2014-01-16-Freedom
Lightline #425
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Freedom
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: Freedom
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, thank you–thank you for us. And I deliberately mean that “us.” I feel each one of us can very genuinely and heartfelt say: thank you for me–thank you for this life of mine. But also: thank you for all of “us.” Thank you for these dear friends, these other people with whom I’ve shared my life. Now I have them and all our events, all that experience in my soul. I have them in my soul as they have me in theirs.
Thank you for all of us all around us–those ones we meet on the sidewalk in a busy city, or passing us on the road—on and on, out from city to state, to county, to this whole world, because I’m a part of it. I’m a part of the operation of this whole world and all the people in it. There is a family here.
Thank you for all the marvelous beings I’m destined to meet—the angels, the Melchizedeks, the Life Carriers; all these other sons and daughters of yours I get to meet, and know, and appropriate their reality. They too will come into a greater understanding and wealth of what my human reality has been. Thank you…thank you… thank you. Amen.
Lesson
MICHAEL: Good evening, this is Michael. Mother Spirit and I accept with a gracious humility your thanks, from all of you. We feel your prayers. We feel your worship, your appreciation for your lives. This is our glory of being your spiritual parents, and being so near you and a part of you. We do so love it when you acknowledge us, just to say hello: “Hello Michael.” “Hello Mother Spirit–Nebadonia.”
It’s the same as when you parents are so delighted when your children turn their beaming faces up towards you and give you that big smile. It’s the love in their faces, and their regard, their respect, their dependence upon you for all the goodness that you are capable of giving them. And there they are.
They’re your children. They literally came right out of you. And their delight is your delight. Their trials are yours, their pains are yours. Their experiences, the ones you have together, are yours. So you know how Mother Spirit and I feel about all of our children. This is our reason for being, just as we ourselves are our Father’s reason for being. This is all free choice. Our Father chooses to share himself with all of us, every personality, every unique being of the trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions. There’s no number you can put on it: it’s a spiritual thing–God’s creation of all these unique personalities that we know and experience as their very essence. But you are especially our children, Mother Spirit’s and mine.
Your choices for the future
Think of this very freedom that we feel from our Father, the way he cuts us loose, and the degree to which he does this. True, no one escapes God’s parameters of their particular order of being, whether you are a Creator Son of God, a Creator Daughter of the Infinite Spirit, a Life Carrier, an angel, a human being. Every order of being exists within his parameters. But within those, you are truly free. So much of your future of what you will continue to experience: this is your choice.
It’s a little bit scary, isn’t it, for a human being, to take upon themselves this responsibility for their own lives. And then further, through their connection of love, and respect, and honoring, to have their children’s lives, and their friend’s lives, also in their hands. Then they have the response from their children, and from their friends; and they can encourage that very ability so it’s genuine, so it’s honest, so it’s true. It’s the freedom that you give your children, and your dearest friends, so that you can truly have them: so what of them you put in your soul is truly them.
It’s coming right out of their essence. This is our Father’s delight, and why he gives us such freedom. He only asks of us–all of us–to be able to respond to each other; even, if we so choose, to respond to him too. Remember: you–as much as Mother Spirit and I–have him right within you as part of you. Though true enough, we are one with our Father in a way that you will spend some time growing into.
We are already “out here.” We have already crossed and connected with the whole of the time and space creation, this whole universe. Now it is yours to encounter and make it your own, and that depends upon your response-ability. Then what a delightful dance ensues, does it not, only because of freedom?–only because each of us, as a personal being, has that creative spark of his right in us. We can originate something all our own, and then share it. This is what we have to give to each other, something of our own. This is what we can get from each other, some freely-given something to have in our soul.
God’s gift of free will
This is so fundamental. It’s so important that you understand this because it does answer the question: Why does God allow certain things to happen, shall we say, genuine evil–which I’ll define here as very intentionally and consciously knowingly, hurting another for the sake of some ego-glorification, some self-assurance, some sense of power. How can he allow that? How can God allow one personal being to deliberately and consciously hurt another? This is the puzzle for so many.
