Michael; Seasons Of The Soul - Feb 19, 2007 - Marin, TM
Michael—February 19, 2006Marin TM Group---Mill Valley, California—U.S.A.MICHAEL—T/R-JLDear Michael and Mother Spirit, Welcome. We open our hearts and our minds to receive your Spirits of Truth and Holiness, and we pray you touch our souls with your presence. We look forward to your lessons and your conversations with us, and we thank you for the inspiration they give us, the renewed strength to carry on. We do wish to be your loving and honoring children. Amen.
MICHAEL: Good evening, my well-beloved children, this is your spirit father, Michael. Tonight I take extra delight in being the occasion for your meeting, just to get you out on such a glorious Spring evening here in your part of the world.
We tease you that your understanding of nature and natural law is only scratching the surface compared to what you will someday know; still in all, the beauty you are presented with at this time of year is certainly enough to fill your souls. This is such an overt and dramatic proof of God’s continuous creation--the way the natural world does renew itself after a period of hibernation.
(Seasons of the soul)
So tonight, ask yourselves, my children, what season is it in your soul? For those of you here mature enough to remember times when you were somewhat out-of-sync with the rest of the natural world, and rightfully so, it’s nice to be a little independent of the current situation, to be cheerful and happy even in the midst of a raging storm. You’ve probably noticed how you do go through your inner seasons--with the quality that we constantly reminding you of, the quality of recognition. You can recognize what season you are in, inside. It helps you remember and have faith in these inner cycles when you find yourself in a cold and stark and dreary winter in your soul.
You can have the courage to accept this and wonder why--in that surrender, in that acceptance of the cold--a kind of inner shrinking upon yourself. You can discover why; and indeed, it might even seem appropriate. For just as nature has her mood of hibernation, of retreat and recovery in a cold, condensing kind of gathering into and unto herself, you too might discover this is healthy and appropriate. It’s just Winter-time inside, time to pause and reflect, time to gather in and evaluate, time to hibernate and rest.
And then your soul, once again, blossoms forth. Once again you begin to stretch, and look around, and find your strength in your faith renewed to extend yourself again. Now it’s time to branch out in all your spiritual ways within, feel all the little buds of curiosity blossoming forth again, wondering and perhaps noticing it’s a new world again, outside. Things have changed because you have changed. Possibility is in the air like a sweet bouquet and so you stretch and blossom. You might even get a little giddy, as we invited you to once before, and be like a little Springtime lamb cavorting about. And so the branches and the blossoms and the bright new leaves of your soul begin to expand. You spread yourself out in the glory of God’s sunshine, welcoming the warmth of his spirit giving you life once again.
We’ve been mentioning how your soul plays an active part in its recognition of how you are inside. For while on the surface you may feel like a little lamb cavorting about, it’s also your soul’s recognition of one more Spring. Once again you’ve survived another winter. Now you can have a wonderful faith in the necessity for these seasons, a worshipful thanks for these changes that help keep you sane. You can even remember your childhood whining and complaining at the frost nipping at your nose, and yet remember too how that first cold chill invigorated your blood and aroused you from your pastoral slumbers in the sunshine of summer. So too the seasons of your soul take an active part in your spiritual growth.
And so, my children, your soul provides this reflection, this deeper understanding that augments and fulfills your fleeting present moments. Indeed, this spiritual part of your own personality, allied and co-mingling with the Spirit of the Father within you, provides a desire to understand, the yearning to know. Your philosophy begins to grow all by itself out of this intrinsic kernel of curiosity. You are truly one of Gods’ children, one of his own that he has imbued with spirit, imbued you with the desire to become more like him--ever more omniscient and omnipresent.
(How your philosophy and soul mirror each other)
In this sense your growing philosophy of life mirrors your soul, and is reflected back again from it as they play a little game of leapfrog. So you have those precious moments of touching your own soul, of reliving moments just like when they first happened to you, reminding you of the enormity of all those people you have been. So your philosophy, your understanding, grows, anchored in this rich soil of your soul. This is your philosophy, my children--this desire to know, to understand.
Then, as you get older, this philosophy of yours, you discover, is ever green, right through all the seasons of your soul, of your inner life. Something there is that continues to stay green through it all. You have this strange, seemingly paradoxical fact that as you get older, as your soul grows, as your philosophy develops, something young and evergreen begins as well, almost as a kind of counter-trend. You can begin to intuit how truly young and just-beginning you really are.
