2015-10-15-Free Will & Creativity
Lightline #478
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Free Will Depends Upon Creativity
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: Free Will Depends Upon Creativity
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, thank you. Thank you for being with us always. Thank you for being part of us, part of our mentality and part of our creative spirit. And we thank our Universal Father for also being part of us–being the co-author of our souls–so in the distant future–hopefully not too distant future–when we actually become one with this presence of God within us, our consciousness will have expanded to approximate the enormity of our souls and all the living experience we will have earned by then.
Thank you so much for all of your dear lessons on how we can get in touch with our souls and with the spiritual presences right within us. I think they have so much to do with our feelings of freedom, and the fact that our choices are possible and have such an effect on our lives. Michael, you have told us over and over again how we are defined in the spiritual world as “creatures of free will dignity.” Yet so many of my friends and folks I talk with have almost no feeling of this freedom. It is not that their lives don’t matter, but they don’t feel this. They don’t feel they have much choice. So if you would, could you speak on this, this evening? What is this “free will dignity” that we have, and how do we achieve it if we feel we really don’t have it–if we don’t experience it? Thank you. Amen.
Lesson
MICHAEL: Good evening, my children, this is Michael. As always, Mother Spirit and I are happy to be with you and to communicate with you this way. Once again let us remind you that we are always available. Anyone can do this–what you call transmitting-receiving–because we are always eager to transmit and directly speak with our children. All we ask is that you do pursue all the techniques of receiving, that you open your minds and step off. Ask us questions right in your meditation. Write them down or use one of your little recording devices, for it helps to be very direct and particular when you actually frame the questions in your mind on which you would like some help.
And of course we are always happy, anytime during the day, when you say, “Hello Mom. Hello Dad. I’m glad you’re with me!” It does affect us so much. We do appreciate it when you acknowledge us and the part we play in your life
Free will depends upon creativity
Since we are pure spirit from your standpoint–pure creativity–we are the link, if you will, to the whole spiritual universe; as is the presence of our Father within you. This is how you too become creative by reflecting on: What is this “dimension” of spirit? It’s the whole notion that you can step out of the stream of time coming at you unstoppable–this whole physical universe you are wrapped up in, and all the people in your life that are relatively independent of you. They too are part of the reality that is constantly coming at you.
But right within this stream of everything else, you have you. You have your own unique self. You have your own creative ability–if you just learn how to tune in to it and start to use it. Part of this is that we tease you with the notion that you are already using your own creativity incessantly, my dear ones. It is what we mean by your co-creativity. You are co-creating everything happening to you, even your own body.
Some of the higher spiritual beings, in writing their chapters in the Urantia Book, do refer to your so-called “animal nature.” But realize this is something that Mother Spirit and I do not do, because we try to talk directly to you, to your personality, to this unique personal being that you are. For even your own body–as you experience it–is not an “animal thing” whatsoever.
Even your body, my dear ones, is also your own co-creation. We tease you with the realization of how it comes and goes in your consciousness. It is a delight sometimes to forget all about yourself–the blessing of self-forgetfulness when your body is just this wonderful tool you are using only half-consciously. Think of all the pleasure and joy it brings you in genuine accomplishment.
Human beings are not just intelligent animals
So your self is not an animal thing at all; it is a personal/human form that you have, and how you actually experience it is a function of your own creativity, even in something so simple, but transcendent, as wiggling your fingers. I call this transcendent because you are involved in something that is pre-existing and continuing–your own body–and yet you have that choice of control over it to the degree you are conscious.
This might seem a long way around the barn–as you say—or around the corner–to address what you asked me, and that is the whole concept of free will. But exactly how free are you if you don’t experience this, if you don’t have a feeling of it, and if you don’t actually use it? From our spiritual standpoint of being rather what you would call pure spontaneity–Mother Spirit and I, and our more spiritual children—we do ask you: How do you get a feeling of this? How do you realize your own free will? And so we point out so many determinisms that more or less render so many folks fatalists. They are really wrapped up in unconsciousness and unexamined notions of fatalism.
Over the years we have talked about so many of these. One question that comes up over and over again is the whole notion of reincarnation. A large percentage of folks, depending on their culture, do believe that somehow or another, in their day to day, immediate Eternal Now that we all live in, they are being determined by some personal thing that happened even before they were born. Their personality had some kind of pre-existence that is actually determining what they are capable of doing now.
Yet from our point of view, we know for sure that you do start here as a human being for the first time. And so we talk about all the cultural conditioning that you are born into as part of that continuing reality that is all around you, and then too right inside you. Just think of the particular language you learned, and all of the cultural concepts wrapped up in it itself. We are using English now, and all the causality that is wrapped up in it–what causes what; what determines what. This is part of the very language and its concepts you learned.
What determines your choices? Then you have what religion and philosophy you were raised in with your parents, your brothers and sisters, and your playmates–right down to what is real and what is not, and what determines you. Think of all those thousands and thousands of hours in your childhood when you were like sponges absorbing the culture all around you. Consider the enormous determinism right there. In order to understand yourself and how you are being influenced even by yourself, it is not necessary to propose a pre-existence. You have the whole culture that you absorbed just as a child growing up.
