2004-12-20-Christmas & Renewed Relationships
Marin #27
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Christmas & Renewed Relationships
2Group: Marin TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Michael
2TR: JL
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
3Dialogue
4Closing
Topic: Christmas & Renewed Relationships
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Merry Christmas! And for You especially, Michael, Happy Birthday! Though it seems, Michael, that Your real birthday was sometime in August of the year, perhaps it is very appropriate that a large part of the world – people of all religions and beliefs – celebrate Your birth and Your coming to us at this time of year, which is the end of one year and the beginning of another. For this, it seems, is one of your greatest gifts to us, this message that after we go through a kind of personal winter of death and hibernation, there comes then a glorious spring of rebirth. We look forward to meeting You face to face some day in that glorious spring. Amen.
Michael: Good evening, My children, this is Michael. I thank you for your heartfelt welcome and your celebration. What a joy it is for Me to feel the peoples of Urantia using this occasion to renew their relationships with each other. This is a wonderful occasion indeed when folks allow themselves to suspend their disbelief in things of a spiritual nature, let their hair down, so to speak, and greet each other as the true brothers and sisters of God’s family that they really are.
Lesson
This allows a certain profound truth of human being to be perceived and joyfully exchanged. It warms the heart and thrills the soul and whispers ever so lovingly, “This is what is possible. This is real” – this simple and profound joy of just being together. Taking time to simply enjoy each others’ company is really at the heart of the season.
Don’t worry or concern yourselves, My children, with all of the so-called material trappings. They can fade away and, in fact, between real friends, and parents and children, they really do fade away for much of this season. They’re merely gaudy, but often heart-felt tokens of affection – hollow enough without the affection, and yet rich beyond expression with affection. So see if you can glimpse through all the hustle and bustle of shopping, all the feelings, sometimes, of duty that people take on as a requirement, see through all of this the struggle of one heart trying to communicate its love for another. For even that search for the perfect gift is mainly to see the delight of surprise in another’s eyes on Christmas morning.
There is some well-meaning worry that Christ will be lost in Christmas. But I assure you I am beating in every heart. I am there to be felt and experienced. This is truly a holiday, a holy day, if sometimes only a very slight vacation from the economic necessities of life. But even the hard facts of food and shelter and warmth, when these are shared with a joyful thanksgiving for life itself, can be indeed a holy occasion. So don’t worry or fret about how your neighbor may be celebrating this time. Feel your own heart beating with My love and share My joy freely. Don’t assume to know what is in another’s heart, but give generously of your own, even, or I might say – especially – in your perceptions.
This complete acceptance, one of another, is the true spirit of My birthday. For it was to deliver this message to all My realms that I was born on Urantia. It was to announce the loving fatherhood of God and the joyful brotherhood and sisterhood of all races on all My worlds that I so dearly loved and enjoyed the life I spent with you. So much joy, so much happiness did I know. For, after a while, once I too was able to grow and find a deeper communion with our Father, then I could see Him in everyone, even my most bitter enemies. So what you celebrate and are capable of enjoying so deeply at this holiday season, remember, My children, I was able to perceive constantly.
Quite regularly – just as I have invited you to do – I found it helpful to commune with our Father. This was very much a part of, and not in any way separate from, My perception of all my brothers and sisters in the flesh as My children. So take heart in this season. Let My Spirit of Truth shine like a beacon in your heart and reveal a year-long reality to those about you, for this can be something that endures beyond the season. There will always be ups and downs in your ability to experience this so directly. It is, for so many, still more an ideal than a reality. But here, My children, is where the ideal and real are one in faith. There is no separation here in My sight – to see your brothers and sisters as real spirit beings, precious beyond measure in My eyes. These are living beings, who, with our Father, are growing souls of eternal potential. These are the precious beings surrounding you.
What a season this is! Each of the worlds religions or systems of beliefs has this magical moment within it, this recognition of the miracle of birth, the beginning of something of infinite potential in a small human child, becoming, seemingly out of nothing, the pure creativity of an absolutely unique personality with self-awareness, growing into this real, ideal spiritual awareness that all the past is but the beginning of the next moment. So now at this season especially we worship the miracle of our Father’s creativity in each and every single child born. For look! – another little nodule of God Himself has come into being and someday, ages and ages, eons upon eons from now, this child of God will have traversed a universe to stand face to face with his or her Creator and be embraced on the threshold to eternity.
As it is My joy and delight for you to see Me and feel Me in your heart as your Father, so too see Me as a little child looking about in unknowing, incomprehensible wonder and awe, just as you once did. And so I bid you, My children, Happy Birthday also. I ask you, please, share this one with Me.
