Tom's Prayer Based on a prayer from the book The Only Planet of Choice (Gateway Books, 1993), with comments by Palden Jenkins.

Tom's Prayer appears in the book The Only Planet of Choice, by Phyllis Schlemmer, published by Gateway Books, 1993. The prayer was offered by Tom (known in ancient history as Atum), the spokesbeing for the Council of Nine. This is a circle of exceptionally insightful cosmic beings who work with large-scale universal issues in cooperation with high-level ET civilisations – though they are not themselves ETs. They have given some explanations of who they are, yet our concepts cannot really encompass the full situation. Nevertheless, their intelligence and understanding is profound. They have a special interest in events on planet Earth and they have long been involved in our history. This article, while primarily commenting on the meaning of Tom's Prayer, nevertheless outlines some of the key points which the Nine have shared with us in their book. I was the compiler of the first edition of the book, yet these interpretations are my own – I am not a spokesperson for them. I encourage you to contemplate the content and meaning of the prayer and to refer to the book itself and form your own conclusions. The prayer itself goes as follows. It is used by many people in connection with meditation work in alignment with the Nine. It was suggested by the Nine in recognition of our human need to focus on thoughts and images in prayer and meditation. After presenting it, I shall review each line one by one. From the Council of Nine for the Nations of Earth. We pray that the nations of Earth come to peace within themselves and come to recognise whence they came. We pray that all the civilisations of the universe that are engaged in the balancing of the universe, be given strength and peace within to carry on the work to which they are committed. We pray that the physical beings of the planet Earth come into a state of awareness and understanding, in order for their souls to evolve, to raise the level of the planet Earth and to cleanse the heavens around the planet Earth so that the universe can progress. We pray that those beings and civilisations that oppose what we do come into the light of understanding, so that they also come into perfect balance. We pray that the day may soon come when all in the universe have the knowledge and the unerstanding that will make them whole. We pray for understanding amongst ourselves, and for the strength that is needed so that each of us can guide the others to become perfect beings. We pray for the souls of the children of the Earth to be brought out of the dark and into the light. – TOM That is the prayer. My comments follow. From the Council of Nine for the Nations of Earth The Council of Nine is, as far as I understand, a collection of beings at or near the cosmoligical centre of the universe. Their brief is to work in maintaining the energy-balances of the universe as a whole. They are involved in cosmic evolution and the evolution of souls and worlds. I am not in a position truly to judge their cosmological status. However, the content of their communications is the most precise, sensible and informative I have ever seen from channelled sources and I have never found reason to doubt what they say about themselves – which isn't actually very much. In our historically-based mythology the Nine have been known as the Nine First Gods of ancient Egypt, as the Elohim of ancient Hebrew tradition and the Aeons of ancient Greek tradition. However, they seek not to be treated as remote 'gods', but to be appreciated by us as friends and co-creators of an unfolding universe – with us. They and other cosmic beings carry a different brief from us, which we customarily interpret to mean that they are spiritually superior to us – this is our illusion. In reality we are all carrying out tasks of integral significance to the Whole, each in our way, and the great and the small have equal significance.. Though they are universal beings, they have a special interest in planet Earth and particularly its current critical situation. This has to do with the unique nature and purpose of our planet and its inhabitants, and the critical state we have reached today – we are at risk of destroying our home, our physical existence and thereby our means of continued evolution. This doesn't affect only us: planet Earth is important to the whole universe – in some respects it is small and peripheral, yet what's going on here is of universal significance. This arises from three key factors: the sheer numbers and variety of souls now on this planetary world; the 'bottlenecking' we cause across the universe as a result of our having lost track of our planetary purpose and arising from our tendency to repeatedly reincarnate here, rather than evolving through our earthly learning-experiences and progressing onwards; and finally the criticalness of the state we've got ourselves into globally – with a raft of issues including overpopulation, environmental destruction and social degeneracy. The sumtotal of these factors has made Earth a problem for the universe. The Nine thus feel the need to address the nations of Earth as a collectivity, to encourage us to resolve our differences, grow in understanding and awareness and move into a state of renewed, accelerated 'forwardness'. This would lead us to heal our planetary ills, bring things back to balance and get on with what