THE TEACHING MISSION

Having decided to traverse this unknown distance before you, you have been engaged for some time now in provisioning yourself with the stocks and supplies you deem you will need for this everlasting journey before you. You have been checking your stores and supplies of the essentials you feel you need before you can feel as though you have pushed your craft off and are under your own power. You have tallied your stores of faith. You have added to your accumulation of courage. You have reevaluated your checklist and determined that priorities have shifted after learning more about the journey before you and gone back to make new checklists of essentials that are deemed important to have with you on this journey. This is the period we have been engaged in of stock piling your lesson plans, your maps and itineraries as you understand them at any given point, later to be reexamined and reevaluated for their worthiness to be with you on this journey. Many conditions that you saw as obstacles or signs of preparedness have been overcome, have been negotiated thoughtfully so as to no longer be impediments to you. The storehouse of wisdom, patience, and courage has been well added to so as to provide you the necessary sustenance along your journey.

We find that some of the possessions that we originally loaded into our crafts become burdensome and troublesome along the way, and we redefine our needs and are willing to lay aside and forget some aspects that we at the beginning saw as important, even necessary to our journey. We, from a new perspective, can perceive that these things we thought would help us may in fact weigh us down and become a burden in this fashion. When this happens we are all too willing to lay these burdens down so that we may continue anew. The journey we foresaw from the beginning knowing that the distance before us may be uncharted by us as individuals but well known to the many scouts and to the Creator of all.

Having stockpiled our faith in generous proportions we find ourselves merrily undertaking this journey, realizing that to embark on this everlasting journey we have already succeeded. The details of the journey before us merely provide us with options and opportunities to be accessed and exercised along the route; that it is a foregone conclusion our journey will meet with certain success, albeit we are unable to clearly define from this bend in the river where this journey exactly will take us. Nevertheless we are not turning back; we are not stalling in this effort. Once having shoved our crafts adrift we are committed to the journey before us and are well assured that our supplies are adequate, our sense of direction is correct, and our journey will meet with success.

This does not indicate that necessarily every day will be filled with smooth sailing, rather, we know there will be the rapids to negotiate, even to avoid. This will cause us some recalculation and readjustment in our direction, but only temporary obstacles lie before us in this sojourn. We all have committed to this everlasting journey to the Father, and no obstacle becomes too great to one entirely committed to this journey.

At this point in your journey many of you are wondering if there is room in your vessel for others whom you may pass along the way. Your heartfelt desire to load up the many for the journey to the Father is perceived with divine affection from on high. However, your craft is a personal craft, and you may pursue your own journey and even lead where others may follow, but it is not yours to load the many onlookers on route into your small craft. They must fashion their own vessels; they must procure their own supplies; they must show their own commitment in setting their own vessel adrift, and then surely all streams lead to the great ocean of the Father.

It has been a joy to oversee the making of your personal crafts, the hewing of your vessels over time, to be fashioned into seaworthy crafts, to witness as you gather together the items you feel essential before you embark upon this journey, to witness as you redefine your necessities, and to see you paddle as it were into the sunset with confidence and bravery. To witness these vessels floating down this river of love is truly joyous to behold. It is my extreme pleasure to float beside you as we make this journey and offer you as a guide who has been down this stretch of the river before you tips on how to navigate the currents, negotiate the rapids, and stay out of dangerous areas of falls. You demonstrate your courage and willingness to follow these suggestions and directions thereby minimizing the dangers to yourselves and increasing your ability to enjoy this journey. A guide merely is one who has traversed the distance before you and can report back as to the hazards ahead, and that is all we as teachers do for you. You must pilot the craft yourself; you must portage around the obstacles alone; you must of your own accord set your vessel adrift. These are the things that I marvel to see from my perspective. It is quite a beautiful journey to observe you make. I offer you my commitment as guide to see you through this journey as this river of love flows into the ocean of love which is the Father.

Naturally the word “liberation” implies that there is some confinement from which you seek release. So the word is not truly adequate to describe the unfoldment of soul, for your soul is not now nor has been imprisoned. Elyon spoke of crafting your vessel and making the effort to set your ship afloat upon the seas. When you exercised your ability to choose truth over error another miracle of great beauty occurred in the universe, and that was the initiation and unfolding of the growth of your soul. This effort on your part created the opportunity for the Divine Spirit to indwell you and establish the condition wherein you as a human being could rise above the mere functions of physical life.

