2011-04-07-To the Fair, Ambition

Session

Opening

Gerdean: Father God and Mother Spirit, thank you for this occasion to come together again in this format that we have orchestrated with your heavenly helpers and willing participants. What a wonderful opportunity to share the brotherhood and sisterhood of our faith. Thank you for the delightful personalities that we have been provided as teachers and associates, companions and mentors. Thank you for everything you give us, Father God and Mother Spirit, which is obviously too much to detail, but we are not without abundant gratitude. Oversee our session this evening and guide our thoughts as you would have them go toward our divine destiny. Amen.

TOMAS: I am Tomas, your Teacher. I have a message for you but I have come today with a friend, a friend of yours and mine, this is Teacher Merium who will speak to you first. She has been clamoring to have an opportunity at the podium, and so I will give her the opportunity without delay.

MERIUM: Good evening, my friends, I am Merium. I am a member of the Teacher Corps, a long-time associate even by your standards, but I am young in many ways as well. I am certainly young in spirit, but when I translated I was a very young woman and so my history as a mortal was short-lived. Of course, I have caught up with myself experientially. I have gone on to learn what you, too, will learn once you’ve gone on to Mansonia, but I always like to introduce myself as a teenager, as a babysitter, if you will. Not meaning to be disparaging in any manner but to somewhat deflect the power of the word Teacher. I am a story-teller, and I would like to tell you a story today about progress.

Lesson

Growth

We have our own little briefings here, as you may know; we are often invited to join the planetary government in their morning briefings as to the details of life on Urantia and we cannot help but notice that you are focused on certain words and phrases representing certain values and standards that are appropriate to your development, your growth, and reflect on your background as a mortal of this realm, this particular planet. One of the things we have found amusing is your near obsession with “What phase are we in?” Sometimes, when we hear you ask that question or others related to it, we think of children in the back seat of the car, saying “Are we there yet?” “How much farther do we have to go?”

And this indicates your impatience and eagerness to have something substantive occur. It is sometimes difficult for you to see how much distance you have crossed between where you started and where you are now but you know you cannot see your growth as it happens. You see your growth after you have grown. And so it is the same with your question about “what phase are we in?” it is similar to saying, “I’m in the third grade; I will be in the fourth grade next year.” It is an earmark, a benchmark, as to your progress and progress is a great deal for you at this time.

Being young and on a young planet, being alert, “quivering on the brink” as it were and eager to investigate and discover all the wonderful doors that have been set before you to open, many of which would not be presenting themselves as possibilities were it not for the Urantia Papers that were delivered to you recently.

Magisterial Mission, Teaching Mission

I wanted to elaborate on that theme somewhat by analogizing how it is that you grow. You know that we have the Teacher Corps and we are pretty much focusing on correcting, personal correction, the “inside job” as it were, the contact with the Indwelling Adjuster, the adjutant mind-spirits, the Spirit of Truth, these kind of quiet personal reflections and revelations that have in fact given rise to this social venue we call transmitting/receiving and we have, too, the Monjoronson Mission, which is yet another branch on the family tree, a compatible branch, but whereas the Teaching Mission is reflective, the Monjoronson Mission tends to be more active.

In truth, this balance occurs throughout your growth and will for ages to come -- the balance between aggressive and recessive, positive and negative, male and female this is not uncommon and so it is natural that it should take place, even here and now, and so those who are involved in the more active outgoing aggressive aspects of our mission will be curious about the counsel that comes from Monjoronson and others on high who have already made the strides and have come a long way. They no longer ask “Are we there yet” because they long ago arrived. In fact, they were created “there.”

