2012-05-17-Acknowledging Spirit
Lightline #358
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Freely Acknowledging Spirit
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: Freely Acknowledging Spirit
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, thank you. Thank you again, and again, and again. Thank you for my life. Thank you for this whole world surrounding me in which to live it, full of all my friends and families and millions and millions and millions and millions of others–all these unique individuals to encounter and relate with. Thank you for that whole universe out there and the promise of an unending future life out in it–my goodness!–filled with all the personal beings of dozens and dozens of orders that I am to encounter and relate with, and make my friends. Thank you. Thank you, dear Father. Thank you, dear Father, for Michael and Mother Spirit. Let our hearts overflow with this appreciation. Amen.
Lesson
MICHAEL: Good evening, this is Michael. Mother Spirit and I are glad, glad in our hearts to receive your worship, to receive your appreciation. In this we can speak for our Father, that he too, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit–the whole Trinity does receive this worship, this appreciation, from all their children–including me. This is the connection that you offer. This is the way you connect yourselves to us, first just by acknowledging us. This is such a big thing that most of you can remember the time when it suddenly occurred to you and you gave your whole heart to saying, “Okay God, I hereby acknowledge with all my heart that you are! You are the originator of all of this, including me. And you are a person, a personal being who is the very origin of my personality.” I’m sure at that moment you all felt an overwhelming warmth come over you, for this is the connection. This is what ties you to us and to our Father.
To freely acknowledge spirit
Very importantly, this is a function of your freedom, not only of your personality that can originate such an appreciation, such an acknowledgement; but to put your whole heart behind it, your whole will behind this acknowledgement, and then feel the connection and have this as a genuine experience in your life and in your soul? This is a marvelous function of freedom, that you can do this of your own freewill.
It’s a fact that some folks can live their lives, and live a very full life even, without this acknowledgment; but then they don’t have quite this same connection. They too are children of the Father, but they are missing this possibility, this spiritual potential of relating this way. This is the glory of worship: it connects you. It connects you not only with the use of your own freewill but also how you are directing that, how you are acknowledging and making real within yourself that which does not impose itself upon you. In a supremely ironic way, my children, we are dependent on you and your acknowledgement of us to live this way within you. And we are happy it is so. This is our notion of free beings expressing themselves from their own unique personalities.
So this is your ultimate gift to us, and it is your ultimate gift to each other.
Think about this. Think about how much or perhaps even how little you acknowledge in your mind, in your heart, in your soul; how much do you acknowledge those around you? How full a reality do give them within yourself? Then by projection, by your own co-creativity–co-creating your reality, how much do you enjoy of them standing there in front of you? These are not separate. There is no ultimate separation between inside and outside. As you live these are perfectly mirroring each other. But by your very ability of denial there can be all kinds of things in your exterior reality that for various reasons you are not acknowledging. On a very deep soulful level of meaning, they don’t exist for you.
Rather it’s the willingness inside yourselves to give of yourselves, to enjoy self-forgetfulness and be totally wrapped up for a while in something other than you: this is what feeds your soul. This is how you escape the prison of self. You acknowledge and then enjoy another. And, my goodness!–what the two of you can enjoy together! We talk about the two-hundred-percent-ness of life, the strange kind of “otherness” of spontaneity that just seems to come about; something you can’t directly create. But with another person, the two of you can enter into a relationship in which it is allowed to come about. And what fun! This is what breaks you up in laughter and tears. This is the proof, if you will–the exercise, the enjoyment, the reality of spirit. It’s touching upon realms and dimensions greater than yourselves. It’s enjoying for some however brief human moments what the higher spiritual beings know so much more intimately. This is literally the conquering of fear and shyness, to give yourself to another. And as they give themselves to you, this unfathomable, unpredictable—(that’s kind of scary)—spontaneity is what you give yourself to: the conquering of fear.
Trust, courage, and wisdom
MICHAEL: It’s trust in another. It’s even trust in Mother Spirit and me when you open yourselves to our presence within you and just trust and have faith that you are not alone. You have spiritual parents who are doing their best–through my Spirit of Truth, through Mother Spirit’s Adjutants–to give you the fullest life that we together are capable of you enjoying. Even in your pain of physical agony or mental uncertainty, to have this means of coping is a very priceless thing–your earned mediation–the way you have found to transcend the difficulty you’re having, not by running away from it, but by staying with it, plumbing its depths and finding beyond it this greater aspect of spirit. Consider all that Mother Spirit has given you of courage, the amazing ability to go beyond yourself and, even in terrible moments, be able to conceive and then do the right thing. You know how to tap into and to use your creative spirit, and then your will, the determination to do that right thing.
