[tmtranscripts] Michael 1.3.05 - Wonder And Humility

[JERRY LANE]

Dear Folks,    Another new year is, as Mother Spirit said, coming at us, 
ready or not.  I seem to remember this phrase (as She maybe intended) from 
the game of Hide-And-Seek.  At least She and Michael are not playing this 
game, but are telling us as directly as They can: Here We are!  So here's 
wishing all of you a happy and spirit-lead one a-coming!  Jerry - 
Nytrayn at msn.com

Michael 1.3.05

Marin TM Group

Dear Michael and Nebadonia,    How wonderful it is to be starting a new year 
with this added confidence You have helped us to achieve - to be able to 
detect and feel Your presence in our lives day by day.  So we thank You for 
the peace and love You have given us in experiencing deep rest and healing.  
We ask You to help us find the service we are now ready and able to do, to 
guide us to and help us take that next step in sharing our lives.  Amen.

Michael: Good evening, My faithful sons.  This is Michael.  I bid you a 
hearty welcome as we start a new year on Urantia together.  Yes, it is 
wonderful, your starting out again like this, in that root sense of 
full-of-wonder.  For what is wonder?  What is it that this word expresses in 
human experience?  Certainly surprise is a part of this - suddenly coming 
upon something, or having something come upon you unexpectedly; something 
beyond your expectations and anticipations; something beyond your own 
imagination; something that reminds you, you are in a universe of God’s 
creation in your day to day lives - something so much larger than yourself.  
So wonder is very closely allied with feelings of humility, of feeling 
yourself to be tiny in the face of something enormous.

Tonight I would like to offer the insight that this is a continuing 
situation, designed by God himself, as the proper way in which to raise His 
children - to deliberately put them in a situation where they are surrounded 
by such an enormity of creation that they are stretched and teased and loved 
onto the spirit of adventure that can feed their souls.  So it helps to keep 
in mind that this situation was deliberately created for you.  What is your 
part to play?  What can you do?  Here, My children, is where you can allow 
yourself, and indeed, must allow yourself to be overwhelmed with wonder.  I 
use the word overwhelmed because it suggests a certain reluctance you may 
have in holding this state of mind, this openness.

As children all of you have had the experience of being overwhelmed by fear, 
or anxiety, or loss - any number of painful situations that temporarily 
swept you away.  But here I am suggesting being swept away by allowing a 
perception that truly adds to your soul experience and understanding.  Just 
as your wonderful Hubble Telescope is now presenting you with marvelous 
views deep into the universe of gigantic cataclysmic events - whole galaxies 
colliding, stars being born in huge conflagrations of energy - so too there 
are spiritual counterparts to these physical phenomena.  There is as much in 
the realm of spirit to awe and thrill your souls.  But, as spirit never 
forcibly intrudes into your life, this is something you have to allow, 
something you have to welcome, something you have to realize that there is 
nothing here to fear.  In the realm of spirit you can go over a Niagara 
Falls laughing and crying at the same time with joy.  It is these 
experiences I offer to share with you.

I invite you to feel Me in your heart.  And talking about feeling, both your 
Mother and I know full well - for We share the experience with you - of how, 
as you go through your social lives, interacting with others, you do well to 
contain yourselves.  You do the right thing by not forcing yourself on 
others but really looking to see and be open as to how much each person 
wants to share their life with you.  This means curtailing your feelings, 
controlling your feelings, limiting your feelings out of your respect for 
others.  But when you come to your Mother and I, there is no need for this 
self-limitation.  We welcome you to feel Our embrace as fully, as deeply, 
and as completely as you can.

Allow yourself to be swept away in tears of joy, My children.  Let 
everything go and just be with Us.  Let yourself be swept away.  Take no 
thought or fear of where you are being carried.  Feel Us in your heart and 
in your mind.  Feel Our presence as a kind of gentle pressure reminding and 
reassuring you that We are with you.  Even beyond feelings or thoughts as 
separate realms, We invite you to make this experience of Us something 
substantial that you can carry within you as a calm and radiantly loving 
center, a little glowing sun within you that can be a gift, not only to 
yourself, but to others in the way this can change you.  This can be a 
self-sufficiency of spirit between Us that allows you to give of yourself to 
your brothers and sisters.  Paradoxically seeming, but real, the less you 
need your fellow human beings, the more free and creative you can be with 
them, the more you can move onto a realm of fulfilled desires of an ever 
more subtle and rewarding spiritual nature.

