2014-04-17-Life Itself
Lightline #439
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
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Life Itself
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Prayer: Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, we thank you for being such a part of our lives. You and our Father–our mutual Father as you have taught us–the three of you are a spiritual presence within our minds, both in orientation and then too a way to keep growing. As you’ve taught so many times, this is the one way out because everything that exists, moment to moment, is a resolution of many forces–physical, mental, and spiritual. Sometimes we come to a very human impasse are not quite sure how to decide because things seem to be too much in equilibrium. Then it is your own orientation towards a greater reality–your Spirit of Truth—that shows us truth is an encompassing. It is always the greater reality that contains us. This should be our orientation, simply: all of the above. We take everything in and sometimes have to sleep on it to let things settle out all by themselves.
So if we stay in touch with our soul–this God co-authored epiphany of our life–and add to it: this is how. In a way, things do sort themselves out in the light of the wisdom we have gained from all we have done, all we have experienced, all the dear folks we have known and shared so much with, and are so much a part of our soul. Thank you for your constant reminder to be unafraid and open ourselves to at least accept all that comes to us, trusting that we do have the free will and the ability to sort it out. We can also come out with a greater understanding for all that you do for us right within us. We thank you. Amen.
Lesson
MICHAEL: Good evening, this is Michael. Mother Spirit and I are both right here within you, and we too join you in thanking our Father for his creation that holds us, surrounds us, and sustains us. Think of that simple-seeming word “life” and all that it means, how it is so synonymous with spirit, and how personality is always associated with some form of life.
Life Itself
Life Itself then becomes our encompassing, our surrounding. This aspect of the whole universe comes from God’s point of view if we remember that God also creates all the physical matter and energy manifestations of reality. So there is a sense, and not just among primitive folks but also among the most sophisticated, that we are living in a living universe.
God is omnipresent and omniscient, so space, and especially our own personal space within and surrounding us, is alive. Everything is in motion. Yet I say there is still a contra-distinction within the whole energetic universe. It’s the primal division between the personal and the impersonal—all this impersonal stuff in such energetic configurations, violently moving all around us in the conflagrations that give rise to millions of stars. This is why personality is such a counter-distinction; a God-created reality that does not in itself change.
It is almost as if we personal beings are not quite in the time and space that surrounds us. Yet everything within time and space, especially for you folks with your living human bodies of matter and energy, is all you know. It is all you have experienced. We tease you with the notion you can’t literally pick yourself up by your own bootstraps and know yourselves outside of time and space. Your personality is like that wonderful oriental expression of an eye that sees, but cannot see itself.
And so of necessity–especially of social necessity, your relationship with other folks–you are capable of creating for yourselves an ongoing, continuous, and rather tenacious version of who and what you are.
Your psychologists call this ego, this continuing “being” you experience as yourself. You have all the ways in which this is more–or less–similar to how other folks experience you. We gave a lesson one time comparing your ego to your bathroom mirror. It’s a useful reflection of yourself, but only a reflection. It is only a living three-dimensional one of sight, whereas your personality enjoys many more dimensions of reality that are not visible.
In spite of all this, we do from time to time remind you that you are a personality, a unique being, and that very uniqueness can be a trial. Yet it is more or less a trial that is universal. Folks from time to time, in getting a more true feeling and experience of the kind of being they are, do constantly trip and fall, or run into a solid wall of projection they don’t quite realize had its own origin right within them.
Overcoming prejudice
These are some of the worse ways by which people see each other, what you call racism, or sexism, or ageism. This pre-judging, these prejudices are personal interpretations projected out, so folks literally experience their prejudices as being real, out there in time and space and other people.
Many of the religious practices almost universal on earth are to lead their students into a whole series of traditional stumbling blocks and solid walls, so they themselves can personally experience the limits of their own projections. Because without their personality recognizing the origin of these projections and then taking responsibility for them–being able to respond to other folks right through, or in spite of, all the prejudices in which they are raised; without this understanding of projection and how they encounter their own values, there is no end to the enmity and warfare between folks. It is only ended by their fully appreciating their own uniqueness of how they are like no other, and facing up to this, and taking responsibility for their very uniqueness and what originates within them. These become the profound spiritual experiences of their lives.
There is a very subtle corner you turn. You do get this ability to withdraw your projections. Your deep meditation is as if the whole world goes away and here you are alone and unique with only God for company. But then with this company you realize your completeness–not your perfection; that is still a long, long way off–but your completeness moment by moment. You realize the universe—you and everything else–is not going anywhere in spite of all this, at times, even violent motion. You and everyone you meet are constantly arriving moment-by-moment–all of reality–because it is, ultimately, God’s creation.