And this was all long, long before you had any kind of self-determinism in terms of developing an ego–the sense of who you are in yourself–and what you were capable of doing. Reincarnation notions really are such an enormous kind of fatalism because so many folks aren’t critically aware of them. They’re not in their consciousness. They do not reflect on them.
Culturally, one of the greatest things to give you some sense of what your determinism is, is simply by being aware of other cultures in terms of their religion, their philosophy, and their nationality. Think of all the different groups on this dear world of yours and, by being aware of them and exposing yourself to them–being interested in different cultures–it gives you some sense and some means to get a hold on what you yourself absorbed, and is now determining you.
If your culture is totally unconscious, it so totally limits your sense of free will. Because when use that term “free will” we are talking about consciousness. You have to expanding your consciousness to realize more and more what is determining you, what degree of fatalism you absorbed, and you now assume that these are fixed parts of reality that cannot be changed. We’ve talked about the prayer of realizing what you can change, and what you cannot, and then the wisdom to know the difference.
This is almost a definition of free will. It is acquiring that wisdom of knowing what you can change, and yet what is immutable. Because so much, my dear ones, so much of what you feel is immutable is right within you yourselves and how you see reality on a very human level, from the standpoint of your personality. The Urantia Book defines your personality as the existence of that which is not changing, right within the presence of everything else that is changing. This is why we recommend so much the practice of meditation as a regular thing. It’s a deliberate, highly conscious choice to bring a new continuity into your life. So it’s very much an exercise of your will.
The need to meditate and reflect
This is one way you can know you have free will: because you are using it. You are deciding to do this strange activity of just sitting down and doing nothing else but practicing being aware, including reflecting on who and what you are. What kind of being is a human being? Who are you? What are you? What are you capable of? Let all these things stir you and peak your interest and curiosity.
This is one prime example of a free-will decision that you can make. You know this because you keep creating it day after day–this new continuity in your life. This is where all the reflection comes in, from one culture to another. Think of all the different people you know, and how they are handling their lives. Exactly what gives you your sense of what is possible and what is not?
Beyond this, my dear ones, there is no escaping the nitty-gritty of experimenting. Try new things and then, as we have mentioned so often, not only try something, but reflect on what the outcome was. Again: this is where you need some continuity, some conscious continuity in your life in order to understand what is happening to you. Otherwise things just become another event that is soon forgotten if it is not understood. You’re not really accepting the impact that this experiment has had on your life. If you don’t learn from it, if you don’t let it affect you and then reflect on it and wonder about it, be curious about it, it can be tragically as if it never happened.
We know that in your modern media, your television and your Internet, so much is available to you instantaneously now that it is right within yourself. Yet your own memory, and then even beyond your memory, your soul, this soul-wealth you are accumulating by your living experience, if you can’t tap into that, if you can’t take some time out of this busyness you get caught up in, and reflect: what good is your soul doing you if it is all unconscious?
Obviously your experience of life–your soul–is where all your values and meaning come from. But if they remain unconscious, these meanings and values are just projected “out there.” Think of some racist encountering someone of a different race, and seeing them as someone barely human. If they don’t realize this prejudice is coming from their own self and being projected out onto another equally human being, they don’t realize what their soul is doing–contributing to their very perception of things.
What affects your perception?
Again, this unconscious projection is just another determinism, another loss of free will. It becomes an inability to keep learning and having reality become more and more transparent and understandable. Because the greatest determinism of all is unconscious projection. It is what allows or lends most people to think something is immutable. They can see it, they can perceive it.
It is real to them and it seems outside them. There is no way they can deal with it. If these projections are not withdrawn and seen through, folks are not actually getting to that other person they have such a prejudice about. Think how this influences all your social and political life, how this pre-judging, all this “screen”– in a sense–stands between a person and what is actually there.
Tragically it seems that some folks go through their life and never really touch the thing-in-itself. They build up a little “bubble of familiarity” around themselves which, ironically and tragically, is strangling them, strangling their soul from all the new reality that each moment could be bringing them. It leads to a kind of smug self-satisfaction–nestled in their little bubble of familiarity where, ironically and again so unconsciously, they become so reactive in trying to defend the little bubble they are living in. And so the warfare, the clash between persons of different cultures goes on.
My dear ones, I hope I am giving you some feeling, some experience right here of the necessity to meditate and reflect on what you are doing. Open yourselves to other possibilities, and then have the courage to step forth and experiment, right with your own life. This is what you have it for. Your greatest ability is to use yourself. Get involved. Wrestle with things. You may get bruised from time to time, but at least you will know you are alive.
You’ll have some sense of freedom of actually wrestling with things, being involved, and learning. Then you can look back and reflect, and realize how much you have grown with all you have learned, all these other folks that you now have in your soul. It’ll also be what you have given of yourself that they have in their souls of you.
