Stillness

Question: When we are seeking communication with the Thought Adjuster in silent receptivity, what do we focus on in order to quiet down, what do we try to be aware of?

Answer: First, I would recommend time spent in prayer which are not selfish petitions but prayer for more spiritual fruits, higher values, service and fellowship, thanksgiving, worship. Then merely relax and try to attain the peace, which surpasses all understanding. This is not an easy task. Many never achieve a clear enough state to consciously hear the guidance of the Father, however what is more likely is you will receive an impulse feeling to proceed in a certain direction and illumination of good acts or action, and these proddings should be followed. Evaluate the spiritual content and you will have an arrow pointing to the Mystery Monitor. 

Question: Is there something specific we should focus on in order to quiet the chatter of the mind? To achieve the stillness?

Answer: There are many techniques which you humans engage in. To do this each person is different. There are many paths to the same destination, and I am not able to know which might be best for you. Certainly, quiet time is a must. Many benefit from time spent on a routine basis, in communion with the higher nature. Exercising a spiritual muscle, whichever form it takes, will lead to eventual success and breakthrough. Try out different methods of relaxation and meditation. Reflect on spiritual receptivity and decide which works best for you. There is no formula that I can give you. Each person must work out their relationship with their indwelling Divinity on their own.

The electro-chemical process of the mind, of the human mind, is very difficult to control. The process requires energy on your part and it requires practice. As you seek the stillness seek to quiet your mind's activity, even if it’s for ten seconds, or less. What is necessary is a continual practice. Do not feel discouraged by your inability. If you are able to do it only for short periods of time, very short, as you begin to practice you will definitely improve. Do not expect improvement overnight. It is like growth. It takes time. If you are diligent and you look back on it after a week or two, you will see that you are able to control your mind action better and better. Once you have gained some control over that ever present, incessant, clamoring of your mind to be heard, then you may truly listen and relax. This is not a process that you must try hard. It is actually the act of not trying. Practice is essential. Continue that daily if you can. And just listen; listen for your Thought Adjuster's voice speaking to you. Have faith that it will occur. He is there waiting, eager, to make direct contact and to give you his marvelous, wondrous, words of love and encouragement.

Question: Is there a distinction between the times we spend being still and desiring communication with
our Thought Adjuster and time we might spend being still to receive communications from a celestial teacher? Can those happen at one and the same time?

Answer: Communications you receive from the celestial teacher must be okayed by your Thought Adjuster. In other words, it is your Thought Adjuster who is the gatekeeper to your body and mind, and so any entity wishing to speak with you must have the permission of your Thought Adjuster as well as your own free will. And so you must practice being still so that when you give your okay to your Thought Adjuster that a celestial being may talk through you, the celestial being is contacted by their Thought Adjuster and so achieves intimate use of your mind. So, no, it is not two separate things, it is one and the same.

Question: My concern was that perhaps in trying to effect a communication with a celestial teacher I might be pre-empting communication with my Thought Adjuster, sort of getting sidetracked. As wonderful and important as it is to the teaching mission I just had this confusion over whether getting centered and being still to receive communication from a teacher would black out that possibility during that time of receiving communication from my Thought Adjuster. I wondered if I should - like - have two separate meditations every day; one for communication with my Thought Adjuster, and one for being open to a celestial teacher that was closer to my level.

Answer: One communication is sufficient. But be aware of - that depending on the form of communication - sometimes your Thought Adjuster will not be present when the celestial personality is talking to you. Although you must have the agreement of the Thought Adjuster to contact the celestial personality, if you wish to talk merely to your own Thought Adjuster you may do that freely as long as you are capable, for as you well know, the Thought Adjuster will become one with you.

Question: At this stage of the game in my spiritual progress, would you say that I am more likely to be able
to receive communication from a celestial teacher than I would my own Thought Adjuster? In terms of
consciously receiving it?

Answer: You are capable of many things. There is a vast potential within you. You must decide. The Thought Adjuster is, or will be a part of you. Maybe you should start to think of the Thought Adjuster as yourself. And relax. Being relaxed is very important.

Question: To those of us who believe that we are trying to reach the stillness, yet who are unable to contact,or be contacted by, yourself, do you have any suggestion as to how we might accomplish this
other than to keep on trying?

Answer: It is important to be relaxed, without stress, and to be free from bodily needs: free from aches, pains, thirsts, hunger, and all things which your animal organism insists on pampering to.

Seek happiness from The Father. Smile. And enjoy communion. Do not take yourself too seriously. Do not be afraid of failure. Voice your innermost thoughts. Be conscious of the outside but be more conscious of your spiritual world. Handle expectations.

Question: I gather from that, that it is possible to try too hard. Is that correct?

Answer: Yes. By saying, “try too hard” you mean to try too hard in the wrong direction. You must try, but do
not put your energies where it will not be of value. Be free of poisons that stimulate or drag down your physical organism, including the brain. Those poisons can be those that you ingest, also poisons produced in your brain by negative emotions such as anger, hate, jealousy, envy, distrust. Fill your mind with love. Clean your body with love. Control the things which influence the functions of your body and mind, for that will influence how your mind contacts the spirit. 

I say the stillness is of increasing importance to your spiritual development because, as you develop spiritually, it is helpful for you to return frequently to the well to draw your support, your strength, from the Father and from the very practice of your stillness. You will find that more and more this will be your comfort zone, your reality check, and your safe house where no pretense need be made, no appearances need be maintained, and no truth be hidden in your times of stillness.

