[tmtranscripts] Michael 7.24.06

[JERRY LANE]

Michael—July 24, 2006

Marin TM Group—Mill Valley, California—U.S.A.

MICHAEL—T/R-JL

(General and individual evolution)
(Stillness as a source of good ideas)
(Stillness, faith, and effort)
(Personal morality)
(You don’t automatically know God’s will)
(The inside and outside of human experience)
(Self-doubt vs. self-questioning)
(Faith vs. tempting God)

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit,    Tonight we want to thank You for helping 
us broaden our contact with, and understanding of, the spiritual dimension 
in our lives.  Yet we find ourselves in the awkward position of often 
knowing more than we can implement.  We often find it difficult to make the 
transition from general ideals to specific, good, useable ideas; and so we 
ask Your help in bringing down to earth, into our own lives, some of these 
principles we have been discovering.  Amen.

MICHAEL:  Good evening, My dear sons, this is Michael.  I welcome your 
prayer this evening for it indicates you are ready now to take a few more 
steps along this path you have chosen to share with Mother and Me and, 
indeed, your whole spiritual family.  For the human race this path is one of 
general and utterly unstoppable evolution, but it is not imposed and 
inevitable when you consider an individual human life.

(General and individual evolution)

You remember back a few years ago in your own United States culture, when 
there was such a generational kind of revolution that, while some folks 
couldn’t wait for things to change fast enough, others were expressing their 
own reaction as “future shock” as if things were happening far too 
fast--good traditions and the accumulated value of the ages, if you will, 
were being lost.

We have told you plainly there is a kind of universe-wide evolution that is 
inexorable.  It’s part of the growing soul of time and space, the growing 
wisdom that all personal beings are evolving from their life experiences.  
This is the basis for both personal and general evolution.  You have the 
potential of growing your wisdom, especially considering that part of your 
mental acuity derived from the Universal Mind of the Infinite Spirit, 
expressed as the Cosmic Mind abroad in the physical universe, and funneled 
down to the Local Universes through each Mother Spirit, each daughter of the 
Infinite Spirit.

You are beginning to realize and accept that what you call mind, your own 
personal thinking, is also part of this dimension of universal mind.  So 
also on the level of mind, as well as that of spirit, there is an evolution 
happening and We, of course, teach some of the general principles, the 
spiritual laws involved.

Now, My children, with the help of Our enticing and teasing, you are turning 
around and re-orienting your attitudes away from being so exclusively 
captured by the past, to looking towards the future.  You are feeling this 
gap, as you expressed it, of being in the uncomfortable or awkward position 
of understanding these principles, yet uncertain on how to implement them in 
your day to day life.

(Stillness as a source of good ideas)

The most simple, straight-forward, true and accurate prescription is one We 
have been recommending from the first: the practice of stillness.  Bring to 
a halt as profoundly as you can, on a regular basis, your habitual ways of 
doing and thinking.  I would ask you to consider that in every major 
religion of Urantia, there’s a great similarity of approach for those who 
wish to dedicate themselves to living what they feel is an overtly religious 
life, in other words, the monks who dwell in monasteries throughout the 
world.

In every religion their days are tightly scheduled to allow for a great deal 
of stillness or meditation.  They start and end their days this way, and all 
through the day, at regular breaks in their activities, they dedicate 
themselves solely to meditation, to reflection on what they are doing.  Even 
their vows of silence serve to augment this inner reflection.

Mother Spirit and I have suggested you bring as much of this into your life 
as you can with small, spontaneous moments of stillness all through your 
day.  For when you look at the momentum of habit and tradition, the 
continuity of value and meaning that individuals absorb for so many years 
from their families, their immediate associates, and now from so much 
incessant media, all the news and entertainment that fills peoples’ days; 
this gives you some estimation of what it might take to re-examine all of 
this.

