2011-11-17-More Life
Lightline #332
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: More Life
2Group: Lightline TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Michael
2TR: JL
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
3Dialogue
4Closing
Heading
Topic: More Life
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Transcribed by Sharron Deason
Opening
Dear Michael & Mother Spirit, we gather together on a chilly November evening just to enjoy the warmth of your presence, and your words of encouragement for us. We do appreciate all that you do for us although admittedly it’s a transcendent realm of our consciousness itself–that part of our waking lives you are so much a part of. We do enjoy learning about that–what you are doing all the time; the extra dimensions of spirit we are engaged in but, like fish in the ocean, we are not always aware of all the dimensions we are swimming thru. So we do appreciate it in our stillness when you make your presence known. You’re just there!—a kind of backup for us; kind of like our guardian angels; or like our Father’s presence which is literally making a spiritual record of our experiences–our imperishable souls that we are earning day by day. So thank you very much, dear parents. Amen
Lesson
Michael: Good evening, this is Michael. I certainly extend you all a warm welcome: certainly. Just be still for a little longer and see if you can feel us as this subtle presence. As we’ve reassured you so many times, we are not intrusive for one of the great insights in strength of spirit is to leave others alone. Let them have their glory. Let them make their mistakes. The greatest thing a parent can do for a child is: all the time you are there backing up their play, or steering them away from any really great accident, you are all the time letting them be, letting them have their own lives.
Which means having your own life. Be that good example by presenting them with a wonderfully fulfilled life of your own. This is not only so that you don’t try to live through them, but you’re literally showing them what is possible. So it is with us. We enjoy being a part of your lives but this is a differential urge, a little nudge we give you on the most subtle of levels to help steer you towards more life. Is that an oxymoron for you? Does that seem somehow impossible?
(More life)
What does it mean, “More life?” It means more consciousness, more awareness both of self and then too those delightful moments of self-forgetfulness–more of whatever it is that has captured your fancy for the moment. Think of all of those good people you know and have known, so much a part of your soul. Think all of that good work you’ve done, the way you’ve engaged reality and changed it for the better for yourself and for others through good craftsmanship. This is your relationship with stuff, all the way from cooking to carpentry; all the material things that you are engaged with–that you’ve learned, that you’ve played with, and worked with: all this delightful stuff all around you. Maybe you’ve the inkling that there is no top or bottom or sides to it either.
There is a wonderful saying that, “a wise man looks into space and does not consider gigantic as too large, nor the infinitesimal as too small, for he knows there is no limit to dimensions.” So you are familiar with the Urantia Book’s presentation of the sub-sub- subatomic level of creation, and your own magnificent telescope sitting out there in space gives you a glimpse into billions of light-years of distance.
Not only is there no limit to physical dimensions, but for a human being just starting out in this big old universe, there is no limit to the number of dimensions. So this is one way you have more life–more experience of becoming ever more subtle and secure in feeling these extra dimensions of meaning and value. When you are in the realm of mind and spirit, of all the relationships across time, and each moment you are truly living in a kind of science fiction fantasy–but making it real moment by moment: this is your essence, my dear ones, your personality. This creation you are–by an act of God–makes things real for you. We call this a kind of co-creation, a living balance between you and everything else.
Individual reality
It’s not that you are creating the chair you are setting on, but how you are taking that chair, and how you are taking yourself sitting in it: that’s you. That’s your fundamental self-realization. You are the one that real-izes your life. And as I said in my last session here, insofar as you are unique, so is your reality. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an objective existence: it sure does. But how you are experiencing it; how you are realizing it; how it is becoming part of your soul; this whole universe of yours depends upon you for its particular existence.
So just think of the folks around you, maybe in a small city or a small town, just a few thousand people, let alone millions, let alone billions. Does this give you some sense of spiritual reality? With a few thousand people you have a few thousand universes, all somewhat distinct, all somewhat different. These are the dimensions I’m talking about in every personal being, and not only of the human order. You have the Midwayers’ orders, the angelic orders; on and on through all the different orders of personal beings. Each has their own grasp and perception of reality. These, as you encounter them just as you encounter each other, these too will be extra dimensions of perception of reality itself for you to incorporate–in-cor-por-ate, literally make these dimensions part of your living body, in a soul-sense of course.
