TMArchives

Topics: Michael Speaks, Improving Awareness of One's Needs

Teachers: Michael, Helena, Evanson, Elyon

January 23, 2000

*Michael (Ginny TR): Good morning, my children. This is your teacher and your friend. It is heartwarming to see you absorb and apply the lessons that were taught to you. I, and my children, have all been surrounding you this morning, listening and absorbing what you had to tell us. Your words are indeed comforting to us, and it is beyond our wildest expectations that you have so eagerly accepted our visits with you.

You are truly growing into better and better teachers and observers of human behavior, for it is an important part of your teaching mission to observe without judgment how people are.

It is a sign of a great teacher to be able to use what is available at the time for a lesson. It probably is the greatest tool that you can use in your active ministry. All my children are ready to learn if you can observe and be sensitive to the method that each one needs, for truly you cannot teach until one is ready to learn.

You are truly great servants in our Father's ministry, and you all continue to grow. Even though you may not observe it at all times, we are always on watch. We, myself and our Father and all our assistants, will be with you more and more in the future. We will have more influence with you as you attune yourselves, as you sharpen your skills. As you learn more about human behavior, we will be more available to you. Your faith in this process is tremendous, as is required. It is indeed our wish that you avail yourselves more to your brothers, especially those in need, for it is truly in active loving service that you grow. I have given you many examples, and you are following in the footsteps of our Father who wills that you minister to your brother, or at least have a sincere desire to do so. We will fill in the gaps, so to speak, of your limitations.

I am always at your side in all your undertakings. Even in the midst of intense activities or in a chaotic environment, I can be reached. The more you spend time in stillness and worship with our Father, the more sensitive you will become to the needs of your companions. The Father sees all. If you wish to see more, invoke His help and rest assured that it will be done.

I give my love to each one of you. As you progress along this sometimes narrow path of faith and confidence that the Father has prepared for you, continue with a light heart and a cheerful countenance. I bid you peace.

Helena: Good morning, again. This is Helena. I have been waiting in the wings. This TR has been wondering who I am and has volunteered to be available for me, although sometimes reluctantly. You know that I am new to your group and have been spending time learning about you, for the truly good teachers never speak until they know to whom they are speaking. So, I have been doing my homework and trying to connect myself to you as a group and to each of your individually. I will begin to visit regularly so we can become acquainted. As you have been told, I am one who also can help you to find methods for problem solving, for finding ways and means to further your ministry.

Spontaneity is, indeed, sometimes a good thing. However, at difficult times there is also a need to have a plan, a method, an awareness, a sensitivity as to how to go about your ministry. I have much experience; I have seen much, so I am quite capable of helping you to sharpen your skills at awareness and communication, which are two basic methods before you even begin your tasks. Let us start with awareness.

I am going to put you on the spot and ask each one of you to contribute one idea that you think would help improve awareness of one's needs.

Jonathan: One's own needs or another's?

Helena: We will start with another's needs.

Evelyn: I have an idea. Try to put yourself in their shoes.

Helena: That is excellent.

Jonathan: Listen for offhand remarks that give clues to a hidden or deeper need. Watch for slips, unconscious asking.

Helena: That is good. There are many ways that people let you know that they would like help. That is a good observation. Mark: My idea is similar. Watch for the signs, evidence of reaching out.

Kirk: Listening. Stilling yourself and listening to them.

Mary: One should remain consciously open to loving them.

Tom: Pay attention to the books they read, the kind of music they listen to, the TV shows they watch, for clues to where they are coming from.

Jonathan: As we age, we develop masks, fronts. So, if we remind ourselves that the adult is still the little child with deeper longings, it might help in being sensitive to spiritual needs despite one's status or rank.

Tom: How about asking them about their childhood and family life?

Helena: Yes. Asking questions is a very good way of getting information that you are not sure of.

Mark: Seek guidance from our unseen assistants.

Helena: So, in this first lesson I am going to ask that each of you in this coming week tries to apply the method that you have offered in your efforts to understand another. Remember your work does not have to be monumental in the eyes of the world. But in our eyes and in our Father's eyes everything is seen; everything is appreciated, and everything is understood.

So, you, indeed, have many good insights. Now it is time to put them into practice, if only in a very simple effort.

