[tmtranscripts] 2-2-01 Daniel transcript(S.E. Idaho)

[Bill Kelly]

POCATELLO TEAM
February 2, 2001

Prayer (Virginia):   Father, First Source and Center: as we come together
tonight, meet the deep needs of each heart.  Help us to find moment by
moment fellowship with you and to know your will as we make our decisions
on this plane.  As we listen tonight to the teachers give us insight that
will help us to make less mistakes, and lead us on to the path of
perfection that we all desire.  Amen.

Daniel (Bill, Isaac): Greetings, my friends, my beloved students, my
companions, I am Daniel, your guide, your teacher, your proud mentor.  It
is with great pleasure that I greet you this evening and let you know once
again how my heart fills with love and pleasure to be in the midst of your
company.

	I will speak on behalf of Isaac for just a moment.  He has been somewhat
nervous because the topic was announced ahead of time, which tempted him to
give it some thought, and produced those uncomfortable feelings of
self-doubt.  I wish to assure him at this point, (and you may strike this
from the record at your judgement,) that despite his worries I, Daniel,
will direct this teaching.  If you are having difficulty in understanding
the dilemma of being a TR, I would recommend that you attempt this
difficult process for it combines the feeling of speaking in front of peers
with the unconscious fears and issues of self esteem, which vary, of
course, with the speaker, the TR involved.

The reality of imperfection is a fundamental fact of this universe
experience.  Our whole career consists in the process of perfection
attainment.  We are destined to be perfected; we do not begin in that
condition.  Because of the culture in which you have been raised, (You were
taught that there was once a perfect beginning and a fall from that
perfection which then cursed all humankind with guilt and sin of another's
doing.) the whole topic of making mistakes and being imperfect is weighed
down with an inappropriate sense of guilt and shame.  Guilt and shame are
two of the most destructive emotions that have been foisted upon Urantians
by this tragic, erroneous misconception of original sin.  Therefor, when
the topic of mistakes is discussed the straight forward rationality of it
is so loaded with irrational feelings of guilt and shame that there is
great difficulty in separating the difference between error, (making
mistakes), and sin, (choosing deliberately to do the wrong or erroneous
thing).  Consequently, when people make mistakes they feel guilty for it
arouses this confusion in their minds.  Your self esteem is thereby damaged
greatly for it is thrown back into that primitive shame and guilt of
beingness, of the very existence of being born in sin as a member of the
human race.

Our textbook is very clear on this matter, and it is of great importance
that this be understood.  There is no innate sin upon each newborn child of
Urantia.  Children are born under the smile of God and with approval of the
universe.  They are God's children!  You are God's children likewise, not
born perfect, for this is not a perfect universe, but born with great
potential, the potential to develop to the point where the mortal
individual becomes the host for the divine spirit of The First Source and
Center, and a potential being of Finaliter status.  When it is understood
that it is impossible in the universe of progressive evolution and
transformative creation to ever achieve, either in a mythical past or in
the current status, the state of perfection; when it is understood that
this is not a possibility, and when it is further understood that there is
no state of perfection that human kind has fallen from, then can your self
esteem assume realistic proportions.  

Why should there be any grief over making mistakes, given these facts, my
friends?  You see, the grief is due to these false beliefs that I have been
speaking about.  Mistakes are merely the inevitable results of incomplete
knowledge, imperfect judgement and the need for experimentation.  The
purpose of mistakes is uniformly and completely one thing only, to serve as
a platform for further growth and progress.  Mistakes are not failures.
They are not shameful.  They are simply inevitable, and they are to be
viewed entirely as learning experiences.

Now, granted, people, and all of you at times, fail to learn from mistakes.
 It was also true with me when I was a mortal. However, our world did not
harbor the massive delusion that this planet is still filled with
 a
mythical past time of perfection origin.  Part of the reason that people do
not learn from mistakes is because of the great shame in admitting them.
Because it is not understood that mistakes are inevitable, normal and
positive, or at least neutral in their impact, people deny that they have
been erroneous in their thinking, feeling, or behavior, and therefor
persist in making the same error repeatedly.  You have a saying, "It is
insanity to do the same thing and expect a different result," and this is
accurate.

	So, my friends, the value of mistakes is in their interpretation.  If they
are interpreted as shameful failure then, indeed, does this woeful pattern
persist.  But when it is understood that this is the very nature of
evolving reality, to build upon a mistake, learning the error, and therefor
avoiding it in the future, then mistakes can become your best friends.

