2006-10-19-Faith, The Power To Drive Growth

Session

Opening

Elyon: Greetings to you all, this is Elyon. I enjoy this soulful fellowship to have the opportunity to speak with you while you are at such different locations. while in mind and in physical coordinates, each personality feels or recognizes distance. We know in our soul that we converge at Paradise and that through the passing of time, though we appear at times separated by distance, by way of growth we are drawing ever closer together.

Lesson

Faith, Grace

The power which drives growth is your faith and that faith derives its energy from your willingness to perceive your experiences in the broad context of your whole being not merely your family life or your hobbies, not merely your physical material status or your education or your social position but also your cosmic placement, your universe significance. The combination of these ingredients organized by your faith gives you power and that energy causes your growth.

But faith has a partner and that is grace. Your faith is your push, grace is the pull, the power whereby God draws you into His arms up to that consciousness of the Divine into worship. Every voluntary effort in faith is supplemented and supported by a complementary extension of grace, hand meeting hand in the upliftment of the soul. Faith can move mountains because grace is the partner, the human becomes powerful because (s/he) is at One.

When you bow in humility before the Almighty your faith stands up as in these vows and beholds the light of divine grace and in that inward communion you receive the dual power and find that when you stand in faith to the challenges of your existence you are graciously accompanied by He who rules and upholds all. Many mortals face the confrontation of a growing faith, an incomplete faith, one which grapples with incompleteness of consciousness of awareness, of insecurity because of a lack of certainties derived from experience, but your faith is filled by grace. Picture webbing, say one of your burlap fabrics. Every crisscross of thread is a path of experience that your faith has undertaken. The holes in between is where uncertainty is encountered. The grace is the filling medium, the mud if you will, which coats the faith and makes you whole and multiplies your strength into bonding. Ever and always go to God whether you feel worthy or not, whether you feel connected or in need of reconciliation, for your deficiencies are remedied by the outpouring of the mercy and love of God.

I give thanks when I pause and reflect upon the majestic and stupendous display of universe reality. From nothing came all things because of the will of God. A being so capable, unfathomable to me in my own creative expression, all the while intensely personal and focused on each of His children. I sit in awe at the expansiveness of this awareness of one who can rule a whole universe and can reside in your own heart. Faith and grace, hand in hand. You can always trust where you fall short. He will take (you) up and you can always be certain that when He calls you forth and you are unsure, He will give the strength and the abilities ahead of your required effort.

Some teach, let go and let God, others teach the importance of self expression, that your creativity is what God seeks that you do. I say it is a partnership not to be divided one away from the other, but both held in oneness in embrace (with) your Creator. Jesus speaking to the human ego cautioned that in service, not to let the right know what the left hand does because the human mind can become overly absorbed in rewarding itself towards acts. But in your divine center, you the left hand and God the right hand work together to bring about ministry and here is where you count on the presence of spirit and your own being.

In the acceptance of your human frailty you are elevated to perfection and divinity. It is the paradox of the last becoming first. I have expressed my thoughts. I wish to receive from you your comments, questions and feedback. Thank you.

Dialogue

Q: Elyon thank you for your words and I was particularly impressed by your analogy of burlap and webbing and our faith and the grace of the mud filling in the gap because together that forms a kind of waterproofing and extended may form a kind of disappointment proofing and our faith and the recognition and acceptance of grace moves us forward. Thank you.

Elyon: You are welcome and I would take the opportunity to transfer this metaphorical image to the entire planet that all of humanity is like this burlap web of faith and your celestial brothers and sisters are coming at Michael's request to be that mud which fills in between what the human lacks. The pattern applies to the planet as it does to your own personal conditions.

Lantarnek: Greetings to you, this is Lantarnek, one of the Melchizedek missionaries to your world. I commend you for your diligence at pursuing an awareness of a universe scope that your personal progress as a spiritual being is enlarged into a cosmic awareness of a universe citizen and that your actions as a single individual are viewed in the context of planetary purpose and while you are aware of your limitations in human expression you have come to the realization of the corporate power in the collectivity of souls and in your association of the many ministering spirits and the angelic hosts. As Elyon spoke of faith with grace, we Melchizedeks count upon your efforts seemingly insignificant but nonetheless of great importance in actuality because every participant is a significant contribution to the entire effort.

When you deepen your relationship to the divine presence you serve your brothers and sisters and you uplift the world for the reality is not only the hard rock, the blowing storms or those peaceful sunny afternoons, it is also the establishment of an awareness of spirit presence in the mind connected by way of soul to He who is overall. The more of you who become adept at this development, this spiritual maturing, the greater will be the ease of progress in the advancement of Urantia toward light and life.

You may not sit on a commission, you may not be a delegate to another country or an ambassador, you may only serve as little ones whom Christ has blessed but every expansion of mind and soul enlarges the reality of the presence of spirit. I encourage you to keep up this work. You are of great help to our efforts upon Urantia.

