2012-02-16. Life Itself.
Lightline #345
Contents
- 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Life Itself
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
§ 3.2.1 Spirit, Creativity
§ 3.2.2 Free will, Co-creation
§ 3.2.3 Adventure
o 3.3 Dialogue
§ 3.3.1 Personality
§ 3.3.2 Integration
§ 3.3.3 Self-mastery, Stillness
§ 3.3.4 Birth
§ 3.3.5 Experience, Soul
§ 3.3.6 Wonder
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Life Itself
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit; Greetings, dear parents. There’s something wonderfully ungraspable and inexplicable about the happiness that arises when you meet a dear friend. It just seems to be spontaneously there, almost, somehow, as if it’s between the two of you. So I feel when we approach these times with the two of you. It’s a little trepidacious but, in a sense, that is just our honoring and our respect for your very being. We know that our love for the two of you–this spontaneous happiness that arises–is something that we’re sure you two feel also. So: Greetings, dear parents. We love you very much. Amen.
Michael. Good evening, this is Michael. Mother Spirit and I are definitely able to feel your love. As she’s said so often, you’re like little stars of personality in our firmament and we can really feel the glow of your life force. And so we reflect it back to you. Our most sincere wish is that you too can feel this really ungraspable life force that is part of you. It’s part of your personality. It’s part of God’s creation.
Lesson.
Spirit, Creativity.
§ Life Itself.
Life Itself. in one way that’s only an abstraction for you, something you can think of–everything living, from the smallest amoeba to the greatest redwood tree. Life itself–living. What is this? What is this? It’s so close to what we designate as spirit, for all spirit is personal. All spirit is part of a living personal being. There is no impersonal spirit abroad in the universe, or in all of creation for that matter. Especially for a human being, spirit and life are so identical, so inseparable. They’re both so unfathomable.
As your Urantia Book has taught you, no matter how deeply and comprehensively you are able to get a hold on all the mechanics of life–all the physical manifestations of it, it remains elusive for its very origin is spirit–Mother Spirit, the Life Carriers, the agents of the Ancients of Days. It’s so much a part of you, and you are so much it that it’s so easily overlooked, disregarded, and even, unfortunately, terribly disrespected–especially with respect to these other human beings. Yet the deep respect, the honoring and the acknowledgement of life: it all begins within you. We love to tease you with the notion that from the standpoint of consciousness–your self-awareness–you’re not even keeping your own heart beating. Here they come, one after another. And when they cease, in what is almost an instantaneous moment for you personally, you find yourself alive again in a transformed reality.
We love to show you how the intrinsic nature of spirit is creativity. We love to put those two together almost inseparably— creative spirit. For spirit is that part of total reality, part of personal beings, part of you that can originate something right from you, right from your own personality. In this you are truly most like our Father. It is his ultimate nature of creativity that he shares with you. And this spirit is part of you. It is what the Eternal Son, in a sense, attaches to our personality so that it’s an intrinsic function of ours.
Creative spirit. With all these galaxies swinging about, with all the material world that you live in, your very own bodies; all following God’s impersonal laws: there is something new constantly springing up. This moment, this moment we share right now, has never happened before and it need never happen again because there is this incessant, continuous, living creativity. And this is your birthright. This is part of you, inseparable from you. This is your own creative spirit. And this is the foundation for your freedom.
Free will, Co-creation.
§ Creature of Will Dignity.
Think of the definition of a human being as a creature–because you definitely were created: God created each and every one of you, everyone of us–a creature–a created being–of will dignity. And this free will means that you are not just a living animal or a plant. Your creative spirit gives you the ability to originate right within yourself something as unique as you are. And this gives you a very real choice.
It couldn’t come from anywhere else. You’re in the middle of a living, constantly changing world situation–your own privately reality. I mean by this your day-to-day life. You literally don’t know what’s going to happen to you tomorrow, try as you might to control that. Things happen. But it’s your own creativity, your own coming up with something–we call it co-creating your own reality–that gives you this freedom, that gives you this self-awareness, that gives you genuine, practical, down-to earth-choice coupled with another intrinsic part of personality, the ability to distinguish morality: good, better, best.