we're here to do. We pray that the nations of Earth come to peace within themselves and come to recognise whence they came. The Nine say that the inhabitants of Earth are derived, as souls, from most or all of the civilisations of the universe – they also describe some of the processes whereby human history was genetically and culturally influenced by beings from other worlds. We're a bit like a cosmological New York City or Hong Kong, a meeting-place which, while to some extent quarantined and in some senses marginal, nevertheless has big-little importance and sends out many ripples to other parts and dimensions. There is intense learning to be had in our world. The training we gain through our existence here is vital for the subsequent unfolding of the whole universe. We have something major to contribute by dint of our experience with physicalness and its ramifications – and by dint of the unique mess we've created and can yet redeem – and we have come here to create a new kind of existence never before attempted, a paradise on Earth. In universal terms, ours is a relatively new situation – we are exploring the ramifications of individualised free-will on a varied, beautiful and physically-emotionally dense planet. Much of what has arisen on Earth throughout our history wasn't foreseen or planned – it was not reckoned that we would so thoroughly lose track of the reasons for which we came here, or that we would treat each other so crazily. This makes it all vitally interesting inasmuch as we have created many evolutionary innovations – from war and destructivity through to works of art, new species, diseases and inventions. In a sense we are participating in a cosmological experiment to find out whether and how a new frontier of evolution can be crossed – an interlocking of the 'physical' and the 'spiritual', a building of Heaven on Earth. According to the Nine, most civilisations throughout the universe have evolved as co-originated collectivities, soul-tribes emanating from one source – with an analogous sociology to beehives. They act as one being much more than we, though they too are variously constituted of many individuals. Earth humans, in contrast, are made up of volunteer souls from vast numbers of worlds. We elected to come here on this particular intensive outward-bound course – except we've lost its main thread, though it glimmers here and there. No one is here by accident – we came in full though inexperienced knowledge of what we were letting ourselves in for! The problem is that, by dint of the density, richness, intensity and variety of experience on Earth, we have forgotten our main agendas and have resorted to stultifying habits, accentuated differentiation and perpetual strife as symptoms of our forgetting. We have lost track of our power to create our reality with intention and to remain spiritually in touch with the wider universe within and around us. We have handed over power to priesthoods, experts and leaderships who, both wittingly and unwittingly, corrupt our perception and control our awareness and lives – with a remarkable measure of success. However, all is not lost! To restore ourselves to balance we need to remember whence we came and why we came. This remembering is not a mental process – more a feeling in our heart and bones. This is a challenge to us as individuals, ethnic groupings and nations and to the whole planetary race: we need to recognise ourselves and resolve our differences sufficiently to work together to correct our immense global problems. Interestingly, this correction is in itself a precedent and an immense learning-experience – a taking of responsibility to an extent rarely seen. We came here not only to learn from the experience and to graduate herefrom, much the richer for it, but also to use our individualised free-will to explore new avenues of possibility and creation, to cook up something new from the basis of our accumulated earthly experience. The First Cause, the Creator or Source, sought to come to know itself by creating a universe in which it would see itself mirrored – 'God' is on a growth-process too! A universe of creator-souls, replicated from the Creator-Source and being cellular parts of it, was set in motion too. The idea is that these souls might themselves create possibilities the Creator on its own might never have thought up – it's a delegation of the creation process. 'God' sought friendship, other co-creators and teachers from within Itself, to see what would happen! While many souls of the universe variously possess free-will within certain parameters conditioned by the nature of their place in and service to the Whole, what is special about the planet Earth experiment is that we are endowed with individualised free-will – we have been given the brief to go forth and do whatever we feel best. And to learn from the consequences and make something of that! Thus, the achievement of peace and creative cooperation between humans, animals and our wider reality is a key ingredient in the stimulation of 'forwardness' on planet Earth. Not only because it's good to be nice to one another, but also because the psychic and practical implications of cooperation can allow humanity to act as one family. The voluntary and intentional joining of the billions of souls on Earth can create an energy and power infinitely greater than the sum of our parts. Spiritually, it would be like an explosion of awareness. This