S.E. Idaho TeaM
3-18-03

Linda(Bill): Take us down the road that leads to Home with greater
confidence, greater joy, with greater fellowship of love and peace. May
these, my students, be blessed tonight as we meet together. In the name of
Michael. Amen

Linda(Bill): My dear friends, I am Linda, Nancy's teacher. It is only
appropriate that once in a while we private teachers, we personal teachers,
are encouraged to take part in the larger prospect of group teaching, and
inasmuch as this meeting tonight is in this home, I have been asked to
greet you and share some thoughts.

I am very intrigued with the material from last week which you provided as
participants, your understanding of the importance of the chosen family of
the Teaching Mission and what that has meant to you. It is salubrious that
you meet together for it lubricates your social facilities. It enhances
your boundaries of ego and diminishes at the same time the loudness of its
voice. As was spoken last week, the greatest thing in the universe of
Nebadon and other universes of all seven of the gigantic superuniverses is
the reality of the emerging Family of God, which is another way of saying
the completion of the Supremacy project in the Supreme Being.

For the record, let it be known that our emphasis on your membership in the
Cosmic Family has never been presented to you as a substitute or an
either/or presentation. It has always been to enhance the reality that you
feel when you have functional family relationships. True, The Cosmic
Family is a larger concept; but it is also a more superlative concept. Not
only is it greater in scope, but higher in quality. The nuclear family,
whether or not it is in jeopardy, is still the most significant social
unit in any evolving planetary culture. Certainly, this is true of
Urantia. It is also wise to remember that a family is balanced between the
parents who are the co-creators of the children. A functional family makes
no substitutions. The children are not more important than the marriage
bond, so that if the marriage is poor and the spouses find their
fulfillment in being parents, we cannot say that it is a fully functional
family. The degree of compatibility of just and fair interactions between
the mother and father, husband and wife, will, indeed, set the tone for the
entire functioning of the rest of the family. Your chosen nuclear family
of the Teaching Mission was appraised by Daniel and Aaron as a functional
family, and I agree with their assessment.

I would also point out that the most important aspect of the functional
family is not so much our purposing to go, as the direction, the sincerity
and motivation of their commitment to this end. What this means for you,
that are here tonight, is that you need to continue to honor the importance
of balance in your relationships and to understand that the degree to which
you extend an effort to be unified with other people is also a measure of
the degree to which you desire to be unified within yourselves. Or we
could say, conversely, the degree to which you are willing to work on self
knowledge and balance of personality is also the potential you manifest for
effective functional relationships with other people.

And now a few words about belief systems and faith. It is impossible to
avoid the reality of formulating and living by a belief system. It is
simply not possible for normal minded people to function without a
construct of the world in their minds. Everyone does have a picture of how
reality manifests. Of course, the wiser among you recognize that no
reality picture can be completely accurate, that in a relatively imperfect
universe no individual part can be more than relatively imperfect.
Therefor, all of your belief systems are only partial, necessarily
incomplete, but nevertheless essential to your mental functioning.
Certainly, there are relative degrees of validity among different belief
systems. Some are clearly more immature, more partial, more inaccurate
than others; and intelligent and fair minded people can, to some degree,
discern this difference. Belief systems are mental constructs. They are
not the same as reality.

Faith, on the other hand, is a word to express a different kind of
knowledge than that of hypothesis, which is necessarily characteristic of
belief systems. Faith is much grander. It is that bond that ties people
together. It is that primal assumption that there can be a reasonable
trust in the behavior, commitments, and social contracts of other people.
It is also that connection that you have with another individual that you
might describe as "gut to gut", rather than "head to head". It's an
intuitive sense of the worthwhileness and the faithfulness of another
person, so that you can commit to them a certain degree of the secrets of
the heart and the promises of your future. Finally, faith is that greatest
connection which you intuitively sense within you to that greater power and
higher power that you call God. This higher power is not an impersonal
Force, but is an intelligent Loving Ground of your being, is a Fatherly,
Motherly, Parental Personality that you can trust. You could say that
faith is intensely personal, that it is larger than the mere speculations
or rational conclusions of the mind. It is not irrational or
anti-conceptual, but it is more satisfying.

You may have a discussion with another about the existence of God and that
other person can say to you,"Give me proof; show me reasons why I should
believe in Deity". You may give your reasons but you will not convince
that other person by intellectual argument. They may say to you, "How do
you know that your faith is truth?". Again, you will not satisfy them by
citing the proofs of St. Thomas Aquinas. All you can say to them is, "I
have experienced God in my life as real as any other person that I know. I
can't prove it to you, but I know it for myself".

My dear friends, I am so happy to have had the opportunity to add my words
to this discussion of family as well as belief and faith. I welcome you to
this setting where Nancy and Bob have a family now that brings us great joy
as it does them. Indeed, are you all very blessed! I have finished my
commentary. Do you have comments or questions?

Nancy: Linda, I sincerely thank you for taking up this topic and for your
commentary. I will carefully consider your various topics and work with
you to expand the lessons that you have in mind for me. I thank you for
being here. It was a joy to hear you through another mind, tonight.

My dear PamElla, if I may call you by that name of affection, you know how
much our relationship means to me and I know it means a great deal to you
as well. Yes, thank you for your sincerity in what you just now stated. I
ask you to think about something that has troubled you in your relationship
to transmitting/receiving. May I comment on that?

Nancy/PamElla: Sure.

