Dear God, our creator, our benefactor, our supporter, our foundation and our goal, we Your children open our hearts and minds to the lessons which have been prepared for our benefit by those volunteers who have come into our presence to be our teachers, our guides, our encouragers and our friends. Touch each one here with the power of Your presence to allow each to grow in his and her personality according to Your will. So be it.

DANIEL (Nancy): Greetings dear students. It is with delight that I look upon this gathering and bask in the flame of unity that lights up Urantia’s circuitry. I am Daniel, your proud guide, teacher, colleague and friend. It is my pleasure to dialogue with you this evening regarding the Master’s directive "to be of good cheer" and what this means in your lives as you seek to grow spiritually and to peel the layers that hide the perfection of the personality bestowed by the Father.

To be of good cheer is a state of mind that recognizes the reality of spiritual supremacy; that recognizes the reality of God, your source at the center of all that is, and recognizes His grand plan of evolution and the reality of spiritual gravity that draws you ever to the center. With this knowledge, you have hope for better days; you have faith that God IS and that God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven; you have faith that you will meet God face-to-face and that long before that time, you will be fused with that aspect of God promised to you. And with this knowledge, this hope and this faith, fed by the ministry of God’s miraculous host of beings, it is possible to be of good cheer even while experiencing fully the veracities of material ! living.

The curriculum that we have set before you includes the task of knowing yourselves better. This task might require, for example, the experiencing of emotions that are contrary to those emotions that you consider "to be of good cheer".

Being of good cheer is not an emotional state. It is an understanding, a state of mind that can be experienced at the same time that the other aspects of life are experienced. It is possible to experience pain, to experience loss, grief, anger and shame, and, yet, at the same time, to be of good cheer, to take the next step, to know that from the fires of struggle, the iron of strength is forged. Being of good cheer can be the equivalent of being happy, but it would be a mistake to make these equal concepts. They are not!

An error made from time to time by people desiring to live a spiritual life is that they believe they must be happy, and that if they are not happy they are (1) not following the Master’s directive and are in error and/or (2) that something is seriously wrong. And so these people may suppress or "stuff" emotions that are not considered spiritual.

The difficulty is that emotions have energy. They are real. And if they are suppressed, they do not disappear. They remain tucked away to surprise the individual, either in an inappropriate time when the emotional response to what is occurring at the time is out of balance, or to cause physical dis-ease. And so once the emotions are generated, they must be felt and released in an appropriate manner [by] taking them to the Father, requesting help, requesting fortitude and assurance that you will live through the experience of this emotion, that destruction will not happen.

And so my dear friends, I exhort you to be of good cheer; to know absolutely that God uses all things for the good; to know absolutely that God is working in your life because you have invited God in; to know that love is the ultimate solution and the goal for every life, and at the same time [to recognize] that life goes on and emotions happen.

Part of the training, part of our curriculum, is to learn to perceive situations differently from the get-go, so that a different range of emotions, a different array of emotions, may be experienced in the initial moment. Let us take the example found in the UB of the man holding a club, appearing ferocious. If you see an individual that appears to be holding a club and looking ferocious, your first response may be fear, may be anger. But if you see instead a person protecting his loved ones, your initial response might be love and support.

And so part of our curriculum is to have you look at your lives in an honest way and experience those aspects as they really are that you may be free of them, and, at the same time, to retrain your thinking so that your response, to the many situations of life that you find yourself in, may be one of genuine love, not of a suppressed emotion covered by a false love.

As you live your lives day-to-day, live as authentically as you can in each moment, holding tightly to the Master’s hand and ever remembering his directive to be of good cheer.

There is a follow-on dialogue available if a TR is so willing.

(Pause)

This is Daniel, I will take comments or questions.

Virginia: Daniel, I would just say that it is nice to hear that being of good cheer is the ultimate in our faith. And that indeed it is not equal with happiness. Thank you, that’s a nice thought to consider.

DANIEL: My pleasure, my dear. Yes, good cheer is a state of mind wherein one is able to reach out to God and to others.

(silence)

You are a quiet group this evening. Have you no reactions you would share with one another, if not with me?

Pat: Well, Daniel, you speak of good cheer and on my good days, I have good cheer. But on these days where. . . (Ken: when you’re grouchy?) no, not those days. Days when things happen in my life, threaten perhaps the family’s well-being, a child or some incident, I feel like I’m strong but when things happen of a serious nature in my life or what I perceive to be serious, then my good cheer and my trust and my faith fly out the window, and I feel very threatened. So in your talk this evening you said that you are trying to teach us how to be of good cheer, and I would like some more pointers.

