History, Costa Rica TeaM
Perhaps the best place to start is with Henry. Henry was a fellow member of a group that my wife Susan and I joined to study the Urantia Book, in Santa Barbara, California, in the mid eighties. When Susan and I moved to Desert Hot Springs, Cal. approximately in 1988, Henry also moved to the desert, shortly thereafter.
Bob Slagle's Paper
The reason this story begins with Henry is that one day at the desert spa while we were soaking in the hot water, we noticed Henry walking around our pool area reading a sheaf of papers with immense concentration, and the secretive-satisfied grin of the cat-ate-the-canary variety. When we inquired what he was reading he gave us his document entitled “Welcome to Change,” by Professor Robert Slagle of Sonoma State University of California. We took it home and read it.
Essentially what Slagle does in this paper is to trace the trail that led him to the discovery of a ten year old phenomenon that is called the Teaching Mission. In a nut shell, earlier, in New Zealand, and later in Woods Cross, Utah, certain individuals began to get telepathic inner hints and guidance and later began to transmit telepathic messages to a group of friends. The senders of these messages identified themselves in the rather broad category as celestial helpers, and identified themselves with specific names. Slagle sets out the steps he took to pin down whether this phenomenon was real. Trained in Western scientific critical thinking at one of the best universities in the world, obviously he did not want to be “picked off base” by something hokey. Which led him ultimately to travel to Woods Cross and attend these meetings where such transmissions were being given on a regular basis.
He leads you through his doubts, the verification steps he took. The whole nine yards. His conclusion was that the phenomenon was real. That is, it was what it said it was. Coherent. Made sense. This was based on his own experience of contact with the teachers in a transmission setting, as well as his study of the variety of the messages received. He sensed the immense intelligence of these so-called celestial teachers while listening to the transmission of their messages through the voice of one of the group members whose telepathic capacity had become functional. He also became aware in the group setting of the teacher’s all-embracing compassion, their respect for individual sovereignty, their edifying humor. His investigation of the reality of this phenomenon also rested on the foundation of the congruence of the messages that were being received through other celestial teachers who were communicating to other small groups in various places in America. These teachers gave lessons on many spiritual subjects. I think it would be fair to say in summarizing the vast amount of lessons that had accumulated through this unique process that the underlying message was: love is the way.
Finally, his field being psychology, Slagle saw that the people who were attracted to and attending these meetings were on the whole average-bright, educated, many advanced degrees, professional people, any and all honest seekers of the truth. To wit: people who do not ordinarily “hear voices.”
We considered Prof. Slagle’s story quite interesting, but we were not galvanized into checking this out any further at the time. We were soon to be heading back to Costa Rica, where we live in “retirement.” My wife and I have each read a zillion spiritual books, and opened ourselves as adults to a good number of spiritual paths. In 1991 we retired on 15 acres of lakeside property, where we were able to build a beautiful home, gardens galore, and enjoy the abundance of butterflies, birds, lizards, snakes, and monkeys here. We lived a life of fulfillment. I was 65, Susan was 55. We loved God. We wanted the will of God in our lives, that is to say, we were intent on being guided by loving wisdom in all things. The point here is that we were relatively mature individuals, reasonably well off, living comfortably and sometimes adventurously in a foreign country, and had no need to be “englamoured” by any kind of unusual religious phenomenon. We had each seen more “unusual religious phenomena” than we wished in one lifetime, and at rather close quarters. I was raised by a minister of the so-called Holy Rollers, my wife with the Episcopalians, so we spanned the wide gamut of the Protestant variety of Christianity. “Welcome to Change” got put on a back burner, despite our admiration for the clarity and care Slagle showed in laying out his epistemological journey.
Henry Zeringue
Sometime in the mid to late nineties, we began getting emails from Henry of transcripts he had been transmitting from his teachers. Henry is now transmitting celestial teachers?? The world is full of wonders! But I have no recollection of what the teachers said to him, even though I can remember their names. What did galvanize my attention was a remarkably different tone in the chatting part of Henry’s emails.
