Michael - Tenacious, Spontaneous Spirit - Wasting energy - Apr 07, 2008 - Marin TM

Michael--April 7, 2008

Marin TM Group--Mill Valley, California--U.S.A.

MICHAEL--T/R-JL

1. (Tenacious, Spontaneous Spirit)
2. (Who You Are to Yourself--self-conscious Self)
3. (Wasting Energy)
4. (Monjoronson’s Message of Mercy)
5. (Free Will Is a Progressive Growth)
6. (Each Individual Recapitulates the Evolution of Life and Civilization)
7. (Having Emotions Vs. Their Having You)
8. (Breaking Through Barriers of Fear to Relate with Others)

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Welcome. We’ve enjoyed your series of lessons on what constitutes being an individual within the spiritual encompassing of God. You’ve explained some of the seeming paradoxes of how gaining self-confidence actually allows us to forget ourselves and be devoted more fully to what is happening--not by trying to hold onto some notion of being blissful all the time, but trusting in our own adaptability. At the same time we can slowly acquire a self-awareness of our living presence that is far more tenacious and subtle than any anxious ego-awareness. This is that good company we can keep ourselves, and this spontaneous part of us can be encouraged to just pop in and help us reflect on what we’re doing. We can bring spirit to bear for a fresh re-evaluation. So we thank you for these lessons and examples that we do our best to imagine, or remember events in our lives that match--in order to really feel what you mean. Thank you very much. Amen

MICHAEL: Good evening, this is Michael, and Mother Spirit and I definitely welcome you all as well. We invite you to be--just as much as you can allow yourselves to be--in our world. We engage in these longer sessions with this particular group just so by hearing or, later, reading our words, you can stay in our point of view as long as possible.

(Tenacious, spontaneous spirit)

Yes, we do hope to give you actual experiences through these lessons, if you can trust us and let your creative spirit provide the experiences that our words suggest. This can also give you somewhat of a respite from your own point of view. So, my children, I suggest you just take us in and let what we say sink in a bit and do its good work, for we are informing you on very deep levels. You may not feel the full effect for quite a while, consciously, but we do hope it will help you in your intra-personal relationships by an ever increasing security of feeling/experiencing yourself as a spiritual being. This can stick with you through all the different states of mind, the different learned mentalities of how to go about your day to day lives--all those practical abilities you’ve acquired.

To emphasize what Mother Spirit spoke of last time, there is no particularly blissful state of mind you can maintain at all times. Sometimes the very real circumstances of your life call for a commitment you can achieve only by courageously letting yourself go and trusting in your own spontaneity to rise to the occasion. Again, as she said, no matter how very strange or self-contradictory it seems, spontaneity can become a new tenacious continuity in your life. The emergence of spontaneous spirit can surprise you most delightfully. You may experience it as, all of a sudden, something new is working. People begin to emerge as individuals. There is simply more spirit around--yours and theirs.

After a while it is possible to experience consciously how your spirit can be aware of spirit, your personality can be directly be aware of other personality. This is in part a function of self-knowledge for the more you know yourself, the more you can trust an inner kind of reflection. How you are changing inside can tell you about what is happening outside. This is the main reason we caution you against suppressing emotion, even though, obviously, as you grow up you must struggle mightily not to be captured by emotion.

Most of you do go through an adolescent period of practicing indifference, deliberately becoming callus as the only way at that time to get some freedom from the emotions blowing you this way and that. But in time you will find that your inner emotions can very accurately reflect the situation about you. You can begin to trust that vague fears or anxieties are a righteous caution that in some way or another you’re getting out on the edge of something dangerous you may not yet recognize. Perhaps if you are driving along it simply means: slow down; there’s something your whole being and higher consciousness realizes in the situation.

By the same means you can become a more loving person just by trusting more and more in Mothers Spirit’s Adjutant of Counsel augmenting your impulses of gregariousness, your inner delight in company. It helps to assuage some of the distrust and confrontation that is endemic in certain social situations, for it takes courage to put yourself out there this way, to trust the upwelling desire to be the cheerful, supportive person you yourself want to find. Someone needs to take this initiative, and there is a wonderful spiritual reward when it is you.