You are complete beings, moment by moment, and We invite you to experience 
this and then share this most precious, wonder-filled assurance with those 
you meet.  Once you begin to distinguish the realm of spirit and its 
associated values in human life, you undergo a transformation in perception 
such that the physical and mental aspects of your life are seen ever more 
clearly as deriving their existence from this preeminent, primary realm of 
creativity.  Spirit becomes the center from which your body and your mind 
derive their existence.

Your personality - your unique essence - lives in this realm of spirit and 
enjoys many dimensions of physical and mental reality.  Once you feel and 
experience yourself coming from this center, then realms of limitation or 
finiteness - the realms of physical fact and mental meanings - once imbued 
with spirit, become infinite themselves, and you realize you are in some 
real way suspended between the infinite and the infinitesimal.  Absolutely 
everything has meaning, even your childhood and adolescent fears of 
meaninglessness.  This is the completeness We invite you to realize, and We 
assure you that in no way does it interfere with your need and your ability 
to continue to grow in perfection.

This is a bit of a paradox to human comprehension, just as God Himself is at 
one and the same time absolutely One with everything, and yet also 
infinitely Diverse in manifestation.  So you too are complete, yet capable 
of growing.  Let Me suggest that this too is fully worthy of your wonder.  
Are you ready for this transformation, My sons?

Group: Yes.

Michael:  It is inherent within you and your human situation.  Just allow it 
to happen.  Fear not when your world starts to change to renew itself before 
your eyes.  This is God’s will.  This is His power  This is His existence in 
you.  This is the child of God embracing his or her oneness with their 
Father, knowing they, like Him, are whole, and complete, and growing.

Rest awhile in My Peace, My sons.  If you have any questions or comments, 
this bright new year full of hope and joyful anticipation, I am here for 
you.

Student:  Father Michael, thank You for Your support and understanding, and 
for Your guidance.  The question I have is: How can we get more people into 
this group?  What can we do - just how to do it?

Michael:  Yes, C, I was aware of your discussions earlier this evening.  And 
I share some of the concerns, the very practical concerns, you all have 
about the nature of this contact being misunderstood by those who are not 
familiar with the concepts of Creator Sons of the Father and the Eternal 
Son, and Mother Spirits, Daughters of the Infinite Spirit.  Think of and 
remember your own initiation and growth in receptivity to celestial 
personalities.  I think your ideas of an intermediate step of introduction - 
to subordinate celestial personalities, is a wise one, and this can be 
affected through almost any way you care to try - your personal circles of 
friends and acquaintances, any number of ways of advertising through so many 
media that are open to you.

I encourage your efforts to contact your own personal celestial teacher, and 
then share these experiences also with those friends and acquaintances you 
feel may be open to this dimension of reality.  As I once advised My dear 
Apostles, not to worry about what they would say when the time came - just 
proceed from a generous heart wanting to share what you yourself have come 
to love.  This is the spiritual fragrance the text mentions, and it is part 
of the transformation I spoke of this evening.  And it is indeed a very 
delicate balance - to be able to realize which of those about you are ready 
for what will be a big step in their lives, but will be all that much more 
joyful for this very reason.

This is yet another way of being open and not categorizing or judging those 
around you, not needing to see them as desperately needful people for your 
own self-aggrandizement.  Being secure and confident in yourself, just 
delicately offer to share what was at first something curious and 
interesting to you.  Remember all the little steps you took to get to here 
with Me?  Use the spiritual power of your imagination to suggest the next 
step in concrete terms.
Does this help point the way, My son?

Student:  Yes, it does.  Your statement of a new openness, a new way of 
being open is very interesting and exciting.  It takes it out of the realm 
of “have to” or “need to” and puts it in the realm of growth.  So thank You.

Michael: Yes, you truly grasp My meaning here.  Sharing your awareness of 
spirit is something light-hearted and joyful, with a little teasing - that 
works. This is something genuine you feel and freely express, not in any way 
just a marketing technique.  See the wholeness and completeness of those 
around you and offer this perception as a little something extra that will 
grow in them on its own.  As you yourself have experienced, this is often at 
first just a tiny window through which you get the barest little glimpse. 
Then, like Alice down the rabbit hole, you fall through and find Spirit has 
surrounded you all your life.  And be in My peace.

