2015-08-20-How to Turn Things Around
Lightline #475
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: How to Turn Things Around
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: How to Turn Things Around
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit: Michael, we wish you a Happy Birthday. We understand that your birthday was on August 21st, way back when. Now we are all the more thankful and appreciative that you are, for us, definitely Michael, as well as Jesus. You are with us, and with us always with your Spirit of Truth as part of us. You give us that orientation which is, and ever and always will be, ever greater than us. For Truth Itself–the presence of God, will always be our encompassing. And so we thank you and Mother Spirit for your lessons orienting us towards his greater reality.
Tonight I would like you to speak on a great phrase that’s kept going through my mind the last couple of weeks. I don’t know if it’s been prompted by you and Mother Spirit, or not, but it’s the phrase: To turn things around’.
Just exactly how do we do this? How do we turn things around when we sense we are going in the wrong direction? I’m assuming the phrase came from centuries ago when people were traveling along and suddenly realized they were going in the wrong direction, and had to turn around. But then we started applying it to so many other facets of our life—our economic situation, our relationships with other folks. We suddenly realize we are doing something wrong, but how do we turn things around? We would definitely appreciate anything you have to offer us on this very important subject. Thank you. Amen.
Lesson
MICHAEL: Good evening. This is Michael, and I accept your well wishes. As this date comes around each year on my beloved planet Urantia, I too stop and pause a minute to think of all that my human life held, and still has so much meaning for me. It was a very happy birth day, a very happy occasion for me, even though it would be years before I would realize not only who, but what I was in the grand scale. It wasn’t until I was baptized by my cousin John, there in the Jordon River, that I regained a full sense of what I was and just what powers I had as a Creator Son of God, still in a human body. One of my first great decisions was: what to do now? What should I do with this power I had?
How to turn things around
So your question tonight has a very personal meaning for me too. I found myself in a situation on earth where I too had a great desire to turn things around. I was very mindful of a whole tradition of my people, my Jewish people. It was the notion of a Messiah coming who would have the power—the social and political power–to overthrow the Roman occupation of our country and to set the Jewish people up as the major power over that part of Mediterranean world; and so inaugurate a wonderful, wonderful time.
One of my first decisions was to not use my power in that sense, knowing full well that the whole lesson of my life on earth would be judged incomplete–and even exasperatingly so in the case of Judas–that I had the power but refused to use it in some gross, political way.
I would ask you, my dear children, to put yourselves in this same position when you too have a notion of things going wrong in your own personal life. You can have the further notion of literally turning things around and going in another direction. Let that be the main focus from time to time in your meditations, for this should not in any way incapacitate you from trying to turn things around there too.
Personal values and life experience
It depends on your personal values and wisdom of what works and what doesn’t. This is why Mother Spirit and I, in our lessons coming to you this way and through our many transmitters; this is why we keep them on a personal level: because this is where all change starts. It all starts with your personality, endowed with creative spirit. This very creative spirit in your meditations enables you to make contact with myself, with Mother Spirit, and with our Universal Father–with God’s presence not only all around you, but right within you and part of you.
This is why we tease you and suggest you keep a notebook handy in your meditations to jot down those things that are so beautiful and comprehensive–those ideas that our Father can give you–that your very fear of losing them can interrupt and ruin your meditative state. So just jot them down for later and go back into the stillness again. Focus for a moment to write them down, then open yourself up again to the spiritual presences within you.
This is how you get an original sense of going in the wrong direction. You are setting aside all your self-justification and rationalizations and having the courage to admit that somewhere or another in your life—it could be your job, or your relationships with others; it could be your relationship with yourself, your total self—mind, body, and spirit: things are not going well. You are going in the wrong direction.
It takes courage to be conscious of this, even for that little notepad where you write things down to begin to provide the continuity for a new life. This way the awareness that things need to turn around is not just isolated and exclusive to your meditation, but something you have the courage to accept and then keep in mind. With hard times coming for so many, and even the world situation–the warring between nation-states and some of the terrible, obscene violence that your news brings you; to turn yourself around in the midst of all of this takes the courage of being conscious of your decisions and keeping them in mind.