These are all delightful aspects of what you think of as self-confidence and, true enough, they do not come about from hanging onto yourself for dear life. That only fills you with you. You’ll be so busy watching yourself, so carefully monitoring everything you do, there’ll be no room for anyone else. Ironically, this can lead to a terrible boredom when an individual does not recognize that relief is in loving and trusting those others about, and realizing they are what we call little walking infinities. Rather, you’re letting your spirit and your personality register theirs so you can literally see in them, and recognize through the confrontation with their uniqueness, a kindred soul, a fellow human.

This is a living balance that you cannot hold still, you cannot capture in some fixed formula for living that will be good for all time. This is why we assure you that much of your human life is unpredictable, much cannot be anticipated--even though this does not relieve you of the necessity to try. It’s just that so much time can be wasted in being overly anxious and trying to evolve or develop some modality that will suit all situations. These anxieties are still functions of your ego awareness of yourself, your formalized ideas and notions of who you are and who you’ve been. In terms of time they are all coming out of the past.

Mother Spirit recommended in her last lesson that if you are losing yourself too much in the moment by relying on some past nostalgia of what worked before, you need to take a break. You need to call on us for a few minutes. Take a deliberate break. Let your more spontaneous, creative nature come out, even if it may be quite disturbing. Your spirit might be telling you, stop! Don’t do this anymore! You are living your life as if walking backwards, using a rearview mirror of past reactions to see where you are going. Because of this mirror function of your ego, always relating to the past, you keep backing into things. In this too it takes nerve to be open to the possibility that changes are called for.

Consider letting your spirit come forth. Then take them seriously, these suggestions from your higher consciousness or from your Father Fragment, you can feel inside when your prayers are answered. Take your spirit seriously and follow it. Otherwise it will just turn off. Your spirit’s function is not to nag or annoy you. You have to credit what it offers. This is how you transform yourself, my children. This is how you bring into consciousness the more tenacious and heartfelt continuity of a bubbling wellspring of energy and ideals. This is the source of spiritual strength, the ability to do the right thing. You do have to stop and ask: Father, what is the best thing to do next?

You may be pleasantly surprised with how quickly the answer can come. We encourage you to do this inner asking often, my children, irrespective of whether or not you can follow the answers. This is another whole level of self-honesty, a way of staying in touch with the ideals you receive, and admitting to your spirit, if you will: Thank you very much. I just can’t do it yet, but I will keep your suggestions in mind and lean in that direction.

(Who you are to yourself--self-conscious self)

Mother Spirit and I have tried to give you a sense of what we and the Urantia book mean by your self-conscious self, your real, evolving self based on your conscious life and memories and, deeper, your soul. Just because you are, hopefully, growing and evolving, you may look back and see that much of what you once believed now seems illusory. This pertains not only to your own childhood and adolescence, for now, with your great multi-media--television and the internet and your movies, you’re more and more able to look back into the history of the human race in so many cultures all over the world, and get some notion of what folks once believed. It may appear that how they lived was also childish or illusory--very primitive across enormous sweeps of time in terms of the different ways people experienced their human reality.

Yet, as Mother Spirit cautioned, be very much aware when you are looking at either your own past or another person’s life, be aware you are looking at it from the outside-in, and as such, it is your own, present construct and therefore very limited. Whereas you, and everyone else who ever lived, actually live your life viewed from the inside-out. And every moment--as it is lived--is complete, even transcendent, being encompassed as it is in God’s presence, like now. This is how you are actually living your life moment to moment; and it is real. Your self-conscious self is no illusion, but real, my children--to God, to Mother Spirit and me, to your personality and your soul--even if it seems to you to be fluctuating wildly at times and somewhat an illusion in retrospect.

There is a difference between an illusion--something that appears real at the time and affects you, however it may later prove to be just some temporary appearance you’ve outgrown; there is a difference between this and a conscious hallucination that you are fully aware of--something not quite right in your visual or perceptual world. Mother Spirit and I and, of course, our Father, can see your life as you see yourself, and we do honor that because it is real. Consider: it is within the realm of your conscious mentality, my children, that you make those critical choices that do determine whether or not you desire to know and be in accord with God’s will--the very trend of the universe.

