[tmtranscripts] Michael 7.30.07

[JERRY LANE]

Michael—July 30, 2007

Marin TM Group—Mill Valley, California—U.S.A.
MICHAEL—T/R-JL
(The unfolding of time)
(Starting from zero in the nurseries of time and space) 
(Waste, and potential) 
(Identifying with only the mental part of being) 
(Civic responsibility)
(Character and soul)
(Impatience vs. oneness)
(Being a true citizen of a democracy)
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Welcome. We welcome you with great joy and wonder, and no little bit of awe. You invite us to embrace mystery, and so we open our minds and our hearts to the two of you. Thank you for making so much--at least of the spiritual part of mystery--personal. That the two of you together transcend time and space; that you are closer to each of endless trillions upon trillions of personal beings than they are to themselves; that you are always here for us: these are deep mysteries. But through you, we can gain an increased love and respect for life itself, and its Creator. And so, dear parents, let us reflect back to you some of the enthusiasm with which you view us, and say, Carry on. Carry on with all your love and good cheer and boundless humor. Thank you for supporting and carrying part of us along with you. Amen.
(The unfolding of time)
MICHAEL: Greetings, dear children, this is Michael. I accept. I accept your profound and heartfelt reflections of our enthusiasm for you. Rest assured, dear ones, we fully intend to carry on. Mother Spirit and I share this with all of our children: we too are growing; we too are learning; we too are alive with wonder and anticipation. We too, in our own way, must await with the unfolding of time the further revelation of the Father’s absoluteness and infinity. We wish to share with you our joy and delight in all this mystery that engulfs us as well.
But we have the advantage, dear children, of sharing the Father’s purity of spirit, and we have our hundreds of billions of years of time--as you measure it--of experience, personal experience in the creation and evolution of Nebadon, yours’ and our home. Ours is already a profound delight you have to look forward to, even getting to know the sister worlds of your local system--over six hundred and some now: meeting all their inhabitants, all their mortal survivors from the most primitive to the most advanced civilizations; all the different kinds and series of human beings. For you will confront almost all of them at once, so to speak, when you regain consciousness. 
Think of your coming life in the local system, being able to understand on such an intimate and direct level, not yet available to you, the whole content of the Lucifer Rebellion: what it was, and all that really entailed, that led Urantia and the other planets in rebellion astray. You will grow an appreciation of just how far your planet veered wildly away from an ordained pattern of not only Mother’s and my intentions and desires for our worlds, but even the Father’s, of whom we are reflections.
You will enjoy this time greatly for you will find good work here to be done. You will find, still, a necessity and reward for courage. Mother Spirit spoke last week on how this is reflected in your human lives, on your individuality and freedom as unique beings, manifested through the dignity of your will--that fullness of reality that you can control, starting, of course, with yourselves. And so we emphasize the degree to which you are an unfolding mystery to yourselves.
(Starting from zero in the nurseries of time and space) 
You were created with a freedom of choice. Yet as you are all discovering, you are starting out as personal beings from zero--in terms of pure spirit/reality experience, however you inherit the whole planet’s evolution of life in your physical being, and after birth you have to individually work your way up through the evolution of culture as you find it. At a certain stage you further discover in your immediacy before transcendence, before the need to continue to grow, the necessity of making decisions and staying open to the full results. These results include all those around you, and sometimes the whole situation in which you find yourself. This is why Mother Spirit mentioned that the complete results of whatever you try are always partially God’s. 
Almost every human being on Urantia is involved in enormous cultural and social tidal forces coming and going, and no one person, institution, organization, or government, is in complete control. There is a planetary evolution going on with your help, and so Mother Spirit mentioned that there is, indeed, something to lose—personally. This is, if you will, the gritty aspect of the nitty-gritty you find yourself in, and I would ask you this evening to open your hearts to confront it.