To encounter and incorporate others, this is quite a challenge. Sometimes there is an instinctive recoiling from that which is antithetical, almost opposite to you and your belief, your own philosophy of life. It takes nerve just to open yourself to really listen, really hear another person and let all that come into you unafraid. This is where you have to trust yourself that no matter what you take in, it will find its place. True enough, it may take hours of rigorous almost unwelcome thought at times afterward. It may be an old friend who has seen better days, and has now adopted some self-pitying, whining, clinging kind of attitude. You do your best to stay with them and be a good friend, and take them in, though it’s almost a kind of pure poison. It might take you a few hours after you’ve left this old friend to get over all that they’ve poured into you–the hatred, or cynicism, or bitterness.
Being a good friend
But to be there for them; to be there and perhaps try to tease them out of their funk: to be a really good friend you do pay that price–having to digest all that they’ve poured into you. But this is being a real friend, being there for someone else when it might be painful. This is the essence of love, this sharing: sharing yourself, giving of yourself with a feeling of spiritual generosity; where you are secure enough in yourself that you can do this. You can just set yourself aside and be in self-forgetfulness, take in another and know too what a merry dance this can be; what love, what sharing, what fun; and what pure cotton candy for your soul. These moments are going to live in eternity, these unforgettable times when you’ve touched someone else, and someone else has touched you. Now that is a part of your soul. This is the real stuff of life, this love, this sharing, this desire to give of yourself.
This is my rather short lesson for tonight. I do want to have some conversations with you. But I wanted to once again give you a feeling of just what strange creatures these personal beings are–these unique beings created by God. Recall that wonderful poetry about God escaping the fetters of infinity by having a nigh infinite number of personal beings as part of him, within his touch, within his sharing. That very essence of personality multiplies the number of universes we are. This is experience. This is life. So, my dears, let me invite you to come forward with any questions or comments you may have.
Dialogue
Student: My name is Melissa, Michael. I don’t really have a question. I just wanted to say how I feel so overwhelmed by hearing this stuff that, I think basically we all know, but hearing it directly–it’s just a whole new wonderful saying, new and old. I just want to thank you. I really have a feeling of your presence. This is just wonderful. I feel like a very small child and a very wise old woman right now.
Human time
Michael: Well, my dear, it seems to me you’ve got the essence of it because you are truly ancient, ancient with what your soul has gathered already. It’s quite beyond time. Yet you are also this little… We used to tease our students with being tadpoles, or even worse, not even hatched yet–you are still in the egg of your first life, not even quite a child yet. Yes, you have the essence of time right there.
Student: Wow, I feel like I just got an A in the class. How wonderful!
Michael: Thank you, my dear, that’s really the essence of the very ungraspable-ness of this present moment, this stuff we so nonchalantly call time.
Student: Yeah, it’s like it is ungraspable, yet that is precisely the graspable in another way. Very interesting isn’t it? Interesting doesn’t quite cover it but, I guess: here we are.
Michael: Be in my peace. Keep feeling for me inside.
Student: Thank you. OK, I will. I am, and I will. Talk to you later.
Michael: Any time, I’m always here.
Student: My family and I use the colloquial Peace In and Peace out, and we have for years, but it takes on a new meaning. OK, love you. I’m going to let someone else speak up.
Michael: Thank you, my dear.
New Student: Good Evening Michael. (Yes) I’m not sure if this is a question, but it is a thought. You know how it is with some people: we have to really endure loving and giving to them. It seems like they are sponges. They take everything we can possibly give: and yet they are there. And though we can’t do that for everyone–those people that we are involved with that we do this for: what are we doing, really? What do we get in the end? Do we get a satisfaction of knowing that we have, you know, endured a type of, you know, indulgence with some people’s humanness? I mean, I know we have to indulge people’s humanness at a certain point because we’re all human. You’ve lived here and you yourself well know the humanness of people. Is it that? I guess that’s what it means to live on this planet–to endure the humanness of others. I’d appreciate your comment.