Student:  Yes, Michael, there so many things I would like to talk to you 
about, including what C brought up this evening.  It’s unfortunate that 
there are so many people out there who are skeptical about what is going on 
here.  Even the church I used to go to denounces it saying we are too 
dependent upon whatever You are.  But I can only respond by saying that in 
the three years I’ve been part of this process, this experience, my life has 
changed dramatically spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

Even if I don’t fully understand what is going on - my lack of understanding 
of the concepts in the Urantia Book - and I do not understand in a sense who 
even You are and who Mother is, I still feel, I still have the experience 
that something is changing within me - the energy - and I do feel Your 
peace.  And for those people who denounce or debunk and say that this is not 
good for us: read the transcripts.  All the transcripts are about love and 
peace and truth and honoring each other, not about separatism, or one church 
being better than another.  It’s just about love and growing and evolving 
and treating each other with respect; and the pursuit of perfection.

And as I say, I do not totally understand - and it does bother me to say I 
don’t understand - the nature of Yourself, or Mother: who and what You are; 
and all the celestials.  These are foreign concepts to me, foreign ideas to 
me, even the idea of a personal teacher; but I’m willing, I’m willing to go 
in that direction because it’s been a positive experience for me and my life 
has changed dramatically.  That’s what I wish to say about that.

But I have been feeling that as You ask us to go into and rest in Your 
peace, I have been noticing when I allow myself to do that - I go home, I 
close the door to the world - especially if there are a lot of things going 
on in my life - I allow myself to let it all go and let God…feel His peace, 
and there are no thoughts, there’s no fear, there’s no anxiety, and I feel 
this current running through my being.  And it’s like…it’s like home.  I 
feel alive in this current.  I know it’s there, and I feel this is my 
essence, my creative force.  I’m so at peace in this place.  And indeed I’ve 
been coming from this place more and more.  If You have any response to what 
I just said, please say so.

Michael: Yes, D.  It warms My heart on this cool winter’s evening to hear 
one of My sons express the joy he has found.  I believe it will help your 
understanding of yourself, and your brothers and sisters, to realize what 
your textbook means when it says you are all Experiential Beings.  As your 
Mother and I have expressed it, you are nodules of God out here in time and 
space experiencing unique lives.  This may seem to contradict what We 
encourage you to feel as completeness, because this is not the same as what 
you have read and been taught to consider as Existential Beings - Paradise 
origin beings - who exist in a way that you will not for a long, long time.

I emphasize that this experience - that you are - that God Himself writes as 
your soul - is what your lives are based upon.  Some of the difficulties you 
have in communicating your spiritual experiences to your fellows are because 
they do not have the same experience behind the words you both have in 
common.  So, often when you are trying to share with them the experiences 
you have known here in the Teaching Mission - these evenings of heightened 
experience of Mother’s and My presence, they do not realize they are just 
filling in the blanks, so to speak, with their own imagination, and then 
reacting to their own creation.

The fault is not so much that people use their imagination in this way, for 
to a degree, this is creative, this is an attempt to fill in the blanks of 
existence with their own spiritual power.  The error is in not realizing 
they are doing so, and therefore rejecting something they truly do not know 
yet.  This is what I meant when I once said, “Forgive them for they know not 
what they are doing.”  Realize that this is a basic part of being human.  
All your thoughts, all your language is based on experience, and today your 
world is so full of so many different media, people are virtually stuffed 
with vicarious experience.  In your society this is based so enormously on 
expectations of entertainment, it is hard for people to distinguish without 
a lot of self-reflection and stillness, how much of what they take for real 
is only some media-provided entertainment based on competition with other 
entertainment.

This is what you are confronted with, so it helps to realize the basis on 
which you are being accepted or rejected.  But this is also their problem, 
if you will.  It helps you to be as concrete and original as you can be in 
your descriptions of your own experience.  Simply let them know, as you did 
with Me tonight, that this is not just ideas, or concepts, or notions you 
got from entertainment or a book - it is not vicarious with you - but real, 
unique, and valid experience.  Ask them to share with this distinction in 
mind.  Ask them to share with you what is their own unique personal 
experience of a spiritual nature.  This way you can both find some solid 
ground, as it were, for experience is the only ground there is for humans.