would, however, involve a remembering of whence we came. We pray that all the civilisations of the universe that are engaged in the balancing of the universe be given strength and peace within to carry on the work to which they are committed. This is a vital point which connects planet Earth to the rest of the universe – we are not alone. Also: different ET civilisations have different agendas and intents – and here we're referring to those which are 'engaged in the balancing of the universe' or in service to the Whole. You may find this incomprehensible, but Earth is one of the key planets involved in the issue of balancing – the spiritual with the physical, the male with the female, the winners with the losers, the hot with the cold. We humans, according to the Nine, have portions of all polarities within us, and thus we embody the meeting-place of contrasting forces. However, we have fallen into denying parts of ourselves and overemphasising other parts, which leads to imbalance. This is perhaps not unique to us, though in us this conflict has taken on extreme proportions – to the extent that our conflict is at risk of destroying us. This reflects a larger cosmological situation for whith Earth has become a nexus-point. A high-level being which mythologically we call Lucifer – the bringer of light who educates souls by taking them through their shadow-worlds – elected to rebel against universal wholeness by elevating his own work out of proportion to that of the universal whole to which his work was contributing. This rebellion is, in the end, fruitless, inasmuch as competition with the Whole to overwhelm it is by nature impossible. Nevertheless, the rebellion causes much unnecessary pain and delay, and can cause much trouble and foiling of universal evolution. This is happening particularly on planet Earth. All is not lost in the final analysis. However, much can be lost in the shorter cosmological term. A lot of complication can arise from serious imbalance. What links this universal situation to planet Earth is that, having lost our way, we have become ideal channels of 'negative' influences – and we've thought up quite a few new ones ourselves. By dint of selfishness, destructive habits and short-sightedness, we willingly act in ways whereby we 'compete with the Creator' – seeking self-interestedly to be as gods ourselves instead of enacting the 'godness' that we are. We are delegates of the Creator. Planet Earth was set in motion in order to breed a new strain of souls with adept experience in working dense and variegated realities – to hybridise a new set of creator-souls to work consciously with expanding dense reality-possibilities and resolving imbalances universally. Dense reality allows the formulation of infinitely wider creation-possibilities, extrapolating variety to almost-infinite proportions – and the variegatedness of humanity is also one of its B features. Though at present this strength presents itself as a problem, since we have allowed variety to become disagreement. However, our very influence on the universe affects it negatively. We act as a seed-bed of negative innovations and precedents which then become emulated or cause ripples elsewhere. We export damaged souls and influences which have a polluting influence. We are amassing billions of souls locked up on one world which itself could be destroyed – thus creating an enormous potential soul-refugee problem. We are 'bottlenecking' the throughflow of evolving souls, holding up the universal process. Should we break through our enormous global challenges and truly transform life on Earth, we would also create an enormous breakthrough for the universe as a whole, even for civilisations much different from our own. It just so happens we derive from them, and redemption of our world from the throes of disaster would represent a mighty bolt of positive energy in the universe. Despite everything, we made it! To return to the theme of this line of Tom's prayer. Other civilisations work to further universal balances, and our case has become important to them by dint of our sheer excess of imbalance. Though they cannot save us and the onus rests on us to solve our planetary problem, our future is nevertheless affected by their containing and moderating influence and work. The energy-interaction between planet Earth and the rest of the universe is greater than we would think. Therefore it makes sense to send our support to supportive civilisations, since we need them and they need us. We pray that the physical beings of the planet Earth come into a state of awareness and understanding, in order for their souls to evolve, to raise the level of the planet Earth and to cleanse the heavens around the planet Earth so that the universe can progress. Although the essence of this statement implies an inner mass awakening, one of the refreshing things the Nine have mentioned in their communications is that humanity simply needs to move into a state where its own inherent goodness is allowed to flourish. The world would become transformed and uplifted if we simply paid attention to basic human priorities. We don't initially need to become spiritually elevated: basic common goodness, clear seeing and understanding will crack it – and we can go on from there. We have it in us to do this, and we have sufficient guidelines available. Two known and sensible guidelines the Nine reiterate are: do to others as you would have them do to you