[tmtranscripts] Spokane/1: PAULO on Perceptions

[ZooidODell at aol.com]

DATE: February 10, 2001
LOCATION: Spokane, Washington, USA
T/R: Gerdean
TEACHERS & TOPICS
    1.  PAULO on Perceptions
    2.  AARON on Anger

PAULO:  Good afternoon, funsters.  This is Paulo.  I'm going to hang out with 
you for a while today.
THOROAH:   Greetings, Paulo.
PAULO:  Greetings, son.  Thank you for coming.  

The intercourse you engaged in prior to our connection, having to do with 
perceptions, is my topic this afternoon, and like illusion will vanish as 
vapors in the mist, so will perceptions.  But even so, as you perceive it, is 
how it is.

Let's look at this nursery of fledgling souls which has recently come to be 
babysat by a plethora of phantom personalities, singing lullabies, bouncing 
you on their knee, as it were, and offering your encouragement in the face of 
the fact that you have a sense of cosmic orphan hood, inasmuch as your 
planetary government has run amok and your Material Son and Daughter parental 
figures have gone awry.  

We thus have a wondrous room wherein you safe toddlers amuse yourself in 
company with one another, are dependant upon your own perceptions of what 
reality is, and I ask you: how can you have anything but compassion for these 
babes?  

Assuming that this lot of young souls are all being well fed (which is, in 
this world a goodly assumption), are warm and comfortable, their perceptions 
may be visions of sugar plums; they may be the fairy godmother / the Divine 
Minister herself; angels / mythical fairies; midwayers / tinkerbells and the 
like, that are amusing, comforting and pretty.  But at the same time, these 
phantasms can also be ogres and boogie men, phastasms of fear / insecurity, 
reverberations of things that go bump in the night.

What do you do with this room full of toddlers?  Do you gather to your breast 
those who think the fairy godmother reigns supreme and grow weary of the tot 
whose sleep is disrupted by bad dreams?  No.  If you are a good parent, a 
trusted steward, you will offer tender loving care to each in your charge and 
help to wash away the bad images brought about by the darkness and instill 
the child, the children, with the assurance that faith brings.

Why are some children more sickly than others?  Well, we could ask ourselves 
that all day long, but what comfort is that to the poor waif who feels - 
because of his or her own erroneous, perhaps, but real nonetheless 
perceptions - that they are in some way overlooked or under-nourished or 
malfunctioning or less than or different or puny or whatever that erroneous 
perception may be?  Who knows why some children are just buoyant and plump, 
precocious and cherubic from the beginning?  It may have to do with genetic 
composition; it may have to do with error of integration of thought; it may 
have to do with less than perfect parents, less than ideal living conditions.

And yet at bottom is the fact that every mind is subject to perception, and 
like shadows, sometimes these perceptions change when the sun comes out.  
Sometimes they're not there when the belly is filled.  It's amazing how 
quickly perceptions change when everything is going good, and how quickly 
perceptions can turn to nightmares when things seemingly turn sour.  It is 
astounding how a fully-adult mature man or woman of the realm can be reduced 
to a trembling shadow of its former self by the influence of a mere memory, 
triggered by a musical chord or a scent.  

The mind is such an amazing miracle.  In truth it is quite strong and 
resilient, but that is not to say that it can take unwarranted use or 
neglect.  It is like any other organ of a material creature; it needs fed 
good things, good thoughts, good nourishment, solid food.  It needs to be a 
healthy organism, as does the physical plane.  The mind is the arena wherein 
these soul-developing decisions are made.  You therefore must see to it that 
you develop and foster a healthy mind.  

Associate your mind with other healthy minds.  Stimulate your mind with that 
which will enable it to grow and be strong.  Just you would not feed your 
body on an unregimented diet of sugar or fat or other potentially undermining 
elements, give your mind good quality substance and eliminate any of those 
elements that would undermine your mind such that you would find yourself 
falling victim to your own phantasms of horror and fear and other elements of 
non-faith.  