Thank you for sharing with Me your experience of what these last few years 
have been for you.  This, My son, is touching on your soul.  Your Mother and 
I encourage all Our children to not be daunted by the fact you are not able 
to fully realize or live up to your ideals of accepting where you are, or 
where you should be heading.  Don’t throw out one for the other, but cherish 
them both - both where you are and where you feel God wants you to go next.  
I will grant you it is like having one foot on a dock and the other in a 
boat, but this stretch is also in the plan.  Our Father has a very loving 
sense of humor or we would all be lost if He didn’t.  This is where I 
suggest a light-hearted teasing and playful attitude is truly part of the 
joy of living.  First find it for yourself, and appreciate this connection, 
and then it let affect others - as it will.

Student:  Well, I’ve come to relish and really wish to accentuate and 
perpetuate that this is my life, and that the force I feel within me is my 
creative force with God.  I wish and desire to experience and make decisions 
from this life-affirming, God-knowing being.  I no longer wish to be limited 
by beliefs or the perceptions around me, but I want this life-force to be 
expressed to its fullest, to create to its fullest, unencumbered, unlimited, 
with God’s textures and colors and ideals and visions.

I also have a sense of this inner wisdom within me, this inner process.  You 
know I’m always questioning, questioning what I believe, and how I got to 
where I am now, and how I can change that.

Michael:  Yes, D, you are learning to accept more and more of yourself.  I 
caution you that this should be a process of letting go and allowing the 
realization: you are just beginning.  This is the wonder, this is the 
humility in the perception of something enormous still to come.  If, by 
comparison, you are just a tiny speck getting started, still this tiny speck 
is capable of that perception.

Student:  The thought of…I don’t feel myself…I know in the grand scheme of 
things, I’m almost nothing.  But I don’t feel like I’m a little speck.  I 
feel, despite my station in life, that I am alive and vibrant and rich and I 
matter, that there is meaning to my existence, that I do exist…to…

There is another question, another thought, because of what has been going 
on in this world, and You know very well what has been happening over in 
Asia with all the strife, the earthquakes and tsunami: how can these people, 
how can we find meaning in what has happened?  What’s the possibility of 
five million people being homeless and hundreds of thousands perishing?  How 
can one find meaning or even God in that, with someone asking that question 
of me?  With someone that has lost everything in their lives, their family, 
their way of life?  They don’t feel like existing.  How could I counsel 
someone who just experienced that, or even say to them that God loves them?  
It would fall on deaf ears.  What would you say to them, Michael?

Michael:  In these cases, My son, you can only offer all you have to give - 
as fully as you can - and only you can decide what this is.  But I and our 
Father offer them eternal life itself, they and their loved ones.  As I 
tried to explain when I lived among you, there are, from the human viewpoint 
you will have so long as you live this life, there are truly accidents of 
time and space.  The tectonic plates of the earth shifted as they have for 
billions of years, and will continue to do, and an impersonal wave of water 
hit the beaches and cities.

To God there are no accidents, everything is His will.  But no subordinate 
being can pretend to know fully why it was this person and not that one.  So 
one thing you can do for yourself, and for those you wish to help, is to 
realize that you do not know.  This is another facet of humility, My son, in 
realizing the enormity of what only God knows.  Then this becomes something 
you can share.  This way those who have lost so much can know that it was 
not their fault, or anything they did or did not do in their life, that 
brought this upon them.  The tectonic plates of the earth shifted and an 
impersonal wave of water went towards land.  Do you understand?

Student:  Yes, I do.

Michael:  It is not a platitude, but the truth: those who perished are in 
His hands now, and you cannot pretend to know the fear and the terror and 
the pain that they experienced.  But I thank you for your question, for this 
touches on the most difficult aspects of life as it has been lived and will 
continue to be lived on the evolutionary planets that are God’s creation.  
So we have seen much this evening of wonder, and to wonder about.  As I 
invited you to once before, do not hesitate to ask a question of spirit.  
Spirit is that which contains all else and unites all else.  This is how you 
grow - by letting the wonder overwhelm you at times and give you a real 
appreciation of the blessings right within your own life.

Good evening, My children.  Be in My peace.