2008-12-01-God’s Creativity, Worship
Marin #159
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: God’s Creativity, Worship
o 1.2 Group: Marin TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Michael
o 2.2 TR: JL
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
Topic: God’s Creativity, Worship
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, These hard times empress upon us the fact we are physical beings dependent upon material reality for the basics of our lives–food and shelter, transportation, employment in creating and distributing our goods and services. Yet in that two-hundred-percent-ness of our challenging, transcendent human reality you tease us to envision, we have come to understand we are spiritual beings too. Our spiritual sense of value permeates our mental and physical life, and so we have this ability, even the necessity to evaluate everything, even your words of insight and assurance for us.
We hope that, as Mother Spirit suggested, in these times when meditation is forced upon us through fear and anxiety, it is mostly because we have not been keeping up with our own voluntary, deep reflection as a necessary part of life. Hopefully as we are brought to consider our economic affairs more comprehensively–just how we are spending our wealth and our time, this will be a positive step into that sustainable material life, expanding mental and spiritual life you’ve pointed us towards. We do thank you so much for your spiritual overview of this adventure we find ourselves upon. Amen.
MICHAEL: Good evening, my children, this is Michael. A while ago on the eve of your national acknowledgement of Thanksgiving I held a Light Line teleconference with a few individuals, and I would like to repeat a little bit of what I brought up at that time.
Lesson
Creativity, Worship (God’s creativity, and worship)
Open your minds, if you can, to the concept that, as experiential beings–your fundamental kind of a unique personality–you are a direct creation of our Father. Now extend this to consider that everything you experience–from the taste of a strawberry, to the feeling of some object in your hand, to the wind on your face, to all the complex emotions you have with each other; all this, as well as the material universe you live within–the planet earth, the sun, the stars; all of this from the tiniest to the largest part of the Creation: everything you experience is created.
In this sense nothing just happens by itself. Every effect has sufficient causes and, as Mother said last time, your conscious presence now is your personal instantaneously living, moving resolution of everything and everyone. This realization becomes the basis for our thanksgiving. We can thank our Father for everything, either directly or in terms of possibility. The Situation–with a capitol S, if you will–is the sum total of all of us living and loving and learning within His existential limits. Part of His creation is the reality of free will bestowed upon all personal beings and endowing them with the potential for dignity–free will dignity. This pretty much accounts for the Situation writ large, His initial and ongoing creations and all the subsequent creations of a nigh infinite number of personal beings through the power of their personalities. This accounts for the physical universe and that extensive brotherhood/sisterhood of all personal beings. It is for this we give our thanks to Him: for our very lives, and, especially from our hearts, for each other–that we can have each other, that our eternal souls are comprised so much of each other.
This is what we call worship, this acknowledgement of our Father’s creativity, this profound gladness in our souls that we are, and that we have our experiences with each other for company–forever!–if we so choose. Mother Spirit spoke extensively last time about the economic situation you find yourselves in. Let me emphasize what she meant when she said it is not condescension on our part, it is not in any way to make little of the genuine suffering this occasions, to point out–to help you keep your focus upon, the potential for this to be a great learning experience. For it includes all the devotion, the study, the paying attention, the respect–indeed all those spiritual qualities involved in the singular quality of value.
Value, Reflection (Value: reflective evaluation)
Within any situation there is that combination of elements that you cannot control, that are more or less just given because you are indeed involved in a gigantic undertaking of all creation and all those relatively free-willed individuals about you and above you. Yet you also have that quotient of reality that you can control, that you can affect, and your perception of this also depends upon your spiritual evaluations. Even these words I am speaking now can be, should be evaluated for your own use. So don’t feel shy about this necessity, my children. Don’t feel down if you are brought to the necessity to re-evaluate your life. This is your ongoing cosmic duty as a citizen, not only of this world, but of all those worlds you will soon enough encounter.
