2011-10-20-Contention and Competition
Lightline #328
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Contention and Competition
2Group: Lightline TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Michael
2TR: JL
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
2.1Competition
2.2Cooperation
2.3Mobs
3Dialogue
3.1Synthesis
3.2Growth
3.3Appreciation, Worship
3.4Freedom
3.5Practice
3.6Cocreation
3.7Inner Life
Heading
Topic: Contention and Competition
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, welcome. Once again we get together to share our time with the two of you. So we open ourselves. We open our hearts to feel. We open our minds to entertain and trust, with faith, what you have to offer us.
Tonight, I do have a request and that is, Michael, with respect to your last lesson; you mentioned how contention between people is kind of a natural order and, shy of physical and mental violence, nothing to be afraid of. Yet in turn it is superseded by co-operation, even in critical times of crisis. Then even this sense of cooperation is based upon the need for greater, deeper love—sharing–just for the profound value of companionship; even to the point where all through history there have been individuals who gave their lives for their companions. So I would ask you to expound upon this and see if I got it right. Amen
Michael: Good evening, this is Michael. Mother Spirit and I, as always, and will always, treasure your invitation to be with you. We do love the way in which you can recognize us almost as the very background of your consciousness itself. We are part of your consciousness so we are even more delighted when you can pick out and enjoy what we contribute. We are always here and you are as much a part of us as we are of you. This is the meaning of spirit, the meaning of all-inclusiveness, and it is our very deepest nature.
Lesson
Competition
Contention and competition
So yes, tonight I’d be glad to expound a bit more on the very basic human dilemma about what to do about contention—or, if you will, another equally valid word is competition. Where does it come from? If you’ll think about the history of the planet it began very early with the beginnings of plant and then animal life. Even plants contend for space for their place in the sun, and for nutrients. As you know there are vines that will wrap around a tree and choke off its light. Very early in the animal kingdom, even on the insect level you’ll have whole colonies fighting other colonies for territory. By the time you get up to vertebrates like little fishes, it can be a very individual thing–this territoriality. And of course this extends all the way up through the evolution of life, and even among people. Here in the year 2011, after hundreds of thousands of years of the slow evolution of culture and civilization, you are still contending for territory.
Yet once the human being comes into existence; once the human animal, if you will, becomes super-minded and personality comes into existence with spiritual dimensions and with the presence of the Thought Adjuster–God’s presence within the individual–you’re immediately out of the realm of just vying for physical things–materials, mates, so forth. You’re into the realm of mind and spirit and the contention of ideas and ideals. And these are based on spirit, on value–what a particular individual or a particular tribe is given to value. So much early contention is not only for a territory. Even things like vanity come into the picture and tribes go to war feeling they have been insulted.
As soon as you have human beings; as soon as you have spirit enter in, everything changes. Everything becomes united. There is no final separation between the physical, the mental, and the spiritual, because you–as a personality, as a spiritual being–even your own bodies and minds depend so much on how you take them. This is a function of your free will and your creativity.
So this contention, if you will, this competition is universal. But with the growth of wisdom; with the human race having established some history, especially in modern historic times–written history with a sense of time, some sense of cultural evolution; you arrive at, I would say, the apogee of your modern civilization where you’ve sublimated a lot of this striving into your sports, which are universally loved and appreciated among all people.
This contention, this competition within declared rules; even these rules keep evolving just to keep the game going. Think of your modern court systems where both parties in a dispute, shall I say a criminal dispute, have the prosecutor and the defense attorneys required to give each other full information. There is an attempt at transparency. There is a judge who is supposed to be familiar with the law, and even reflective of God’s impartiality respecting no persons–where you say: No person is above the law. You try to have a society based on law–uniform law, transparent law. You have a jury of peers who are the final determiners of physical facts as presented by the prosecution and the defense. This group of people will decide which facts being presented represent, in their own wisdom, what really happened.
Cooperation
Co-operation and love
So this is what I meant by contention shy of mental and physical violence. There’s a natural order of things. Left to its own devices it’s what you call the law of the jungle, dog-eat-dog. This is where human wisdom and understanding and even worship and appreciation come in. I was asked about: in a crisis situation there’s a great temptation just to take what you need irrespective of what it does to other folks. Yet throughout history this pure selfishness or self-centered-ness never stood up against a group of people working with an understood cooperation, pooling their resources and, even more critically, sometimes pooling their ideas about what to do next. This calls not for selfishness or self-centered-ness but the exact opposite. It calls for consciously, knowingly submitting one’s self subordinate to the best idea that pops up–no matter where it comes from!
