Michael - Communicating On-Line - Jul 18, 2013 - Jerry Lane, Lightline

[from Jerry Lane:  Hello again, here's a Lightline in which I asked Michael if he would address some of the problems we've been having in our Teaching Mission List chat-room. Perhaps his suggested guidelines will help us establish a more welcoming and spiritually joyous sharing of our inner lives. To this let me add what is only my opinion, but I think welcoming personal t/r-ed material would help individuals in this activity that both Michael and Mother Spirit suggest we all try. Even if these contributions do not always conform to someone else's really strict notions of the "letter of the law" as they think it is given in the UB, surely being more inclusive is fully in keeping with the positive spirit of the UB. And isn't this what we are hopefully taking away from our readings of the UB--the creative spirit of the spirit authors addressed to everyone? Jerry. ]

Michael—T/R—JL

Subjects

• (Actively Creating, to Feel Yourself)
• (Things Independent of Their Source)
• (Communicating Online)
• (Tenderness, Joy, Acceptance)
• (Predicted Physical Cataclysms, Existent Social Problems)
• (Reasons for Greed; Solutions)
• (Balance and Proportion)
• (What Is “Superabundance” And/or “Generosity” of Spirit?)
• (Learn to t/r yourself)

July 18, 2013

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, well, here we are again, stepping off into the unknown—the unknown for us because sometimes that’s how we know inside ourselves that we acknowledge your autonomy, your independence from us. It’s because you offer us the very thing that we cannot do, and that is: what we cannot anticipate. But we have learned how to trust in you and your presence, and what you have for us each time. Tonight, I’d ask you--if you would—to address some of the problems we have in communicating with each other online. Anything you have to say along these lines, we would appreciate. Sometimes we have a hard time keeping our group together and really respecting each other’s’ rights and feelings. So anything you have to say about that would be deeply appreciated. Thank you.

Michael: Good evening, this is Michael, and I welcome your warm acknowledging my very independence and rather self-contained being from your own. This is something that Mother Spirit and I teach so often on: is how to contact us. Part of the difficulty, the supremely ironic difficulty of this, as well as contacting your Thought Adjuster—the presence of God within you--is that we’ve been here all along. We’re actually part of you, yet we don’t mean to imply you get schizophrenic and feel you have to divide against yourself just to feel our presence.

(Actively creating, to feel yourself)

We are subtle. I’ll talk later about this, but for now I’ll mention the deep reverence we have for your God-created personality, your uniqueness of being, and your uniqueness of worldly experience in your souls. So we do our best to encourage this unfathomable-to-you quality of free will because this too is such a will-of-the-wisp that disappears when you try to get a hold of it. It’s only in its use, maybe like riding a bicycle where, as long as you keep moving and keep using your free will, it supports you and gets you somewhere. Yet the second you stop and try to get a hold of it directly, you find that the balance is suddenly gone. It disappears for it is only in its use.

But once you get a sense of this free will that we do respect so highly, then that gives you about the only grasp on something that is even more subtle, and that is you yourself, your personality. Just as you can’t pick yourself up by your bootstraps, so you yourself can’t get a hold of yourself except by acting. Then it’s acting out of your own free will, sometimes rather independently of any previous cause. You’re suddenly creating. You’re using your creative spirit and you have that wonderful feeling inside of creating, of doing something, saying something, writing something that you know is coming from yourself. Then: there you are, unmistakably.

The words you may be thinking or expressing definitely have their antecedents; you have the whole language that you inherited with your birth. Yet your thoughts themselves--as we’ve taught so often--these are just finely articulated feelings. Feeling is your fundamental reality--the feeling of yourself, your body, your whole surrounding circumstances, all your senses. This is the essence of your freedom. It’s a necessity for your freedom--this creative free will of yours that can come up with something new, something that’s all your own, some alternative to what the moment is going to present you with, this whole world surrounding you and the folks in it.

You have this ability to create right out of yourselves and then: there you are. You’re doing it. You’re moving and you’re controlling this movement of your own. This is what we so deeply, deeply encourage you to feel, and get involved in: to create. For this is that ultimate power you share with God himself, the power of creation, of bringing something right up out of yourself.

