[tmtranscripts] Michael 8.20.07

[JERRY LANE]

Michael-August 20, 2007
Marin T/M Group—Mill Valley. California--U.S.A.
MICHAEL—T/R-JL
(The Life Carriers: creation and evolution))  
(Be not afraid)
(Fear and caution)
(Being comprehensive and consistent within)  
(Establishing extra continuity in your life)
(Building determination)
(Discovering and growing an ability)  
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Good evening. We ask you to join with us this warm summer evening. Thank you very much for your last few lessons on the mystery, uncertainty, and sheer unpredictability of human life. Strangely enough, perhaps by contrast, you give us a deeper appreciation and experience of our own moment-to-moment completeness. Then too, we can know a wonderful humility realizing how provisional all of our knowledge and wisdom is. This vision and these feelings encourage us to wear our life loosely and avoid clinging. Rather, we identify ourselves with our living spiritual bedrock of spontaneity and creativity--knowing this is your very essence--to help us grow: and keep you with us always. So thank you for your fine definitions and gentle reminders of all we are and can be. Thank you. Amen.
MICHAEL: Good evening, my dear children, for you are that to me. You are my children and I am your father, both in spirit and with my own precious memories of what it was to live with a body, a physical vehicle much as your own. I’ve mentioned a number of times just how precious those few years were, and remain. As Michael, as a Creator Son in partnership with a Daughter of the Infinite Spirit, Nebadonia, our shared memories are something beyond human comprehension, so my years as a human being seem as fresh to us as yesterday is to you.
(The Life Carriers: creation and evolution))  
My human body was the evolved creation of our Life Carrier Sons, an order of sonship who literally go around and instigate life on evolutionary planets--with our approval of course: we do check over their plans. In a way you could consider them as intermediate parents who, on Urantia, gave rise what would eventually become yourselves. In your metaphysical battles right up to present times--what you call the controversy between creationism and evolution, of course both are correct. You are definitely creations of divine spiritual beings. Your personalities issue directly from God, while your minds and physical bodies come more by way of Mother Nebadonia and myself, and our Sons.  
We and our Life Carrier Sons are also experiential and evolving. Life Carriers in particular share their notes, so to speak, and they are all very interested in what each others’ latest experiments on the millions of planets of Nebadon have proven possible. Also, Urantia was one of ten planets--a decimal planet--on which the Life Carriers were allowed to experiment a little more freely. But even on those planets to which life is not originated, but carried, still every planet has its own unique history of development. You will soon encounter these survivors from hundreds of planets just in your local system.  
So the cells of living DNA that that are planted on the evolutionary planets have an enormous amount of spiritual thought and experience behind them, and this is evolving. Life is very definitely created, and the pattern you call human beings was preconceived with a definite goal/essence of who and what you are proceeding your existence. Yet evolution is part of this plan and procedure. It’s how we choose to go about inhabiting our worlds. As you have also been informed, Mother Nebadonia very carefully and with great love and tenderness shepherds the evolving life of a planet along with a differential urge, if you will, guiding evolution along, again, just a little better each time.
This is that enormous expansion, that humanly inconceivable cosmic evolution taking place not only in Nebadon but in the hundreds of thousands of other Local Universes where physical planets are being created, then coming online for the implantation of life; life which, at a certain stage, is endowed with personality by our Father. We present you with these historical facts, my children, to encourage you to identify with this universal growth that all spiritual beings are involved in, as well as those members of the more advanced and spiritually aware civilized planets.  
You have a soul being created by the presence the God within you. So you can cease clinging to yourself anxiously. You can know that there is a spiritual record being created of your life’s experiences far more profound and comprehensive, even divinely loving, compared to your physical mind memories. This is especially necessary on Urantia because your world has had such a checkered past. Not even one-hundredth of one percent of the planets in Nebadon went so wildly astray.
When you look up into a clear night sky and, with your Urantia book tucked under your arm, imagine all those millions of worlds out there just in our own Local Universe, keep in mind that nearly almost all of them, almost without exception, have been and are following a divine plan of development and evolution. Urantia’s departure from this is almost non-existent elsewhere. You have such a disparity at times between individual, even cultural maturity, and scientific/technological abilities and powers. On worlds long guided by Planetary Princes and Material Sons and Daughters, all these separate aspects of human development are guided and kept in a far more productive and less dangerous balance.  
