1998-10-11-Assurance

Session

Opening

Will (Jonathan TR): I am Will; I visit you today; it has been a while since I have addressed you. I take delight in this opportunity granted me to be your instructor this day. I have been for many years interested in your activities and your growth, as I have been watching and receiving stories as related by your teacher Elyon. It has brought me great satisfaction.

Many of you know I began my life on a world in Light and Life and have had the blessed opportunity to be raised on a world where spiritual truth was held in great esteem. To witness the effort by all in this Teaching Mission to grow brings untold delight. Today I would express to you some thoughts revolving around the word "assurance".

Lesson

You know through living even the few years that you all have that assurance is not simply gained through the acquirement of skill or knowledge, though they do help. When of tender years it is quite easy to be insecure, for experience in time has not granted many opportunities for you to witness how well and how skillfully you can perform a given task. In the course of time through application of yourself you discover your abilities, and assurance grows. However, this assurance is fleeting, for as your years will wind on, some of these certain skills will diminish. The simple act of walking is a good example. In the level of knowledge this same rise of assurance and diminishment likewise exists, for the increase in comprehension of many details about reality, while granting a sense of understanding and certainty about your placement in the makeup of things, also brings the realization of much that is yet unknown. Even the great pursuers of thought reach the uncharted realms of knowledge, leaving everyone uncertain of what the greater comprehensible aspects of reality are. But I assure you with no small amount of deliberate intensity that, no matter where you are in the timeline of life, be it your own physical growth cycle or the course of planetary progress, you can be certain of the resident divine presence within you.

To make contact, to have communion with this presence, results in a form of assurance that is an umbrella that covers all of your incompleteness, all of your insecurities, all of your limitations, for when you make even the slightest, fractional touch with God, you have passed through the tiny porthole to the great, infinite, and eternal Being of absolute greatness. You can be assured never for you pass back through the other way. The pursuit of knowledge, the acquirement of skill, are all forms of the discovery of that which is God as He is revealed throughout creation and by which you are co-participating in His creative expression. Even the feelings of incompleteness are very important in the creative design. Life proceeds through motion. Cessation of motion is the cessation of life; vitality is dynamic. When it comes to personality as regards creatures of our order, the sense of lack is a propellant towards acquirement. On Urantia, you are in quite fertile soil for growth. My native world was like a well-tended garden; spiritual nourishment was abundant, celestial overcare overtly present. Urantia may have many rocks in its beds, many weeds encroaching upon it, however, what is witnessed is the rise and development of vigorous freewill creatures.

In every aspect where you find yourself uncertain, perplexed, and in a quandary, overlay these feelings and perceptions with your already acquired assurance of sonship, assurance of contact with truth, assurance of love that is abundant throughout this universe of benign individuals willing to help you.

I close my comments to you today by saying that the love of God surrounds you; the power of God upholds you; wherever you are He is. Shalom.

Dialogue

This is Elyon, and I am here as usual today. I will forgo comment such that I may entertain your questions or your comments.

Tom: I would like to introduce our new friend and brother Michael. As you see he is a spiritual student. I offer the floor to him for questions or to open a discussion.

Elyon: I welcome you, Mike. It is delightful to perceive your spiritual luminosity and to perceive your ability to discern. It is an art in life that one like yourself can develop wherein meaning and insight are derived from delving deeper than superficial perception. It enriches the adventure of growth. I witness this in you.

Michael: Thank you for those words, Elyon.

Elyon: You are quite welcome. I mean them in a twofold manner, for I wish to assure you that your progress is apparent, and I wish to encourage you to proceed in your pursuit of wisdom and your attainment of spiritual states of being.

Michael: When I say "roads" what does that make you think of? When one is on roads.

Elyon: When I receive this word I begin to apply it to the idea of travel, of displacement in the sense that one moves from one location to another location. But a road signifies a deeper meaning than merely displacement, for it implies direction to a destiny. Roads, however, also bring the idea of prior travel by other individuals, that a road traveled by oneself has been discovered by another, even prepared by another, presenting the opportunity for you to travel thereby. This is the significance of the phrase "I am the way" that the master spoke. However, another element of roads is that they are a specific course of direction, and in this age of the Supreme it is the will of the Father that many -- actually all of you -- pave a road yourself. Some individuals pave great highways in the map of the universe. Others may only pave the private drive to their own soul. However, they all connect together and interrelate.

What are your thoughts on roads?

