2007-03-19-Our Father & the Supreme
Marin #125
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Our Father & The Supreme
o 1.2 Group: Marin 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: Our Father & The Supreme
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Once again it’s Monday evening and we’ve gathered together to feel your presence and hear your words. You help us confirm for ourselves the reality of spirit, which was mostly imperceptible, only faith and curiosity, before. They still remain, but you reach out to us, and elicit a response in us that acknowledges your truth and wisdom—so you illuminate a part of us too. Thank you. Amen.
MICHAEL: Good evening my children, this is Michael, your spiritual father. And this is Jesus, your dear friend. Tonight I would like to clarify some points I feel have perhaps been misunderstood or a source of confusion in the past. So much of what Mother and I say in these sessions is very limited in a living context. For to exhaustively delineate and rigidly define every term we use would take another Urantia book. I confess it may be a bit tardy for those of you who have followed our lessons for many years now, but I do want to say that I’m addressing you here this evening, and those of you who will read these lessons, pretty much as your conscious selves. I say this because a large part of our lessons have been introducing you to the complexity that you are, and is, for the most part, unconscious. It’s even ironic to the point of pitying the poor ego-maniac who doesn’t realize he is so much more than what he thinks he is.
Lesson
(Conscious and unconscious)
We have addressed the three major aspects of yourself, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual, yet so much of all these three aspects is, moment to moment, unconscious. Obviously you are not consciously keeping your own physical bodies going, digesting your last meal and so forth. Obviously too you are not consciously aware of all the hundreds of thousands of rather detailed memories you have, wrapped up and accessible by way of your comfortable and spontaneous use of language/thought within yourself.
Many of our lessons have been–as you noted in your prayer this evening–trying to help you realize and confirm for yourselves the reality of spirit, and how to go about using your spiritual creativity. In addition we’ve offered the concept of your soul as a living record of your life, produced by both your Father Fragment and your personality’s experience. Being a spiritual construct by the very purest spirit there is, it is so much more enormous than you can yet get a hold of. So I am of necessity addressing mostly your consciousness, your conscious selves, in our get-togethers here.
I welcomed Mother Spirit’s lesson last week where she extended what I taught on effort and effortlessness and commitment. She talked about it from a more objective viewpoint along the time-line of your lives, and how you grow your memories, and soul, and abilities. So keep this in mind as you read and perhaps re-read some of the older lessons. Our purpose is to help you realize, consciously, some of these great truths of your human being, hidden in the very complexity that you are. This may explain some of the paradoxes that arise when you compare what is known and understood by way of these different, but intermingling, human dimensions.
For this too is a way to freedom, a way of knowing what you yourselves are, moment to moment, co-creating of your own experienced reality. You can understand this easily enough in principle, that you yourselves are both recognizing and projecting all the meaning and value you find in the world around you. But the confirmation is in noticing how, as you’ve changed and grown inside, your relationship with the world, especially with the people of the world, has changed in a complementary fashion. Here’s another place you can look for the rewards of your inner growth. Every person you encounter is his or her own walking infinity inside, yet you can only recognize this in others to the degree it is a living reality within yourself.
So with respect to my spiritual reality–right now: is this really happening? How can you tell if it is or not? Now ask yourselves further: are you reaching for concepts, an idea what a Creator Son is, and who I am specifically either as Michael or as Jesus? Or are you reaching for some subtle feeling of my presence, and how my words correspond to something within you? It may be a little of both.
I’m asking you to re-experience once again what we taught about feeling being your most fundamental human reality, moment to moment. If you’ve lived many years now, language and thought have become such unconscious and comfortable tools you may never think to wonder: what is their origin—with me? You might find it interesting to say to yourself some common word like, water. See if you can feel: what is the present reality behind this thought/sound? Or are you reaching for a specific memory, some actual experience of how water felt?