So this gives you some appreciation of your present situation. But right in your own individual lives Mother Spirit exercises her holy presence to help guide you towards worship and wisdom. So don’t feel discouraged, my children, if it seems you are of a still tiny minority with respect to knowing Mother Spirit and myself. You have all that fantastic detail the Urantia book has given you about your planetary history and the personal organization and watch-care of the universe itself.
(Be not afraid)
Just feel yourselves to be growing and expanding. Find in your prayers this evening evermore spiritual completeness and security in the midst of all your mental and physical uncertainty. Identify less and less with only the mental construct of your ego awareness--all your worries and concerns and regrets, all your notions of failure and incompleteness which are, from our point of view, only passing wisps of mist over the real reality of your souls. This is why we say, fear not. This does not mean there is nothing to fear. It does not mean that fear is not something you have to contend with. It means be quick and lively. Perhaps we should say, be unafraid. Don’t let the temporary fears and cautions that help keep you alive set up into an attitude.  
Keep growing, my children. Keep stretching. Open your arms wide, clear your minds for action, and feel your spirits reaching out. Let my peace enter your souls and be unafraid. Accept with a sense of humor all those gritty little bits in life. We remind you are on a real, physical planet. Go forward with our blessings, with our love, and in my peace.
If you have any questions or comments this evening, bring them forth and see if we can feel how even they don’t disturb this peace we share.
Student: Father Michael, when you say be unafraid, what kind of fear are you talking about?
(Fear and caution)
MICHAEL: Yes, my son. I mean the kind of fear that settles in to an attitude, a really deep anxiety some folks feel even about their very existence. By identifying so much with the superficial and most fleeting aspect of their own changing consciousness, some folks feel they never quite—are--complete: they are just some tenuous cosmic accident, or even mistake. They feel terribly incomplete and almost totally without peace. So they hesitate to even try to stop and be still, for to them this means ceasing to exist. They feel there is only their nervous, anxious fleeting about that gives them any life at all.
You are physical beings living in a highly mechanical society, and so a certain kind of fear is indistinguishable from caution. This does you a great service in those moments of un-self-consciousness when you are dangerously distracted while handling your car in fast, busy traffic. Your imagination can hit you with a jolt of fear of what might be possible--to wake you up, to pay attention. This is good. But some folks let these necessary, beneficial cautions that come and go, settle in. They become moody, captured by whole emotional complexes, and accept a fearful attitude to make the best of a seemingly bad situation.
What do we mean by, be unafraid? Accept that a large part of your life is in God’s hands too. Even though you may lose your physical life, your soul is safe with Him. Does this make sense to you, my son?
Student: It does make the distinction between caution and fear. I guess you’d call it evolutionary fear, we all have in our bodies and from ourselves. It does make a lot of sense.
MICHAEL: So we reassure you when you feel those fears surrounding you and you start to worry profoundly, we reassure you there is a need for courage, sometimes just to get out of bed in the morning and do some painfully necessary duty, fulfill some responsibility to yourself or others. We of the spiritual world salute you for the hard lives of necessity so many of you lead on such a violent and immature planet.  
This is why the greatest gift I have to offer is my peace. I well know how many youngsters are out there whose notion of peace is synonymous with boredom. But those of you with a lifetime of experience have come to know the value of peace of mind. So be in my peace, my son. (Thank you)
Student: Yes, Father, at this moment and over the past couple of days I’ve felt quite constricted. It seems like ever since Mother and I had a conversation last week about my being open to being a teacher, it’s been weighing on me. Maybe I fear I’m not really living my life. I do attempt to be silent and to be still with this, and to live day to day, moment to moment, to the best of my ability. I do appreciate there’s no turning back—for me. I’ve tasted and felt God’s reality, and…what do I do? How do I live? What is expected of me?  
What I checked out on the internet—all the different churches and organizations, even a couple I participated in, they all have their ways of being a teacher, a minister. You do this, pay that, and voila!—you’re a teacher. There’s a certain contrived-ness about that, and I sincerely want to be authentic. There’s already too many teachers, or ministers, or whatnot, whose messages barely scratch the surface, and actually con a lot of people. So I am cautious.
(Being comprehensive and consistent within)  
MICHAEL: Yes, my son, from my point of view I see you are actually mildly suffering from your ambition. (Yeah!) We touched on how, sometimes, you are out on a limb. You are putting yourself in a situation that requires faith, where you have to deal with living between steps. You’ve stepped off with one foot and you’ve yet to land with the other—you’re mid-stride and a bit up in the air. You’re caught between two worlds with a hard necessity to reevaluate ambitions and desires from previous times.  