It is all complete. There is nothing missing, except that it is almost impossible for you to simultaneously grasp the fact that it is also all in motion; and it is growing. I know this is something that, in terms of a strict time-and-space which your scientists try to trace back to a single Big Bang, this doesn’t make sense. Something is complete and yet growing?
But this, my dears, is just another function of Life is it not? The Supreme Being, the aspect of God out here in time and space, is growing. There are spiritual beings creating matter and energy out in open space. There are trillions and trillions of new personalities being created across all of the different orders of personal beings.
This is what you are involved in. This is part of the living encompassing that surrounds and holds you, this universal growth. So in your meditations, when you can fearlessly let everything else go, you find you too still have a growing soul of your experience. Your soul is growing else you would cease to exist. Your soul, the epiphany of your whole life, is like all of creation, growing, growing in experience.
Accepting your uniqueness
So be of good cheer. Accept the almost ungraspable uniqueness of who and what you are. Come to terms with it. Grow to accept it. It is not a fearful thing but the most wonderful gift of all, that everyone you meet is also unique and not threatening particularly but here, here with you for company.
As I have taught before, then your soul is not some wasteland of just me-me-me. It contains all the other equally ungraspable personalities you have known, and you have shared so much with. You suddenly find that in being unique, and accepting this in all those you meet, your whole world opens up. Other people open up because you are opening up. Allow this uniqueness, this gift you have for others. Be yourself, as you say, “right up front.” Then what a lively exchange ensues!
This is the essence of love is it not? This is the essence of God’s nature, of sharing. We thank you, Father, for coming up with this whole idea in the first place, then creating all of our personalities so we have this enormous encompassing of each other. If you have any questions or comments this evening, I certainly enjoy them and I hope you do too.
Dialogue
Student: I have a question concerning some better understanding about the Magisterial Mission. My question is, Michael: what are your ideas about the reality of the Magisterial Mission? Is it going to happen or not?
The Magisterial Mission
MICHAEL: Yes, my dear, the Magisterial Mission as you make reference to has been in operation many years. Monjoronson is here, only not physically yet. You might say the conditions are not quite right yet for his appearing as a physical human being like yourselves, or very much like Machiventa Melchizedek did years and years ago.
The Magisterial Mission of mercy is definitely on its way in response to the greater spiritual community’s understanding of the situation that Urantia is in. I think if you follow our lessons, you know how unique Urantia is, not only as one of the planets that went into rebellion, but also as the planet on which I had my human life.
The amount of suffering on this planet is truly incomprehensible from a human standpoint. It is only comprehensible from a higher spiritual being’s standpoint such as Mother Spirit’s, my self’s, and our Father’s, who can feel and experience the amount of suffering, insofar as your planetary history is so fraught with the effects of the Lucifer Rebellion. This is so pervasive in all your cultures. This is why the Magisterial Mission is here. This is why it took a being of this sort to come and help change things around.
Human love and sharing
MICHAEL: Yet the situation is also like the 200% of reality that we talk about from time to time. In spite of all that I said, in spite of the fact that Urantia has deviated so much from a standard, almost universal way of planetary development, the other thing that is hard and almost impossible for you to realize is: the amount of love and genuine sharing of life between the individuals on this benighted planet. This human love so totally outweighs all the anger and strife, even the warfare or things like the day-to-day petty tyranny of some fathers and mothers in their families.
This is so totally outweighed by all the love, understanding, and sharing agreement. This is something we teach on so much, yet it isn’t until a person becomes loving, and sharing, and understanding themselves that, because of the psychological function of projection I talked about tonight, they cannot see this. If they are locked into a certain cynical way of seeing and understanding things, then their misunderstanding will be self-validating.
But by being open to change, and being open to growing within yourself, you begin to see this enormous preponderance of love and sharing that I mention. So keep in mind that the Magisterial Mission is like the frosting on the cake. The cake itself is the inexorable planetary evolution. But just as you parents, in loving your children, do your best to keep them from truly or permanently injuring themselves, so too the Magisterial Mission is to speed up the process, to help humanity as a whole move forward, to accelerate this Spiritual Renaissance that is taking place.