And then: there it is. You’ve given it to the world. You’ve even given it to yourself. Along these lines, we ask you to consider again that, when something is out of you, shall we say something you’ve spoken and someone else has heard—or maybe you’ve recorded it, or maybe you’ve written it: but once it’s expressed it has its own reality.

You know this yourself if you make a journal and come back and read it several years later. It’s a wonderful message to yourself in the future that, when you read it again, it’s from yourself in the past and you get a deeper appreciation for who you were then. Those words on the paper, shall we say a journal, a diary; these are what you were then because they exist, and they’re independent of you now.

(Things independent of their source)

This is such a blessing because you can take anything you hear, or anything you read now, and consider it as best you can. This is an ability you have to cultivate, to consider something somewhat independently of its source. Because there it is; it has its own reality now. Now you can take it into yourself and, as we say, entertain it, do your best to understand it and feel it.

Let it find its own place within you. You have your marvelous mentality with all of Mother Spirit’s Adjutants helping you and nudging you along: the intuition of experiencing it; all the knowledge and understanding you’ve accumulated; the courage to set yourself aside and be unaffected by it. This is what then becomes part of your soul. You’ve gotten beyond any kind of knee-jerk automatic denial of whatever it is. You’ve entertained it, and now it’s part of you. All this process is helped by considering things, as I say, independently of their source. This keeps you from--shall I say again--just a kind of knee-jerk, automatic re-action against something, or even for something, because of its source.

Mother Spirit and I encourage you to do this, especially with what we offer. Don’t allow our very identity to over-influence you one way or the other because, again, this is an aspect of our respecting your free will ability to determine, to judge, to assess things for yourself. This is another great spiritual ability you have to use, just like your free will, this assessment of things only by fully entertaining them first.

(Communicating online)

Now along these lines with respect to your communications online, and what you as a spiritual community are doing your best to share with each other: I already spoke one time about not becoming in any way callous. This is especially important for those of you who have been maintaining--and even struggling at times to maintain--this communication. As you’ve said, you’ve fought the good fight with all the detractors and nay-sayers that have come your way. You’ve done your best to keep the essence of spiritual generosity, almost in a self-centered way simply because it’s good for you. You have to exercise your spirit this way to be generous, to have a superabundance of security and good feeling in yourself to allow others to express themselves. And also it’s your greatest gift to them, to give them a forum in which to speak.

In doing so we also encourage everybody to do what this T/R is practicing right now, and that is to get in touch with Mother Spirit and me, even God’s presence within you. In your meditations start to write down whatever comes to you. This is the only way to do it--right in motion--to learn how to trust our inner spiritual presence within you, and give us voice. Then in your online exchanges, welcome this from each other. Your very uniqueness of point of view and experience is what you have to offer each other.

We would also suggest you err on the side of open admission, rather than too closely control what is being offered. One thing that Mother Spirit and I have right up front confessed, is that we ourselves cannot judge for you the content--the meaning and the value--of what you encounter, either online or in the rest of your life. We can only offer these suggestions that you stay open and entertain, and I mean everything, as fearlessly as you can.

Don’t be afraid of it unless it is some absolute outright attack on you, or some truly obscene violence being expressed. Stretch your mind. Discover. Enjoy how infinite your own mind is in taking in everything and finding your balance; finding, then, yourself within all that. Your soul is absolutely elastic, my dear ones, but you yourself have to stretch it to get used to the stretch.

This is what you have to offer each other. This is what you have to respect in each other. It helps so much to acknowledge this between you. I’m not talking about some kind of mutual admiration society of puffing each other up, but simply saying, “Thank you for your offering, for your contribution.” This is how we would see an ideal kind of online exchange take place.

When you are being so open yourself, and when you are encouraging others to open themselves, you have to be so careful with each other’s tender feelings. Again, this is what I mean by not being callous towards each other. Those of you who are rather toughened by years of exchange have to be so careful with others who are not anywhere near so spiritually powerful and articulate as yourselves. Watch the tendency to be a bully if you do encounter someone who is so much more, shall we say, spiritually fragile. For this is a true test of your own ability to contain yourself and not ride roughshod over those who might be so much more shy and nervous than yourself.