We’ve been offering that sincere prayer to our Father, “What’s the best thing I can do next?” That’s exercising your morality like a muscle. It’s entertaining/opening yourself to your own creativity. In spite of all the advice you get, coming and going, from all your best friends–or worst enemies; right within yourself you can come up with this best thing. And if you can’t, God’s presence within you can–if you are that open, if you are that humble to the enormity of his presence.
Ironically, it’s your own creativity, your own co-creating your reality: that ability can be so unconscious it leads to what Mother Spirit and I taught on, once upon a time, as living in “a bubble of familiarity.” Your own creative power can actually put you in a bubble where seemingly nothing changes. And Oh!–what a relief for you who have been so tempest-tossed by circumstances, to finally have one day after another after another be somewhat secure, somewhat dependable, somewhat not so terrifying. The irony comes in because that very bubble of familiarity can suffocate you, especially if it’s unconscious, especially if you are not aware that you yourself are co-creating this.
You think somehow you’ve found some final, objective, unchanging reality. But there is something in the human spirit that does respond to something new in the situation. There is something in you that sleeps until it is awakened. Folks are suffocating in their bubble of familiarity sometimes unto death, sometimes unto the most painful of all things, intense boredom, their poor souls screaming out for some experience, something different.
How lucky those souls who are taken out of this bubble willy-nilly. All the pain, all the discomfort, all the terror they feel, that suddenly everything is changing again… But in this very kind of topsy-turvy situation there lies the possibility for their creative spirit to wrestle with something real, something other, and find this glorious kind of contact once again; to realize, however painfully at first, that there is another whole universe out there.
Adventure.
§ A beautiful, unfathomable, endless adventure.
So be aware of this, my children. Realize how blessed you are that you can be aware that you are co-creating your very reality as you listen to me. For it’s how my voice is registering within you, within your soul; and that’s partly you. Yet this is not necessarily a prison of self, a tough, unbreakable bubble of familiarity day after day. Once you grasp the principle you can begin to appreciate God’s handiwork all the more: that you were set into the middle of a beautiful, unfathomable, endless adventure. You were made for it and it was made for you. This is the way God likes to treat all of his children, all of us.
And for those poor souls who are dying of familiarity, of boredom; even they too will be reawakened some day in something that is so fantastically changed, even their poor souls will be compelled to rejoice. So how much more fun to begin now, to look around and say, “Wow! Look at all that. Thank you, Father that I can perceive, I can be aware, I can respond to such an enormity, and not only of stuff–a whole physical universe, but every other personal being I meet, another unique being.”
So thank you for listening. Thank you for opening your hearts to this feeling of the possibility that awaits you moment by moment. It’s yours to embrace and delight. Now if you have any questions or comments this evening, let’s do that.
Dialogue
Student: Can you hear me Michael?
Michael. Yes, Gerdean.
Student: Thank you. Thank you for your lesson, for being with us. While you were talking I was reflecting on something that we’ve probably all of us all heard, and that is The Urantia Book talks about how in the spirit world they think of us as spirits having a physical experience, a human experience. Whereas we have the idea that we’re humans having a spiritual experience.
I have a hard time thinking of myself as a spiritual being having a human experience because so much of me is human. So much of me is conditioned and trained and naturally focused on the physical condition, and its needs, and its aches and pains and desires. It also gives me an opportunity to really, really cherish those times when I tap into feeling like I am a spiritual being, a soul at the very least.
I just wondered if you had any clarification on that. Should we beat ourselves up? No, of course not. Should we try to recondition ourselves to think that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, or should we just proceed as humans having what we can–what spiritual we can make of it? I don’t know if that question made any sense, but I’d like a little clarity on it since it’s such a popular thing.
Personality.
§ Human or spirit.