Mother Spirit adds her Holy Spirit to your own spiritual qualities of intuition, curiosity for knowledge and understanding, and the courage to seek them, even worship, and the wisdom to welcome this great adventure. I extend my Spirit of Truth to you as a helpful orientation, a way of helping you orient yourselves toward the truth. A fragment of God himself dwells within your mind to provide you the ideas, the concepts, the links, the connections if you be but open enough, willing enough, even at times desperate enough to wonder and feel His presence.
You are somewhat correct in your opening prayer, but Mother Spirit and I see it not so much as a debt but more as a living balance within each individual of what reflection is forced upon you and what you voluntary, even joyfully embrace. What opening to the spiritual dimensions within yourself, and without to the spiritual community, i.e. what meditation and prayer do you make an integral part of your life? Or what may be at times forced upon you through fear and anxiety, that you call worry? It’s that enforced meditation when you are quite literally stumped by circumstances and more or less held in their enormous grip, held immobile, feeling each moment as it comes to you full of so much fear of the unknown.
Remember that at every moment in God’s reality, as a measure of His power, there is that aspect of the Creation that is not repeating itself, right down to your individual life. Much of each unique moment–now–is ever springing new in the absolute infinity of His living spontaneity, a spontaneity that can, in some smaller measure, be yours.
Mother Spirit spoke of the misperceptions and their related misunderstandings, called fatalism, which still infect your religion and reasoning. The belief that you are fated, that all reality is entirely Someone Else’s, or some Thing else, can color all your perceptions and so become a self-fulfilling and highly limiting philosophy of life. You can get terribly out of balance, my children, with not only the physical health and well-being that is your potential, your birthright–so much of your disease and ill health stemming directly from your choices, but you can also fail to attain a more ideal balance of meditation and reflection in your life. You can go for long periods in what your psychologists call denial, a kind of stubborn, perhaps only half-conscious refusal to reflect, to consider, to evaluate–with your spirit, what you are doing.
To her understanding insight I mention her Holy Spirit of Courage to help you turn around within your life and accept the necessity to meditate, to evaluate, to decide, to choose. It is upon these that your wonderful quality of flexibility depends. This is wise creativity, using her Spirit of Wisdom to, first of all, arrive at an ongoing, inner self-honesty. We invited you once to explore this realm of self-honesty by fully accepting within yourself what is the right thing to do–totally irrespectively of whether or not you will do it right then. With this ability to stop, and be still, and meditate, and open yourself to what is the right thing for you to do in your situation, you can then make the choice, only now highly consciously, of whether you want to, and whether you will do it or not. That decision becomes both a determining yet liberating fact. So be gone dulling, enervating denial, and beliefs of being helplessly fated.
With accepting a human need for reflection, and meditation, and prayer, you will create the way forward. Keep in mind all of your institutions, all your governments and their enormous powers, are all composed of living people, and the way forward is literally and only within each individual’s creativity, however combined. We of the spiritual community are doing all we can to help you achieve an inner realization of God’s will, and so strive for that. Strive for that inner openness and transparency and responsibility you would love to see–(Michael chuckles)–in those around you, and in those institutions that affect your life.
Responsibility (The ability to respond)
I know this can be an enormous thing to ask, it is an enormous thing to ask many of you, to consider that you are, in a sense, behind in your responses. You are living in pain and unhealthy ways, uncertainty and anxiety and fear, and to accept your own response-ability for this takes enormous courage. A once simple, comfortable feeling can suddenly seem very threatening and complex; something once possible no longer is. But as Mother Spirit also said, and I have to agree with my whole heart: we see the magnificence of soul and character that you bring to each moment, often with a rather wry or ironic sense of humor, to acknowledge what an adventure life is.
That wry, ionic humor of yours, my children, is one of your greatest spiritual triumphs. So by all means hang on to that and take it with you as well. Mother Spirit and I are constantly, wonderfully, joyfully, amazed at your courage. You do survive. You do thrive, and this is God’s will as well as ours. So yes, by all means, embrace the necessity for meditation and prayer, not only to get you through hard times, but in the even greater challenges when you are successful. If you have any questions or comments on these or any other subjects, I’m right here.