Keep in mind our Father’s outreaching mercy, His ultimate justice in limiting these critical choices to your consciousness. The potential of your eternal survival is finally determined by your own highly conscious individual choices. This is the reality of your individual self. This is the power of spirit you are capable of progressively knowing. So be not afraid, my children, to be who you are and who you can grow to be. This is a natural thing. This is God’s will for you--to grow into your true individuality, both for yourself and as the most precious gift you can give to others, and to Him. You can trust in His Supreme Being that set up this human adventure. You can trust Him--who decreed that you be the complex being you are, and ordained you will some day lose this physical body of yours to gain an even greater, more subtle and real, spiritual one.

This is you trusting His creation--life itself, as a living being, no matter what befalls you. And so Mother Spirit and I humbly acknowledge you, my children--especially as you know yourselves. This is the kind of being you were created to be.

If you have any questions or comments this evening, let them too spring from your individual self.

Student: Father Michael, is what we’re being told about global warming being caused by people as dangerous as it sounds, or is it just a natural cycle the earth is going through?

(Wasting energy)

MICHAEL: Yes, my son, it’s both, and even other causes like sun cycles. But the enormous increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is directly due to human consumption of fossil fuels. If you look at this from a long term historical perspective, you can realize that the hundreds of horsepower you nonchalantly toss around out on the highway is a very recent phenomenon. Think too of the way your fear of crime drives you to light up your cities and pour billions of watts of energy out into space all night long. There is a really fantastically enormous waste involved in your modern civilizations compared to any time previous, even a hundred years ago. And it started just recently with the use of coal, natural gas, and petroleum, a kind of geometrically progressive increase that cannot last for long.

But as we have commented before, my son, human beings are economic creatures, always living within limits of necessity. But by that very token they are capable of enormous change when it is needed. The supreme irony is that a world with much less waste in the so-called advanced cultures of the world would lead to much more spiritually rewarding, fuller lives in those very cultures. When the human ego looks less to how many hundreds of horsepower it can casually toss about, and thinks more of getting in shape to ride a bicycle around where possible, this could be a net increase for that human soul to, as you say, stop to sniff the flowers along the way.

From our point of view we see the more mechanically advanced cultures being driven along by literally hundreds of millennia of the general racial past of never having enough power. That is the human past you are all standing on, and that is the source for all this greed--if you will, this reveling in such enormous waste. For all of human history there was never enough power, never enough energy. Aside from the wind and running water it was all organic, all living human and animal muscle--hundreds of thousands of years until someone built a fire under a boiler, connected a steam line to a piston, that to a wheel, and then watched as it spun merrily along--indefinitely. What a wonder that was, and what dreams and ambitions it gave rise to.

So we encourage you to look forward to a time when energy is more respected than it is now. Hopefully these changes in your climate will help convince you of that sooner than later. Meanwhile just do what you can in your own individual life to curb your own greed for unnecessary power. Does this help answer your question, my son?

Student: Indeed it does, it puts it on the individual level and it also gives me a glimmer of hope that the human race is going to make it after all.

MICHAEL: Well, there is a very real decimation going on constantly. In the same nation/states with such enormous waste you have such a high degree of human suffering caused by, ironically, freely chosen life-styles. People are literally doing themselves in and taking themselves out of the game: but what a waste. (Yes) But you are in our love, and we hope to help guide you to finding our peace.

Student: Thank you, Father Michael.

Student: Hello Michael. On the note of human adventure and where we’re all going, I wanted to ask you to amplify, or just add anything you’d like, in regard to the message from Monjoronson this past weekend. By its nature it caught everybody’s attention and really raised eyebrows when he said the Adjudication has begun. The Adjudication has begun, and further, what sounds like a kind of separation of, well, to quote the bible, the sheep from the goats--so to speak. It seemed an invitation, actually a requirement for people to make their decisions now, that this is a time of decision and that what’s at stake is whether they’re going to remain on the planet. I couldn’t tell but it seemed like it might have been a metaphor. He said those who would not be willing to go with the Father’s will, the Father’s plan for the planet, would be removed. He actually said they would be removed from the planet, which strikes me as being almost like a Rapture, but like a reverse of the Christian Rapture where the sheep remain and the goats are taken off. So I wonder if you can help us validate this, and add anything that your divine mind and loving personality wants to add to this. Thank you.