Michael. Yes, my daughter. Since most of you are familiar with The Urantia Book, I recommend reading again and again and again the paper on Personality Survival. For I think this gives you the deepest appreciation of that aspect of you that you can identify with. And this is even beyond spirit. This is personality. This is uniqueness of living being. Personality is created by God. I like to think that only God has the infinity of being to create a nigh infinite number of all the different kinds of personal beings.
So fundamentally you are this personality, but what does it mean that personality does not change? Personality does acquire a possession, and that is soul, co-authored by God himself–a presence of God takes on your human experience.
We say personality is endowed with spirit–it is one thing that shows the primacy of Father Personality over Eternal Son Spirit. Personality is the one thing that can be added to spirit because spirit is intrinsically all-inclusive of all else. And though this pure spirit is hardly so for most human beings, that it is their destiny—to traverse the universe and then Havona, and then, after ending up on Paradise, head out again–six more superuniverses to explore.
So personality is your fundamental reality, my daughter, and it is spiritual by nature. There is no separation here between your personality, your spirit, and your human nature. These are all one, you might say, in ultimate reality–in God’s view–in your Thought Adjuster’s experience of you: these are all one. But your personality is acquiring a soul, a growth that is continuous. Your personality does gain soul-wealth abilities–abilities to unify. So from the standpoint of you–your personality–this is a growing ability to unify all that you are so that you feel no separation between being a human being having spirit, or a spirit having human experience. They are in reality–in God’s reality, if you will; in our reality–these are one. You are one being, indivisible. But this is an ability you have to grow–to realize it.
So, my dear, you are this God-created personality. And you can vary from day to day as to your orientation. Did that help, or did that just complicate things?
Student: No, no. That’s refreshing. I can deal with that.
Michael. Well, read that chapter again, it’s so wonderful.
Student: I will.
Michael. It’s the most comprehensive definition of what a human being is.
Integration.
Student: Tell me, if I may ask further of you, would this be like having an integrated personality? I can walk like an Agondonter in this existence, and live in faith in my soul-self? Is that what you mean by integrated?
Michael. Yes, very much. All that you are in your very complex being, all that you are is capable of being realized in this life. But again, that’s generally for more advanced planets where individuals reach such a unity and oneness–one I myself personally achieved with you–that they just, as you say, “Flash over.” They actually can avoid/bypass what for you is natural death, and become totally united with their Thought Adjuster while still physical. So that’s a kind of an ultimate, but possible–very possible, distant reality for more advanced human beings.
Student: Thank you.
Michael. You’re welcome, and be in my peace.
Student: Hello Michael.
Michael. Hello.
Self-mastery, Stillness.
Student: This is Mike. And I’d like to sort-of dovetail off of Gerdean’s question. In regards to self-mastery, which obviously is a tremendous challenge for mortals, especially on Urantia where we struggle with a lot of uncertainty… I just want to share personally: lately I’ve been experiencing tremendous turmoil, not so much that I can’t overcome, but if I could, you know, maybe give you an analogy of that.
I feel as though I’m standing in the ocean waves where the tide comes in, and a wave hits me. And just as I sort-of recover from that wave and barely regain my balance, another wave hits me. And I’m doing my best to try to rise up to that and, of course, with every succeeding wave I obtain a new balance, sort of a new perspective. I may be perfecting my ability to handle the situations that hit me.
And I just sort-of wanted to maybe get your insight in regards to this idea of self-mastery, this idea of trying our best to reach for the horizon, reach for these ideals that we hold so dear in our heart, but that sometimes are so difficult because every time we reach for them, it seems something kind-of hits us, and it’s difficult to maintain our balance.
And I know everybody is working on this. I know from my study of your mortal existence that you as well dealt with tremendous so-called waves hitting you. And I just personally… Recently it’s been very difficult to deal with this. And I would love to explore this further if you could, and I thank you very much for your lesson tonight. It’s speaking very deeply into my heart and my soul. I appreciate your comments.
- A strange and ironic suggestion.
