[tmtranscripts] 09-08-02 Rio Rancho TeaM

[ZooidODell at aol.com]

Date:   September 8, 2002
Location:   Rio Rancho, NM
Teachers:   Tomas and Machiventa Melchizedek
Topics: The Soul
T/r's:      Gerdean (for Tomas) and Matthew (for Machiventa)

Prayer:  (Matthew) Let us place ourselves in the presence of Jesus, the 
Christ.
    "Master Teacher, whenever we call your name, we sense and confidently 
know your presence. We trust that because you said you would always be with 
us. Calling upon you is to call upon the greater powers that are next to the 
Father, Him and Herself. To be in your presence is to be in the presence of 
the Father. And to be complete is to be in your presence. We sanctify 
ourselves in your presence, to place ourselves before you as custodians, 
servants and trusted lords over your terrain and over your land as you have 
presented to us. We commit ourselves to the fulfillment of our places here on 
terra firma - Urantia, Gaia, the number of names that it is called.  
Regardless of culture, regardless of temperament, we place ourselves in your 
care and we care for that which you place us within.  We ask for the teachers 
that you make ready for us and the information and instruction and loving 
care that they make known to us as well.  And for all of this, and for the 
gift of life and ongoing eternal life, we are forever grateful.  Amen.

TOMAS:  My cheerful friends, I am Tomas. How wonderful to be in your company, 
in your embrace and in the embrace of the Master Teacher who oversees us all. 
 Once more we gather together to become more because of our association with 
the divine.

This afternoon I'd like to talk to you, specifically, about that which you 
are becoming -- that which is eternal and that which is brought about as a 
result of your human will marrying itself to the divine will, thus bringing 
about the product, the offspring of that liaison: the immortal soul. The 
concept of the soul is one which has provoked thought and contemplation in 
the minds of men for many millennia on this world and on other worlds as 
well. For on  all the  worlds of time and space, there is a point of 
departure from the animal into potential of spirit, that point of soul-birth 
which becomes sufficient in its existence to carry you into the destiny 
assigned to you by your Creator.

The soul is the seed of your reality. It is brought about by the birth of 
your reality in the arrival of your indwelling Adjuster. This Spark of 
Divinity remains with you throughout your life and into eternity, in 
particular if you have and as you have, allowed your soul to develop and 
become an element of reality which is able to stand alone, that is to say, be 
able to reveal the qualities of divinity through the personality, which is 
you. 

There are many who rejoice in sonship and who know not the definition of 
sonship. There are many of childlike faith who, while respecting a concept of 
a power greater than themselves have no theologic comprehension of how it is 
that the universe has established itself and its many worlds and creature 
creations. There are many also who testify to having great understanding of 
these matters yet are only empty voices having no real appreciation of the 
spirit within. The soul is that which you are in potential, and while the 
Creator has provided the avenue through which you may grow and become, it is 
also true that you are responsible in your own way to foster the growth of 
the soul. 

The growth of the soul may be thwarted or retarded.  Just like the growth of 
a plant may be thwarted or retarded by planting it in unfavorable soil, or in 
conditions unfavorable to growth, a soul's development may be detained as a 
result of erroneous decision, bad associations, immature choices, but there 
is always provided an opportunity to make a conscious will choice to survive, 
and this is enough to provide an opportunity for the potential to become 
actual.

I am here to encourage you to provide the conditions that are favorable to 
growth.  The nature of the soul is such that I would like to derive from each 
of you, if you will indulge me and each other, an explanation or definition 
of a soul, as it is understood by you.  In this way, I will know and you each 
will know, how it is that we can proceed to develop this soul such that it 
becomes a greater part of who you are than that which you were born.

The lessons you learn, the teachings you derive from this Teacher Corps, are 
of little use to you or anyone, unless, and until, it is made real to you, by 
and through the birth and growth of your own soul. And that is the reality 
which will survive death and reawaken as embraceable by the Adjuster who has 
worked with you and lived with you willingly and tirelessly, within the 
framework of your existence, so that you may know eternal life, and not 
merely this one. I am instructed to cater to the growth of the soul. In that 
case I ask you to convey to us what your understanding of the soul is.