(Monjoronson’s message of mercy)

MICHAEL: Yes, my son, if I’m not mistaken, I just did. (group laughs) Monjoronson is issuing a clear clarion call to help everybody wake up to the dis-ease that is infesting you by way of your own freedom of choice. But this too, my son, is very complex. Mother Spirit and I have tried to address this issue by showing you the various ways your free will is limited by so much cultural conditioning. It is what I meant by being able to see the terrible waste stemming from long outdated cultural attitudes of never enough energy.

Remember it’s been so very recent--the discovery of enormous sources of energy in fossil fuels that led to lifestyles that cannot be sustained in such cruel disparity. On the most basic levels of nutrition, while you have a third of the world’s population dying or living enormously stunted lives for lack of good food, you have millions and millions of folks riddled with disease through obesity or poor nutrition within their choice. There is such a thing as gluttony, not only with food but with all aspects of human life that require energy. A lack of freedom of choice--from a spiritual standpoint, is being so caught up in the cultural habits of the family and larger society. People cannot grow out of this conditioning because they have yet to get in touch with their own spontaneity and creativity. This is what it takes to break out of the patterns they were born into.

Monjoronson reminds you that these choices will be forced upon you simply because the world is a finite place with limited resources. Ironically it’s with a kind of spiritual justice that those who cannot decide to live a fuller, healthier life are being taken out, yet not exactly by their own choices, but by their inability to choose. This is happening; the decimation is coming down. We emphasize it is within the realm of each individual’s consciousness that freedom exists, or not, and why we’ve given lessons on how to increase your conscious contact with liberating spirit. Once you’ve made contact, you must cherish and credit it; you must obey it for, being spirit, it will not compel you but will go away.

God is spirit and His will, stemming from His love, is no other than the best way for you to live. Mother Spirit’s Mind/Spirit Adjutants of worship and wisdom are here to augment your own natural abilities. My Spirit of Truth is here to help you sort through this maze of what is better and what is not. But yes, the whole universe is progressive by God’s will, and you do have to keep up. (much laughter {Ouch!})

Student: So the removable of those who are not choosing the better way is really a self-removable and we needn’t project into that the notion of anything like a Rapture, some exponential speeding-up of what is already happening. So there will be a self-elimination of those who aren’t living spiritually, along with a kind-of caldron boiling out factors that don’t belong. Am I on the right track with this interpretation?

MICHAEL: Very much so, my son. This has been the case right from the beginning with the first humans, Andon and Fonta; and ever since. You have given this process the term Social Darwinism, the weeding out of unfit biological and behavioral strains. Mother Spirit mentioned last time the civilizing benefits of warfare, one of which was the elimination of the less fit to survive that way. It’s difficult to think of any harder Darwinism than that, except that modern warfare is so indiscriminate it takes out individuals haphazardly/randomly.

Student: If I may clarify a bit more… In the separation that Monjoronson speaks of, it would appear he is playing some role in this…separation of the sheep and the goats, and so it’s not just the natural forces, but it’s something extra being injected by him. It sounded like what the Urantia book means by a judgment of the age that is now occurring--not the adjudication of the Lucifer Rebellion--that’s already happened--but the judgment of the age is what the Magisterial Mission is for. So there’s also action from him and not just the planetary evolution speeding up. Could you throw more light on his role?

MICHAEL: Yes. It is most fundamental that you keep in mind his mission is one of mercy. This is critical for it steers you away from ideas that any of us---including my brother Monjoronson--would directly negate or supervene your individual freedom. This we do not do. It is not in our nature. Intervention does nothing to advance your true spiritual growth. Again, Monjoronson wishes to get you all to wake up!--to make the necessary decisions--to bring all these concerns into consciousness and begin to think outside your habitual conditioning. Start thinking in terms of this whole world and all the peoples on it--those billions I mentioned who are suffering and perishing beyond your wildest imagination, just by the accident of where they were born.

There are great turning points looming near with respect to how you can continue using energy so wastefully. You are beginning to speak of peak oil--the leveling off of new discoveries of crude oil and natural gas. You notice the phenomena of global warming due partly to carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere faster than the plant life can use. There is no other way than conservation but, beyond that, what we call spiritual generosity--curbing your own greed and waste so others might simply live. This is part of God’s law, this Social Darwinism that comes into effect following basic physical limitations you do well to respect. These considerations are another aspect of loving your neighbors as yourself. It is the only way out. You can choose to share your wealth, or be driven to it.

