Michael - Being and Experience - Spiritual Generosity - The Spirit of Truth - Imagination and Reality - Jun 19, 2014 - Jerry Lane, Lightline
Michael Lightline - June 19, 2014.
Michael—T/R-JL
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, welcome. We welcome you into our hearts and our minds, and thank you for these bodies we have. We thank our Father for our very essence, our personalities, our unique being that, in this tiny tiny way, we do resemble him. We are truly his children for he is the most unique of all.
He is a personal being and we get our personality from him. Since he is only conditioned by his own volition, he chooses to give us too a relative freedom, even from himself, so that we may freely--totally freely--choose to tune into all of him, and all of his creation.
We thank you, Michael and Mother Spirit, for these bodies, for this pattern of human being that we are. Especially Mother Spirit, we thank you for your Holy Spirit, our spirit/mind connection with this physicalness of ours, our whole personhood, just as we thank the Eternal Son of Paradise for endowing us with creative spirit. It’s his spirit that gives us the ability to bring something right out of ourselves, upon which our freedom of choice depends.
I do want to mention for those who come to listen to these sessions, or read the transcripts of them, there are two free websites where they can go. One is called TMArchives.com, standing for the Teaching Mission and its archive. The other one is Daynal.org which has a wonderfully comprehensive and cross-referenced archive of all the transcripts that go back to 1982.
So thank you Michael, and thank you Mother Spirit--for us; and for being our closest spiritual parents. Amen.
Michael: Good evening everyone. This is Michael and I thank you for being here, being in the occasion for me to come and visit with you this way. Isn’t this the great joy of life, the fact our Father not only creates us and gives us life, but manages to get us going and sends us out on our own, unique and individual lives? Then he creates all these other personal beings as well, so we have company.
(The blessing of gregariousness)
In your case, these are not only your fellow human beings--all your friends and acquaintances--but also through your media, out there is a whole world you can tune in to and be curious about, get some information on and get some contact with. Then too there is the hierarchy of personal beings that you will be introduced to, you might say, one order at a time as you yourselves grow into being able to perceive them. So thank your Mother Spirit, thank Nebadonia for giving you a little boost in all your mental and spiritual facilities, especially the one of gregariousness, this marvelous curiosity that you have about each other.
It’s the delight you have in getting together, in so many ways that you do get together. It gives you the opportunity to engage in God’s essence, this thing of sharing, sharing your lives with another by being able to express yourselves and be out there, even discover yourselves through your expressions because they are real. Your expressions have been given objective reality just by your going forth in all the ways you do. Then too, once you are secure in your own being, once you truly know and can appreciate and worship the fact that you are, you can say, “Dear God: thank you for me!”
Once you are really secure in this--sometimes, if you are lucky, even as a small child--you can open up and take in others. It is these others that really form the most precious part of your soul, because they too are not altogether material, although they too have a body, a visible body like yours. Let’s say, personality-to-personality, soul-to-soul, you can have so much in you of these other unique beings, these other “little walking infinities” as we call you. Don’t be put off by that infinity in another. Don’t be frightened by that, or even overwhelmed by that; but delight in that.
Delight in: here comes another being like yourself that you cannot totally capture because they too have their own creative spirit. They too are another whole universe unto themselves in how they see things. And to share that? This is how you grow most successfully, not only in what you do by yourself that is so important, but here comes another soul with a different lifetime of experience. Most of you can remember, when you were children and adolescents, just how awesome those grown-ups were with all their worldly experience. You listened to their stories and couldn’t wait to get out there into the world and find your own wonderful stories to tell sometime.
(Being and experience)
The marvel of experience: there is no substitute for it. This is why this whole time-and-space cosmos exists, full of trillions and trillions of unique personal beings. The purpose of it all is experience. As you know, I myself, in spite of being hundreds of billions of years old and having all the endless trillions upon trillions of people I have known, and have shared my life with, as they have offered their life to share with me on all the millions of worlds that are inhabited much like yours; I too needed and was blessed to have a human life myself--what all of you are now engaged in. To me this life was so priceless, it is my greatest desire and hope for each one of you, that you too can feel this sense of worship, this sense of thankfulness that you are--that the universe resounds with each joyous cry, “I am!”
And then to have a way of storing your experience, to have not only what you know of as memory that you can readily access, but to have a soul growing as well? We’ve taught, and I hope you can get some feeling for, the fact that your memories are only like an outline, an outline of your experiences. What actually fills that outline is your soul.
Your soul is not some record book that God is keeping as a ledger somewhere so far distant from you, because he is not distant from you. He is part of you and your soul is a living filing-in of the outline that your memories are. Compared to your memories that are readily accessible--you can remember what happened on a certain date with a certain person—you need to take time out of your present life to sit down, close your eyes, and let your soul come forth to give you different times in your life--what they actually felt like. This meditation gives you a good sense then, that as you go through your day-to-day life, minute by minute your soul is what is giving you all the meaning and values your life contains. You can look around and everything is pregnant with this meaning coming forward.