Tom: The Urantia Book offers the definition of insight as "prevision".

Helena: Yes. As you have all stated quite clearly, in order to nourish that prevision you must spend time in stillness, even if it is just at a traffic light, waiting in line at a grocery store, or any other mundane task that you do daily. There is much time available to you during your daily tasks that seems wasted when, in truth, it can be used to center yourself and to practice stillness, if even for a moment. The benefit of stillness is cumulative, so do not think that you must have large blocks of time for this, although periodically it would benefit you to do so.

It has been a pleasure to be with you this morning, as I will continue to observe you and offer my own insights into how I can be of service. Since I have asked this of you, I must also practice what I preach. I am grateful to this TR for her willingness, which has not been easy. I will spare her now. Good bye.

Evanson (Jonathan): This is Evanson. I would like to jump in the water here.

What I would like to point out to you is how similar the rearrangement of the letters "worship" and "wisdom" are in providing a lesson. Take the word "worship", and it is easy to see the words "row ship". That implies a significant amount of meaning to the act of stillness and entering into the currents of the Father and taking your vessel to His shores. Likewise, "wisdom", that you "do swim", that you do not simply accumulate, as would a static charge, those experiences in your life, but that you likewise actively pursue the enhancement of wisdom, that you keep your head afloat throughout the currents of life, that you can still breathe and negotiate through these waters.

That's all I care to share. Thank you.

Ginny: I've been reading the Jesus papers. It says Jesus learned to master his mind. I know it's a big question, but exactly how do we master our minds?

Elyon: This is Elyon. I would like to address this question.

There is at play in the function of mind many factors, and it becomes quite complex, for it entails the physical engagement of brain and body as well as the spiritual impingement of circuitry and spirit ministers.

Primarily, however, the mastery of mind is the ability to choose and to choose with strength, to have power in your selectivity, your decisiveness. In your reading perhaps you have pondered the times that Jesus spent making his life decisions alone in the hills with the Father, what it must have been like to mull over those significant questions and life-directing decisions. He assessed the influences that were bearing upon him. You all have these same influences: the urges of the physical nature and your longings from your spiritual nature.

Mind mastery is not so much that you become master of your mind but that your mind is a master re-director of your goals and longings for yourself and for your life. Your mind becomes the clearing-house, the exchange, for the incoming and outgoing influences upon you and those that you create. It is a process of ordering, of noting the relative value, of every influence that comes into your conscious arena; valuing them, and therefrom acting accordingly.

The human being, while yet housed in a physical form, is blessed by the adjutant circuitry of our Mother Spirit. These entities function naturally. Michael, knowing as he grew in his understanding of his true origin being a Creator Son, was able to have an accelerating effect upon this circuitry. As you have spoken of today in your discussion, he did undertake the study of human nature, and he spent much time with his Father. These two life-long endeavors greatly contributed to the working of the adjutant of wisdom and the adjutant of worship, the two highest circuits for the human being.

When the mind becomes the great cooperator with spirit, then has the human personality mastered the mind. But again I must repeat, it is not a mastery of dominance. It is a mastery of synchrony and order and efficient working, a mastery of skill.

When the physical drives of your animal origins confront you, it is the mind that must place value and meaning upon these urges and choose subsequently. The mind is never swept away by these impinging forces, but it is the director of the incoming and the outgoing forces and actions.

Each one of you is undertaking this same mind mastery as has the master. You are accelerating this mind developing by applying all the lessons you have received from our great revelation and from the presence of myself and the other teaching staff.

Before I conclude my response, I would like to emphasize that all this mind-work must proceed from your personality, for it is the personality that gives the charge that fires the circuits of the mind. It is what you choose in the depths of your being that will modify and alter the direction of the mind. The mind is your servant -- and a great one, indeed -- for it is the very orchestrator of your choices. As a personality, you can be likened to the producer of a play, the one who decides what is necessary to bring about the event. Your mind is the director who actually places all the ingredients on stage that you may dramatize the desires of the personality/producer.

I hope I have been helpful.

Ginny: The mind influences our choices, and our choices influence our minds. It works both ways.

Elyon: Yes, and Michael came to understand this dynamic in his attainment of mind mastery.

END