Henry is one of those larger than life characters. Artist, grandson of a back country Louisana blacksmith, deeply wounded by the gothic Christianity (Catholic or Protestant, take your pick) of the South that Flannery O’Conner evokes so vividly. Expelled in his sensitive adolescence from a monastery, a master of fine arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Henry had a streak of high dungeon and skepticism about some of the ways he perceived the alleged divine authorities were running certain matters in the universe.
On occasion, he would become so incensed at some obvious absurdity, some perceived sleazy short cut on the part of the divine, that it would cause me to crack up laughing, because the whole scenario was veering wildly toward the comic. This scenario in drama form could be entitled, “Henry, As God.” I could laugh, rather than defend, because I had gone through my own period of doubt and skepticism. And we were and are in good company. One of my favorite theologians, Hans Kung, has confessed pretty much this same streak of questioning in his recent memoirs. “ I am no stranger to such quarrelling with God’s guidance and dispensation.” Pg. 328. “My Struggle for Freedom.” This artist, this sensitive soul, this rough barked original, this man with the agonizing questions, this grizzly bear of a man, this one had begun to sound a new note of love in all his communications. What was up?
Something different was happening here. Love was changing Henry. We felt him communicating love as we never had before. This is not to say that Henry was not loving before. He was. It is rather that the love he now began to manifest seemed like a quantum leap for a man who had reached the stage of the curmudgeon at a rather early age. I became interested to discover the source of his change. I had traversed enough spiritual loops, one might say, that I had come to the place where I knew that love was the way. I had come to believe that love was the ancestor of all spiritual values. I had also come to believe that the fact that love existed at all on this planet was a miracle in itself and as mysterious as the existence of evil. Given this rather stable perception of where the crown jewels were stored in the divine order of things, it should be obvious that I was interested in anyone or any tradition, new or old, that could show me the way to greater love. A love that wore pants and walked in a way that worked in an ordinary life.
Visit to US
We soon began to make plans to go to the States to visit family and friends, but more specifically, to check out what was now happening in Henry’s life. As I have suggested, we were both secure in our spiritual path at the time, but we knew that a visit to Henry to check out his new found source of love, was something that we needed to sniff-out. So off we went, like anthropologists of religion, on a new scent. Our tool, our radar, was our inner gyroscope, the inner lure and guide of truth, combined with our outer gyroscope, which was created and shaped by all the experiences of a lifetime we had each had on a number of spiritual paths.
So when we got settled in the desert, we decided the easiest way to get into what was happening with Henry was to invite him over to do his number, his transmitting, of the “ teachers.” I put teachers in italics because at this point in time we had no ideas at all about the bona fides of these so-called teachers, based on personal experience. Thus we approached this new phenomenon with a relatively clear slate, but, of course, with all the linaments of our respective Western skeptical academic backgrounds and our own life of experiences. All we knew was that something profound was happening in Henry. We felt it immediately. A new gentleness, a humility of respect for love, is as close as I can come to describing it. So he invited us over with the intention that we would have our first experience of being exposed to this phenomenon.
There were just the three of us in the room. Henry, Suzi, and I went into what is called “the stillness,” just a simple meditative technique of quieting the mind, sitting still, opening, and listening. Henry began to speak in a quiet normal voice, which we recorded. I do not recall any unusual sensations or experiences from that first encounter. What ensued was that we offered to transcribe the recordings into hard copy so that it would take several hours of rather tedious labor off Henry’s shoulders. The result of this process was that it allowed us to listen to and read each message four times. We heard it when Henry transmitted it, we heard it on the tape as we were transcribing it, we read it for meaning as we transcribed the message, and finally when we had it in hard copy, we read it in its printed state. What this process helped secure was a clear idea in our minds of what was being said, what the message was. This was a quite “objective” pursuit, quite apart from any notions as to who these so-called “teachers” might be, whether these messages were coming from Henry’s subconscious, or whatever usual suspects are thrown up when this kind of phenomenon is reported. Running the message through our minds four times, helped us to determine such elementary stabalizing posts as, does this message make sense? Does it have an internal integrity? What is the spirit of these messages? Thus from an anthropological point of view we were investigating a manuscript. A manuscript is a form of data whose investigation can claim some “objectively.” And so, like good little school children we faithfully read our lessons, did our homework.
