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with love and gratitude,
with love and gratitude,
Rob
'''Byron Belitsos wrote October 28, 2015 at 11:25pm'''
Rob, I hope you don’t mind that I posted my comments in this email—in green. We can paste it into the discussion page later…
COMMENTS BY BB
It will be helpful to those examining these textual artifacts to know something about their origin. This requires at minimum, a brief overview of what is known as The Teaching Mission.
Please simplify and make more warm and inviting…A phrase like textual artifact sounds distant and academic IMO. What is the core teaching being delivered in the Teaching Mission? What is its purpose in a few words? What are some of the key facts? How many lessons? How many teachers? How many TeaM groups came into being? Here you might also link out to introductory accounts by others such Cleveland’s site, or to mine at evolving-souls.org.
Judging from the record of dialogues, an Advance Corps of celestial teachers began contacts with individual human beings in the late 1960’s for the purpose of developing experience with humans otherwise deprived of celestial contact and communication apart from the context of mysticism. As such, there are a few records from the early 1970’s that bear witness to this effort.
Until now, I have never heard the term “Advance Corps” — it is not in common parlance among us, and not well defined at your link, so suggest not using it.
Mention of the lessons before New Zealand is only of academic interest IMO.
Why have hyperlinks for generic terms like “1960s” and “communication” here? New people may think these links are essential to the discussion at hand, but they are quite tangential; such links add nothing to the immediate needs of the reader and could be distracting.
It wasn’t until the 1980’s
Suggest you simply put the actual date that first contact was made in New Zealand.
however that more systematic contact aiming to develop long term relationships with groups of persons began in New Zealand where the biblical personality known as Abraham acted as the group teacher. By the late 1980’s, other teachers were found contacting groups in the United States who, unlike the New Zealand group, were all Urantia Book readers.
The record suggests that the contact with a group in Utah by the teacher Ham
I believe this was not in Pocatello, but instead in Woods Cross.
was among the first, and afterwards grew into a network of small groups in the United States and eventually throughout the world. Typically, these were characterized by the study of The Urantia Book as a basic text though it appears not to have been a prerequisite for participation.
In early 1992, the teacher Ham made an announcement to the General Council of the Urantia Brotherhood through a “transmitter” named Rebecca, one of the first to bring through celestial teachings in the Woods Cross group …
then the only organization sponsoring study of the Urantia text. In this meeting on February 1, 1992 in Los Angeles, California in advance of a general conference of the Urantia Brotherhood, Ham described the Teaching Mission as follows:
1) Initiation and expansion of the Teacher Corps as many of you will desire to receive personal instruction. At present we are preparing a group of teachers who are in the first phase of our Teaching Mission. The mortals brought under their teaching and guidance will become teachers themselves, as themselves, not in an intermediary position as is Rebecca (the ‘transmitter’) tonight. Spiritual enlightenment on individual, group, national, and planetary scale is anticipated.
2) Also, along with the spiritual uplifting, we anticipate and desire cooperation in other areas of human life endeavor as well, chiefly economic, political, social, environmental, and technical changes. Of course we are anticipating many years duration of this initial phase of our mission.
3) I am commissioned to announce also the third aspect of our Teaching Mission, and that is preparation for an even greater Teacher. Michael has prepared the way. We are expanding the way. A Teacher Son will complete the way toward Light and Life on Urantia. As for timing, I cannot adequately or accurately foresee.
Suggest remove the generic hyperlinks here. It it is distracting as the reader has to pick and choose to find one that is immediately relevant.
The reception of this announcement was decidedly cool. Nevertheless, it was described by Teaching Mission participants who were present as a “great success”. No doubt, the Urantia Brotherhood had larger concerns at that time with contests over copyright control of the Urantia text that persisted through the 1990’s until the copyright was cancelled by a Superior Court decision in 2001 after nearly a decade of litigation.
Suggest delete most of this, or, if you decide to keep it, add more detail. Who gave it a cool reception? Why? And, if it was poorly received, why did others call it a success? Confusing unless this is filled in with journalistic detail. IMO, the copyright issue was not relevant at this time, so I don’t see how it fits in here.
With copyright no longer serving as a thorn in the body of organized readers of The Urantia Book, the Teaching Mission became increasingly perceived as a threat to the goal of presenting The Urantia Book to what was considered the mainstream of society. Regardless of any official chagrin, it was announcements among many Teaching Mission groups of an impending materialization of celestial visitors in what the Urantia text describes as a Magisterial Mission that resulted in the decline of public participation due to the manner with which this prospect was represented by some.