Michael: Definite journeys. I was told that I was on roads by a very spiritual man. Far and distant. I am between fields right now, working on spirit. The spirit is so intense. With all the stimulation from superficial knowledge, I know my spirit is positive.

Elyon: The beauty of the spiritual path is its transcendent quality in that the road of spirit may appear to be washed out, may appear to be full of ruts and potholes, may appear to climb steep inclines. However, the momentum of growth, the divine propellant within you, is capable of progressing even when roads appear to disappear, much like your sports of snowboarding and skateboarding where one need not be in contact with the ground to move forward. Spiritually speaking, all things about one may appear to crumble and yet progress will be made. Even the moment of standing in the crossroads of many directions, though appearing to be a quandary, a moment of hesitation, is in itself a progressive movement, for decision is a vital factor in all progress.

Tom, I would express a few thoughts to you to address your prior comment about the connectedness of the triangular pyramids, that is, the patterns we are working from to understand more of morontia reality.

If you visualize a giant empty region of space and place love in the middle, at the center, and space equidistantly truth, beauty, and goodness in this three dimensional area so that they all are as far separated from one another as they are from love, the center, then imagine from any one of those three, truth, beauty, or goodness another equidistant arrangement of these other words we have assigned. From those points do likewise, and on and on it will unfold. Each subsequent point or location can unfold in this multiplicity using any of the other word-titles we have assigned. But, if I can draw you back to love, truth, beauty, and goodness, these are nearly absolute in that they uphold and propagate all the subsequent connections.

I hope this has provided you with more to think about.

Tom: Yes, thank you.

Evelyn: Sometimes I wonder why so much emphasis is given to providing this geometry with things that aren't physical. These concepts we are dealing with like worship, service, will, they are so intangible. Is the reason for the triangular relationships to show how they are related? Is there something beyond that for this physical model?

Elyon: These are presented to you in this manner because it provides pattern, a sense of structure, which helps to realize the integration, the interconnectivity, of these many values, virtues, and behaviors. I would remind you that highest of all importance in the universe is relationship. Relationship is the interconnectivity of one to another. It is through relationship that greater meanings are discovered, that deeper love is experienced than simply understanding or experiencing one element or another. Your entire morontia training will be discovering this interconnectivity and inter-relating of everything. In this way it can be said that things physical are spiritual; things spiritual are physical, for it is the relationship that brings about one's ability to perceive this truth.

The construction of imagery we are using will be and is short of the nature of the realities themselves, for descriptions are never as precise as the thing described.

Early in our teaching we have presented many of these relationships to you without describing the relationship. Now that you have these primary constructions you are being given a sort of background lesson, in a sense, the teacher's guide for how these lessons are taught. When I was trained to be part of this mission, I was taught how to present these patterns, these relationships; not to present the pattern and the relationship, but the content of them. This is how you will teach, as well. These structures we discuss over the weeks are background of your insight, for deepening the core of your cosmic comprehensibility. In a sense, what we are doing here is learning about the compounds that make up paint. When we teach we are going to simply apply the color and enjoy the results.

Does this help?

Evelyn: Yes, I notice now that is what you have been doing. I mentioned earlier having read from a 1995 transcript where you discussed progress and provided a threefold description under the heading of will. You gave the same lesson a couple weeks ago only this time you called it a triangle. Then you presented the material; now you are presenting the structure behind it. To be effective as teachers, perhaps we don't need to start off with triangles so much as the items that form them, the values. Working our way up, we use triangles in composing our teaching but not necessarily teaching the triangles themselves.

Elyon: Yes, and to use another metaphor, providing spiritual nourishment to another individual is like serving food to a friend. When you serve a dish to another, for instance, lasagna, you intend for that other to experience the delight of the entire dish, the lasagna, yet, incorporated within it are many ingredients. You could simply place all those ingredients on the table before your guests. This would not be lasagna. As you discuss these triangular relationships, we are playing with the ingredients, yet in teaching we will present the entire casserole. I hope this helps to illuminate our purpose.

Tom: That was topping on the dessert.

Closing

Elyon: I am continually gladdened to have you all so receptive to the way I present ideas to you, for they are enjoyable to me to concoct these perspectives, this imagery. This approach is, itself, exemplary of the interconnectedness of things physical and things spiritual, for you do find meaning that transcends the objects contained within the imagery.

I will close today if you are content at this time and without a doubt will be with you at our next meeting.

Evelyn: Our thank you to Will.

Elyon: Your gratitude has been received. Take care.