The first intimations of eternal life begin to appear to your consciousness. Your faith in the renewal of Spring speaks of an endless rebirth, a sequential renewing, a path on which you’ve taken only the first few tentative steps. The time units of your present moments begin to expand and, after your first few tentative touches with other-spirit--with your Father Fragment within you, with Mother Spirit and myself--comes an inner spiritual assurance and security. As the inner seasons come and go, you can come to welcome the whole panorama. You are coming to master yourself in terms of self-knowledge being a kind of parallel course with all your other learning and curiosity. Now you begin to see these whole cycles in their entirety, and so the cycles of your soul intimate, as they go round and round, that they are also going ever upward, expanding, reaching toward your next, more fully Morontia phase of existence.
More perfectly counter-balanced deeper and deeper inside, appreciating more and more the unfathomable depths of your own personality--the ultimate gift from God; these are the spiritual dimensions that imbue both your inner and
outer reality with value. These are the kinds of God’s creations that you are, my children, so let yourselves go. There is nothing to cling to anyway. You are life itself. Welcome the changes, however unfathomable and unforeseeable.
(You are the continuity in all the change)
They are calling for foresight; appealing for understanding; challenging as the ultimate adventure. So be sure to stop from time to time and sniff the flowers. You can lazy about--for a day or two--in your Spring fever, glorying in the warmth returning. All is in motion; all is changing but the deepest, ultimate you, you have yet to encompass. You see: you are the continuity in all this change. You are the connecting link between all these moments. Enjoy them well, my children. As one of your great poets put it: nature answers all your doubting, probing questions, only with Spring.
If you have any comments or questions this fine Spring evening, let them blossom forth.
Student: Father Michael, thank you for the lessons, and thank you for being here. Thank you for being our father. The question I have is about me. There are a lot of things I’d like to do. I would like to experience my Father Fragment more. I have a little bit, but I would like to get more in touch with my spirit teacher, Jessie, or whoever else is there, and I would like to get closer to you and Mother Spirit. But I find I resist that sort of thing, and I don’t know how to overcome the resistance. I’ve tried day by day looking at it, which doesn’t do any good: it’s still there. I would like to eliminate it, if it’s possible to eliminate it, you know--find out where it comes from, if that’s possible too.
(Resistance to spirit)
MICHAEL: Yes, my son, I understand fully. I first thing I would like to say is, Don’t feel like the Lone Stranger. This is much more universal than you can credit right now. This is part of being human in these first, early stages of your eternal life. What you call resistance is representative of being a bit scattered and multiple in the way you manifest yourself over time, from hour to hour, day to day. Your spirit longs for unity, and is the function of your personality, to try to incorporate, engulf, encompass all that you are. But all that you are is a rather complex mix of a physical and mental and spiritual being, so there is a…well, warfare is too strong a word, but there are some very lively skirmishes going back and forth within you as different parts of your being strive for mastery.
Try to appreciate the small microcosm you are, of necessity recapitulating what is happening on the largest scale, for in the universe at large, my son, personal beings are struggling for the mastery of a constantly expanding and therefore new physical universe. Within yourself your personality and spirit are trying to unify much that is universal. Here I am referring to a whole heredity of evolution, millions of years of animal striving that are still represented within you; and not only that but the whole history of human thought in the struggle to understand. From the standpoint of your personality there is much within you that is constantly springing up unbidden, to be controlled, to be understood, to be enjoyed, to be experimented with. You can achieve, through great effort, some control over the focus of your thoughts, but the individual thoughts themselves as they come, come from such a variety of sources.
Think of your family and the immediate, close-in culture you were raised in; then the larger one of your country at this particular time; then the world-wide historical period too. You have your own personal experiences—all your memories, all your associations and understandings, and values. Overarching all of this you have your higher consciousness and your own personal spirit, your life’s companions—your Father Fragment and your Guardian Angel, then too your own soul. This complexity is where all your resistance comes from, yet as you seek to understand it, it is no less than seeking to understand and unify all that you are. So appreciate the task before you. (Michael laughs; student joins in) Appreciate too the necessity for it, if you wish to keep growing. Does this seem to find some response within you, my son? Student: Yes… It raises more question than it answers, but it looks like a very interesting inquiry. I’m of the opinion—and it’s just an opinion—that the way I am of this moment is the result of decisions I’ve made in the past about events of my life. I was thinking the resistance—that might not be the right word; my reasoning might come from some decision I made years and years ago. There was a time in my life—in my early twenties and again a few years ago—that I thought you were nothing more than a human rabble-rouser that founded a religion. And that persisted for several years until I finally got out of it. I don’t know where that comes from or why it’s there, but I wonder if that caused the way I look at you and other spirit beings? I mean I don’t know why I got down on you all.
