[tmtranscripts] Tomas: Soul Struggle

[ZooidODell at aol.com]

Transmission:  4/12/99
Location:  Pittsburgh PA
Subject:  Soul Struggle
Teacher:  Tomas
T/R:  Gerdean

URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
  Paper 45, THE LOCAL SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION
	#1.  Transitional Culture Worlds
	#2.  The System Sovereign	
	#3.  The System Government
	#4.  The Four and Twenty Counselors
	#5.  The Material Sons
	#6.	Adamic Training of Ascenders
	#7.  The Melchizedek Schools
	
GROUP:	Hester, Elyssia, Celeste, Angus and Gerdean
 
TOMAS:	Good afternoon, dear ones.  I am Tomas, your teacher, companion, 
guide and friend in our association en route to greater comprehension of 
spirit reality and divine association.

GROUP:	Greetings, Tomas.  Welcome.

TOMAS:	Welcome to you as well.  It grieves me when we lose one sheep, but 
even so, we rejoice in the faithful flock of today.  The words and attitudes 
of our gathering, as a result of our energy and configuration, are profound 
and plentiful and will go far.  We always benefit by your aggregation, for 
the more we can comprise our minds' purpose, the greater our potential and 
capacity. 

It is a soul struggle we all deal with -- how to consistently balance the 
supreme value as compared to the lesser but yet invaluable and cherished 
choices.  I am glad to come back to our topic at hand and, Celeste, I 
acknowledge your gentle reprimand.  Your words and feelings are duly noted 
and sincerely respected [Editor's note:  In sharing, Celeste had remarked on 
Tomas' firm stance of last week regarding the class not having done their 
homework.] yet I, like you all, am able to justify my persistence in that 
which is what my God has given me to do.  It is a matter of the sanctity of 
trust, and this, too, is at the heart of all soul struggle.

The subject has arisen as a result of being postulated by Elyssia's inquiry 
into "the great temptation of Christ" and our subsequent investigations based 
upon our own hunger to know and to better illuminate our realm, embark, yes, 
upon a study of the references, textual references, to Jesus' having wrestled 
...

CELESTE:	Tomas, I understand absolutely what you're saying and I've 
been searching in the Bible for ALL the different ways this happened to him, 
for many times he was tempted, and I have had a wonderful time this week 
trying to track them all down.

TOMAS:	You have certainly outdone yourself in terms of homework make-up, my 
child.  
CELESTE:	I was just curious.

TOMAS:	It is indeed a matter to have in your grasp.  The wrestle, the soul 
struggle, was experienced, you realize, as a human being, and so the 
inference is that each of you have your own soul struggle in matters of 
importance, preponderance.  Remember that Jesus said, "I come not to bring 
peace, but a soul struggle," and yet he is called the Prince of Peace, but 
the definition here is at liberty.

The soul struggle that you encounter is an experience you share with the 
human Jesus, as do all ascending beings and many others as well.  These 
cruxes in the path would seem to be obstacles set in your way to cause you 
distress, to invoke emotional anguish, to point out to you the possibility of 
betrayal to one idea in support of another, and feeling inadequate to make a 
decision at all, given the potential heartbreak and disappointment of your 
own experience and/or those otherwise affected by your decision one way or 
the other.

I will call to your mind Jesus' favorite prayer:  "Even so, thy will be 
done."  As we advance, gain morontial wisdom, experience enough adversity to 
fill the wisdom tank, as we attain such levels of association that we feel we 
have mastered all there is to know and that we have attained oneness with 
divinity, we are here admonished to remember it is our will that His will be 
done.  It is so easy to become so invested that you take undue authority over 
your destiny.

Each decision you make indeed furthers or retards your development, and 
experientially you are given free will to determine which experiences you 
will engage in in order to gain experiential wisdom that you may then enjoy 
teaching to those around you.  But in each soul struggle, in each decision, 
prior to the clarity of the divine will for you, is a degree of setting aside 
your pre-conceived notions, your prejudices, your preferences, your desires, 
your perceptions, in order that truth should prevail.

People hang themself up for a lifetime unwilling to face even one decision, 
the concept of a soul struggle is so overwhelming to them.  But you are urged 
to become proficient at making such decisions as will further your spirit 
life and your enjoyment of life, that you may radiate the Life and Light that 
is within you, that is His will being done through you.

CELESTE:	Tomas, I'm glad that we have an eternity to learn and to 
understand and grow.

TOMAS:	Of course.  This is not a crash course.  These growth experiences 
take time.  They are not always learned the first time around.  They cannot 
be absorbed at first blush, but must recur like the tide upon the shore as 
the water ebbs and then flows in its tidal movement, inching further up and 
then inching away in order that it have time to maintain the balance of its 
very being and all that depends upon it.