Otherwise you can’t recognize what is the best idea in that situation. It’s a kind of selflessness, a kind of cooperation, a kind of appreciation of the group. Yet even this cooperation under extremely trying times, under a real stress, is not based on some cold calculation. It’s actually based on love. It’s having a supreme value in oneself, and wanting to share that moment with another. This is again sometimes most obvious in combat, in warring units of men. But even in other crisis situations as well, when individuals very knowingly out of love for their compatriots give up their lives; and even in less stressful social situations: it’s the same principal of people wanting to give up their egos–their sense of themselves–in order to be part of a group and lend all of their strength to the group.
So whenever you look at any political, or social, or religious group, any group of people, you have all of these playing. All of these living determinisms, if you will, are alive and at work simply because people are not just physical, or mental, or spiritual, or personal, or soulful. Every individual is all of these.
Mobs
Mob behavior
There are also those instances where, for various complicated reasons, people are convinced, or taught, or threatened into a total submersion of themselves into the group. It’s almost a submergence of individual free will, sometimes out of fear of not belonging. This is what you call a mob and you are rightfully aware of mob behavior, of a group of individuals getting together and so submerging themselves–each one their own self–a kind of group dynamic takes over with a collusion of irresponsibility. No one is responding. No one is contending and saying: this is wrong!
So as long as you have all of the creative, spiritual elements, you can arrive at a wonderful sporting game where each team and each individual in that competition can rise to their best because of that competition. Think about a group of runners going around a track and having another top competitor right next to them, as you say, breathing down their neck. That helps them achieve their greatest effort. And so competition, contention within the bounds of cooperation, within the bounds of love and respect, does lead to the greatest result for everyone.
The thing to avoid here in seeking the simplicity of spirit–trying to find that one thread of common humanity that ties everything together; the thing to avoid is simple-mindedness. It’s trying to separate these elements out in some kind of pure state and say some simple-minded thing as, shall we say, “Competition or contention is just wrong–evil.”
So ponder these things, my children. They are reflected all through your politics, and your societies, and all the various religious organizations all over the world: these elements of competition, cooperation, and love/sharing. Now if any of you has any questions this evening, bring them forth.
Dialogue
Student: Thank you for your very apropos topic tonight. I’ve been reading and listening to the papers in the Urantia book on the teachings–the spread of the Melchizedek teachings in the Levant–and thinking about current-day politics in Arabia; which brings me to my question.
Would a religion about Jesus here on the planet–as opposed to a religion of Jesus–be our conversation and our goal to share with others? When you speak of competition between ideas, and a whole lot of free-will individuals trying to make the simple presentation of the up-stepped Urantia Book; the presentation of Jesus is hard to do in such a dynamic world society that we live in right now. Do you have any thoughts about that? I’m sure you do.
Synthesis
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis
Michael: Yes, my daughter. This is why I also mentioned in my last lesson the challenge of being open-minded. It’s the challenge of expanding your understanding; especially in light of the fact your understanding is what you have, in a sense, paid your life for. This is what you’ve earned. This is your own Philosophy of Life on a day-to-day, sometimes even hour-by-hour relationship with your family and friends–everything you do as you go through your day. It’s all based upon this understanding.
Yet consider the way folks are raised in, shall we say, the political party of the family. They absorbed it all the time they were growing up and perhaps they just feel more comfortable in being with other folks who believe the same way. The true challenge of being open-minded is to seek out and embrace/entertain that which is antithetical–the exact opposite, and all the shades in between. This is nothing other than what your philosophers have called the dialectic method. It’s where you have an idea, a theme, and it encounters its opposite. Out of these two; out of the contention in the marketplace of ideas; out of this competition for greater spiritual value; from this thesis and the antithesis to it; and because you are a spiritual being, you are a creative being: you have the possibility of a new synthesis that incorporates both.