DANIEL: My dear, thank you, so much for this opportunity to respond directly to your heart’s inquiry. Yes when the family, those you love dearly, are threatened in some manner, it is difficult to maintain the longer view, the view of eternity and the significant but quickly passing aspect of this material life. It is at these times when you feel most threatened that you need the arms of Michael, the love of Nebadonia , the comfort of your Thought Adjuster and the ministry of the Host of Hosts most dearly.

When a small child feels threatened, they go to those adults they love and trust, who pick them up and hold them tight and give them kisses and assurances that they are loved and the world will be righted. At these times, reach out with your heart, set your mind aside, set aside the fear temporarily, and invite Michael in. Invite the ministry of the Host of Hosts. Let yourself be vulnerable. Let yourself be as a small child and share your fear; share your concern; spill out your heart; spill out your emotion, and reach out figuratively—if not physically—and allow yourself to be rocked and nourished. And in this way you may ! experience some semblance of peace, perhaps only temporarily, but enough to remind yourself that love will triumph and that those you love are safely kept in the bosom of the Father. And while you may experience your other emotions, you can feel the hand of Michael clasping yours, and this helps you to be spiritually strong for those who rely on your love and strength. Remember that Michael is not asking you to be happy, necessarily, but to have optimism. Does this help at all my dear?

Pat: Yes, Daniel it does. I believe in my heart that those are the things that I need to do, that you have talked about. I guess my ego and the need to control the situation gets in the way. And I’m going to have to work on that. I can see that. I thank you for your words.

DANIEL: You do very well. Keep up the good work. (Thank you) You are welcome.

Virginia: I am glad you said that the instructions might be just a temporary relief. And as often as I do what you suggested, it does not last very long. (Laughing) It’s just a temporary relief. And this morning Klarixiska told me that Pollyanna will return. (Group comments and laughter.) I’m looking forward to it. Optimism is wonderful if you’re not completely hit day after day.

DANIEL: You do well my dear. And as you practice this. . .

Virginia: The Glad game.

DANIEL: . . . as you practice the reaching for Michael’s hand, the coming to Michael as a small child, in reaching up and allowing yourself to be held, nurtured, and loved, the relief will last longer through the practice, which is like exercising a muscle. It becomes stronger, and you can remain connected for longer periods of time. And then, yes, the "Glad" game will become automatic.

LaReen …

LaReen: Yes Daniel.

DANIEL: Would you do the group the honor of sharing your thoughts?

LaReen: Well, I was just thinking that you mentioned take your emotions, don’t bury them, and take them to Father. Would that be in the Still time in the morning and at night"? Because if that’s the case, then I’m going to have swollen eyes the next morning or that morning before I go to do whatever I have to do that day. That would seem the appropriate time to share the emotion, whether it be sadness or anger. Because, I do know that I hold that in a lot.

DANIEL: Thank you my dear for your question. The answer is: to take these to Father whenever you can. In the morning, in the evening would be the appropriate time to allow yourself to experience the intensity of the emotion and to share your grief or your anger with all the noise that may coincide. But also throughout your day, do not deny the emotion, let it be there, let it be a part of you even as you go forward with good cheer. It is possible to be aware that you are sad and to honor your sadness, even while interacting with others in any manner that brings cheer to them.

It is possible to be aware of vestiges of shame that are like a cloak, not [resulting] from anything real for which a person with conscience should feel bad, but from the sense of shame that is passed like a hot potato back and forth and around and around on this planet. Most children have been shamed. And shame is an emotion that is "stuffed", ignored, hidden, that often results in other reactions [such as anger] while the shame remains hidden. It is possible to be aware of experiencing this unpleasant, uncomfortable emotion while interacting with others and being of good cheer. And so, it is through an ongoing connection through[out] your day, with periods of one! -on-one when you have the time or the place, that these emotions can be brought to the Father and offered up, that He may relieve you of them.

I do not mean to indicate that this is a one-time immediate thing, no! Rather through the process of experiencing and releasing to the Father these emotions, they dissipate and are cleansed over time. Just like an air cleaner does not instantaneously clean the air in a room, the emotions of a lifetime are not instantaneously gone through a single decision, they are removed through a process of honoring the emotion, while deciding you no longer need it and offering it up which then allows space for more until the process is completed. Does this answer your question, my dear?

LaReen: Yes thank you very much. I’ve been emotional the last two weeks and I’ll get more emotional, but I’ll have fun doing it. (Group- loud laughing and comments)

DANIEL: Yes, be of good cheer. Take those emotions and have fun with them.

LaReen: Thank you Daniel.

DANIEL: My pleasure.

My friends I realize the night is growing late, but I would offer at least one more opportunity before pulling the plug on our dialogue. We on our side are having too much fun.

Virginia: You’re happy?

DANIEL: My experience is beyond happiness. I am deeply content. But, yes, I am enjoying myself.

Please stand. Klarixiska requests the opportunity to provide the closing prayer.

KLARIXISKA:

END