You’ve read your marvelous Urantia Book that goes into such enormous detail—more than the human race has never known before–about the Lucifer rebellion. He was the head of a whole System of six hundred-and-some planets who got an idea of rebellion in his mind, totally with his own creativity, his own creative spirit. He got the idea and he built upon that. Then he shared it with his lieutenant, and convinced a number of Planetary Heads to join in his rebellion, his deliberately going against all of God’s, and mine, and Mother Spirit’s way of doing things. He came up with a rebellion that has had such evil, it has no parallel in all of our Local Universe of millions of planets, of hundreds of billions of years of evolution and development.
So to understand, first of all: this was part of the Unqualified Absolute, the truly unqualified nature of Cosmic Possibility that this rebellion happened. It was possible. It was real. It happened. And it has been evil to an unparalleled extent over the last two hundred thousand years. You wonder: if God had the power, if I had the power just to squash the rebellion instantly, why didn’t we do so? Concerning many billions of otherwise innocent human beings on these rebel planets, even higher beings on the Local System headquarters, how could we allow this much suffering?
This is one indicator, and yet only a small indicator, of what we mean by free will, of our not stepping in and immediately squashing the rebellion, which even the Constellation Fathers—Lucifer’s immediate superiors—could have done. It didn’t require me. My Constellation’s Fathers had the power to do that. Why did they hold off until almost every one of the System’s celestial family had decided one way or another, with the rebellion or against it?
Only then after this maximum expression of free will choice was the rebellion, in a sense, squashed. Still, the evil created and established as a pattern that has come right down into your modern day cultures of human beings killing each other, torturing each other, doing the most obscene things to each other in the name of God. This still exists on the poor unfortunate planets that joined the rebellion. This too is a facet of free will.
Evil is possible. People can conceive of it and then carry it out, again, as I defined it, as a very conscious, deliberate hurting of another person for whatever reason.
Evil = lack of sympathy
MICHAEL: After your World War II, in which tens of millions perished in the most obscene ways, one finding of your Nuremberg trials was that evil requires no further definition than a lack of empathy, a breaking of the human bond of the most glorious things–of being able to share your lives and feel what each other feel. You can share that, all that love, all that delight, all that laughter and humor, all that joy. Yet to deliberately cut oneself off from that empathy in order to enable one to hurt another; and see that, and feel that power; and yet not feel the pain, not see the suffering, not know the fear: that is definition enough of evil. And it is a corollary of free will because it is undeniably happening.
And so when we use that expression “free will” it is to say you are a creature–because you were created–you are a creature of free will dignity. You are not just an impersonal aspect of physics and chemistry, nor even just the animal intelligence, the amazing intelligence of some of your highest animals. Consider the enormous intelligence behind the hundreds, sometimes close to a thousand responses that animals can give to their human trainers. Yet given the enormous intelligence that animals have, they are still not personal beings as a human being is. They do not have your creative spirit. They do not have your free will dignity because they literally cannot create, as you can right out of yourselves, something equally unique as your own personality. This, my children is the meaning of free will dignity.
This dignity gives you some choice, and so we’re coming full circle to: what do you want to do with this future stretching out before you into eternity? What do you want to have in your soul, to carry with you as part of you, forever? What is your possibility in this eternal now, because the possibility is real to the degree that you can realize it.
It sounds like a circular argument, but to feel it, to use it, to see that whole world out there, and the people in it, responding to you because you are responding to it and to them: that’s the joyous dance that is only possible with your free will, with your own creativity.
To love and to be loved
Then to feel that from another–to not only love, but to be loved–is worth the sometimes terrible price attendant to that free will, that creativity, that bringing something right out of yourself, and receiving something right out of another. This is hopefully how you will fill your eternity to come.
Will you/won’t you you join the dance, once you know the delight of freely sharing it? Won’t you learn how to tickle, and be tickled; to know joy and light-hearted-ness; learn how to let others be free in your presence? Yes, this all can be a little scary because you’re stepping off into sheer possibility. You’re acknowledging that full range of awesome possibility, but you’re reaching out unafraid to share your life with another.
So join the merry dance. Fill your souls with joy and laughter. Be genuine. Be one within yourself and, as you say, “right up front.” Have the courage to be yourself right on the surface.
Well, enough of our teasing. Mother Spirit and I do love to, if you will, dangle these possibilities out in front of you, for you to entertain and reflect upon, and even to live by–if you so choose. Now if you have any questions or comments this evening, we can do that too. Part of our joy is the conversations we can have with you. So go ahead.