If this is such a subtle and almost ineffable experience about such a simple reality, think about the other more metaphysical, even spiritual concepts you may be using. Language itself, and its use, is such a habit it takes genuine curiosity, even creative imagination, to approach it afresh. You gain such deeper insights as to the origin of what you are thinking, you may begin to realize what you are constantly assuming, what you are constantly creating, yourself, of your inner and outer reality.
This is where a genuine search for truth may lead you. It may not be all that comfortable at times to feel a certain bedrock of usage crumbling beneath you. Indeed, one of the great advantages on that morning when you re-awaken on the Mansion Worlds is to find everything so profoundly changed it offers you the opportunity to begin again. But tonight I would just like to introduce the principle of beginning again, or, if you will, keeping your Beginner’s Mind. First, see the necessity for this, this ever deeper and more continuously conscious fresh perception, and reevaluation, for you all have expressed some discomfort in doing this, in not knowing if you are doing the right thing, or expressing it as, What else might I do to know if I am doing the right thing?
(Living in a state of question and wonder)
Implicit in the discomfort is an assumption that to live in a state of question is somehow erroneous or unnecessary. But I opened with asking you to consider how much of you, in all your aspects, is conscious, and how much is necessarily unconscious. This presupposes levels within you. One solution to the discomfort is to accept the necessity for questioning yourself, giving free rein at times to the wonder of what else you might do, or think, or feel, and do this with your whole heart and soul. Simply get used to it. See it as a genuine, necessary search for truth, to follow the changing reality of yourself and all that out there.
Then take a break from this very thing. Just do your best to relax this kind of striving. Just relax into stillness. Let it all go. Rediscover each time anew your home base in actuality, in completeness, in spirit, right where you join company with Mother Spirit and myself, and most profoundly of all, your very own Father Fragment, your very own presence of God.
Now I’ve just presented these two activities almost as polar opposites, the questioning, and feeling the assurance. Consider that they might be one in God’s will for you. Get beyond the fear that turns the self-questioning and the wondering into doubt. And don’t make the error of trying to relax into the spiritual assurance of stillness by an effort of will. Feel the concentration of your mental facilities, and then the relaxation of them, like your breath as you naturally breathe in and out.
It is very much like your breath, my children. Most of you can recall, from your early stages of meditation, how your noticing your breath changed it, and how this too became a spiritual ability of just watching, just noticing something you could change, yet choose not to, so it might be a discovery. So too this going back and forth between a self-questioning deliberate wondering, and what we might call going beyond yourself to rest in spirit in an experience of ours and our Father’s presence, can become as natural-seeming as your breath.
Pray for guidance. Come visit us and your Father Fragment in stillness. Consider our suggestions, for no one can decide for you what you need to question, or wonder; or anticipate what you may discover. You have to see for yourself. You have to steal out to the periphery of what you know and peek over the edge. The adventure is yours to undertake. So will be the rewards to add to your soul. Wonder about all these many levels in this complex being you are. Marvel that in all three aspects of your being, physical, and mental, and spiritual, you are an infinity to yourself—already. You might as well get used to it: it only gets larger. (Ed: this was said with a great deal of humor)
If you have any questions or comments this evening, let’s expand to encompass them as well.
Dialogue
Student: Father Michael, in the last few days I’ve been thinking about my past life and how many times somebody on your side has saved me from a disaster of some sort–not necessarily physical, but emotional and mental. And it’s an ongoing thing, and I appreciate it very much, now that I begin to recognize how it is. So I thank you very much for your involvement, and all the others’ involvement—the other beings who are involved in my life.
I don’t quite understand the assurance you’re talking about. In the Alcoholics Anonymous program I’m learning to live a life that is better, better ways of doing, better ways of more honestly living life. But it gets very uncomfortable at times because I begin to recognize how wrong I’ve been in so many things, how off-base. Some of it was just simply evolutionary–that small stuff I learned when I was a kid; and I learned more about it when I was grown up. Some of it was plain wrong and it’s very uncomfortable, as you say. I don’t understand where the assurance comes from.