Celebrate your life with Me. See the little child you once were, taking those first awkward, uncertain steps into the future. Our Father has a big universe out there, My sons and daughters. You will always be a little bit like children in the face of that. And in the awesome face of that, it does us so well to share our lives with each other. We learn – in some wonderful way – it makes all that universe manageable – as if it were made for each of us alone. So join with Me in thanking our Father for this life we can share.
Do you have any questions you wish to share with Me, or just any comments? I am always happy to be here for you.
Dialogue
Student: Dear Michael, I would like to get more insight on what it means to make a decision…ah, as like when You were – after Your baptism – You made decisions of record which, I would assume, would be the Personalized Thought Adjuster. Could You help us make firmer decisions with our Thought Adjusters?
Michael: Yes, V, it may be helpful to consider what the fragment of God, that shares your life with you, does in this way. The record that is being kept of your life, including decisions you make, is, from a human standpoint, seemingly automatic. I say seemingly because nothing that God does is automatic. Everything flows from His perfect will and is absolutely realized – what you would perceive as – instantaneously. A record is being kept of your life for both Him and you. And this is your soul, this is your eternal possession and wealth.
Your Father Fragment, along with other spiritual influences such as Myself and your Mother Nebadonia, your guardian seraphim, and now other celestial personalities that you are tuning into; all of these impinge upon you by personally trying to help you achieve – for it is an achievement – those decisions by which you are free to choose who you will become. You can best perceive this by something I touched on this evening – the reality of the ideal. Devote the time and the effort to exercise your spiritual sense of values in making these decisions. You only need to record these decisions, for yourself, in terms of openness as to what these decisions incur, and the willpower or determination it takes to exercise these decisions as you go forward.
This memory/recording is for you alone – to help you remember these decisions, and how these decisions affect you and others. The other record being made is strictly for your soul, and this is God’s will and perfect ability with respect to this part of your life. Think of some of the suggestions We have offered in the past on how to tune into your soul, one of which, I suggested many weeks ago, was to relive moments of your life as purely as they happened to you originally. In this way you can revisit past decisions in the pristine innocence with which you made them the very first time. For here you will be touching your Father Fragment’s record. Does this help answer your question, My son?
Student: Yes, it does, Michael. Thanks once again for the eternally beneficial lesson.
Michael: You are very welcome. And be in My peace.
Student: Michael, my mind drifts a lot while You or Mother are speaking. I’d like to learn how to pay attention and be in the present moment. I can be here a little bit but it still drifts a lot. I would like to stop that if it’s at all possible. Michael: Yes, C, this is a bit of a paradoxical puzzle, for how can you be aware of when you are not being aware – especially when any attempt you make, in terms of a process or some kind of exercise you are doing in your mind, only becomes another diversion leading you away from what is happening? So don’t try any kind of exercise to focus on what is being said, but rather, as when you are practicing receiving a celestial friend, feel for an enhancement of the words themselves.
If you catch yourself doing anything to listen better, just relax that effort to get a qualitative enhancement of the words themselves. In other words, don’t strain to listen to what is being said, just hear it so that the words become more meaningful. And you do this by relaxing, by not trying anything that only becomes a diversionary over-complication. Just hear the words and let their meaning bounce around inside your mind where they will precipitate all kinds of suggestions and meanings of things that happened in your past; but let these suggestions happen as if they are all around the words coming in.
Just continue to hear the words coming in and don’t worry about other ideas you may have in association. It’s a constant moment by moment focusing on the living words, and treasuring this moment happening right now – more than all the memories that the words precipitate. It’s a constant moment by moment letting go of yourself in order to take in something other than you. And this takes a self-confidence in yourself, to be able to let go of yourself like this. So as things come up within you, responding to what is coming in, just let them float away; just keep hearing the other. Does this help you understand the internal dynamics of the situation?
Student: Yes, much better. Don’t be distracted by being distracted.
Michael: Exactly.
Student: Sometimes I feel like I’m standing maybe a step or two back watching myself being distracted, and trying to pay attention, as opposed to being just plain present. But I think just allowing it to happen is what’s going to work, but it seems too simple sometimes.
Michael: Well, the simple things are sometimes the most difficult for their very subtlety, but I think you are grasping the principle involved here. And again, it reflects your values. You have to value more what you are trying to hear, rather than these other perceptions of yourself listening. This is an ability that you can slowly learn, because no one is just automatically blessed with this ability. It is a spiritual triumph to be able to set yourself aside. You just focus on another – whether it be Myself or another human being.
As you know there are some, I would say, argumentative souls who cannot hear at all but are only concerned with they are going to say next. They are usually not aware they are depriving themselves of all that is not themselves. So by contrast to these individuals, you are blessed indeed, C, in being so aware of the dynamics involved in truly wanting this contact with another. Are there any other questions this evening that you have, C?
