[tmtranscripts] Cut & Paste Snowbird (1)

[ZooidODell at aol.com]

July 7, 2001                    
Keynote Address
TeaM 10th Anniversary 
Snowbird, Utah

Embracing Spiritual Reality
With Practical Arms

    
Introduction by Mark Greer:
     ... and all sit down.  Did you want to sit, stand up or ...?

GERDEAN: Stand up.  Teachers should stand up, I've been told.  And I need to 
learn how to use this (the microphone), so, okay, I hear what it sounds like, 
so if I can hear it then that means that you can hear it, right?

Good morning.  I'm Gerdean.  Nice to see you all here.  It's more than nice.  
It makes my life worthwhile.  I'm not alone and you're proof.

I'm not ready for this.  I'm ready, but my words aren't ready, so I'm just 
going to have fun here.  I'm going to start by assuring you that this is not 
just a speech.  (To the flipchart.)  I got this last night.  We had a late 
night transmitting session and this is a clue as to what I'm going to talk 
about:
    "1.  I AM,  2.  In us,  3.  We are,  4.  In them,  5.  All"
Okay, this will be clear later on.  Okay.  (Back to the podium)

Okay.  Last year in Oklahoma, where I wasn't, Michael talked about what we're 
going to talk about this year.  (Isn't it wonderful how good he is at knowing 
what's coming?)  He said, "I would have you know I am among you whether you 
are together or not.  I would oversee that the foundation that we make today 
is strong enough for future generations.  We must embrace spiritual reality 
with practical arms."

Now, since I wasn't there and I didn't have this piece of paper til recently, 
I said, "Oh, yeah, I'll give the speech.  Okay.  That's great!  That's really 
an honor," and somehow in my mind I had – (I'll get my breath here in a 
minute.  It's the altitude, not because I'm nervous.  No.)  Where was I?  Oh, 
yeah.  Okay, yeah, I got the theme.  It's "embracing the kingdom with 
practical arms," so I've been approaching this in my mind as the kingdom, and 
last week Calvin said, "that's spiritual reality with practical arms" and I 
said, "Oh, my God!  I've been preparing the wrong speech!"  

So it's like Mark (Turnbull) was singing in his song last night, "I got 
baggage"?  Man, have I got baggage!  I got so much baggage here.  I got more 
Urantia Book excerpts and teacher excerpts.  I got way too much, and this is 
why I'm not ready. You know, it reminds me of when I was taking a class in 
some kind of history and I had been recently introduced to the Urantia Book, 
so that history was more important than world history or whatever it was, so 
I was going to really ace this exam, I was going to bring in all that Urantia 
history.  HaHaHaHaHa.  Man, did I confuse myself! 

I enjoyed Rob Crickett - but he's not here at the moment, I don't think, - 
but I really enjoyed his presentations in our area and he said ‘just throw 
away the papers', so I'm going to do that eventually, but I'm going to tell 
as story first.  We get it started with a story; I'm going to learn how to do 
this speech stuff.

When I was a little girl I lived - at one point - in Hillville, Pennsylvania. 
 I was about 6 in this really provincial little town and the Jehovah's 
Witnesses came to the door and my mother answered and I was hanging on her 
apron strings, because nobody ever came "calling" and the Jehovah's Witnesses 
were smart, in this case, because they saw that I was a predominant influence 
in that family, so they chose a scripture that would sucker my mother based 
on my mentality, and so they read this beautiful scripture out of Isaiah, 
[Ed: Isaiah 11: 6-10] and it talks about the lion shall lie down with the 
lamb, and something about the ox, and the little child shall lead them, and I 
was going, "Oh, yeah, that sounds really cool", and so my mother looks down 
at my face and she says, "Well, if it's good enough for her, it's good enough 
for me", so she became a Witness, and still is as a matter of fact, though I 
lost favor with them at some point along the way.  But this idea of the 
Kingdom goes way, way, way back in my mind and part of my point this morning 
is that we are so deeply conditioned. 