Your dialogue earlier about interpersonal relationships and mediation of a higher power is an appropriate direction for your lines of thought. In fact, all personal relationships, if turned over to the will of the Father, can be quite satisfactorily administered. It is a good practice to return to the space, the stillness, and attempt to discern there the appropriate action to be taken, whether in a one-on-one personal relationship, or a in a relationship between yourself and many others. Guidance can still be secured through this channel of the stillness.

If you are sincere in your desire to not be clouded with issues of ego. To be granted greater insight into your relationships will facilitate much growth and much learning on your part.

The times are nearing for you all here today to be more dynamically connected to the stillness, to bring from the stillness into your actions the direction and wisdom you gain, to quickly access the stillness and receive guidance and direction at a moment's notice. This is not a difficult task, merely one which takes much practice. The more trips you make to that isle of stillness within you, the easier the journey becomes each time until at some time you feel the connectedness of that isle of stillness within you and that thought/mouth process of communication. This establishment of this connection between your stillness and your active thoughts is your desired goal in this life, to be conscious always of the direction and insight from the stillness in your everyday life.

It may seem to you now that this is a place you go only occasionally for refreshing and for support. This will change as you practice the stillness to support and refresh while you are in active participation mode. It is a process of training you must endure to bond this connection better, but your efforts will be rewarded many times in the fruits you can draw from such a connection. You are even now becoming aware much more rapidly than in the past of the connection between lessons and interactions immediately following with you brothers and sisters. You are seeing patterns repeat themselves; opportunities arise before you; challenges come your way.

Continue in your pursuits in your direction towards the Father, towards the stillness through which you get to the Father. Each time will become easier and easier until it is second nature to you to gravitate towards
the stillness whenever the opportunity arises.

I would extend affirmation in your direction as well as encouragement that, just like the practice of stillness, the practice of communication builds for stronger and better results. The more you stillness, communication, attempt a project, the easier the next time becomes. 

Tom:  Something you said triggered for me the mota in the Urantia Book that says, "Few mortals dare to draw the sum of personality credits established by the combined ministries of nature and grace." I have trouble accessing the stillness. Can I cash in a couple of these personality credits and use them to help me in the stillness?  How do you go about doing that?  Is that the appropriate vehicle to use?

Elyon: You have much to your credit, so to speak. However, you need not feel you must bargain away anything that you have in order to gain the benefits of stillness. Stillness is yours for the earning. It may take a longer period of time for some than for others. The adjustments necessary may be different from individual to individual. Therefore, all human experiences will not be the same in relation to stillness.

Stillness is an attitude, the seeking of awareness, the sharing of one's life experience with the Father. It may include prayers; it may include some dialogue on your part, some sharing of your life experience, some asking for direction and guidance, and then by its very nature it requires the cessation of dialogue and the opening up of receptivity for insight, for awareness to pervade. 

Stillness is primarily the preparation of the attitude of receptivity for spirit contact. It is beneficial for people to prepare themselves for the attitude of receptivity to accept spirit contact.

I would also add that very much spirit contact takes place with the individual mortal involved being relatively unaware of this process. For example, whereby a strong urge, thought, a compelling idea, surfaced in your mind that you then latched on to and agreeed with and determined to be correct and worthy of your pursuit, the series of events that I just described many times is spirit contact.

The simple elevation of an idea at a certain time in relation to a certain topic or subject is not wholly a human mind process. Your human mind is a vast storage facility much like a computer. What triggers the appropriate bit of information to surface at the appropriate time can often be facilitated by sources other than your human mind. Your Thought Adjuster, celestial teachers, even Christ Michael are all capable of elevating these highest of human ideas and thoughts in your mind and giving them life and voice.

Many times many transmitter/receivers feel as though they are involved in the transmitting process, that there is a personal aspect to the transmitting process. They are correct in that teachers cannot use what is not present in some form in the transmitters memory banks. Therefore there is an intertwining of the personal thoughts and ideas with the teacher's capacity to bring these thoughts and ideas to the surface at the appropriate time.

I say this to you to perhaps raise your level of awareness that when you feel prompted or inspired to interject an idea or a worthy thought in conversation or to direct conversation towards another level, that this very likely is due to external prompting coupled with your internal desire. This occurs in you regularly in individuals who care a great deal about their thought processes, about the content and direction of
what they have to offer to others. These are keys to being of service.

I encourage you as I encourage the entire group to remain in pursuit of these goals, remain in pursuit of achieving stillness easier and faster and better, maintain your pursuit of service to your brothers and sisters through your words, thoughts, and actions. You really cannot go wrong in this direction.  

Tom: I still have one more bit of that last question.  What are personality credits?

Elyon:  Personality credits refer not to some form of barter you have available to you but rather to your personal spiritual advancement. It may be seen to think of these credits as applying towards perhaps skipping a grade in your ascension, perhaps a mansion world, perhaps providing a unique opportunity to you because of these credits you have built up. Again I say these credits need never be taken away or exchanged from you for anything. They are to your credit forevermore.

Tom:  They say we don't dare to draw personality credits. That intrigues me. I have sources I can tap by asking; that's the richest mind a person could have, to spend time in stillness and ask the teachers. Your point is well taken on barter. But what personality credit could there be that I wouldn't have the courage to draw on? How would I use this untapped credit source for whatever, in trying to be still, to be of service?  I don't want to hoard it for personal use, but what is this? 

Elyon: The untapped credits you refer to may be more helpfully thought of as potentials available to you. Each one of you has many potentials before you that you have not at this time chosen to access, chosen to develop. This does not go against you as a debt, but rather it is an untaken credit on your part. Many traits are around you that simply have not been embraced, recognized, and developed to their full potential or to even their partial potential.