Dialogue
Student: Father?
MICHAEL: Yes.
Student: I have a question. I would like to know exactly what you had said about Israel. They’re in such peril right now, and a friend of mine quotes me different things from the Bible that you have said. I just wonder exactly what you have said about it.
MICHAEL: You’re talking about the state of Israel?
Student: Yes.
The Middle East
MICHAEL: Well, my dear, I think the most basic thing I can say is that, just to be open-minded about the situation, we’re talking about a nation-state that is surrounded by others. And there have been a number of wars recently because of different cultures that go clear back to Biblical times–way, way back before my birth and life among you. Some of these things go back thousands of years, back to the Old Testament, that are still determining so much of what’s happening.
You have these major religious/cultural differences between peoples, that there’s so much enmity still between them. Now there’s so much fear with the advent of nuclear weapons. They can bring the surface of the sun down right over a city, as has already happened twice on earth. With this proliferation of arms we can only ask everybody to be extremely cautious and respectful of this possibility I talked about tonight.
There are men and women who have to make decisions that will determine not only their own fate, but the fate of so many other ones around them. And I mean by “fate” something, with nuclear weapons, where there’s no discrimination. Things are done on the basis of nation-state considerations. For once you have such weapons possible, this was something that changed the whole world a number of years ago. And so these people literally have to feel their way along–the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Iraqis, and the Iranians–that whole area there.
We can only pray that the men and women who have these decisions in their hands, who have the authority of their nation-states concentrated in them, that they will hold on to the very last second that whole thing of possibility for the future. These are also military considerations because this is what we’re talking about.
You can only pray and do all you that can in your own life to help them, however this occurs to you. Pray for peace. Pray that the leaders have some real deep love and respect for human life, not just for Israel but for all of the people there. Pray they have some deep respect for human life itself so they can set aside all other considerations before they start a nuclear holocaust that will dwarf all their other more minor military skirmishes–even though these over the course of years have involved tens of thousands of people.
Let us pray for the basic human dignity of all the leaders to set their egos and their pride and all that ancient, ancient history aside, and think about the men and women and children under those nuclear weapons.
Student: Something that she told me from the Bible: she says that you had said that you would always protect Israel. Is that a correct statement?
MICHAEL: : Yes, of course. We will–Mother Spirit and I–do our best to protect every human being on the planet. Because God is no respecter of persons. Neither are we.
Student: Right.
MICHAEL: : This is one of things most misunderstood when I was among you, a Jew among Jews. I talked about the Father not being a respecter of persons, especially the hated and despised Romans. This was something so many could not begin to credit. So many who heard me thought this was just some sort of a pipe dream, that you would love your enemies. But yes, we will do our best to preserve Israel–the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Jordanians, everyone.
Student: Thank you very much, Father.
MICHAEL: : Be in my peace. Let us do all we can, each one of us, to bring that about for everyone.
Student: Michael, I just want to tell you that ever since I was a child, I’ve only known you as Jesus. But I have always loved you so very much. Now I know that you’re much greater than I could have ever imagined.
Oneness within and without
MICHAEL: There’s this verse in the Bible about oneness. “As you, Father, are in me, and I am in you; that they also may be one in us.” That speaks mountains to me about the goal of becoming one, that even in the Bible you present to us the opportunity to become one with you, you who are in the Father. You give us an opportunity to be one in our Father through you. That has always motivated me to pursue that oneness with all of my heart. I thank you for all the tremendous love that you have showered on me all of my life, and the joy that you are giving me. Recently you’ve really taught me even to learn to love my enemies, which has been tremendously more than I could have endured.
But now I’m deeply concerned about the countries at war with one and other, and I’m attending an Orthodox Jewish synagogue because you were Jewish. I want to see what it would have been like to be Jewish. Also coming into my mind is to go to an Islamic mosque and to try to learn what life would be like with them as well. I’ve always been raised as a Christian, so I don’t know how the mix of all that would work out. I’m already attending an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, and they don’t really want me to mention your name there.
I’ve not attended an Islamic service yet, but I’m thinking about it.
Anyway, mostly, I never even knew Nebadonia existed until just recently, but I love you too, Mother. I never knew I had a mother. I just want you to know that I love you with all my heart. Continue to guide and direct my life. Help me to do that which is good according to your will. Just help me to do what is right, according to your way of what is right. That’s it.