And I'll get  back to that later, but I need to say – if someone would please 
check your watch.  I don't have a clock. I can't see where I'm at.  I don't 
want to short-change myself.  This is such an opportunity to address people, 
to practice my public speaking skills, and share, but I don't want to talk 
all day and ruin the schedule for the rest of the day, so somebody let me 
know.  You know, start getting antsy or something, if I'm not finished?  
(When?)  An hour from now.  I have an hour.  And I've got so much baggage!
Okay.  I really do, I have so many papers here.  And I did a really diligent 
study on the kingdom of heaven paper which is Paper 170.  So anyway, I was 
talking about embracing spiritual reality and why that is like embracing the 
kingdom.  I think they are interchangeable so I'm more or less on track.  But 
Jesus always made reference to his apostles, he always taught the kingdom as 
embracing man's personal experience in relation to his fellows on earth and 
to the father in heaven.  So he made it clear that spiritual reality (the 
kingdom of heaven) be centered in the dual concepts of the truth of the 
fatherhood of god and the co-related fact of the brotherhood of man, and that 
if we learn how to do this, we would have new courage, augmented spiritual 
power.  We would have new confidence.  It would provide true consolation for 
all men.  It would bring in a new standard of moral values, a new ethical 
yardstick wherewith to measure human conduct.  It would even bring about a 
whole new order of human society.  It taught the preeminence of spiritual 
compared to the material, glorified spiritual reality, it exalted superhuman 
ideals, and it talked about spiritual attainment as the true goal of living.  
This being what the kingdom was supposed to be about.

He taught eternal realities were the result of righteous earthly striving, 
like in the prayer, it says "on earth as it is in heaven", so this kingdom 
idea - of course he had a hard time with that.  People kept thinking it was 
going to be a material kingdom – (attempting and discarding the stationary 
microphone) ...

This I found interesting. ( This is the only way I know how to do this is to 
just flip through my notes and jabber.)  They didn't get it.  The apostles 
didn't get it because they kept thinking about the material kingdom, because 
we are so material minded.  We are constantly taking what the Teachers say, 
what the Urantia Book says, what God says, and dragging it down to the dead 
level of us, you know, crystallizing it and if we can "fix" it, then we can 
think we have control over it, because the world can be very overwhelming and 
some of these truths are too exciting, and if we can "get a fix on it", if we 
can control it, then we somehow feel that we've got "self-mastery".  Isn't 
that a joke!

So what does it mean to embrace the kingdom with practical arms?  Well, here. 
 This is why I went to this particular Paper, because ... (I don't know what 
all these notes are about.) ... Alright.  Here we are.  This is why I put it 
on the bulletin board.  One.  Okay, these are my points.  These are the big 
points here.  This is where I'm getting my theme from.  Number one.  Here.  
These are five phases or epochs of the kingdom, so is it not true that there 
are possibly five phases of spiritual reality!  
One, being the personal and inward experience of the spiritual life of the 
fellowship of the individual with God the father.  And that's how I see these 
last ten years since the Teaching Mission started, is a wonderful opportunity 
for us to be reborn of the spirit, born as a little child (and a little child 
shall lead them, remember), so here we are - children - and developing this 
relationship with our parents, our infinite parents, and realizing we are not 
alone.  There is a connection.  There's relationship.  We have – We're loved! 
 We've been learning about love.  We've been learning how to receive love, in 
the spiritual sense, that there aren't really strings attached.  A whole new 
understanding of what love is and very liberating!  It actually does all 
those things. It's empowering and it's personal and it's rewarding and we can 
rejoice in it and we can see, and this is, to me, what these last ten years 
have been, is a personal development of a relationship with divinity.  So 
that is "I AM".  I AM.  Not a figment of somebody's imagination.  Not an 
extension of somebody else.  I AM a daughter of the Most High.  

