[tmtranscripts] Michael 6.5.06

[JERRY LANE]

Michael—June 5, 2006

Marin T/M Group—Mill Valley, California—U. S. A.

MICHAEL—T/R-JL

(The nature of spiritual beings)
(How to achieve self-determination)
(Fundamentalism)
(Reality is liberating)
(Fearful things that never come)
(The nature of stillness)
(Your soul is not your memories)
(Guilt and self-forgiveness)
(The whole Celestial Family is learning, growing)

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit,    Tonight we want to thank You particularly 
for these wonderful Handbooks On Being Human You’ve been giving us.  You are 
able to present to us, that is to our conscious selves, what we can know 
about ourselves.  You help us understand the spiritual principles and 
presented facts of the Urantia book as if from the inside-out--how these 
spiritual realities impact our inner life.  And so we thank You for this 
great reward You’ve helped us experience.  Amen.

MICHAEL:  Good evening, My children, this is Michael.  I thank you in return 
for your appreciation of the teaching mission that Mother and I, and Our 
other Local Universe Sons and Daughters are involved in.  Urantia has had 
such a checkered and unique history Our whole family feels that whatever 
effort We can give you to help you, in a sense, catch up and remedy some of 
the terribly painful disasters that have stricken the whole human family; 
whatever We can do to help is Our gift to you.  We are happy and thrilled to 
be of service.

(The nature of spiritual beings)

This is Our nature and so it pleases Us greatly when you can put Us to use.  
We want to be used this way--as your Parents, as your Friends.  It does Us 
good, even as a Creator Son and Mother Spirit of millions of worlds.  Every 
son and daughter, whether of a human or higher estate, fulfills us, and so 
We are more than pleased when Our efforts have a good effect in your lives.

For it is also Our nature not to compel any kind of obedience or even a 
specific reaction to Our offerings.  We know this would be a short-sighted, 
short term effect.  But more importantly, We would do nothing to cramp your 
own exercise of your free will.  This is what is most precious to Us, in 
you, and We hope to always encourage you to treasure this yourselves.

The very definition of the kind of beings you are is this potential for free 
will that God grants you as a condition of your existence.  Yet it would be 
going too far to state that you are only human to the degree you can 
exercise your free will.  Even if this ability is largely latent and only 
potential, still this entitles you to the full human estate and deserving of 
respect, both from your Celestial Family, and hopefully more and more from 
and to each other.

But the realization and the exercise of your free will definitely augment 
your human experience. This is literally how you take hold of reality and 
discover what works, and what doesn’t.  We’ve talked a lot recently about 
the complexity of being human, for you know yourselves primarily from the 
viewpoint of your consciousness.  It was a great leap forward when your more 
modern psychology was able to express the notion of an unconsciousness part 
of your human being that more or less had to be inferred from people’s 
behavior.

Simple observation of mentally disturbed persons showed they were often 
acting out certain learned behaviors, but unconscious of either the primary 
cause or origin, and even more tragically, of the effects.  This was the 
realization that people can do what they choose not to do, and not do what 
they choose to.  Also the phenomenon of projection is so much easier to see 
when another person projects their values onto those around them, completely 
unconsciously and independent of whether these values and behaviors are 
externally there.

But then: how to internalize and accept for yourself that this is an 
intrinsic part of consciousness?  From the standpoint of your conscious 
self, all value and meaning you experience as outside of yourself, seemingly 
intrinsic in your surroundings, has a lot of its origin within you, if not 
in its genesis then certainly in its recognition.  Another person outside of 
you can have value in and of themselves, but you have to perceive it and 
recognize it before you can experience it.

(How to achieve self-determination)

My last lesson mentioned how all these unconscious factors condition your 
consciousness, and so long as they remain unconscious and unrecognized, this 
conditioning limits your ability to freely choose, independent of it.  In a 
word, you are still being—determined--by that which you do not consciously 
realize.  So look at the recognition and acceptance of this as a sign or 
indication of both individual maturity, and also a growing maturity of 
society and culture; if you will, a process the whole world of Urantia needs 
to be involved in even more.  For without this viewpoint, without this 
acceptance that you are being conditioned by your own unconsciousness, your 
projections stand in the way of your perceiving a more objective, broader, 
deeper, God-created reality.

