FROM THE NETWORK OF THE HEART CONFERENCE, 1995
Expanded Understandings of the Teaching Mission
by David G. Schlundt
followed by a transmission from the celestial teacher, Tarkas
The Network of the Heart Teaching Mission Gathering in
Fayetteville, Ark. in 1995 was a sharing that gave the author
three new insights into the phenomenon of receiving and
transmitting celestial teachers. Each insight is preceded by a
quote from the Urantia Papers.
From Paper 100:
You cannot truly love your fellows by a mere act of the will.
Love is only born of thoroughgoing understanding of your
neighbor's motives and sentiments. It is not so important to
love all men today as it is that each day you learn to love
one more human being. If each day or each week you achieve an
understanding of one more of your fellows, and if this is the
limit of your ability, then you are certainly socializing and
truly spiritualizing your personality. Love is infectious, and
when human devotion is intelligent and wise, love is more
catching than hate. But only genuine and unselfish love is
truly contagious. If each mortal could only become a focus of
dynamic affection, this benign virus of love would soon
pervade the sentimental emotion-stream of humanity to such an
extent that all civilization would be encompassed by love, and
that would be the realization of the brotherhood of man.
Insight #1: The teaching mission is as much about spreading
love as it is about the dissemination of information
Imagine that you are exploring a deep dark forest. It is
getting late, darkness is approaching, and you feel the need
for a campfire for light, warmth, and safety. You gather
kindling, twigs, small branches, and some logs. You build a
tepee like structure with logs on the outside and twigs and
kindling on the inside. You strike a spark and get a fire
started in some dry grass. You blow on the spark and it glows
brighter and brighter until you begin to see smoke and flames.
You continue to blow until the fire is well established, then
you transfer it to the kindling in the center of the campfire.
You continue to blow on the fire, nursing it so it won't go
out.
After a certain point, you have enough flame so that you are
confident the fire will burn. It will still be some time
before the fire becomes bright and hot. It may take all night
to burn the logs you have placed on the outside. But, in
making a campfire there is a point of no return where you have
enough heat and flame to sustain combustion.
The teaching mission is a spark to the dry kindling. A handful
of humans have been contacted, the fire of love has been lit
in their hearts, and the flames of service are beginning to
glow. The fires may smolder for a long time, but eventually
they will spread.
Fire can be used to do work. Iron can be heated and worked,
clay pots can be hardened, food can be cooked and so forth.
The campfire metaphor has helped me understand the teaching
mission much better.
When I first learned that thousands of teachers had come to
this planet to help us, I was elated. I read that they were
working on our spiritual welfare, on health problems, and on
saving the planet from environmental destruction. At first, I
focused on the work that would be done using the fire. At
first, it was the content of the teachings that I considered
most important. The new insights, the new information, and the
expanded perspectives were what I thought the teaching mission
was all about.
Part of the work of the mission is to spread the truth of the
fifth epochal revelation, but that is not the entire purpose
of the correcting time.
After spending the weekend at the Gathering of the Heart, I
came to realize that an equally important purpose of the
teaching mission is to light a campfire in the dark, cold,
wilderness. The teachers are sparks that have started
smoldering little fires in small groups all over the world.
The teachers have gently blown on the fires to keep them from
going out in the cold and rain that is part of life in the
wilderness. I wonder if we have reached the point of no
return. Are the small little fires burning all over now strong
enough to both sustain combustion and to eventually spread?
This important aspect of the teaching mission has to do with
person to person contact and the spreading of love in every
day interactions between people. It may take a very long time
for the small campfires that have been started to blaze into
bonfires and then spread into a massive forest fire of love.
But, sparks have been struck and a few campfires have been
lit.
It may never be necessary for the great majority of people on
this planet to know anything about the teaching mission for
their lives to have been dramatically changed by it.
Christian, Moslem, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, and others can all
catch fire with love, even though they will still
conceptualize religion differently. Millions of people will
embark upon a spiritual quest and will discover the source of
love that is within them. Some will call it God, some Allah,
some the Thought Adjuster, and some will have no particular
words at all for it.
It is not immediately necessary for everyone to embrace the
teachings of the Urantia book in order to learn to incorporate
more love into their lives. It is not necessary to believe
that any contact with celestials has occurred to begin trying
to understand and love one more brother or sister each day.
From Paper 43:
On the mansion worlds you completed the unification of the
evolving mortal personality; on the system capital you
attained Jerusem citizenship and achieved the willingness to
submit the self to the disciplines of group activities and
co-ordinated undertakings; but now on the constellation
training worlds you are to achieve the real socialization of
your evolving morontia personality. This supernal cultural
acquirement consists in learning how to:
1. Live happily and work effectively with ten diverse fellow
morontians, while ten such groups are associated in companies
of one hundred and then federated in corps of one thousand.
