Talk:About the Teaching Mission
This discussion has been moved now to this location.--rdavis 22:54, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
New Dialogues url
Rob wrote: May 1, 2013 at 10:16 pm: To:Byron Belitsos <byron@originpress.com> Cc: Dave Tenney <davidstenney@yahoo.com>, Marty Greenhut <martyg@bcn.net>, Mer Tenney <meredithhtenney@yahoo.com>, Rick Voss <roadtec@centurylink.net>
Hello Byron-
In response to the request by you and others for a direct url pointing to the Teaching Mission Dialogues, the webmaster and I installed this site today. What we like best about this design is that it gives more space to the content while integrating more smoothly at various widths. After some testing and further examination, we may consider installing this design with some customization for the Institute and Press pages as well.
Thanks,
Rob
Byron wrote: May 2, 2013 at 1:03am To: Robert Davis <rdavis@daynal.org> Cc: Dave Tenney <davidstenney@yahoo.com>, Marty Greenhut <martyg@bcn.net>, Mer Tenney <meredithhtenney@yahoo.com>, Rick Voss <roadtec@centurylink.net>
Thanks Rob, good to see this step. But, with respect, I must say that I find it to be a confusing interface for folks who are new--which I thought was the intention. This Ham quote is not very welcoming (in fact, it's rather cold), and it lacks context and any sort of introduction for the newcomer. I'm thinking this interface is not intended for the newcomer. In any case, glad to see a simpler URL to refer people to who already have an introduction. Byron
Rob wrote: May 2, 2013 at 8:47am To: Byron Belitsos <byron@originpress.com> Cc: Dave Tenney <davidstenney@yahoo.com>, Marty Greenhut <martyg@bcn.net>, Mer Tenney <meredithhtenney@yahoo.com>, Rick Voss <roadtec@centurylink.net>
Hello Byron-
Evolution is slow but terribly effective, and this is an evolving prototype for further development. No doubt, wiki interfaces are challenging to many. As for the content pages, these are preliminary anticipating the need to incorporate personal preferences of those who would volunteer their proposals. Toward that end, would you write something to consider as an alternative to the current introduction by Ham? All such proposals will be entered into the discussion page for review by others' who may have suggestions as well as comments to identify best attributes of each.
Rob
Byron wrote: May 2, 2013 at 3:46pm To: Robert Davis <rdavis@daynal.org> Cc: Dave Tenney <davidstenney@yahoo.com>, Marty Greenhut <martyg@bcn.net>, Mer Tenney <meredithhtenney@yahoo.com>, Rick Voss <roadtec@centurylink.net>
Yes, I will offer something in the discussion page pronto. I may have been a bit harsh in my critique, but I have had so much difficulty presenting this material to newcomers (as I am sure we all do). This problem comes up all the time when we publish a new book and pitch it to reviewers, media, and radio hosts. I dislike sending these sorts of folks to TMarchives, so a viable alternative would be most helpful.
Shortly we will start pitching Healing a Broken World to media, which I hope most of you have seen. If not, I am attaching the PDF for your perusal.
The Amazon link is now up for HBW. It would be excellent if any of you could drop in a review here:
https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Broken-World-Grassroots-Sustainable/dp/1579830110
Love, BB
Rob wrote: May 2, 2013 at 7:06pm to Gerdean O'Dell <gerdean@cableone.net>
Hello Gerdean-
The past few days I have worked with the webmaster in Asheville to develop a url for the Teaching Mission Dialogues to offer those who might not wish to navigate to its location in the wiki. The url is - www.dialogues.daynal.org . You will notice that it lands on what is an "About" page for the Teaching Mission where I have inserted Ham's description of the curriculum. What do you think of this description? Should I use another shorter more upbeat piece written perhaps by a fellow participant? As for the "Contact" page, I will want to use something other than a brief resume of my experience which is what is filling this space now. Any thoughts will be appreciated.