We have also a tendency unfolding to seek the counsel of higher and higher celestials, as if the higher the celestial, the more important the message, and the more capable therefore must you be to assimilate higher messages. This makes you feel good; it makes you feel important. This is not a judgment; it is an observation. But what I wanted to talk about was the Fair, going to the Fair. This is the story:

Competition, Expression

When you have your own personal life -- and let’s give it a life - a simple humble life, happy, productive, perhaps on the farm, perhaps not, but simple and humble and you do the things you love to do. Perhaps you raise sheep or chickens. Perhaps you have a garden. Perhaps you are a great cook or a wonderful seamstress, and you make quilts or pies or jelly. Perhaps you make crafts or woodworking, and your neighbors know how gifted you are at this that you do. You may make them as gifts for holidays or special events. And then again, you may feel the desire to enter them into the County Fair, so as to compete with others in your neighborhood who do the same kinds of activities – this being a friendly competition, and one which will show off your works and wares to happy advantage.

Perhaps you enter your goats into the barn where other goats are entered for the best goat, for the best sheep, for the best chicken, for the best rooster, for the best rabbit in the animal realm. Or in the home-making area there are quilts and pies and all those things. And then, too, there are fine arts and amateur arts. And you enter your goods and services and there is a reward for these expressions. Sometimes, just to go a little further, you choose to enter these into the State Fair -- not just the County Fair, but the State Fair -- where you might get national attention and sometimes a connection that will render you such a success you leave home and move to the city and teach these techniques or become a circuit judge to determine the value of others’ efforts. And the higher you go on this chain, the more stiff is the competition.

There is no requirement that you enter any of these venues. These are opportunities for you to express yourself and to receive feedback from your peers. It is a way of doing things with others and for others that puts you in the heart of your community so that you can share these good works with others. It becomes a social venue that provides certain values, and yet those who do not choose to enter into the County Fair or State Fair or go on to be professionals in their field, could be just as happy to stay at home, humbly plying their trade or their hobbies as they have always done, generation after generation, as a whittler, or canning, or whatever their propensity may be.

“Are we there yet?” Are we there yet depends upon where you think you want to go. At some point it is possible for you to say, “I won the red ribbon. I didn’t think I would ever win the red ribbon, and I have won. I’m done. I am happy. I have arrived. I am there.” And only you can make that determination. To ask others, “Are we there yet? Have we mastered what I wanted to do? Have I set out to reach my goal? Have I succeeded?” Only you can say.

I wish you each all the success and all the accomplishment in your heart, knowing even that as you make your efforts here on your native planet, you give it all you‘ve got, if you haven’t been able to satisfy these longings, most assuredly at some time in your future, you will be able to satisfy these longings for accomplishment, mastery and appreciation by a peer group. Just keep up the good work, and under no circumstances are you to consider yourself any kind of a failure, for as long as you have strived to do your best and done your best within the framework that has been presented, you have succeeded and you can go home from the fair with a smile on your face, whether it is to resume the adventure next year or if it is simply to go back to work, life as usual, on the home stretch.

I have so longed to have an opportunity to tell stories to my students. I notice with the tendency to get loftier and loftier, we who are a much lower level of accomplishment, seem to be given less and less to do, and having trained and volunteered for this assignment, it seems a shame to be overlooked. Plus, I know the midwayers themselves who are so close to you and who know so much about what you need and what you do are always so eager to participate in this format. It’s not like I object to Siraya or Serena or any of the major players, but having a young girl’s heart, I like to put some eggs in the basket of the youth, the inexperienced, the rookies who, although they are just starting out, still have so much to offer.

And then too there are all the layers of those who listen, as in the apostles. There were the very bright ones and then the ones who were not so very bright but they all loved to hear the master speak; they all loved to hear his stories and receive his guidance. And so I have offered mine. I will now humbly back off for Tomas to offer his words for the evening. Thank you so much.

TOMAS: Ah, youth! Such a vibrant, young, personality.

Ambition

I do indeed have words for you this evening, although I will not be as chatty as Merium. I want to talk to you about ambition. Ambition is an aspect of going to the fair, if you will. One must have ambition to get out of bed in the morning, to get up and go to work and apply oneself, even if it is a minimum of ambition, one still must have some in order to survive and make his way in this world, in this society. Ambition is a natural part of the animal constitution. It’s a part of your adjutants that look for adventure and seek knowledge and opt to investigate and do things. It is a part of the active aspect of service, not merely reflecting on what you would do for the Master or for your brothers and sisters, but what you can actually accomplish if you set your mind to it, and how you can impact others by these choices.

