[tmtranscripts] N. Idaho Team 11/17/02

[RickGiles]

North Idaho Teaching Mission Group
Topics: Grace,Collective Visualization, 
Questions on Prayer
Teachers: Lester, Elyon

November 17, 2002

*	Lester (Jonathan TR):  Greetings to you, 
this is Lester, taking a shot at first at bat 
rather than be the one to mop up at the end.  I 
wish to express my take on the grace of God.  
If I may settle into the manner of your 
wonderful teacher Elyon, I would like to 
“metaphorize” this by saying that grace is like 
grease.
	You know, as you have just now uttered 
your solemn wishes and hopes for ailing 
friends, that it is this grace that you seek to 
be bestowed.  It is as you know much needed in 
a world that is so fraught with shortcomings, 
you may call them diseases or ailments or 
catastrophes, but from our perspective we’ve 
learn to see them all as shortcomings.  So, it 
is like your world being a frying pan where the 
heat has been turned up perhaps a little higher 
than it ought to have been.  Instead of that 
long, patient simmer some of you feel at times 
like you are roasting.  The grace of God is not 
placed upon you to put out the heat but rather 
it greases the pan, and it allows you to 
spiritually mature, to cook through without 
burning, to find yourself at the end of your 
endeavor tasty, delightful, transformed but not 
seared, dried out, and tasteless.
	You know that grease is used also as a 
means of reducing friction where two parts may 
wear rapidly were it not for the presence of 
this lubricant.  Again it is the function of 
the grace of our great God to go between, to 
stand as that film between you and the abrasive 
encounter you are experiencing in your life.  
This lubricant does not isolate you from the 
calamity or difficulty; it rather modifies you 
to better engage and to do so without undue 
damage.
	  Perhaps the greatest inspiration we can 
derive from Michael’s life on this little world 
was the manner in which he faced his 
crucifixion.  He allowed the grace of his 
divine Parent to be that lubricant to sustain 
him when life’s tribulations grew too large for 
one single human being to handle.  He did not 
ask for a back door exit; he simply asked for 
strength and courage to pursue the Father’s 
will in spite of all episodes ahead of him, 
what they may bring, and the impact upon his 
life.
	I will take one more minute and  enter my 
plea and prodding for you to practice your 
stillness.  The daytime of your short life on 
earth is as intense as your noontime summer 
sun, for this world is rather topsy-turvy in 
many ways.  So, stillness becomes your 
sunscreen that you must put on to anoint 
yourself in this grace of God that you can then 
not shrink from the sun but rather boldly face 
the intensity and accomplish the will of the 
Father in your life and for this world.  Thank 
you.

*	Elyon:  This is Elyon, greetings to you, 
friends.  I am pleased with Lester’s slick 
presentation, if you catch my drift.  I am 
desirous and would be delighted to converse 
with you regarding your topic of conversation 
of collective visualization and so will make my 
comments as you make yours.
	Tom:  You first, Elyon.  
*	Elyon:  I would begin by acknowledging the 
appropriateness of your sensitivity to a shared 
understanding through a visual technique, or 
audible or tactile, that encourages each 
individual mind to meld into a group 
mindfulness, for this is akin, no, it is 
exactly the technique that is synergy, that 
compounding above and beyond the sum of the 
parts into a more potent whole.  While you 
could express the esoteric quality of mind as 
always being interconnected, it does the human 
mind much good to use these aids that you speak 
of, the visualization or rituals, to focus.  
Yes, indeed, you may not be creating the link, 
that collective mindfulness, but you do need to 
tap in consciously to that existing condition 
that is the nature of mind.
	These practices are much like, for 
instance, the step to the door of a bus.  The 
bus already contains enough seats for every one 
of you, however, it can be difficult to climb 
into that bus, high riding as it is, without 
that aid of the step.  Your attempt to develop 
a mutually acceptable form to approach your 
prayerful healing circle provides that step for 
you to enter into that mindfulness, that family 
of mercy bestowers, of healers.
	Your turn.