Welcome them. Make them feel at home as best you can. Even if they do ramble on or get lost in their own expressions, be gentle and tolerant. Above all: watch your criticism. There’s generally no need to critique another, but just offer in a manner of conversation back and forth, offer your own viewpoints, your own responses, if you will. And have the humility to say so. It helps so much sometimes to say: This is just my opinion; or, this is my take on the Urantia Book--or anything else. It shows you have the spiritual generosity to contain yourself.

(Tenderness, joy, acceptance)

This, I think, is what will lead to a more joyous and rewarding exchange--this tenderness, this joyful teasing and acceptance. It should be fun, should it not? Be careful even if you see it as “fighting the good fight” because beyond that is the joy of free exchange and something spontaneous allowed to happen, and then appearing to tickle you all. This is the spiritual generosity that is its own reward and fun. Don’t forget the fun part.

So with that let me open the floor here to anyone who wants to make a contribution here and now. Let’s do that.

Student: Yes. I’d like to know more about the last Summary O. Does the receiver understand what that was all about?

Michael: Would you say that again?

Student: That was sent by Mr. Besser--the Summary O. Could Christ Michael talk about that at this point, or just the receiver--understand what it is that I’m talking about?

Michael: Yes, my dear. I believe you are--just through this T/R’s experience--you’re talking about something that appeared on one of your websites?

Student: Yes. It was a Teaching Mission website. No. It was in an email that was sent out about an ABC summary. And the summary was O, which is the last one that was sent, I think, last week.

Michael: Let me answer any specific questions you have about it, if I can. Because as I’ve said, Mother Spirit and I sometimes refuse to comment on other transmissions for the very reason we need you to exercise your own assessment and judgment of these things.

Student: Yes. I see.

Michael: We can’t throw our authority--to the degree that you do credit us--we can’t throw our authority one way or the other behind these things.

Student: Right. Okay. Thank you. Yes. I just want to verify that your archangel Michael had mentioned that you wanted to send us a message that within two calendar years there’s going to be catastrophic problems with the earth because it’s trying to balance itself. We are to try to create teams within our areas to help in sustaining human life since there will be many, many people that won’t be around any more. And that you want us to gather as a team to do this around the world. Is that correct?

(Predicted physical cataclysms, existent social problems)

Michael: Yes, in a way; but in a way, no. Mother Spirit and I have taught--we’ve addressed this for a number of years about different cataclysms that have been predicted--our main focus has been: if you look carefully around the world today, you’re already in the middle of it.

Student: Oh!--yes.

Michael: In other words, there is so much happening in the world now. An enormous percentage of the world’s population is--just in terms of any kind of what you might think of as a full, joyful experience—an educated life, even of something as simple as physical health: so much of the world’s population is already living such totally cramped and short, stunted lives that you don’t have to look to the future for any kind of decimation. You’re in the middle of it already.

It’s not only in terms of the warfare that is raging in some countries now where you have hundreds of thousands of casualties, but just the amount of crime, the simple crime that is taking place all over the world between the strong and the weaker. The suffering goes off the scale in a way--across any human scale. We’re almost at a loss for words, Mother Spirit and I, how to communicate this to you. So whatever you can do starting now, in terms of forming together groups, if you want to call them that: anything like this helps with what Monjoronson has talked about as “social sustainability.”

Student: Exactly. Yes.

Michael: Even bereft of any physical cataclysms on a planetary scale, which we do not see happening.

Student: You don’t?

Michael: In other words: this is an enormous physical planet that has its own geological changes that do from time to time wipe out thousands of people with tsunamis, tectonic plates activity and that sort of thing.

Student: Right.

Michael: The physical planet itself is shrinking, but that’s been over millions of years and will continue for millions and millions more years. But to get together to live a more spiritual life? This is why we give our lessons, so you can take them to heart within yourself and work on and discover your own more spiritual way of living. Feel this evolution, this planetary social and political and spiritual evolution right within yourself by being involved in all these activities as much as you can.

Then, with what I talked about this evening with respect to your online communications, reach out and form as big a group as you can around you with your friends and associates, to help each other live a more spiritual life. In one way, this is all you can do; yet in another way, this is sufficient. This is all we, the spiritual community, can ask of you: is that you keep growing, keep stretching yourself, keep reaching for more and more inclusive ways of relating.