MICHAEL: Well, my son, we both know of the terrible atrocities, the truly obscene and perverted, horrible things that have been done in my name. So this is very understandable. Also, insofar as you were raised in a general Christian context, and every young man and woman needs to go through a period of rebelliousness just to gain their individuality, their autonomy, their freedom from the context in which they were raised, see your rebellious nature in this light, as a necessary stage to go through.
But your are also struggling to achieve a general freedom in the here-and-now, and not be so determined by these previous decisions. What this requires is a greater decisiveness now—to decide that these previous, more immature decisions are not going to continue to control you. This is how I see your struggle now. You are getting a strengthening of your ideals to reach for this unity. You are no longer self-satisfied with this reluctance, this resistance to spirit. You are reaching for greater life, a greater spontaneity and more thrilling adventure. So keep examining. Put a name to these reluctance’s and fears. Get to know them well. For you are building a philosophy of life that includes these hindrances. This is where the great spiritual value of acceptance of the past can help you be free of it. The more you understand something, the more you have it, and the less it has you.
Student: Thank you, Father Michael. That really hits the nail on the head. I can understand that. Thank you.
MICHAEL: I did a little catalogue of all your various parts so as you reread these words you can have this quality of recognition--of your memories, all your animal instincts and fears, all those thousands and thousands of hours as a youngster just absorbing like a sponge all that was around you, and learning how to cope with it. All this is within you. And every little you, you ever were, wants to keep on living. Every idea and ideal wants to continue to influence you. But I am telling you here and now, my son, you can let these go. As they come up in your stillness, just recognize them and let them go. Nothing is lost. They are secure in your soul. So as they bid to influence you and cause a reluctance to accept spiritual reality—all these plaguing ideas of who you once were—be content to let them be in your soul. Don’t continue to give them life by worry.
(Striving for self-mastery)
Let the past be the past, and you will find your present moments more spontaneous and free. No human is spared this effort—I should say, no conscientious human who strives for self-mastery. So rest assured it is the most worthwhile thing you can be engaged in. There is nothing more important. This is your inner life, and I’m sure you all know folks who are never a waking moment away from a turned-on radio or TV set, or now your ingenious I-pods; who have almost no inner life at all they value. Stillness is not just a formal sitting down and doing something; it encompasses all your reflection throughout the day. It’s all good.
Student: Thank you, Father. I love you.
Student: I can put a name to my reluctance, Michael. I can understand what my friend here is talking about. And thank you for touching on this tonight. For so many years it’s been, Nobody is going to trick me into believing in something! I’ll just sit over here on the sidelines and watch everyone else. Finally, after fifteen years, I’m finally learning the value of stillness. Today I had a discussion with an old friend on what can a person cling to—in relationships, partners--putting all that on a partner—to keep us safe and secure. We just had the best laugh at, what can we cling to but our own journey and spirit? So I liked that you touched on that tonight: what can we cling to but our faith, and our growth?
MICHAEL: Yes, my daughter, that’s the "sublime uncertainty with security." (student breaks up laughing) It calls for a discrimination between certainty and security, as well as recognizing the unfathomable, or unpredictable nature of the future—even your exact thoughts an hour from now. At the same time you can develop an ever broader and deeper foresight that augments your feeling of the present. Your sense of time modulates as you mature.
Student: I understand that very well. A little off the topic… I wonder about the nature of holograms in their relation to the way our brains work. Are memories in the brain like the condensed light reflecting off an object and then onto a photographic plate? Because if you break up the plate, every little piece will give you the complete image.
If you don’t want to say anything about that, that’s OK. Thank you so much for your humor, and your love, and your presence that I’m actually believing in now, 100 percent. I’m not on the sidelines any more. I feel I’m right here with you.