	Kirk:  Sometimes when praying for healing 
I think that if I were suffering I would like 
the collective consciousness to push me over to 
the other side rather than prolong suffering 
for fear of what the other side is.   I think 
we often pray for healing because we are afraid 
to push that person to the other side.  I would 
rather have people pray for me to go over and 
start my morontia career.

*	Elyon:  You have expressed what has been 
ingrained in the human mindstream, that sense 
that death is terminal and must be avoided at 
all costs.  I can assure you, and Lester who 
stands by my side agrees, that that has been 
one of the most remarkable experiences of our 
lives.  It truly transforms the soul.  It is of 
great value what you gain in experience while 
domiciled upon this world.  It is an 
experience, I assure you, unlike what is to 
follow.  However, it is unlike what is to 
follow, and the morontia career is stupendous, 
breathtaking, exhilarating and enlightening.
	You are correct to not place death in a 
form of avoidance and finality.  The Father 
does know all and will direct or allow events 
to unfold as He, indwelling an individual, 
discerns to be of the best spiritual welfare 
for that person.  In a short interval of time 
it may appear that one was stopped short, did 
not gain all that could have been derived on a 
world like Urantia through an early disease or 
an unfortunate accident.  But these occurrences 
are one small interval of experience in the 
long span of eternity, and as important as they 
are to a human being whose life is rather short 
and extremely valuable, it is after all one of 
the most precious possessions you have, your 
vitality.  In a broadened perspective these 
calamities are no worse than a child’s scraped 
knee or cut finger, but at the time was so 
traumatic.  As the child soon learns as age 
increases that these injuries, while they must 
be reckoned with, are not as fear intensifying 
or as dramatic as they once were, you apply the 
techniques you know to allow the healing to 
proceed, and you recover.  Soon with age your 
nicks and scrapes are noticed, tended to, and 
you proceed on with little upset to your well-
being.  In a few millennia you will better see 
how disease and death are quite similar, 
particularly in how they are dealt with as the 
little child’s injury on the playground.
	I would never discourage you from the 
expression of hope and for your faith reliance 
upon God to enter in to your needs and desires 
and to provide remedy as you wish it to unfold.  
Yet it is wisdom that brings to one’s mind the 
understanding you express, that perhaps a 
disease or condition may not be suffered to the 
bitter end, that in a way as you have 
expressed, does the prayer become like your 
medical machinery that keeps people alive when 
the suffering would cease if they were allowed 
to transpire?  This is the secret of the 
potency of the prayer, “Not my will but Your 
will be done.”  Many times a human being has 
lost faith because in their earnest prayer for 
the recovery of a friend the friend passed on, 
and bitterness towards God resulted.  They 
prayed that their friend become better, and 
they perceived death to be worse.  Yet the 
prayer was answered; that soul transcended that 
physical form.  I would not ever advise you to 
pray for the hasty death of a fellow, but it is 
good to context your supplications for relief 
of another who ails with the understanding that 
a full healing and recovery in physical form 
would be beautiful and magnificent, but the 
translation into the higher realms of morontia 
living would be likewise and even more so 
beautiful and magnificent.  Remember that 
prayer is as much a method for your own 
reflection and growth as it is a supplication 
of need whether for self or others and that as 
you long for help for another it enlarges your 
grasp of the context of this trouble.
	You indicate in your question the 
sensitivity to this awareness of the bigger 
perspective.  As you pray earnestly and with 
hope for another’s recovery you also enlarge 
your spiritual consciousness, the cosmic 
context.  This will become a possession of 
yours that you will retain long after any 
particular episode that you request healing has 
been concluded.

	Evelyn:  The rules for effective praying 
in The Urantia Book indicate that you ought to 
exhaust all the avenues of applying your own 
efforts towards accomplishing something before 
resorting to praying for divine assistance.  
Yet we all experience what seem to be answers 
to prayers when we don’t feel like we have 
anywhere near exhausted what we could have done 
to make it come about.  Would you care to 
comment?