This is the divine plan. This is the genuine sharing. This is God’s very nature and the nature of creative spirit–sharing real stuff, your life and theirs. It’s having a real sense of freedom in getting away from all the determinisms that you were simply born into. It is how you grow more and more close to a world soul. Then you all leave this world behind and head out into the universe where you’ll be confronted with, and have the possibility of enjoying, even other kinds of personal beings than human.
Unsettlement precedes growth
So: welcome. Welcome, my dear ones. Welcome to all this possibility that is yours to reach out and get a hold on. Ask yourself, are you free? And if not, why not? How are you going to use this freedom? What are you going to do with your life? There often is a kind of unsettlement that precedes growth. It is shaking off the winter of your soul and inaugurating your own personal springtime. Now I have teased you enough for one lesson here. If you have any questions or comments about this: feel free.
Dialogue
Student #1: I couldn’t get my mute off. Good evening, Father and Mother. I love it when I get a private meeting with you.
MICHAEL:: Welcome aboard.
Student #1: You hit on exactly what has been the theme of free will that I was studying in our textbook yesterday–the free will to choose and to live your true personality. Yet this is but a short classroom. Life is like a three-year college, and then we get to The University. I’m headed to Salt Lake tomorrow. As you know, all world religions will be there and I just pray everybody’s Father Fragment is open, and your Spirit of Truth, and Mother Spirit–like going up that mountain again.
Be free; then grant it to others
MICHAEL:: Well you are blessed, my dear, that you can realize this within yourself. From this point of view, from this feeling of freedom within yourself, you can see it within other folks and even—hopefully–help them to realize this. Another irony is, the more folks can realize their own freedom, the more they are able to grant it to others. It’s a deep spiritual realization of how much you can be in control of your own life, a kind of genuine confidence that you don’t have to try so hard to control others. You can actually do what Mother Spirit and I do; you can tease others into being more free themselves. That way you both get to enjoy this greater freedom.
Realize that so much of the terrible things folks do to each other is because they don’t feel free. You can say they are just making an excuse to be sadistic or threatening, but deeper down it comes from their insecurity. This is why genuinely free people with this inner strength are generally more happy and forgiving in allowing and encouraging others to join in their freedom. On a political level true democracy is where people really feel free to express themselves and choose their own leaders. They tend to be so much more peaceful than in the dictatorships run by perverted, distorted folks who live in a kind of terror themselves, and can only think about spreading it abroad to control others. So in this one way, freedom is the only way to peace.
Student #1: Thank you. Thank you so much. It has been very hard for me to sit down and connect this last week. With the “graduation” of another friend it has taken me a minute to realize that this too is part of the cycle, part of the classroom of life.
Death is God’s creation; trust in Him
MICHAEL:: Yes, it is a big realization, my dear, that death is something that God created. It is hard to see this from the standpoint of being in your first life, but once you reawaken–as your beloved textbook reminds you–this is something that you will remember and cherish for all eternity. It’s the realization of surviving, and seeing death for the blessing it is, the liberating and the wonderful lesson it is.
Student #1: Well, I’m not going to say I’m looking forward to it–today. But I am going to brush off this winter, and get into my spring, and go be with my Urantia Book friends, and Teaching Mission friends, and my daughter and granddaughter, and just have a great reunion.
MICHAEL:: Yes. You are blessed already to see death as a graduation, as a movement from, shall we say, from grade school and high school and college, then out into the big world. Here you are, leaving the planet of your nativity and going out to rub elbows and be with the denizens and survivors of so many other worlds.
Ever be ready to start again
I talked tonight about cultures. Just imagine what it is when you encounter the cultures of different planets, different worlds. But it is always good to start now. Every time you sit down to meditate, let it be a rebirth of wonder of all that is. This is always the way to start. Keep your beginner’s mind and you keep in touch with the blessing of humility of being aware of so much, such an enormity of reality all around you.
Closing
Well, my dear: enjoy yourself. Have fun meeting all those folks from all over the world with all their different notions what constitutes reality. This really the matter of religion is it not–what is real and what is not?
Student #1: That is what I am praying for–that it will be a healing, magnificent, come-to-Jesus meeting.
MICHAEL:: It is a fact that Mother Spirit and I–and that is Jesus–are in everyone. Whether they attribute us to their particular feelings, or not, all the really good religious feeling is an awareness of spirit. So, my dear, go forward with all of my blessings, and always keep me in mind. I know that you enjoy saying hello to Mother Spirit and I in your meditations and in your prayers. We do appreciate it.
Student #1: I do; I do. I carry it with me. I wear your love. That is the song.
MICHAEL:: Mother Spirit sends her love. I bid you: be in my peace.
Student #1: Thank you, Father.
MICHAEL:: On such a wonderful note, and with such a wonderful touch back and forth, I will close this evening’s lesson.
Strive to be free
Strive to be free, my dear ones. It is what our Father wants. It is what our Father endows you with the creative spirit to realize. So keep creating. Keep being aware of what you are creating–of yourself and all that out there. Be in my Peace. Good evening.