Gratefully,
Rob
Teaching Mission Description
Byron wrote:Sun, May 5, 2013 at 5:35 PM
Hello friends--per Rob's invitation, I extracted this overview of the TM dialogues from my own writings (at Evolving-Souls.org) and offer it as alternative way to introduce the subject matter at dialogues.daynal.org. You may use or edit or extract from this as you see fit, Rob. --Byron
The Celestial Teaching Mission— a Mission in Service to the Urantia Revelation
Beginning in the late 1980s, and especially since 1992, something unprecedented erupted onto our planet—an outpouring of profound celestial teachings and energies that has persisted and grown ever since, culminating in this specialized archive, numerous conferences, and various compilations and websites.
Back in those days, new religious movements were mushrooming all over America. And transpiring on the fringe of one of these movements was what appears to be an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of religion: coordinated celestial contact across multiple locations. In the many years that have passed since then, hundreds of loosely affiliated individuals and groups worldwide have been gifted with over 5,000 sessions of interaction with several hundred celestial beings, all of whom use The Urantia Book as their key reference text. These invisible teachers were now making themselves known almost thirty years after the publication of the Urantia text, and they were purportedly sent by the same hight beings who had originally authored it.
By all accounts, the messages being offered were loving, benign, and compelling. Usually the “contactees”—later called TRs or transmitter/receivers—would be able to speak the transmitted words audibly so that they could be easily recorded and later transcribed; other TRs would sit at their keyboards and “hot pen” the messages, as if taking gentle dictation.
A Global Mission of Grassroots Spiritual Teaching
In the early sessions, opening statements were made by specially trained celestial teachers with names like Abraham, Ham, Will, JarEL, Bertrand, Daniel, Will, Josephine, Jared, Tarkas, Welmek, and Tomas. Each one explained to their newly assembled groups that an experimental initiative was under way that was authorized at the highest levels.
This planetwide project actually would, they said, have a twofold designation: It was to be called the Teaching Mission (now popularly known as TeaM, TM, or the Mission) when linked to existing readers of The Urantia Book; but it was to be dubbed the Correcting Time when referring to conscious or unconscious celestial contacts with social, religious, and spiritual groups and individuals across the rest of the planet who were not necessarily connected with the Urantia Revelation. In other words, the Correcting Time was far broader. It’s contacts were with folks high and low who had no personal knowledge of or belief in the Urantia Revelation; however, the same celestial teaching faculty was involved, and a similar curriculum was being pursued. Plus, indications were given that the TM was to go through a variety of stages itself and would interact with the Correcting Time in a myriad of ways over many decades.
The TM groups were to receive systematic instruction by what we now know is a organized corps of “ascended masters” working in collaboration with various orders of angelic beings. Overseeing the entire initiative, and its actual initiator, was Jesus himself. Jesus Christ is known as Christ Michael or Michael in the parlance of The Urantia Book. He is depicted there as our compassionate brother, all-loving father, and omniscient guide through his Spirit of Truth. As we have noted elsewhere in this book, he is also the cosmic creator—along with his female complement known as “Mother Spirit”—of our local universe of millions of inhabited planets.
The Unique Background Story of the Teaching Mission
Meanwhile, down on this planet, the celestial authority immediate in charge of the TM was Machiventa Melchizedek, a key personality in the narratives of the Urantian revelation. With the formal inauguration of the Teaching Mission announced on February 1, 1992, we were told that Machieventa had been elevated to the status of “Planetary Prince.” This phrase was Urantia lingo for the “chief executive officer” of Earth; in other words, he was the head of the planetary celestial administration.
As contact groups began to transcribe the lessons and send them out to other groups, often using the new email technology, it soon become clear that the teachings contained in these varied streams of transmitted wisdom was relatively uniform across all the transcripts—that is, in regard to terminology, content, and even style of presentation.