It is not required that each individual expand and embrace in every possible aspect of existence on this plane. However each individual has far more latent potential than actualized potential that they choose to develop. There may be aspects of yourself that with but a little energy could be developed into glorious avenues of expression. These are your untapped credits; these are waiting for your freewill choice to expand and to come to fruition. They will be there for you whether you choose to tap into them at this point or whether you choose to access them at a later time; they are latent credits you have yet to draw on.

Tom:  When you use the word "dare" it implies that I know what it is but I'm afraid to ask for it. Does it begin by asking? Can you give an example of how these would work?

Elyon:  It always begins with the expression of desire on your part; that is key in any avenue that you choose to express. The first step always remains to open up, to embrace and ask that this new direction, this new credit you wish to explore be fully revealed to you, and that you be in an attitude whereby you can appreciate and utilize and function in this new direction.

An example might be a person who has never tried to put their thoughts down in the form of writing and has lived most of their life never having given this avenue of expression a sincere try. This person then decides with their entire being that they wish to do this project. Their emphasis then shifts; their priorities then shift, and they determine what capacity they have for the avenue of writing.

It is never too late to give one of these avenues a try to see what your personal tendencies are. I use writing; it could be painting; it could be sailing; it could be roller skating. It could be any one of numerous, numerous talents or qualities. Many times we are the ones who stop ourselves from expressing this particular talent. We are the ones who either say we are not interested or not good at any particular avenue and shut that off to ourselves. Many other times we are not even aware that avenues exist to us. As I said, these avenues are available to you, if not now in this life, then perhaps in the next or the next or the next.  But it is helpful to ever be on the lookout to expand your potential through these other sources.

Elyon:  If you all could see, if you could truly stand back and witness all that is available to you, it would seem, as it does even to me, as a road map. As many roads go out from a city on a road map, all intersecting at the city and all taking various routes away from the city to various different directions, this is what each of you has to look around and see all around you. There are directions and avenues available to you all around. Most individuals choose their favorite highways that access their center being, and they stick to these highways, these familiar roads that are well traveled and are comfortable.  But there are many, many side roads and alternative routes which can expand your experience while you are here which are equally as valid as the main roads which come and go from your center.

So perhaps keep this in mind as you turn full circle in your life and see the many different directions you could take. Perhaps this could serve to arouse some curiosity in you as to the roads not taken, the paths not chosen.

The roads you do choose you walk down well. You are very sure-footed on these roads. You are becoming well versed in these paths. As your life experience proceeds you will find it challenging and intriguing to walk a different path from time to time and see what happens.  

Solonia: The time you spend in stillness with your Fragment of Father, is the greatest gift imaginable. If you
could know how much those of my order envy the opportunity that you have to spend time in personal communication with a Fragment of our Universal Father, you would look for every opportunity to have that
time. Stillness helps you at bringing Father into your daily efforts, ministries, services. It feels wonderful when you do so. You see opportunities opening up. You see the value of Love being shared with those who feel unloved. You connect in these times with your Fragment of our Infinite Father. If only you would take more opportunity to have individual communion and personal communication with your Indwelling Father Partner, you would so much more easily accomplish the difficult things in your personal spiritual growth.

You bear great fruits from those times wherein you allow your Father Fragment to have your personality for
expression. You feel the connection. You recognize it relatively quickly now in situations. This does much for the growth of yourself and your human life. If you would desire to actively incorporate your soul, then you must communicate directly from your soul. Over and over we have stressed the stillness in our teachings, yet we never cease to be astounded at how relatively few of you take full advantage of the incredible opportunity this offers to you. Again I say, communion with Father, communion with Jesus. It is the time of full focusing of your Soul upon and with your Father.

I cannot emphasize enough how much a regular practice of this stillness will transform you beyond what you can even now imagine. Practice this, be religious about it. It is a Right that you have as God's child to communicate with your Parent. It is a Rite that you should often practice.

There is a fear of being seen for who you truly are in stillness. It is a struggle between your ego being afraid of being seen in its immaturity, and the soul desiring to be seen in its joyfulness. It is a difficult struggle that a human must make between the human ego struggling to maintain some form of control, and the evolving soul desiring so badly to give control completely over to Father. It does not come easy to any mortal, most especially on this planet. 

Jill: I just got a little revelation if you will, or insightful flash, that what I do so beautifully with my clients, my brothers and sisters, in asking God to guide me for their highest good and let me be a facilitator,  I don't do the same for myself and I think this has been my issue throughout my life of giving myself the same equal
value in the eyes of God that I see all others having. So that may be why the discomfort with going into the silence on my own is still this level of accepting my own child position with my Father as totally equal. So I'm going to be able to do stillness with a renewed sense of self love and self worth. I'm looking forward to it.

Solonia: Indeed you have discovered something. This is an issue with most people. This is a fear of being seen for who you truly are. It is a struggle between your ego being afraid of being seen in it's immaturity, and the soul desiring to be seen in it's joyfulness.  It is a difficult struggle that a human must make between the human ego struggling to maintain some form of control, and the evolving soul desiring so badly to give control completely over to Father. It does not come easy to any mortal, most especially on this planet. You have made a realization tonight dear one. Now you must follow up on it.

Jill: What I felt after I said that, and then started listening to your response was, "Oh, for me personally, I'm afraid to hear what Father has to say to Me." For all my brothers and sisters, because I see them from my soul, and I see their soul, I see all their beauty and I have no fear of what Father will say to them. And so, I think this is where you're pointing out the ego and its fear in its need to control, and I'm afraid to let the Father in. And from my soul perspective, that seems so silly and yet I can feel that fear from the ego self. It's quite a journey I will be on.