It’s not merely compromise, or a blending. You are able to rise to an inclusive point of view because you yourself have fully taken in the people behind these ideas. You yourself can be in possession of this synthesis, this new point of view that incorporates both because you will be able–by taking them in–able to detect that common humanity where they might be resolved on a higher level. This simplicity is the exact opposite of simple-mindedness, or fundamentalism, where you are so full of ego, so full of yourself, that you feel that you’ve arrived at some final, fundamental truth and you need look no further. You know “The Truth” and are even willing to die or to kill others to promote that truth.
So the striving for true simplicity, for true creative synthesis is the exact opposite of being a fundamentalist. That’s the challenge!–to set all you’ve understood so far on the line and really open yourself to that which is almost antithetical to your point of view. And yet, my dear, that is another person; those are other people behind that point of view: and to incorporate them? Now does this make sense to you?
Student: Yes, because in sharing my understanding and my faith and belief in the Father’s goodness, and greatness, and love, I can take into consideration the other person’s inaccurate point of view–or the middle point of view, and try to find the agreement that we both have on the highest ideals of where we each are in our day-to-day understanding. We try to elevate the other person’s–and my own–faith in the Father’s love, rather than pointing out the less admirable points of belief. Is that what you think?
Michael: Yes, since love is a true motive. I was talking more about technique, how you do this–
Student: Yes, exactly.
Michael: –how you take in others. It is essentially beyond the point of saying. It’s realizing the whole world has progressed in terms of cooperation, yet individual people can only do this by acknowledging and taking each other in. This then is based on love. The more you actually know others, the more capable you are of loving them and making them a part of you. It means expanding your own understanding and eschewing any kind of simple-mindedness, and being open because, my daughter, you are facing eternity. You’re facing a whole universe out there, a whole cosmos, and this is just your first step. You’ve got a lot to encounter and to incorporate into you–forever.
Student: Yes.
Growth
Expand, grow
Michael: This is approaching God’s perfection of all-inclusiveness: it doesn’t mean you set aside the slightest bit of discrimination or distinction. Rather, you expand. So you don’t have to blur over: you don’t go through life kind-of squinting your eyes so that all the distinctions between people are just blurred over. No. You have to expand. You have to grow. You have to incorporate everybody just as they are. Then and only then can you rise to create a genuine synthesis fully incorporating yourself and them. It means you have to trust yourself rather than get in some kind of defensive attitude where no matter what comes to you, you have to twist it around so that it fits your own existing philosophy. Rather, you just take people in and trust that you yourself can be that synthesis.
Student: Wow.
Michael: It’s not easy, but then that’s the glory of creativity.
Student: It seems like this planet, having been in quarantine, had these individuals: the individual souls on this planet seem to be having to learn these lessons in cosmic growth and progressions in a planetary society that is just all over the map. It is of such national, and tribal, and religious, and spiritual, and economic, and all sorts of levels of experiences of development that when you–or rather, when I step up to be the synthesis that you are talking about here, my faith says that one thing of use–that brotherhood: it takes so much faith on my part to just open my mouth and say it. It seems like it’s so hard to step out in faith every time.
Michael: Yes, my daughter, you are very correct about the world situation. Without any Planetary Prince, with his whole staff; without a loyal Adam & Eve; without the existence on the planet’s surface of these spiritual beings, there is no uniform planetary culture yet. You have everything from the most advanced technological cultures to near stone-age primitive folks still on the planet. So yes, you have almost all stages of cultural evolution still existing, still contending.
But the synthesis I’m talking about is in you! It does not exist anywhere else except in each individual. This is the challenge for each one of you to be this open-minded, open-hearted, feeling, thinking, wise person who comes up–within yourself–with the resolution of all that you can embrace. This is what you have to offer yourself and those around you. In the market place of ideas, maybe you can be the one that suggests that over-arching idea and ideal that can tie two warring factions together.
Student: (Ed: too faint)…Spirit of Truth that we each can depend on to recognize opportunity in the moment and express that over-arching truth; and have the faith and the belief that the other person has access to being circuited with the Spirit of Truth to somehow recognize the high point of ….?
Michael: It even goes beyond this because in some contentious times there is no guarantee this other person, or other persons, can accept what you have arrived at. It’s first of all, independently–for you! My Spirit of Truth is active in you to help you arrive at this synthesis, but this is a creative act that you yourself must achieve and then offer others. And again, by following the way of spirit, you do not demand, you do not enforce. You offer this as best you can and just hope that it can be accepted by this other person–who may be out to do you in. You do have the right of self-defense, but in this marketplace of ideas, you simply offer. You yourself follow the ways of spirit.