and do only things you can respect yourself for. This applies to nations as well as individuals. The awareness and understanding we need to come into concerns the bottom-line realities we are faced with. We are responsible for our situation. Helplessness and confusion are the problem, not the solution. We have all of the freedom of choice we need – and, paradoxically, the ultimate expression of free-will is to align with universal purpose. That means cooperation, ecological sense, learning from nature and deeper human nature. Humanity empowers itself to pull off miracles by cooperation, and we already have most of what we need to solve our problems. We need to come to understand how easily we are controlled and then how to take control of our lives, together, in a new way. Though we all differently contribute to the variegated world matrix, we share so much common ground that we need to give attention to what we share. No one will rescue us: this is up to us, and rescue would constitute a crucial overriding of free-will. A transformative revival of human spirit would, after our long history of oppression, represent a triumph of enormous proportions. As it happens, other beings of the universe are fascinated to see how we'll manage with this, since it implies a tremendous evolutionary breakthrough for our world and for the universe as a whole. 'Raising the level of planet Earth'. Understanding this involves distinguishing two kinds of density-effect we live in. There is the intense gravitational influence and density of physical life on Earth: manifestation takes a lot of effort, and the bodies we need to wear here are weighty and intense. We can by degrees change the effect density has on our spirits, though that density is an inherent part of physicality. Then there is the downward-pulling emotional effect of the collective human psyche – an energy-field filled with historic pain, doubt, powerlessness, regret, attachment, violence and separativeness. This we can change – it arises from our choices about how to treat our reality. Understanding penetrates this – it's a choice of awareness which has little or no relation to education, literacy or mass media. The growth of overall understanding would cause the morphic or energy-field of humanity to rise, to become emotionally less dense. This would unblock the planetary energy-field pervading and surrounding our world. It would also literally clean our atmosphere. This concerns such issues as the ozone layer, pollution and war. By being inattentive to our level of energy and awareness, we unconsciously deplete planet Earth's protective energy-fields, rendering the planet vulnerable to outside influences – whether of an astronomical dimension (meteors and cosmic rays), of an ET dimension (allowing in ETs who aren't helpful to our situation) or other influences which penetrate our planetary immune-system. The Nine point out that by such activities as killing off beings such as dolphins, we destroy intelligent beings who themselves act as consciousness-protectors of the planet. By perpetually reinforcing vibrations of fear in our planetary energy-sphere, we pull all people down into a repeating pattern of strife, distrust and unease, we affect our capacity to revive and we buy into the influences exerted by those who would control us – both humans and other beings. This needs to be reversed through the building up of a growing consensus seeking truth, transformation and breakthrough. This starts with people like us. We pray that those beings and civilisations that oppose what we do come into the light of understanding, so that they also come into perfect balance. The problem of unwholesome negativity affects the wider universe, though planet Earth acts as a playground and sump for negative forces. This arises from our own accumulated historical choices. In making such choices we have empowered and cooperated with 'beings and civilisations that oppose' the evolutionary progression of the universe. The issue here isn't a simple good-guys and bad-guys scenario since, in reality, both the 'positive' and the 'negative' are counterbalancing forces which are part of the creation process. The problem is imbalance between them and their separation into increasingly independent poles of reality. That is, the forces of opposition ('darkness') have come to believe that self-oriented negative polarisation is the only valid reality, and that it exists for itself. Conversely, beings of 'light' can section themselves off in their own domain, believing that darkness opposes light, and that darkness should therefore be ignored, resisted or opposed. This happens within us all – our spirit and shadow tend to ignore or deny one another and we live with divided psyches. Both light and darkness need to integrate back into co-participative naturally-alternating balance, since each sheds light and meaning on the other. We hold a crucial key here on Earth: we are constituted of a balance of both light and darkness. It is the reintegration of our whole being which puts them into context and returns us to a remembering of our essential nature. We would return to balance, uncovering our capacity to create and evolve. If we can do this in the tortuous and treacly circumstances of Earthly life, we achieve the impossible. This would set a tremendous example to the beings of other civilisations too. By dint of our numbers and the intensity of our experience, we would swing