*	Elyon:  These conditions you speak of were 
presented to you by revelators whose intent was 
to further deepen in the minds of human beings 
your participation, your engagement, in the 
answer to prayer as well as refining the 
quality of your petitions in prayer.
	Far too long it has been that the human 
mindset around the world is that you are like a 
spectator in the stadium cheering on the team 
to make the goal while not a player yourself.  
Yes, it is true that the cheers of the fan can 
bolster the energies and efforts of a player 
and cause great performance and goal 
attainment.  These are the prayers you speak of 
where you feel you have done little of your own 
resources to bring answer to prayer.  But for 
you who have engaged in the play of sport know, 
the thrill of carrying the ball yourself to the 
goal is far greater than cheering from the 
stands.  By applying these prayer conditions 
you speak of you are jumping out of the stands 
and onto the field.
	There is no order that you must approach 
these conditions.  There is no requirement that 
you must absolutely fulfill them prior.  It is 
more that you begin the application of the 
actions that these conditions promote.  The 
answer to the prayer will be forthcoming.  
Again it is like the game.  When the ball is 
hiked the quarterback is looking for the player 
running down to whom he may throw that ball.  
If a fan in the stands were to shout, “Throw it 
here!” do you think the quarterback would do 
that?  But if the player down field were to 
call for help the quarterback would 
unhesitatingly discharge that ball into the 
keeping of that player.  Not to be unfair to 
the fan, the fan who says, “There is the player 
who’s in the open!  Throw it!  Throw it!” will 
be heard by the quarterback.  Prayer of a 
passive nature is good.  Active prayer, prayer 
wherein you get on the field and participate in 
the answer to the petition, brings not only the 
fulfillment of the petition, the answer to the 
prayer, but likewise, as I illustrated in 
talking with Kirk, it brings larger contexts, 
lessons not to be directly connected to the 
specific request.  Other peripheral spiritual 
values and meanings are derived.
	Has this been helpful?

	Evelyn:  Yes.  Instead of a right and a 
wrong way, there’s a good and a better way.  
Any prayer is good; then there are those even 
better, more benefiting all.  If you’re praying 
for someone’s pain to be relieved and the pain 
is relieved, that person derives the benefit.  
But if you engage yourself in doing what you 
can to relieve that pain then you also derive 
some benefit for having gone through the 
experience, as well as the person being 
relieved of the pain.

*	Elyon:  Yes.

	Tom:  That’s what we are endeavoring to do 
in our healing circle, change it from passive 
into a more active form of prayer.  That’s the 
benefit of adding as many senses as you can.