2. Abide joyfully and co-operate heartily with ten univitatia,
who, though similar intellectually to morontia beings, are
very different in every other way. And then must you function
with this group of ten as it co-ordinates with ten other
families, which are in turn confederated into a corps of one
thousand univitatia.
3. Achieve simultaneous adjustment to both fellow morontians
and these host univitatia. Acquire the ability voluntarily and
effectively to co-operate with your own order of beings in
close working association with a somewhat dissimilar group of
intelligent creatures.
4. While thus socially functioning with beings like and unlike
yourself, achieve intellectual harmony with, and make
vocational adjustment to, both groups of associates.
5. While attaining satisfactory socialization of the
personality on intellectual and vocational levels, further
perfect the ability to live in intimate contact with similar
and slightly dissimilar beings with ever-lessening
irritability and ever-diminishing resentment. The reversion
directors contribute much to this latter attainment through
their group-play activities.
6. Adjust all of these various socialization techniques to the
furtherance of the progressive co-ordination of the
Paradise-ascension career; augment universe insight by
enhancing the ability to grasp the eternal goal-meanings
concealed within these seemingly insignificant time-space
activities.
7. And then, climax all of these procedures of
multisocialization with the concurrent enhancement of
spiritual insight as it pertains to the augmentation of all
phases of personal endowment through group spiritual
association and morontia co-ordination. Intellectually,
socially, and spiritually two moral creatures do not merely
double their personal potentials of universe achievement by
partnership technique; they more nearly quadruple their
attainment and accomplishment possibilities.
Insight #2: The teaching mission is a partnership!
Once the fires have been lit, there will be work to be done.
My original understanding of this work was that only humans
could do the things that needed to be done and the teachers
would be here telling the humans what to do. I think this
vision of how the teaching mission will work is not quite
correct. I think that something new and unique is being tried
here. Humans and ascenders are forming teams that will work
together creatively.
I think the most accurate idea of how the mission is designed
to work is through a creative partnership. By forming working
teams, problems can be addressed at many different levels. The
teachers, mostly former human beings from perfected worlds, do
not understand how our nasty little planet conducts its
business. These beings do not comprehend the kind of
unmitigated greed that drives our economic system. They have
never seen the kind of violence and selfishness we take for
granted. They do not have much insight into our distorted
religious beliefs and cannot always predict how we will
comprehend their teachings. They need us to do the leg work,
but they also need us engaged in the creative process.
A single individual is able to creatively solve problems at a
certain level of efficiency. We are taught in the Urantia book
that adding personalities together to work on a problem
increases the creative potential exponentially not linearly.
We who have been contacted have been given a fantastic
opportunity. We are given a taste of how life in the universe
usually works.
Universe education is about assigning groups to accomplish
tasks and solve problems. The groups often mix beings of
different talents and levels of experience. We have the chance
to work in groups as partners with morontia beings and to use
these working groups to solve spiritual, social, medical,
scientific, artistic, and environmental problems.
The benefits of the partnership go two ways. We the humans
benefit from the input of wiser and more experienced beings.
We benefit greatly from the love, support, and friendship
these sympathetic and dedicated workers offer us. We actually
become friends with the members of our working groups. The
phrase, "our unseen friends", is quite literally true.
Our unseen friends benefit in ways that may be difficult for
us to fully understand. Clearly the
highest goal in the universe is to be of service, and the need
on this planet is great. Our unseen friends crave
opportunities to serve. There will be great insights that
develop on the other side by those who work with us day in and
day out. I also think that the agondonters have much to teach
the morontia visitors about faith, trust, and courage. They
observe us struggling to cope with life on an isolated planet.
When we can show steady spiritual growth under these
conditions, I believe those who developed under conditions of
light and life learn much from observing us.
From Paper 186:
The Father in heaven loved mortal man on earth just as much
before the life and death of Jesus on Urantia as he did after
this transcendent exhibition of the copartnership of man and
God. This mighty transaction of the incarnation of the God of
Nebadon as a man on Urantia could not augment the attributes
of the eternal, infinite, and universal Father, but it did
enrich and enlighten all other administrators and creatures of
the universe of Nebadon. While the Father in heaven loves us
no more because of this bestowal of Michael, all other
celestial intelligences do. And this is because Jesus not only
made a revelation of God to man, but he also likewise made a
new revelation of man to the Gods and to the celestial
intelligences of the universe of universes.
Insight # 3: The teaching mission is a glorious extension of
Michael's seventh bestowal (as Jesus), and in the larger
universe will result in new revelations of the Father to the
creatures of time and space.
For a moment, consider the problem from Christ Michael's
perspective. There was a major rebellion in one of your local
systems. In your perfect wisdom, you allowed free-will to go
unviolated. The rebellion ran its course. In the midst of the
rebellion, you made your final bestowal as a mortal on the
most backward and isolated of the planets marred by rebellion.