(Waste, and potential) 
I offer for your consideration, my children, the whole concept that you signify by the human word--waste. I ask you to think about this for awhile. What does it mean to waste time, to waste your lives, to waste abilities? First of all, is it possible? If from a certain point of view we’ve invited you to see, everyone is doing the best they can, is anything being wasted? As we look into this deeper we come face to face with the allied concept of potential. You can have a feeling that there was some potential in a person that was never realized, some possibility that never materialized, some near eventuality that never happened. I offer these for your consideration, my children, and ask you to further consider whether any answer is necessary?
Rather, isn’t this an open-ended state of question you must also embrace, as you do mystery and uncertainty, with faith? Can you do this out of love for yourself and for those around you who may benefit from your personal evolution? We know this is difficult because, as you consider any unrealized potential, or that you may be wasting time, wasting your life, it can lead to the kind of Monday Morning Quarterbacking--the after-the-fact being judgmental--you’ve struggled so hard to understand and avoid. So it helps greatly to keep things present. Respect the past, everything that happened, and let it be. Indeed, see it as some kind of strange land you have to enter with love and respect to discover what really happened. We’ve had many lessons on that.
Think in terms of present potential and the possibility of wasting it. Think in terms of what to do right now, what to do tomorrow, how to plan and provide, how to extend your deepening spiritual insights into useful foresight. How can you live your lives in the face of so many new challenges coming your way for your very numbers and increasing technology, the fact that this day never happened before? It’s an enormously quickly changing world you live in.
I offer these concepts as tools, tools that have to be used with great care to stay out of the realms of guilt or inefficient worrying. Rather, have a deep respect for all that’s included in your dignity of will. Your day to day reality is being largely determined by your own choices, so what are your potentials? What abilities do you have in potential that are yet unrealized, but enticingly possible? You might, perhaps, let yourself be enticed. Let yourself be intrigued with what you might do, what might be possible, only if…within yourself. 
These are the ponderings, the deep curiosity you can bring into your stillness and put before Mother Spirit and me, and our Father. Be as specific as you can, my children, so we can be as specific as you let us be in our response. (there followed a very long pause)
Now ask yourselves: what is passing here? Is there anything passing? Or is it simply: we are--in motion. You are dear to me, children, especially right as you are--moving around out there, and in here. What does it mean to be complete and yet capable of being replete, even as our Father? What does it mean to grow, and to continue to grow--endlessly? If we have all time forever ahead of us, what is this now we find ourselves in? What are we pointing at with the word--potential? And are there possibilities, once lost, lost forever, if each moment of time is unique--if this particular now will never happen again?
Mother Spirit mentioned that aspect of Universal Reality we call God and His will, and the wondrous part of it all: we can experience that He is knowable, that this Universal Reality--His creation, is knowable; and yet will take forever, encountering. I leave you with this enigma for an answer.
If you have any questions or comments, bring them forth out of your own mysterious, unfathomable selves.
Student: Thank you, Father Michael, for putting a positive look on this mystery of life, the way we live our lives; and this world. Even though mine’s been scarred many times, it’s as though you’ve put a positive look on it. I appreciate that because I kind-of get negative a lot of the time. So thank you.
MICHAEL: You are welcome, my son. Let me ask you with respect to last week’s lesson, if you’ve been having any success in practicing even a few minutes of stillness?
Student: Yes, I’ve been counting my breath as Mother suggested. It goes a not very long period, but it’s still a committed stillness, I guess is the best way to put it. It is a beginning, and learning to count my breaths, and stay in the present that way, and give up the old ideas of what I think stillness should be--learning to stop that, being in the present at the particular moment.
(Identifying with only the mental part of being) 
MICHAEL: Yes, the thing to understand here, and I think you are discovering, is that you’ve been identifying yourself almost exclusively with your mental reality, with all the thoughts you’re thinking. You’re beginning to realize there are numerous large parts of your day gone by with almost no cognizance of your physical being: it’s just there doing its thing. So your meditating, and feeling yourself breathing, is your turning your mind around to a deep respect for the physical life it’s presently based upon.