As you grew in your comprehension of spiritual reality, you established conceptual frameworks; you developed response mechanisms that you discern to be contributory to your growth. You made effort. Some decisions were easy to exercise, some difficult and caused emotional turmoil, mental conflict. Sometimes you had to choose based upon your ideals and contrary to your wishes. And you did so because you developed a devotion to truth that superseded your wants, and in doing so you gained a freedom. You were liberated from your constraints due to imperfection or immaturity. While the soul is ever free, it is the mind and your seat of will that undergo that discipline, correction, and development that brings to you a sense of liberation. It is the effort of building the vessel. It is the struggle to portage.

Religion, as you know it on this world, has often promoted rules of conduct, defined behavior, set standards whereby living them you are perceived to be of a more noble character. Many a soul has rebelled against these conditions not wishing to be constrained. These dogmas and doctrines were not initially established to confine you. Those who first developed them were merely expressing the methods whereby they grew in spirit stature, and desire to make available to others that same ability by way of that path that later became crystallized and coded. They found through the discipline spiritual freedom. Today, while you may or may not align yourself with these recommended standards, it still falls to each of you as an individual to develop your own disciplines, your own standards, in order that you develop strength and power as a personality.

Elyon indicated the importance of you sailing your vessel. Many who build a ship do take counsel in the architecture and design developed by those who have gone before them. While some creatively alter the design, often much that was first developed is only adjusted and not abandoned. A sound keel, a workable rudder, and the like have contributed and will continue to contribute to a good journey.

Choose wisely what you will adopt and develop and attain. Do freely abandon and discard what you perceive to be outmoded or distracting. Do honor the fact that freedom is not the absence of any constraint; it is the development of ability through refinement, hard work, discipline. You might call it fettered freedom, that is what it takes to build a vessel and venture into the unknown.

As one who stands often on the sidelines and watches your masterful instructors guide you and encourage you each week, I must say, as they have often expressed their humility by stating that they help you as you choose your direction, that this is the case. Let us use the idea that they are as a detective. A detective has a course of action that is being pursued to uncover truth, to find and capture a desired end. You all are like the hound dogs, for your energy, your vigorous tug at the leashes of friendship that are between you and your instructors, is what drives the whole pack forward. Your anxious scouting, your enthusiastic push forward, propels your teachers forward in their plans and in their purposes. While it may seem that you are merely the mutts, it is not the case, for as any who has owned a pet knows, it is a loving relationship. You are truly the driving force; you are the ones who uncover the trail, find the scent. I am happy to be part of your pursuit.

You each have been given a glimpse of the goal through the reading of your Urantia text. Now you are so anxious to dive right into living and establishing the perfection decreed by Father on Paradise that it is very difficult to hold you in check that we may discern the clues upon the way. I know that at times you are frustrated when you feel you do not make the progress as you wish you could. However, I must say from my perspective you are moving along quite rapidly. There are other planets whereon the human beings are far less desirous of pursuing the perspectives and attaining the levels of personality that you seek. I will continue evermore to encourage you to do so.

* Elyon: One of these hazards is complacency, which perhaps is emphasized by the encouragement we give you all to continue, that while you have negotiated a rapid, have managed to break free from the stagnation of an eddy and have entered into the calm of a beautiful lake, it is the goal to reach the sea of the Universal Father, the vast ocean of His spirit presence. That would be one hazard. To pause along the way is good, however, to remain there for an unnecessary period of time could delay your progress, even bring upon you a change of weather that would inhibit your speedy advance.

* Elyon: These are conditions that are defined by your order of being; you are ascending children of God and therefore have channels wherein you rise to Paradise. It is true though that these are not confinements that are inflexible. As you paint upon a canvas your creativity is unlimited. What you do within the framework of that canvas has no limitation other than the size of that blank board. To draw beyond the boundaries into space would not serve to reveal the image within your mind. You are however capable of developing larger canvases. This is also part of your ascending experience. At every stage of your ascent, however, you have a canvas that is only so large within which you may create. I hope this serves to show the value of limitations and your ability to break free as you grow.

* Elyon: You are quite perceptive. This is true. While it is apparently a struggle to encounter conflict as it is to negotiate a rapid, it is in the end far more thrilling than long stretches of quiet water where you must still make the effort but make the effort unaided, unassisted, by the conditions around you. Those are times to rest. But to journey forward you must apply yourself even more rigorously than during the times when the rapids appear to be tossing you about.