But stillness is the best way you yourself can create these specific, good, 
useable ideas, and plans, and projects.  Mother Spirit and I are always 
hesitant to supply these specifics for you, My children, only because We 
realize this is the effort you most need to exercise.  This is the spirit of 
experimenting you need to welcome, generating your own good ideas and 
projects: what you need most to establish a real self-confidence.

There is no shorter, more direct way.  By all means read your self-help 
books.  Enjoy exposing yourself to hundreds of ideas.  But they all come 
down to feeling, feeling which of these apply to you, feeling which you can 
use.

In practicing stillness, in setting aside part of your day to meditate, you 
are uniquely and immediately face to face with certain primal fears: fears 
of nothing happening, fears of wasting your time, or missing out on some 
great action that’s somewhere else.  You wonder: Why am I setting here?  Am 
I enlightened yet?  What is this?  My mind is just filled with all these 
mundane things.  And so an immediate requirement of good meditation is 
faith.

Faith is what Mother Spirit and I call an offering of trust--one of the most 
valuable activities you can do.  Faith is what all religious traditions of 
Urantia have evolved, something very similar, as a way for their religiously 
ambitious members to get in deeper contact with spirit.   Faith is what so 
many great historical personages from your own near past have given credit 
for their creativity during their moments of being quiet, talking with who 
they experienced as God, then listening for His suggestions.  Think of all 
the great scientists, and artists of every kind, who frankly stated they 
didn’t know where the good ideas came from.  They simply learned how to let 
them come.

A few lessons ago I suggested that one small way to get a handle on what to 
do is to divide your human reality along the lines We’ve suggested so often, 
even though all three—physical, mental, spiritual--are inextricably 
intertwined.

Think in terms of physical idealism, getting into some activity that is just 
intrinsically interesting to you, that forever teases you forward to greater 
and greater physical dexterity, agility, flexibility, and balance.  Consider 
seriously your diet, your periods of rest.

Mentally strive for an ever clearer, more open consciousness, welcoming all 
the physical facts, then the persons you meet--all that you say, and is said 
to you.  Think of the mentality you share with those you love, and those you 
associate with every day.  Stretch yourselves intellectually.  Don’t shy 
away from certain understandings simply because they are complex.

Then practice your stillness.  Let this physical/mental part of your being 
relax in such a way that your spiritual home base swells forth, and you can 
welcome the re-evaluation of your life.  This is where it will come to you, 
My children: what to try differently today or tomorrow, whichever is next.

(Stillness, faith, and effort)

In your present-day pop culture there is an attitude that if you feel a 
great effort is needed to change your life, to grow, to understand; you are 
doing something wrong.  There’s some failure involved.  This is a notion 
that if you are doing it right, life should be easy.  True happiness is 
effortlessness.  So Mother Spirit had Her lesson last week on the need to 
feel the inner experience of effort involved in what you are doing.  This, 
My children, is one fine measure of the value of it.

I’m not talking here about being inefficient, or of doing some 
meaninglessness activity simply because it involves effort.  You don’t take 
the physical and mental considerations away in order just to feel this 
spiritual effort.  But simply in all your physical and mental activities, 
you don’t shy away from feeling the effort involved.  Feeling is your 
connection with creativity.   It is how you know you are--doing.  It is even 
your contribution to the Supreme Being, just as this is the gift to your own 
soul.  This is your engagement with life.  This is what strengthens you and 
gives you the ability for more life.  This is how you get from general 
desires and principles to specific actions.  This is how you open yourselves 
to the ideas that will be both yours, and Ours, and our Father’s.  As Mother 
Spirit said, this is where Her wisdom and your own co-mingle.

Think about it, yes, of course; but practice it.  Do it.  I’ll meet you 
there.

If you have any questions or comments this evening, this is also something 
we share, is it not?

Student:  Father Michael, last week, I mean last lesson, You mentioned the 
word
“moral” several times, and I’m wondering if You could say some more on the 
subject of moral, or morality, please?