And then as you live, my children, tonight I also want to mention Mother Spirit’s Adjutant of wisdom augmenting your own wisdom, your ability to use all of yourself in this present moment. It’s your memories, your soul, all you’ve gained as an experiential being–a being of experience, to bring all of this to bear on the present moment. This is another unfathomable thing even, your own wisdom. It helps to think of those wise folks you know, especially during all those years you were growing up, your parents, or aunts and uncles and teachers. Think of the grown-ups you couldn’t wait to become one of because you felt so helpless in your lack of experience. There they were, they who had already lived so much and seemed to know so much.
So with respect to this aspect of yourself, of your own mind and your own capabilities, just mediate on this from time to time: what is wisdom? How do you get it? How do you keep in touch with it? Tonight I would like to reiterate that expression from your Urantia Book that Mother Spirit and I have mentioned before about a hallmark of wisdom. What is it that sets wisdom apart from the other aspects of your mind? One hallmark of wisdom is a sense of proportion. As you may have noticed, Mother Spirit and I do not, we cannot address all the social and political determinisms in your life that surround you and call upon you to exercise your full citizenship. They are just too complicated because the very words themselves are so loaded that we literally could spend half an hour defining a few terms.
But as you exercise your responsibility of being a citizen, try to keep this hallmark of wisdom in mind: a sense of proportion. Because your social and political commentators, just to make a point, just to present some drama or melodrama to compete with all the other entertainment in your life; they do tend to go to extremes. It is up to each one of you, right within your own comprehension of the social and political situation, it’s up to you to generate, to create this sense of proportion to stay clear, shall we say, of simple pure principles, pure exaggerations bearing little reality to the situation. You yourselves have to come up with this balance, this sense of proportion from all that you have experienced.
Mother Spirit and I, we’re right here inside you doing our best. And as we perceive you, as we experience you, we do so in your wholeness. This is our glory of being your spiritual parents, of being the kinds of beings that we are: we can experience you in your totality of body and mind, personality, spirit, soul–all these living, interacting facets of a single being created by God. And so dear friends, dear children, dear compatriots out here in time and space, we do ask you to consider these things and feel the glow inside when you connect with us. This is your marvelous freewill gift to us, and it is our deepest desire that you can feel our reply.
Now, if you have any questions or comments this evening, you can go ahead and unmute yourselves and feel our welcome.
Dialogue
Student: This is G. I just wanted to thank you for your words. They were like honey, just rolling off your tongue like poetry, pouring into my heart: lovely, lovely.
MICHAEL: : Thank you, my darling.
Student: I do treasure my time spent with you, Michael, and Nebadonia, and would be quite lonely without it. Thank you for your immediacy.
To become more than we are
MICHAEL:: Thank you, my daughter. It’s wonderful when you and I and Mother Spirit enjoy this contact, for in this contact we all become more than we are. I, for one, am content to leave it be the mystery that it is. I think our Father has something to do with it. So thank you, my dear. Be in my peace.
Student: Thank you.
Student: This is I.-(name)-and I share Gerdean’s sentiment. It is so soothing to hear your words. We’re starting back in the Southeast Teaching Mission and, as I read through the old lessons, I see how many have passed on: Bert Cobbs, Bill Kelly, Rachel: all of them. I’m just so grateful to be a part of the Teaching Mission, and the Correcting Time, and The Urantia Book. And thank you, thank you, Jerry, for tr-ing.
MICHAEL:: Well–this is still Michael, and you’re very, very welcome. It was such a delight to be able to inaugurate the Teaching Mission. It is something–a further extension, if you will, of the Correcting Time. The Teaching Mission is such an important part of that, we feel along with you just how fortunate you are–and we are–to be living in this time of the beginning of a planetary transformation. As you know, not only the Teaching Mission with you folks here, but the Correcting Time is going out to the whole world.
An inexorable evolution
MICHAEL: There is truly an inexorable evolution happening. This is where your planet is in tune, coming into step with the whole rest of creation. Remember, those planets that went on in rebellion are such a tiny, tiny percentage of the whole. But for those of you who are living through this, it is truly such an opportunity. As I mentioned tonight, it does take courage to be constantly setting aside all your familiar, comfortable understandings of things and just stand naked in the light of what your own mind and your own situation bring to you: and keep growing. Just keep growing. Delight in all that you are and all that you have been, but keep growing. Keep adding to it. So thank you, my daughter. Be in my peace.
First student: Michael, since no one is asking a question, if it’s okay with you, could I say something?