This is indeed correct -- finding your time in space, finding your place in 
your universe, understanding your capabilities and your pace, knowing the 
sound of your instrument and practicing your instrument, loving the note it 
plays, correcting the sour notes that come seemingly by accident, and 
enjoining the symphonic realms of harmony in unison with others to sing 
praises.  Are there questions this afternoon?

ANGUS:	I have a question, Tomas.  It seems like it's such a dichotomy, to 
give up your own sovereignty to gain yourself.

TOMAS:	It is perhaps the most poignant paradox of all.  
ANGUS:	It's difficult.

TOMAS:	Indeed, and hence the soul struggle.  It is, even so, an exercise 
that becomes a coveted act on your part for it sharpens your skill and your 
appreciation for life itself.  If you remain captive of your own perception 
of reality, you deprive Jesus of his yearning to share with his children the 
wonder of being in and through the universe as a child of God, as compared to 
enjoying the freedom of camaraderie with those others who also know they are 
children of the First Source and Center.

It is rather, my friend, along the philosophic ideas of the group as compared 
to the individual.  Eventually you will understand the benefits of the 
association such that it's fascination and appeal significantly affects your 
need to hold so fast to your own individuality for it will be enabled a new 
freedom when you have entrusted it to a greater reality, a greater 
understanding of what that energy is and can do and how that personality is 
bestowed by Father to ideally function -- a conclusion, I might add, which 
would be ideally suited for both Father and mortal of Its inhabitation.

ANGUS:	I feel that transition at times.  I guess what it is -- sometimes -- 
the giving of my desires to the Father's will, it almost seems like that's 
what I naturally want, and yet sometimes I sense, as I look back at it, 
hind-sight being 20/20, that I did enforce my own will without considering.  
Is there such a time as it becomes more instinctive?  Or is it never 
instinctive?

TOMAS:	Indeed, the instinct is one which is elemental, and it would have you 
survive, but it is not the elongated, emancipated, evolved and elevated 
approach which is to become so in tune with your own soul and your 
personality's relationship to the Father indwelling, that your soul has an 
opportunity to take flight and begin to function on your behalf, for you have 
risen above and beyond mere survival of the species instinct to go into a 
yearning to soar into spiritual heights.

Your urge to live is enhanced when you are more thoroughly "indoctrinated" by 
your willingness to allow yourself to be subject to the will of God.  It 
becomes not only easier, my son, it becomes the preferred Way.

ANGUS:	Practice, practice, practice.

TOMAS:	And as Celeste says, it is a long-term course.  But there are times 
when I feel I need to lasso you in from the playground in order to take up 
our studies in this Melchizedek university.  I appreciate the fact of your 
attending and that you have been so gracious as to invite me and us back.  
Your faith flowers and the benefits of your growing faith and your belief in 
what you are doing, is real, viable and pertinent.

CELESTE:	Tomas, I'm so thankful that you want to be with us.  It's 
wonderful, wonderful.
TOMAS:	I am learning to love you more and more.
CELESTE:	And we you.
TOMAS:	Is there anything else this afternoon?

ELYSSIA:	I still would like to examine this passage in the book 
because I simply -- I'm trying hard to think of what the struggle would be.  
I guess I must sort of be retarded in this respect.  I'm trying to figure out 
what this huge struggle was because somehow I -- I mean, the way I understood 
Lucifer is that he wanted to be more independent.  He wanted more freedom.  
He didn't even quite believe that there was a Universal Father.  That, I 
believe I understand from the Book,-- 

TOMAS:	Yes.

ELYSSIA:	... so he began to be more and more separate, separated from 
the central ideas of worship ...

TOMAS:	Yes.

ELYSSIA:	... of his world.  Now, he's with Jesus, and does Jesus have 
a hard time not punching him in the nose?  I mean, or what is this?  Is Jesus 
struggling to restrain ... to feel love for this soul that's brought down 
worlds?  I mean, is that where the struggle is?  I'd like to identify how the 
great Creator, as I think of him, in all his perfection and beauty, in all 
the things that he said in his coming, his service on our planet, indicated 
such magnificence that I simply am confused about this.  

And then I'm also interested in this word soul.  This word "soul struggle" 
because evidently this is where it's at.  That's what you indicated to us; 
this is the important thing, to have a soul involvement, and yet I don't seem 
to have any of those big ...