There is a natural hesitation to accept responsibility for something that 
seems to be--not you.  And if you take the view that responsibility limits 
you, limits your freedom of action by having to be responsible for what you 
do, an immature person chooses license, or simply acting without being 
responsible.

Yet as long as this viewpoint dominates your thinking, you can never be 
free. You may feel you are more free, and that accepting responsibility is 
somehow going to cramp your style, but accepting the psychological and 
spiritual truth of what I’m telling you now is the way to true liberation, 
is the only way to exercise your free will.  Taking 
response-ability--accepting the need to acknowledge and respond to others 
gets you out of your own self-created smaller world, and concurrently 
develops real abilities.

(Fundamentalism)

Your world has long experienced a phenomena in all cultures, all 
societies--something you call fundamentalism.  In essence a fundamentalist 
is a person who believes within himself or herself, they are so 
fundamentally in accord with reality they needn’t entertain or explore any 
contrary viewpoints: they already know what’s totally right.  They believe 
they are literally holding the living, fundamental truth of life itself; and 
this gives them the great power of license.  Why entertain doubts of your 
own unconscious conditioning, or the fact that how you see the world is 
largely due to how you’ve been indoctrinated?  Why open your mind to other 
ideas and notions of reality when you already posses the full truth?  Why be 
bothered feeling contradictory or contrary feelings when you can blank them 
out with a dogmatic self-assertion?

Of course, these are all rhetorical questions.  The real reason you welcome 
an open mindedness and seek many different opinions and viewpoints is 
because you accept the psychology that you yourself need to examine the 
origin of your own ideas.  You open yourself to many other different 
people’s opinions so you can see them more as they see themselves, beyond or 
through your own projections of who you once saw them to be.

It takes courage and faith to go down this path.  From the viewpoint of 
adolescent or clinging, lingering immaturity, it seems needlessly 
self-limiting.  It seems like a lot of work to understand different 
viewpoints when there is such an enticing, comfortable laziness in just 
accepting what you’ve been told due to the accidents of your birth.

Here is where it helps to be truly cosmopolitan in the sense of striving for 
a world viewpoint, including as many cultures as you can encounter.  This is 
  enormously facilitated in your world today through your mass media, 
television and the internet, if backed by the principle of a free press.  
Now you can more easily accomplish a number of broader viewpoints of what 
life is, fundamentally, for others.  In keeping with the stretch this 
occasions, and the faith it takes when you start to feel that stretch 
pulling your once monistic notions apart, you must go through a kind of 
fracturing process in order to avoid simple-mindedness.  This is a dangerous 
passage to a future greater wholeness, but no one who wishes to be truly 
self-aware and in possession of an ever expanding free will is spared this 
journey.  For a long time now this has been the goal of what you call a 
liberal arts education, where you are purposefully exposed to a number of 
arts and sciences considered the minimum of what a young cultured person 
should experience.

So keep in mind, My children, that you are truly, at the most fundamental 
level, a spirit-endowed personality.  Objectively you are a creature, that 
is to say, a creation of God, starting out at a particular point in time and 
space.  Subjectively you are only your conscious self, and it is a blessing 
of humility to be able to perceive the enormity of the surrounding world in 
which you find yourself.

There are certain modern notions that much decry an egoistic or egocentric 
view of things.  Such as when people thought the universe rotated about the 
earth, so an egotistical person sees the world pivoting about them.  Still 
in all, you need a strong and ever more refined, growing sense of yourself.  
And it is a further blessing of humility to remember that you are your ego 
to yourself.  For this sets you free of illusions of objectivity, which 
remains a goal, not a possession.

(Reality is liberating)

The basic principle I am teaching here is that what is real liberates you, 
while what is unreal, in the sense of false motivations and unrecognized 
projections, binds you tight in a snare of misdirected efforts and unwanted 
effects.  These are principles to help guide you to being open-minded in all 
your thinking, and remembering, and to be open-hearted in your feelings.  
Deny or suppress nothing whatsoever, but grow to encompass all you can 
perceive and imagine.  Then you are approaching the all-inclusiveness of 
spirit. Then you are building that ineffable quality of character, 
that--something there--Mother taught you last week.