Solonia: Yes. It is Quite a Journey. I have observed many in my time here on this planet, struggling, recognizing and overcoming. You all have this ability. Your ego fears to be shown how incredibly beautiful the soul is, for it fears losing it's desire for control. It tells you that it is afraid to see how bad you are, but in
reality, it is truly afraid to see how good you are.

Jill: And I interpret that as the conflict that I try to explain to a lot of people I work with, of the conflict between the mind and the heart, where we have two messages; The message we've learned from our ego self about who we are, with all the criticism and the demands to do better, do better, do better, without the validations of how well we've done, verses our heart recognizing how well we've done. Resolving that conflict is an ongoing battle, and yet the more I move into living from my soul consciousness in my daily choices, the more tired I get of having to do battle with the ego's fear because it feels so uncomfortable now.

Solonia: This is why it is so very important to give your soul personal communion time with Father. He knows you as a beautiful complete individual. He does not see your immaturity as negative. He sees it as appropriate. When you choose to give your soul the still silent time to communicate in worship and in questioning, this is an example to the clinging human self which allows it to feel good about itself. In these times it is captivated by the beauty of the relationship with God. The more often that you do this, the more
easy it is for ego to cease the desperate struggle and to embrace itself as partner to soul and partner with God. Stillness is a golden key. Use it daily.

Jill: Once again you gave me another insight, another revelation. Even though Stillness is the key, I had a conceptual problem. What I think I've been doing and why I felt I've had so little success in my stillness, you said it's the opportunity to allow the Soul to commune with Father, and I think I've always approached it from my ego self, and I think that comes from a socialized belief system drilled into us from the time we get religious, Christian experience anyway, of how imperfect we are and how inadequate we are and how shameful we are and we're so guilty for all of our mistakes, and so it is this shameful ego that reaches out in the stillness to talk to God and not my beautiful Soul that I'm allowing to have the commune time with. And the ego with it's shame blocks Father's message whereas the soul would allow the message to come through because the soul understands and accepts it's beauty, and that is me. So I have a whole new approach now that I can try and see if perhaps that was one of my major blocks to having stillness that rejuvenated and was effortless, and becomes effortless. So perhaps others have struggled with stillness from a similar conceptual misconception, if you will.

Solonia: Oh yes indeed. Many, many others. The ego merely needs to make the choice to allow it. It is a difficult choice to make for reasons you have given, and others, yet when done habitually, it becomes easier and easier of a choice to make. You would do well to make your stillness time a habit. Ego is more easily taught in habitual situations. You must stand firm in your soul, and demand the opportunity for this quiet time with your Divine Partner. And you must be firm until, through habitual practice, ego begins to experientially learn that it is not a threat, but the most ennobling experience there is.

Barona: I would like to add one small piece of guidance relative to stillness. After you have allowed your soul to insist on its communion time, I would like to suggest that you could also then invite your ego to join in joyously in the sharing of the Father's message. Your ego is the little child and it becomes very frightened when it is left out, especially when it is left out of Love in action. So with warmth and Love, invite your ego to
silently join in with you and you may just discover that one of the benefits of the habitual  practice of stillness is the eventual elimination of all fear in your consciousness.

Evanson: I make these comments to provide insight into what is a distinction between what is spiritual awareness and what is spiritual thinking. You have in your upbringing learned the laws of mathematics. In so doing you have come to be proficient in such techniques as addition, multiplication, and those higher applications of algebra and such. When you use these principles today in your life, you are no longer concerned with rehashing the theorems that describe how these principles work. You are capable of executing a function and deriving your answer with relative ease. Though you had at one time spent hours memorizing your multiplication tables, today they flow when you need to have a quick response, an answer that is independent of the more laborious derivations of how multiplication takes place.

Stillness is that ability to be aware of the Father even when your mind is not occupied with spiritual concepts. Stillness is the ability to be instantly able to function in service without having to prepare yourself, without having to review the original principles, truth theorems, which are the foundations to your actions. In a sense, stillness is similar to having the ability to simultaneously express all the numbers in a multiplication table. It is whole-grasping rather than particular citing. This is why such emphasis is made by us teachers, for it encourages you to become even more capable in function; it encourages you this way far more than it will encourage you to become more enlightened, for the process of enlightenment is the process of grasping at the unattained which implies degrees of inability. Function, on the other hand, is a demonstration of attained states. Stillness is the bridge. 

Just as you all in years past have grappled with the concept of fractions, today the ability to perceive proportion, percentage, and partitions happens spontaneously. It is because you have mathematical insight. This insight in a spiritual dimension is derived from stillness. It is based upon your understanding but transcends this understanding.

Mark: I want to practice for the game. At some point practice becomes the game. Practice gets more intentional and directed, and thus you have the game. So when do we go from practice into the game?

Jada: Volleying before the game, the idea is to keep it moving. How many times can you get it across the net?

Evanson: Rare are the times in your lives when you have the position as the apostles, with Michael when on earth as Jesus, wherein you are deliberately ordered to go out two by two and begin ministry. More often for the whole of you inhabitants here there is a gradual and unnoticed transition, as you have indicated, where the warm-up transitions into a game. You are more often afforded the hindsight view where you realize that, in the course of this interval of time, you have shed your warm-up sweats and are now standing in uniform. The practice of small kindnesses is this very method that you have indicated. The establishment in yourselves of a naturalness ... and the truths contained makes this transition feasible. It is much like in tennis when you are being instructed by the coach as to how to execute a backhand. It is deliberately broken into particular steps. But the time comes when the backhand is applied spontaneously with skill. You do not note the moment of change. It is more of a gradual rise and fall than a sharp peak. 