We concentrated on the message, the Word, like good classic Protestants. As I have said, I can’t at this point in time recall what was said on that first occasion. There was certainly no sense of awe. It seemed quite tweedle dee and tweedle dum, as a matter of fact. So we continued these transmission meetings with Henry until about the fourth or fifth time when in the midst of transmitting, he asks, or the teachers asked, “Do we have any questions?” Well, this is a rather critical juncture in the epistemological journey of determining the reality of what we were experiencing.
Should one be gracious to the alleged teachers? After all they are enunciating a very loving message, perhaps the most courteous tack might be to try out a little shy neutral question. Or possibly, throw out a fraudulent question, that is, one you already know the answer to, in an attempt to “trick” the teachers, so you can expose their fraudulence? Or you can be open to the experience, trust at that point, at least on an “as if” basis. I happened to be at a point of deep heart sorrow and anxiety about the fact that I had been in the states for three months and had not heard from or received an invitation to visit from one of my adult offspring. One of my sons had recently left his wife and gotten a divorce. This divorce seemed to have had the power to open up the fault line and evoke all the pain in my family that had not healed from the divorce of my first wife and I, some 30 years previously.
One way to check out what is real, is by being as real as you can be. This creates an inner plumb line, a hologram of integrity, if you will, that unerringly gives a true reading on the response you receive from your realness, your plumb line of integrity-reality. So I spoke up out of a cry from my heart. Thus I stepped into the anthropologist’s circle of subjective understanding. The area of reality that needs and demands, because of its inherent subtleties, all of the careful mindfulness that is necessary in the far less subtle dimension of the physical sciences. What I am trying to say here is, that on the basis of my very real, very raw, human need, I decided to go for broke. To perceive this voice I had been listening to from Henry as connected to something like a subjective being, quite like myself. And so I leaped. I needed help.
At that moment, I was totally unashamed of my need for help. Suzi and I had previously talked sadly about the fact that we had no response from this family member, but when I began to unravel my tale of woe to the female teacher named Berca, I couldn’t believe how the feelings tumbled out of me, uncensored. Nothing of what I spilled seemed to faze her. She was the model of evenhandedness, asking common sense questions in the midst of my turbulence, like, “were you invited?” The closest I can come to how I experienced this is to say it was like being in the presence of a cosmic psychologist. I felt such a total acceptance in the midst of my distress. In addition to which, I remember to this day something she said to me. She said something to the effect of, “perhaps this person has passed the age when you can any longer be a teacher to this person. But you can trust that whatever lessons you think this person should be learning, life will teach this one on its own. And you need not fear but simply trust in the goodness of life to do this.”
It was not until the second or third time I read a printed copy of the transmission of the above lesson, that I saw the incredible respect, delicacy, kindness, and wisdom with which I had been treated. It just leaped out at me like a revelation. One of my professions had been as a psychotherapist. So my own professional experiences led to a respect for the nuances in this encounter. This, my first existential encounter with “the teachers,” became the first stepping stone on a stairway that through teacher contact several years later led to a reconciliation with this estranged member of my family. So back to the epistemological quest. I just took a Kirkegardean leap based on a need. My question was real. I know my pain was real. And what I had encountered was for me clearly not Henry’s subconscious. Henry is one of the brighter people I know, but because I knew him well, I also understood his limits. What I brought to that situation, a very real pain, a very real need, a very real confusion, was met by something equally real. I felt the compassion in her words, the tenderness toward my woundedness, and the gift of this wonderful shape-shifting technique of reframing, creating a larger frame, taking in more of the picture, extending the time line. Berca reframed the problem for me. Namely, there’s something bigger than you daddy, and it’s called life. What had formerly seemed bleakly hopeless, now contained the spark of hope. (would including the transcript from Berca itself “show” what I am talking about, rather than having to tell what it was? Or does this narrative capture it well enough?Do we still have the transcript? Let’s take a look at it.)