Meditation, courage, and continuity
This is where your stillness meditation is so important. It’s choosing to have this continuity of every morning being still and opening yourself to whatever–whatever wants to suggest itself: that continuity day to day.
You have a wonderful prayer that actually addresses this situation. It’s what you call your Serenity Prayer. It’s asking God to give you the courage to change those things you can, and be able to turn things around in your life. But then too, the serenity to accept into yourself–to acknowledge and embrace–those things you cannot change, whatever they are. It’s the openness, and the willingness to be curious about everything, and accept it. Then the prayer has that final clause, the wisdom to know the difference between what you can change and what you cannot.
That is why I mentioned wisdom this evening. Think a bit about the difference between wisdom and knowledge, because in your modern, multi-media world, especially with your television and your internet computers now, every day of your life if you are kind-of curious about things, you are bombarded with knowledge from different folks. The difference between all that information and wisdom is, as your Urantia Book states, your own personal experience of life. Wisdom is what you know inside you because you have done it, or it has been done to you.
This is the wisdom of knowing the difference between of what you can change and turn around, and what you cannot. This is where your meditation, your stillness practice, lets you get in touch with your soul, the inclusive spiritual story of your life’s experience. It’s where you find the courage to open yourself to the spiritual influences and creativity right within you, to know and to accept that you are going the wrong way and need to turn around.
A living being of unique experience
You are an experiential being, a living nodule of experience out here in time and space, literally co-creating your own soul-experience, along with the entire world all around you. To be aware of your own part, your own creativity is that continuity I talked about, that day-to-day application of your willpower to turn an element of your life around. Now to keep this going day to day, sometimes hour by hour when a bad habit clamps down on you and the impulse to do the wrong thing keeps reoccurring over and over again?
Sometimes it does take sitting down in your meditation to get through the next temptation. Have the courage to do this. Have the willpower to express yourself this new way. It could be your relationship with a very unpleasant person around you that you cannot escape. It’s the part of serenity to accept they are part of your life for the foreseeable future, yet also to turn the relationship around when it comes back to you.
What are you yourself initiating between the two of you? What are you accepting? What are you refusing to accept? How are you reacting to this other person, and how do you turn that around? This too requires a continuity of effort, yet fortunately this also concerns the relationship between you and yourself. Just as with a bad physical habit, it’s how to get out of denial or the rationalization of what may be your own unthinking impulse.
The glory of will
It has nothing to do with being rational or irrational. It just is and you have to deal with it to turn it around. The glory of will is that there are not only what you call vicious circles, but there are positive circles too by choosing over and over again not to do the wrong thing. Use your curiosity and your imagination to reach out in front of you into the future and conceive of a better life, a healthier, stronger life. Create a fuller expression of your God-given personality so that your soul retains forever the things you are capable of accomplishing–once you do turn things around.
Spend some time and some deep soul energy to think of a better future that you want and are capable of achieving, so your effort is not only a totally negative thing against whatever is wrong. It’s using all your creative spirit to come up with the alternative. In some cases it helps to join a group who are involved in the very same thing. This is also where the social and your political parts of your life come in, joining with others who want to turn some aspect of the world around.
It all starts inside with your personality, who you uniquely are, and what you have to offer that no one else can. It’s coming up with alternatives right out of your own creativity. All of a sudden you are a creative person. You are truly acting and not just re-acting to those forces around and within you. A new you begins to emerge, and you realize you have turned things around. You have turned you around, and the whole world has changed because of it.
This is your co-creativity, my dear ones–those realizations that you yourself are co-creating not only yourself, but everything else—for yourself. It’s very humbling to realize how much you yourself are responsible for. How to get that precious ability to respond, to turn things around when your own courage opens you to realize this is what you need to do?
Courage is the ability to do the difficult thing. This is where it takes all of you, all that God has placed in you, here in your unique situation. So don’t forget him. Don’t forget he is a part of you. He can give you those great and necessary ideas. He can suggest things if you are simply open to him inside.
Don’t be afraid to use your own creativity, and his suggestions, to line out what would be the most wonderful thing–whether you can do it right away, or not! Don’t be afraid to think about that better future–if you could only turn things around. Have the courage to open yourself to that possibility because, my dear, you are the one laying the track out ahead of you into something greater. God suggests this right within you, right within your stillness for you to entertain. Do your best to follow what you yourself know is a better way.