Student: Yeah. That would be nice. It seems very hard for humans to do that, doesn’t it?

Michael: Well, so many folks are living in an abundance, even a superabundance of goods and things. Think of the magnificent buildings that are going up around the world today, almost impossible to conceive architectural structures. They don’t look like they could exist for five minutes and yet there they are—huge, beautiful structures just to take one tiny example. Think of the billions and billions and billions of dollars worth of effort and imagination and creation that goes into these magnificent buildings. At the same time you have others literally squatting, almost naked, on a tiny bit of dirt under their feet to call their own.

You have the most fantastic luxury and wealth. Think of cars costing millions of dollars or yachts costing tens of millions of dollars. You have this enormous, enormous luxury on the one hand and, like I’ve said, people starving to death or living terribly stunted lives from malnutrition.

Student: Why is there so much greed in the world? When is that going to go away?

(Reasons for greed; solutions)

Michael: It’s only going to go away when each individual finds something of greater value than what amounts to a kind of an anxiety within themself. It’s why only by being very spiritually creative, and secure in your own creativity within yourself, can you let go some of these, you might say, round-about ways; as if you’re not going to start living until you have this or that and something else, some other material thing. Materialism is putting all of your effort and imagination into that, for some notion of security, because you are lacking that inside. That’s why there is a Spiritual Renaissance going on, my dear, and it is spreading very fast. But we’re bucking two hundred thousand years of your world being deprived of a spiritual leader.

Student: Right.

Michael: You have to have a deep appreciation for how rare this world is compared to, you know as we tease you with, 99.99999 percent of all the other worlds that have ever existed with a loyal Planetary Prince controlling a worldwide evolution, where, in a sense, the whole world’s evolution is being brought along together for the last half a million years. How rare it is that your world is bereft of this kind of leadership. You’re here kind-of by yourself, struggling with a little trial and error to see what works and what doesn’t.

You have the persistence still of cultures that are thousands and even tens of thousands of years old coming out of scarcity, coming out of a general worldwide deprivation. What you call greed is the persistence of this feeling of not enough. Yet the only sufficiency really is within yourself and your own creative spirit. It’s the feeling of creating to such a degree, and being so spiritually generous then with your creativity, that is the only thing that can ultimately relive this deep anxiety that is another name for the greed you expressed.

Student: Well, I have an idea. I thought possibly the people that are in the Teaching Mission might work as a team effort that could actually become global at some point. That would create a non-profit organization that would have locations within a city--different places, you know--where if something terrible happened, like there was an earthquake or something like that, these locations would put up a sign that would say: let’s see, “Survival.” More like this is a place you can come to if you don’t have a home any more and, you know, you could get a good hot meal and this and that.

Michael: This is where in one way, my dear, you are blessed with some really genuinely valid organizations like that already. In other words, there are literally hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of organizations which are validly doing good work. I’ll define that by their taking most of the contributions coming in and not spending it all on themselves as administrators, but actually putting those monies coming in from folks down where the rubber meets the road, as you say.

Student: Right.

Michael: One thing you can do is simply search out these organizations and contribute to them. This is one way in which your societies do work. You have keep a balance and also realize the amount of goodwill, understanding, and organization--working together that actually is holding the world together.

Student: Right.

(Balance and proportion)

Michael: Seek some kind of balance with the amount of love and caring--taking care of each other and enjoying each other and having fun and all the good things of life, and how much this is also expanding from whatever it’s been in the past. You don’t have the bubonic plague coming through and wiping out half of everybody. Hopefully, you’ve gotten beyond the slowly accumulating scope of warfare. I say hopefully because of a World War in which tens of millions died not too long ago; hopefully that marks a turning point toward your world’s development of peace.

You do have the slow growth of democracies all over the world. People are having to find out through that experiment how to get along with each other when they’ve gone from a kind of totalitarian state of a tiny minority rule, to majority rule; and then, even going beyond that to majority rule with minority rights. All this political evolution has been happening too. There’s something to keeping a balance of all of the goodness as well as the terribly, terribly obscene violence folks do to each other, and the reasons for it.

Student: Right.

Michael: I mean, you do have so many people who have a vested interest in making a kind of profit by all of this violence. And you have some centuries and centuries old cultures still fighting each other.