Okay, so, these teachers have been talking about phase two and I'm not really 
sure of what they mean by phase two, but here – "Jesus noted no less than 
five phases" – so maybe this is it.  Number two: "The enlarging brotherhood 
of gospel believers, the social aspects of the enhanced morals and quickened 
ethics resulting from the reign of God's spirit in the hearts of individual 
believers."  Okay.  

It's like (forgive my little plug here, but) this is what I was writing about 
in "The Zooid Mission".  I figured eventually (I figured this back in 1970, 
by the way) that eventually people were going to know who they were and they 
were going to want to learn how to get along with each other.  And I 
concluded that is what phase two is, we're going to have to learn to get 
along with each other.  It's the natural outgrowth of having this personal 
religious experience.  It's going to need to be socialized.  That's one of 
those universal laws.  We don't just do this by and for ourselves.  So that's 
where we're going to encounter our initial challenges.  That's where some of 
us have already been encountering some of them, and I'm going to get back to 
them, but I also want to point out the other three things here. That Jesus 
noted.  The five phases.  

The supermortal brotherhood.  "Number 3, the supermortal brotherhood of 
invisible spirit beings which prevails on earth and in heaven, the superhuman 
kingdom of God," and off the top of my head I interpret that as the Teachers, 
the Melchizedeks, the midwayers, the celestials hosts and all those great 
friends I've got.  They're –  Well, I'll just tell another story.  I'll just 
take the opportunity.  I'm not out of time yet, am I?

When I was little, even before I moved to Hillville, we were living at 
Grandma's house down in the hollow, and out behind the house was a natural 
spring ...

[distraction on the patio outdoors]  We got some adventure here?  Oh!  A 
fallen bird! [a respectful moment of silence] Show stealer. [Laughter] 

... okay so I'm down in the woods behind the house in the hollow.  This is 
where my Thought Adjuster came to me, by the way, so it's my secret place, my 
quiet place in  nature.  When I do the construct, I go down there by the 
spring.  I was down there with my invisible friends.  I had invisible friends 
and that was the beginning of my spiritual reality.  Shoe and Sock was their 
name at the time.  They subsequently elevated themselves to Trieste and 
Adrian, my personal mentors, but they are very real to me, these entities.  I 
had no trouble embracing the Teaching Mission because I know all about 
invisible friends.  They were at one time more real to me than my own 
parents.  They're real good at unconditional love and earthly parents aren't. 
 You know?  They really are controlling.

So the fourth phase of this kingdom, as I'm looking at it practically 
speaking, is the prospect, "Number 4. The prospect of the more perfect 
fulfillment of the will of God, the advance toward the dawn of a new social 
order in connection with improved spiritual living the next age of man."  So 
I extend this, I call this – (uh, the "We are" is the teachers.  All 
together.  The Interspecies Alliance.  All of us together are the we are.)  
And number four "in them" – who's "them"?  Who's them, you know?  "Them" is 
everybody else.  And it's not just – and I'm going beyond the little picture 
of our society, our movement, and our social paradigm that's growing here, 
our little kingdom here, to include the kingdoms of the Pleaideans and the 
Galactic Federation, and the Assembly of God, and lots of other movements 
that are grasping the personal relationship with divinity and running with 
it, however it is that they understand it.  Those are our neighbors.

And not only that, but what about .. What about life on other planets?  
That's coming into the picture.  Jesus himself said, "I have ..." what was 
the phrase?  " ... not of this flock?"  I have children not of this flock?  
Other sheep?  Right?  "And the lion shall lie down with the sheep." Well then 
that might mean that we in all our dynamic might have to lay down with those 
neighbors on another planet and learn how to get along!  We have a tendency 
to be very ... egoistic.  Egocentric?  Myopic!  Myopic is perhaps the word 
I'm looking for, and it's probably because we've been isolated for so long; 
it's just part of our conditioning.

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