When we express to you that your hour has come it will not be expressed as, "now is the time to put on your uniform." It will be expressed as a recognition that you are now fully in uniform and prepared. All your effort as preparation is more valuable than you can this day comprehend. As you are today diligently seeking to be of service to this world, that which you are acquiring has implications that will be far transcendent of the current goals and objectives of this planet. There are projects, there are achievements, to be made throughout this universe that require these skills you are developing, skills that do not replicate the skills of others. These unique acquirements you have are beyond the ability to value; they are priceless. So do not let your playful, pregame volleys lead you to a sense that it is not for purpose, that it is merely play without direction.

Aaron: I wish to present a means whereby you can practice stillness without having to necessarily create a scheduled event. There is an expression that goes something like, "as the days pass by". You have another expression, that you are "running to catch up" when your schedule is hectic and you feel behind. Let us work with these two expressions and apply them to stillness.

When for example you are busy, you have in your expression of "running to catch up" a dual motion at play. The first is that your schedule of events, your daily activities, are moving forward at a speed faster than you are heading, and you are falling behind, attempting to accelerate to bring your velocity in line with your schedule. This is what I would call two temporal actions at play. They are transient; they are in motion; there is no fixed, still reference. When it is encouraged that you practice stillness, to sit in silence quietly for ten minutes to let the Father speak, it is with the intent that you will cease one of these two motions. In actuality if you practiced this successfully both motions would stop, your advancing schedule and your running to catch up. This stillness can be difficult to accomplish, for the time of pause only brings a sharper sensitivity to all that needs to be done and all that you are not doing and the stirring to get up and get after it. It takes discipline. It may not suit your specific needs of a particular day, though at times you may find it a beneficial approach to fellowship with the Father. But let us look at the expression, "days passing by".

Now you can assign to yourself and "days" different time frames. The days are transient; they are in motion. They have temporal sequence. You are fixed. The days pass you by. You stand still. This is a means of communion while you are engaged in activities. Father has bestowed upon each one of you His divine gift, the fragment of absolute perfection, your local representative of the perfect will of the Father. The Father never moves from Paradise. All the universe is astir around and about Him. This spark of divinity within is
its own central Isle of Paradise, and you, your life, is like a universe astir around and about Him. You can exercise your activities as a reference of comparison to the stillness of the Father's presence.

Computer technology can also illustrate what I mean, for there is a mode wherein you can scroll your page while your cursor is fixed rather than scroll your cursor while your page is fixed. Your "days passing you by" is your moving page with your fixed cursor. This approach to stillness can be done at any time, in any place, during any degree of intensity of activity. All it takes is a moment's reflection and, perhaps more significantly, a moment of association wherein you reference yourself to this motionless divine spirit at the center of your miniature Paradise Isle in your being. While you are busy running here and there take a moment to freeze yourself and perceive all else in motion in reference to you. The world comes your way and passes by rather than you running to it. Integrate this perspective with your understanding of friendship with God. Develop this technique and you will find stillness ever-present, not necessarily an exercise to go do, but something always active.

Elyon: I want to play some with Aaron's description of stillness. I will not speak about stillness per se, but his
comparison of your being to the Father resident on Paradise.

You know that the Father gave thought to creation, His Son gave expression to creation, and the Spirit activates creation. To sense centeredness, control, in your busy schedules, you can use this same pattern from your mini-paradise within. The thought of creation is the expression of the will of the Father as given by your Thought Adjuster. You are the Father's son and you express the manner in which this will will be accomplished. You, the Son or Daughter of God, have your own universe stations through which you can activate this will, and that is your mind, your body, your growing soul. Know that even the Father is not immune to events taking place throughout His busy universe of the potential and the actual occurrence of developments that do not fit with His projected plan for universe unfoldment. Likewise, have you experienced such changes in your projected plans for your day. But the Father has done well in absorbing these events into the grand scheme of things. It is not unusual for yourselves to react negatively, with frustration or discouragement at unexpected changes in our plans. But we should draw from the Father's example the quality of patience, of overarching comprehension. He has never, to the knowledge of anyone in this vast universe, exhibited discouragement or disappointment with what has taken place all about Him. No event topples that peaceful, serene divine dignity, rather they contribute to the emerging manifestation of God throughout the universe.

We likewise are our own Supreme Being; we have souls that are absorbing the events of our lives, recreating through time the perfect will of the Paradise Father. In this case this is your mini-paradisaical Father, the Thought Adjuster. If the Father were to move from Paradise, the universe would crumble. 

Picture your divine gift within in the same manner. Be still and you will find greater acceptance of what appears to be chaos about you. You will discern more of the complex interworking of events that contribute to soul development, and you will begin to perceive that all people around you are in the same undertaking
whether they know it or not, the same mechanics at play; this is, in collective, a rubbing of shoulders. What appears to be an unnecessary twist of events for you, you will begin to see is the contribution to the development of another's growth. This will give birth to compassion, understanding, and acceptance when
things do not appear to go your way but do in greater insight help a brother or sister.

Mary: So much of our success in accomplishing our spiritual goals is in disciplining our minds to pay attention to what we want to pay attention to ultimately instead of being constantly distracted.

Elyon: The very beauty and nature of the mind is also a contributor to one's frustration with the practice of stillness, for Mother Spirit has given you this mind that you may discover, become more knowledgeable, discern reality, choose, accumulate and express. Its very nature is dynamism. That is its beauty. It is your gathering mechanism; it is your extension mechanism coupled with your physical vehicle for being about the Father's business. But it can work difficulty in the practice of communion and worship, for it isn't naturally given to a state of repose. This is where the image that Aaron has shared today is useful, for even your mind can move around you as you sit in stillness.

The human desire for peace and tranquillity, for divine communion, for stillness, for spiritual repose is due to the presence of the Father within who is that very set of qualities: perfect, complete, centered, pure, all those descriptives that a tumultuous life, or even a moderately normal active life, do not appear to contain.