Collective Intelligence, Supreme

Q: Well Lantarnek, as I reflect on your encouragement to us as individuals to make that connection with our divine selves, growing our souls and affecting those around us, is the effect exponentially more when we do it collectively in a group in close contact? What made me ponder this was something I read today from a friend and let me digress and say my spiritual path began in meditation and eastern philosophy and specifically transcendental meditation and I have some friends that still stay very much involved and he e-mailed me a message about a gathering they had within the last month of thousands of mediators that gathered together in Fairfield, Iowa in group meditation and they feel that they have had an effect on our country and they referred comically that it was related in economic terms, but that the stock market has gone up because of their collective consciousness and lastly I think because of the consequence of people gathering together to work together and I think it says in the Urantia book that the effect is the number of people squared. How much more powerful is it and important for us to try to work together as groups rather than just as individuals?

Lantarnek: You have indicated a very important aspect of planetary progress. From your studies of the papers for Urantia you have developed an understanding of the nature and progress of the soul long perceived on your world but often misunderstood as to the significance and you know that the growth of the soul makes for a larger substance of your being into which the divine spirit becomes one. You have also had revealed to you the God of time and space, the Supreme Being. It too has been a recognized reality on your world. You speak of your eastern religions which have understood many aspects of the nature of the Supreme.

This is the result of your efforts at collective consciousness. When an individual undertakes an experience which harmonizes the physical, mental and the spiritual elements of being there is always the result of soul growth. When souls, many individuals harmonize one another's various elements of being into a corporate community of effort you have Supreme growth. Light and life is Supreme growth as a result of all the many souls growth. Yes you will find greater power and effectiveness as you unite in purpose and focus with spirit for the good of the world. Thank you for your question. [Thank you.]

Elyon: I Elyon am making myself known again. I will prod you for further comments before I dismiss class. It is always the will of our Divine Parents to fill your need to benefit you and to create well being and as you ask you will receive.

Q: What fills my daytime ponderings is this cosmic perspective that Lantarnek is speaking of, that while we are serving our brothers and sisters on a daily basis, I would like to know that my individual efforts are exponentially joined even to those I don't know about, that I can't see or I can't come in contact with. Do I have to know the people or be around people of like mind, because I'm not, in order to affect the Supreme? I feel out in left field most of the time.

Elyon: To the human awareness, those afar appear to have little or no bearing upon each other but this reality of supremacy makes it such that your effort is exponentialized even in concert with another in another superuniverse, not merely across the county or the planet or your local system. The hub of this connection is the Supreme and the breadth and influence of the Supreme is across the grand universe. The unseen friends are always near you and it is with the spiritual eye that you see them and are encouraged by them even when about you in the realm of the material you perceive yourself to stand alone. This takes great faith. A faith as strong as Michael's when He spent His last hours in great loneliness at His [depth] while His apostles, His only friends were absent, He knew of and communed with the mighty hosts of His universe. This you may do also and you will know that your efforts are magnified by the assistance of your cosmic brothers and sisters.

Q: Thank you so much for that reminder of our brother Michael's loneliness and at the same time communion. That certainly makes our efforts seem united. I'll start waving to you guys during the day.

Timing

Q: Along those same lines as I ponder my own choices, I have a choice to either spend time pursuing my own spiritual growth in study, reflections of that study, in stillness practice and in this wonderful way through the spiritual eye of seeing the unseen friends and through faith working even more with them and collectively trying to improve our planet. Obviously that cannot help but produce good fruits but the question is if there is a choice to do it in concert with others say a study group [or alone], but if you have to choose one or the other is there a better way?

Elyon: The better way is the way that is of the greatest need at that moment and I direct you back to Michael's life on your world. The time when He would cross an entire lake only to be alone and the times when He would march right into the center of a city to be surrounded by the throng. It depends on the need of the moment, the need of your fellows or your own need. But I also direct your focus to that dual purpose of personal growth and planetary advancement. You grow of your own by way of your will and your receptivity to the divine guidance but the planet grows by way of your inner connectivity with one another, your sharing, your service ministry.

You may advance independently and progress personally spiritually and become more prepared to function as an ambassador of spirit on Urantia, but until you are active in, among and with your fellows, this ability will be merely potential. I therefore ask you to be discerning to know when the hour has come, to know when you must go to the hills to be with your Father and when you must ride into town on the back of a donkey.

Q: I will prepare myself and begin to look for donkeys. Thank you my Father/brother of great wisdom.

Closing

Elyon: I express my gratitude for your attention. I honor your sincere hearts and I respect the diligence of your minds in the pursuit of truth. It is the reality of the goodness of your soul that expresses the beauty of God through you and I will let us depart with one final thought, to look to the resident Lord, to He within who knows you and is you. It is only your giving and becoming that completes the union. In this state all things are possible. Thank you, farewell.