There is something innate in an encounter like I have described above, that gives you a surety in your sense of the personhood of “the other”. This sense grew in me as we hit the ball back and forth in the ping pong of our conversation. What I discovered in that exchange was the emerging signature of personality. Berca’s personality was clearly distinct on this occasion of our first personal interaction, regardless of whether I had made any conscious decision as to her bona fides yet. While we were in the midst of our first encounter, I could not help but notice at times the speed with which she responded with wit. Quick witted often stands in our language for intelligence. But it is intelligence with a lilting grace to it. It seeks to lighten the observation with a little twinkle of humor. Certain people seemed to be gifted with this grace. And it is surely the mark of personhood. It was a distinctly different humor than was common to Henry. Perhaps it would be helpful at this juncture to mention that I had some notion as to who the teachers were from having read Slagel’s document. They are alleged to be mortals like ourselves who have passed through death and gone further up the spiral of spiritual evolution. These teachers do not ordinarily come from this planet, but from other planets of mortal habitation. Because of certain events in the cosmic spiritual dispensation of this local universe, it became possible for these advanced beings to volunteer their services to help restore the spiritual balance of this planet as well as advance their own journey toward truth, beauty, and goodness. These teachers all come in the name of love and in service of the Master Jesus, Heavenly Father, divine mother, and in any and all sources and names that point to the way of love.
Return to Costa Rica
During our last transmission with Henry, again, apropos of no inquiry on our part, we were each given the name of our teachers. Suzi was informed that her teacher was named Davina and the name of my teacher I did not quite get. It had the sound “song” in it, so I settled on that as his name or nickname. We returned to Costa Rica, mulled over our experiences together, and forthwith more or less put these teachers on the shelf for a year or two. We felt no compelling need or urge to make contact with these teachers who had been “assigned” to us as personal teachers.
One evening in my sleep, and possibly in a dream state there appeared to me a smiling face of luminous brightness. This face was alight with a crystalline light that shone like diamonds. This dazzling emanating light had the palpable feeling of love and the beauty evoked an immediate sense of awe through its magnetic quality. And in tune with my usual speed of uptake, I did not remember this vision until some months later, when Suzi began to feel some urges to do her stillness meditation at the computer. Since she can type blind, she began to type out these little poems that came to her. (INCLUDE POEMS don’t think I have the poems anymore…but I will put in the story of going to the computer and another experience that led up to that, if I don’t have it, Zola still has a letter I wrote at the time)
As this process continued she began to get direct messages from her teacher who identified herself as Davina and referred to “others” as part of her retinue. After some time Suzi began to tell me about these experiences and sharing the messages with me. The first and most vivid result of this contact, as far as I was concerned, was the increase I felt in her expressions of love toward me. Very noticeable. It’s hard to knock or doubt something as gratuitous as love. It was during one of our talks together about the teachers, that I suddenly remembered the dream or vision I had had in the night time and told her about this. It would seem that our teachers were operating from a transcendent level of patience, waiting until we were ready, not imposing themselves upon us.
Shortly thereafter, Suzi began to get messages from a teacher named Alana and her co-leader named Legion, who announced they were to be our group teachers although at that time we did not have a group. So we began, perhaps once a week to do our stillness and invite the presence of the teachers. This process began in the summer of 2000 and continued perhaps for 3 months or so until we started a group. We recorded their messages, transcribed them, and studied them closely for congruence in the messages and following some of the disciplines such as the “stillness” they asked us to follow. It was all rather low key, but needless to say, we were both a bit incredulous that this was happening to us. We did not share this with others at this time, except Henry, who just urged, “go for it.”