	Finally, let me say that when mistakes are clearly understood and
erroneous ways are clearly defined, should an individual decide to continue
those, consciously knowing that they are erroneous and wrong, then such a
person is in very dangerous territory indeed!  They are committing a
conscious rebellion against the reality that God has created.  That is the
definition of sin, which, if persisted in, becomes habitual and is then
iniquitous.  None of you are in this situation, but I merely add that as a
postlude to this other commentary.

	I will at this time complete this installment of our curriculum on
self-esteem and allow you to react or ask questions.  There are other
teachers here, of course, and they will be glad to partner with you in this
discussion.  The floor is now open.

Lareen: Daniel, I had a problem with the word justice.  I can't seem to put
it in proper perspective.  When I hear the word it sounds like judgement to
me.  Can your give me an explanation of the word justice, please?

Daniel (Bill): My dear, I will not at this time answer your question
because I wish to see if there are concerns with tonight's lesson.
However, I will not forget your question.  I would ask you to hold off and
see if others will ask about the concepts presented, and then we will deal
with yours.  Is that acceptable?

Lareen: Very much.  Thank you.

Lori: I have a question, Daniel.  Does everyone in the general population
have the ability to learn from mistakes; and why is it that some people can
make the same mistakes over and over, not critical or harmful mistakes, but
simple mistakes?  So does everybody have the same capability to learn from
mistakes, or some capability?

Daniel (Bill): You are concerned with the varied reaction that people have
to the process of making mistakes; why it is that some continue to repeat
them and whether or not everyone is equally capable of making progress.  Do
I understand you questions correctly?

Lori: Yes.

Daniel (Bill): Well, my dear, there is variation in people's ability to
comprehend.  That is simply a fact, and those who have greater ability,
intelligence, have the potential to learn faster and to learn a greater
amount of information.  They have the capacity.  They have the potential.
But as I was describing earlier, many people refuse to learn from their
mistakes.  They will not call them what they are, mistakes, for fear that
they will be overcome with guilt and shame, and so they deny that they have
made a mistake.  For example, the alcoholic typically refuses to learn from
the mistakes of his or her excessive drinking because they are unwilling to
entertain the idea that there might be something about themselves which is
different than other people.  They employ what your doctors and others call
"denial", which is a defense against the perceived shame and guilt of
admitting their mistake, their problem, with alcohol.  So they don't seem
to learn from their mistakes, as it were.  There are many other factors
going on here with this example, but that is one aspect.

Lori: Is shame so ingrained in some people that they continue to make just
simple mistakes too, not just mistakes that are self destructive, that
maybe can just obstruct daily lives not in harmful ways, just to make it
more difficult?  Is that how deep shame goes with this process?

Daniel (Bill): Can you give me an example of this error that is possibly
not self-destructive?

Lori: Well, say you've taught someone how to do a simple procedure, but
they just simply won't do that, and therefor it amounts to small things
getting destroyed, or ruined, or things like that.  It doesn't seem
deliberate.  It just seems that they won't learn.

Daniel (Bill): There are people who decide, for various reasons, that they
are not going to trust the advice of others, and, even though they are
shown repeatedly a more effective way to do things, resist that advice.
They do so because they feel that if they accept that kind of learning it
demeans their worth.  It means that they are dependent; it means they are
like children and have to learn from others.  They have decided that they
will learn everything only from within themselves.  This is another source
of the unwillingness or inability to learn from error because they think
that they should learn all things through their own minds.  This is the
perversity of the rejection of legitimate authority which pervades your
culture and results in antisocial behavior among children and adults.  All
mortal races have these strains, but in your case on Urantia, with the
failure of Adamic upstepping and the lack of cooperation from the
rebellious Planet Prince, these tendencies are still there in greater
numbers than should be true of races as advanced technologically as you are.

	Part of the reason that people refuse wise help from others is a
self-esteem issue.  They have either decided that they are not worthy of
that help, (all of this unconsciously), or they have decided that no one is
trustworthy, that they must defend themselves and stick up for themselves;
and all of these things can come out of very traumatic experiences as
children.  Am I touching at all on what you are asking?

Lori: Yes, you answered it completely.  Thank you.

Virginia: Daniel, as you know I have carefully not talked to Bill about
this subject this week, but I thought about the things you told me to do
last Saturday and I want to confirm whether that was you or that was my own
mind when I wrote down those things to ponder?

Daniel (Bill): I spoke with you.  Your self-doubt plagues you at times, my
dear.  Be assured that you hear me correctly.

Virginia: Thank you, Daniel, and really you touched on issues tonight that
you asked me to ponder, whether or not the mistakes I have made were
without knowledge or whether it was self-will, or whether or not it was
something else.  (I can't find the list, but I didn't show it to Bill.)
[Laughter.]