TOMAS:	Let us go back, then, and look at the scene that has caused this to 
come to our attention -- the soul struggle of Jesus.  Jesus met with Satan 
and Caligastia and they did not discuss bread, pinnacles or kingdoms of the 
world.  They discussed universe administration.  And so as we look at his 
soul struggle, we are looking at a human being, the son of man, touching the 
parallel truths of Caligastia, Satan and Lucifer's powerful, effective, and 
to a great extent successful Manifesto in support of self-liberty.

I would like for each of you, simplistically speaking, to go back (not very 
far!) into your own experience and look at a moment when you have been faced 
with the choice of self-liberty or doing the Father's will.  Jesus was aware 
of the soul struggle.  How many times a day do you, do we, encounter an 
opportunity of being completely and acutely alive and in support of the 
Father's reality when our reality is so dominant/predominant?  

Our self-interests, our committee, our understanding of things; our 
standards, our values, our loyalty, our comprehension of the Spirit of Truth 
-- these are not necessarily puny sins.  These are soul struggles.  Do you 
think it would have been important to mention Jesus sharing that those who 
would follow after him would leave their mothers, their fathers, their 
children, their husband, their wife, in order to follow him?  

Now tell me, mortal human being friends of mine, if you would not find it a 
soul struggle to find yourself in a position of needing to let go of your 
loyalty to your own creation.  Jesus, as the Creator Son of this local 
universe, created Lucifer.  His own son wanted to include him in opposition 
to the First Source and Center.  

I don't think that Jesus was in a humor to reprimand his errant son and I am 
certain that he had full cognizance of the long-term effect of the soul 
suffering that would be taking place far and wide as a result of Lucifer's 
mis-dealings.  But Jesus ...

ELYSSIA:	But by then hadn't many worlds or many souls followed Lucifer 
by the time Jesus was in the wilderness with Lucifer?  By that time hadn't 
much ...

TOMAS:	Oh, yes, my dear!
ELYSSIA:	... separation occurred?

TOMAS:	Oh, yes.  The Lucifer rebellion had indeed occurred thousands upon 
thousands of years prior to that.  This incident of Jesus meeting with Satan, 
as Lucifer's representative, and Caligastia, was the effective adjudication 
of the Lucifer rebellion on that very day.  The temptation was along the 
lines of universe sovereignty.  It has to do with betrayal of trust.  In the 
family.  You surely understand betrayal of trust in the family.  This is soul 
struggle.

ELYSSIA:	Was Jesus then thinking of personal ... his son who was 
pulling him one way and his other faithful ones who had kept the faith in the 
Father.

TOMAS:	Of a certainty he was mindful of all of that.

ELYSSIA:	There would have been the two forces and he would have been 
involved in both of them because he created both sides in this universe.  He 
created Van, who was faithful.

TOMAS:	It was not a comparative analysis exclusively that he would be 
comparing these beings with mortal beings or other creations.  The soul 
struggle was predominantly a face to face with the evil ones.  The fact that 
Van and Amadon were faithful, that many other loyal midwayers and angelic 
orders were steadfast, is of course a part of the entire scenario of the 
Lucifer rebellion, but that was not specifically his struggle that day, 
although of course it was for all worlds of time and space, all of his worlds 
in his universe, a part of his gaining sovereignty over his universe.

ELYSSIA:	The soul struggle, then, was it this heartbreaking time when 
he would have to cut this son loose and then see that he might come to this 
ultimate destruction that he did come to.

TOMAS:	Yes, my dear, even in the face of undying hope.

ELYSSIA:	I see.  And so it was partly that ... partly this son ... he 
was doing this, I guess, it would be like cutting your son loose.  A lot of 
parents in our time have had to do it, and it's heartbreaking for them.  It's 
utterly heartbreaking.  A frame of mind.

TOMAS:	This is the nature of a soul struggle.

ELYSSIA:	Yeah.  That's good.  I guess I'm beginning to feel that I can 
understand some of this now.

TOMAS:	I want to also add that the cursory perusal of this conversation 
we've had might garner a picture that would indicate that our subject was 
ethics or meaning, but the essence of this struggle is to forego the 
self-will for the divine will.

ANGUS:	I can think of some examples of that, Tomas, when you put it in 
that....  For instance if you have a job decision where you are in charge of 
some people and you are actually close to the people but at some you have to 
bring them on the carpet, if you will, and point out their mistakes, and a 
lot of people think that's really an easy thing to do, but having been there 
and done that, I know it's not, so in a sense it's that kind of thing where 
you know you have to do something even though you don't want to.

TOMAS:	Along your analogy, I am envisioning also, and by comparison, an 
employee who has several employees working under him, such as a foreman, and 
they are working for a large factory that has other foremen in other areas, 
and this one foreman wants to go on strike and calls the other areas to join 
with him in striking against the company for better pay or other benefits.  