After several months into this exercise, we got a call from a dear friend of ours who had been involved with us in a previous group of seekers which was held at our home in the past. She reported a dream she had that seemed to have some spiritual significance to her, and she asked that we start our group again.
So at our first meeting we spent some time in stillness, talked about our friend’s dream, and generally touched bases with each other on the progress of our spiritual paths. We did not mention our teachers at this first meeting. We were a bit shy about springing the teachers on our friend who is very sharp, a critical thinker, with the resume of a competent professional. We were reluctant to present something that she might think was a wee bit off the board. But around the third meeting, at the gentle encouragement of Alana, we blabbed the whole scenario out. Rather than being scandalized, she jumped in like a duck to water.
Suzi (what is in our notebooks about this early stage?)
Initial Resistance
Well, I can’t say I jumped in like a duck to water. It was a long journey for me. I grew up Episcopalian, and my brothers and sister remain church-going folk to this day. One conducts bible study groups, another takes gratification and expresses gratitude in purchasing fine linens for the altar table. All have baptized their children in the faith. How I’ve journeyed so far from that path is a complicated story of both humanness and grace.
I resisted the idea of the teaching mission because I had already had a devastating experience lasting several years with “channeling” that ended in disillusionment and public dismay.(A scandal in which I played the key role as whistle blower and was quoted on the front pages of the LATimes.) When Henry at first presented his new path, enthusiasm poured from his eyes and smile, but I remained aloof and slightly cynical. I couldn’t quickly believe again. It was too painful. Indeed, I do not think I had recalled the pain and disappointment for many years, had perhaps even believed there was no pain left inside me, but as we joined Henry in his early search for contact with his teachers, I felt isolated and alienated from sincerity. It was too easy, I thought, to imagine wise old men and crones giving me advice to “go here, go there.” It was too easy to picture the path winding up the mountain, the open cave, part of the guided fantasies intended to introduce me to my teachers and guides. “Been there, done that,” kept echoing in my mind, and the process created little sense of certainty about my life and world, my spiritual destiny, and fell under the category, for me, of make believe, or “I made this up.”
I felt the need to be cautious, because of my past disappointments. I felt the fear of being “led astray” by my own need to believe something to be the essence of the true, the good, the beautiful. But I did not trust what I imagined. A dream man with a sweet face, a loving female guiding me to clear waters. This was fantasy, to me, not reality, not spiritual teachers speaking to me from within, just products of my imagination. The crux of it was, in wanting to join my friend Henry and my husband in this new spiritual pursuit, I encountered my distrust of myself. Trust, it seems, was what had been most deeply wounded by my past experience. I was willing to believe in Jesus, in angels, in guides, in God, but could not extend my trust to believe that they could come to me, care about me, or the biggest stretch of all, speak to me
The faith that took me to Costa Rica was based on my faith in my husband. He had been a classmate of mine when we were in training at the American Institute of Family Relations in Los Angeles, a former assistant professor, an ordained Presbyterian minister and had been raised in a minister’s family. The faith that believed in God and the possibility of a loving universe was based on my husband’s faith in such things. I had given love unstintingly to clients, but this did not spill over to myself. I enjoyed reading the Urantia Book, found in it “pearls of wisdom” and passed them on, but could not give it my total faith.
Previous Disappointment
So in order to tell this story, I must dredge up my story of the past. I remember my first encounter with what were in this story called, “entities.” A male friend, who also worked with people, had degrees in physics and psychology, introduced me to them by playing a tape of one of his sessions. He invited me to attend a session of my own. I accepted. As we drove to Escondido, we passed through a landscape new to me, filled with huge boulders of sandstone and hills dotted with dark green trees and bushes. My imagination went wild, with mystery and an excited fear. Not enough to turn me back, but enough to fulfill all childhood fantasies of ghosts, spirits and dark unfathomable energies swirling about to “catch” me unaware. I was attracted to the unknown. I hoped to be “special” enough to be given an audience. I feared I was unworthy.