Elena:  I think the soul is the spiritualness that we have.  I think the 
personality is separate and the soul is that spiritual part of our material 
existence.  It's more maybe in your land than in the material world, and I 
think we need to call it in more to nurture it. I'm interested in what you're 
saying about nurturing and supplying it more fertile ground, because I think 
of the spirit poisons, etc.  So your further conversation will be of great 
interest to me, but that's about as close as I could get in defining what a 
soul is.

Carl:  Tomas, I read back to you the notion that I've gained from reading the 
Bible. It says in the book of Genesis that Adam was a soul, not that he had a 
soul - that he was a soul.  And further along, speaking of King David's 
enemies, that they were after his soul …. and I gather from that, that the 
soul is all of us - our whole being.



Myra:  I understand it to be the core of my being…  My soul is my core. I 
would compare it to a placenta … the part that stays tied to my God to keep 
me in touch with my spiritual life.



Esmarelda.  I feel like it's part - an inner, deeper part of me that I do not 
nurture as much as I should, but probably I associate that with the 
indwelling Father fragment, and I know that the soul is supposed to grow, and 
I hope that mine is … but it's an inner thing, even more important than our 
outer being.  A very inadequate definition, I'm afraid.

Janet:  It's pretty hard to define.  It's something that we each feel within 
us but it isn't a part of our anatomy - it's just a feeling inside you that 
guides and it's very, very important, but it doesn't have a place within your 
body.

Thoroah:  You said earlier, Tomas, that it is our 'real self.'  And reality 
is what our soul amounts to. The relationship between our indwelling Presence 
and our will - our decisions, our actions, etc., whatever we create that is 
real- makes up our soul, and that's what we take with us wherever we go.

Gerdean: Well my definition of soul is what I got from the book I wrote.  
Having to do with that in us that is most poignant. And so for my definition 
I would call it Love. Sometimes I find my soul weeping. I feel like my soul 
is weeping sometimes when I see love rejected -- I don't mean emotional love, 
I mean spiritual love - or when it's ignored or overlooked. And I know when 
my soul is rejoicing because there's a happiness in me that is not based on 
payday or a date or those things that might make a mortal happy.  And so I 
regard the soul as a font of feeling.  That's my definition, my 
interpretation of what the soul is. As I see it.

Matthew:  I'm glad for the opportunity to address this because I had the 
thought, I think this morning, or recently, and I'm glad it came up - but I 
wanted to ask Tomas whether or not it was true that we had a pre-knowledge or 
pre-existence prior to physical life.  And to me then, soul is that 
connection with the eternal that we're given, a spark of that 'let's inhabit 
this life to experience what life in this form is'.  So it's our bridge from 
before to now to return to the ultimate and eternal.  So to me it's  the 
bridge of the eternal spark. But that bridge then has troops and animals and 
everything trudging across it and what experience it grasps from that is what 
we carry on with us.

(group comments about the various things going across the 'bridge' and a 
comment was made about the idea of the circus going across the bridge)

TOMAS:  There are times when I think of you as a circus going across a 
bridge, yes.  (group laughter)  The bridge being the transition from the 
material life to the morontial life -- for clarification (over-simplified 
perhaps) -- to say "from the material to the spiritual".

Perhaps my depiction will give you a demonstration.  I will suggest that you 
are each created an electrical appliance. We have a toaster and a radio, an 
electric lawnmower, a hairdryer -- any of these appliances. And the Father is 
the electric circuit. The radio cannot give forth music or news broadcasts 
without it being plugged into the electric circuit of Paradise. The hairdryer 
is inert and cannot fluff-up any hair-do or dry your nails, without first 
having been plugged into the Paradise circuit.

Thus, to say that you are a toaster is certainly true, but that is not the 
soul. The soul is the toaster that is plugged into the electric current; the 
toaster that is toasting is the soul. The hairdryer that is blowing is the 
soul. The electric mower that is cutting grass is the soul. The material 
appliance by itself is merely a material appliance.  Adam was, in those 
terms, a mere "lump of clay" until such time as the spark of the divine 
activated him, in a spiritual sense.

