Prayer:  Dear Michael and Mother Spirit.  Greetings!   We welcome you with open minds and open, humble hearts.  We invite you to come be with us – especially tonight.   We thank you for the power that you and our mutual Father have given us: the power of self awareness, the power to create and choose our own destiny, the power to know this dignity of being a free will creature of yours and even the power to disregard you, to totally ignore you. And so tonight we open our hearts and minds and ask you to help us, help us be self forgetful, help us feel your presence. We love you very much and it is a bit overwhelming to feel your love for us.  Thank you for everything. Amen.

MICHAEL:  Good evening, my children.  This is Michael.  Mother and I do wish you a joyous Merry Christmas.  This is a special time of year and special time throughout the local universe.  Yet, my children, Christmas is not about Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or Judaism or Hinduism, just to name a few of so many.  Christmas is not even about me, or about my life I lived among you as Jesus.  Christmas is about you.  Christmas is about your life and all the lives that you know and treasure so dearly.  This is the true meaning of Christmas, this thankfulness and love that we can share together, this uniting, this coming together of our souls to rejoice that we are! Here we are -- God’s creations, creatures of His infinite creativity.

Christmas is about you. Christmas is about this spirit of yours, these unique personalities you have, endowed with spirit, endowed with creativity, endowed with this power you mentioned that gives you choice, gives you freedom.  For even though Mother Spirit and I call you children -- and in a way you are, truly – the two of us along with our Life Carrier sons, along with the whole development of our local universe now these billions of years, all this has gone up into the pattern beings you are, graced and united with God’s pure creation of your personalities.  And yet in a way you are not ours at all.  You belong to yourselves, yourselves and God.

You have the presence of God right within you, part of you.  It is how God experiences life with you, my children, and that creates your soul, and so your soul is counter-parted by this presence that is absolute and infinite. You belong to your selves and to God.  It’s His presence within you that was the essence of my teaching as Jesus. This was my religion; this is what I practiced; this is what I gloried and delighted in, was my contact, my communication with my Father.  And this was my religion.  Not the religion about me, but the religion that each of you knows inside – your relationship with God -- for it is this relationship, my children, that gives you yourself, even as your Creator created you – unique and individual.

 There is something inside you, part of you that supersedes all ecclesiastical authority of whatever, all social authority, all political authority, even perhaps the coercive authority of your well-meaning, loving friends.  This is what gives you freedom.  This is what gives you the ability to create and choose and decide and become the co-creator along with the whole rest of the universe, the whole world around you and the people in it, and still you are the co-creator of your own reality.  And this could be the basis of the most profound loneliness an individual creature could know, this realization that you are unique.

All the while you are universally a human being, there is that which is in you known only to you and to God.  True enough Mother Spirit and I, Creator Son/Creator Daughter of Nebadon, we too experience you in all fullness: your personality, your spirit, your soul, even as much of your faults you care to share with us, but even we are not God. There is that special relationship of God to each and every one of the personal beings he creates.  And so my dear ones you have the finest company so far yet beyond your imagination, and what  you experience in these lives of yours, these lives that you share with each other, it is the presence of God sharing it with you that makes it his own.

God vouchsafes this cosmic reality, this new birth of an eternal soul.  This is what I would invite you to share, not only at Christmastime, which does honor my birth among you, but this is what I would invite you to perceive in each other -- feel each other, fully experience each other as spiritual beings, unique beings. For then you can marvel all the more fully that you can relate, you can share so much between you, among you.  This is that beautiful co-creation which you and your beloved ones create and sustain in each other; you literally give each other life, even as Mother Spirit, the Holy Spirit of Urantia, gives life to you.  This is how you share her, and me, among you.

This is my Spirit of Truth orienting you to an endless, literally endless, discovery of more truth, more individual personal beings, on and on, with your whole universe out there with hundreds of orders of beings to encounter, to cherish, and to make their reality your own. But back here on earth we invite you to cherish and acknowledge each other, even on a busy city sidewalk.  Here they come! Every one unique.  Every face bearing the full stamp of the human condition. Thrill in this, delight in this uniqueness, my children, and marvel all the more that you can share so much with each other. There is that quality of not only physical and mental but even spiritual recognition … and so glorious, so delightful, so intrinsically joyful.