(Your relationship with the past)
MICHAEL: Yes, my son, and yet you called it. One of the basic tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous is to recognize and acknowledge there is a power greater than yourself, and this is no less than your introduction to the spiritual community. I congratulate you on recognizing the source of what you call these saving graces, and how you can feel they have helped you from time to time.
There’s a hard saying of, let the past bury the past; but you can interpret it simply, let the past be the past. We’ve suggested reliving moments of the past as purely as you can. Open a little door to your soul in your stillness, and relive those moments in all the infinite fullness they had at the time: what did you see; what did you hear; what did you do; what did that time feel like? Because as you do this extra-consciously, my son, you experience a strange catharsis when you return to the present moment. This is the enormous power of understanding because you can now make sense of what might have been senseless, or misunderstood, or simply something that continually abrades your nerves because it’s not yet been re-experienced as past.
Understanding is a power. It allows you to keep things in the past where they belong. What I’m pointing at here is a kind of living detachment, not from the past in denial, but with the past. Insofar as you get more and more a sense of your spontaneous living presence and your creative spirit in present time, you are not being conditioned so much by past events. This is the assurance. This is resting right in present accomplishments so past fears or notions of impossibility, mistakes, failures; all these things can be positive lessons in the light of present understanding–and forgiveness.
You may as well use these lessons—you’ve paid for them with your life, with living.
This is the assurance of spirit where, through your understanding, you can use spirit now to gain the initiative, to say ahead of the curve, to begin to express yourself more and more, to wonder more and more: what do I want out of life? What do I want to do? What just naturally turns me on? Perhaps, What is God’s will for me? You are feeling the source of the spiritual community that is helping you. That is the direction in which to open your wonder. Ask of your Father Fragment, what is your will for me? What is the best thing I can do today? Then enter into what we’ve called reality-experiments with a joyful heart. Spirit is the source of the assurance you seek. When you realize it, it is a genuine accomplishment. Does this help you my son?
Student: Indeed it does, Father Michael. I’ve heard you and Mother say the same thing about experiencing the past, and I find myself wanting to do that, but unwilling to look at all the mistakes and failures. It seems that’s all I look at. I can’t seem to balance them out with all the good things, the positive things I’ve done—the happy times. But the assurance you’re talking about–I still don’t quite understand–does give me a context to put all this in. Yeah, maybe I’ll get rid of, get over the negative and start remembering the positive stuff. Thank you. (heavy sigh)
MICHAEL: My son, you’re up against a psychological reality here that your present, living state of mind influences your evaluation of the past. So reread my lesson tonight on accomplishment in the present. Sometimes the only way to avoid thinking of these negative things is to do something now. That requires a great determination. Begin to initiate a new life that can become the basis from which you can realize the good things you’ve done all your life. This is not living in the past, whether success or failure. Live more now; do more now. Does this make sense to you?
Student: Yes, it’s beginning to make a lot more sense than it did when we first started. I’m going to have to read the transcript a few times to get it to sink in and be a part of me.
MICHAEL: What I mean is, initiate those positive things you enjoy before you are driven by all this negativity into a stubborn funk where you refuse to do anything.
Student (laughing): Yes, I’ve done that. Yes, it makes sense now.
MICHAEL: By creating, initiating your day to day life, rather than being driven by the past, you have a real kind of freedom from the past. What you are doing now will be supporting itself, valuable in and of itself, real and good. There is something called achievement, and it has its own great power. You can always rest assured in genuine accomplishment. So yes, by all means reread these, and bring up any questions you may have. (Yes)
There is a enormous amount of inertia you can feel, an overwhelming drag of laziness or uncertainty. (Yes, I’ve done that too…) Look it right in the eye and just step off regardless. I wish you well, my son. Keep feeling for how the spiritual community is supporting you and cheering you on, for this is how you join us.