(Personal morality)

MICHAEL:  Yes, C.  I mentioned that when God creates personality of the 
human order, even though no being other than God can exhaustibly delineate 
what personality is, We are certain of certain characteristics or properties 
with which He endows you.  One is the ability to discern in personal 
behavior and activity, a contrast of right and wrong, better and best.  You 
are even capable of welcoming this as a conscious evaluation in every small 
phase of your life, from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment 
you go to sleep at night.

But you are also endowed with an ability to ignore this possible 
consciousness.  You can remember from your own teenage years how it was 
almost imperative you go through a phase of challenging all the values were 
raised with, all the do’s and don’ts, rights and wrongs of your particular 
culture heritage.  You did this largely through the exercise of 
indifference, the general attitude of: Who cares?  Don’t bug me with these 
considerations, I know what I want to do.  I think you can even see a 
certain necessity for each generation to go through this phase of 
re-examining the values it was given.

Tonight We’re encouraging you to keep going, to make this re-evaluation 
incessant, and find a way of living in transition, feeling yourselves 
growing, changing. This means welcoming an inner feeling of right and wrong 
back into your life, recovering, if you will, from the drastic medicine of 
indifference as the only way your younger self could get some separation.  
You may have been living for awhile in a calculated, rather cynical kind of 
indifference as to whether all the small routines of your life are actually 
good for you, health-wise, mentally-wise, spiritually-wise.

If you have been used to license, indulging yourself along these lines for a 
while, it takes great courage to welcome the sense of right and wrong that 
can lead you to greater health, greater sanity, greater spiritual value.  
This is the essence of morality: feeling this dimension of right and wrong, 
better and best in everything you do.  Exercise this sense, experiment with 
it, keep track of which decisions worked, which didn’t, and why.  For in 
discovering what works, what truly works, and what doesn’t, and why, you are 
discovering God’s will.  You are discovering His laws, whether it be in your 
own life, or in your inter-personal relations--society and culture and 
government.  You have only to accept the discipline of sincerely striving to 
know what is right and wrong, and then doing it, in order to achieve the 
glorious rewards.  Does this clarify your understanding, My son?

Student:  Yes, Father, quite a bit.  I’ve always wondered what is this thing 
called God’s will.  Now I’ve got a clue as to what it is, I also see that 
I’ve taken some steps that way, but I’ve been slack in the discipline it 
takes to find these things out--which is really like…which is really wrong, 
which really works, which really doesn’t.  I look forward to doing that 
again.

MICHAEL:  Yes, My son, like all disciplines it seems rather constricting at 
first.  Then you make the ironic discovery that this is actually the way to 
true liberation.  (Yes)  The more you can bring your own will in accord with 
God’s will, which is just another name for Reality, the more success and 
happiness you will find.

There is a delight in discovering a constant refinement of abilities.  You 
are most familiar with this in terms of craftsmanship, but it applies to all 
facets of your life--in your present life, and even more in your 
Morontia/soulful phases to come.  For this refinement is also infinite.  Is 
there anything more you wish to know or say?

Student:  Yes.  I look forward to the discovery of more refinement.  I 
hadn’t looked at it that way, but that is actually what it is.  Thank You 
very much, Father.

(You don’t automatically know God’s will)

MICHAEL:  You are very welcome, My son.  These are all those little ways you 
find of teaching yourself what you need to know.  This is the adventure.  
You don’t automatically know what God’s will, what Reality is.  But you’ve 
been given a way to find out.  (Yes)  So be in My peace.

Student:  Yes, Michael.  I first want to thank You, and Mother, and the 
other teachers I have listened to and put into action their teachings over 
the past four years.  It has enriched my life tremendously.  I can’t fathom 
where I would be if I hadn’t made that initial phone call to Donna.  (Ed: 
Donna D’Ingillo—Center For Christ Consciousness--Marin’s initial T/R)  I 
also appreciate the people who have come here, and those I meet with on 
Saturday in the city: they’ve enriched me as well.  What keeps me going is 
coming to these experiences on Monday, and all the others I’ve participated 
in.