(Time and reality)
In this sense, my dear ones, your life—and this whole universe of God’s--is not going anywhere. It’s just moving around in an eternal now. It is not going anywhere so much as it is constantly arriving. Each moment is complete because it is God’s creation, and is essentially spiritual in nature. You might say it escapes the confines and the purely logical sequence of the material universe because it is personal and spiritual. At one and at the same time reality is complete in each moment, because it is God’s handiwork, yet at the same time it is also growing.
As you know, this does not apply to the finite, impersonal reality about you of matter and energy. But to be complete and feel that you are complete, yet you are, hopefully, also growing? Even this is very much a function of your free will and how much you embrace this aspect of reality that is not repeating itself, in a strict cause-and-effect way, but is constantly growing and teasing you, asking you to grow with it.
Experience your unique experience of life. Some folks, when they first encounter this as youngsters, find it can lead to an overwhelming sense of loneliness. You are all, alone in the world because there is no other one quite like another. This very loneliness can lead into a whole range of what you call extreme anti-social behavior. Because you are a being that cannot pick yourself up by your own bootstraps, you cannot get a hold of yourself, you have the creative ability to create a version of yourself, what you call your ego. We use that word to mean all that you perceive yourself to be, and all your memories of who you have been, plus all your desires and projections of what you want to become. And you need this. You need to have some sense of who you are. But it is a self-creation.
(Memories and soul)
This is another way in which your memories, created by your own personal self, are contra-distinct from your soul, which is co-authored by God. But for those who, perhaps, get a little too overwhelmed with their very uniqueness and, out of this loneliness, feel that their ego and their own sense of themselves is all there is, there is very little deep, soulful sharing that overcomes their sense of loneliness, because they are not really exchanging experience. Without that sharing they can be led to the deepest cynicism and the most truly obscene acts against others. And Mother Spirit and I reserve that term obscene for the violence, the irreparable harm and pain and suffering that people deliberately cause another out of a cynical sense of: everybody would exercise their power this way if only they had the nerve to do so.
It is the final self-justification that, as you have been informed, leads some beings to extinction. Their rebirth on the other side is not some blessed event because as they become aware they have survived death, and their soul comes forth more and more--like with all of you--their soul is filled with what they have done in their lifetime--all the pain and suffering that they have deliberately caused others. It becomes a merciful act to allow them to cease to exist.
Fortunately, this is pretty rare. Most individuals, as much as they have suffered at the hands of others, have not passed it on. Like most of you, they have had the supreme courage to take in all the pain and suffering that has been put upon them, and let it end with them, not just cynically pass it on and add to it. This is one way each individual on this world can improve it by taking all that comes to them, all those “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as well as the deliberately caused pain, and not pass it on. Rather, they use all their creativity to come fresh to meet the next pair of human eyes with their own wonderful sense of sharing.
So, my dear ones, I hope to give you a sense of appreciation that you are this experiential being out here in a time and space that was designed for you and for all of us; and get a feeling too of your soul growing apace. Remember it’s partly God’s view of your life and all your choices, all your freedom, all the creativity you are bringing right out of yourself to meet “tomorrow.”
Now if you have any questions or comments, let’s do that.
Student #1: Michael, I feel like I should have a question, but I don’t. I just wanted to say: Thank you.
Michael: Wonderful! You sound very complete to me.
Student #2: Michael, could you go into some of the advantages of living on a planet such as ours?
Michael: Yes, I believe you are referring to the fact of all the troubles this planet has seen because it did go into default?
Student #2: What are the spiritual advantages that we will gain from the trials and tribulations we are suffering here?
(Spiritual advances through trial)
Michael: I refer you to that statement in the Urantia Book that your Guardian Angel is not here to smooth all your ruffled feathers, nor to make your path easy and gently sloping downhill all the way, but actually to--as much as possible--put you in situations--enhanced situations--that require you to exercise your free will and make choices. Because only by doing these existential acts can you really get a sense of not only who and what you are, but the kind of being you are. You do have abilities, yet as I have taught so often, these abilities exist only in their use. They may have some theoretical, abstract meaning to you, but it is only the exercise of your free will that gives you this dignity, this completeness I talked about. It’s the feeling of being engaged and having the power to change things; to express yourself, to have your mark on things and be a participant in reality.
You are raised in a society that puts certain challenges on you because it is not fully developed, especially by contrast what you have been told about worlds in Light and Life where every parent is what you would consider a saint, and the whole social order of that entire world is very, very peaceful. There everybody is so creative, and enjoys such a completeness, that they live for hundreds of years because even the human body itself is given the opportunity to keep evolving.