Dialogue
Student: Thank you, Father Michael, for your love and support. It never ceases to amaze me. The more I get to know you, the more I get to like you, and Mother, and the rest of your children. The question I have is: how does one get in contact with your Spirit of Truth; or how does one use the Spirit of Truth to live life with?
Spirit of Truth (Michael’s Spirit of Truth)
MICHAEL: Yes, my son. Tonight I used the word orientation, so you can think of it as a way of pointing yourself in all your endeavors. We’ve talked about many ways of achieving this, mainly through an openness of mind and spirit, which is none other than being willing to entertain almost anything that comes your way. There’s no simple definition for truth, my son. But you could think of it–provisionally–as that spiritual dimension that permeates all aspects of reality. So one of its features is being all-inclusive. An orientation towards truth points you at this all-inclusiveness. In this sense truth is all that is.
My Spirit of Truth is, like Mother Spirit’s Mind/Spirit Adjutants, an augmentation of abilities you yourself possess as a personal being created by God. Personality is intrinsically aware of value distinctions, and so an orientation towards truth is an evolving ability to pursue truth, to follow where it leads in this merry chase we call the Cosmic Adventure. Obviously there are hindrances or hang-ups–(Michael chuckles)–snag-hazards to this pursuit. You have the mental potential and capability called denial, using your creativity to construct a personal reality based upon the only half-conscious, half-unconscious denial of certain spirit/value realities that are, at least potentially from your point of view, there for you to acknowledge and become aligned with. It is the unconsciousness of the habit that is so detrimental. You are literally avoiding consciously choosing to consider things.
Yet you first became aware of truth as a great discovery when you were just children. You could find things that worked–(Michael chuckles)–and they kept working day after day–like fingers: they were true–then; they may still be. Those were the first inklings, the first events in which my Spirit of Truth could help you along–in a sense introduce you to the great quest. This quest is part of your eternal life, my son, for truth has no bottom or sides, no end to it, because you yourself will keep encountering greater and greater dimensions of reality. This orientation, this deep desire for and the thrill of discovery of what is true, is one of my greatest joys I can share with you. Does this give you some notion of it anyway?
Student: Yes, a little bit. I notice I have a very narrow definition of truth. I’m beginning to see it contains a lot more than I thought it did. The all-inclusiveness I have some trouble with. Like I’m prejudiced against the organized religion I was brought up in because it looks like it’s so far off the mark it’s not even true. But are you saying it is true? I don’t know quite where to put that yet. I can’t include it in what I could call truth–yet, anyway.
MICHAEL: My son, when you get into human behavior you do encounter the truth, the reality of deliberate fraud and falsification. This is what people are capable of, and what they have chosen to do to each other from the very beginning. To realize that someone is telling you a lie, could be the truth. To discover that institutions and organizations of men are deliberately falsifying the reality they know, as they cynically present it to you; this could be the truth. This is what I mean by all-inclusiveness, the greater reality if you will. For those who are existentially oriented, truth is reality. The terms are interchangeable. Truth is what is–all that is. Does that help?
Student: Yes, it does. I’m going to have to read this thing all over again. But it’s a beginning. I’m going to have to expand my definition of truth and make the distinction between what is really true and what is false.
MICHAEL: Yes, truth includes all of that. Insofar as truth is a quest, a discovery, you are constantly leap-frogging, using truth as a platform of insight from which to launch another investigation. Yet this is also why some folks have a fear of curiosity–because they have encountered the truth that what they believed yesterday is no longer valid in the light of what their curiosity has discovered. They’ve become soul-weary and wish the search for truth could come to an end, the adventure would just stop, and that what they believe now would be true forever. But it is a big universe of many dimensions and you are taking just your first few hesitant steps out into it.