We met three people, two women and a man, rather un-exemplary, ordinary in a back-country way, one of whom, the wife of the male channeler, held a degree in Marriage and Family Counseling, like me. She did not participate in the session, but her presence at our introduction lent a “professional” quality to the endeavor. We were taken into a large room, where they held group sessions as well, and sat on the floor. The channeler went into another small room, to lie down on a cot and go into his trance. The lights were turned off. The woman played a tape of music, “Welcome to our World,” and sang along. After awhile I heard the soft sound of feet, as if they were moist, sucking along the floor with each step. I can not recall much else from that first session, except that an atmosphere of love was created, enough to bring me back again, for a “private” session.
It is difficult to say how one is convinced to believe that spiritual entities can manifest, not only in words, but in a body, but that is what we were asked to believe. Perhaps it was a function of the desperate need to be loved and to be told one’s life has meaning and a “special” direction. As well, perhaps, the desire to give over the responsibility for one’s life to some power greater than one’s own, preferably, in my case, a benign power, a loving God. At the time of my involvement in the Escondido scene, there were two draws: we were going to save the world from negativity, under the leadership of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her plan to establish many centers, Shanti Nilaya, for working with people, troubled, sick, and dying. This satisfied my desire to contribute to the world, to make up for all I had been given by accident of birth. I was undoubtedly persuaded by the Kubler-Ross fame, as well. She gave a legitimacy to this unusual experience, and certainly that hope for “specialness.” But the experience of lying with an entity, weeping one’s heart out and being “unconditionally loved” in return, was so powerful, that with the help of reading such books as “The Tao of Physics,” and “Stalking the Wild Pendulumn,” I was willing to suspend my dis-belief and jumped right in. I believe we did some good, all those who devoted enormous amounts of time to our own growth, and to developing and leading workshops for others, but when I consider the cost to my family life, I must say that no spiritual pursuit should ever take one away from the primary task of caring for your children.
I was the “whistle-blower.” Evidence came into my hands and I acted on it.(tell the story) This eventually led to the downfall of the “dark room.” (Need to give more detail of the dark room…put it into the story above.) The growth I had believed true, of myself, the community of colleagues and friends who had participated, fell apart. I escaped into marriage and keeping a low profile. I was embarrassed and deeply, deeply disappointed. I largely kept this disappointment to myself. I rarely spoke of my experience, even after Henry introduced us to The Teaching Mission. I did not want to end up the fool once again.
Escondido was a step in courage on my spiritual journey. A step off the well-worn path of a ready-made religion. I now know that it is no mistake to search and in that search it is entirely possible that the inner longing, the desire for spiritual certainty, may lead to experiences that have an initially hidden down side. The heartbreak and disillusionment in religion, that comes to some of the brightest and most ideal within its ranks, is widespread, and whose accompanying caution and downright cynicism can only be overcome by that urge deep within us which seems to unerringly prompt us in new directions in our search combined with a necessary caution and alertness in slowly building the steps that lead to trust. The teachers were certainly alert to my caution, mentioned it to me, and gave me the comfort of guiding me in the direction of not having to hide it ,be ashamed for being a fool, and in fact, to accept it, even to respect the caution and learn from it.
I’ve read the Mitford series, a gift from my sister, and in it Jan Karon evokes an Episcopal priest in crisis and despair, working on his sermon. The sermon message is not clear. He takes up the Bible, open to its message anywhere the pages fall, and hears: “Stop seeking what you want to hear, Timothy, and listen to what I have to tell you.” (p. 305) This is not unlike my experience of going to my computer to type “blind” while listening with my “mind’s eye.” The message has been the same as that given to “Father Tim,” gratitude in all things. “The path to God is paved with gratitude,” says Alana. So I felt a little boost of confidence in my path in my recognition that if the author, Jan Karon can describe such an event, and people by the millions accept without protest that God can speak to us in the present, why should I continue to resist and question my own experience since the two were quite congruent to my mind?