Student: I’ll just comment and say it appears there isn’t any sense in looking for an overt event of divine intervention per se, but a process of acceleration of the need to make decisions that lead to sustainable living for all of us. There could be a point of acceleration that would be intolerable, that would force everyone to decide one way or the other--maybe catastrophic conditions. But we’re not going to see an intervention amidst this; although we’ll certainly have individual input from spirit. There won’t be a planetary event in our day for all to see, but rather something more subtle.

MICHAEL: Essentially--yes. It is still a sign of immaturity to expect to be saved from yourselves…(much laughter)…and hope that Daddy will intervene and take care of you. Keep in mind God is already inside you, and can show you the way as soon as you are open to Him--and have the nerve and the will to act in accord. Remember to seek my peace as well.

Student: Yes, Michael, I remember hearing someone say that true humility is obedience to the unenforceable, and that if we humble ourselves and allow ourselves to hear the Father’s will within us, then we become more truly ourselves. I remember Mother Spirit addressing us to take the time in our day--little stillness breaks--and some of these teaching also practice resting naturally at certain moments; in essence the same thing. In time these moments become one long moment if we let go the habits, the illusions, the notions we hold onto so dearly.

There seems to be a veil over this planet that promotes separation from the Father, instead of oneness and unity. But if we allow ourselves to take those moments of stillness and rest, and experience our innate wisdom, and let go the conventional mind that casts this veil, then the choice is evident. Our freedom, which is our natural state, is assured. So that’s our individual responsibility.

(Free will is a progressive growth)

MICHAEL: Yes, my son, that is very much to the point. I emphasized tonight the way in which your freedom of choice is a progressive growth in your life, starting from almost none when you were a small child, you were surrounded by such enormous forces over which you had no understanding, and therefore no control. This growth of freedom will continue on into your Morontia phases, indeed on into eternity as you encounter and understand more and more of the Father’s creation. Mother Spirit reminded you, you will always find more to discover and know, even about yourself.

It is in this sense these are not individual choices, but the lack of them stemming from cultural conditioning that can be traced back to the Lucifer Rebellion and the thwarting of divine plans that would have had Urantia far more advanced in social equality than it is. Keep in mind that all evolutionary planets are just that. They all start out in primitive imperfection and slowly grow their civilizations. This is also true of individuals. The individual does not choose to be separated from God. This is a stage you go through. We explained the process a few lessons ago of how you leave the magical oneness of childhood of the undifferentiated physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of life, much like very primitive folks who perceive even the trees and rocks are alive with spirits--for there is some truth in that. But there comes an adolescent period of the maximum separation of individualization as each person tries to achieve a grasp of his or her own uniqueness--first from their parents and that generation, then from the general cultural at large, and this includes religious beliefs about God. This often entails practicing indifference and callousness--insensitivity and rebellion, just to get some sense of freedom from social constraints. It takes time and the maturity of experience to learn that insensitivity also cuts you off from what is worthwhile in life as well, and you seek to be reconnected with what can now be appreciated on a higher level with all your hard-earned soul wealth of the process.

So this process is a civilizing thing of oneness--separation--mature connection. The estrangement from ones source is not something the individual chooses because it is a kind of suffering. The individual has to grow a more mature and genuine freedom to have a choice--to tune in to their Father Fragment, to trust their increasing wisdom and have the nerve to step off and live it. You all start out from scratch in a relatively unenlightened culture from which you need to differentiate yourself, but you can see how many individuals are arrested at different stages along this path to becoming enlightened, some never leaving the realm of magic, others the attitudes of indifference and callousness. Hopefully each generation takes genuine progress a bit further than where they encountered it.

I like your definition of humility, of choosing to do something you aren’t forced to. We say it comes about by the perception of something enormous--God’s will manifested in His creation. You have the choice of feeling very tiny and humiliated, or you can glory that you can have such a perception.