The humanness of others
Michael: Yes, my son, I do believe you’ve answered your own question of just what you get; and you don’t always get anything. That’s why it is often a true gift of yourself. I mean, it’s true spiritual generosity. What you’re giving is life, life itself sometimes. Sometimes with an old parent who is tottering and nearing death, they are literally getting their life from you. You are giving them a continuing reason to be alive. There’s no denying that some folks are like parasites, physically with your physical goods, or just with mental meanings–people who are extremely bitter, or angry, or vengeful, even in the spiritual realm of value. There are some people who cannot help themselves from denigrating and tearing down almost anything they can think of. So you do your best to tease them out of this, maybe introduce a little playfulness in their barren souls.
What you get immediately is them. If you are doing your best to follow along with what I suggested this evening, just by opening yourself you are giving them another person to relate to, especially for those who are so desperately hungry for any kind of human contact, suffering a most terrible alone-ness. Just your being there; just your reacting with them and giving them some feedback: that itself can make their day, make their life worthwhile.
Student: I like that, you know–being there for people. That’s what I get the most out of your life here, reading about it. You were here for people. You gave them your time and you made time for them. And you really cared. It’s tremendously inspirational, and tremendously exhausting as well. At a certain point you’d spiritually renewed yourself, and that kind-of kept you moving forward in the knowing-ness that this is why we are here.
Love is sharing
Michael: The Urantia Book puts it beautifully that the closest English equivalent to deity is sharing. It’s like God’s innate wanting to share his absolute and ultimate reality with all of these personal beings beyond number is what gave rise to the universe and all the beings in it. So, as I said tonight, you as the center of your own universe, with your own take on things, and your own soul–your soul-wealth of your abilities–all that you’ve learned and experienced: this is what you have to share. At times it can be really critical. You can supply the little missing link that’s hanging someone up–they can’t quite get on their own. You can be that necessary thing, that necessary person for them.
What you get is them. And as you open your soul, as you open yourself to why we call a human being a little walking infinity, even in the most trying of times with this very trying person you’re doing your best to relate with, you can have some feeling of that infinity behind and within them, no matter how they present themselves.
Student: You’re right. You are right. There are tremendous possibilities in infinity, you know. But what was really helpful were the words about sharing, and where it comes from. That, I thank you for especially. It was very good.
Michael: Well, that is the essence of love isn’t it, to take what you have, what you’ve learned, and share it. And the most precious thing you have is you. It’s your personality and the character that you’ve acquired–to give that kind of feedback, that kind of reflection, back to other people–to reflect their personality and their character back to them, especially if they need it so desperately. These are just so unforgettable, these moments when you’ve reached out and touched someone, and in that moment given them so much. These are the little bright points in your soul that live forever.
Student: I guess sometimes what we don’t sometimes realize is how much a little bit on our side can be a tremendous amount on someone else’s side.
Michael: Well, my son, you have only to think about those times when you were in very desperate need, and someone else out of their unfathomable generosity just reached over and, purely spontaneously, reached over and put a hand on your shoulder, or gave you a hug. It gives you some measure of it, doesn’t it?
Student: Yes, yes it does–perspective. Thank you. Thank you a lot for the words. I don’t want to take up any more space, so I’ll step aside for somebody else. Thank you.
Michael: You’re very welcome, go in my peace.
Student: Well, once again, Michael, I’d like to add another “thank you.” It feels like you are always talking exactly straight to me because I’ve just gone through what you’ve been talking about. Tonight I had to excuse myself from a phone call I’d been on for an hour and a quarter, listening; and it was difficult. But when I said, “I just have to go now,” it was really because I needed to get on this call–to get rejuvenated, because I’d been drained.
At that point my friend said, “Well, you don’t want to talk to me anyway!” I was like, “I’ve been talking to you for an hour and a quarter, and I need to go and do something else.” And she kind-of pulled herself together and let me go, but not without saying that. Which then, of course, fills you with guilt, and you’re thinking: OK, so now what? You hardly know what to say next.
So you’ve just had this great talk about exactly what was going on there. I guess I just wanted to say: Thank you for that! I needed tonight’s lecture!