But how could such an uncanny feat be carried out? Well, the Mission has been planned for centuries. Our celestial “masters” and their angelic collaborators had been carefully recruited to come to our planet explicitly as spiritual teachers when the age was ripe. They would teach from a common curriculum provided by a celestial class of educators known as the Melchizedeks—and specifically adapted for the TM by Machiventa Melchizedek himself.
But who exactly were our unseen mission-driven instructors who would teach us? They had originated from scores of advanced planets, but they were not material ETs. They hailed from the spirit worlds; they had survived death on their home planets. In other words, they had ascended by natural means (i.e., resurrection after death) to higher realms, also known in the UB as “mansions”—as Jesus put it somewhere in the Bible. It was here that surviving souls continue to live and grow in the afterlife, at least according to the Urantia Revelation. (For a description see papers 47 and 48 in The Urantia Book). And in these metaphysical worlds our intrepid teachers-to-be had received the advanced intellectual and spiritual training that all heavenly ascenders are entitled to, in some cases for periods of up to 50,000 years. And now, they had volunteered to condescend (in the best sense) to come to Earth for a most unusual mission. Put another way, these ascended humans were not “brothers from outer space” contacting earthlings from UFOs, and not beings from the lower “astral” realms who were offering ad hoc “channelings.” They were enlightened beings speaking from domiciles in the higher etheric realms, and they were charged with the task of offering us lessons that they themselves had long ago mastered. These teachings were in fact based on the standard curriculum as taught on the initial levels of the heavenly mansion realms in first stages of the afterlife.
It should be noted here that most of our instructors were not true “Ascended Masters” in the sense used in the Theosophical tradition to designate teachers like St. Germain and Djwal Khul. In that system, Ascended Masters always originate on Earth; our TM “masters” had as a rule ascended to higher planes from other planets—specifically planets that were not dark and warlike as was ours. But there were a few exceptions: many TM transmissions over the years have been received from Abraham—whose story is told in Genesis in the Bible—and a few from Yogananda, the great Indian guru and saint of the twentieth century, and even from Martin Luther King. These would technically be Ascended Masters as Theosophists understand that phrase, but they are the exception in the TM. The Teaching Mission groups also received transmissions from a wide variety of angelic beings and high teachers who are the indigenous citizens of the upper worlds.
The late, great (and soon to be restored) planet earth
We all knew from our studies of The Urantia Book a fact that should not surprise those who don’t read this text: that life on Earth deviates greatly from that on a normal planet. This was owing to events in the distant past that had occurred both off and on our world. Genocide, world war, mass starvation, and ecocide are highly atypical for a planet in our state of technological evolution; these ugly phenomena are an outgrowth of the tragic default of two previous revelatory missions, according to the Urantia Book’s narrative of the history of Urantia (the celestial name for planet earth)—a long and tragic saga that sounds like eerie science fiction to some.
Our Earth is, in fact, what is known as a rebellion planet: Out of the 619 inhabited planets in the local inhabited planetary group, 37 worlds had suffered from a turbulent and tragic history. Our blight resulted from of a very rare event—an angelic rebellion that had erupted eons ago in this local system of inhabited worlds. These planets had been under universe quarantine ever since those distant times. When a planet is quarantined, it is cut off from the so-called celestial communication circuits that naturally link material planets to one another and to the higher realms, not unlike the way that fiber optic lines connect cities on Earth. Urantia Book students believe that this heavenly mutiny, celebrated in allegorical works such as poet John Milton’s Paradise Lost, was a real fact in our planetary history. It had been led by the angelic rulers of the local system of 1000 inhabited planets, Lucifer and Satan (yes, of Biblical fame), and is thus called the Lucifer Rebellion. By the way, our planet “Urantia” turns out to be among the two or three worst-affected planets of the 37 rebellion planets. Are you surprised?
Remedial emergency measures have long been under way for Urantia and all of the other rebellion planets. In our case, one of these measures was the spectacular event of the incarnation and life of Christ; the other was the gift of The Urantia Book itself, with the Teaching Mission being a planned extension of that work. The TM was being offered to us and to all 37 rebellion planets.