The important thing is to feel yourself breathing. The numbering is only a way to help you do this, because if you try solely to feel each breath as it happens, your mind can very quickly get captured by ideas, and off you go… ( laughter) All of a sudden you realize quite a long time has gone by, and here you are, off again, wandering in your mind, leaving your poor little body behind with no regard. Stillness can be a way of really feeling yourself to be a living being. 
So as you’re paying this deep respect, counting your breaths up to ten over and over to stay in touch, and you loose count or go right past ten, then simply start again with the next breath, there are other fringe benefits. Learning to start again without worry, without concern, without self-condemnation or guilt--any of that; just being able to feel that next breath as number one; this is in itself, as Mother Spirit said, an exercise in your beginner’s mind. Maybe in five minutes of your early meditation you do this a dozen times: you lose yourself, then you reappear. You start again without any recrimination, consistently letting go even a few seconds past. You’re feeling that next breath, feeling your living body supporting you. You expand into the infinity that is your living body, learning from it, treasuring it, being open to what is going on to make it healthier and stronger for you. 
This way the spiritual part of your personality, and your ego-awareness, are both paying a deep respect to God’s "stuff"--especially that part of His stuff we call alive: another mystery. Spend even a few minutes of your whole day worshiping the mystery of the life that was given to you. As you noted in your discussion before my lesson, that wonderful saying: "Your life is God’s gift to you: what you do with your life is your gift back to Him." So start by just feeling it, being aware of it, falling in love once again with the mystery. Then, my goodness, look! Here comes another human being. So carry on, my son, I congratulate you on your success so far.
Student: Thank you, Father Michael, thank you. 
Student: Michael, that was very beautiful—the gift we give back, and how we live our lives. I’ve been really troubled the last few days and your words tonight are very comforting. I just read in the Urantia book that personality is changeless, and it is our moral character that is growing, that is evolving. I was getting a grasp of that, and now, talking about potential and looking forward rather than backward, or feeling guilty--because I’ve worked hard to get rid of guilt; yesterday I got bombarded with a bunch of guilt. I think being here tonight was very important for me to sort that out and get back to what you speak of, of living my best self and being the living waters you speak of. I want to move forward. I don’t want to be in the past. 
My question for you tonight, if you are willing to give me any little guidance on my concern, is my neglect of some information I learned about our government ten years ago. Now I want to move forward and get involved, but I really don’t know how. Is there anything you can address on that? Otherwise, thank you for your words tonight. They helped immensely to bring my joy back and remind me to worship my gift of life.
(Civic responsibility)
MICHAEL: Yes, my daughter. I want you to open your heart and feel my love. Because with respect to your political responsibilities, I congratulate you on acknowledging this civic duty you have as a voting person in a society that, at least ostensibly, calls itself a democracy. I congratulate you on opening your heart to this sense of duty, for this is what has caused you to feel guilty for, maybe, neglecting it in the past. (Yes) 
So welcome this resurgence of civic responsibility to do your part to help this democracy grow democratically, to play your part. Use your will to determine the Father’s will regarding these levels of society and government, because in doing so, my daughter, you will be struggling to achieve world citizenship above your own country’s more narrow concerns. This is the Father’s will regarding the whole, manifesting in the Supreme Being out here in time and space. 
The Supreme Being does consider Urantia as all its peoples, and encourages you to expand your viewpoint as much as you can to answer all these day to day questions in your own personal life. This is so desperately needed on Urantia today for, as we have said, you do not have to wait for any apocalyptic cataclysm, any decimation: you are in the middle of it, minute by minute and hour by hour. The amount of human suffering, the numbers of people of all ages and every conceivable condition dying for lack of just basic resources--even clean water, while others are spending untold millions and millions of dollars worth of resources on silly hobbies for mere distraction. This is another mystery, understanding the unfathomable infinity of human behavior on what you think of as a very finite sphere. 