MICHAEL:: Sure.
Student: This has to do with the story from the Urantia Papers about, you know, the Master. When you gave a speech and the seekers of signs wanted to make you king, you said, “No. I’m not going to go that way. If you’re not happy with that, go home in peace. But this is the way I’m going to go about the Father’s business.” And so you lost a huge percentage of followers that day because they wanted more hoopla, evidently. They were seekers of signs, and so forth. What happened to those people? I mean, I’m sure they went home and went back to their way of life and perhaps some of them later on did in fact recognize the deeper, more enduring aspects of your teachings. But I could just imagine that so many of them were filled with such…they were so stimulated they just couldn’t take “no” for an answer and had to do something with all that energy. I just can’t help but wonder how many left and filled engagements, enterprises? -Isms, cults and sages, and so forth must have stemmed from those who turned away. It couldn’t be any different than the Tower of Babel, or even today’s sectarians. But you know, I saw this story and just recently wondered what did they do?
MICHAEL:: Yes, my darling, this is something in which you have to realize again the individuality, the uniqueness of everyone. As you say, it’s “where they’re coming from” that determines the degree to which they can or cannot be present and open-minded. If they are constantly coming out of the past, this determines–as with you–what you can experience, what you can relate to, what you can acknowledge and credit within yourself.
As Mother Spirit and I do speak, even in these lessons, we do our best not to speak over your head. But sometimes there is part of you that does recognize the validity of what we’re saying, and takes a while to soak in. It becomes one with all the other things you accept from those you see as teachers, or give some respect and credit to in your social or political life. As I said this evening, this was the same effect back in those days when there were those who had a certain notion of the Messiah having social and political powers, and becoming king.
That authority is something Mother Spirit and I must refuse because, in one way, it would be a mistrusting of your own creativity. In other words, we would be supplying for you, from a sense of pure, raw power and authority, that which you must create for yourselves.
Notice that there may be a certain part of your life that you wish we could take over and simply tell you what to do in an authoritarian kind of way. Yet this is the one thing that we must refuse you in order to be really good parents and, we hope, be an example for you too, to raise your children. True, from one point of view it seems like we are heaping things on you, we are not doing for you what you wish we could. This was the same in those days when the folks with a certain concept of the Messiah were terribly, terribly disappointed in me because I could not fulfill their wishes.
What you really need
But in this, as you yourselves as parents must stay true to your deepest wisdom of what your children really need, know they need the experience and then the glory of coming up with–right out of their own selves, out their own personality and creativity–what to do. And then further, find out whether it works or not. That becomes part of their soul and we would not deprive anybody of this. That is why I had to insist back then, and why Mother Spirit and I have to say now: no–to certain requests that, in a sense, we take over part of our children’s lives and do for them what they really have to do for themselves, just in order to keep growing. So I hope that does answer the question.
Student: Well, it certainly speaks to it, yes. It reminds me too of the truth that the kingdom is within, and the way we get to Paradise is inward and upward; not outward, but inward and upward. And so, I guess I will focus my energy as much as possible on the inward journey because this outward journey is wearing me out. I jest, of course, but . .
MICHAEL:: Well, thank you, my dear. Let’s give the opportunity for some other folks to talk, if you will. Thank you.
Student: Michael?
MICHAEL:: Yes?
Student: Yes. I have a simple question that may be in the minds of many others, particularly those who have been involved in the Teaching Mission for a couple of decades or more, and perhaps reading The Urantia Book for four or five decades. With this wonderful communication that we have, such as we’ve just experienced with you, are we still Agondonters?
Agondonter status
MICHAEL:: Oh, yes!–very much so.
Student: Okay, the body’s eyes need to see a divine Son to . . . Maybe this is the last generation of Agondonters, perhaps.
MICHAEL:: Oh, no. That’s a situation you’ll find yourself in and out of forever.
Student: I see.
MICHAEL:: Keep in mind, my son, this might seem strange but as you are experiencing me right now, this is half you. This is your ability to recognize and relate, even to these words coming over the telephone. So this is your Agondonter status: what you are willing to put your heart behind, your will behind, your understanding behind. The proof you are finding, what we are literally sharing right now, is to a large degree you; so I’m happy to acknowledge that.
Student: Thank you very much for that clarification.
MICHAEL:: Don’t forget, my son, you are a co-creative being. The fact that you’re so seldom aware of that is a kind of a marvel in and of itself. That’s almost a definition of sanity, the way things stick together. A lot of the meaning, a lot of the value–the spiritual value you find in things and others; that’s part of your own soul. So: welcome! This is another one of those ironic gifts of being in the situation. It requires you to be an Agondonter to believe where there isn’t always that mental awareness of just how much you already do believe.