Student: It would be a pleasure to join you, but I think we have to wait for a while. But I’m willing to wait for it’s worth it.
MICHAEL: What I’m suggesting, my son, is waiting no longer. It’s doing. Alternate these like breathing in and out—the doing and the resting with us. Now just rest in my peace for a while.
Student: I will. Thank you , Father Michael.
MICHAEL: Tomorrow is a new day with new possibilities. Go forward to greet it. Mother Spirit sends her love too.
Student: Thank you, Mother.
Student: Yes, Michael. I don’t think I’m guilty of being lazy; I’m probably at the other extreme. It would be nice to have a break, to just relax and rest. Sometimes I just want to give up, though God won’t let me. But there was that feeling, that I’ve had enough. I’m tired of scanning what’s going on in my mind, and my heart, and in my soul. Last week with Mother Spirit I questioned where I am right now.
I look at myself and I don’t feel happy. I don’t feel that joy you assure me does exist within me. I’ve had glimpses. I’ve felt the experience of it. Maybe I contemplate too much. But I see and feel things so much more acutely now. I see in my day to day life peoples’ frustrations, and sadness, and hardships, just in the people I work for. And I feel for them. And there’s nothing I can do.
Then I read about all the soldiers who have died in this war, in Iraq; and what the soldiers in Israel are doing to the Palestinians. So it’s hard for me to experience joy when all this is going on in the world, and my day to day life. I feel different from those around me. I see things differently. I know there is another way, and I want to communicate that. But I don’t know how. I just want to know what is God’s will for me, because, as I’ve said before, I’m nothing if I can’t share what God has given me to share. I’m tired of uncertainty. (laughs) I’m really tired of that.
(Perceiving a moral dimension in everything)
MICHAEL: My son, I almost hesitate to answer the question implicit in what you are saying for I don’t wish to overly generalize or give too facile a response, but a large part of it is what the Urantia book speaks about as an innate property of your personality, the ability to distinguish right and wrong, to feel an innate moral dimension. This is what you are experiencing ever more acutely—as you say. It becomes: how can you feel a joy of spiritual triumph in the ability to perceive this, yet not be torn apart in uncertainty because things are no longer so black-and-white?
I think you can see from this point of view the necessity of experiencing this moral dimension. For if you want to come up with your own solutions, your own ability to help, then your sense of right and wrong, of what could be better—even while feeling all the pain that is being suffered by your fellows—is a necessary step. So I offer you this realization: that there is a spiritual triumph in your growing ability to exercise your moral discrimination, to perceive and understand ever more fully and broadly what gives rise, and what all though history has given rise, to this conflict, this warfare. For in doing so you will be experiencing internally the complexity involved in these exterior events. Only by doing so can you begin to appreciate what the combatants are faced with even more immediately. How do you end some of these conflicts that have been going on for centuries now and giving meaning to peoples’ lives?
Here there is a fine line between rightfully feeling a kind of spiritual triumph that allows you to rest awhile in that accomplishment, compared to being happily indifferent or callous. Be open to the wondering that keeps you from being self-satisfied. Consider the courage it takes to keep from being simple-mindedly self-satisfied. As I just mentioned to (Name), think of the creativity, the initiation, the doing it takes to follow God’s will, to be more like him in creating a better world.
Student: I guess my sense of frustration is because I do have these understandings, but I don’t know how the parties involved could even conceive of these understandings and allow them to be considered, and implemented—just the basic treatment of human beings. I’ve read about others who have these feelings of empathy, and then go headlong into the fray; but nothing changes—except they become martyrs. The conflict goes on and on.
MICHAEL: Mother Spirit once posed the realization of how much different folks have to settle these things for themselves, for it brings it full circle back to you, being aware of this pain and suffering, and yet meeting your neighbor with good cheer and moral support. This is quite a stretch, not to get depressed or drowned in negativity.
Student: Yes. I don’t want to minimize my own needs, my own sense of value of who I am.
