2016-01-21-Keep Your Beginners Mind
Lightline #482
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Keep Your Beginner’s Mind
o 1.2 Group: Lightline 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
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Keep Your Beginner’s Mind
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Greetings. We have a favor to ask and that is, can you wish us a Happy New Year–as we reckon time on this dear old planet of ours? It reminds us, Michael, that most of the world does count time dating from your life among us, now over 2,000 years ago. Although I am sure, in all the various cultures around the world, they reckon time by other means as well.
But on this New Year, this first month of the year, it does remind us of your life among us. We thank all the authors of the Urantia Book for giving us an almost day-by-day account of your life here. It is such an inspiration to see how one person, one human being so much in touch with our Universal Father, can change the world for the better. It really gives us a wonderful humility just to imagine how much courage it took day-to-day for you to live the life you did.
What it is to be a Creator Son or a Creator Daughter of the Paradise Trinity, we can’t begin to imagine! We are even more thankful to our beloved Urantia Book for giving us at least some notion of what has been happening with you two, now for hundreds of billions of years–the kind of beings, personal beings that you are.
We thank you so much for instructing us, and then reminding us, that we too are creative beings, creative personal beings right from God. We are co-creating our own lives, and not only in all the hundred-and-one little decisions we are constantly making all through the day on how to spend our time, how to spend these lives we have
But our creativity even extends so unconsciously into how we perceive ourselves and everything around us, and how involved we are in that insofar as we can never fully escape our own subjectivity. We can never be so arrogant as to think we are truly objective. Fortunately yours and Mother Spirit’s presence right within us does encourage us to open our minds to all those around us. You help us get out of this “prison of self” and appreciate how others are living their lives. So for all of your wonderful lessons and guidance, we do thank the two of you so much. Amen.
Lesson
MICHAEL: Good evening, my dear ones. To all of you who will come to hear me through recordings, or come to read the transcripts of my lessons, Mother Spirit and I do wish you a Happy New Year. It is good that from time to time you have these big demarcations and celebrations of what is actually, of course, an Eternal Now, a continuity of existence coming right directly from God. A wise man of yours once said that, one of the great mistakes people make is in always assuming and taking for granted that there is time, time to do all the things they want to do. This is the sense that you can continually put off getting started.
Keep your beginner’s mind
MICHAEL: This is why Mother Spirit and I encourage you to keep your “beginner’s mind.” Never be afraid or shy of beginning, over and over again even in a single day, if that is what it takes to get you going, get you involved in your life.
Because this is a paradox, my dear ones. Yes, you do have a soul. You actually have a presence of God within you that is making a spiritual record of your life. So in one way nothing of value is lost. You can count on the Supreme Co-author of your soul to record everything of spiritual significance. But on the other hand, time is passing and you have a relatively short period here, of your human life, to begin with.
Every day you do get older. A “beginner’s mind” means that you can constantly start anew. This is especially true with some old ingrained habits that might be leading you down the path of less health and power and strength than you might otherwise have if you were only determined to seek and find them.
One aspect of co-creativity is that you yourself are creating so much of what is happening to you. As you said in your introduction, it’s all those hundred and one little decisions you make so unconsciously throughout the day because old ingrained habits make these decisions for you. It is the degree of consciousness of what you are doing–how much you are consciously involved–that is a critical factor of how to make best use of your time.
Spend some time with creative spirit
And so we suggest you “begin again” every morning as full of pure consciousness as you can muster. After waking up out of a hopefully wonderful sleep and restoration of your body, mind, spirit, and soul, and that transition period of sitting on the edge of your bed and gathering yourself together one more time, you immediately go, sit down, and spend some time with Mother Spirit and myself, and our Father–the presence of God within you.
Just open yourself to a re-birth of wonder—a wonder that: here you are! Wonder at this life you have. You have an ironic expression that nothing is free, and yet any time you are consciously spending and paying to have a life, gives you that life. You are definitely earning your own self, day-by-day, by determining to such a large degree what is going into your soul.
We point you at all the people you know and have known, all these other un-limited personal beings right from God. Recognize this. Let them be without limit in your mind and in your soul. Sit in your meditation surrounded within and without with all the people in your life. This can be your greatest thankfulness, your greatest blessing. This is how you open yourself, by recognizing all these other folks who have their own unique reality, hopefully just as full as yours.
This is the marvel of open-minded meditation, consciously breaking old habits by realizing them anew. Here the only habit is just doing it, just being determined the first thing when you start your day is to open yourself to suggestion. Because it is only you, my dear ones–and the spiritual forces and beings within you–that can determine what meditation opens you up to.
For so many of you this kind of a new activity, this meditation of just sitting down and doing nothing but being open, leads to a whole backlog of things pressing upon you demanding your attention, seeking your consideration. It might take a while for you to catch up with yourself and let all the things come into your mind that you’ve been putting off or denying for so long. But marvel, then, that this can happen. What a marvel to appreciate that your own mind, your own spirit, and your own soul can bring up those things that need your attention.