MICHAEL: You are very welcome, my daughter. This is the wonderful leapfrogging we speak of, where you extend yourself by faith into areas you cannot know beforehand, then fulfill by actual experience. You reflect on this for awhile, you go through a little Winter of condensing the experience, then this gives you the strength and the desire to extend yourself once again. So spirit becomes a genuine experience. You simply have to recognize it for what it is.
(Holograms and inner visualization)
With respect to holograms, the product of your modern science and ability to control and focus light; the first kind was the focusing of a number of beams so they intersected in a foggy medium and created an actual-seeming object composed entirely of light—maybe a picture or a geometric object like a sphere. Then with lasers and such, you can produce the almost endless phenomena you talked about.
This is only vaguely similar to visualization within your brain, so keep in mind the billions of living cells there do not literally create a kind of energy such as light or even micro-voltages of electricity to form images. Your inner imagination is more subtle than this. I refer you back to a session we had one time where a student asked about visualization, and was concerned he could not visualize within himself certain truths. Inner visualization is living, and fluid; much more concerned with memory and imagination—spiritual creativity. You can think of something—say a vase, or a sphere—and get a feeling of it even though you may not be able to see it clearly with your mind’s eye. For this ability varies greatly between individuals, those being inwardly visually oriented even able to visualize, vaguely, spiritual beings, while others are more conceptually oriented. But those are about the only parallels you can draw between holograms created by physical light and mental processes going on in your brain which are permeated by, and therefore partly, spirit.
Student: Thank you, Michael, for that. It was a kind of curiosity-question, so I appreciate your taking the time to answer me.
MICHAEL: You are very welcome, my daughter. Be in my peace. You too, (Name). (first student laughs—Thank you, Michael)
Student: Yes, Michael, as you were speaking about our inner seasons, I feel I’m somewhere between Winter and Spring. I’m going through the cold and dark, cloudy stuff, but I can feel the potential of the sprouting, the roots growing beneath the soil; and, as we talked about before, the sublime uncertainty: and also the security.
I was thinking about prayer the other day, and the times I’ve prayed and was answered in one way or another. Then there were times when nothing appeared to have happened. One time something manifested, or I experienced, was about the teachings I’ve been participating in so deeply. The times nothing seemed to happen were about the financial situations. So I was wondering why.
I sense that with the praying about the teachings, that’s my soul’s greatest desire. I look at the wisdom of all the things that happened in my life, and why—to gain a deeper perspective on why my life is as it is, and what is happening beneath the surface. Maybe my prayers aren’t answered so that I have a deeper understanding and appreciation of now, and what is only potential. So could I have some comments about that?
(Different answers to prayer)
MICHAEL: Yes, my son, I’m sure you recall a few weeks back I answered one of your friends about the nature of time, and how certain issues could only be revealed in time. So yes, this can be part of your understanding, that in the different realms of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual, spiritual questions can be answered almost instantaneously because spirit calls to spirit, and the answer is spirit. The mental repercussions, the associations, the deeper understandings usually come a little bit later because they are a sequence of reflections on that spiritual impression. They spread out like ripples and counter-ripples around the original impact. Physical repercussions, like finances, do take more time because they involve the material world. I gave the example of planting a seed and then not digging it up every few days to see how it’s doing.
This calls for a deeper commitment into the physical extensions of yourself—your activities. Some of these experiments do not bear fruit for many days, or even months. That’s how long it takes to get the answer back, as to whether or not this endeavor will be fruitful. Not all seeds some up. Not all trees that you’ve nurtured for years bear fruit. So these are some ways you can distinguish the time element in what answers you are requesting, and how long it takes for them to come back.