When I spoke privately to Mother last Saturday, about what I want to do with 
my life, I’m at a loss because I don’t have any specific idea.  It’s all 
kind of general and nebulous.  Some of it is ego-driven, with a strong error 
of romance involved, so I don’t want to deceive myself.  I sense that’s what 
holds me back.  All I can do is be in the moment, to the best of my 
abilities.  I do have inklings, but I don’t…I just…do not know.

Trying to find something that is uniquely mine to give is quite a challenge 
at this time.  I know it’s in there…   But how to find it in the days and 
weeks to come…

MICHAEL:  Yes, My son, I too can feel the progress you’ve made these last 
few years, mainly because contact with spirit has been a matter of real 
experience for you.  It is one way you’ve been able to ground yourself: 
because these meetings are real events.  The people you have met have become 
your soul-mates on this spiritual path.  You are finding out too that 
experience such as this cannot, by its very essence, be anticipated.

As an aside, this is the essence of transmitting, of stepping off and not 
knowing what is coming next, but just trusting in the process.  (Ed: This 
was said by Michael, not me—JL)

(The inside and outside of human experience)

So you too, My son, need to break down these desires you have and realize 
that these various things you are interested in are somewhat opaque from the 
outside, because they are human experience.  You have to step off and get 
into them to know what they are on the inside.  You can only anticipate so 
much.  This calls for the need for real experimentation, actually trying 
small, discrete activities in order to know what they really are.

You are beginning to recognize this, for I can say the word “experiment,” 
but it too has little meaning until you have actually done one.  So many 
folks wonder what would happen if they gave up certain habits—is this habit 
really addictive?—but there is no way shy of actually giving something up to 
know this.

This understanding also helps you respect you cannot see fully into what 
other folks are doing—from the outside.  You are not only infinite and 
bottomless to each other for the limitations of your perceptions—the fact 
you are not mind-readers—you are also somewhat opaque to each other in 
experience.  A thorough understanding of this helps curb your tendency to 
judge others.

So consider this, My son: the inside and the outside of experience.  
Sometimes you just have to step off to see what happens.

Student:  Two words came to mind as You were speaking.  One is connection, 
connecting to the other people who I am gathering with—the idea of 
exchanging ideas, exchanging experiences, as we share a common experience of 
being together.  I find this thrilling and magical, and that is so important 
to me considering how solitary I live.  My intention is to nurture my 
connection to God—the Source of everything, and to experience that 24/7.  I 
know that’s quite a challenge, and takes a lot of effort, but my intention 
is connection.

Then the idea of freedom: this is the essence of my desire; the freedom to 
do what…I desire to do.  If I desire to travel, then I have the freedom to 
do so.  If I desire to not work, then I have the freedom to do so—without 
any negative results.

MICHAEL:  Well, I’m sure you will enjoy reading and rereading tonight’s 
lesson then, for this was the object, the focus—on how you implement and 
actually use that freedom.

Student:  It’s so amazing, the synchronicity of what I’m experiencing in my 
life, and this dialogue we’re having, and the dialogue I had on Saturday 
with Mother.  It’s like all these are the same theme.  Like what I’m 
experiencing, You’ve expressed.  It’s been remarkable all these four or five 
years, since I’ve been coming to the Teaching Mission.

MICHAEL:  This is what We refer to as spiritual unity, which can be found in 
a multiplicity of expressions of it.  But it is only available to you when 
you give up the need for uniformity of expression.  This is what you are 
discovering.

Student:  I do feel…  I do feel! (laughs)  I do feel a pull toward greater 
expansion and awareness…  I do feel a shift.

MICHAEL:  This too is a reward of your faith—these years.