Student: Thank you.
Michael: You are welcome. You can see that you have a very good grasp on the world situation right now, and there are still some very major, not only political units–nation states, but even ideologies now in very deadly contention. Each person has to arrive at a strength based on their inner reality and what they have created and discovered–that truth. And you need to be willing not to force it upon anyone else. So be in my peace.
Student: It feels like a wonderful time to be alive, to pray for the up-stepping of each individual, in whatever situation they are in throughout the world, to move higher.
Michael: Yes, my daughter. Are there any others who have questions or comments this evening?
Student: Yes, I want to simply because I didn’t want to fade to black. I wanted to thank you, Michael, for the lovely visits this evening with a lot of substantive information, some good therapy, and lot of encouragement. I will want to read this one too, to absorb it with my conscious mind. My subconscious and super-conscious mind seemed to enjoy it all the way through.
I regret that I don’t have something more substantive to say, but I would like to thank you for this absolutely spectacular weather we’ve been enjoying here. I’ve been putting my life back together after having been in an art show, where my living room was a total mess. And so this past week I’ve been… I made my entire living room a gallery and it’s just such fun living here in this townhouse with my husband, who is such an amiable fellow. The sunshine has been lovely today, and several days on end have been so sweet.
I’ve had so many occasions to stop and just marvel how perfect my life can be sometimes, and today was one of them. In fact I think I’ll blame it on October, because the sun has been so nice. But anyway: I also was wondering if you might have any advice for me? You know I do the first Thursday of the Light Line, as Jerry does you and Nebadonia on the third Thursday. We’d talked earlier about possibly providing courses and developing the themes of…(Ed: unclear) I wondered if you have any suggestions for me about what I might do with the first Thursday situation?–if you know what I mean. Do you have a response to that?
Appreciation, Worship
Appreciation and worship
Michael: Well, my daughter, with respect to this beautiful weather you’ve been having, I’m afraid in all true humility Mother Spirit and I cannot take total credit for that. A lot of this cosmic design is our Father’s. But certainly your appreciation is, as I’ve said before, one of the most sincere forms of worship: to appreciate and be thankful for the very design of things, including a beautiful fall day.
Student: Yes, yes.
Again with respect to this Light Line series; again all I can advise is to just be open. Be open to experimentation–try different things. There is so much that you cannot know until you do try them. And this again is the theme of my last lesson this evening: that you just have to open yourself to possibilities. Sometimes that possibility is another person with whom you might be having a political or social argument. It might be what to do with this first Thursday of yours; how much to open this to other folks.
So this is a challenge–to be unafraid to try. But the next biggest challenge is, once you try something–and sometimes this is an even greater challenge for so many folks—is: be open to the results. Really take in the results unafraid. Without denial take them in, in their entirety. Sometimes you are lead to say, “Oops!–that was a mistake!” But then you’ve learned something; you’ve let this become a part of you.
So this is something, my daughter, that you can work out for yourself. I’m just putting it back in your lap, if you will allow me to. You have the ability, so I’m just encouraging you to stick yourself out there.
Student: OK.
Michael. Thank you for the courage to ask. And thank you again for the appreciation of the wonderful fall day. It’s something we get to appreciate through you.
Student: That’s great.
Michael. Be in my peace.
Student: Thank you.
Freedom
New Student: I just wanted to ask you a question. I’m new to this Light Line thing; this was the first time I listened in, and you mentioned earlier about people who are so sure that they have “The Truth” in my situation where I grew up. I was born into a religion where I was told we had “The Truth” and we didn’t need to look any further. But recently I’ve come to disbelieve that. I’m just, well, I don’t know what to believe anymore. I want to have faith. I believe in God; I believe that I’m going to survive after death. But I’m… I even hate to say it, but I’m a little bit skeptical that I’m talking to the Creator right now. So, I’m just wondering what advise you have for me, or if there’s anything that could help me.