That is the magnetism that draws one to the Father. However, the Father is within you seeking all that dynamism, all that display of activity. He desires to encounter the coordination of purpose with chance. As we ascenders seek the Father, the Father is seeking our experiences.

When you are not able to spend time in stillness, hold forefront in your mind that you are giving dynamism to the Father. It is good for the human being to seek stillness, and it is equally good for the human being to give activity to the Father.

LaReen: Aaron, on stillness...I know it is all individual and we all have our ways...I am not looking for shortcuts, but I am looking for advice on stillness. I get sidetracked so easy and my mind wanders. It seems that in this group atmosphere I can feel Father more, than when alone. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Aaron: Perhaps, looking at stillness differently might help you. The stillness is not designed to be merely a
period of time where you try to feel God or feel closer to God. Many people think of stillness, or worship, or even prayer time in terms of how they can feel a deeper presence of God Success is perceived by a large part of the human population as depending on your feelings. Rather, with the stillness, is this an exercise to lift your mind into channels of awareness beyond simply the presence, but rather are you allowing an actual
transfer to take place.

LaReen: I don't think I am. I think I am inpatient and my mind wanders and I don't sit quiet long enough, although reading lessons or the Urantia book or the Center Within or whatever.  I journal my prayer for the day, my gratitude and my worship. Then I will sit there for about a minute and my mind wanders.

Aaron: A wandering mind is not necessarily a sign of failure. It is like exercise. When you do pushups you can't do twenty pushups the first time you try. Stillness is not really an effort to stop thought, to quit thinking. Some types of meditation do this, yes. But what we have generally guided you toward is an avenue where you are trying to place your thought in certain streams, instead of chastising yourself because your mind wanders. Simply redirect and go back to the center.  

With the stillness, it is truly an endurance test, allowing yourself to wander with your thoughts, knowing that you can redirect, that you can continue on, that you can spend five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, eventually in unbroken communion. But this takes real practice. You are not expected to be an expert at stillness, but one who is simply trying. So, rather than recognize your thoughts wandering and then choosing a different activity, you may simply want to apply yourself, give yourself more time to redirect. What you will find is that channeling your energy back, your thoughts back towards your center, the Spirit within you, will bring about a productivity in time. You may not even be consciously aware of the assurance and the will power, the strengthening of your resolve toward higher things, better avenues of thought, success in overcoming many areas of life that you would like to change. Much of what is accomplished in the stillness practice is unconscious. What you feel is a mixture of things. Part of that may be Spirit contact. Many of the emotions and sensations you feel are actually human electro-chemical responses.

Abraham: I agree fully with Aaron's outline and I would apply my words of fortitude and patience to you
specifically with this concern. Indeed, the main purpose of stillness is not thought stopping. That is a
certain kind of meditation. The main purpose of stillness is a re-centering of your being away from the clamor of the ego, the demand of your culture and your conditioning, a re-centering to go within to that
Center which contains all of God. So, I agree, do not be distressed that your mind wanders, but exercise your will to bring it back to center on the love and presence of your divine Indweller. Be patient with yourself. Draw upon your inner strength.

Virginia: One of the things that discourages me is when I hear other people and what they sometimes
experience in their quiet time. I say to myself, my ego self, "What's wrong with me that I can't have what they have. Then I say, "I know God loves everyone the same. Why is this different for me or different for
them". I want, as far as I know my myself, to be the best I can be. If a state of being is possible that would make me better because I have experienced a quiet, than hey, give it to me, God!

Abraham: The grass is greener on the other side!  

Virginia: I don't know if the grass is even growing on this side of the fence.

Abraham: The grass is not growing on the other side for you...for you are like any other mortal, confined to your own pasture. It is an illusion that someone else's experience is better than yours, my dear. Each person's experience is unique and truly difficult if not impossible of comparison. What you experience when you hear of other's experiences is a very second hand process. At the same time that it is true that each has unique experience, it is also true that each has the same divine Indweller. The reason each one's experiences are different is the interaction with personality. It is commendable to aspire to higher levels of spiritual growth. But it is sometimes deceptive to be seduced by mysticism, by the mysterious, by the different, so as to make one discontented with their pasture, and willing to stick their neck through the barbed wire to eat the grass that grows on the other side of the fence. Excuse what may appear to be a lack of seriousness in my response, but after all, we take ourselves far too seriously! Do we not?

Bob: One's experience is also colored greatly by cultural conditioning, life experiences, everything that has happened before and therefor an experience is laced with so many other factors than just the contact with Spirit itself. So the reason that you don't have the same experience as others do, when you hear about these marvelous experiences, is because your experience is colored by your conditioning, their experience is colored by their conditioning. It is a false comparison when you try to make those comparisons.

Sivad: I'm drawn to the image of the mind as a mirror. In astronomy to study an image deep in space outside the range of our mortal vision, the larger the diameter of the mirror, the greater the capacity for resolution of ever deeper objects. When we encounter physical limits of engineering, we have learned to link mirrors in different parts of our world, combining their knowledge so we can calculate objects we have never before seen.

If this works for physical observation, how do we actively engage in linking our minds to focus on the love of God, and thereby magnify its understanding in our world?

Elyon: My friend, you have touched upon a subject of Supreme immensity. I will make some attempt to offer my input.