Student: I’ll choose the latter. I’ve been reading in the Urantia book about the nature of God, the personality of God, the mystery of His infinity. It mentioned the choice we have between the material and the spiritual and how we seem to run aground in our material ways of life, and if we continue that way we cease to exist. It reinforced my drive to be more spiritually open-minded to the expansiveness of who we all are. But it seems so odd we’re inundated with all these beliefs, we’re not even given the chance to think for ourselves. So we experience suffering. Because I suffered I started asking questions about what I believed and who I am. I still am. I look around and I think we’re living wrong. We’re not living in harmony with our Father, our Source.

MICHAEL: Yes, my son, but consider it’s the natural tendency of an animal/primitive nature to expand until stopped. Animals are territorial, and with humans this includes not only land but knowledge and religion--you’ve gone to war over disputed facts and beliefs. You develop in a certain direction until you hit a wall--figuratively speaking. You experience a limitation, and that is suffering. Hopefully you learn by the experience; you find a way around the limit by understanding it.

(Each individual recapitulates the evolution of life and civilization)

Every individual has to recapitulate, not only as an embryo the evolution of planetary life, but as a child and adolescent the evolution of civilization. A little two-year-old is kind-of like a small cave man walking around, and when you thwart them…(much laughter)…thank goodness they don’t have the power or hardly a parent would survive. This is the story here, and you are just pointing out the world is still only in the early stages of a planetary-wide united civilization. There was an enormous miscarriage of the divine plan, and everyone is still suffering the effects of that in the disparity I mentioned. Yet this can be overcome only one person at a time through the realization of free will fed by creative spirit.

Never despair. This universe was set up so individuals could learn, could take a hand in their own, progressive evolution. You are co-creating your own life. You are a creative part of this adventure. You are an active component of what you are experiencing. (Thank you) Be in my peace.

Student: Michael, you touched on so many things tonight. For me it was so many yesterdays to walk in and so many tomorrows to fuss with, and I’m just beginning to feel, now and yesterday--I’m going to tell this without crying--what you said about emotion causing us to suffer--what turmoil--they can lead us by the nose. But I’m learning they are like clothes we’re wearing, and we can take them off, and not become cold and uncaring. I can care for the world without crying.

Yesterday, overlooking the apple orchard blossoms and the sky I felt your goodness so strongly it was like the clouds were speaking. I could breathe in the clouds speaking: You are a piece of me. You are a part of the whole. You can feel now. I can’t put it into words because now I understand how words can’t touch this sometimes, but I’m so moved in this I just wept--you are so good! You are so good! I felt all the goodness, and everything was just sort-of washed clean--all my little worries and stuff. I felt so refreshed and alive and awake and thankful--and I’m still riding this. It’s just pure joy; there’s no judgment. I was looking at the world unclouded; it was just pure me without all the emotion.

And yet it’s like you say, we can’t--I don’t expect to remain in this bliss all the time. I have to be focused. But I have so much love, and I choose to serve our world in any way I’m guided. And you were right. When I ask how to serve, you always place someone right in front of me; or something happens and I am creating and writing because of this awareness. I honor you. Thank you so much for nudging me.

MICHAEL: It is I who thank you, my daughter, for receiving me so directly. That takes enormous courage, because you don’t know what is going to happen next, do you? (laughing, No!--but I’m prepared…) And yet it can be glorious, can it not? (long pause…) I hate to disturb this peace you’ve already found.

Student: I just wanted to comment on emotions and how we can step aside from them at times and observe such wonderful things, instead of being tossed around. That’s what’s really going on with me now.

(Having emotions vs. their having you)

MICHAEL: Yes, this is very true. You’ve discovered a critical difference between when you have emotions, and when emotions have you. It’s a true perception. When you’re taken by some emotion and just shaken around like a proverbial rag doll, and all you can do is ride out the storm until whatever caused it ceases, the feeling of helplessness, of being humiliated is a true one. You do well to credit it and strive to understand it. For only by doing so can you reach that wonderful state I mentioned where you have emotions and, because they come from a totality of your self, they can caution you about some genuine event happening around you, you may not have noticed. As I mentioned, perhaps you’re out driving and fall into daydreaming about some other time. The fear can be to wake you up, and you do well to respect it, and find its source.

A subtle play of emotions within you can tell you very accurately about the person standing in front of you, because your spirits and personalities may be in touch, but this has to filter down through your super-conscious mind, through your physical/mental being. So what you are feeling with these subtle little zithers of emotion can tell you much about another person.