This is the main purpose of your human life.  You are an experiential being 
growing a soul, growing character, and this is potentially an eternal 
treasure.  So joyfully accept as many viewpoints as you can embrace.  As 
Mother invited you to do last week, see if you can be a democracy inside.  
Sure enough it may seem a bit complex and messy, compared to some simplistic 
notion of rigid, dogmatic, fundamentalist assurance you already know all 
there is to know; just as your political democracies can be rather messy and 
contentious at times.  But as you say: it beats whatever is in second place.

So don’t fear the stretch or the temporary confusion the complexity 
sometimes brings.  There is an economy of energy within your mind that deems 
it proper to expand and stretch only when you need to.  So exercise your 
mind like a muscle.  Use it.  Welcome this wild mix of mind and body and 
spirit--Mother Spirit, and Myself, and your Father Fragment--as well as all 
the people you’ve ever known in your soul; then graciously offer this 
wonderful storehouse of your human reality to service.

Play the part of true spirit.  Never seek to coerce or simply overwhelm 
those who may be a little less developed than yourself.  Rather: forget 
yourself.  Let go and open wide to take in the next moment, another day.  
This is where the fun is, so I invite you to enjoy it well.

If you have any questions or comments this evening, I enjoy them as a gift 
from you.

Student:  Thank You, Father Michael, and Mother Nebadonia, and Whoever else 
is around, for all the help I got this last month.  I appreciate it very 
much.  Also, I’ve been looking at how much I’m circumscribed and conditioned 
by fear.  I’m afraid to make certain decisions that would open me up to, 
maybe criticism or… I’m not exactly… what.  A lot of things I don’t do I 
want to do, I can’t do because I’ve been…  I’m not even sure what I’m trying 
  to say right at the moment.  Like I want to be a transmitter/receiver, but 
I find myself not doing anything—not practicing, not contacting my Teacher 
as often as I could, not maintaining, not being in stillness.  I don’t know 
why I don’t do these things, which are obviously beneficial to me and 
others.  Do You have any insight as to what is going on--anyway?

(Fearful things that never come)

MICHAEL:  Yes, My son, you probably recall your Urantia book giving examples 
of Morontia Mota--spiritual laws--being the kind of lessons you will 
immediately be given in the next phase of your eternal life.  One of these 
laws states that many of the worst fears are those of things which never 
come.  This may seem absurd on the face of it, because something you fear 
and never arrives certainly cannot be worse than some fearful thing that 
actually happens to you.  But it is true nevertheless.  This only emphasizes 
My lesson for this evening.  Fears that are not based on anything that can 
actually happen can be more crippling and limiting because they are not 
based on reality.  A realistic, fearful thing that comes to past--when it 
does arrive you have some chance of dealing with a particular event.  So 
even if you do not triumph over it, if you are somehow injured by it, still 
you have contacted and related with something real.

You have that tough-minded saying: that those things that don’t kill you, 
make you  strong.  (Yes…)  This is a bit overstated, but it is something you 
have to thoroughly understand and embrace in order for it to help you with a 
particular fear.  For fears are something you must also embrace.  You must 
let yourself feel them with the courageous attitude of: OK fear, do your 
worst.  For this is the only way you can get to the bottom of one, and make 
this a real inner event.  Then you can learn from the experience.  You know 
this psychologically as facing your fears, probing into them, letting your 
mind articulate what it is you are afraid of.  Let it become specific so you 
can deal with it.  Your faith in your own abilities and adaptability’s comes 
into play.  So look in your soul, My son, at those wonderful times in your 
past when you  have triumphed over adversity, and remember how it seemed 
worse that what it was.  (Yes…)

This is part of the training so many go through to handle fearful 
situations; which is learning to control your imagination.  Think of the 
hundreds of thousands of years men and women were enslaved by their own 
imaginations creating so many paralyzing taboos and superstitions, that had 
to be faced and penetrated in order to get at valid causes and effects.

