2001-04-11-Human Associations 101, Part 1

Session

Opening

TOMAS: Good afternoon. I am Tomas. I'll be here for just a few minutes and then I'll give the group to the Teacher assistance of Dolores today for our continued discussion on Human Associations. The highlight of my message to you today is in reference to comfort zone. You may envision me this afternoon in my chair with a glass of iced tea, having no apparent discomfort from the oppressive heat of your local climate. The climatic extremes of Urantia are a short-lived chapter in your existence. As you know, the mansion worlds are more moderate, and infinitely less dramatic in their geologic scope also.

However, the rigors of material life are made in such a way as to allow you to overcome a lot of these seeming handicaps through mastering the forces of nature. Climbing the highest peak, shooting rapids - these sport-like experiences to the more athletic are not possible on the more developed, advanced worlds which have begun to temper and also on the morontia spheres where such feats of accomplishment pale in comparison to the feats of accomplishment you will approach in that reality.

The Teachers on assignment here with you observe with fascination your lives as you live it. With the exception of Abraham, all of us have come from other worlds, and while there are similarities, Urantia is unique in itself. As you know, my home world was one which was extreme, weather-wise, which was a contributing factor to our adaptation to each other and to our way of life which was contributory to our being able to elevate our behaviors into the spheres of fraternity which ultimately gave us an environment approaching a quality of life you might call light and life.

I mention this as an indication of how it is possible that you can reach great spiritual heights of accomplishment even while in the flesh. You can master your environment sufficiently to allow your higher selves to rule the day and overcome the down-pull of the heat, the cold, and other weather constraints. You will think me a fraud for chatting about the weather. Well, this is perhaps a preliminary to your on-going session now about Human Associations, for when humans have no other idea of what to talk about, they talk about the weather. This is one way of establishing a Human Association . Let us then commence.

DOLORES: I am Dolores. Good afternoon. I take up the pointer and my place at the podium. I greet you. I thank you for attending our time with you in joy and anticipation even in delight of our association. We have become friends, yes, in our association and I'd like to stress today the human quality that you all recognize as friendship. The fraternity born of friendship is essential to having the platform readily available for you to bridge the gap from this world to the next, from this reality to the higher ground, from the awareness of the life in the flesh to the awareness of the life as it is lived in the spirit.

Lesson

Let's go back, then, and look at your friendships throughout the course of your life, the childhood associations. Have you a favorite memory of your pals you can call up? Gerdean, what about you?

GERDEAN: Yes, my best friend in childhood, or my best friend at one point in time, was a gal named Donna and we took the bus together. We were probably what you would call "school bus friends" because I didn't see her at school that often and I didn't see her at home that often but we rode together loyally on the bus every day. It somehow made the transition from my home life to my school life more meaningful because she and I always shared a seat on the bus.

I can't remember having large numbers of children as friends. I had another friend, Debby, but she was what you might call "painfully shy" and she would never spend the night at my house, although I often spent the night at her house. One time she did muster up the courage to spend the night away from her home and in the middle of the night my dad had to take her back home, so we didn't do that again but I visited her often and we had a good time. We colored mostly, as I remember.

And I had a fellah friend, Stanley, who lived across the railroad tracks in another community we lived in when I was a child, and he would always come across the tracks and we created this great building out of, I don't know what they were, chicken crates or orange crates or something. It seems like there must have been hundreds of them and we made a huge structure. It was like a fort, I suppose, but we would play there by the hour and that was fun . Most of my childhood friends were one-on-one situations.

DOLORES: Thoroah?

THOROAH: I think that my childhood was almost replete with sort of unrequited friendships. Friendships always seemed to end up with getting hurt by each other a lot. We'd get over those things, but I think there was a lot of disappointment in friendships when I was young. My two closest friends (besides my sister, Carol) and all the way through high school, were my cousin Kent and my friend Tom and they both shared with me more of the spiritual kinds of things than anybody else had. But I didn't have a lot of close friends, and still don't, but I think I was vulnerable to being taken advantage of, which wasn't necessarily my friends' fault as much as myself.