Love and respect yourself
This is where some love and respect for yourself comes in. Some newfound trust in yourself can be acquired. It can be earned by paying attention and thoroughly thinking through and getting to the bottom of all the things that ask for your attention. Because this is how you pay to have an open mind: you pay attention.
You let things come up that want to suggest themselves. It could be reliving some of the more painful moments in your past, things done to you or even things you did to others–hurtful things you have done to others. But there they are. They are part of your past; they are part of your soul. Yet now there is an older and hopefully wiser you to consider them, to understand and, most importantly, keep in touch with who you once were, and who they were.
This is how you open your soul. Let it come forth fearlessly, wondrously. Here you are in this Eternal Now that yes, on one hand, it is passing. Every moment is unique and never to be repeated in all of its fullness. But it is an eternal now, something where you will be with yourself and all your surroundings forever. This is God’s promise that you will exist as long as you want, as long as you desire, as long as you decide. This is the power put in your own hands, and so it is good every morning to remind yourself of your powers of choice, of what you are choosing to do in all full consciousness. This is how you how you have a full life, my dear ones. This is how you fill your soul with unique, creative days. This is how you make best use of this power that is intrinsically yours to develop.
To live a full life
This is how we wish you a Happy New Year. This is what makes it happy–your commitment, your involvement, your decisions, your wonder and appreciation. You realize how much you are giving value and meaning to your own life. It is a little bit scary!–how much God has placed in your own hands. It takes courage to acknowledge this and not to blame circumstances or others for what is happening to you. It is very humbling, is it not? But humility is such a spiritual blessing, keeping you in contact with so much that is so much greater than you.
So yes, my dear ones, Happy New Year. It is always and forever will be a new year, a new day, even a new next hour. How are you going to use it? How do you want to use it? That is kind-of scary. Mother and Spirit and I fully appreciate your trying as best you can to get a hold on this life of yours and use it wisely, and not only for yourself, but for all those others you can help and be of service. You give them more life by sharing your life with them.
God’s blessing
This is our Father’s blessing to you–all these others, every personality directly from him with whom to share things. So share your time, share your joy, share your hard work.
Dear Father, we thank you for all of us–all of us beyond number–all of us beyond time–all of us to fill eternity. We thank you, Father, and we love you very much. My dear children, know that Mother Spirit and I, we too love you beyond measure. Now if you have any questions or comments, let them spring anew.
Dialogue
Student: I have a comment. Now we do have a lot of power to decide what we are going to do. And of course we want to decide to do God’s will. But we have to figure out what God’s will is. So you wake up in the morning and you say, “Well, I think God’s will is this.” But then you go: Gee, I just can’t do it. I have more pressing matters to take care of. I have to feed myself. I have to make some money instead of going out and being of service. And so we really don’t have that much choice of what we can do because we do have some limitations on keeping ourselves alive and functioning in society. Can you speak on that?
Wondering about God’s will
MICHAEL: : Oh yes, my son. Let me tease you with the notion that you needn’t necessarily separate those things. How do you know it’s not God’s will for you to earn some money to pay the rent and buy some food? This is why you need to be very open-minded about what God’s will might be. I can suggest that the first thing is for you to be healthy and happy and share your life with others.
You are an economic being. I know personally that in all your prayers this is such a stumbling point because you have such spiritual strivings and spiritual ambitions that you tend to overlook, sometimes, that spirituality is all-inclusive. It is that dimension, starting with our Father’s, which incorporates everything, absolutely everything. It includes acknowledging what you call the hard, even the evil things of life. You don’t in any way keep anything out of consideration.
Try to open yourself to everything happening. This is spirit. This is the all-inclusiveness of spirit. For right within this you have what you call “the economic law of scarcity.” Consider all those decisions I talked about, that you make throughout the day, deciding how you are going to use your time. Because you can’t do everything all at once. There is a kind of joke that time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Economic reality
You do have constant decisions on how you spend your time on the economic necessities of life, those physical things that are limited and not like collecting salt water on the shore of an ocean. You’re choosing between one thing and another, material things like food, shelter, clothing, and transportation–all those physical aspects of your life that need attending to.
And then there’s time itself. Don’t forget, my son, that your particularly human life is God’s will. You were created an economic being in terms of time, in terms of space, in terms of personal resources of energy and will power. All of these things are involved. So open your mind as to what God’s will might be for you.
Obviously it is to be as generous–spiritually generous–with yourself as you can be, and then with respect to others. But even to do this you need to be strong and healthy and not constantly worrying about, shall we say, your food, shelter, clothing, and all these economic necessities. Does this help you?
