2012-09-12-Love and Sharing
Marin #218
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Love and Sharing
o 1.2 Group: Marin TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Michael
o 2.2 TR: JL
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
3.1.1 Love, Sharing
o 3.2 Dialogue
3.2.1 Mother Spirit
3.2.2 Acceptance
3.2.3 Freedom
o 3.3 Closing
Topic: Love and Sharing
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, here we are again, having come our various distances to get here, always with this sweet anticipation of what you have for us. Tonight I would like to actually request a certain topic. So many times in the past you have been able to reach a new depth of understanding for us of what may have become for many of us something too familiar. And so we appreciate your new take on things–to the best of your ability to convey it to us and ours to open ourselves to think about something anew–start again–keep our beginner’s minds as we look into the depths of the eternity waiting for us. So if you can, help us keep our beginner’s mind about love. Amen.
MICHAEL: Good evening, this is Michael and as always, Mother Spirit and I are happy to be here with you. Well, that’s quite a curveball you’re throwing at me because in all the English language, there probably is, unfortunately, no more hackneyed expression, yet at the same time, no more essential expression between people. And like everything else in human life, each expression has its own moment in time. Even between the same two people, or within a group, each time is unique unto itself. So the meaning, the feeling behind that word hardly ever repeats itself except in the most hackneyed sense where it’s just a kind of knee jerk response.
Love, Sharing
Love and sharing
We’ve taught that the one English word that stands for Deity–for God’s nature, for the nature of Creative Spirit–is this word called “sharing.” God, out of his own beginning-less desire, his own deepest eternal nature–wanting to share himself: this is what gave birth to all of existence, starting with the Eternal Son and Paradise–that initial separation of personal and impersonal reality that he created; on through the Infinite Spirit, the Seven Master Spirits, all of Paradise–and on and on until you get out to time and space where we are–all these millions and millions of galaxies of physical stuff, energy and matter–all the trillions and trillions of personal beings, each one unique. Through his own dimensions of contact with, and sharing of, personality, God himself experiences what every personal being of his experiences.
So essentially there is no separation, especially on the human level, between sharing and loving. They’re nearly synonymous. You might say that love is the result and reward, the wonderful experience of genuine sharing. And it’s something that, as a human being, you’re blessed to experience it in all the dimensions of you. Your personality can realize the experience. Your own creative spirit can play an enormous part in bringing it about for you and for the other, the other one that you are sharing it with. Your physical nature gives you a thousand and one ways of expressing and enjoying and sharing love with another. And, of course, the realm of mind, in this sense, is virtually infinite, not only in all the associations and memories and potentials that love can bring, but all the expressions.
This is one major theme in all your world’s literature, in every culture and civilization. For many it is the prime purpose for life itself, for living. It’s the reason behind it all. And it has it’s rather…I’d say, fraudulent expressions too, where the personality loses its essence of sharing and you have what is sometimes mistaken for genuine love.
Not always exclusively, but often, “falling in love;” when two people fall in love they can get into a situation that is not very loving and sharing, nor self-supporting at all. So it is generally a little more short-lived than the real thing. “Falling in love” is a state of mind and something that two people can, in one way, share; but the focus here is just on each one’s inner feeling of love. It’s like two intoxicated drunks in those standard cartoons, leaning together and holding each other up. It can lead to some very destructive–self-destructive lifestyles to maintain this “just-being-in-love.”
(Love beyond a mere state of mind)
Again it’s the irony of how clinging onto a state of mind–of just being in love–can lose the sharing and become destructive of your partner because it’s too self-centered. You’re losing the ability to respond to another person and it’s this lack of responsibility found in just-falling-in-love that renders it not very loving indeed.
The sharing part of love, the self-forgetfulness to focus and delight in another—as we’ve called you–“little walking infinities:”–this genuine love you can share with another person so far transcends any material thing you can have some affection for. It could be it your home, your property, your delightful car. Still, it’s the other people around you, these other little walking infinities. It’s losing yourself in self-forgetfulness and opening yourself to take in another–another unique personality. This is truly the most genuinely rewarding.