DOLORES: You've both had the experience of Human Associations in your youth, yes. The disappointments you mention are, in the main, because you are molding your personality as children and adapting in ways that are not required by your family. There are also family constraints put upon children in their friendships, but I cannot help but notice that you both stressed the reason for your friendship, the activity that bound you. The common interest you shared. This common interest may have been temporary, but the congealing factor of your association was because of your common love for a thing or an activity or your common need.

The fact of friendship has not changed that much in adulthood. You still call those who are your friends those who have with you a commonality that binds you or allows you to have sympathetic feelings. This is the basis of clubs and social groups - stamp collectors, cheer leaders, canasta players, hockey players, other fraternities and sororities of like-minded people which constitute Human Associations.

Many of you have asked about how it is that you can better promote the higher reality in your daily life. The challenge is to look for openings, while the more zealous begin to attack the problem with evangelical overtones, and even while it may appear too simple, a one-on-one association is still the most effective route to proselytizing. It is still the most efficient method of bringing man to God and thus God to man. This is fortuitous, for not everyone is as gregarious or as popular as those kids you may have looked at with envy in grade school, those who were constantly swarmed by admirers or supporters.

But in those situations where you are in a group because of that group purpose, it tends to constrain you in your attempts to open up the level of communication to include the spirit interest. It's as if society isn't set up to give God an opening, and here is where you feel your responsibility lies, that you would bring truth, beauty, and goodness to your more routine affairs and associations rather than to make a public pronouncement or a big noise about ministry.

Well, you're on track. The key is in you, that same key that is in the story about Jesus who would seek the key wherewith to unlock the door. In this parable you can see that he, too, had to seek to find a way to open that door. He was known to have said knock and the door will be opened unto you". (144:2.3) He is depicted as standing at the door poised to knock. (159:3.2) You are all standing at the door of your friends, poised to knock on their heart in order to let Him in, in order to open to spirit reality such that they will be personally affected, and it is indeed a fine art form to be able to find the key and open the door such that they will enter into the kingdom. How would you do this? What is your technique? Each of you have begun to develop a technique that is reflecting a degree of success. Each of you are aware of how you have attempted to approach the spirit in your Human Associations only to have the door slammed in your face, and in these experiences you have been able to review and ponder what it is you have done that is offensive, how you could have done it better, or you have gotten deeper insight into how resistant your fellow is to a new dimension, a thought, or a purpose.

This is not any different than when you were a child and your friend and you had a parting of the ways because of a misunderstanding or hurt feelings. Children aren't sophisticated in analyzing a behavior, and they are only concerned about how it can get back to where it was when you were friends, before their reactions or responses to your behavior or your comments caused them to react or recoil. Sometimes the parents intervene on behalf of their child and thwart your attempts to reconcile the friendship. In this adult life, too, the "adult" of the mortal sometimes interjects, interferes, intercedes on behalf of the mortal and the association is disrupted. The "adult" may be their own intellect, may be their own fears, may be a reflection of their foundations, their own organizational loyalties such as to their club or their church or their political ideologies. And when this happens, the only recourse of the child is to mourn he passing of that moment in time wherein their friendship was whole and go on to a new phase of life, opening other doors to other adventures and experiences, other Human Associations.

The tendency is to stick with your own kind. This is one of the lessons fro m childhood from the clan mentality. This is a cultural conditioning that comes from antiquity, but it seriously limits your horizon in terms of Human Associations with those outside the familiar. As you embark into individuality and adulthood, it's possible for you then to develop a taste, to encourage the propensity, to seek out that which is unfamiliar, bizarre, or in contrast to that which you have always known, in order to exchange your cultural composition with others.

This ability greatly enhances the opportunity to minister "as you pass by" a s you can readily perceive from Jesus' experiences as a youth in the comings and goings of the caravans with their strange scents and sounds. Thus opening the doors of perception into other ways of life and in this wide-eye d wondrous exchange of human associations, there is the wide-open door of amazement and complete sharing. It's in so many ways so much easier to approach the spirit in company of strangers than it is those whose company you have long known and whose limitations are already familiar to you. Thus there is provided a range of opportunities, depending upon how far afield you allow yourself to go from your home base. The child, Debby that Gerdean spoke of is destined to live a sheltered life if she is of such a nature as to cling so fast to her home scene. The midwayers may be able to provide her an opportunity as a youth to reveal to her an adventurous side of her character, but it will be her Adjuster who leads her into those experiences which will be necessary for her to experience in order to open up to that which is unfamiliar. As is true for all of you who have set out on your path toward perfection attainment.