Speaking of phases, we seems there seems to be a phase emerging where each of you as individuals – many of you at lest – have reached a point of wanting to undertake paths that will represent your perception of what God’s will is for you. You know that you each have a personality that has a destiny plan, this predestination is custom made for each individual, and so you have your strengths and your weaknesses and as you discover what those are and process yourself, undertaking to attain the seven psychic circles, you diminish your failings and empower your strengths such that you can hardly curtail the psychic headwinds that push you in the direction of fulfilling your destiny as you see it.

Some of your efforts toward ministry are truly pronounced. There are those of you who do healing work and have a following, have developed techniques, have written books, have helped innumerable persons overcome their infirmities and diseases. There are those who choose to broadcast the good news and, along with their love of technology or musical instruments or the written word or the creative arts, painting, dancing, etc., have found avenues of expressing your gifts, your talents, in a way that is rightfully representative of an expression of sonship. You exalt God in your works.

There are so many examples of such individuals in our immediate culture here in the Teaching Mission and extending into the greater mission of Correcting Time, and each of these star seeds are observed and cultivated to God’s glory. And yet ambition can sometimes be over-reaching. Self determination can render danger to the eager beaver religionist. There is an admonition in morontia mota that speaks to ambition. “Ambition is dangerous unless it is fully socialized” and so the socializing of your ambitions is carried on and when it is given community support it is hailed as acceptable and thus it endures, it proceeds, it may excel. It becomes a part of the culture. Many times, just like entering something into the fair, you run up against some serious competition. You enter your best hen or your best jelly only to find that it is mediocre compared to some other rising star on the horizon, and as unsatisfying and as disappointing as that may be, that is the way it goes sometimes and you must not be defeated by this apparent defeat but rather perceive that there is a time for everything, and a time for everyone.

Interestingly, though, Jesus was not ambitious. Not personally ambitious. He … well, I hear objections coming at me right and left. Obviously he was ambitious to do the Father’s will. He was diligent in seeing to it that he stayed close to the Father all through his life he sought counsel and communion with and through his Father in heaven. When it came time for him to take off his apron and be about the Father’s business, he was directed and consecrated. He traveled many miles; he withstood many deprivations; he had no place to lay his head, and yet he persisted -- sometimes exhausted and unable to get away from the crowds that clamored for him. And so he had to have some kind of sense of purpose, but he was not ambitious for himself. He did not seek to set himself up as a king or a leader, compliant with the ways of the world. He sought to please the Father and to do what he came here to do, and he succeeded well. He took home the blue ribbon.

I wanted to call to your attention today this thing about ambition. You have ambition and you need ambition to fulfill yourselves, but you do not need ambition to fulfill the will of God, for God provides the energy, the strength, the power and the wherewithal to do His will.

Somewhere there is an admonition that you should learn to recognize the presence of God. Recognizing the presence of God is a way of tapping into divine energy, and this divine energy can guide and direct your steps, your path, your ventures, such that you need not depend on your own self-determination, your own ambition, but simply be alert to divine guidance which will always come if you are to be guided. If you do not receive divine guidance, perhaps you need to go home and tend to your flock in peace. In truth, there is no greater gift than to have a flock to tend, to have a simple life wherein you are able to care for that which has been given to you to care for, no matter how humble, no matter how simple.

I will conclude my lecture for the evening, as well, and open the floor now for your involvement. We are eager to hear from you. Thank you. Don’t be shy. Is anyone contemplating entering something into the fair?

Dialogue

Adjutant Mind Spirits

Juan: Well, Gerdean, I wonder if Tomas could answer my question about the 12 specialized senses that we two-brained mortals have. He had posited that in addition to seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling, we have the seven adjutant mind-spirits and I wonder if that is it.