Let that lively, dancing, spirit tickle you until you can hardly stand it.  Forget yourselves. Forget yourselves and fill your souls with another. Forget yourselves and be the helping hand to our Father, reaching out.  Reaching out to touch and be touched.  Don’t be afraid of this, my children. There is that within you that is imperishable.  You need not be afraid to touch and be touched, for this sharing is what truly fills your souls. And to realize each one of you belongs to himself or herself alone, with God.  As one of your poets put it so succinctly, to keep it in your mind and not forget, it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to.  This is the essence of holidays and holy days in whatever religion. This joy is to set everything else aside for awhile and get together and laugh and rejoice simply that we are.

It’s a marvel of existence itself that God so beloved all of us that he created us, unique and individual, and able to share His ability to enjoy another and then another.  So this Christmas, be gone dull fear!  Be gone loneliness!  Be gone self-centeredness and worry.  Give your poor bedraggled egos a rest.  Forget yourselves to be there for another.  Let their spirit, let their soul fill yours.  This was my religion.  This was my glory here.  All these people here, all these sons and daughters I came to know, all those I loved and who loved me so dearly.  This became as it will for you, that totally irreducible glory of a human life.

Merry Christmas, my dear ones!  Each moment let us just step off together, welcoming that enormous unknown our Father lays before us, with hope and the certain assurance of his love, this glorious spiritual light suffusing all of creation.  We take time out from time to time to acknowledge and enjoy.  Mother Spirit sends her love and I bid you: be in my peace.

Now, if you have any questions or comments, let us merely proceed to them.

~*~*~*~*~

Gerdean:        Good evening, Michael.  It is wonderful to hear you again, and to be in your company.  Not that you are not in our private time, but in this forum.

MICHAEL:    Good evening, Gerdean.

Gerdean:        Thank you.  I really appreciate your coming out on Christmas Eve which is a time when a lot of people really do need to have some kind of spiritual contact.  I was late, but better late than never. I was so glad to hear your voice when I came on-line.

MICHAEL:    My dear daughter, I certainly am happy to just be with you this way.  We have other ways as well.  My main message tonight was that it is not about me at all. It is about all of you, my dear children.  At least, – your Mother Spirit and I – that is our glory.

Gerdean:  That is beautiful.

MICHAEL:    Are you having a joyous time?

Gerdean:        Yes, actually.  I am.  I had a little trouble getting started, with the season.  I was feeling rather worthless, and useless, that I wasn’t reaching my potential and “I had no gifts to bring pa-rum-pa-pa-pum.”  So I spent some time with you in my life, like in the movie: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and when I add the dimension of divinity that accompanies me now, all I have to do is walk in the room and the light is there … just because it started me.  I’m so blessed.  And if Christmas is a representation of spiritual bounty and benevolence and goodness and giving and caring, I won’t hold that against it, even if it is on the wrong day.

MICHAEL:    (Chuckling) Well, it could be every day in the spirit.

Gerdean:        That’s what I thought.  Yes.

MICHAEL:    Don’t worry about the struggles and the doubting and the worry and all that. It’s like don’t worry about worrying.  Just take it in stride.  Kind of be open to it; just glean it for whatever message it may have for you.   It’s when fear becomes simply caution and worrying becomes a way of just really caring about something.  (Yes)  Doing your best to tune into it.  That heartfelt reaching out is what really counts.

Gerdean:        Right.  And being there for people like you are there for us.

MICHAEL:    Well, you are very welcome.

Karo:              Hello!

MICHAEL:    Good evening!

Karo:              Thank you for your message.  I appreciate it.  Would you like to comment on Urantia being an architectural world and (indistinguishable) they teach us of the universe.

MICHAEL:    Yes, my son.  I realize that sometimes you human folks have such a wonderful, enormous enlightenment, you feel reborn.  Then you look around you and you begin to see a lot of qualities of the architectural spheres right here on earth, and you think “Maybe that is what it means! I am on an architectural sphere!” But I have to inform you, they are quite different.  There is this enormous difference between those spheres, those worlds of not only human but many other orders of beings that inhabit.  It is quite distinct from the evolutionary history of Urantia.