Spiritual energy; limitations
Michael: My daughter, keep in mind that spiritual energy is like–somewhat like–other energies of a physical or mental nature: you only have so much as a human being. And you have to find ways of replenishing that, especially when, as you talk about, you’re next to some poor person who is what you call an “energy suck”–kind of like a bottomless pit. No matter how much of yourself you pour into them, it’s never enough. You do have to break away just by giving them a little pat on the head or the shoulder, and get on with your life. For in one way, you are letting them have theirs.
It’s very humbling sometimes to realize the enormity of what you can’t do. Because they are in there, flying their own being around. They are their personality, realizing–as best they can–their own life. [Student: I know you can’t fix everything.] Exactly, and there’s a way of being as gracious as you can in those times by not holding any kind of bitterness or cynicism yourself. It’s not only taking every person as an individual, but taking each moment in time by seeing how they too are unique because you are changing, and everything around you is changing.
So there is no ultimate clinging to anything. We just come along to reassure you that you don’t need to cling to your own life. There is literally a presence of God taking it on and becoming part of it and part of you. With this assurance of your soul you can be that much more giving. And when you feel exhausted; well, that’s the time to come to us. That’s the time to just be still and let Mother Spirit and me, let your Father pour the feeling of living back into you.
Student: I can do that part.
Michael: That actually lets you rest, lets you let go off into oblivion to “knit up the raveled sleeve of care”–I’m borrowing that from one of your poets. Remember that childhood prayer: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
It’s nice to know that. It’s nice to trust that and have that faith. And so you rise the next morning refreshed and renewed.
Student: I guess I need to see it or hear it again, to get over the guilt of having to finally say, “I can’t take any more!”–without really saying that.
Guilt trips
Michael: Well, my dear, psychology is very subtle and it’s true, you have what you call guilt trips that people lay on you, a way of trying to manipulate you by getting you to feel guilty. So no matter what you offer–your most precious being, yourself–it can be kind-of nonchalantly tossed away. The best thing in that case is to think of guilt as a kind of self-indulgence and have nothing to do with it. Don’t let anybody else put you on a guilt trip. Just do your best to reflect back to them what they are trying to do to you. You could say, “You don’t have to put me on a guilt trip to hang on to me, or to try to manipulate me. I’m a free being. I’m here with you because I want to be, not because I have to be.” So you might have to remind them of that from time to time.
Student: Well, that was great. She’s said that before, so I wasn’t surprised. But now I sort-of have something to say that might make her think a little. Thank you so much!
Michael: My dear, you are thinking more than a little, rest assured on that.
Well, my children, if there are no other questions or comments, I want to repeat something I touched on at the last Lightline session. When my essence comes thru a human being like this one, it’s how it resonates within you. This is that reality that you too are doing. This is your co-creation. This is your realizing what truth is being able to be conveyed this way.
The greatest truth and beauty
So have trust in yourself. It can get complicated. But it’s a matter of not doubting your doubt. If something doesn’t jibe; if something doesn’t strike you as valid, or ring true; that’s an experience of yours. That’s a realization that, however limited or conditioned to a specific person or a specific time, it’s within you. You are recognizing the truth, or the lack of it. That co-respondence, that recognition is in you. And so the greatest truth, the greatest beauty that you’ve encountered in your life, is partly you–especially in not only the recognition, but the appreciation of it.
This is your most sincere form of worship, of thankfulness for our Father’s almost unbelievable infinite creativity, creating every moment unique, something happening here that never happened before, and will never happen again. That awareness leads to more life, more sharing, more love. It leads you to becoming more like him, he who gives away of himself all that he possibly can. A whole universe, a whole cosmos springs into being each moment.
Human being
Then to appreciate the kind of being you were created to be. You have this creativity as part of you, an ability to realize and make real for you, and for your soul, all that you’ve known.
So we thank our Father for this wealth, for this enormous expansion right within each one of us. Not only is God growing a soul in the Supreme Being, each one of us has a touch of that, a bit of that grace, a bit of that creativity. We do thank our Father for this, for the very kinds of beings we are.
Closing
And then, My Goodness!–here comes another one down the sidewalk towards us.
Be in my peace, dear ones. Good evening.