Acceptance
(I think your following piece should be saved, but it does not seem to fit here, because it is largely the record or summation of years of learning, rather than You wrote this I believe at the point where you did not know how to proceed with your story on Escondido. I think there should be some narration here of your early experiences with the teachers and whatever inner struggle you were going through in your encounters with them. For instance, the first twelve pages or so in O’s collection contains an immense amount of material, but I am not sure if these are with the group or alone, or with me. I am a little stuck on how to go forward here with the story line. Can we insert all those lessons at this point without wearing out the reader’s desire to know what happens next?))
In service to love there is a discipline, the discipline of love. It is a practice. It has to be learned, to be chosen daily. As love disciplines, so comes joy. Gratitude is immediate in the humility of respect for love’s power to dwell within each one, equally. Love and joy become connected to many things and different functions in the living of a life, therefore discipline. Resistance, defiance, unconscious denial, outright refusal, all will rise up to your discipline, your practice. The choice is always yours no matter what oppresses, and the choice can be difficult, although the love is easy.
I surrendered to the call of love and Alana came along with Legion. Is this God? Is this Jesus or my imagination? It is all of these things to me and good. It is the truth, the beauty, the goodness these teachers have shown me that keeps me coming back to be reminded that love is the ultimate power and joy is the ultimate gift of lov. I am not perfect. I am not always sure I am even perfecting, just a toad shifting her belly on the moss, but I am growing in gratitude for a life lived in love, even the “bad” parts, the “hard” parts, that bring me to my knees, is a life worth living. Besides I am curious what’s next. The teachers embrace our curiosity, encourage it. This entire human experience is a lesson in learning how to love, if you choose it. I’ve known blind hatred, vicious jealousy, the shock of being slugged across the hallway. I know there is cold-hearted cruelty and ruthless pain. The heart room is a call to a class room of profound love that embraces all things that are human in knowledge, will, and action. We are known by love, intimately. To be known by love, to know that you are loved, is to know that you have love within, abundantly, plenty to give away without fear, without doubt. Acceptance brings forgiveness that allows love to change you. One does not need to sacrifice oneself to the altar of love, but allow love, accept love, into your heart and mind and let love shape you, be the cause of your living.
We had our first meeting with our friend and our teachers on……2000.
First Transmissions
I sent the following note to our friend Henry re the teaching mission: We began a spiritual group again and have introduced some of the teachings. We have all agreed to practicing the stillness and listening for teacher guidance. Would you please have someone speak to Jar-el about this? just to say that we are here, waiting and listening and practicing, and to ask if there is any message for us. Also to ask for me: Is understanding always necessary for forgiveness?
Before I heard back from Henry, I “received” the following:
“Listen, you will understand. Forgiveness is fluid, like love. You will see great empty spaces, like the blank page to the author. You will be the one to carve your forgiveness out of granite, as smooth as glass, so smooth you have difficulty seeing the fault lines through which all change is manifested. Your fear of understanding is different only in kind from your fear of truth. You have discovered the similarities, but not identified with them. Truth is friendly. So is understanding, because these twins, not identical, are nevertheless from the same seed, love. When the truth hurts, there must always follow a period of relief to this bending oneself to love. Do not despair.
But understanding without love, without that relief that pain will end, is worthless, no matter how true the understanding is. Truth can not stand alone. Love must filter through the truth; all intelligence must be struck thru by love in order to reveal the truth; all truth leads to love. My understanding may vastly differ from your understanding, but in this we agree and are the same, we do not exist without love. Love is the generator, the moving part to all forgiveness and growth. Forgiveness and growth are love’s machine. We are grateful for all opportunities to grease the wheels, so to speak, to infuse your truth with forgiveness and love beyond your understanding. Be in peace, brother and sister.”