In all of the Universe of Universes, a Creator Son had never
before been assassinated during a final bestowal in mortal
form. Your ordinary local universe out towards the edge of
settled space suddenly has become the focal point for much
attention. You have the bully pulpit, all are aware of the
"world of the cross". Your actions in resolving the rebellion,
restoring the isolated planets, and especially dealing with
the planet of your bestowal are of interest to the entire
Superuniverse. How would you go about setting things right
given you have the opportunity to make a unique contribution
to the history Orvonton?
While it is impossible for me to truly understand the
perspective that a Creator Son must have on this problem, it
is not hard to see that the correcting time on Urantia is an
opportunity for Christ Michael to continue to reveal the
majestic perfection of the Universal Father to the creatures
of time and space. It is a great opportunity to reveal the
Father's love and perfection and to make a unique contribution
to the evolution of the Supreme being. I don't pretend to
understand how he will accomplish this, but I fell safe in
suggesting that much good will result from the correcting time
on every level of reality in Nebadon.
The correcting time has many different levels of meaning
depending on who is looking at it from what perspective. From
our human view here on the ground, it is a period of
increasingly rapid spiritual growth and development that will
eventually lead the planet into light and life. It is the
provision of the assistance we lacked because of the
rebellion, and it is emergency aid to help us overcome some of
the terrible problems the rebellion has created on this
planet.
From other perspectives, however, the correcting time may have
even more profound meanings as well. Numerous forces are
converging. There is the work of Michael and his
administration. There is the planning and activity of the
Melchizedeks. There are the thousands of teachers who are here
to form working partnerships with us, and there are the
millions of seraphim and others who are here to help put plans
into action. Perhaps most important, the Universal Father is
present in the very midst of all this activity. The Thought
Adjusters are in many ways the wild card. The teachers, who
are adjuster indwelt or fused, encourage us to form a working
relationship with our own thought adjuster. We then work
together in groups with supervision and help from the
Melchizedeks. The whole, being greater than the sum of its
parts, may be a greater revelation of the Universal Father to
the Universe.
When Michael walked the planet as Jesus of Nazareth he lived a
life that revealed the Universal Father to all of his
universe. Is he creating a situation in which thousands of his
children can use the opportunity of the rebellion to continue
this revelation in new and profound ways? As the universe
watches, we are called to collaborate with Michael and our
older brothers in a project called the correcting time. What
new insights, meaning, and revelations will come of this
unique partnership?
On Working Together, transmitted by TARKAS at the conference:
I am Tarkas. I daresay that over the past year your
perspectives have broadened as to the actual intent and
purpose of this Mission and you have settled into a
comfortable base of understanding on which we can logically
and experientially grow together.
For in the beginning the phenomenon itself is even
distracting, calling attention to itself, detracting from the
purity of the message, and the real live Mission, which is to
radiate the Father's love, one on one, to each person, each
day, each hour and each moment, building from within, from
within the hearts, the souls, the minds of each of you,
outward.
There was some discussion tonight about how long this would
require, and of course you know that this hinges a great deal
upon your own minds and bodies and spirits and the free will
decisions that you will make to activate this Mission, make it
live, make it love, make it shine. And you have grown more
patient and knowing that there will be time required for this
outworking, for time is indeed a great tool, a great catalyst,
also a great catharsis attimes. And so you must learn to use
the Father's great gifts of time and space. As you can
understand them, you can use them for divine purpose.
If the basic spiritual lessons, the various truths of the
heart are to be learned, you know now that, as with a great
book, they must be learned a page at a time, and as you turn
each page, what you have learned grows increasingly greater.
And what you're intended to learn in this classroom of
material experience grows shorter, so make use of your time
each moment of the day, each conference when you can come
together and manifest greater and more profound energies, and
day by day, week by week, this Mission will grow.
Be patient as you turn the pages of this book of experiential
knowledge, absorb these pages, learn day by day. Your teachers
will continue to inspire and to provide insights for your
consideration as we feel you are equipped to absorb these
learnings, and in turn teach these pages to others, for you
know as well that learning is not complete until the student
is able to share and give that knowledge, in love, to another.
During this meeting, much as you, we will be together sharing,
smiling, being invigorated by the phenomena which we have
experienced, and indeed it has been a great phenomenon to be
able to come here in this Misssion and work with humans.
You are our minds on Urantia, you are our hands, and you are
our feet. You are our hearts. And we welcome your hands and
feet and hearts and minds to this room. And so together we are
quite, quite optimistic that the Father's plan will come to
full fruition as you radiate the Father's love all around you.
Peace to all of you. Thank you.
[archives/sub_nav.htm]
ÔøΩ 2001 Light and Life.com