Linda: You have thought in terms of accuracy and error. It is now becoming
more apparent to many transmitter/receivers that this whole way of looking
at transmissions is inaccurate. It is, in fact, erroneous. Transmissions
are inevitably a blend of the two minds, the transmitting mind and the
receiving mind. They cannot help but be a construction from the
vocabulary, the memory, the knowledge, the structure of the mind of the
receiver as well as the structure of the mind of the transmitter. In
evaluating the accuracy of a transmission, one should shift gears to think
of this as an exercise in discerning truth. Remember that truth is always
greater than facts. So, while there may be factual errors at times that
come into transmissions, the important thing is the truth level that
exists. I recommend that you come back to a level of confidence, when it
is your wish, and rejoin the corps of TRs that would gladly welcome your
assistance. I know this is somewhat personal and we can delete this part
from the transcript if you wish.

Nancy: No, no. That was lovely. I am sure many people will benefit from
your discussion of that topic.
Thank you.

(Then follows a few jocular comments on the value of crying when you feel
like it instead of holding back the tears and getting a sore throat, also
much laughter.)

LaReen: I just want to comment that this sounded like a beautiful
re-commitment to me on your part to the teacher connection and work
together. That was beautiful.

Virginia: Linda, I do have a question on that very thing, that transmitting
is a discernment of truth. Am I correct? Is that what was said?

Linda: In evaluating transmissions, the thing that is important is the
discernment of truth.

Virginia: Yes.

Linda: Whether or not on some occasions there might be some factual errors.

Virginia: My concern is that, I think that whenever we try to(and I am
looking at myself and I have heard other TRs say this) hear the issues of
truth and reality that will help us to grow spiritually, it is possible to
have less error when we don't wish to have something happen in our world.
That's when I think our wishes get mixed into what we think we are hearing,
because we are looking for reality, as such, to change, rather than
discernment of truth that will help us grow. Did I make myself clear on that?

Linda: Yes, to me you did. You are saying that in the process of Tring it
enhances the truth value of the transmission if the personal wishes of the
transmitter are set aside as much as possible.

Virginia: I would say, definitely! In fact when I find myself wanting
something desperately to happen as in our world situation now, I have been
very careful that I don't let my emotions interfere with what I am hearing.
As Klarixiska said this morning, " Virginia, no matter what happens, good
is going to come out of this chaos and turmoil that you see in the world.
I did not hear what I wanted to hear, that war and death would not occur.
I guess that is what I am trying to say, that I cannot interfere with
listening.

Linda: I would say it is always best to have the intention of not letting
your prejudice and your wishes color what is being said, just as you have
described. On the other hand, on some occasions your wishes and desire can
be sufficiently altruistic in nature that they would not distort, in a
sense, the value or the truth, or dilute it. So, sometimes the very
passion that a transmitter has can be a plus, if it isn't an aggrandizement
of self or isn't a wilful assertion. The rule of thumb is that when the
material presented is more materialistic in tone and tenor then it may be
that it is being altered by the preconceived ideas of the
transmitter/receiver.

The final point is this. We are not delivering to you Holy Gospel or
Sacred Scripture, infallible and God's very Word as it is imagined by
fundamentalists of all religions. We are bringing you truth which is
relative, even as your belief systems are very relative. It is your
responsibility to exercise your best judgment, your truth discernment
judgment. Truth as you understand it, is the only truth that matters to
you. Each person has that sacred responsibility to exercise their judgment
on what is truth for them.

Bob P.: I have a comment also. In listening to what I think I remember,
things both in the pre-discussion and the lesson tonight, again, the
practice of developing relationships in the larger context, be it celestial
or cosmic or even earth wise is excellent practice in skill development for
focusing those same types of relationships in narrower context like family
relationships, friend relationships, and profession relationships or
working relationships. I think the level of affection between the parties
obviously differs. The ways of dealing with those relationships remains
constant. That's where I can see that in essence they are all the same. I
know that some days I am grateful for my professional relationships because
of the way they work. Some days I am grateful for spiritual relationships;
and all days I am grateful for my family relationships. For me that growth
has been somewhat simultaneous. I know we talked earlier tonight about it
being broader to narrower, bigger to smaller, but I can say with some
confidence that I think it works the other way, also, in that the loving
and nurturing experience at the smallest family level can easily translate
itself into the broader loving and nurturing relationships otherwise. The
point that I think connects all this is practice of the relationships,
where all relationships benefit. To me, the order is more philosophical
than real. Again, I don't think you can experience very solid
relationships without a spirituality of some sort. In a sense, I guess
that is what comes first, but is simultaneous with the others. I really
believe it is a fairly complex and oftentimes simultaneous development that
occurs. I am truly grateful for allowing this long comment. (Laughter)

Linda: My dear friend, your words are truly eloquent and they have added
significant clarification to the concepts presented. Our team has just
voted to include you in the teaching corps. (Laughter, applause) You
already have the distinguished job of teaching on this planet. Thank you
very much, Bob, for those clarifying words.

Yes, you are right. It is all the same thing, whether it be in a cosmic
sense or in the intimate sense of family. It appears to be philosophical
to you, perhaps. Yet when ascension becomes a real experience for you
after the gateway of death is passed through, you will see that...

Bob: Give that a little time!

Linda: ...you will see that it is real as well as philosophical. But, the
most important thing that anybody does is the work of the realm in which
they live. You live on this mortal sphere, and this is the realm that is
most important. If one assumes to be spiritually advanced and cannot apply
that alleged knowledge in their mortal lives, their actual day to day
interactions, then their alleged spiritual knowledge is just that, alleged
and not real.

Well, my friends, I thank Daniel and Minearisa for the chance to be on
target tonight. Know that all of us on this side of the veil in the
Teaching Mission love all of all you, and are very impressed with your
continued growth. We will conclude tonight with a prayer that you are
perhaps too familiar with. It would be wise tonight to repeat the prayer
that Jesus used in His family, a prayer known in your religions as the
Lord's Prayer. I ask you to stand and hold hands.

Group: Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom
come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For
Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever and ever. Amen.