There is no shortcut through this thicket. You are using your wisdom to acknowledge it. You have to take one small item at a time and feel it, because this is your fundamental reality. You are striving to get beyond all your past thinking, all the thoughts you've had before about who and what to be. This is a great ambition, and is largely an expectation you put upon yourself.  
This is not a bad thing. It keeps your values truly spiritual. Realize the necessity for these reevaluations so you don’t feel you are just spinning your wheels and going nowhere. This necessity falls upon everyone from time to time. To mix the metaphors a bit, you are like a potential butterfly feeling the constraints of the cocoon about you, and now you have to sort things out and find a new path through all your old considerations, and thoughts, and wondering.  
So many folks who set out to be teachers launch themselves willy-nilly without going through this process, and find themselves in front of their students just repeating the bits and pieces they’ve accumulated without having first found their own voice, without having made all the personal decisions from the depths of their soul experience. So, my son, you are discovering this, and it can be a bit painful, or constricting, at times.  
Student: I’ve had those moments of where I’ve felt all those old past ways I want to discard. I really want to be open to a new way. But what is it?—for me? Because there’s no cookie-cutter out there. Or there is, but that’s not for me. So I go through this…or I just have to lie down and not just grab hold of anything, and see what comes forth.  
I do put this expectation on me because I feel my whole life is being geared toward something that may be…I don’t know. Whenever I try to initiate something, nothing happens. There’s no energy. I feel myself expanding, but my focus is really narrow. That’s what it feels like. I do my work, and watch out for my family… So… I’m anxious! (nervous laughter) There is no turning back—for me.
MICHAEL (after a really long pause): And so it comes down to this, at times: just feeling each breath
Student: Maybe I identify too much with the expectation, with the ambition.  
MICHAEL: It’s a living balancing act, my son. You are learning the wisdom of how to do this.  
Student: But I can’t deny the inspiration, and the aspiration. I understand all we have is time, and timelessness.  
MICHAEL: You are also learning how plastic, or malleable, or expansive this now can be. From time to time you’ve had those glorious touches of a little bump, a little augmentation of the very quality of your life. You can feel fortunate you’ve given yourself time to explore so much, yet even your book-learning, and other studies and experiences, come at a price. Right now you are feeling the greater need, by way of your teaching ambitions, to put it all together and come up with what you really believe. This is a Herculean tack, my son, of creating a comprehensive and consistent world view--especially when you are aware of so many conflicting viewpoints. So treasure the freedom your explorations have given you. You pried loose from your own particular upbringing and went out and discovered so much. Time to consolidate. Time to decide. So give yourself the time. Let these things keep percolating. You are putting this constriction, this necessity upon yourself, so let it relax from time to time.
Student: Time to be a butterfly. It’s appropriate you mentioned that. When I was working today, this monarch butterfly was flying around me—came out of nowhere. So that’s kind of cool.
MICHAEL: Yes. He, or she—as the case may be—had to go through his or her own constriction of a cocoon that provided for metamorphosis. This is literally what you are involved in. So welcome it joyously. Those who have never known this are very un-fortunate. Many of them must wait upon physical death and resurrection on the Mansion Worlds, and that profound metamorphosis, to start to get themselves together.  
Don’t forget to feel my peace. (Thank you)
Student: Michael, the question that was on my mind as I was coming here, I feel was, in essence, answered; but what I struggle with every day is, I don’t feel all that well. I don’t have much energy, and what I do have doesn’t match what I’d like to be doing. Because I have a number of responsibilities with my two children, and myself, I get afraid I won’t be able to meet the demands of being solidly there for them, to help them make their own way in the world.  
But I’m hearing what you said tonight. It was nice to hear that our soul—the most important part, is always taken care of. It really helps me just…let go and be with the way things are. It takes away some of the stress and the strain I think I put myself through.  
The question I had earlier was, where do I put my attention to help me find enough energy to take care of what I need to? If you have any suggestions? Thank you.
(Establishing extra continuity in your life)
MICHAEL: Yes, my daughter. Let me ask if you have a well established routine of meditation, of just being still, because in your situation you have to actually create a greater continuity, a cohesiveness, by which you can make these evaluations. Do you meditate and practice a kind of stillness on a regular basis?