So keep pondering, my son. Keep feeling that orientation I’m doing my best to help you be aligned with. Just keep asking yourself: is it true? If it’s not, what species of reality is this thing?–to be included. And be in my peace.
Student: Thank you, Father Michael.
Student: Good evening, Michael. My question tonight is, with respect to things I could have done better, I’d like your guidance on how to go about correcting some of my errors with other people. And how can I bounce back from their errors?–not just forgiving them but how, as you did in your life, can I graciously accept them?
Honesty (Self-honesty; making amends)
MICHAEL: Yes, my daughter, it seems you’ve already taken that first courageous step of being self-honest, opening yourself to your memories and, even deeper, your soul, revisiting the times in your past when you might have done something better–according to your present evaluation, or cannot help but feel that others might have been a little bit better toward you as well. The profound goodness of this, my daughter, is that it helps you achieve and stay in the living now, for it is within this living now, and with an orientation toward discovering the truth–whatever that might be, that you avoid denying what is real now. You’re accepting bringing these real past events into conscious consideration, because they do affect your present life, consciously or not.
That was more or less my lesson for tonight, to encourage people to take some time out of their precious lives and revisit what they’ve done, perhaps what has been done to them. For this reflection is always in the light of your present, growing understanding and wisdom, and these become the basis for your forgiveness. As I put it once, you can forgive much more readily when you can see to what degree people do or do not know what they are doing. This is an evaluation you can make without being overly judgmental. Just how much were they able to make a conscious choice in what they did to you, and what portion was some kind of unconscious, conditioned response?
The striving for expanding consciousness within yourself, this pursuit of totality, is what your Urantia book means by God’s desire for you to be perfect, even as He is perfect. For only He is omniscient. Only He is truth itself, for only He is conscious of total reality. And so, in this way of knowing and accepting yourself and all you’ve done or failed to do, you can also find the ability to make amends–directly–to those you may have harmed or disappointed. You yourself must choose how you will repay that debt. We can only counsel you to do it as directly as possible with that person so it forms a new, changed relationship.
You are a living example of what I mean by opening your mind to everything–to the truth, whether you can immediately live it or not. That’s part of the humility–(Michael chuckles)–that comes with the pursuit of truth: it keeps you in touch with that which is greater than you. Does that cover all the bases, or was there something further?
Student, laughing: I think it does.
MICHAEL: You have that expression–forgiving and forgetting–but we prefer to advise you simply forgive. You’ve already paid dearly for every speck of your human experience; you need not forget or deny anything. Rather, include everything in your pursuit of truth. And be in my peace.
Student: Yes, Michael, I see now I’m by myself–my offspring have flown–that there’s an enormous opportunity for me to reorient myself to something greater, something more beneficial, whatever that looks like. Past a few days’ roller-coaster of emotions, and feelings, and thoughts, even a little depression, I was getting pretty low, so I just lay down to feel the loneliness of my space, and prayed to every deity, every spiritual being that came to mind. How was I to use this space about me; what materials did I need to use now the old ones no longer worked for me? This space was my consciousness–in those moments of loneliness and prayer, and discomfort–but letting myself go; tears were coming and everything. And then it just stopped, or peaked, and a recommitment to what I could be came back. Sometimes my desire for description and definition gets in the way of the vastness of the potential that awaits all of us. I felt peaceful, and the next day I felt like I was in a womb–in my place–and that was good. I just worked at home and prepared for the next adventure. So that’s where I am now. So: do you have any comments?
MICHAEL: Well, I must say I enjoyed taking that trip with you. (much laughter)
Student: I didn’t mean to ramble on like that…
(Keep feeling)
MICHAEL: Oh!–not at all. I wasn’t being sarcastic. I really enjoyed that whole thing of–mainly–just giving yourself over to feeling–which Mother Spirit and I have been encouraging through this series of lessons. To do so you have to trust that the experience is intrinsically progressive. It’s what tonight we called a desire for truth with an intrinsic part of your personality–the ability to weigh things, get to the bottom of things, to find sound, practical ground, and have some real concrete things to do to be more beneficial. So don’t fear the human need for description and definition in thought. Yet you experience that some times you are stumped and nothing comes.