This is the hard work you’re confronted with, how to go about this balancing act, for it does come down to your day to day life and how you live it. How do you relate to others? How do you meet those needful eyes you encounter? So much of it comes back to that humbling acknowledgment of the limits of personal energy and strength, growing your will to argument, in your little sphere, the Father’s will. Let the Father find two hands on the ends of your arms to help his other children. Take it a day at a time and, if needed, a dozen times a day, any time you are troubled, just sit down and give as much of yourself to us as you can grow this ability too.
(Character and soul)
Character is just another word for soul, my daughter. Character is also that aspect of soul you can see and recognize in each other. As your beloved Urantia book puts it: personality is unchangeable, and the Thought Adjuster is the pure presence of God. It is the relationship between them that is absolutely alive and growing, and that is your soul, that is the fabric being woven by the two of them together. 
When others look in your eyes--if they are sensitive to these things--they see your character, as you can see theirs. This too is another part of God and His will that you can know in the midst of all this other mystery. This is what you share together. So be of good cheer, my daughter. You’ve just allowed yourself to feel that deep sense of citizenship and duty again. 
Student: Thank you so much, and I will ask for guidance from you as I stumble along through this, and get my footing, and get my calm assurance that I can feel your love. Thank you. 
Michael: You are very welcome. Be in my peace.
Student: Yes, Michael. I’m sitting here and I have this deep sense of impatience, and it seems to get in the way of my, or our peace. My sense of, in regards to waste--and I alluded to this in another conversation about having to do mundane things. So much of life, of how we live on this planet, in contrast or comparison to the grand scheme of the cosmos, it seems so wasteful. It seems so unimportant, and I just feel impatient. I so desire to live a simple life, to not be consumed or dwell on the unnecessary, in a sense, but just focus on the need for oneness. So I feel impatient to get a move on, in the moment.
(Impatience vs. oneness)
MICHAEL: My son, I think you will be very interested when you re-read your own comments just now, of how much you are self-defining your own situation very accurately, because impatience is a kind of duality, a kind of functioning with two minds. (Yeah) So let me introduce the radical notion…(laughter…{Go for it}) that at your particular stage of development as a individual, this might be a good thing: this might be a necessary thing. 
You might have to function for a while in this duality of mind in order to reach deep into yourself and question, wonder, argue: What is this potential? Is there something that I could do that I’m not doing? Are things moving fast enough? Could I get them moving faster? And so, my son, you are responding as best you can to the very things I posed earlier. You are trying to open yourself, and this is felt as impatience. 
This is not necessarily a bad thing if it, in turn--which you yourself just stated, finds a good balance with the oneness. The good part is a non-clinging, not being so desperately in need of feeling this oneness that, in trying to cling to it, trying to maintain some inner state of grace--or whatever, you do not realize you have to constantly let that go in order to find it again, and again, and again. (Ah) This was my point to our C here about discovering his beginner’s mind, even if he looses track of his breathing maybe a dozen times in the first few minutes. He’ll still be willing to hang in there and start again.
This starting-again is an ability. This is a way of resolving impatience and not worrying about it, but seeing it as a tool and welcoming what it can do. So consider it that way.
Student: I do go through those times of ebbs and flows--going into stillness and then feeling the impatience. As I talked about before, it’s also within that, that I find uncertainty as well. But I do feel, I do have a sense of, like you said, this is good, this is necessary. I’m kind-of scratching the surface of potential, of opening up, of slowly opening up the door to experience more of myself. I do have that sense.
MICHAEL: Yes, for with respect to the oneness you can feel initially in your meditation: you can’t hang onto it. You can’t just deliberately create it. It’s more of a discovery than an invention, and so you just have to rediscover it. You find out it’s not something you can get a hold of, because it’s alive. You just find, after awhile, as you rediscover it over and over again, this is spiritual confidence in something alive. 