TOMAS: They are not exactly senses. They are circuits.

Juan: That’s what I thought. But I was curious about the senses they speak of in the Urantia Book.

TOMAS: I suspect I would need to see the reference in context, rather than try to guess what they might be trying to say. Are you talking about the senses that you enjoy here, now, as a mortal or are you talking about the senses that you will enjoy after you have translated to Mansonia?

Juan: No, they are speaking of the twelve specialized senses we have now which will become seventy specialized senses in Mansonia. The three-brained mortals are slightly more spiritual and have additional senses. That’s what I was curious about. What our twelve senses might be.

TOMAS: Well, for peace of mind, you could consider those seven adjutant mind-spirits as senses, in that, they can be felt, they can be determined. You can sense the spirit of intuition and the spirit of understanding and the spirit of courage and the others if you know what to look for. Most people don’t pay enough attention to the seven adjutant mind-spirits to know that they can in fact be felt.

Juan: That sounds like an answer to me.

TOMAS: It is an answer. I don’t know if it’s the one you are looking for. I don’t know, frankly, if it’s the one you are referring to. But I would venture to say that they suffice as senses to the extent that you value them as senses. Do you know the spirit of worship? Do you have a sense of what it feels like when you want to worship? Have you pondered the energy, the molecular constitution that your body undergoes as a sense when you want to worship? Have you experienced when your face crumples up in tears and you have no idea why you are crying?

Juan: Exactly.

TOMAS: And in the spirit of wisdom, the sense of wisdom would come where you hear total gibberish and foolishness and yet have no desire to correct, clarify or set straight the transgressor. Wisdom would allow for growth to come about by its own development. You could tell someone where they were wrong and why they were wrong, but that is only an intellectual response. True wisdom comes from experiencing life, and that involves your senses. You have made it tangible by experiencing it. And so, to the extent that the seven adjutant mind-spirits are experience-able, as are your physical senses, that would constitute twelve viable senses, but I don’t know if those are the ones they are speaking of, frankly. I was not part of the revelatory commission.

Juan: Thank you, Tomas.

TOMAS: Thank you, Juan, for your question.

Tom: Tomas, I have a question. In keeping with this theme of ambition, in our text, under morontia mota, it says, “Ambition is dangerous until it is fully socialized.” And yet we’re talking about ambition just getting out of bed. Can you speak to that please?

TOMAS: Ambition is a function of the mortal of the realm. Ambition is a characteristic of the human. It is not a spiritual quality.

Sometimes you speak of the identity as the ego. In this case, your desire to be about the Father’s will would present itself as ambition.

This is a human interpretation. You think of almost everything, naturally, from the human perspective. Every once in awhile I ask you to think in terms of a higher perspective, take the farther view, recognize that while it is perfectly normal for the human animal to think in those terms, it is possible for you to embrace a higher terminology. This is mota calling out to be owned, assimilated. The human needs to be ambitious up to a point so that it can take care of things, get a job, provide for its self, provide for its family, go to school, and get educated. These are natural things for a finite creature.

When you get into the idea of ideas and become ambitious with your ideas, you affect other people and they have a right to know what your ambitions are as you are going to be affected by them. This is where you want your politicians to be forthcoming. This is where you want the CEO of the corporations to have a more open door policy than allowing everything to take place in a smoke-filled board room. One must be cautious of those who adopt the attitude that their ambition is good for the masses, or is something that everyone needs to follow. Everyone has a right to make that determination for themselves. This is about personal sovereignty.

This was my point. That while you may personally have ambition – in fact, you need ambition to wend your way in this world – when you put your ambitions to work for and with other people, you need to be forthcoming as to what those ambitions are so that others can ascertain whether that is an ambition they want to follow through with or not. The other part of that mota says something to the effect of, “You have not truly acquired any virtue until your acts make you worthy of it.” And so we don’t know you well enough to know what will happen to your unbridled ambition if you are given the power to carry it out blindly, when everyone says, “Good. Do it. Go for it” without knowing what it is that you are doing or going for.