On this world, because of the double default of both your Planetary Prince and your Material Son and Daughter, there is so much suffering because of that. Your world is such a departure from almost all other planets with their spiritual guidance. You have a much harder time of it, and yet you are called upon, and given the glory, of decisiveness in the face of all these challenges, just because things aren’t already so perfect around you in terms of social structures and individual development.
If you are aware of world affairs, you know that now, even though there is this Spiritual Renaissance we talk about, and there is a growth of democratic institutions, there is also still so much of the old, cynical adage: Might makes Right. Today might makes the ability to censor and control the media to where only a very narrow point of view is allowed, and people are murdered in the most terrible ways as examples for anybody who strays from that single point of view.
But if you wish to be aware of what is happening in your world, there are a number of different news outlets now with all their varying outlooks. You can be aware of this enormous suffering that is still taking place because of your, shall we say, more primitive societies.
Take this into you, and be aware of that much suffering. Truly and deeply wonder what you personally can do about it, even to help your neighbors with their difficulties. This is why you are given this possible status of Agondonter, which means you can continue to believe, and act, and send out some goodness and justice and righteousness, even though it is not always rewarded; even though it is not always obvious. These are your advantages of living on such a hard world--the challenges you can choose to meet. Does this give you some sense of it?
Student #2: Yes. Thank you very much.
Michael: It is not that we of the spiritual community would choose this to happen. It is exactly the opposite. We didn’t choose for your System Sovereign to go so astray and be joined by your Planetary Prince, and all the celestial souls that were lost because of this. There is no intention of the spiritual community to cause suffering, and your Urantia Book spells out wonderfully what it calls the “inevitabilities of human life.” (Ed: page 52) Even individuals born on a planet that is well established in Light and Life still have their choices to make because that is just part of being a unique individual with a creative spirit. For you the contrast is so much greater, and so the necessity for courage to act upon what you feel is right is so much greater.
Now be in my peace, although we do appreciate how hard it is sometimes for you to feel it. It is our profound desire that you can feel it, and be in my peace.
Student #3: Thank you, Father, this is __, and I can relate to what you are saying. I keep fighting my inner self in the fact that, as an example, just driving a car in horrible traffic at the wrong time of the day because I tend to hurt a little bit. I’ve been in pain for quite a while and sometimes my nerves get real short. I really have to catch myself from getting angry at the other drivers that are in the same predicament that I am. So a lot of times I have to stop and try and catch myself from loosing it, and ask for forgiveness at the time. It definitely seems to help.
(Mini-meditations—relaxing into ones larger self)
Michael: My son, that is what we recommend, these many little mini-meditations. They are not meditations where you are trying to change yourself so much as a way of relaxing into your spiritual home base, as we called it one time. It’s having established and being able to connect from time to time with a spiritual base of appreciation. There you are, stuck in traffic, yet you still are able to say, “Thank you, God, that I am! Here I am stuck in traffic, but my lungs are breathing, and my heart is beating, and I’m digesting the last thing I ate. I can wiggle my fingers and my toes, and look about me.” This sense of worship is to us one of the most wonderful kinds of meditation. You just relax into your Self. I think you have found a lot of this already.
Student #3: Yes, many little mini-victories over those obstacles that constantly seem to get in our way. I guess during the day it is just constantly reminding ourselves of why we are here, and that everybody is going through it. So we’ve got to be above it, and the rewards will be later--hopefully.
Michael: And also, my son, the reward is sometimes the very next minute. You may not be able to feel it but the reward, the victory is a genuine one because it is getting you through your life. You are keeping yourself from flying off the handle in some kind of road rage, and smashing into someone else to have a melodramatic event happen to end it all. You keep on a steady attention not only for yourself--because more anger only re-injures you--but for all of those around you. You stay aware of them to take them in and be concerned about them. This kind of caring for others is what so often can see you through.
(Spiritual generosity)
We call it spiritual generosity, being strong enough in yourself to be the right person for all those other total strangers all around you, stuck in the same situation. It’s another kind of sharing the fact they are not just willy-nilly smashing into you. In this way you are all together, sharing the situation; and it is a triumph. So by all means give yourself that credit. Feel the triumph, sometimes minute by minute, of what you are doing not only for yourself, but also for them.
Student #3: That is some truth I have to keep reminding myself: Just keep trying. That is what we are here for. That is what everybody says to me: just keep on keeping. Just try to help as much as we can--in every little way, I think.
Michael: Just by being open and taking them in.
Student #3: Right.
Michael: You have that wonderful expression of not getting stuck on yourself, especially when you are suffering. Continue to have the marvelous curiosity to look around and keep taking in all that whole world surrounding you. Thank you, my son. Keep being in my peace.