I don't mean to suggest that truth is unsavory, even though truth is 
sometimes frightening.  It may burst your bubble of illusion and leave you 
gasping for air; however, truth is such a valuable commodity in terms of your 
eternal career, it is something that you can hold onto, even while the other 
illusions of time and space erode away around you.  Truth is like stainless 
steel when every thing else is like fog.  If you must have a crutch, use 
truth as your crutch.  It will not allow you to sink into a quicksand of 
illusion, which can otherwise happen when you have faulty foundation upon 
which to stand.  

Let the Spirit of Truth be your companion.  When you walk in the abyss of 
instincts, floundering for courage, yearning for knowledge, seeking counsel, 
lacking understanding, having nothing of substance to worship and 
acknowledging how far removed you are from wisdom, clutch hold of the Spirit 
of Truth.  Use it as a cane, as a staff, as a mighty sword and let it, let 
Michael banish your dragons and demons; let the light and truth of the Master 
Son illumine the darkness and melt away the haze and fog of mortal confusion. 
 Rise up in the stature of sonship and in this strength, gather the babes – 
suffer the little children – even when you find that, for a moment in time, 
it is yourself.  Perceptions.  They are as varied as a kaleidoscope, changing 
with your eye.  

I am glad to be here today with you to share my perception of the moment.  
What have we got on the table today besides illusions of reality?

THOROAH: We have a couple of follow-up questions from our friend to the south 
of us who had a question last week about the relationship with sciatica to 
pent up anger, and the response that she got had to do with having a unified 
personality as the best medicine, and she says, 

"Now I have a couple more questions!  The above ... indicates that 
personality unification is essential to the development of the individual.  
Given my fractured childhood I would not be surprised if this were indeed the 
case; however, I wonder how do I now unify my personality so as not to have a 
‘misguided conscience'?  I do tend to take on the troubles of the world and 
they do cause me much conflict and sorrow.  I would like to be ‘balanced' and 
I'm hoping Tomas or someone else might have some advice in this realm."

That's the first part of the question.

PAULO: Yes, we can deal with this, child, but it will take a few moments for 
me to gather my tools for this formidable task.  I'm going to persist in the 
picture, if you will, of the nursery for I see here you among the many 
toddlers who would be happy in your playpen, who would foster a healthy and 
vigorous mind and body, who would grow into a well unified personality, yes, 
and so while I'm here, will you remember from your exposure to the human 
condition, realize that young children have a perception that is limited 
because they themselves are limited and remember too that many times when a 
child's first impression seizes his mind, he maintains that impression even 
throughout a lifetime.  It is sometimes necessary to undergo what we could 
call psychic surgery in order to let go of that concept that grasped/ 
clutched that little mind so fiercely so long ago.

So let's say for example a little one who sees something bad happen can take 
on the sense of responsibility for it happening as if his very presence was 
the impetus for such an act.  And I ask you, in your reasonable mind, to 
ponder, "Why do you suppose it is that child mind would think such a thing?"  
Because it is the only reality in the universe!  Is it not true that at that 
age, before you've even learned to share appropriately, you are singularly 
interested in having your needs met?  Your needs, your survival, your 
comforts, your reaction to the universe is all that matters, is all that is.  
 And so many of these impressions that gain sway with the child mind are 
frozen there for a lifetime.

It is unfortunate that anything of this nature should occur at all but it 
does, and in some cases it is more serious than others.  But don't think that 
you are the only one who feels a sense of responsibility for all your 
planet's ills.  This is a common perception among humanity, at least those 
who are not anti-social, for all children are at least in some ways 
vulnerable to impressions of both good and evil and they are very sensitive 
to injustices.  Their compassion levels are very high, and even while their 
compassion levels are high, their vulnerability levels are also high and they 
can be shot down in a moment by an unthinking adult, thereby submerging his 
or her desire to manifest compassion or to be vulnerable for the rest of its 
life.

Therefore, many of your impressions are old – have been with you a long time. 
 Even so, you can be released from that perception by reviewing the truth in 
the light of the adult mind instead of the child mind. –

(I'm getting a lot of flack from the peanut gallery here.  Aaron will come in 
and clean up after me.  One moment.)