Student: There is a part of me questioning my state of preparedness for experiencing what my prayer is asking. I know I’m using words that separate spirit and the material, and I know that deep down they are all one, but I have no problem using prayer to actualize something that will help the growth of my spirit. I have a harder time asking for material things, because I’ve heard different comments on that. The Urantia book says one should only ask for things of a spiritual nature, while others say… I mean I’m not asking for a house or anything. I’m just trying to be open to the wealth that is mine, or for others. Maybe I’m looking for the desire behind the desire, for understanding that. So…I’m sure you can make sense out of what I just said. (laughing)
MICHAEL: Again, my son, I reassure you there is noting wrong with seeking to pick yourself up and get a hold of yourself this way, except that you are also continually disappearing to yourself down an endless series. By this I mean there is a part of you that is unfathomable to yourself, because you are this personality, this link beyond time, this changelessness, yet nothing you have ever known comprehensively is of this beyond-space-and–time reality. All your experience so far is conditioned by this space-and-time physical being you are also. (The one and the many)
I would advise you give greater credence and understanding to the degree spirit and mind and material realities are separate, or distinct. You can too easily assume the standpoint of God himself--and this is especially true in some of the Oriental religions you’ve studied where their intellects long ago achieved that high point of reasoning that from God’s viewpoint, everything is One. But they failed to credit that only God experiences it as such. As your Urantia book puts it, this was the fundamental flaw in their reasoning, of not discriminating the separate levels of personality reality. So that while from an absolute viewpoint this finite, physical reality you inhabit seemed only relative, and therefore illusionary in the impossibility of your completely comprehending it—they could see that, they called it an illusion, a Maya, but as if it had no real existence; so they failed to realize that from the point of view of the finite creature, it is absolute. In other words, you are face to face with the paradox to human reasoning that reality is at one and the same time both One—you can say that God is everything--and yet infinitely diverse as God distinguishes himself—being personality itself--from the impersonal; and creates autonomous other personalities. God represents—is--personality in universal reality.
From your point of view, your experience as an experiential being, the impersonal aspect of reality—matter/energy—is absolute, not an illusion. The chair you are sitting in has no personality, yet that stuff is real. It is imbued with spirit only insofar as you give it value. That is the way the physical realm is imbued with spirit: you are doing the imbuing. It is not intrinsically spiritual itself; it is impersonal; yet it is real. So I ask you to consider extending your philosophy deeper into this distinction of personal spirit, mind, and matter/energy when you nonchalantly say, everything is one.
Otherwise, my son, associating yourself solely with the aspect that all is one, can lead to a great discomfort as you keep running into…(Michael couldn’t keep from laughing, and everyone else joined in)…all these discrete aspects of yourself and the world.
Student: Hmmm… I was under the understanding that all there is, is God—his creation. That is, infinite--everything; there is no disconnection except by our own design, so we are always connected. That’s what keeps us and this universe from chaos.
MICHAEL: Yes, these are very tricky metaphysics, my son. Every sentence we say here is such a generalization. But we’ve also had our understanding that God is not evil. Evil exists in potential by the very nature of a finite universe with all its various shades of a person’s living according to God’s will, or departing from God’s will. These both exist, and must at least potentially, to give reality to creature choice; and obviously God set it up this way. Yet God is not in himself, evil.
These are paradoxes. This is the way in which reality is both one, and at the same time, infinitely diverse. God creates everything and is not separate from it, from his point of view, in his experience. He touches, knows everything, even that which is not-him, personally. From your point of view, you can separate yourself from God, even to the point of ceasing to exist as an ongoing, autonomous entity. God gives you that freedom. True enough, God’s overall plans ultimately encompass any decision you can make; still they are validly your decisions. Your existence as an autonomous entity is not an illusion. Your personality is not an illusion.
And this is contra-distinct from how some human philosophies and metaphysics see the nature of reality. They try to see things exclusively from God’s point of view—which is another illusion—you really can’t—and end up making only relative--everything. There is a great loss of value then in your appreciation of God’s "other" creation—matter/energy—the whole physical cosmos, and in the very struggles you are forced to make day to day dealing with it. If everything is already God and there is nothing to be gained, from your standpoint, you do not have any freedom. If you cannot separate yourself from God and cease to exist, you are just a little nodule of God. You are not in any way as distinct from him as we say you are.
Student: Well, I don’t see myself as being an illusion. I see myself as an extension of God, living and breathing as God—as everyone here is. I have the capacity to create as God creates, to see as God sees, to live and love as God lives and loves. We are all infinite potential—as you have said. I’m not a puppet that God is, like…we have free will to create. But I desire to create using the fabrics, and paints, and colors that God puts at our disposal.