The Magisterial Mission is very much in action right now, and is influencing peoples all over the world totally irrespective of their particular religion or belief system. This is the Spiritual Renaissance that is happening. Does this begin to answer your question?
Student: Yes, thank you very much.
MICHAEL: : We know it is hard to see. Truly, in some people’s minds Mother Spirit and I are judged as Pollyanna. They think your Creator Son and Creator Daughter are wearing rose-colored glasses and we can’t see all the pain and suffering. It is just that we see the love and the sharing to be so enormously greater. Most of the lives on this planet are unselfish and un-self-centered, truly spiritual in the divine sense of sharing. But it is impossible to evaluate them unless you consider what their souls contain: all those other personalities, all those other folks that they have loved. So be in my peace.
Student #2: Are you still there?
MICHAEL: : Yes, I am here.
Student #2: OK, I wasn’t getting anything.
MICHAEL: : Sometimes there is such a wonderful stillness that we share together in these Lightline teleconferences, folks are simply reluctant to disturb the peace. Go ahead.
Student #2: Do we still have Michael?
MICHAEL: : This is Michael speaking.
Student #2: Thank you. Recently in my Beit Midrash class here in Santa Fe, at temple Beth Shalom, we had Walter Brueggemann visit–the wonderful, wonderful theologian on the Old Testament. He wrote a wonderful new book called Sabbath as Resistance to bring back that day of rest; and it is wonderful. We’ve had lots of discussions.
It seems we are all awash in grief for the world, for our fellow human beings who are suffering so much: and we feel so helpless. It wasn’t so bad when we didn’t know about them, but now we know what is going on. Like you say, on the one hand we are sort-of like Pollyanna in that it is all going to be OK: trust in God and send your good vibes and love. Yet on the other hand we sit here hearing day after day about horrible things happening to people, even in our immediate surroundings. So we are a little impatient, I think.
Weighing suffering and sharing
MICHAEL: : Well, my dear, keep in mind that your nightly news tends toward the melodramatic and the tragic for the very reason that there is a certain permanence about them. When someone is killed or terribly injured we have to acknowledge that this is fraught with meaning and value just because it is so permanent. Things like the love and sharing that I talked on this evening: these are transient. They come and go. The fact that they keep coming is the miracle here. But now no one is satisfied anymore in terms of the news saying, “And so they lived happily ever after.” You have to keep in mind that the world does hang together by the fact that people can have full lives, sharing so much with each other.
Sometimes the most raggedly poor individual with a tiny morsel of food to eat can break that morsel into pieces to feed their children and go without themselves. Even in the height of the most ferocious battle, and even with all your modern warfare, consider the amount of courage, faith, and love that can tie individual soldiers to their friends – even while they are doing the most terrible things to others.
Spirit restoration
See this wholeness of the human situation. This is the rest you need to take, and not only in your unconsciousness during sleep when your body rests and all your biological functions are able to renew you. Your spirit needs the rest of full consciousness, just like your body needs all of its activity. As all your joints need to keep their full range of motion, and all your muscles need to work to constantly renew themselves, so your spirit needs to rest and be renewed in full consciousness.
Your personality needs to not only experience the restoration of body and mind in physical sleep, but your mind needs to relax in meditation so your soul–the epiphany of your life like a running sum total of your existence–can come forth. We refer to your soul often as a home base. You do have this home base if you can reach it. It is both a creation of yours, and yet too it is allowing a discovery of something that has a pre-existence because it is co-authored by God. This is what rests and renews your spirit, your creative spirit.
Student #2: I have taken to renewing my Sabbath too.
MICHAEL: : What are you calling your Sabbath?
Student #2: Well, in my case it would have to be a Sunday because that is the day I can take as a day of rest, a day of not doing and all that stuff.
MICHAEL: : This is why stillness gets its name, because it is a relaxing and a not-doing.
There are dozens and dozens of different kinds of meditation, and each one has a certain ideal that it helps you strive towards, a certain purpose for it and, hopefully, a certain result. We recommend a kind of pure stillness of: just to sit there. Simply sit and, as everything comes up, look at it and let it go. Rather than put yourself on another program: just be.
The challenge of stillness
MICHAEL: For a lot of folks that is the most difficult thing because within moments they are bored to death. They are so used to being entertained by something other than themselves. They don’t yet know they have a creative spiritual capacity to let their soul come forth, and feel this deep home base of the completeness I talked about. But this stillness is what rests the soul, what rests the spirit, and renews you. This can be done. This Sabbath is something you can do every morning. We recommend it as soon as you get up and move around a bit, bestir yourselves.