As you read those chapters of how the solar system was formed and then the planet was formed, you’d have to realize that the architectural spheres are most appropriately -- with this season, this time of celebration, if you could see an architectural sphere, it would look much like a Christmas tree ornament.  There on either pole are those enormous, huge crystals, the field of glass.  Then dotted all over this huge world – some of them many, many times larger than the earth here – you’d have those geometric figures literally indented into the squares and triangles and circles.  So bear that in mind.   Think of the architectural spheres as great Christmas tree ornaments, hung out in space.

See if you can see a little difference between the globe that you have sitting on your desk or the maps of the world you have with the continents and oceans and so forth.  They are very quaintly, very distinct, one from another.  And as you have been informed, the life, both the plant and the animal life on the morontia spheres is quite a different, more advanced order, so we tease you to imagine what this might be and assure you that you will note your surprise to awaken one day and look around and just be overwhelmed with it all.  That is another great delight awaiting you.  But does this answer your question?

Karo:  [Indistinguishable something about “your having lived here” leading to this becoming an architectural world.] I wanted to get some more insight into that.

MICHAEL:    In a way it’s true, my son, that Earth/Urantia will always have a very special place – not only in my heart, but in significance throughout Nebadon, insofar as I have only life as I have lived with you all, but it can become more of a shrine, if you will, as it grows toward light and life, as the peoples of Urantia find an ever progressing civilization, and by that I mean discovering ways of being civil with each other, for it is still a greatly war-torn and violent place.  But as it evolves, it will always be this shrine of my incarnation as a human being.

If I can -- just to keep some meaning in the words, Earth will always be as it has always been, an evolutionary planet.  The very meaning of an architectural sphere is, as I told you, a deliberately created sphere to house completely different life forms.  If we were to use that word a little too, shall we say, casually or haphazardly, it would lose its meaning.  So think of Urantia as a very special place – not only in my heart, but your own – and love and cherish it just as it is.  Does this further clarify the situation?

Karo:  Yes, I would think so.  I think I get the angle you’re coming from.  The reason I asked the question is because in some circles, some people are of the opinion or belief that planet earth will not die out but will continue to be recreated and become somewhat of an architectural sphere or something of that sort so our heavenly globe that could be said you were born here, you came here.  That’s why I asked the question. I think I see the point, the angle, you are coming from.

MICHAEL:    It’s just that expression “architectural sphere” has a very specific meaning in the cosmology of Nebadon.  As you’ve been informed, those star systems, those suns that can be put and exist on certain power lines of space that your eyes cannot yet see, can live on indefinitely, and so your earth itself can continue as a evolutionary planet and continue to evolve geologically, planet-wise if you will, and still be this shrine for all Nebadon to cherish.  I think perhaps the use of “architectural sphere” was just trying to get a handle on this preciousness, this value that this planet has for so many – so many other hundreds of worlds that know of my incarnation here.

Karo:  (Indistinguishable) from what people have said, have come to the conclusion that planets die off.  They are worn out and in college they teach it currently, that at some time in the future the planets that exist now will cease to exist.  Our scientists are predicting that someday this world will cease to exist.  It won’t hold life anymore.  However, (indistinguishable).

MICHAEL:  Yes, your science definitely knows the birth and death of stars, when they go into certain phases, say the Red Giant, but they pretty much consume their solar systems with it, but this is what I meant by it is within our power to have your sun burn on indefinitely and so you do not have the same future for your solar system that is the lot of so many others.  And you recall, the Urantia Book mentioned there are certain inhabited planets now that go clear back to the beginning of Nebadon. It is within our power to treat Urantia this way and make sure it lives on.  This is what I meant by it will become as it is now, a shrine – a very special world.  Always.  But never an architectural sphere.  Never a Christmas tree ornament hanging out in space.

Karo:  Thank you.

MICHAEL:  I enjoy your questions.  As I began, some persons who have had such a profound rebirth, and just being aware of the Urantia Book’s terminology, can feel perhaps they are on a very special world already and think of it as an architectural sphere, but once you are standing on a true architectural sphere, my son, there will be no doubt in your mind as to the difference.   Thank you for your question, and your curiosity.  Be in my peace.

Karo:  Thank you.  [Long pause] If nobody has anything to say or a question, I have another question, if you have time for that.