The field of Human Associations is unlimited, especially today in your world of mobility and technology. Each face on the TV is another story. Each person you pass in your car is a story, a personality, a soul, a possible friend. In conclusion today, I would like to add this element of Human Associations, and that is that the spirit can be fostered without ever using such terms as would be denounced by a mind protecting itself against spiritual propaganda. The presence of God is within you and within them as well, and that communion of spirit may be had, may be acknowledged, and may be encouraged even in the simplest of communal activities. A moment in time can be made into and realized as a moment in eternity simply by the quality of the sharing that is enjoyed by each of you. An instant in time wherein you mutually share the expression of a child as it crosses her face, and appreciating all the wonder and awareness of a youth coming into its own as a life, is enough to bond your spirits and eventually this encouragement of refinement of sentiment is adequate to support the courage to broach upon other discussions and ideologies that may one day lead to an acknowledgment of our Eternal Parents and a sublime worship thereof. But as you well know, a pint cannot hold a quart. Best to enjoy the cup as it runneth over. In this way its capacities are made greater for yet more of the living water. In this way, too, you are regarded not as a preacher and not as a proselyte, but as a friend, and friendship is the pinnacle of Human Associations, whether it be a "riding on the bus together friend" or a "marriage partner for life friend" or a variation of all of the above. The supreme compliment Jesus paid his apostles was to call them his friends, so the assignment is to go enjoy your friends, and enjoy new friends as well, a s a part of our on-going course in Human Associations.

Thank you for your time today. I return the podium to Tomas.

TOMAS: The realm of friendship is a side-effect of divinity, whether you are conscious of it or not. I would hardly be your friend if Our Father had not brought us together. I just wanted to sit here with my iced tea and ask if you have any questions about anything or have you got anything you want to talk about? It's a measure of friendship to not always want to take the floor and focus the attention on yourself, and so I like to give you the opportunity to express yourself and let your interests be known. In this way I offer myself in a friendly manner.

[No questions.]

Yes, it is possible to be friends in the political arena. It is possible for those of you who are political to also be friends or those of you who are friends to also be political. The reality of politics is not limited to Republicans and Democrats. It is a part of the constitution of any group of entities engaged in a cause or a purpose. Your identification with TeaM inherently involves you in TeaM politics. And this is a part of association, a part therefore of friendships.

The politics of Jesus' time was not only about the Romans and the Jews and the Essenes and so forth. It was about the mental configurations of each of his apostles and disciples and associates. Even though his agenda was an agenda of friendship with God, it was regarded as a political stance which indeed got him crucified. But you do well to be mindful of the politics of others, the individual and independent mind-sets of your associates that they have committed themselves to, consciously or unconsciously, which give them the identification with their mental support systems which help them constitute who they are.

We will have more opportunities to investigate human politics and Human Associations in our adventures into experiencing the brotherhood of man as time goes by and as time allows. This season ahead is astir with celebration plans in honor of Jesus of Nazareth who lived the perfect human life. How he inspires us in his sovereignty today is no less remarkable than his portrayal of Jesus. The lessons that he lived and taught are as poignant in your lesson plans as they were then, and even more so, since it is your life indeed that you are living, and sharing this life experience with the Master . The religious life of Jesus and how he lived it is indeed a curriculum well worth studying and applying to your own applications of your ministry as you pass by.

Closing

Enjoy your upcoming festivities and acknowledgments of your appreciation for his gift of nativity to Urantia, a gesture of friendship indeed, that you have the Human Association with the Sovereign of the universe -- you both shared this earth as your material incarnation. Sort of like riding the bus, together. Wouldn't you say, Gerdean?

GERDEAN: Sure. A lot like that. Thank you, Tomas.

TOMAS: Thank you, beloved friends. See you in our next session. Good afternoon.