Achieving a free mind
Michael: Well, yes, my son, I would say congratulations! I can feel a deep yearning for the expansion that is spirit, that is growth, because you’ve come a long, long way just in recognizing–sorry to say–the limitations in which you were raised. Yet even to feel them as uncomfortable limitations was an achievement. Then to allow yourself, within yourself, the freedom to be a free-thinker–which, as you know, authoritarian religions don’t want any kind of competition from at all. For many of them it’s a major sin just to go out looking around, comparing notes, being eclectic and evolving your own philosophy.
My son, I feel you are well on your way to doing it. The thing I would suggest is a kind of meditation where you are spending some time each day–always nice in the morning; wonderful way to start the day–to just sit and ponder. Just sit and think, just wonder, “What do I believe?” and try as best you can to express this to yourself–because that then becomes a spiritual event in your life!
Practice
You’ve already come so far along the path of wondering: What do I believe?–What do I have faith in? In meditation you are opening yourself to the presence of God within you. You can ask within yourself, “Dear God, what is the truth about”…something that comes up in your mind. As we’ve offered before, one of the most sincere prayers is, “Dear God, what do I do next?”–and that’s ten minutes from now when I get up from my meditation. How do I spend today? What is the best thing to do next?
A practical slant on faith and belief
And that, my son, that practical slant on it will bring you right back to your faith and what you do believe in, because it’s simply what are you operating on moment to moment, day to day–especially with all your friends and other contacts, with the other people in your life. This is what you believe. This is the fundamental…rather, the good foundation, or home base, if you will, in spirit. It’s what you believe about yourself and them.
So I would just suggest longer and deeper meditation, this opening yourself inside to our presence. Let Mother’s Holy Spirit, let God’s presence, let my presence within you show you the way and give you these spiritual experiences inside. Does that sound attractive?
Student: Yeah, I guess. I need to spend more time doing it and trying a little harder. I just, you know: it’s kind-of a life-changing thing when the faith–that you were one time so sure of–is gone. I feel alone sometimes. Sometimes I’m unsure of who to pray to. You know, we were always taught to pray to God in Jesus’ name. I have never really tried meditation and the whole Thought Adjuster concept. While it makes logical sense to me, it’s still hard for me to grab a hold of and understand because at this point I can’t tell if I’m just thinking and hearing my own thoughts. It’s just hard to separate what’s real and what I’m creating myself. Does that make sense?
Cocreation
Co-creation: what it means
Michael: Well, my son, not only does it make sense, you are right on the cusp of creation itself. You are a creative spiritual being. You are co-creating everything you know, everything you experience. It all depends on you for its existence. You are the center of your whole life. Just think of all that you’ve encountered–all the people, all the facts, all the world, everything that you’ve encountered that is to a degree unique to you.
In one way you are alone because you’re a unique being. But inside you are, in a sense, alone with your Father, and with your two spiritual parents. And so you can pray. You can ask questions. You can ask for guidance. But meditation is a kind of listening. Just listen to your thoughts. Just look at them as they come along. Be very familiar with just who you are and what you do believe, for that then forms a kind of a home base from which to grow consciously. So yes, you’re right on the point there. You yourself are creating so much of what you are and what you experience. (OK)
Inner Life
Inside
Michael: My son, between us, inside you is where it really counts. You’re going to have to believe–or disbelieve–as it comes through another human person like this one, with all these limitations. But inside, you and I are not limited. So in that sense: be in my peace.
Student. OK, thank you.
Michael: And once again I do marvel at this wonderful stillness we can share; and once again I’ll remind you that nothing really disturbs it. It’s always here. It’s the absolute, almost unmoving nature of God that is the origin of the entire universe in which there is nothing but motion. And as you are made in his image, so you too can achieve this stillness; and you do achieve it–mostly through faith. And this is a creative act you are capable of because you are this personal being created by him. Never lose sight of that Supreme fact, my dear ones: you are a deliberate creation, by God, for your situation. And you yourself, as a personal being, are co-creating your entire reality. This is a living balance between you and the rest of creation, and it’s not only awfully big out there–out here; it’s also infinite in here. This is the potential you have for eternal life, an eternal life of endless growth and expansion with no limits anywhere, any-when, any-how. This is what you were made for.
So we thank you, Father, for the very nature of our being. We literally live in you and we thank you for our next heartbeat, our next breath, and the next pair of eyes smiling into ours. This is Michael, saying, Good Evening; and just feel my peace deep inside. That’s where we are. Good night.