I don’t think you can properly explain Naperville, etc. in a few sentences, and I don’t see it as important in an introduction to new people, so I would delete this.
Today, there are Teaching Mission lessons translated into many languages around the world,
I don’t think that translations are at all significant enough to mention here.
and no doubt, lessons are being received by those who care to listen to the Source of all spiritual guidance within every child of God endowed with his presence. How many of these oral lessons will be shared in public is yet to be seen.
I find this less than helpful, because if conflates two very different phenomena.
It is for this reason, the following collection is offered to the pubic simply as evidence, that at best, points to a greater body of teaching well beyond the reach of words but not to any who would make the time required to learn to recognize the still, small voice within.
Suggest flesh this out a bit more. Important point passed over quickly.
'''Byron Belitsos wrote October 28, 2015 at 11:25pm'''
Rob, I should add that, if any of my comments hit home, you might like to provide us with a new and improved version of this introductory page. Also, I want to acknowledge you for your years of deep devotion to this complex work in a time when interest in it is at low ebb—though not for long.
Love
Byron
'''Rob wrote: October 29, 2015 at 10:11pm'''
Dear Byron,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, all of which are gratefully taken home to Father within. The page associated with the url http://dialogues.daynal.org will be updated in transit to the redesign of the entire site. Your generous acknowledgement is appreciated.
with love and gratitude,
Rob
For brevity, your comments that are numbered citing only their first sentence with my replies beneath .
1. "Please simplify and make more warm and inviting…A phrase like textual artifact sounds distant and academic"
reply: Textuality is at best twice removed from its source, and at worst, used to negate its purpose. The use of the term ‘artifact’ simply makes this fact more explicit while stating such artifacts arise from "oral lessons given by Ascending and Descending teachers of various orders”. Your helpful points posed as questions are addressed by Ham’s description of the Teaching Mission found by following the supplied link.
2. "Until now, I have never heard the term Advance Corps"
reply: Following the supplied link through the brief description to the lesson describing this term finds -
"Wenslo: At the onset of the fifth epochal revelation, which began actually at the end of the (19th) last century, a small staff came to train initially then to do service in bringing about the book, also to begin establishing a core of contacts. I was fortunate enough to have arrived shortly after the initial group and have served on many levels before being assigned to Bill. My functions were not necessarily to work as a personal teacher as my current assignment is, but to work with the angelic corps in indirectly contacting mortals. There were others who were capable of making direct contact even without the circuits. There is also the knowledge of impending adjudication. It was apparent even at that point that it would be resolved soon in our terms. This is why we started preparing for the change, preparing for the reconnecting of the standard normal circuitry even at that point in the distant past from your point of view.”….
For archival purposes, any lessons received prior to Ham’s announcement to the Urantia Brotherhood are categorized as being among the Advance Corps though this category is not featured in the general chronology.
I appreciate encouragement to sharpen the focus of supplied hyperlinks and will implement wherever feasible.
3. "Suggest you simply put the actual date that first contact was made in New Zealand."
reply: While the first NZ record is Feb. 20, 1984 I seriously doubt it was the “first contact” given that formalities inherent in recording and transcribing generally follow personal and informal contacts.
4. "I believe this was not in Pocatello, but instead in Woods Cross."
reply: I am surprised your sharp eye did not detect the discrepancy between the words and their hyperlink ;-) I had written “a group in Utah” intending a link to Woods Cross. In error, I inserted the hyperlink pointing to Pocatello.
5. "through a “transmitter” named Rebecca, one of the first to bring through celestial teachings in...Woods Cross"
reply: The TR is identified in the following paragraph by Ham. Given Rebecca’s current desire to distance herself for professional reasons, I see no reason to lift her profile any further than Ham’s words do already.
6. "Suggest remove the generic hyperlinks here.”
reply: As per #2 above, I am glad to sharpen the focus of hyperlinks and will do so.
7. "Suggest delete most of this, or, if you decide to keep it, add more detail.”
reply: As I will be scrutinizing the page aiming to reduce its length, I will give attention to this section.