It is actually very political.  This is why you should not be surprised to 
see the caption "Gabriel vs Lucifer" since Gabriel is in authority 
governmentally in your universe.  My adding this indicates the merit of Jesus 
giving the job of Summary Judgment, if you will, to the Father and not 
personally firing the foreman who led Urantia and other worlds into 
rebellion, default and isolation.  

There are any number of ways of interpreting the concept of soul struggle, 
but its root is always a position as to go with the Father's will as he would 
have you, as compared to any other variation on that theme.  

But we are all in the process of perfecting and it is a rare one indeed who 
gets it right all the time.  In fact only those who are created perfected are 
expected to behave thus, although there are to emulate models of perfection 
of orders of beings who uphold by their own decisions the pattern of paradise 
perfection as it is infused in their being, and so it can be attained, it 
will be attained, and in the meantime, "ain't we got fun."

I am going to withdraw for the afternoon.  I convey to you Merium's abiding 
affection and the affection and acknowledgement as well of our many local 
seraphim and assistants and visitors.

ELYSSIA:	I remember that Jesus himself came to tell us about what 
happened at the baptism and explained the important part of that to us and it 
was very wonderful for all of us, and so if he ever chooses to, he might 
teach us himself sometime, but in the meantime I really thank you because I 
think I'm beginning to get a picture of it.  Thanks to Angus, too.

CELESTE:	I also wrote some things down, and Jesus gave his disciples 
authority over unclean spirits, and then it said the disciples power over 
demons, he described as proof of "Satan falling as lightning from heaven."  I 
thought that was so interesting.  Once Jesus gave them that power.

ELYSSIA:	What I like are these things that Angus is helping me with, 
which is to kind of visualize situations that would be, you know, faintly 
similar to what Jesus' situation would be.  He must have been foreseeing this 
time when he was going to come into this position with his son.  He must have 
been foreseeing that.

CELESTE:	This says, "Jesus himself evidently believed in a kingdom of 
evil spirits under its own powerful ruler" and he said that this is what he 
had come to destroy.  That's Mark.

TOMAS:	Quote your cite.  Notate your research for our benefit, Celeste.
ANGUS:	That was Mark you said?
CELESTE:	Um-hum.  Mark 3:22-27.

TOMAS:	Thank you.  Well, we had a good practice here.  We'll be back with 
some more good study next week.  Is everyone doing okay?

ELYSSIA:	I do have a personal problem.  Do you have time?
TOMAS:	I can chat with you after we resolve our group this afternoon if it 
is ...
ELYSSIA:	Well, I can talk about it in the group.  It's nothing that is 
that kind of ... but 

I feel that I'm being put in a position where I have to behave in a way that 
I find very distasteful, and that means, I suppose, that I don't think it's 
totally honest.  My granddaughter tells me that it's honest.  The situation 
is that my son is going to be married and there was a family upheaval due to 
a person.  At the time I told him he could never be part of family 
gatherings, that we would see him individually but he couldn't ever be part 
of a family gathering because he created such upheaval that it was absolutely 
incredible.  Hurt somebody terribly.

Now my son's going to be married and I want to invite my dear sister-in-law 
but this person is married to this person who has created havok everytime 
he's part of a family group.  We're afraid to tell him that we're going to 
have a wedding, but we also feel very underhanded in dealing with it some 
other way, and so I feel that I'm being put in a position where I'm going to 
have to be handling something in a way that I find rather distasteful.

TOMAS:	What you are having is a conflict of loyalties and values.  Indeed, 
it is a soul struggle.  I am not going to tell you what to do or flip the 
coin, but in your heart you know what you need to do.  We have had this 
conversation before.  This issue has come up in your life on other occasions 
and you wrestle with it every time.  You will get it one of these days and it 
will not be such a struggle, but you need to stand by your highest value, and 
so make your determination, Elyssia, as to what your highest value is and 
stand by it.  

If it is not upheld, that is not your concern so much as establishing your 
value for yourself in terms of your foundation relationship with your 
Indwelling Adjuster.  That is the bottom line as to who you answer to for 
your decisions.  And, "let the chips fall where they may."  That decision can 
only be made, yet and again, by you, my dear, and I encourage you to be 
strong, in truth ... beauty and goodness.

ELYSSIA:	I realize that I can do that.  By myself.

TOMAS:	I'll see you next week and I'll be eager to hear all the latest 
developments.  Good afternoon.

CELESTE:	Thank you for today.  Wonderful.