MICHAEL: But to open yourself to the suffering, and still genuinely be there for others, for your family and friends; these are small spiritual triumphs in which you can feel yourself doing good, and have these as bright moments in your soul; and achieve some balance here. This is how you can be effective in changing your sphere of the world. It takes no less than this, person by person, because everyone has their free will to experience, to cultivate, to grow. So welcome, my son, as much as you can, this acuity of perception, this feeling of a moral dimension in everything you see and do. It only seems a heavy burden at first, like any other potential you are beginning to actualize. It is really how you join the spiritual community, how you realize your spiritual nature.
Student: I guess I am opening up and stepping off…(laughs)…to new ways I can be there for others. It doesn’t have to be an intrusive manner. It can be nonverbal as well. I prefer to be inconspicuous.
One of my clients is beginning to experience Alzheimer’s, and I would love to be able to help her. Another has thyroid cancer, and I’d like to offer healing–if I had that capability. All I can do is pray.
(Being a person)
MICHAEL: If you would, first of all and above all, be a person. Be a person to others. This healing contact is most direct and immediate. You are no longer just the worker, or whatever social role you may be playing. To be there for them as a person, an individual with whom they can share their experience of life, perhaps help them escape themselves and their problems for a while and engage in a real spirit-to-spirit, soul-to-soul exchange with another genuine person in their life: this has great meaning, great value.
Student: I really see that. I can offer a different slant on things they may not have thought of.
One last question—I know it’s getting late. I do feel, besides my physical body, I do feel, in a sense, another body beneath the surface of my skin. Also I notice a desire to rest more, to kind-of center my energies on God. So if you have any comments on that, or what we’ve been talking about…
(Spiritual hunger)
MICHAEL: My son, much of what you call your God-self we call your Father Fragment, your Thought Adjuster. Your personality, created by God, seeks this companionship—almost, in a way, knows it. You do have a kind of spiritual hunger for this possibility of joining with your Creator. You’re beginning to feel this. It is the kind of resting assured I spoke of, the deep relaxing into the spiritual presence of your Father Fragment–which is pretty much indistinguishable from Mother Spirit’s and my presence too. In fact you needn’t distinguish them at this stage. Feeling our spirits can come about as an augmentation of a ground of being, a background of pure spirit that you can begin to segregate and recognize as distinct from yourself. This is supremely restful, this constant companionship that is possible to experience. This is what you are feeling toward. We call it going home.
Student (laughing): It feels like that too. It feels really good… when I allow myself to truly rest. Hmmm…
MICHAEL: Well, there’s your joy!
Student (breaking up this time): True! Wow! Thank you for that. (Michael and the other students join in)
MICHAEL: It’s my joy too.
Student: Be in my peace! (and everyone breaks up…)
MICHAEL: Amen! (others: Amen!)
Student: Thank you.
Closing
MICHAEL: What a happy note to end on. I’m almost shy of saying anything else.
(God the Father: the Supreme Being)
One final note though: We do distinguish God the Father and our relationship to him as his children. We are all his sons and daughters, just as you are also mine and Mother Spirit’s: maybe you can think of God as your Grandfather. Yet even when we think of all of God there is, as a single being, we do need to express in the English language the different ways in which he manifests himself to us. If you want a visual image, think of a single pure crystal with seven facets. One of these is God the Father; another is the Supreme Being, that aspect of God that is the soul of the time-and-space creation, the sum total of all the experiences of all the personal beings who have ever been, and continue to be, out here apart from the central creation of Havona.
Your relationship to this aspect of God, to the Supreme Being, is one of doing. And there is no blunting that point, in truth and actuality. Sometimes you must first do in order to feel yourself being. You must accomplish before you can rest. This is another facet of God’s will, even though it might still be a matter of faith for you, my children, to accept, and to embrace, as I said before, as a divine necessity—manifesting his love and wisdom. Be in my peace. Good evening.