8. "I don’t think you can properly explain Naperville, “
reply: Please examine the Naperville page & its talk page. There you will find no reference to the Magisterial Mission that is referenced in the copy whose manner of representation coincided with decline in participation.
9. "I don’t think that translations are at all significant enough to mention here.”
reply: Numbers of languages in translation suggests strength of appeal. There are many more to be added.
10. "I find this less than helpful, because if conflates two very different phenomena.”
reply: Do you suggest a lack of integration in spirit?
11. "Suggest flesh this out a bit more. Important point passed over quickly.”
reply: I would like to hear you say more about this “important point passed over quickly.”
'''Mer Tenney wrote: October 30, 2015 at 8:23pm'''
I think your points are well taken, Byron, and I like your suggestions.
Mer
'''Rob wrote: October 30, 2015 at 10:03 pm'''
Hello Mer-
Thank you for chiming in! I would encourage you to say more and in greater detail.
Gratefully,
Rob
'''Byron wrote: November 1, 2015 at 4:42pm'''
A final few responses …
*1 I would argue that the transcribed lessons are themselves the immediate objective of the celestials, and not the live sessions—most sessions were ad hoc events with minor effect on most participants, and many transmissions have no audience at all (as in the 11:11 transmissions). So, these “texts" are more like living documents than they are like “leftover” artifacts of some past event.
*8 I still hold to the idea that Naperville is far too complex to cover here, and your special page on it does not add enough to change my mind. It should not be elevated to such central importance when many other key points need to be made in this introductory overview that have not been made.
*10 Spirit unifies all things. You can still conflate two distantly related items from within this "set of all things.” A transmission from a celestial being is a function occurring between personalities, one human and one (typically) an ascendant human; listening to one’s TA is not IMO in the same category.
I’ll leave it at that in the hope that we will see a new draft of this material.
Love,
BB
'''Rick Voss wrote: November 1, 2015 at 7:20pm'''
Thanks Byron, you make some really good points here. I’m in full agreement of the first two. “Live living documents” better describes what these transcripts are to me. The teacher can comes alive in the heart of the recipient when these treasures are read by a seeker. “Personality recognizes personality” as we are told in the UB.
I fully agree on the second point as it is written. I’ll need to review the original text you are referring to comment on #10.
Thanks again
'''Rob wrote (in reply to Byron's last post): November 2, 2015 at 12:01pm'''
Most certainly, a new draft will be forthcoming. In the interim, I offer the following for reflection:
1) The objective of spirit is spiritualization. Material symbols can serve this purpose as a means to an end.
8) Naperville is not referenced in the copy supplied. ‘Materializations' associated with a Magisterial Mission are.
10) For archival processing of any document, the ‘teacher' is but an attribution tag for database purposes.
I appreciate the ‘feelings’ associated with this discussion and the willingness to share them.
'''Rob wrote (in reply to Rick's post): November 2, 2015 at 12:14pm'''
Hello Rick-
Yes, Byron makes important points revealing his personal experience with what we know as the Teaching Mission, and of course, I appreciate his articulating these thoughts. It may prove that I hold a minority opinion in the discussion, but finding an acceptable description of experience than so many find to be of unspeakable value is always a challenge.
On what you refer to as “the second point”, please review the text referenced I enclose here:
"Regardless of any official chagrin, it was announcements among many Teaching Mission groups of an impending materialization of celestial visitors in what the Urantia text describes as a Magisterial Mission that resulted in the decline of public participation due to the manner with which this prospect was represented by some.”
and let me know where you find a reference to Naperville. Otherwise, I look forward to any further thoughts shared.
Gratefully,
Rob
'''Byron wrote: November 2, 2015 at 12:43pm'''
Rob, as a publisher of Teaching Mission texts going back 17 years, and having been on many radio shows discussing it with thousands of listeners who ask questions on the air, I speak for more than my purely personal experience—I’ve been working with the general public, not to mention booksellers and radio hosts, for that entire period of time. So, I speak as best as I can from the point of view of our audience and its true needs when being introduced to this phenomenon.
That said, I’ll step out now and wait for you to generate a second draft.
—B
'''Rob wrote: November 2, 2015 at 1:43pm'''
Dear Byron,
The public labor you describe that is so highly respected and having been given so freely on behalf of the Teaching Mission is an indication of the potency and depth of your personal experience in and with it. The former is the domain of words while the latter remains well beyond their reach.
With love and gratitude,
Rob
Rob