Student #2: Actually I do. That is when I do my things in the morning.
MICHAEL: : This practice of stillness is not doing anything but sitting there as highly consciously as you can, and not at all holding your mind blank. Whatever comes up or wants to come up: let it. It is where your personality is being open and as non-judgmental as possible.
Rather than put yourself on another program, another kind of meditation, this is just being still. Then all through the day you can have many little mini-meditations for five minutes or so. Sit down, take a deep rest, and say, “Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.”–that is Mother Spirit and me; “What have you got?” Or even, “Hello, God. What have you got for me? What is this I’m feeling here?” All through the day do these mini-meditations. So many folks do them half unconsciously when they are stumped and need to stop and think. They stop a while to let something come up; or they sleep on it. These are all meditations that a lot of folks do naturally without even consciously considering them to be so.
Student #2: Thank you.
MICHAEL: : Keep up your Sabbath in all of its forms. Be in my Peace.
Student #3: I think we just need to know that there will be an end to this suffering that we see going on, that people will become more enlightened and feel more love toward each other. There will be less violence. We just keep hoping still to keep seeing more good signs.
The necessity for creativity
MICHAEL: : This is why it takes creativity, does it not? You have continuity. Some of the hatred and viciousness of different nation/states, different peoples, different cultures, goes back hundreds if not thousands of years. So you have this continuity, you have this completeness moment to moment. You have what is continuing on its own in a kind of knee-jerk, unconscious, reactionary sense. This is why it takes genuine creative spirit to break out of that, to come up with something new.
Consider some racist who sees the race of another person as overwhelming every other aspect of them–whether they are a man or woman, whether they are beautiful or plain, everything about them: how they are dressed, what their behavior is. For a person like this who sees only another’s race, they don’t realize that they themselves are impoverished of all the other 99% of that person’s being, and personality, and soul. So yes, for these poor impoverished souls who are so desperately clinging to their prejudices, the only way out is creativity, is for them to open themselves creatively.
They need to open themselves to the creative spirit that unites and informs and illuminates. It is how to bring something new into time and space, and it is inexorable. It does happen eventually to each single one of you, as well as with Mother Spirit and myself. This has to be your orientation towards ever greater life and ever greater acceptance of all that God creates for all of us.
Student #3: So it is up to us.
Free will and responsibility
MICHAEL: : Always. This is your free will, your responsibility, your ability to respond purely from the standpoint of your personality in all the other aspects of you, for it is your body and your mind that connect you with the whole physical, energetic world around you. It’s your personality being able to respond to what your body and your mind are presenting you with, and then too to the whole world they connect you with. It’s even your soul, this God co-authored story of your life: to respond to it. Consider to be able to respond an ability –something you do and can grow: abilities–soul abilities. This is where your personality, though it is unchanging, does have this accumulating–hopefully accumulating–possession of a soul of all you have experienced, all you have learned and have come to understand; all you’ve shared.
Closing
My dear children, let me bring this particular meeting to a close, hopefully a close that is just a temporary adjournment until we meet again…
Student #3: Within…
MICHAEL: : Yes. This can be right within you where we are, and where you are as well, this innermost home base of spirit, this completeness moment to moment, that is yet still in motion, still a kind of soulful super-addition to all that has been. Everything–all the billions of years that have brought the universe to its present moment–all of that is in the memory of God, the Supreme Being of which you too are a part. You too have a facet of this within yourself. You too have your own supreme being that is growing with all your experience.
Keep experiencing
So keep experiencing. This is the one thing demanded of you for it is the greatest failing of so many folks, to get so habituated that every evening, for year after year, is for them exactly the same as all the ones that went before it. It is their terrible, tragic lack of creative spirit. Sometimes it is a kind of exhaustion due to the way they were raised, and in the whole culture surrounding them. They cannot experience any more, and have to await their re-birth on the mansion worlds to start again.
Universal uniqueness
Keep your beginner’s mind. Tune in to that part of reality that is not repeating itself. It is complete and yet different each moment. You can see that, and feel that, and not be afraid of it–that everything except you is changing. Then you will have welcomed the adventure that God puts before you. You will trust that this very human nature of yours is an intentional thing of his. These personalities you have are so unique, yet that uniqueness is universal. Enough of paradoxes; actually not paradoxes, but they are complex truths. Enough for one evening. Be in my peace, dear ones.
Student #3: Thank you so much.