As for practicing your stillness, My son, I think it helps to consider it 
not just another effort, another chore, not just another thing you feel you 
should do, but see it as taking a break.  The only difference between 
stillness and, shall we say just being lazy and enjoying doing nothing—which 
is also interesting from time to time, to indulge a bit—is the matter of 
consciousness.  You are setting aside small periods to do nothing—only 
highly consciously, so rather than slipping into a dreamy half-conscious 
state, you try to be consciously aware of your thinking. Rather than getting 
caught up in thoughts, you‘re observing them, detached.

(The nature of stillness)

The stillness itself is nothing you directly create, for indeed that would 
just be another job, another effort.  It is more a matter of noticing after 
ten, or fifteen, or twenty minutes—if you can devote that much time—your 
mind just naturally tends to slow and broaden.  Memories as they occur to 
you can be more exquisitely unique, almost as if you are reliving some 
former event, for here you are beginning to touch your soul, the story 
created both by you and your Father Fragment.  So if you’re doing it right, 
it should be delightful in and of itself.  It’s not a job, it’s not an 
effort.  It is no more nor less than trusting this rather strange and funny 
thing to do—from the viewpoint of all your other busy activities—actually 
has some special benefit.  As Mother Spirit said last week, there is 
a--something there--that slowly accumulates, and this is genuine character.  
It is a kind of home base and sense of yourself that is a little more subtle 
than what you normally consider your ego.  It’s more like constantly 
discovering you are more than who and what you think you are, more than you 
have hitherto perceived yourself to be.  (Yes…)  It’s encouraging to feel 
this living growth.

So it takes a while to get the feeling this is home, because it is rather 
strange at first, to be sitting there doing nothing--highly consciously.  
This is what I feel is your reluctance or aversion to try it .  You‘ve been 
seeing it as just one more thing to do.

Student:  Yes, I see that.  I also see that I was reluctant to get in touch 
with my soul because I didn’t want to see what was there.  I see that 
particular idea is conditioning from the past, childhood upbringing in a 
fundamentalist religion.  I don’t know how I got hold of that one except, 
well, I just didn’t want to see my soul.  So I resisted anything that would 
show me that, even though You and Mother have said that it is a co-creation 
of my personality and my Father Fragment, and that, in and of itself, would 
make it positive.

(Your soul is not your memories)

MICHAEL:  Yes.  I’ll say that again: Yes!  (laughter)  Exactly!  Your soul 
is contra-distinct from your memories.  If nothing else, then in its very 
size.  You recall the times We’ve told you how enormous your soul is, 
precisely because it is a product of the presence of God, a story told from 
His perspective.

Student:  That’s a wonderful way to look at it, because I’ve been looking at 
it from my perspective, which is not very positive at all.

MICHAEL:  Those are your memories.  (Right…)  From the standpoint of your 
consciousness, as We’ve discussed this evening, your own soul is something 
to be discovered.

Student:  Yes, I see that now—nothing to be feared but to be discovered, and 
relished.

MICHAEL:  Here is where your stillness opens that door, and can give so much 
meaning, now, to your memories.  It is a way in which your genuine soul’s 
point of view can inform your memories, which tend to be more partial or 
fragmented; and if they’re painful, they have a kind of built-in aversion.  
(Yes…)

You recall from your reading the Urantia book, there is a whole order of 
angelic helpers on the Mansion Worlds called Reversion Directors who teach 
you how to understand your own past experiences, and especially the painful 
ones.  They revert you back to a former state and let you re-experience some 
of these memories with your own now more mature, fuller, broader 
understanding, both of yourself and the others involved.  This is what 
contact with your soul and your Father Fragment can do for you.  Again, you 
should feel this wonderful sense of freedom in your present existence, this 
expansion of your free will as one more fearful memory becomes understood 
and ceases to condition you.  So why wait until you get to the Mansion 
Worlds?

Student:  I was kind-of wondering the same thing.  (Michael joins in the 
laughter)  Both You and Mother have pointed out several times, to get in 
tough with… no… really relive these memories.  And I never could do that.  I 
was too afraid of them.  I feel less fear now—more understanding.  I’m 
looking forward to actually freeing myself from those things—those burdens 
I’ve been carrying around.  (heavy sigh)

MICHAEL:  There is a lot of forgiveness involved here, My son, both for 
yourself and for others.

Student:  It seems to be easier to forgive others than it is to forgive 
myself.  Slowly I’m learning to accept and forgive myself--as I am.  That I 
learned from You and Mother.