Your selection of these mirror-like antenna is a good illustration of what is often our central teaching of stillness, for these collectors are taking in light. They aren't broadcasting; they are receiving. As each of you incircuit through stillness you are creating that network, that enlarged receptive field upon which that immense imagery can be collected and become known. You understand that the Father can be discovered in the heart of any individual, but that the Supreme is discovered in the revelation of all. To gain increased
ability it is important to spend your time in stillness, for this is a point of focus in the arena of mind without the distractions of the environment. It is the opportunity to remove the snow from the collector dish so that the incoming signals are discernible and undistorted.

The mind which is bestowed upon you — and I speak to you as a large group — has some ability to function independently of time, but it is still largely conditioned by sequential perception and duration. This collecting of the greater image can happen independently of simultaneous receptivity, but you as the one viewing can strengthen your reception of tangible feedback by collectively deciding upon certain moments wherein you will actively engage in mind networking. By doing so you are teaming up; you are creating in real time a network. This form of teamwork will reveal to you more of the great picture. As I say, it can be done independently of timing, but it is helpful to the human mind to deliberately create instances of conjoined seeking.

Jessona: It is perhaps the most challenging and difficult discipline for an evolutionary creature to practice stilling the mind and reaching to the superconscious level of thought activity wherein the Father's gift, your Thought Adjuster, is most efficient in preparing those patterns necessary for your growth as you engage in your daily lives. However, it is also one of, in a paradoxical sense, the easiest activities you could undertake. The difficulty and the ease are intertwined. We have chosen to accommodate the terms 'stillness' and 'quiet
time' that are used in your religious disciplines, for they indicate attitudes of body and mind that are conducive to spirit engagement.

Naturally you are wired with a nervous system that seeks activity; it is the very channel from which impulses activate your being in physical form and allow you to accomplish all that you do in this life. This stimulation brings the difficulty of a period of motionlessness wherein you seek to reach to your higher mind for communion. Likewise the Mother Spirit has bestowed upon you a mind ever seeking creative expression and ideation, for that is the fountain that generates all that you come to know, understand, and experience consciously; bringing expansion of awareness. Were it not for this self-generating ideational fountain you would advance in no way. Again, does the mind as well as the body create an obstacle for your time of quiet with the Father. Yet in contrast the body fatigues; the mind grows weary as well. It is the natural state for the human being to engage in activity to create greater ease in life, to promote time for relaxation, for rest, for inactivity. Time off is a sought-for value.

Communion with the Father, to be honest, is independent of any stillness. It is an interaction of your personality with the Divine Presence and can be had during or in spite of the full spectrum of engagements of activities. This is the continual practice of the presence of God. This is what Michael found and demonstrated to be attainable by a human being.  You will perhaps never experience a stillness event like the Mount of Transfiguration, the spectacular appearance of celestial beings. You may have the fortune to never experience the dark prayer of that evening in Gethsemane, that longing cry for the guidance of your Father when all seems so lost. You may never sit upon a mountain and undertake the organization of your life career, making Supreme decision upon Supreme decision not only for the sake of your own bestowal mission but for the sake of a world and a system and a universe beyond. These are the extremes of that deep quiet time.

You will however day after day have the opportunity to lie in your bed and have a personal talk with the Father. This is the building block. This is that small exercise which prepares you for any stress and for anything that could happen to you supernaturally. Knowing full well that the Father is in constant communication with you, we are certain that the spiritual level of your stillness practice is always ongoing, unceasing. Our emphasis to you to maintain or develop stillness is to align your physical responses and your mental attitude that you will better perceive and receive this constant interchange that takes place at the higher spiritual levels of your being. This is the element of you cooperating and coordinating with the divine influence.

You have been instructed to set time aside, to allot enough time to reach quietness and not an over amount of time to burden you with undue discipline and endurance. Because of the ever constant stream of Adjuster contact to you, time duration is really insignificant for communion. It is, however, important for the level of mind and for the reining in of that natural tendency of the body to move.

Let us approach the phrase, "be still and know that I am God". Beginning with the tail end of the phrase are the words, "I am God". He is ever present always. Continually do you have Him within. There is no need to reach to discover. His presence is now and always. Stillness is this knowledge. To know God comes by being still.

It is often taught to set aside distractions that hinder the stillness. In reality these are not distractions; they are natural tendencies of the makeup of the human being. All that is really required is to bring balance, and is not all of human life the management of extremes? the development of balance in a dynamic means of giving and receiving, of undertaking and refraining, of activity and rest.

This phrase begins with "Be". All too often the calendar of one's life is too full to take that moment and know that you are, that you aren't just doing, achieving, but that you are. Just as the phrase ends "I am God", you are as well. In stillness this is known.

Given the fact of a continual connection of the Father to your being, personality, and soul, and given the fact that your mind and body are designed for motion, you may practice stillness dynamically. Your text tells you that religion must act. It must do something, for the Father has manifested Himself from the far stretches of eternity past, from that time before time before eternity wherein God is wholly complete, fully contained. The age we experience is this bursting forth of God into dynamic interrelationship. Therefore you will stir, you will think continually; this is the desire of the Father to be moving about in the universe. To calm the mind, to relax the body, is for you to retrace the steps of the revelation, the emanation, the manifestation of God, to come back to that point of the beginning of all things in your own microcosm and
know this Divine Being and to realize this center of all things is the center of yourself.

To the ego the universe revolves around itself. In reality you revolve around the Father. Given enough time practicing stillness you will find that stillness is always as the eye of a hurricane, and you can be traveling through your days with 140 mile an hour winds taking you on into numerous activities. But if you spend deliberately time in quiet you will discern that eye of the hurricane, that peaceful center, within you. Do not fight the activity, for would a hurricane be a hurricane without its calm center? Accept the natural construction of your being and be creative in developing techniques which allow you to strike a balance between dynamism and stillness. Stillness brings you to the awareness of the Father. The activities of your life bring the Father to the awareness of the human being.