It is dangerous! And it has nothing to do with the spirit, even if it says, “This is good for humanity. God wants me to do this.” Many, many religious wars have been started over this kind of attitude. And it is not necessary for the true believer to be ambitious on God’s behalf, or for God. God does not want you to be ambitious for him – if I may presume to say such a thing. Go ahead and be ambitious for your world, but God does not require that you be ambitious for him. God will do it all. All you have to do is believe. And this is why I suggested you give some thought to the idea of recognizing the presence of God because the presence of God will guide you.

Sometimes it will take you away from your own ambitions because it will put a block in your path, disallowing you to go the way you wanted to go, but if it is not what he wants for you to do, even if you do want to do it that way, the true child of God will follow His will even if it means his own ambitions have to perish.

Ambitions, by and large, are created by the ego. They are constructs. They manifest in finite ways, organizations, methods, systems, and they may not be beneficial. These need to be fully socialized before they are implemented instead of after the fact, but for many years you have allowed those with ambition to carry the load, and now there are many power-mongers in existence and many mechanisms in place that do not serve God’s will, do not even serve the people, they serve only ambition.

Now it’s true that “the meek shall inherit the earth,” and those who are humble and stay home, who don’t even want to join the County Fair but just want to tend to their own flock and their own garden. They will be all right. If they are safe in Him, their spirit will be held in His hands. He need not have ambition for God, just to keep his talents and obligations in good order, his house in good order. But those who have ambition, give eye to their ambition. How misplaced is it? For you too could become swept into such ambition and, while that is not necessarily a bad thing, it is a good thing that it be fully socialized.

And that means criticized / discussed, like the Master would discuss “Counting the Cost.” If you are going to do this, these are going to be the effects. Are you willing and able to put up with the effects of such a cause? And look at everything there. Look at it all. Look at the possible good and the possible evil that could come from these plans. Look at the motivations involved. This is what is involved in creating One World -- one mankind, one humanity, with one language.

There are tremendous projects ahead for your world, indeed some undertakings that will require superhuman ambition, but these are for your finite existence. They are not for God. God will do it all; all you have to do is believe. Look for Him, and Listen for Him in all your ways and means and in the ways and means of your peers. Don’t be in a big hurry. Don’t constantly say, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” We will not be there yet for a long time. We can work on it, however. Polish our tools. Sharpen our tools and our skills. Develop our mental acumen.

Become familiar with your adjutant mind spirits. Help them work with you and for you, so that they are a firm foundation underneath the Spirit of Truth. Is this helpful my son?

Tom: Yes, it is, especially the part about announcing your intentions along with your ambitions. I’m reminded of door to door salesmen, or evangelists, or even politicians or dictators, were we to know their ambitions ahead of time, it would save us a lot of time.

TOMAS: Yes, and be mindful too that if they are ambitious, and they feel that this is God’s will for them, they are going to be very sincere, and so you have to observe that sincerity and make your own determination by recognizing the presence of God in them. For sometimes, we are misled by our own perceptions. To see someone enthusiastic about a plan, a project, an undertaking does not necessarily mean it’s going to work; it doesn’t necessarily mean it is a good idea. Which is why it is a good idea to investigate and ask questions, and if anyone gets angry at you for asking questions, find out why they are angry. You should be able to put everything on the table -- as they say: “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and know what you are dealing with. Count the cost of being his apostles.

There is some great work ahead, exciting work, meaningful work, and when we get there, you will feel it, you will know it, you will be called to act, called to speak. The spirit will rise up within you and shout it out far and wide and you shall not be denied.

Tom: Thank you for your counsel, Tomas.

TOMAS: Thank you, my son.

Closing

We are out of time. That is to say, we’re there. We have reached the point where we can sign off for the evening, but not before I offer a prayer of thanksgiving for your presence and your attention to these matters that we all hold dear: how to do the Father’s will effectively in our lives, so as to please Him and be meaningful to Him and to each other. Amen and farewell.