It just tags along with you. You let it go, and all of a sudden, it’s there again, unbidden, and surprising. This is where the great, unfathomable goodness of the Father is truly awesome, and so unexpected. It’s an amazing blessing. It’s that unearned grace that you discover from time to time. It totally blows your mind, and knocks you off your feet, and overwhelms you with gratitude. So you breath in and feel yourself filling up with all this confidence, and then you breathe out and let it all go because you can’t hold it. You have to let it all go, to breath in again, and re-discover it. And so, once again, you pay homage to life. You pay homage to this seemingly finite human body of yours and acknowledge its infinity. Let the rediscovery lead you to health and strength.
Student: That feels good. I sense if I allow myself to live in stillness, and to deepen and expand my experience of stillness then, in a sense, my life will naturally unfold. I feel that part of my impatience is that it also implies faith. But if I go deep into stillness and allow that to pervade my whole entire life, then, like I said, my life will naturally unfold. Impatience sometimes wants me to kind-of push, and coerce, and do something, and that may not be for my benefit at that moment. So if I allow myself to stop, and to breathe, and be still, then my life is of benefit for myself and for those around me. 
Michael: Yes, my son. When you feel impatience, let it bring you, as a reminder, back to stillness. This is the best use of this tool because you are fulfilling what it wants. (Hmmm…What?) Use impatience as a reminder to just stop and return to your breath, to breathe in and take in some more life, so you find again a new, rediscovered oneness that has never been before. You will have achieved what your impatience was trying to realize. That’s the fulfillment.
Student: Yeah; and I should ask myself, who is being intentioned? What is this intention? Who has it? I don’t need to follow it, do I?
One other thought--I know it’s getting late--about desire. I’ve been reading different texts, that if we have a desire, then the fact that we desire it, or whatever, means that it already exists. It’s already here, but we have to open up to see it. I know I’m not exactly saying what has been written.
MICHAEL: Desire can have as its object, again, our trinity of physical, mental, or spiritual dimensions, or aspects. There can definitely be a desire for physical things which are impossible, which reflect immaturity, like wishing for the moon. 
Student: Next time I will quote exactly what they said, and then we can go from there. But I do thank you for your talk.
Previous student: If I can ask very briefly before we close? Do you, Michael, see an urgency for my civic duty to increase to toppling the administration right now? It seems it’s causing so much damage to democracy. Is my urgency just my fear, or is it something I’m really picking up right now?
MICHAEL: My daughter, I encourage you to continue researching this. I feel it’s way too early for you to come to any conclusion as to how to deal with this part of your civic responsibility. That is a very particular thing--whether or not to join a very specific group of people devoted to a very specific goal, like toppling the present government.
Student: Yes, I’m really wondering about the toppling part.
MICHAEL: It’s right in your Declaration of Independence. This is your own government, your nation’s history. This is how you got started. It states in the Declaration of Independence it is the civic duty of the citizens to abolish their government if they find it is detrimental to their needs. (Yes) But the complexities start at that moment, of how to go about this--whether, indeed, a revolution is going to be creative or destructive in the balance. Fortunately, in your case, there are more peaceful ways you can go about this.
(Being a true citizen of a democracy)
These are questions you have to answer for yourself after an enormous amount research into all phases and aspects of this particular question. It is a mark of maturity when you accept that no other person can do this for you, whatever their claims of social, governmental, or even ecclesiastical authority, and you remain a true citizen of a democracy. This is really pulling your own weight. So I encourage you to welcome this responsibility with open arms. You said it yourself: you feel a need to settle down and start the hard work of answering the how and why of that question. So be in my peace.
Student: Thank you so much.
MICHAEL: This is that long journey of civilizing maturity every world undergoes, recapitulated in each individual life. It was put very wonderfully by one of your philosophers, that the individual, although raised by authority as each of you were—both parental and social, must at a certain point of maturity decide in their immediacy before transcendence—the need to keep growing; each individual must decide for themselves what is real and what is not.
We encourage you to open yourself to every possible physical, mental, and spiritual source of information, every being you can contact, human and above. Still the choice is yours because you are the co-creator of your reality. This determination of what is real and what is not, what is true and what is not, is up to your human dignity of will to decide. 
Be in my peace, dear ones. Good evening.
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