This is what you discovered, my daughter. You’ve gained an ability to choose, to set emotion to the side, and the freedom that comes about because of that makes you feel one with everything around you. (Yes!) And you are right not to cling to this. But enjoy it, and see if you can’t invite it to come back, again and again. Thank you for sharing that with us--it was truly glorious. Continue to be in my peace. (heavy sigh)

Student: Good evening, Michael. For me the question is, when I get to this place where it requires some initiative to reach out to other people from that Spirit of Council you spoke of earlier, I find I come up against a dead space in me that comes from my past relationships--especially with my mother, and I’ve found it easier to live in a world of imagined relationships because that is what I did with her--to replace her. Now in order to fulfill myself and do the Father’s will I need to find a way to break through it, because there’s a lot of fear there. The fear isn’t as great as the love, but what can I keep in mind, what kind of prayer would help me break through that?

(Breaking through barriers of fear to relate with others)

MICHAEL: Yes, my daughter. I congratulate you on the courage and the self-honesty it takes to see the situation so clearly. This has been a great accomplishment so far. The prayer would be: Dear Father, let me beam as much love as I know is within me; let me beam this love at this person in front of me, irrespective of whatever result. Give me the strength to have this spiritual generosity--just to beam love out. And let me experience how this is strengthening me.

This will be exercising you, my daughter, just like going to the gym and working out. By beaming your love out, by giving it away like this, you find the source of it, you find the freedom in it of not being bound by results. It takes spiritual nerve because it goes against all the physical/mental economy of trading this for that, of giving only to get, of wondering if you‘re not being made a fool of, or being taken advantage of--now not quite so strictly, so judgmentally. Just feel a pure out-flowing of love for this person; then try to do this for everyone you see. This will help get you over any kind of prejudices or superficial evaluations you’re making about them.

The wonderful result of this can be breaking through this barrier you feel, by starting to notice a blossoming of individuality. You’ll be breaking through your own screening process, you own pigeon-holing of others. Then you have to have the nerve to take the next step and welcome what may be a little overwhelming at first. But this is that deep contact and response, my daughter, that your soul is dying for. This is what really feeds you--living in a world of unique individuals, each with his or her own story, each with their own character and soul. As you said, you are feeling the need for initiative. You just have to beam your love right straight through any barriers; just give, and trust that this is what makes you strong. Letting love flow through you is what gives you spiritual strength, and makes you less dependant.

It also helps to credit that other people are subtle and sensitive beyond either of your conscious selves. They respond to you on a spiritual, personal level too. You have to trust this, that as you beam your love out there, it is being received. It will show results in time. But you have to have the courage and strength to go first, without trying only a little bit to see if it immediately works. (much laughter) This is the faith it takes; but that’s why it works. That’s why nothing short of faith will. (Wow) This is what it is. You’ve very correctly analyzed what’s happening: this is you prayer: Dear Father, give me the courage and the strength to just beam my love out there. Help me be more like You.

Student: Thank you.

MICHAEL: Thank you, my daughter. I do salute the courage it takes to see things so clearly. Keep my peace all about you as you go forward.

And so we try to be like our Father, whose outpouring creates a universe. That is spirit. That’s how it works. That is also why its unity is so contra-distinct from the multiplicity of the strictly physical. We’ve gone around and around a lot tonight on how you, not only as individuals but this whole world of yours, gets caught up in the fragmentation/separation of materialism as a stage of development, and how you and everyone else must slowly evolve--both beyond and yet respectfully inclusive of material reality in order for this world to evolve. You can come to trust in the creative flexibility of yourself and your fellows.

As the material changes come along--the turning around of the energy glut we talked about--this can be a spiritual Renaissance, hopefully not only out of necessity; hopefully too out of spiritual generosity, mutual regard, and love. Life is a lot less painful that way. For that is also one of God’s spiritual laws, and one of your free-will choices to make. Make it wisely. Don’t forget, we are here, Mother Spirit and I, and our Father. We are right here inside you and beside you, to help. Call upon us, and then credit and treasure what we have to offer. Keep hope alive. Never give up. This is still just another phase in eternity. Be in my peace. Good evening.

END