(Guilt and self-forgiveness)

MICHAEL:  See guilt, and the refusal to forgive yourself, as self-motivating 
techniques.  There is a necessity for you to evaluate what you are doing, 
and what you have done, in order to keep growing, in order not to keep 
repeating past mistakes.

Student:  Yes.  I just saw also that I wanted not to…  I didn’t want to get 
in trouble with Mother again, and I was kind-of putting You and Mother 
Nebadonia in that position of being parents, and I didn’t want to get in 
trouble again, so I’m careful of what I’m doing…  And none of that is true, 
as far as You Two are concerned, or the Celestial Family is concerned.  But 
that’s where I was at the time, up until just a few minutes ago.

MICHAEL:  My son, cultivate a willingness to try something new.  That is a 
better way to go about the future than trying to drive yourself to a better 
behavior through guilt or this not-forgiving yourself.  You have a fear that 
if you forgive yourself, and relinquish the guilt, you‘ll simply back-slide 
into an ever worse kind of person.  (Yes…)  So I want you to see the noble 
desire to be a better person behind that.  (Yes…)  I’m just pointing out a 
more efficient and better way to go about it.

Look forward to new behavior, to trying things, to seeing life as an 
adventure where you‘re bound to make mistakes.  This is the way it was all 
set up.  (Michael laughs)  You‘re starting out as a highly imperfect kind of 
creature--  (Yes…) compared to what you will be a few million years from 
now.  So don’t be overly-critical about your mistakes.  Simply acknowledge 
them.  Say, Ooops! (Michael laughs again) missed that one!  Take it in 
stride and use your imagination, not to surround yourself with fears and 
taboos, but to embrace the unique next moment.  For this fear, this 
apprehension casts a dulling pall over the moments as they come.  Some poor 
folks experience life as if nothing new ever happens, not realizing they are 
causing the illusion that is killing them with boredom.

Student:  Yes.  I like Your ways of doing things much better than my way.

MICHAEL:  Well, let’s see if we can make them--our way.  (both laugh at 
that)

Student:  I agree with that.  Yes, I will.  Thank You once more, Father 
Michael.

MICHAEL:  My son, when the people about you suddenly seem to be inexplicably 
happier and more open and welcoming, then you know this is really what you 
yourself are doing.  There is that marvelous concept you have of feedback, 
where you realize your own projected fears and apprehensions are falling 
away because reality itself is wearing a new face, and is more responsive to 
you.  You find yourself in an friendlier universe, with the further delight 
of realizing it was always there.

Student:  I’m realizing a little bit more the universe really is friendly.  
I can visualize that the next life is much friendlier than this one, but I 
had not looked at this life as being too friendly.

(The whole Celestial Family is learning, growing)

MICHAEL:  The human situation on Urantia is close to unique in millions of 
worlds in the hardships the whole human race has had to endure for so long.  
This of course is one of the main purposes of the Urantia book--to explain 
why things are as they are, and that even We, your Creator Father and Mother 
Spirit are not yet perfect either, nor is all our Celestial Family.  We are 
all trying and learning.  We are all involved in this great adventure that 
our Father deliberately created—it and us—in an imperfect state so we might 
participate in the creation of our own perfection.  So realize where you are 
starting from, My son.  Realize how far you’ve come already in just a 
relatively few, short human years.

Student:  Thank You , Father.

MICHAEL:  You’re welcome.  I thank you for your love, that Mother and I feel 
so directly, beaming from your heart, and your mind, and your soul.  I 
invite you to feel what I just mentioned a moment ago, that even your guilt 
and your un-self-forgiveness is basically an attempt to grow, to live a 
fuller life, to be a better person.  So know that this is how We see you, My 
son.  And this is to your eternal credit.

Student: I look forward to standing before You and Mother one day, in this 
universe.

MICHAEL:  And so you will, My son.  You’re not doing too bad a job of it 
right now.  (much laughter, and a few tears of happiness)  (Thank You 
again…)  Let’s say amen to that!  (Amen!)  We thank our Father for this love 
He created for us to share.  (Yes…)  (a long pause…)

Now be in My peace.   Good evening.


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