Spiritual influences within you
You have Mother Spirit and myself within you, as well as our Father. So use us. Enjoy my Spirit of Truth pointing the way. Enjoy Mother Spirit’s presence augmenting all your mental and spiritual aspects–your knowledge, and wisdom, and courage. You will forever be able to do this, once you start. For all eternity you will find yourself from time to time going in the wrong direction, and needing to turn things around. But then there is the glory of doing it, and what opens up once you do. Now my dear ones, if you have any questions or comments on these things or anything else, come forward.
Dialogue
Student #1: I felt, Michael, like you were speaking directly to me! I just wanted to thank you, and Happy Birthday!
A happy time for Michael)
MICHAEL: : Well, my dear, I am speaking very directly to you. And thank you for the good wishes. Like you say, it is definitely a special and happy time for me when it comes around on my dear Urantia, reminding me too of the human life I had. It all started on an August 21st. So thank you so much. Be in my Peace.
Student #2: Michael, this is __, and Happy Birthday! Thank you so much for tonight’s lesson, and truth. You spoke right to my heart. I have been missing our Gerdean for a while. I’d call her once a month and her advice would be the Serenity Prayer, so thank you for that. Just thank you. I feel so grateful to have the knowledge of our Adjuster, your Spirit of Truth, and Mother Spirit, all through the Urantia Book and the Teaching Mission. I haven’t been doing my still time; I’ve been wrapped up in grandkids. So just thank you for guiding me back to where I need to be.
Detachment increases your experience
MICHAEL: : My dear, thank you for your appreciation. I am sure that once you have done stillness–as you have–even in the midst of all your grandchildren, some part of you can still be still. That is where it is most valuable, is it not?–not only in a specific meditation. For that you may have to get up an extra half-hour earlier in the morning, which means you may have to go to bed a half hour earlier in the evening.
But it gives you the serenity you carry with you through the day. Some call it: The Theory and Practice of Detachment, which, ironically in a super-spiritual kind of way, means being aware–always. As I taught tonight, it’s an extra layer of consciousness, carrying on a continuity of turning things around.
This stays with you even in the midst of all the ruckus of your activities, even with your grandchildren. The whole idea of detachment is that it enables you to experience more, and to be there for them. So carry on, my dear. It sounds like you are doing great.
Student #2: Thank you very much, Michael.
MICHAEL: : Be in my Peace.
Closing
Real history via the Urantia Book
MICHAEL: My dear ones, let me close this evening with reminding you how much truth is around you and available. There is a wonderful, wonderful joy you can take in real history going clear back, not only to my own life among you as Jesus, but now through the Urantia Book, taking you back to Anton and Fonta, the first human beings almost a million years ago.
The Urantia Book gives you the history of society; civilization itself; the marriage state; the forming of tribes then countries: all the history, the wonderful history the book gives you.
Then there’s your own history, captured right here in your soul by a presence of God. This is something you need for your own personal sense of yourself–you need to tune in to. Just be still and let past events suggest themselves. If only for a few short moments, set this present moment aside and relive, in all the fullness, what you have actually done.
Mother Spirit and I see your whole life not as just one little peak here and there, but a whole continuous mountain range–you might say–of peaks and valleys; and something that is going to be continuing on forever, if you so choose.
Be aware of this power you have–to choose, to keep going with those things you love and that are so creative and rewarding. Use it to turn around when you find yourself going in the wrong direction and getting very terribly lost at times. Have the courage and the humility to accept that and determine, with all your heart and soul, to do something about it. Then this too becomes part of your soul, part of your true wealth, a real ability to carry on with into the future.
You–your personality—tying everything together
MICHAEL: My dear ones: you are all this. You are so complex and enormous in one way, and yet you have your God-given personality–who you are–tying it all together. So carry on. Pray for that courage, and serenity, and wisdom. Keep experiencing. Keep trying things and see what works and what doesn’t. This is your adventure, deliberately created by God to be this way. Mother Spirit sends her love, and I bid you: Be in my peace. Goodnight.