*	Elyon:  This is true.  And you know, for I 
discern the spiritual maturity of each of you, 
that it is additionally helpful when praying 
for another that you also, for instance, visit 
the bedside, for these actions are part of the 
healing.  But you are also developing the 
sensitivity to those conditions of healing that 
engage agencies such as the midway cousins and 
the angels who can work with the circuits and 
cause the manifestation of the divine healing 
energy to appear in that particular individual.
	The universe is a like a team, and 
teamwork accomplishes the desires of the 
players.  The Father can directly bless, heal, 
grace, any individual.  As I have stated there 
are peripheral experiences to any action of 
this nature.  Rather than doing so of Himself, 
He does through His Son and His Spirit and all 
the agencies derived therefrom, and each one of 
us is blessed with His grace in the 
transference of His energy to another.
	I have expressed in years past the triad 
of worship that entails faith, focus, and 
feeling.  Your prayer circle is engaging the 
dynamics of this arrangement.  You have begun, 
initiated, your prayer circle prior to inviting 
myself and others into your discussions because 
of faith and because of your compassion for 
your fellows, and for your desire that many be 
comforted when ailing.  This is the feeling 
element.  Now you seek for focus, how to 
develop a group concentration that will 
intensify what is essentially a worshipful 
experience, for you are relying upon the divine 
to distribute the healing through whatever 
agency is deemed best.  This act of reliance 
upon God is an act of worship, the 
acknowledgment of Almighty power, of all-
knowingness, of divine compassion.  I will 
offer one method you may use.  I do not offer 
it as a technique to bring healing; I offer it 
as a technique to establish group focus.
	This group tends to sit facing one another 
in a circle, and this allows for you to 
physically focus inward toward each other.  So, 
it is appropriate to being your collective 
focus something in the middle of your circle.  
I offer that you visualize the appearance of 
divine spirit, be it Michael, Mother Spirit, 
however you wish to define the presence.  See 
it at first not present and then ever so small, 
beginning to emerge from nothing into view.  
Small, white, energized, sparkling, crackling, 
powerful, enlarging until each of you clearly 
sees this presence.  This is the beginning of 
the focus.  But I encourage you to not simply 
allow that presence to hover centered between 
you all but to let it grow until the perimeter 
of this sphere of divinity encompasses you and 
shrouds you from your backside.  This technique 
stimulates the feeling of being together.
	You have mentioned the difficulty of 
holding hands from the standpoint of physical 
discomfort for long periods.  By visualizing 
this light energy entirely surrounding you all 
you have created a hand-holding condition on 
the level of the mind.  Now, rather than being 
discreet individuals praying and hoping, you 
are a unified body encased in the divine light, 
encircuited and energized.
	Out of that center where that divine 
presence emerged at the beginning of your 
focus, you place the one you are praying for at 
the very coordinates you perceive the emergence 
of divinity, and let that be where you seek to 
bring healing to.  Undergo that same expansion.  
Transform from nothing -- in this case the 
condition of ailment, the absence of health -- 
and expand, become energized, illuminated, 
glowing with the warmth of spiritual healing, 
mental calm, and physical well-being.  Likewise 
let that individual’s presence expand to 
surround you all so that individual merges into 
the feeling of the presence of Father.  In a 
sense in this manner of visualization you have 
placed the individual of whom you were praying 
into the care of the Father, and that is faith.
	You are under no obligation to undertake 
this method I present.  I offer it as a friend 
not as an assignment.

	Kirk:  Has a circumstance ever come up 
where a group or individual is praying for 
someone suffering who is going to die anyway or 
that it’s the will of that person to go on, 
does it ever prolong their suffering?

*	Elyon:  Prayer by nature is unable to 
bring harm.  The will of the Father prevails.  
If an individual, even though sincerely and 
earnestly is praying for an outcome that is not 
the will of the Father, it will not condition 
the timing, the sequence of events, to fulfill 
His will.  Be not concerned that you may 
interfere with the rightful unfolding of 
events.  Do know that the Father understands 
every creature, and that you can and ought to 
pray what you truly believe and hope for, that 
you will not bring damage or undue hardship, 
only that you will acquire greater wisdom as 
time unfolds.
	Recall the episode of Lazarus  and how 
Jesus said that this was “not to the death”.  
Lazarus had been dead for days.  If it was the 
master’s desire to demonstrate the source of 
his divinity through the resurrection of 
Lazarus, would not one consider it undue 
hardship for this fellow to have gone through 
such an excruciating disease, death, and -- 
within a culture that distanced itself from 
things dead -- to have to emerge from a grave 
before strangers?  There are many times in the 
human life when the implications and the deep 
meanings are not fully understood.  The one who 
wished to have Jesus heal before death, that 
prayer went unanswered.  Yet the outcome 
benefited many for centuries to come.  Pray as 
you are moved to and welcome the answer of 
spirit.
	My friends, the time goes on and I would 
release you from my engagement.  We could 
continue to talk until the dawn of the next 
age, however, it may not promote much 
understanding if the mind grows tired and the 
body would like Mexican food!  Farewell.	 
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