(Obtaining God’s vision)
MICHAEL: But, my son, you will not see nearly as God sees for many and many endless eons of time, and growth, and even then, never quite. He alone is unqualifiedly absolute and infinite. You have a whole universe to traverse, and then a billion worlds of the inner, Havona universe to experience, before you even begin to approach God on Paradise, and his point of view. Your seeing as God sees is now a creative ideal, and marvelous goal you will spend an eternity approaching. You are just starting. (everyone laughs with Michael) You are complete only insofar as you absolutely are.
Student: But I am!
MICHAEL: Yes! But the way you are: your personality is not yet a possession of your consciousness. Your consciousness is just beginning.
Student: These are words to ponder. (more laughter)
Student (# 2): Thank you, really, for those words on Maya. I just got these great concepts of what you’re saying, and it’s always baffled me. I’m sorry; I just wanted to say, thank you for that, Michael, I’m very delighted the way you answered. And thank you, (Name), for asking!
Student: I’ve also been thinking about the Buddha Mind, and Christ Consciousness, and I understand what they are. But I also think that Buddha Mind is part of Christ Consciousness, and more. It goes beyond, into the Christ Consciousness.
(The inner life)
I have one more query. You mentioned how some people don’t have an inner life. They always have to have the radio or television on. I’ve been experiencing some deep agitation toward my daughter because of what I feel is a lack of an inner life, or an inner life that is greatly discombobulated—so to speak—full of pain and discomfort, and disconnected. I have to be patient with her, and at times it’s very trying, she reacts so spontaneously to any comments. I do love her, and she is a great mother to her new daughter, but I do foresee the need for a lot of growth.
MICHAEL: Those of you who have spent a great deal of time thinking through things and very consciously struggling to evolve a coherent and inclusive philosophy, know the enormous amount of effort required. So you can feel a kind of righteous worry about those who don’t seem to have even started on that path yet. As I told (Name) earlier this evening, this is the inner work by which you gain contact with your soul. For a non-thinking, non-reflecting person, their soul is there, except they will enjoy so very little of it until they cross over into the Morontia realm. You are seeing one of the results of this, my son, when your daughter is acting only off the surface, impulsive level of her mind, rather than the deep, well-thought-out and well articulated part of her mind she has not yet developed. These are both mental and spiritual functions, where both the mind and spirit help each other progress--one as origin, the other as articulation.
Student: Unfortunately she’s been damaged by her mother—not all the time, but greatly the cause of her lack of inner validity.
MICHAEL: Just do your best, my son, to peak her curiosity, her philosophical curiosity, by sitting down and reasoning with her, which I’m sure you’ve tried. This is the way to go. You introduce her to this adventure, and reassure her that it is not easy—there are these bottomless holes you step in from time to time—just because that is your profound human nature.
As you know, some people get extraordinarily impatient with themselves, and very frustrated that they cannot immediately fully understand themselves. They are just touching the bottomless depths for the first time, which are a bit scary. This is where your own self-honesty sets such a wonderful example, when you as parent can readily admit to your child there are enormous things you don’t understand yourself. This is genuine humility. Some lazy souls don’t want to start. They think, well, if reality is bottomless and unfathomable, why even try? You can only demonstrate the pure joy of philosophizing, and what wonderful times it’s given you.
Student: I just want her to be more introspective, and account for her actions and thoughts, and words.
MICHAEL: Your example is the most important. Mother Spirit and I do hope we are setting a good example for you all as parents.
Student: I will keep pondering what we talked about. I mean I’m not at all sold on all of that. (everyone laughing with Michael)
MICHAEL: Well, that’s good! I’m just pointing you at directions to explore.
Student: And you know I will!
MICHAEL: I’ll just say, in wrapping up, these two understandings, of the one and the many, also mark phases in your spiritual growth. Starting from the undifferentiated oneness of infancy, you encounter the infinite multiplicity of the material world. Then you may apprehend a oneness in discovering the spiritual unity that penetrates across many diverse fields of comprehension. Yet, having achieved this unity, you still need to go on, to a deeper appreciation, by reflection, of the discontinuity, the differences, the separations between realms, the discrete levels of an ever greater universe reality.
But enough for this evening! (Oh no!—more! Stay!) So I’ll bid you all a fond farewell for a while. It’s been fun, and these are great times we know together. They fill my heart as well. (Thank you for your love, Michael) I thank you for all of yours, and leave you with all the blessings of my peace. Let it sink deep within you and… Carry on! Good evening.
END