Daniel (Bill/Isaac): Isaac was not aware of what I was going to say even
though he gave it some considerable thought, and he was happy to hear that
I am responsible for these teachings.  And you, my dear, your ears hear
well the spiritual messages that are coming to you.

Virginia: Thank you very much, Daniel.  I do have a question, and I
probably know what you are going to answer, but what is it that I, and
probably since I have been coming to believe we are all alike, finally, (I
used to not think that.) why is it when I am assertive and do something
that I feel is just, and that comes to Lareen's question, why is it we feel
guilty when we do something that is just in a situation?  Is it that we are
selfish or is it our low self-esteem?  You know this week I was assertive
and got my way, and now I feel guilty.

Daniel (Bill): My dear Letah/Virginia, each person has to answer those
questions for themselves ultimately.  I can talk in general terms, and some
of what I might say would be specifically applicable to you, but it is not
my place to tell you those things.  You need to discover ‘if the shoe fits,
and then wear it', you see.

I will say some things in general, however.  There is a tradition of
respect for elders in all the cultures of the world which is taught to
children and has a sound basis, namely that people with more experience
have the right to share their experience with those who have less
experience, whether this be parent to child, teacher to student, elder
statesman to younger statesman.  Whatever the particular parameters to this
relationship are, the principle is the person with greater experience has
by virtue of greater experience the authority to speak as one who has wisdom.

But this principle has been distorted so that the structure of the
relationship, as in parent to child, or boss to employee has within itself
the authority, rather than the wisdom which should be the result of the
experience of years.  Therefor when someone rebels against another person
in that position of authority, (again this refers to the structure) there
is an emotional consequence which results in an automatic guilt feeling for
violating the structure of authority, a student who challenges a teacher,
for example.  However when two people have equal experience-authority and
one is in the position of what is purportedly higher authority, e.g. let us
say an older student is learning from a younger teacher a particular skill,
that older student will feel more free to challenge the younger teacher,
and yet experience in that challenge conflicting feelings: one feeling
being that they know they are right, which is close to your situation; and
yet the other feeling being the guilt of breaking the taboo of challenging
authority.  Do you understand what I am saying here?
Virginia: Yes, Daniel, I do.
Daniel (Bill): Another reason people feel guilty when they stand up for
themselves is not only that they break the taboo of authority at times, but
that it is not considered to be  "nice."  You have been taught in your
cultures to be nice, rather than to be truthful, compassionate, forgiving,
and nonjudgmental.  To be nice is simply to comply with the rules of
society.  To be honest, which is well illustrated by the life of our
Master, is to often come into conflict and to challenge the rules of
society.  When one does not keep the rules, conscience (which is the source
of guilt feelings, by the way, not the indwelling Spirit) then exacts the
price of guilt.  Do you understand what I am saying at this point?
Virginia: Yes I do, Daniel.  
Daniel (Bill): Has this been helpful?
Virginia: Yes it has, Daniel.  I just wish I could erase the feelings, and
that's hard.
Daniel (Bill): It is my purpose to change your thinking because when your
thinking changes your feelings will follow suit.  This is an accurate rule
of thumb which your psychology has discovered only in the last few years,
for indeed it is your perspective, your thinking that is our greatest
concern, for there is the secret of changing your feelings. Therefor, your
behaviors will become more pleasant and more stress free.  I am not saying
you will not have distress and problems.  No, but you will be better able
to handle them.  In this regard think of Jesus at his trial, the end of his
life.  Of all the people in those rooms he was the most majestic and stress
free of all the actors on that stage of tragedy.  That is the goal.  This
is what we are about for you people and for ourselves as well.  Are there
any other questions or comments?  [Pause.]  Very well, I will conclude our
meeting this evening.
Virginia: Daniel, are you going to deal with justice this evening?
Lareen: No, he did.  My question about justice concerned judgement, and
when he answered your question, he answered mine.
Daniel (Bill):Lareen, my dear, I am glad that you were satisfied without a
direct answer.  I will take a second if you have anything that you would
like to tie up along that line, but if you feel satisfied I will proceed to
conclude the meeting.
Lareen: I feel satisfied, thank you.
Daniel (Bill): My friends, I wish that you once again join together with
arms around each other.  Let us pray.  
Oh great Love, the Father of the universe, we your children worship you,
adore you, admire you, desire your constant company.  Hold these, my little
brothers and sisters, in warmest embrace as they move away from the
hobgoblins of fear, shame and guilt which have harassed them as they harass
all on this planet.  May the light of your lovely, totally accepting and
redeeming love fill their minds and their hearts so that they can look at
each other in new wonder as they look at a sister and at a brother.   As
one great family  of God, send them home with joy.  Amen.
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