Of course we’ve also taught, my children, this is what really fills your soul, these living experiences of an ever-changing dynamic that attracts you and then holds you in such a way that, when a man and woman get together with this genuine love and curiosity and interest in each other, this is truly the most stable relationship for bringing about and raising children. There is such an enormous, enormous difference for children of whether their parents have genuine love for each other and are setting an example, sometimes, even of self-sacrifice for another.
So it’s the sharing part of love, and then it’s the reward of love in genuine sharing, genuinely getting to know someone else. It’s where one and one make three, for this is the greatest joy you can both know–spiritually and physically and mentally. It’s when you come to a point of finding your deepest delight in this uniqueness of another. Others are no longer something alien. You’re no longer caught up in self-limitations of having part of your unique personality you can never express, you can never share except with God. It happens in the face of the challenge of two unique beings getting together because each is generally more interested in the other than in themselves: this third part comes into being. And again: this is not just two people falling in the state of love–and just loving to be in love. No: this is the taking in of another.
In a sense love is the most, the strongest connection in the universe, more than equaling that of universal gravity that holds all energy and matter together, though this too comes from God in the way he’s set up Paradise to be the center of all material creation. Even stronger than this is his personality relationship, the enormous force that can hold people together through the most trying times.
It even transcends the instinct for survival wherein a mother animal can give her life in defending her young. It takes a human being with the dimensions of worship, of appreciation, of thankfulness; and then of wisdom, of being able to finally realize what is really important in life. It takes a human being to love.
Holding everything together
And so this is the big sticking-point, the biggest force, you might say, that’s holding everything together right down here on your bedraggled and sometimes terribly fought-over world. From Mother Spirit’s and my perspective—as we actually experience you–this connective/sharing force of love so enormously outweighs all of the selfishness, the self-centeredness, the greediness, the lack of caring.
People share amongst themselves and between themselves, even soldiers involved in warfare. This sharing, this loving, so totally overwhelms what, you might say, is its opposite—hatred or a deep desire to annihilate another. This is what holds the world together. This is what–with actually very rare exceptions at the end of their life–makes people realize that life has been worth living, that there is right within themselves
God’s presence.
(God’s love)
There is a binding kind of love in that he will not forsake you. He is part of you and will remain a part of you until you decide otherwise. Also, your very ability to deny his presence–your awareness of God–is another token of his love. For God so loves each individual that he bestows upon them the essence of his own creative spirit. This actually gives them freedom, even a relative degree of freedom from him if not from his natural laws. You are a physical being and this body of yours does answer to and obey both chemical and physical laws, even beyond your ken yet. Yet God so loves you that he sets you free even from him, for however long you may wish to entertain that notion. He does not demand of you this acquiescence.
So, my children, we can only ask–as you pursue his nature and try to be ever more like him in all of the days and years and eons to come—you keep this in mind: that real love, real love for another, sets them free even from yourself. You may come to delight in who they are all by themselves, irrespective of you, even in your company. What a reward that is–to be able to take in so much from another little walking infinity–that is finally between them and God alone, but given you to share as much as you can.
I’ll stop here because the delightful thing about love and sharing is not only their promise, but their actuality of being endless. And so if you have any questions or comments this evening, that’s generally loving.
Dialogue
Student: Okay, Michael, I have a question. What is the best way to love someone who isn’t lovable?
Loving the unlovable
MICHAEL: laughing: That’s a very good question, my daughter. Let me say what I think you’ve already discovered with your whole heart. Love, in this sense, is what Mother Spirit and I have called spiritual generosity for it goes beyond just-because-it-feels-good, even though it does that on the deepest level to let you know you’re doing the right thing. Do it with your eyes wide open, my dear. Do your best not to let their lack of response, or even negative response, shall we say of anger; do your best to see through these to their personality, their body, their mind, their spirit, and their soul. Keep in touch–for yourself and for your own health—with the totality of this other person.
This takes enormous strength. This is that aspect of courage that Mother Spirit does her best to augment within your breast. It takes nerve. I pointed up a difference between falling in love as some kind of state-of-mind you try to cling on to, while genuine love takes in and welcomes the other. This is why it takes courage to bring into yourself someone who is, on the surface, so inimitable, so self-centered and selfish with themself. This is the basis of real pity–not the kind of self-defensively putting someone else down–but letting your heart go out to this other person and doing your own best to spark love within them, even if it’s not for you. Do your best to bring them around to some loving they may have known in their life.