Student #3: I will. Thank you, Father.
Student #4: Good evening, Michael, this is __. I just have a question. Many of my friends, or most of my friends, have real resistance to spirit because of the experiences they’ve had in the past with the hypocrisies of many of the church experiences they have had. Do you have any suggestions on how to approach people, who are really good people, they just haven’t developed any interest in spirit because of their experiences.
(Realizing personal spirit as ones creative abilities)
Michael: Yes, my son. I would point out and introduce them to our notion of personality, that they are a unique person. Also do something that Mother Spirit and I like to do, and that is, often when we use the word “spirit” we remind everybody that it is creative spirit. Spirit is that aspect of human, personal reality that is creative and is not bound by strict cause-and-effect. This is an aspect of personality that is contrasted to impersonal matter and energy--the whole physical world, the chair you are sitting on, the room all around you. All personality has this creative spirit, and all spirit is personal. I can assure you there is no such thing as an impersonal spirit abroad in the universe. All spirit is a function of personality.
People have a whole range of what the word “spirit” means to them. To some people it means a kind of séance table-thumping, like contacting their dead grandma. Or they’ve been so totally abused in a cynical, dogmatic way in the world’s different churches. For Mother Spirit and me, religion really means each individual’s relationship to God, both within themselves and surrounding them with God’s creation. Different churches come about of people getting together to share their religious feelings and experiences.
I would go at it in a new way for them. Say to them, “What I mean, and what you may think of as spirit, is not all these human organizations, but what is happening right inside you. You actually have creative spirit. You yourself are co-creating your whole reality. No two people see things or experience things exactly alike. Each one is involved in creating their own unique universe.” In this way you are taking the word and the concept of spirit away from, as you say, cynical human organizations they are fed up with, and bringing it home to them.
They are a spiritual being. They are co-creating their own world as they go along. Now for people who are extreme in considering themselves to be very scientific and objective, this might be rather new to them--the idea they themselves are co-creating, with a personal spirit, their supposed purely objective reality. But this is where a little playful teasing comes in. Just ask them to think about this to give them an appreciation, then, of what has been given them by being a personal being. How does that sound?
Student #4: Very good. Thank you very much. It’s always such a treat to have you here, Michael.
(What is ”teasing” as Michael and Mother Spirit mean it?)
Michael: I’d say this is where we are like the whole Urantia Book, as about 90% of it too can’t yet be “proven.” The whole Urantia Book in one way is an enormous tease. It is saying, “Why don’t you consider this?”—or, “Have you thought of that?” But it does all make sense; it all hangs together. And so you will be giving your friends the gift of themselves by saying, “You yourself are a unique personality right from God”--that kind of spirit. And since they are endowed with their own creativity, they are not bound what happened the minute before. They themselves can introduce something and have a choice. If they can get a feeling for that--their own creativity--it is one of the greatest things you can give them. This is what Mother Spirit and I hope to spread abroad. Thank you for your question.
Student #4: Thank you, Michael.
Michael: Be in my peace. Well, my dear ones, let’s wrap up this particular session even though it brings so much joy to Mother Spirit and myself, this sharing--sharing our viewpoint with all of you.
Student #3: Thank you, Michael. I think we all benefit a whole lot more than you and Mother do--by your presence. At least that is how I feel.
(Mother Spirit and Michael’s Spirit of Truth)
Michael: Well, it is your presence right within us. I get a lot of all of you by way of Mother Spirit, as you know. She is so much more literally a part of you, while I am more like a companion. You have my Spirit of Truth within you, but even that comes by way of Mother Spirit because I can be off in a convention, a get-together from time to time with all my fellow Creator Sons. But you have her and, through her, you have my spirit too right within you.
I say my Spirit of Truth is an orientation and openness to accept with humility that you are surrounded by such an enormity, so many infinities in every dimension and direction. We tease you that you are kind-of a “mid-range creature,” poised/suspended between the infinite and the infinitesimal. And yet here you are, moment by moment by moment with the biggest tease of all: that this need never ever stop—ever!
(Imagination and total reality)
Your ability to grow is part of your God-given personality. This is what a personal being is because they are a direct creation of God’s. One way to get a grasp on his infinity is that only God is infinite enough to create all the personalities we have been talking about. It takes an enormous reach of your imagination to even begin to realize: this is actually all real, this whole universe with all its personal beings. This is all actually happening right now, and it is what you are bound for—both out there and in here where we meet.
Mother Spirit sends you all her love, and I send you my peace. Treasure it inside. Fill your own little home base of spirit with who and what you really are. It’s where you connect with our Father, and us. So, Good Evening, my dear ones.
Be in my peace.
END