Student: Yeah.
MICHAEL: There you are for a while, and it’s real. Finally you come back to yourself, changed, so wonderfully refreshed for the journey, for the opening, almost as if the spiritual community as a whole is giving you a big wink and saying, Yes, my son: keep feeling. Keep throwing yourself open this way to whatever may come–inside.
I can only add, in all your prayers to the spiritual community: don’t forget your own soul. Don’t forget you can sit down and pray, Oh my soul–all that I have been and known–and not only as I know us now, but as God knows us–you too are welcome to come forth and remind me of all I have been, starting from scratch as that little, bloody, squalling bundle of life. Eventually–as you discovered–even Ultimately–your soul emerges to reassure you: you are!
Student: Yes–thank you. Thank you for that, because I know–as I’m developing in this metaphoric womb: this is my time. Not in a self-centered or egotistic sense, not in a material sense; and not only to find truth, but to live it as you said–concretely day to day. And blossom. I have a sense of that. I’m very aware of what content is allowed in this space. I have a lot of choice here. I want it to be from God, and not from fear or suffering.
MICHAEL: I find it interesting, my son, you feel yourself to be in a womb, because my first impression was–as you were relating these last few days of yours–that you’re becoming aware you are evermore…pregnant. (much laughter at the notion)
Student: No!–that’s right–I have been!
Potentials (The awareness of potential]
MICHAEL: Exactly! This is that wonderful awareness of potential and the awesome responsibility of choice. It does take courage to accept how much you are determining what comes into your inner life. Mother Spirit spoke of giving up your feeling of forward momentum in life and coming to a complete stop, even for several days at a time, or several times a day, to meditate with as much devotion as you can bring to it. Then start again. Stop long enough to get an impression of what to do right, and then do that. It may be only a little bit later you find you’re doing something wrong again, but every time you stop to evaluate becomes a fresh opportunity to feel for what is right.
The root of the word opportunity–po–power–means to sit down with power for company, to make power your companion, to sit with the power to start anew. Op-portunity means potential. You can have not only the vicious cycles you’re familiar with in that expression, but also those wonderful cycles that, as you exercise and realize your potential, that potential itself increases. The more you do, the more pregnant you become with what you can do. Your positive abilities are growing along with your character, adding to your soul, adding to all your future. This soul is what you are becoming–the only, but only necessary possession of your personality.
Student: It sounds like you’re getting excited there.
MICHAEL, laughing: Well, we do. We do get excited with you–and for you.
Student: Thank you. I do know that–in my alone-ness: I know I’m not alone. And I know that somewhere–out there–someone hears my prayers for me to be an extension of the kingdom.
MICHAEL: Yes, you have that choice to make it your own, and make your own life part of it.
Student: I’ve always pondered what you and Mother spirit have said, that the universe was created for each one of us.
MICHAEL: I started my lesson tonight with the invitation for you to realize that everything you encounter or experience, and not only your physical perceptions but including your mental and spiritual feelings and awareness as well, is all created by our Father, either directly or by way of His endowment of free will personality. Each of us has the power of our personalities, with whom He shares His absolute and infinite creative power, a sharing that is the essence of divinity. Only in this way could we determine, could we earn, who we are, and who we are becoming.
Worship (Our thankfulness–our worship)
That realization becomes our thankfulness, our worship. That’s our love and our regard for Him, our devotion to Him. Our immediate response to His will as expressed in the Creation is our sense of humility of just how enormous it is, and yet–as you just said, my son, it is made for us. It is our home. Each one of us co-creates it for ourselves and those about us. That’s the great circle of personal creativity; the great circle of freedom; the great circle of will dignity. Enjoy it with us. And be in my peace. Good evening.