As I say, this is a kind of spiritual generosity that does not ask for and does not always receive its reward in another. But you persist because you have heart. You persist because this is a gift to this other being who is essentially starving for it, who does not have–at least at this moment within themselves—their own spiritual generosity to take you in and be kind and loving to you. Does this make sense?
Student: Yes, very much sense. Thank you. It’s very helpful.
Mother Spirit
Mother Spirit’s part
MICHAEL: This is where Mother Spirit is just being her nature; you might almost say, the nature of life itself. She is doing her best to augment your own understanding, your own courage, your own sense of companionship–knowing deep within yourself this is universal, in spite of this poor, crippled person in front of you. You keep giving them a hand, offering them love that they may someday be able to generate this themselves. But in the meanwhile, you’re doing your best to assuage the fear that is the root of their inability. And most are in time won over, if not in this world then in the next that God has prepared for them in such a way that, being more spiritual, they may at last start then to really appreciate and love others. So, carry on, my dear. As you say, your work is cut out for you. But with great heart, you change that work into real service.
Student: Thank you.
Student: Yes, Michael. I remember a story that was spoken to me–told to me, of this Tibetan monk who was imprisoned during the counterrevolution in China. He was imprisoned for twenty, twenty-five years and brutally tortured and in solitary confinement for all those years. When he finally was released, I think it was the Dali Lama who asked him, “What was your greatest challenge?” And he said, “Not losing compassion for the Chinese.” And that is, in a sense, what the epitome of love is. No matter what the appearances, or circumstances we are in, or see about us, or if someone is doing unsavory acts; that to go beyond the appearances of all that and see the essence of who we are as you, yourself, see in all of us.
There are times where I feel challenged to feel compassion even for some members of my own family. Yet I notice that when I do feel that I’m in a place of not-loving; that when I allow myself to be still and not get caught up in the appearances and the story–no matter how I may feel that I’ve been dismissed, not seen, hurt–that not to deny those feelings but just to be still with them and not get caught up in creating and embellishing and denying or reacting from them. When I allow myself to be still, my mind to be still, I discover love has never left, and that I’m able to be with these people in that place, in that space.
You know, it’s a 24-7 adventure, so to speak, because, you know, I see and I read and I hear so many unloving acts around me–diabolical acts. And I ask myself, “Where is the discernment within these individuals or groups of people that allows them to be unloving?” You know, these are things that I ask myself. “Where’s that . . . why . . . what is preventing that switch from saying, ‘”You know, maybe it’s not good to hurt this person, to physically abuse this person. Why am I persisting in doing that, even though love is our underlying essence and basis for living?”’
So these are things that I dwell upon from time to time, and also looking at how our belief systems kind-of get in the way of our true nature, of our reality, of our ability to love. I don’t mean just romantic love. But I mean to love, to feel empathy and compassion towards another.
So I ask these questions. They’re more rhetorical questions, but are something I think about. So as J. and I were talking earlier, I have these two beautiful grandchildren who know none of that, one who’s five months and all she does is love, you know; and poop and cry and all that. But, you know, the trust she must have that she will be taken care of, and the same with my other granddaughter who’s almost six. You know, just to trust, to put their lives in another human being’s hands, and hoping and trusting that they will be taken care of.
Acceptance
Something missing
MICHAEL: You’ve just given us about thirty dimensions of love. Thank you very much. Let me make the observation in what you’ve just given us: that all the mean, deliberately cruel, obscene behavior that people do to each other is more from a lack of something rather than something positive there–except in the most poor, perverted souls for which there is no redemption–Lucifer and Calagastia and Satan are celestial examples of this.
As you’ve come to know, yourself: when you are deliberately attacked—someone is deliberately trying to hurt you—yet to have discovered and earned your ability to be still and realize it is your own mind, out of its own sense of self-defense, that can endlessly, endlessly, endlessly come up with scenarios of: getting even, paying them back even more so they don’t do it again—whatever it is. As you accept this about yourself—the way you see all these scenarios—all these stories that just come bubbling up of their own nature—this gives you your deepest insight into the nature of others who are incapable of being still.