MICHAEL:  Go ahead.

Karo:  When you were here (indistinguishable), and I’ve been wondering (indistinguishable) your life, your teachings, your seventh bestowal.  Can you (indistinguishable)?

MICHAEL:  Yes, my son, it was totally other ways.  It was by the phenomenon of universe reflectivity that my life here on Urantia was literally experienced on all the more advanced planets of the whole local universe.  This is why my seventh bestowal here was so distinct from my previous six others in which there was some mystery, some hidden nature of the kind of being I was, so it was often not until long after that various beings surmised that I had been this Melchizedek or that Archangel or that Morontia Progressor.  I announced my incarnation on Urantia long before I came here.

You have to realize, my son, the family surrounding Urantia is able to communicate this way. And so when I told Peter to put up his sword, there were then legions of angels sitting on the hills surrounding us.  This is quite literally true.  You have to realize that the spirit is, from a human standpoint, I guess you could say super-multi-dimensional. There is a kind of this universe reflectivity that spiritual beings can tune into that quite transcends time and space as you know it.  And so there was no necessity whatsoever for physical beings or space ships or whatever to spread the word.  The word was broadcast instantaneously across the whole local universe.

It was in this sense that I did what I did.  Not only for the peoples of Urantia but for all the millions of worlds of Mother Spirits’ and mine. You just have to stretch your imagination to envision such a kind of communication, for it so totally transcends even the electronic type of electronic transmission you are familiar with.  Is this clear?

Karo:    It clarifies it somewhat, and it more or less (indistinguishable).  I mean, was it like a movie or-- ?  I’m trying to use my imagination.

MICHAEL:  It’s not just sight and sound as in a movie, it’s spiritually multi-dimensional.  It’s a more direct experience of me and what I went through than you are yet capable of.  You have to bear in mind, my son, that so many of the worlds of Nebadon are enormously more advanced not only physically and technologically but even spiritually, as well as all the architectural spheres – the thousands of thousands of architectural spheres at the system and constellation level.  This is something you will enjoy in many ages to come, this enormously enhanced ability to experience dimensions than you are now.

Karo:  Well, how about your other planets, if there is ever a rebellion, whose fault is that and (indistinguishable)?

MICHAEL:      The inhabitants of these worlds were not quite yet able to, shall we say, “tune in” because of their very backward status but each of the apostate planets that joined the rebellion, each one has its own unique history, its own unique development and evolution.  But they, too, are coming around.  They too are being attended to.

Karo:  So some of them have gotten the message that you came on a bestowal.

MICHAEL:  Yes, some of the individuals of these planets will await their rebirth on a mansion world before they learn of the story of my life among you.

Karo:  Interesting.  To think that some of our brothers and sisters on other planets are totally oblivious to your seventh bestowal.  

MICHAEL:  As are many of the inhabitants of this planet.

Karo:  [Chuckling] I gotcha.

 MICHAEL:  I seem to be teasing you with so many of these that will take time for you to encounter, and many more in the worlds to come - things like spiritual communication. But now we are getting down to how each individual person – even on Urantia here – sees things and is able to appreciate just what Christmas means, as I talked about tonight.  The religion of Jesus, the religion I knew was the communication with the Father within and that is what is solely but certainly spreading in your life here, and its reception, its enjoyment is an individual thing and it varies enormously, and so it is world to world, my son.  The architectural spheres have a spiritual communication quite beyond human imagination but that is part of the life you will encounter.

Karo:  Thank you very much. You have enlarged my perspective on various matters. Thank you.

MICHAEL:  You have to forgive Mother Spirit and I for teasing you so much with what you cannot yet envision, but its true!  And so we pass it on.  It’s just part of that huge universe out there to very righteously give you a sense of humility, of living in the middle of an enormous encompassing.  We do assure you, because it is quite perceptible to us, this glorious spiritual light that shines through everything.  It emanates from the Father but it is also emanating from every personal being, every one of you has your own unique glow.  You are like so many stars in a spiritual firmament.  We do enjoy you and love you so much.

So be in our love and our peace, my dear ones.  Get together and enjoy each other in this season of festivities and send all your hopes and good wishes to those others of you in their different religions who are, in essence, celebrating the same way.  Good evening.