the universal balance back into balance. Many of us would 'graduate' from Earthly life, to become teachers and mentors to other civilisations. Who better to do it than we? After all, we have seen heaven (joy and pleasure) and hell (pain and suffering), and we know them for what they are. In the meantime, fighting against fear and 'darkness' doesn't help. What helps is understanding. To release the power of 'opposition' influences, we need to send understanding their way – understanding is an antidote to polarisation. By praying that beings of 'opposing' civilisations may themselves to come into balance, we bring benefit to the whole by helping to integrate polarities. Wholeness arises from both darkness and light. We pray that the day may soon come when all in the universe have the knowledge and the understanding that will make them whole. This line represents an invocation of universal completion and fulfilment. This might not mean The End – more a state where 'God' comes to know itself. What happens after that is anybody's guess! The penetrating light of knowledge and understanding has the capacity to reveal things as they truly are and to harmonise all dissonance. Planet Earth and its inhabitants have a capacity to swing things one way or the other, depending on choices we make in our current crucial global situation. The destruction or saving of planet Earth makes an enormous difference for the whole universe because of the ridiculous straits it has got into and the miracle that transformation would represent. Thus we have a disproportionately large power to catayse a universal breakthrough. Achieving wholeness is what is necessary universally. And, contrary to our religious beliefs, we have a lot to teach since we are intelligent beings accustomed to mastering difficult circumstances. We pray for understanding amongst ourselves, and for the strength that is needed so that each of us can guide others to become perfect beings. The key to the situation, for us, is to understand one another – to see what it's like standing in other people's shoes. The nexus-point of understanding lies where there is most hurt, anguish and strife, since these divert us from pursuing our true purpose. So we must strive to bridge the cultural and psychological gulfs which separate the groupings of planet Earth. This bridging is achieved by understanding that we all have a valid claim on reality, we all have a purpose, and we all can rub along well enough with one another if we trust and understand each other. It's all about listening. Our capacity to guide others is not so much a matter of teaching as of setting good examples, generating a new transformative consensus and facilitating social growth-processes. A diamond of inner strength grows from ongoing experiential learning, and such learning needs to become collective as well as individual. Learning is an act of free choice – life is what we make of it. In praying for strength, we are (re)awakening choicefulness within us. Perfection isn't a finalised static state – it's a dynamic capacity to perceive reality and co-create it clearly with intent and wholesome outcomes. Perfection and naturalness go together. We pray for the souls of the children of the Earth to be brought out of the dark and into the light This is a concluding affirmation of goodwill to our fellow Earthlings and a commitment to being part of everyone's process of enlightenment – since at some level we are all one being. Darkness is a clouded state of the psyche, hemmed in with fear and guilt, doubt and incomprehension. Light is insight – it sees through darkness to understand it all in a larger context. Thereby both darkness and light are rebalanced, creating a co-evolutionary force where the proportions are correct for accelerated unfolding. This is 'God' coming to know Itself. Light is a lightness of being. The Nine once pointed out that the future can be similar to what we now call a 'peak experience'. By envisioning our potential, our lightness as whole beings, we increasingly move into it – we overcome the downward-pulling effects of emotional density, which will change our relationship with physical density. In oter words, we'll all be happier and more able to get on with the real business of being human. By moving into this collectively, we transform planet Earth into a 'light-space vehicle' (in the Nine's words). One of the purposes in this planet Earth business is the exploration of the archetype of paradise – part of our earthly brief is to see if we can create a new kind of paradise, a world of beauty and harmony, above and beyond what nature has hitherto created. In recent times we have largely been evading this joyous issue, though some have created short-lived private paradises! We're good at creating complex ways of corrupting our happiness. Yet perhaps we are now exhausting this need, readying ourselves for a new planetary agenda and reality. Our challenge is to rise to our full stature and to the power of the occasion, to be honest with ourselves and see clearly. The children of Earth are ready for a change, and a prayer such as this is one starting-place for this to be brought about. The text of this prayer is taken from the book The Only Planet of Choice – essential briefings from deep space, transceived by Phyllis Schlemmer, second edition, published by Gateway Books, UK, 1994. See also: Quotes from the Nine

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