It’s by accepting all you’ve had directed at you: and then not giving it back! You’re breaking the karmic link of action and then endless reaction devoid of any really creative action. If you do be still, you give a chance for your own creative nature to come forth and keep you here-and-now—keep you present and assign these things to the immediate past. This is how you keep your beginner’s mind with an endless willingness, a power within you to begin again with freshness, even towards those who are deliberately abusing you. You understand it is a lack of something in them and you can more easily forgive them when you realize some of these poor souls have never known that very positive-ness that you feel coming up within you–one more time, to keep you open even toward those who are deliberately trying to abuse you. This is not a weakness but is the ultimate strength. This is the ultimate power it takes to turn things around and keep offering love until, hopefully, some day it is recognized as the power it is.
It is tricky because some folks can only interpret—in their system—love as a weakness. It’s such a shame because they suffer so much for lack of this essential power of the spirit and the soul. This is where genuine pity comes in and keeps you from rubbing your own loving nature in their face. Genuine love is never self-congratulating like that. That’s just another temptation to avoid–of being holier-than-thou. Love is a real humility. I’ve mentioned before your rather cynical expression that, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely;” where from Mother Spirit’s and my point of view the greater power of love corrupts absolutely no one. So carry on. As you say, it is an adventure and accepting it as such helps a lot.
Student: Yes, and what you said about people lacking something: it seems like those who are lacking, or never had a genuine experience of love in their lives, they seem to be the ones who want to control, you know, their lives and everyone else’s lives. They see love as being—you’re vulnerable, you’re open. And it’s true, there are times when, because you love, you experience people suffering that much more—because it doesn’t have to be that way. When you allow yourself to come from that place of love, and compassion, and empathy, you’re kind-of letting down your guard. You’re letting go of that self-control—so to speak, and letting go of that reification and that special-ness. You’re allowing yourself to see and be as God sees, and is.
Because what I’m feeling too: even though you feel all these connections, it’s also very solitary. You feel empowered because you’re not all scattered but, like—focused. You observe. It’s like that song by the Beatles—The Fool On The Hill—you see the world spinning round, and the eyes in your head…all that. You kind-of watch everything, and experience; but you don’t toot your own horn. We have too many spiritual teachers who do that, and I’m tired of that. But it’s just day-to-day life, moment to moment. And that is simplicity—amidst the complexity of all of this. (he and Michael laugh)
Freedom
Granting freedom
MICHAEL:My son, you’ve just reiterated a big part of my lesson—that God so loves each of us he gives us the ability to be free. We say we are made in God’s image, and that mostly applies to his sharing his creative spirit with us, as part of our personality. What the Eternal Son gives each one of us is this creativity by which God relinquishes control of us, and not only gives us this ability, this potential for free will to be our own person, but actually encourages it at every stage of the way. He rewards our decisiveness, our acting—hopefully acting out of love.
As you say, God is the very epitome of a being who is not a control-freak, but delights in the autonomy and uniqueness and freedom of all his children. For those of us who—myself and you—who are fortunate enough to have the nerve to try that—letting those you love be themselves—there is a loneliness; or perhaps not a loneliness but only an aloneness here insofar as each of us is unique. Each of us shares with God alone the totality of our being. And yet with the—(Michael laughs)—proper motivation, and, hopefully, loving parents, and brothers and sisters and friends, we ourselves can have this courage and power to let others be. We can delight in their very uniqueness and independence from us. Then love can get truly lively. You’re not just clinging on to being in love, but you can become a loving person, and have that in your soul.
Closing
Keep it playful
So, my children, if there are no more questions or comments, lets soak ourselves in this endless, infinite, eternal possibility of ever greater freedom to become more and more like our Father as we delight more and more in each other’s uniqueness, and autonomy from us. What fun! All of a sudden we have, not just stereotypes of our own in our minds and in our souls, but genuine, genuine others. This is our true wealth, and we help those along who have not had this experience. Let them experience us and our—as much as possible—unconditional love for them. If you love you’ll tease a bit, and be playful. Entice them, enable them, invite them into the merry dance you are so fortunate to know already. So, my dear ones: be in my peace. Good evening.