The definitions are not as essential as the recognition of the significance 
of that dimension within you and your life that levitates from a temporary 
reality to a permanent reality, from a short-term existence to an eternal 
life. The experience of the material existence will certainly give you an 
appreciation of the fact that material reality will not last forever.  'From 
dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return,' is in reference to the material 
tabernacle in which the divine spark lives.

Civilizations are born and grow and crumble. Families are born and reared and 
die out. And yet the electrical charge of divinity is permanent and eternal. 
In order for you to be eternal, it behooves you to get yourself plugged in 
and operative. If you would become actualized, you would be more than inert. 

It is the marriage of the human will and the divine will which creates the 
soul.  It is the human will making determined decisions to live on a higher 
plane than an inert material existence, that gives you meaning and value, 
that gives you soul birth, and that develops your personality into a 
personality which is revealed as the "love-saturated soul", that which is so 
connected to the energy of Paradise.  The reality of the soul's existence 
continues even long after the appliance of the material life is returned to 
dust.

In this way you are given an opportunity to develop your own soul, to nurture 
its growth and foster its furtherance.  Conditions for the growth of the soul 
are relative to those behaviors which will supplant lower and lesser habits, 
which are devoted to the human and temporal self, with those higher and 
exalted realities that will foster and further higher and greater reality ... 
even the greater reality within your fellows. Thus, you are able to augment 
others by your contribution to their favorable conditions for spiritual 
development and soul growth. By the same token, you are able to dissuade and 
discourage the spirit in others as well. And those of you who would foster 
the growth of your own soul will see to it that your field is kept free of 
toxins and weeds which interfere with the abundance of your own productivity.

We will spend more time and energy on the development of the soul, on the 
nurturance of your soul and that of others' as time goes by.  Suffice for my 
lesson this afternoon to introduce the concept of the soul into your minds 
that you may ponder this concept and chew on it for future sustenance.

Matthew, I am going to ask you to share the platform as a mouthpiece for 
Anatolia or any of our associates in attendance who have an in with your 
circuitry in order for you to share the spirit realm with your peers, if you 
are willing.

Matthew:  Certainly. Thank you.
Machiventa Melchizedek is here.

Machiventa:  I'm happy to be with you this afternoon, here within your realm, 
where I find myself more than an occasional visitor. As you know, regardless 
of one's teaching or what one has been brought up with, I am the who one 
preceded all that you know to be the case - with the exception of 
Adam. I am most pleased to be among you, not for any other reason than for 
the reason that you meet every Sunday.  It is with this purpose that I am 
willing and able to share with you one of the insights as to the reason for 
your meeting here upon each Sunday occasion. 

And it is with that occasion that I take this opportunity to tell you that 
you are a living, breathing organism of the unity of purpose for which this 
"soon-to-be institution of instruction from the spirit realm" makes itself 
with regularity and with dispatch. And more importantly that you, as a group 
of learners and listeners and lovers of the truth, are willingly able to 
devote yourselves to these lessons. And with this purpose in mind you will 
find great reward and benefit to your personal lives and the lives of those 
that you touch.

It is much in the realm of Martha and Mary-ism that I bring you this word of 
instruction. That is, this co-mingling of spirit and body, that which you 
know to be the case of Martha and Mary, with that subtle conflict and 
contrast that existed. The sisters, as they were, knew one another quite 
well. They knew one another's habits, likes, dislikes, needs, dependencies 
and other similar insights into the personality of each.  However, when the 
occasion arose, when it was necessary for each individual or each personality 
to rise to the occasion of meeting the needs of the group at hand. Primarily 
because that of the commanding presence of the Master, whom you know him to 
be, was there among them, those personalities rose to the occasion to meet 
the need as they saw fit.

So as the story goes, you are well familiar, it was the conflict of Martha 
perceiving that Mary took the upper road - took the road of lesser 
responsibility and the lighter road in terms of rejecting that which Martha 
was left to carry the additional burden of.  Martha, having the disposition 
that she did toward service and reliability, took on that as her comfortable, 
more traveled road and was able to accept that as her place. And as a result 
she saw her sister's departure from that typical role as a departure or 
abandonment of responsibility and what Martha perceived as Mary taking the 
lighter of the options.