Bear in mind that a large portion of the lengthy Urantia Revelation is devoted to explaining this hidden history of planetary rebellion that is only hinted at in the Bible as the doctrines of Original Sin and the “fall of mankind.”
The stunning premise of the Teaching Mission, first revealed on February 1, 1992, was the news of the final adjudication of Lucifer Rebellion in heavenly courts. It is well known to Urantia Book students that the tribunal for the so-called case of Gabriel vs. Lucifer was long under way, and had already begun before The Urantia Book was completed in the mid-twentieth century.
And now, in living rooms around America and elsewhere, the celestials were transmitting the grand news that the Adjudication of the rebellion had been finalized in the fall of 1985. This ruling was carried out by high juridical beings in heavenly courts located on the capital of the intergalactic “superuniverse” (that is, the administrative center of one trillion inhabited planets, according to the Urantia Book’s cosmology). This meant, significantly, that Urantia’s planetary quarantine would gradually be lifted, allowing the reinstatement of the celestial circuits that had long been severed. This in turn would permit such celestial transmissions as were now occurring to readily take place, among many other benefits. The Adventure of Being Human is just one example of this phenomenon.
Rob wrote: Sun, May 5, 2013 at 7:19 PM
Hello Byron-
Thank you for taking the time to write this description of the Teaching Mission! I will re-read it tomorrow as I have having some difficulty with my laptop I normally use to work on the site. On first glance, it seems a bit long for a short introduction offered on a single page but looks to be rich material for an enthusiastic preface to a historical survey. I favor teacher descriptions given they exude a sense of confidence student accounts often lack, but give me some time to study this more thoroughly.
Gratefully,
Rob
This discussion has been moved now to this location.--rdavis 22:54, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
Rob wrote: Saturday, June 15, 2013 at 7:03 PM
Taken as a whole, I think this is the long version of a publicist's account. I rather like the succinct description of the Dialogues that is found here that allows persons to make up their own minds what the Teaching Mission is by virtue of examining its literary artefacts without regard to confessional beliefs.
The Teaching Mission: Dialogues are textual artefacts of oral lessons given by Ascending and Descending teachers of various orders of universe intelligence and the ensuing discussion with their mortal students of widely varying backgrounds. These utilize The Urantia Book for basic reference while engaged in the experiential study of philosophy, cosmology, and divinity.
Otherwise, my specific comments are below.
- The Celestial Teaching Mission—a Mission in Service to the Urantia Revelation
- reply-The word celestial misses the most important point, namely that it is a spiritual initiative enjoining terrestrial partners. To characterize it as in service to the Urantia Revelation tends toward a more narrow objective.
- over 5,000 sessions of interaction
- reply-actually there are over 7500 records of individual sessions representing a small percentage of unrecorded sessions.
- The TM groups were to receive systematic instruction by what we now know is a organized corps of “ascended masters”
- reply-I think Teaching Mission participants is more accurate than TM groups, but no reference has been made to "ascended masters" given this has been derided by some teachers as missing the point. The term is perhaps helpful to those interested in celestial beings as 'masters' when such can hardly be the case based upon what has been taught thus far.
- The Unique Background Story of the Teaching Mission
- reply-It seems less than unique given the number of other such initiatives on this planet operating in advance and alongside and as an everyday activity on "normal worlds".
- Machiventa Melchizedek, a key personality in the narratives of the Urantian revelation.
- reply-Your pitch toward a larger audience might be better served by referencing Machiventa as a key personality 1) explicitly, in the founding of monotheism, and 2) tacitly, in all the world's religions rather than just the Urantia revelation
- Our celestial “masters” and their angelic collaborators
- reply-This seems more akin to the terminology that is sought to remedy.
- The late, great (and soon to be restored) planet earth
- reply-This section seems more of an addendum that utilizes an evangelical terminology from the 70's--rdavis 00:35, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