Student: Yeah.

Michael: Some of this is partly generational. It’s taken an older generation simply dying away and passing on the power to a younger generation who have grown up without quite such a stranglehold of these old, outworn cultures. But those very cultures give meaning to life, do they not? Think of some of the warring factions that have been fighting for centuries and centuries now. This gives meaning to people’s lives and they simply have to discover and provide for themselves a greater meaning.

Student: Right.

Michael: But it is happening.

Student: That would be nice. Thank you so much.

Michael: Right. From our perspective--and especially with the view of what has happened in the past and the helplessness that the human race in general suffered in the face of things like starvation, mass plagues, huge wars sweeping over them--there is a spiritual evolution that is inexorable. It’s really wonderful when you can actually feel it inside transforming you as well. So be in my peace.

Student: Thank you.

Student: Well, I’ll say, “Hi!” This G. and I enjoyed all of your work this evening, J. And Michael, thank you for your patience with us as we try to learn how to be more tactful, more tolerant, more diplomatic, more gracious, and all those qualities that you showed in your life. You are indeed the big brother that we all want to be like when we grow up. I do appreciate, however, your reminding us that we’re not supposed to live your life. We’re supposed to live ours. And even though it may be rough around the edges, this is, in fact, what we’re called to do: to live our lives in accordance with God’s will as we understand it.

It’s a process. All of us are engaged in it or affected by it one way or another. Language has a whole lot to do with it. One word may mean six different things to five different people. And there are--as you were talking about--generational difficulties. We’re participating in creating them on a daily basis as we are part of a generation. What we bring out and what we carry forward is part of that legacy. Hopefully it’s a positive legacy and not yet another one of the ignorant spreads of destruction as part of the adventure of this experiential world we live on. Sometimes it is fun. And sometimes it’s very, very difficult. But we forge ahead and we forge ahead in faith. I appreciate your taking an interest in our little culture and our concerns.

Michael: Well, my dear, I am part of you all. And you are our greatest joy, Mother Spirit’s and mine. You are our children, all of our children.

Another student: I have a question about children. Speaking of children: “Hi.”

(What is “superabundance” and/or “generosity” of spirit?)

Michael: Just a second; I was speaking to Gerdean and encouraging her to keep the faith by being creative enough within herself to feel the joy of a kind of superabundance of spirit. You’re all capable of this, yet there are some deep ironies here because it’s only by forgetting yourself and giving yourself away. This is the way to spiritual generosity. This is what really sustains you. This is the kind of good exercise that your body needs as well, and it applies to your mind and your spirit too. It’s the wonderful exercise that enables you to grow, because you need to keep growing. And then: there it is. So keep this idea of growth in mind for yourself personally, and then all your organizations. This is a final sense of health: how much you are growing physically and spiritually and mentally? So keep up the good work, and keep the faith.

Student: Thank you, Michael. I will.

Michael: Be in my peace.

Student: Thank you.

Michael: Now: was there another question?

Student: Sounded like Eva.

Michael: Was somebody else here who wanted another question, besides G?

Well if not, I’ll call it a night and bid you all a fond farewell by repeating what Mother Spirit and I have: our glory, our wealth--in a sense our soul wealth of all of our long, long experience since coming out from Paradise and organizing this section of the galaxy. There are all of our children, starting from the highest and on down to the human order. We still have all of this in us; and we are pleased to have us in you, so we give our lessons on how to meditate and feel us inside.

(Learn to T/R yourself)

As I’ve said before, take out a notebook or your little recorder and see if you can’t do what this T/R is doing. See if you can’t receive us and delight in our very autonomy and freedom from you, because we can come up with what you can’t anticipate on your own. That’s the joy of this transmitting/receiving that--with respect to some of the other, I would even say most of the other planets--almost everybody does this. Everybody has this much more intimate and rewarding connection with spirit.

And so we encourage you and tease you to try this yourselves. In your meditations all you have to do is ask, “Okay Michael, Mother Spirit; okay God: what have you got for me now, this day?” Tune into our spontaneous--at least to a human being--tune into our spontaneous life and enjoy the delight. Then go out and spread the fun around.

Now good evening, my children. This is Michael, wishing you to be in my peace. Good evening.

END