This I present to you as merely a representation of what your lesson is 
today. That lighter road taken, the acceptance of true spiritual light and 
life presented, rises to the occasion, leaps in acceptance of recognition of 
that which is true and eternal, much as Mary rose to the occasion to sit at 
the Master's feet, to bask in his glory, and to become one with him as spirit 
ignites to spirit.

Martha on the other hand needed to see that there was a way toward that which 
is the lighter road, the road toward truth, the road that ignites with 
excitement and unites with the oneness of that which is true and eternal. It 
was in this way that both learned of their mutual need for one another.  In 
this life, as you know it, there is the need for the true, the tested, the 
reliable because it is in this that survival is met and survival is portended 
upon, that which is present for a vehicle for life's expression here in this 
form of existence. But without this form of existence, spirit still would 
exist. Spirit does abound and spirit resides within that which is true and 
eternal.

So it is within this that is eternal and true, which elects to express itself 
in the physical vehicle which Martha represents, and it is in this case that 
the two shall become one, in the sense that the two are mutually beneficial 
and allow for the unique expression or experience of life as you know it to 
be expressed and to be lived. 

This I merely present to you as another form of representation. It is 
existent in many other forms as well, much as your Master Teacher presented, 
in terms of the wine derived from the grapes and that the grapes are that 
which is presented in the physical form and that each of you are branches, 
but that in the grape and in the subsequent wine is that mystery portrayed as 
well. 

Many and all examples can be found. You can find it within any living being. 
To imagine or to contemplate that which is within a living presence and that 
which enables it to be is truly an expression of the mystery of life.

And so I share this opportunity with you to invite you to continue to grow 
within our being, to know the light form that you are, and to begin to 
understand that the mutual expression of your life spirit within you, 
expressing within your physical being, is what this world is graced with here 
and now by your presence. You could have, after all, been anything. You could 
have chosen to have been a tree had your spirit decided that you wished to 
express as a tree.  But you chose to express that which is the closest 
representation to the godforce Him and Herself, to express as you are right 
now. 

 So in many ways of knowing and thinking, the world is a better place by your 
having been here and by your being here. So grace yourselves with this 
knowledge and bethrone yourselves in the presence of the godforce within you, 
to give rightful honor and homage to that which is made known and possible 
through the spirit which lives within you. Grace that spirit which is you and 
which houses the greatest spirit of them all, masked and marked by your 
presence inward and withoutward.

I could go on with illustrations and actualizations but I think you get the 
point. The point is to continue to grow in the awareness of who you are and 
that awareness will continue forever.  Be at one with yourself and be all 
that you can be, much as the Herbie legend lives on. This is what you're 
called to and this is what you are asked to be, each and every Sunday and 
each hour that follows in the aftermath. Be well aware of who you are and all 
else will become a new reality. I encourage you to grow in happiness and 
acceptance, primarily of yourselves, and all else will follow. Be good to 
yourselves and all of those who share your presence. Peace be with you.

TOMAS:  Thank you, Machiventa, and thank you for presenting your curriculum 
with those of us who are eager learners as well as teachers.

The floor is yours now.  

Elena:  I'm confused about sequence   About personality and soul.  You were 
saying that will, divine will and divinity, combine to produce a soul and 
then I was a little bit … producing … or clarifying personality.  So I think 
I remember reading in the Urantia Book that personality came first, or we 
have personality first.  So, could you shed light on that?

TOMAS:  Personality is a gift acknowledged at birth. At the point of your 
arrival on the stage of human drama, you are registered as a living 
personality and immediately it is observable. It can be ascertained, even in 
an infant, if it will be a progressive or a receding personality. And as a 
child grows and begins to discover itself, it's personality is made even more 
apparent by the way in which it relates with others. There are those who 
affirm that even animals enjoy a personality and that their pet is rife with 
personality traits.  And thus the personality is in existence even before 
being indwelt by spirit, and thus personality exists before the inception of 
the seed of the soul which then begins to germinate in the personality of the 
individual as it is indwelt and influenced by the spirit.

There are, by way of further discussion, many individuals whose personality 
is so uniquely human and originally their own they are unaware of any 
potential to the soul. There are personalities malformed by dysfunction and 
moral error which, none-the-less, perform gallantly in society and find 
similar fellows with which to develop cultural trends. Yet they lack spirit 
quality. The gift of personality that is a reflection of the divine is that 
personality which is made more than it was as a result of the combined will 
of the human and the divine. The personality also is able to operate  
effectively by those individuals who are unconsciously following the will of 
God, even though they may not consciously and directly allow spirit a 
prominent place in their consciousness. 