Student: Once again I appreciate your clarification of that, and I think that may answer the question for others as well.
MICHAEL:: Thank you, my son. Be in my peace.
Student: So, Father, this is I. again. Thank you. So the good news is: we were given freewill. And the bad news is: we were given freewill? (much laughter, Michael included)
Student: I have a question about the circuits. I’ve heard they’re open, they’re wide open. It seems to me a new generation is coming up that doesn’t feel like they’re Agondonters. It feels like they’re “knowing.” It feels like they’re born knowing. It’s just an exciting time to see the next generation come about in faith.
Faith—the ability to act from your totality
MICHAEL:: Well, you hit the right word there. It is faith. It’s the ability to act on that which is not obvious in and of itself. This is the definition of an Agondonter as someone who is still able to act on faith, on the evidence, if you will, of things unseen. This, again–not just to reiterate the same point, but this is acting out of wisdom. It’s the way all of you, out of your totality if you will, including your soul, including not only your memories but your deepest soul, gives meaning and value to what you are experiencing. It’s being able to act on that, and act unselfishly, act generously, act with mercy and compassion and genuine love for another person.
It’s the ability to actually act on that, to put yourself out there on the line, to do something in response to the totality that you are. This is what an Agondonter is. It’s where you act without, shall we say, a kind of empirical, physical, demonstrable proof. It’s to act from your heart, to put yourself out there and then–in that further step that Mother Spirit and I always love to mention–be open to the result. You’ve tried something right out of your own self, but then be open to the result, whatever it is, whatever all that reality out there is telling you. That is the second step that really proves your Agondonter status, the willingness to accept what reality is telling you, and then try again. Does that help clarify the situation?
Student: Very much so. Thank you.
MICHAEL:: And for your children, as you say both for the shear effort that it takes, but then also the reward that is forthcoming: that’s what they too will be involved in. Your world has quite a ways to go before the spiritual community can have its full effect and there is a right-up-front spiritual recognition among most of the folks. Until that time you will be called upon to act when there is no proof beforehand that this is ultimately a spiritual thing. You literally are putting yourselves out there, and that takes courage. And so your children also will need a great measure of this. Are there some other questions or comments? Okay? I ask because this is truly fun for me, and for Mother Spirit in her meetings.
Student: Actually, I have a question.
MICHAEL:: Go ahead.
Student: Michael, did you dictate a Course in Miracles?
Combined spirit and human creativity
MICHAEL:: Yes, as much as I am talking to you right now. Everything that does come through this way, comes through a human being with all the greatness and limitations of that. In other words, all of this has a contextual framework. For you folks I’m able to use more Urantia Book-type concepts and meanings. At a different time and in a different place, I did have this input. But as you notice, it is quite different in a way from The Urantia Book or even from the Teaching Mission, for it is, being human, a product of it’s time and it’s orientation.
Student: Wow. Well, it’s a grand piece. You did a good job, Michael.
MICHAEL:: It’s good to say, “we did a good job“–myself and those I came through. But also, my son, keep in mind that Mother Spirit and I are right inside you. And you can—and you do–relate even more directly with us this way. And your prayers, your mediation and your worship: these are even more direct.
Student: Thank you.
MICHAEL:: Be in my peace.
Student: I am. I am.
God’s idea
MICHAEL:: Well, that was fun. This is really great, folks. I do love this so much, being able to converse with you this way even though it is limited by this person also, as well. But it’s your realization within yourself of the spirit that comes through. It’s where deep calls to deep and deeply responds. It’s the response within you that is Mother Spirit’s and my glory, that we have this connection, that so much meaning and value can flow between us. This is the joy of life. This is God’s idea of creating a whole bunch of us: every single one of us somewhat different; every single one of us somewhat the same. I think it’s a good idea of his, this whole creation full of trillions upon trillions of personal beings; and all that comes from that, all that fills the heart of the Supreme Being–all of our hearts.
Closing
So, thank you, Father, thank you for this whole creation. Thank you for all of us. And we pray. We ask for what power you can give us to help us acknowledge this, to warmly welcome and enjoy all that you give us. So, my children, thank you all for being here. Thank you for being the reason for all of this. Enjoy your Agondonter status and don’t be surprised when the adventure continues, both the scary and the rewarding parts of it. This too is God’s idea of constantly putting all of us in something that’s always, and will remain always, a little bit beyond us, teasing us to reach and acknowledge more. So: good evening. Mother Spirit sends her love and I bid you be in mine.