(Self-doubt vs. self-questioning)

A certain amount of self-doubt…  Correction: I should say self-questioning, 
not self-doubt, for that is mostly an unconscious kind of pall that hangs 
over you.  A certain amount of conscious self-questioning is very healthy.  
It keeps you out of realms of ego-driven, self-congratulatory hubris.  But 
it should lead you; it should have good results.  You should find the 
answers to these questions.  It should be a refinement, a transformation 
taking place so you know you are not getting stuck going around and around 
in some kind of rut.  It should help you bring these general desires down to 
earth, My son.

This I feel you are striving to do.  You call it being more here-and-now: 
thinking of those nice things—travel, and finding some other kind of 
work—yet realizing you have a loyalty to what you find at hand, be it the 
little weed or flower in front of you, right now.  In your effort to feel 
God 24/7, be careful not to make the mistake of putting another head on top 
of your own.  To the degree you try to see God in the flower, you can miss 
the flower itself, which in a more direct way is God—God’s creation.

Student:  Right!  I do find myself getting too caught up in concepts, and, 
like You say, missing the flower: too caught up in my head.  It takes a 
while to appreciate it.  So I do understand what You mean by that.

One final thing: Mother mentioned to me, Don’t tempt God.  But is there a 
fine line between faith and tempting God?  Do You know what I’m saying?  
Like for example, let’s say I’m really tired of the work I’m doing and don’t 
want to do it any more.  So I just say, OK God, I’m quitting this: take care 
of me.  But there is a belief I will be taken care of.

(Faith vs. tempting God)

MICHAEL:  Yes, My son, another example of tempting God would be to pass a 
car on a blind curve and say, OK, God, save me.  I use this example for it 
shows the difference between faith, and tempting God to save you—from 
yourself: save you from your own irresponsibility.  So I say that fine line 
is one where, on one side, faith is the willingness to accept the full 
responsibility for your decisions.  In other words, you do all you can with 
the fullest respect for your own life, as well as for any others affected.  
I think this is a good enough rule of thumb, don’t you?

Student:  Yes.  Is this the same as when Jesus asked the Apostles to give up 
what they were doing to follow Him?  They had to let go of a lot, right then 
and there—to follow Him.

MICHAEL:  Yes, this was real faith—true, based upon their own perception of 
who I was then--but, as you know, I met many who could not recognize who and 
what I was.  For My Apostles and disciples, this was very much an exercise 
of faith because they were striving to be more responsible with their lives.

Student:  I think that is the key right there—to be more responsible for my 
own life.  And have faith in its upward, expansive abilities.

MICHAEL:  There are those who see it as a matter of their faith to trust in 
God for their livelihood, but this only works when they are willing to 
accept that God is also within them.  The closest two helping hands are on 
the ends of their own arms.  It does not work if you set God totally apart 
from yourself as some kind of paternalistic Being who is going to indulge 
you as His immature child.  Rather it is part of His wisdom that these folks 
will find a great disappointment, so that their souls might learn.

Student:  I just thought it was important to explore the distinction between 
faith and tempting God  (Indeed!)  Thank You.  (starts laughing)  This is 
great!

MICHAEL: This is how you feel your way along, sometimes through the densest 
darkness of not knowing--still!—that very thing can be approaching a greater 
truth, especially if you have been burning the candle of your life at both 
ends, selling your body and your mind and your spirit short for some little 
illusion of vainglory.

But to struggle to grow, to extend yourself with faith, praying for God’s 
help and acknowledging that He will be a large part of any success you find, 
still all the while being willing to accept the full responsibility for what 
happens—this, My children, is courage.  This is the right way to go, the 
better method, the best life you can live.   This potential is inherent in 
your human reality, so I invite you to sincerely join the hunt for it.  I 
will say it again: you do not automatically know God’s will, but it helps in 
terms of your modern philosophy to equate it with Reality itself, and to 
credit the search is an adventure without parallel.  Enjoy it well.  It will 
lead you to My peace.  Good evening.


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