Henry sent this teaching:
Children of Time, patience is the eternal response to time. Time is the puzzle of eternity. Its answer is the pathway to eternity.
Willful decision is the key which unlocks the doorway to Time.
- I AM Timeless,
- You are Timeful,
- We are Timeable.
Greetings, my friend. In answer to the question whether understanding is necessary for forgiveness, Is understanding necessary to give or receive love. Understanding is the act of eternity, forgiveness is the act of Time.
Usually it is in retrospect to experience which yields understanding. Forgiveness is the ability to bring understanding to a situation. First, one has to forgive ones'self. This is possible by the fact that the Father resident within has already forgiven you. Forgiveness is a decision, a willful one.
If one had complete understanding, one would forgive automatically. The Master did and at the end of his life while on the cross was able to voice, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing". He certainly had complete understanding of the human condition.
Finally, forgiveness is more important than understanding as a value. Understanding becomes augmented by the act of forgiveness, eternal value acquired by the mortal act of time.”
But before I had received Henry's message, I had already had two more experiences: I started out with, “I am open to listening and learning. I am grateful for this opportunity to listen and learn.”
1. “Have faith in learning. You are wandering lost in the barren desert, but I am here and I will guide you. Never fear, we are watching over all your falls and mishaps.
When the call comes, you answer it. Each time you open yourself to listening, hearing our guidance, you are learning. You can only see one step at a time, here, in the here and now. We are with you and on the other side of the mountain as well. As you learn from one another, you increase your ability to be here and there. As we do. This is the importance of connection, listening, communicating in an exchange of effort to hear and be guided. Whether the thread you are following is thin, and you cling to it with faith and trepidation, loyally, but shivering in the dark, Love will prevail. You will reach the summit and see beyond the narrow confines of your self and the small spotlight of your earthly life. Let us show you how to spread that light, how to see into the darkness, which for all your fear is still fascinating. Shadows go slowly, you must be willing for them to change shape until suddenly they become your safe escape into light and the joys of unconditional love. Be not intimidated. Look with eyes unafraid to be open. Listen with ears patient for the truth. In between your conflicts and struggles to love one another as we love you, like the interstices of a strong foundation built to withstand the natural settling and shifting of the earth's faults, be content in who you are, human beings, limited in scope but gifted with the the capacity to love, and be loved. You are loved beyond your wildest hopes and dreams. Your power to love is limited only by your ability to know this is true, I am with you, the father and all the heavenly hosts are with you, the mother spirit embraces you. The miracle of love on earth is founded in these beliefs. And re-created by each one of you, as fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers. But the greatest of these is to know that you are one, one among many, one in all, each of you is precious in the father's eyes, and the mother is no less. That is all for now.”
2. “Pain. You weep because you fear you will not be loved. This fear of the future is because you do not believe that you are loved, or loveable. Whatever you believe love to be, begin to give that to yourself now. You are loved. By me who is always at your side. By the father and the mother, equal and equally.
You have done well, my child. The discipline of love is the mastery of the tongue; you want to speak when it is not wise to do so, and only love quiets the tongue. When you speak out with love, you are heard. Wait and listen before you speak. Even then, loving speech may bear hard truth, painful truth, and your words are flung back at you like dirt on a burial scene. You want to rise up, let the dirt fall, have your say. The dead can not speak. Only the living. We only live by love.
Misunderstanding in love is overcome only by forgiveness. Forgiveness exists as soon as you have the intention; it is not a solitary act, it must be done again and again and again. Your intention will guide you, and we, knowing now your intention is real, have given you support. Listen and your forgiveness will give you that feeling of love you so desperately seek.
Rest well, child of love, you are known as a divine mentor in heaven. Take these words and share them.”