Michael. Well, yes, my son, let me introduce what might appear to be a very, very strange and almost too ironic kind of suggestion, and that is that the waves that are hitting you are, in part, because of your idealism, your very feeling: this is the better way. Whatever is pulling you forward, whatever is attracting you; that very thing can bring about a discomfort with your present situation and lead you into all kinds of activities that literally generate these waves.
Because, my son, in your analogy you are doing your best to stand there on the sand and feel these waves. In other words, this is your personality–this unmoving part of you, this experiential part of you that is, in an ironic sense, augmenting the waves of circumstance and situation that come your way. For you could just go with the waves, even into some very unhealthy ways of addiction and things to kind-of numb out and just go along, and not question or wonder: stifle your curiosity and just let the waves take you.
But there you stand. There you stand. And the firmer you stand the harder the waves hit. And yet, my son, as an experiential being this is the very lifeblood for your soul. This is your experience. This is how you get some grasp on this ungraspable living-ness that you’re involved in living. It’s about living those ideals–that impinge upon you and tickle your curiosity–that augments all the natural ways of circumstance. But then this is what fills your soul, and you can feel that growth.
Just being a physical being who will get decrepit and die someday–that whole adventure of starting out as this little bloody, balling bundle of life; then having a life, tuning in to this living physical being that you are: this is that mastery, is that oneness, is that spirituality, all-inclusiveness of a constant, constant acceptance moment by moment that keeps you here and now, keeps you on your feet.
And so, of course, one of the greatest things that you can do is just stop and do this really strange, artificial thing called stillness. In the midst of all these waves crashing about, just choose to be still for a while and see what’s inside. But you’re right. Self-master is that unity, is that oneness, is that total acceptance that allows you to stay with yourself moment by moment.
Student: Thank you very much. That helps me tremendously.
Michael. It’s why we have to remind you from time to time, you were set down in the middle of a big adventure. And there’s no end to it. You might as well get used to it.
Student: It’s truly a challenge, and I feel very fortunate to understand that it is a challenge. And I like challenges. So I try my best to stand tall in midst of it, even when I sort-of sway back and forth. As you know, sometimes I have days where I feel on top of the world and spiritually grounded, and other days where I just feel so uncertain and almost drowning, so to speak. But I always turn to the Father. I really make an effort to find that center, that ideal. Even if I’m not achieving that ideal, at least I can reach for the ideal. Even in the process of reaching for that ideal I seem to center myself, at least center myself enough as to not stumble so much. But thank you very much for your words, and again, thank you very much for your guidance tonight. And I’ll step aside for others to ask questions.
- Stillness.
Michael. Well, you’re very welcome, my son. The wonderful thing about stillness is that sometimes it can give you some measure of where these waves are coming from. Sometimes it is your own ambition. Other times it’s the situation, the really, truly objective situation that needs to be looked at and perhaps changed. So that’s another great decision that stillness leads you to–some separation between inside and outside that lets you get a feeling of where these waves are coming from. So keep searching for my peace, my son. I’m here. I’m always here, and so is our Father.
Student: Thank you. I feel you peace. I feel your peace whenever I search for it. I love you very much. And thank you very much. I’m going to leave you now and contemplate.
Michael. Amen.
Student: Amen to you too.
New student: Aloha. Aloha, Michael.
Michael. Aloha.
Birth.
Student: I have a question in the form of some thoughts that have been floating around, concerning conception to birth. And, on behalf of my sisters on this planet, my little sisters and my others, I have researched and looked for hints about personality and birth. And I know that there are forces at work on the planet that have led to a lot of confusion around this subject of birth and conception.
And one of the things that I found in The Urantia Book that talks about conception is that a human embryo is a transient, parasitic stage of human life. And we had an in-depth discussion the other day. For me life would begin with the breath of life, the first breath of life that would indicate that a baby had been born, or could survive–a fetus could survive outside of the womb. So there’s so much confusion around this subject. I believe that in the World of the Archangels paper it talks about personality being bestowed at birth, which we know that it is. But then we don’t get our Thought Adjust for five and some years. So, if you could enlighten the subject a little bit, I would be better able to respond and talk to my brothers and sisters about this subject that has been whirling around for so long. So maybe you could expound on that a bit.