Student: No, I can understand that explanation, and thank You very much; thank You for the spiritual principles involved. It’s just a matter of practice and practice more.
Michael: Yes, and I think the discussion you had earlier this evening about spiritual values will help you a lot. (Referring to a session with Welmek about contacting your celestial teacher)
Student: Yes, that part made a lot of sense to me, I can understand that one.
Michael: This helps a lot when you simply value this happening – now, in My case, My communicating to you – for even this ability will help you so much with your friends – just to be able to suspend all the things you want to say to them. For there is nothing more truly spiritually helpful, as a gift to another person, than to really listen, to really hear them, to really make it possible for them to share themselves with you. And be in My peace.
Student: Thank You, Michael, thank You.
Student: Yes, Michael, as I reread the transcripts and find little nuggets to meditate upon, or to ponder over, and I mentioned this to the group last week, there was one thing that was said, I think it was by You, was that at times I am inexplicably stubborn, and if You may, I would like for You to elaborate that idea or character traits more deeply. And then I read another transcript from Mother about feeling Her peace, and Your peace, and diving into this ocean of serenity and love, and having the ability to hug another human being without doing the motivation or intention of specifically doing so, because that is our nature. That’s where I desire to come to be. In a sense to get beyond intention, but to be – without thinking about it. In a sense not thinking about my life, or my situation, or my drama. So if you can talk about that…
Michael: Yes, D, the first part of your question, referring to this stubbornness; as I recall, this came about in portraying a situation in which We invited you to be open – to relate to another person – neither filtering what a person is and what they are saying to you, nor projecting a certain attitude towards them – shall we say an attitude of indifference where you are letting them know, however consciously or unconsciously, that perhaps you don’t value too much what they are saying? That can be one attitude; or an attitude of superiority, or an attitude of inferiority. These are just examples of how people can signal others as to how they want to be taken or understood.
But if you are open to all that is possible with another person, and you really take in their whole personality, you will find that there are, then, parts of you which respond, and it is these which may be inexplicably, and yet very stubbornly, you. I say stubbornly because they might be negative reactions of anger, fear, indifference, or callousness that you would just as soon dissociate and say, “No, that’s not me!” But these are part of you. It is by allowing these to reach your consciousness, where you can feel them and decide what to do about them, that you change them from an unconscious reaction which may be causing all kinds of estrangement between you and others. It is only by recognizing that these are part of you, maybe left over from past experiences which may or may not have anything to do with the present situation; it is only by owning rather than disowning these parts of yourself that you can grow. That, I believe, was what was meant by an inexplicable but still stubborn part of you.
As for your second question, I would suggest here that you may have in mind an ideal which is only an illusion. It may not actually be, or lead to, the kind of behavior you really want to be involved in. There is in many philosophies and ways of living the ideal of being so totally One with what is right – in a profound spiritual way – that there is no thought required: we are so One with God and His will that we can act without thinking or reflection. But consider for awhile how much in tune with God’s will – in the sense of doing what is right for all parties concerned in any conceivable situation – this would have to be.
I can share with you the difficulty I had, Myself, as a human being, knowing what this was moment to moment. You see what I mean when I say this is, for most human beings, maybe all human beings, a kind of impossible or illusory ideal – to just relax and be perfectly in accord with God’s will with no reflection or thinking. This could lead to the gravest of mistakes. For this is the exact mindset associated with so much profound evil in the world. There are so many acting, not out of your intention of goodness, but out of a refusal to think or reflect on what they are doing, causing so much suffering in a very immediate way to those around them.
In this way of understanding, the thinking and reflecting we do before we act – of being open to our human inability to know the full repercussions of our actions; this care and consideration – that we may not know what is perfect to do – this becomes a gift of spirit to our fellow human beings who have to put up with us and our behavior. So I would suggest that while it is righteous to constantly feel for what is the right thing to do, so long as you are human this will take a lot of consciousness and care.
It ties in with what we looked at first – how to be open. How do you do this? How do you be open to another person and be conscious and accept those spontaneous aspects of yourself which come to the surface when you are open and you do not know what will happen next? Does this answer your question?
Student: A lot to consider… In regards to the first question, I have felt the negative reactions to something I’m experiencing in the present. And I have no idea why I feel what I’m feeling towards this human being, or towards the situation. And most of the time I allow, instead of denying it, what You alluded to a couple of weeks ago about denial. I try to deal with it. I try to learn from it – why I am being bothered so, and then write it in my journal. So I do that, and I am aware of how something in the past can be triggered by something in the present, even though the past has nothing to do with the present – a totally different situation. So I am keenly aware of that.