It is those of you who are conscious of consciousness, those of you who are 
aware of the power of divinity, those of you who choose to plug in your 
appliance to feel the current of divine electricity in you, that enables you 
to function as more than you were. Thus the clever human can get by on being 
a character and the soul rather chooses to 'have' character. The individual 
who is conscious of his soul has a comprehension of feeling that goes beyond 
the temporary and the material. It goes to the heart of a perception of 
reality which does have such quality of existence as guarantees its 
usefulness and its survival value. 

The reference here is scriptural, that there might come a time in the life of 
a human who has professed loudly his belief in God, but when called upon to 
present his reality, there is nothing to show for it. And so the Lord would 
say 'I know you not.'  There are many who make professions of belief and 
theology but they are empty words. It is in the soul that the real essence 
and substance is housed, and it will continue to support you in your advance 
into eternity.  As you grow,  your personality is made more God-like and will 
reflect more and more the glory and grandeur of life.

Myra: Tomas is there a group soul?  As an example, does this group here have 
a collective soul that strengthens the individuals' souls?  Or does the 
individuals coming together as a group make that soul stronger?  I guess I am 
asking you to speak to the importance of group in soul's construction.

TOMAS:  Alright then let me give you an illustration of a candle. If you are 
one candle in the dark, if each of you are one candle in the darkness you 
can, in fact, make it possible for others to see. However, as you join 
together your light is made brighter and its range of influence extends 
farther so that, like the illustration, you do not hide your light under a 
basket but put it on a hillside for all to see.  And when you gather together 
in a group to enhance each other's light, your lights individually are 
brighter, and the group light, also, is made greater.

In fact, one of the conditions favorable to soul growth is association with 
other personalities who are inclined to honor and sustain the spirit and 
foster the growth of the soul.  As to the concept of group soul - the short 
answer is yes.  The group soul is dependent on its constituents. You are all 
a part of the whole.  And the whole, the oversoul, is that which we create by 
assisting the evolution of the supreme.  The God in creation is a part of the 
wonderful opportunity we have to expand and enlarge upon infinite deity. 

It is a part of our privilege and responsibility, in fact, to contribute to 
that oversoul, as it in turn augments and supports our individual growth, as 
we are then a recognized part of the greater reality -- not only in our own 
mind and in our own group, but in the whole of the universe. What you do here 
has eternal repercussions. You are not just an inert toaster, you see.  By 
tapping into the "cosmic electricity," you are making toast to feed the 
universes of time and space, for your efforts are part of the overall efforts 
of God to recreate himself through his creatures. This is your gift to God.

It is a gift for me to be given the opportunity to grow with you in your 
community; to be a part of this teacher base is a gift I, and we, truly 
cherish. We have a perception of the potential that can come from the 
development of the individual in this gathering and in the energy and power 
that you, yourselves, are going to be able to give off, in order to empower 
and activate a plethora of otherwise dormant souls awaiting an opportunity to 
reactivate themselves and align themselves with that which truly matters, 
that which is All-there-is.

It is wonderful to see your enjoyment of each other and to participate in the 
development of these associations of affection and loyalty. If you only knew 
how much greater your involvement is than what it may seem to be to you, you 
would be astounded. However, delightful children, return next week for a few 
more moments on-line with our creative Source and you will again feel that 
power which infuses each and all of our evolving souls with the evolving soul 
of creation, thus adding to the destiny of all of life. And what a marvelous 
opportunity to live and experience even a small part of such a tremendous 
potential. No wonder the Master said, 'Be of good cheer.'

In the spirit of prayer, let us rejoice in the coming together as sons and 
daughters of the living god, in obedience to his will for us, and in 
rejoicing for his desire for our souls to emerge into the abundance and 
radiance which is our inheritance, our destiny, our birthright as a part of 
the wonders of God. Amen and farewell.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://circuit1.teamcircuits.com/pipermail/tmtranscripts/attachments/20020909/ae8d64a3/attachment.html>