The nature of spirit: all inclusive
MICHAEL: : Well, my daughter, I feel very humble in your presence because, when you talk about the oneness that comes from God–that unity which is the essence of the divine–it’s what we mean by “spirit.” Spirit is that dimension of reality that includes everything. When you strive for oneness–first within yourself, with your meditations–because you’re a very complex being of personality, spirit, body, mind, and soul: just relax in your meditation and be still. Feel and experience all these parts of you that may, or may not, be at war with themselves. Feel us within you helping you be this one.
Challenging one’s own simple-mindedness
My daughter, I appreciate so much the fact that then you challenge the oneness of the religion that you were raised with. You actually challenge that by going out and seeking to be one with a greater group than what you’ve known. This is how you go/evolve from simple-mindedness–which is a terrible thing of simply excluding everything else so you can know simplicity. You risk that mere familiarity; you challenge that within yourself. You go out and take on another culture, and lose your oneness for a while, because now you’re dual. Now you’ve taken in another whole way of looking at things.
Yet you also trust that within yourself, with your own creative spirit, your own mind; you trust that you will rise to a greater oneness. You will be eschewing and leaving behind the simple-mindedness of one culture to find true simplicity, true oneness in a greater context. Now you’re thinking, “Well, wait a minute. There’s this other group here on earth called Muslims. What’s their culture like?”
My dear, you are putting a foot on an eternal path here. Imagine awakening on another world, and there’s a little angel there, you know, taking you by the hand and leading you out into a totally transformed reality where you will start to meet other kinds of beings than human.
A way of aligning oneself
So I say I totally cherish your orientation here. This is what my Spirit of Truth is all about. It’s an orientation. It’s a way of aligning yourself to that which is greater than you, and going forward to meet it, and embrace it, and make it your own. This is where Mother Spirit, with her Holy Spirit right in you, is encouraging you every step of the way to contact reality, and have that experience, that knowledge of it, that genuine knowledge because you’ve done it. Think of the understanding that comes from that, and the courage it takes–all the attributes of Mother Spirit’s Holy Spirit that you’re exercising.
So I would say: “Carry on.” Carry on, my dear. This is really great. This is what gives Mother Spirit and I such joy, that you’ve grasped the principle of my Spirit of Truth and oriented yourself to that which is ever, ever greater than you. Mother Spirit sends her love and I bid you be in my peace. Were there any other questions or comments this evening?
Student: I find my hands un-muting the phone even though my mind didn’t want to do that. Can you hear me? Am I audible?
MICHAEL: : Yes, you are.
Student: Thank you. This is G, and Michael, I thank you for your words and for your attitude, which helps me set my attitude on a firm path forward.
The big transition
Student: I am at this time in my life where I’m facing transition from the finite to the infinite. I’m getting ready. It won’t be long–I mean within a year or two–I suppose that I’ll be leaving this plane. As I review my life, I look back and I see so many things that I did that were so foolish. Yet I really didn’t know they were at the time. I was naïve. And even though they were really stupid things, I can’t be hard on myself. I have to forgive myself, because I didn’t know what I was doing. If I had known what I was doing, I perhaps would have made better choices. I like to think I would have made better choices.
Now I anticipate that when I get to Mansonia, and I look around and encounter people that I’ve known here; and the memories come to me about how it is that I knew that person, and what the relationship is that has lasting value: I may have some embarrassment as to the circumstances by and through which our experiential relationship was manifested. I anticipate feeling a little embarrassed when I get to Mansonia. But I trust that other people will also have a similar chagrin as to how ribald and decadent it was down here. I do know the book mentions that primitive men have always experimented with intoxicants. There were just so many ways I’ve wasted so much valuable time.
That’s all I wanted to say right now.
The transformation by experience
MICHAEL: : Well, my dear, I congratulate you for seeing the whole picture. As you say, you’re an experiential being. That’s your purpose. And, as you say, it’s one thing to have done all kinds of terrible things to yourself, yet, as you’ll find out, it’s even more terrible to have done them to others. Still, to acknowledge that, to be open to that, shows that the experiences were not in vain. Yes, you may be very righteously embarrassed by some of your past shenanigans, right?–especially if you do meet those they were harmful towards.