Tom: As we get older at least some of our minds seem to diminish like our bodies whether through improper diet or lack of use of the mind or overuse of it or substance abuse. Our text in the Rodan papers says the master's worshipful practice brings relaxation that renews the mind. Does the mind need renewing? I thought the mind was a circuit from the Mother Spirit that's perfect. It's the brain that's not functioning. Is stillness able to renew the mind to overcome deterioration?

Jessona: It is helpful. I must place it in context in that your mind has a physical receptive mechanism that is your brain which is intimately associated with all else that is your body, and it is the body which is first to run out of its energy, its life force, to deteriorate. Since the mind must use this receptive organ to engage into your physical form and enact events initiated by your will in this world, it becomes hampered as the physical dimension of your mental, mindal, makeup declines. Relaxation renews the mind because it refreshes the brain. When the neural circuits are able to reset themselves through passivity, through the release of the tension of grappling with thought and method and events and their coordination, the mind is able to turn away from the outward focus and to be attracted to the inner impulses of the Divine Monitor.  Relaxation in a sense closes the door on the noise of the outer world so that you can hear the subtle sounds of the spirit dimension.

The mind itself does not degenerate; the platform upon which the mind rests undergoes deterioration. Your mind is circuit-like, and as you age your patterns of thinking will remain, though your effectiveness at thinking may slip away.

I will return to my lesson and point out that the effort to be still and know that I am God is a knowledge that is grounded in awareness and not grounded in thinking, that stream of constructed expression of awareness. The knowledge or perhaps better the awareness of God subsequently is developed into a stream of thought often aided by a stream of words that express that knowledge. The awareness is in the mind; the expression is composed in the craft-room of the brain. You may encounter difficulty as your biologic form will deteriorate, for physical life is of a finite duration.

Your mind will never lose its patterns of thinking that it developed in the experience of the physical life.  When you receive your morontia vehicle, you will receive the new mind circuit, but your patterns of thought will be installed in this circuit, and you will continue the consciousness that you had prior to your death. In a sense, your operating system will change, but your software will be reinstalled. Then your work begins to transform these patterns of thought that were born in your nativity life on an evolutionary world into those
morontia patterns that will elevate you in awareness to this pure spirit form of consciousness. That, my friend, is a great task.

To aid in the preservation of the organ through which your mind functions it is good to practice those habits of health and well-being, be it nutritionally, be it through activity, and be it through the exercise of
thinking, of problem solving, of wrestling in the mind conceptually. This will burn the rust off the circuits or at least prevent further rust development.

Tom: Does stillness have anything to do with refining the thought patterns?

Jessona:  It does.  Patterns, thought patterns, are a framework through which your thoughts flow. It isn't so much that one thought causes another thought, causing another thought thereby revealing pattern. It is more rather that pattern exists and your thoughts tend to conform to the framework. The goal of the Thought Adjuster is the transformation of your pattern into the soul pattern, the morontia pattern of thought. Then your thinking will flow into that framework in a new and fresh way compared to today.  Stillness allows you to break not thought pattern but thought habits, repetitious forms and reflexive forms of thought that fixate and inhibit creative bursts of thinking. It allows you to break the confines, to sit for one moment free of the habitual stream and to allow the pattern to mold your thoughts into that frame that has been developed by the Father's continual compassionate and merciful care of your life experiences.

There is a gradation. The mind is a beautiful manifestation of divinity. You have at the lowest level of gradation simple physical responses such as reflex, that you even breathe while you pay no attention. It continues on up through many levels of your psychology to that which we are speaking of now, of pattern that is superconscious. Then mind blurs and bleeds over into the morontia state, and that is the pattern of your pattern that is your soul. This is mind at its highest in physical form, for the soul is your new vehicle for
morontia life, and it is your new mind for morontia thought.

You begin your life on this planet largely in physical form, and early on in your growth your mind develops rapidly, enlarges, becomes more adept at many forms of activity on a mental level. What emerges is that higher mind, that superconscious and soul level of encircuitment. Once this has developed those levels may fall away, and they will. Naturally it is of concern to a physical being this falling away, but rally your faith and trust in the Father's care, for your high mind is sharper than any level below can ever have been at any time in your life. Stillness is the reminder to the busy mind of that prize of attainment that is your soul.

Evelyn: You mentioned practicing stillness in motion. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Jessona: I will draw from the expression of experience of the humans who have said that sitting to practice stillness only amplifies how much the mind is racing. It is much like pausing for a moment to notice how much wind is in the air. But when you are active is the wind noticed? The day can appear calm until you stop and notice the wind. In effect I am encouraging you to do precisely the opposite. If calming yourself physically only amplifies the internal activity, try external activity to mark the calmness that does exist within.

As an extreme let us illustrate: Yelling at the top of your lungs for five minutes everything that could possibly cross your mind, stomping, flailing, agitating, and then pause. The inrush of the silence is quite noticeable. Of course this is an extreme method of meditation, but it may illustrate how you can use rather than fight the natural tendencies of the body and the mind to be active.

Evelyn: Some of us have experienced this with monotonous activity, with something reasonably energetic there is a quiet mental space you can get into. Large amounts of time can go by without noticing the vigor of it all. I experience that more than I do stillness while trying to be still.

Jessona: I extracted a key word, "monotonous" and also add to it "repetitive" and call to mind how effective the lullaby is to bring an infant to sleep. The silent room may not encourage that sleep state, but the lullaby
is so soothing that the child falls off to sleep. Of course, I do not encourage sleeping in stillness. But the effect is the same. A little bit of calming dynamics can encourage the development of stillness, especially if the tendency is to be agitated when attempting stillness of body and mind.