- Personality and physical uniqueness.
Michael. Yes, my daughter. It’s a little difficult because of the, I would say, almost loaded nature of so many concepts surrounding this. It has been such a deep, deep mystery and puzzle as well as being a matter of dogma of every religion that has come along. There’s an intrinsic quality to personality that is ungraspable. And that is not only its uniqueness, but the fact that it is created by God–human personality.
We detect this association of personality with a living physical organism, in this case a fertilized human cell, all of a sudden. Keep in mind that this cell is a physical uniqueness. We’ve give the example before of looking at a picture of an old-time family of maybe a mother and father and fourteen brothers and sisters. Yes, there is that family resemblance there, but there’s also that uniqueness in every face.
We detect this association of personality with the fertilized egg, so there’s no way in which the personality has preexistence. It does not “come out” from Paradise: God is omnipresent. Also God is omniscient. God, in a way beyond your comprehension–think of thousands of dimensions of reality–God knows that DNA. God knows the unique physical being of that fertilized egg. And so there is no other being that I know who can expound comprehensively on that association. That is God’s creation for that unique time and space event.
Insofar as you are an experiential being, your only absoluteness is in your very existence; everything else is very relative. You do not begin to experience as a personality much before birth. Upon birth and really getting that breath of life, the little baby starts to experience. And, as you know, the Thought Adjuster is not so tightly bound, but is around: and the Thought Adjuster is God all the way through.
Experience, Soul.
§ Experience.
Upon birth you start to fulfill your destiny, you start to experience. That leads, someday, to a closer association of your Though Adjuster with your personality. So birth is not the exact beginnings of the soul for there was a kind of pre-soul, if you will, in the Thought Adjuster. But with experience the real soul, the more fully developed soul, starts then. Your personality at that moment also achieves a measure of freedom. The little child for the first time does something that is not merely a “monkey see, monkey do” kind of thing. That little child can actually make a free act, if you will. It is the birth of the free will. And, as you know, at that moment the Thought Adjuster appears as if attached to the young child.
Again, this is explaining something in a few words that is extraordinarily multidimensional. So I can only feel a kind of inadequacy of putting something in a few short words that someone could expound upon forever. But does this help clear up exactly when the personality comes into existence and when its unique physical being begins to experience and then take on a soul?
Student: Indeed it does. It’s very enlightening to hear that women, especially on this planet, are liberated from thinking the way certain elements have kept a tight grip, so to speak, on the consciousness of so many regarding birth, conception, and personality. And so any information that I can pass on to my sisters to help them through the darkness that prevails; then I feel like the bit of enlightenment that I can bestow is somehow helping someone behind them pull them up a little bit. We can stand united in our reproductive rights and know that it’s okay, and God loves us, and it’s all good.
Wonder.
§ A rebirth of wonder.
Michael. My daughter, what it really takes is a rebirth of wonder about personality, and about the uniqueness of when that egg and sperm get together–the physical uniqueness of human being.
It’s how that association of personality and physical being comes from an omniscience that is beyond comprehension, and worthy of wonder. So let’s pray for that rebirth of wonder, that escaping the bubble of familiarity in which some folks, unfortunately, do get caught up into thinking they know all about it. There’s no wonder left.
Student: Thank you. Thank you so much, Michael, and bless your heart.
Michael. Well, thank you, my daughter, I do feel very blessed.
Student: Thank you. Aloha.
Closing.
Michael. And be in my peace. If there are no further questions or comments, it is getting kind-of late so, let’s bid each other Adieu and until we see each other again. Mother Spirit and I are only a thought away, and we do love it when you take time out of your busy life, a little mini-mediation, and say hello. It does tickle us so much.
And so, good evening, my dearest ones. Mother Spirit sends her love, and I bid you be in my peace. Good evening.