But you will still have perhaps an even enhanced ability to continue to grow, to continue to be open-minded. For as you are aware of, and accept the totality of your soul and all that’s in it; to continue to be open-minded, and keep learning about all that you’ve done, all that you’ve experienced: this is how experience is not in vain. This is how you have learned. You have transformed yourself.
This is the way to keep learning, because you will keep making mistakes almost forever. You’re a long, long way from a First Stage Spirit. Then you’ve got the whole universe to cross and experience; you’ve got the billion worlds of Havona to cross and experience before you stand in the presence of God…
Student: Right…
MICHAEL: : …and are even then only somewhat perfect. So keep an open mind in your meditations. Give time for your soul to come forth, irrespective of whether it’s good or bad in a sense. Embrace everything. Continue to embrace all that you’ve known, or it will have been in vain.
Student: Yeah.
MICHAEL: : If you feel you have to shut out any of it, that’s where you open up. That’s where you accept the responsibility. All this, my dear, gives you such a deeper understanding and appreciation of others. It’s part of your responsibility, your ability-to-respond to all that you are and all that you’ve learned. Sometimes that means being righteously embarrassed. At that moment, that’s the totality of you summing up that experience and saying, “Yes!–you should be embarrassed!” You know? That was a very embarrassing thing you did.
Student: Yes.
MICHAEL: : But you take it in too, because the experience is part of what you are, and also–who you’ve known. So: carry on. Keep going.
Student: I will. No doubt.
MICHAEL: : Right. And that’s the glory of it all, isn’t it?—“no doubt.” Be in my peace.
Student: Thank you.
No doubt
MICHAEL: : Well, my dear ones, let me amplify that last thing in closing. See if you can feel this idea of not-having-doubt. As I just mentioned to our dear sister, it only comes from having a really open mind towards yourself and all that you’ve done, being fully willing to admit and atone within yourself for all the terrible things you may have done to yourself and to others.
If you can, make amends to yourself and to others. Reach out. That idea of keeping an open mind?–this is what it means to be without doubt. It doesn’t mean you don’t question yourself, or you don’t strive to be open. You make assessments; you don’t fall into the trap of making a simple-minded, blanket judgment that you’re all evil, or all good; or anyone else is. You’re very particular about all your experience, all those individual experiences.
This is what it means by “no doubt.” You don’t doubt yourself. It means you are committed to being here and now one hundred percent, with all your energy, with all your heart, and with all your soul. You try to live the fullest life you can–as I taught tonight–with a deeper appreciation of all that goes into that expression “free will.” It’s all the possibilities, even all the terrible possibilities that are involved in that. But it’s all the glory too, all the wonderful things you’re capable of sharing.
Ponder these things deeply, especially this wonderful thing our sister gave us tonight about oneness, and realizing that oneness has to be all-inclusive. As I pointed out, that’s the difference between simple-mindedness–trying to achieve simplicity just by eliminating everything—and the real, all-inclusive thing. It’s the difference between being some dogmatic, kneejerk/reactionary kind of person, as opposed to your delighting in meeting something different, and taking it into you, and growing.
Keep growing. That’s always the way out. When everything else is balanced and you’re in a quandary, take it all in and trust that something in you will respond, and you will keep growing. Because you have a whole universe–and then some–ahead of you.
Closing
Human life: deliberately planned–in essence
MICHAEL: So be of good cheer, my dear ones. Feel deeply thankful for our Father that human life is deliberately planned to be this way–to be full of challenges and uncertainty, wondering, even confusion at times because you’re over-extended. Then you let it all go, and you rest. You sleep deeply, trusting that he will awaken you again into this life that Mother Spirit and I are so happy to give you. Be thankful for your human parents, your spiritual parents, and our Universal Father. You’re part of a big family.
Delight in that. Help each other. Love each other. Share. There’s so much here, so much in you, so much potential, so much possibility. It’s marvelous. Don’t think that Mother Spirit and I have a complete grasp on it either, any more than you do, in a way–for us. We too have our decisions to make. We too have a greater reality to reach out toward, and embrace. We are as much children of God as you are. This is another oneness that we share.
Mother Spirit sends you her love, and I bid you: be in my peace. Rest in it. Be nourished and refreshed in it. Then step off again. Good night.