And secondly, if someone is prepared to hurt another human being, or be evil towards another, then I believe it’s not of the will of God; that is not His vision. My thoughts – as to how I can respond to that: I feel if someone has love in their heart, there can be no evil. Evil doesn’t exist if one has love in their heart.
Michael: Yes, D, you understand fully about this first part we talked about, and how this was partly Mother’s message too – about what is meant by “bad karma” – how people can continue to do damage to others in the present because they refuse to own their own reactions – which may be coming from something in the past which has nothing to do with the person they are presently engaged with.
My example in the second case was that individuals, who are blind to their own motivations and refuse to think about or reflect on what they doing, but try for this ideal of – just doing things – being One with their intentions – cause a great deal of damage, even though they feel within themselves they are coming from a good place. True enough, if you are standing outside their situation you can say: Well, they are just being cynical. They are just doing that because they think everybody acts that way; or, this is just the way it is. And yes, they do not really have God’s will in their consciousness because their actions are causing great pain to others.
But if they would only pay the price of thinking about what they are doing, reflecting on what they are doing, entertaining the possibility that they may not know what is right; this becomes a gift to their fellow human beings. Entertaining the possibility – always – that you are not yet perfect, you do not perfectly know God’s will – especially when it comes to your interaction with other people – this is actually a consideration and a gift of spirit. It enables you to more fully accept the responsibility of what you are doing.
Student: Then why is this person, who I’ve never met, and do not remember her name – she’s from India – who all day, spends her whole day loving and hugging people; and that’s all she does? And everyone feels so loved by her?
Michael: It seems you are describing a situation where this woman is acting in true accord with the real effect she is having on others. As to how she came to be this way, perhaps she is being open to the feedback from what she is doing. This, to Me, seems an example of deep, profound humility. This is what We call an extraordinarily humble person who feels herself to be tiny, almost miniscule, in the face of the enormity of God’s love, and so is acting in an almost paradoxical way by letting this great power of love flow through her. In any case, I can only see her as being open and receptive to the effect she’s having on others, rather than simply acting blindly out of some inner notion which may or may not accord with reality. Student: It’s like a very, very high statement of self-forgetfulness. Michael: Yes. For her this is probably a growth of maturity – that she herself had to go through an initial phase of thinking very much about what she was doing. She may have had an enormous period of self-reflection and self-awareness before she could achieve this state of being selfless.
Student: I guess what I was getting at was the idea of getting beyond intentions – in a sense of every human being as a child of God – without having this censor within myself – of who is worthy to hug – who I feel compelled to hug or love. I guess it’s my own…looking at my own resistances or my own…as I said – inexplicable stubbornness to not give love to one person, but love to another – for whatever reason. So I need to get beyond my own blindness or stubbornness and see, in time, God in each and every person. And be honest with myself about what I feel.
Michael: Yes, My son, this is what I am suggesting you do. Own these aspects of yourself, which you say you are struggling to do. This may take a lot of thought for there is no way to just automatically go from here to there. But your being aware of these limitations to your love is itself a very loving thing to do. So continue with this. Continue to own all these aspects of yourself that arise. This is how you become what I call open. This is how you become aware so someday you can suspend this filter of who should be loved and who should not. So carry on. Continue to strive for sincerity.
Student: In a sense…I just thought about when I’m not open to that – to love, I’m denying myself.
Michael: Where you yourself are standing in your own way as this kind of a filter, you are denying yourself that aspect We have called God’s continuous creation. You are coming from the past and past judgments, and missing something new and unique in this person now standing before you. That’s why I referred to it as an ability that you slowly learn – first by being conscious of what you are doing and it’s effect on others. For this is the very thing those who cause great pain and suffering in the world refuse to do. So this is a loving thing you can do for each other – to acknowledge you are not yet perfect.
Student: Whatever perfection is…
Michael: Well, you have much to consider, My son.
Student: But I do see how, sometimes when a feeling does come up, especially in my household – where I’m not happy about something – how the people in the household feel it, and they want to run away from it because it is so powerful, the energy of it. So I thank You.
Michael: You are welcome, My son. As you just now realized: it’s also a gift to others for us to sometimes – contain ourselves. And be in My peace.
Closing
This has been quite a Christmas Eve this evening. Every religion has, at it’s core, this worship, this thankfulness for God becoming human – our Father creating, in this enormous universe, a unique personality like no other, a gift to this new person of himself or herself, and a gift to the rest of us of another brother or sister. So let us celebrate with joy and thanksgiving that each of us, every single one, is such a child of God.
Be in My peace, My children. Good Evening