Student: Not regular enough. I have a difficult time doing anything on a regular enough basis. It’s hard getting some space to do it at home, and so a lot of what I’ve done in the past is go for a walk, and that physical act would quiet me down and help me empty out my mind. But a lot of times I even put that particular piece off, that part of the day, and then it gets to be too late.
MICHAEL: Yes, this is why we generally recommend meditating the first thing in the morning, even if it’s only ten minutes, by getting up ten minutes earlier when the house is still and the world itself is quieter. This may be a dedication you cannot avoid paying very dearly for at first. Like any great art, whether you pick up a brush to paint, or a guitar to play, or a computer to start writing, you may have to pour a lot of your soul into this before it starts to pay back. Because as we’ve said in previous lessons, practicing stillness may seem to have the opposite effect at first of making you feel just that much more nervous, or distracted and flying about. You have to dedicate yourself to sitting through this.  
Don’t meditate for some particular psychological effect, for that can lead to another type of self-deception—hurrying to be through being still. Don’t meditate just to get a particular feeling or attitude, a certain result. Start off gently. Sit down and simply constantly relax as things crop up. No matter what comes up, just look at it and let it go. Above all, don’t try to hold your mind a blank; don’t entertain any notions of being perfectly still and calm within these initial ten minutes. Just pay your dues. Get in there and do it. Give yourself this really necessary opportunity of a more thorough-going reflection, my daughter. You have to have the faith to try this.  
What you will be doing—from a spiritual standpoint—you will be literally creating a new continuity in your life. You will be exercising your willpower. Think of the old-fashioned term of gumption, because there is nothing else quite like it. Determination is its own thing—as you put it; as is faith. This you may find is more lacking than any specific physiological energy. This will be the emergence of a new you based upon a new activity, day by day, week by week, with which you can start to have some leverage over the living situation you find yourself in.
(Building determination)
Just as you proceed forward on two legs, so do you also with, first, determination, a kind of focused resolve, a concentration. The next step is a letting go, an opening, an expansiveness, taking things as they come, going with the flow, doing what you did yesterday. Then you reflect again. I think you can see the necessity for both, but you have to have the concentration, the highly conscious continuity of who you are, to find out what you want to do, and be able to do it.
You can feel for our presence, my daughter, for we are in here helping you as much as we can. But there is this essence--we talked about last week--that you are perceiving in other people… (Yes…) this--something there--(Michael chuckles)--some very real essence of personality you feel in them? You have this too, but you cannot get a hold of this directly. You cannot literally pick yourself up by your bootstraps. But you can decide: I am going to sit here for ten minutes and just be me. It may take a while to feel positively.  
The next step is to have little, spontaneous mini-meditations all throughout your day, where you relax for a few minutes and let things settle down; and start over. Just say, Thank you, Father. Thank you for reminding me that I am! I am Your daughter, and I am complete. Then go to these contacts in times of uncertainty, or stress, or anxiety. Sit down right in the middle of them, determined to know what they are, and not let them determine you. I think you can see this is that more determined, purposeful, focussed kind of person you want to be, both for yourself and your sons. So give it a try. Give yourself this opportunity to break free, to find your determination in the exercise of it. It has no other reality. You have to earn it. But then it is yours.
Student: I will. It’s very helpful. Thank you.
MICHAEL: This will be a wonderful, spiritual kind of super-addition. You already have a physical and mental continuity persisting day to day. There is a you there when you wake up and look about you; there is an ongoing situation. So it doesn’t occur to a lot of folks that they themselves can start another whole aspect of their lives. Traditionally societies have tended to isolate this kind of behavior and consider it only for so-called religious people. It’s what monks and nuns go off to monasteries to do. So it’s categorized and set aside without considering the reasons for it. They never wonder why some folks get up at five-thirty every morning and sit in meditation for a half hour or more, and again occasionally all through the day, purely exercising their will.
(Discovering and growing an ability)  
In my own life as Jesus, it was the only thing that kept me going, the only human way of renewing myself with my Father, day by day, as more and more people believed in me, and relied upon me, to show them the way—to literally be the way. This is what I found indispensable for my human-being. So I know whereof I speak, my children. There comes a point where, no matter how well you are attuned to what presents itself, if you want this extra you in your life, it is up to you to create it. The glory of discovering and growing that ability will be truly yours, and very definitely a large part of your soul.  
So discover what we’ve been calling your beginner’s mind, your creative spiritual home base. Sit down and let all the past go, and start again. All of a sudden, there you are.  
Be in my peace. Good evening.  
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