Student: Oh yes, it helps quite a bit. One point that comes to mind though is that our economic system is not very fair, or just, as it’s administered or designed, and we have to deal with that too. It just gets a little frustrating working in such an unjust arena.
Duty of a citizen
MICHAEL: : Yes, my son, that is where your duty as a citizen comes in, does it not? You have to pay attention and be informed, open your mind to all the different viewpoints being expressed–especially in this political year of choosing your leaders. Yet even this duty is something that you can share with all your friends–to help you both be informed and make the best decisions. This is even if–as you have the expression–you have to hold your nose and cast your vote for the lesser of two evils.
Student: I can go for that. I think that is the name of the times–to be informed. I was reading in the Urantia Book the chapter Government on a Neighboring Planet where they spend a lot of time being informed. I think we do have the time now, and we have the means, that we can be very well informed of our choices, and our predicament.
That was just a statement; now I have another question for you though, a fun little question about time. I have this thought that we are always at the beginning of time, seeing that we live for eternity. We have an infinite amount of time in front of us, but only a finite amount of time behind us. We are always, like, at the beginning of our time span.
MICHAEL: : Yes, my son. This is what I mean by keeping your “beginner’s mind.” There is an old saying that, for a totally habituated person there are very few choices, but for someone who is constantly willing to begin, they have some means of exercising their creativity. They get out of living just by habit, by living consciously. Yet that requires all the sometimes difficult conscious decisions which some folks–as you know–try their best to avoid.
The other factor is consciousness of the Eternal Now—as we call it–coming down. You are in it now, and you always will be, as long as you decide to continue. You can call it “eternity” but even this is just a human mental projection right within this Eternal Now.
Student: OK–thank you. I’ll yield the floor now.
MICHAEL: : What I mean by using that expression is that people make the mistake of thinking they have time when it’s obviously just a way of putting off beginning, avoiding their “beginner’s mind.” They deliberately try to “kill time” through habituation to various drugs, coming home from work every evening and “getting blithered”–as you say–one way or another, just to kill time. It’s the sense that the present moment is weighing too heavily on them.
A most sincere prayer
Rather, it’s calling for each of you to make fully conscious decisions. Stopping to ask, “Dear God, what should I do next?” can be the most sincere prayer to open yourself and get all the help you need to answer that question. It is kind-of scary, and we acknowledge that–Mother Spirit and I.
Student: But asking “What do I do next?”–is that something you can do in the amount of time you have to do it though? Or do you have to assume you have plenty of time to do whatever you want to do?
MICHAEL: : That depends on what you are doing, does it not? Some things you can do in five minutes, and for some things you are going to have to lay out plans for the next five years. Call it the flexibility of time. It is a matter of planning and decisions on some things.
Student: Where I was going with that is, you have eternity to develop yourself, so get started. You can start anytime, so why not start now because you do have the time to do it.
MICHAEL: : Exactly. Since all eternity is “now”, nothing happens unless you do start it now. That’s keeping your beginner’s mind and not being afraid of it, not being shy about beginning something that might take five years.
Student: OK. Thank you.
MICHAEL: : Thank you, my son. Be in my Peace. Well, my dears, if there are no further questions, let me wrap up this session with a comment on time.
Being alive so many ways within time
First, you are a living being. This physical body of yours that enables you to maintain consciousness is alive. Yet your mind and your spirit are more than just physical. You are not just intelligent animals, for an animal has only now. Starting at a very early age and with the matter of language–the way folks talk and phrase different things with respect to time–you literally began creating a conscious past with your worded, thoughtful memories.
Here we’ve given lessons on how to contact your soul that is co-authored by God–how you can open yourself and relive moments. I just talked about eternity and the fact you can have a notion of this Eternal Now never ending. Though it’s mostly an unconscious process, it’s you actually creating what you are going to do tomorrow, the plans you have, maybe the work you have. You can arrange with someone else to meet them three months from now at a certain place and a certain time.
All this is part of your personal creativity, part of your being human. However unconscious, it is yours. It is your creation except for those poor folks who lack certain mental abilities and live in an eternal now with no past or future. They have to be institutionalized and taken care of because they have lost the human creativity of understanding days, hours and minutes.
Think of how your science has chased temporal cause-and-effect right down into the nanosecond of sub-sub-atomic activity, and out into the millions of light years through space it took for a star’s light to reach you–time and space so tied together.
Closing
Let me tickle your wonder
This is all a big tease–I’ll have to admit to that. It’s to tickle your wonder as you meditate, or as you stop, from time-to-time throughout the day, to wonder and appreciate all that is involved in your human life. Yes indeed: it can be a Happy New Year, even full of all the aches and pains you are heir to–everything that contributes to your sense of meaning and your understanding. Then think of all the spiritual value you find in life, indeed! Happy New Year, my dear ones. Mother Spirit sends you her love, and I bid you be in my Peace. Good Evening.
