2009-02-02-Love of Spirit
Marin #163
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Love of Spirit
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: Love of Spirit
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Welcome, welcome indeed. Thank you both for being in our lives, inside and right alongside. You are good companions. We especially want to thank you for your last few lessons on what to do in hard times. You point us at that true saving grace in our human reality, the fact we are intrinsically creative by the kind of spiritual beings we are. We are not bound fast by all that has led up to this moment, but we have within us the potential to create something new, and a free will to choose it.
Tonight we pray you help us realize your presence, Mother Spirit, especially with your augmentation of courage. Help us find the courage to be creative. Help us not be overcome by fear when our livelihood is suddenly taken away. This is especially so for those of us who have not only ourselves but many others depending upon us. Help us find the courage to break out of long established and deep ruts of habitual thinking and anxious needs, surrounded as we are by so many mind-numbing advertisements for stuff we can ill afford.
We all personally know how hard it can be to break out of unhealthy habits–what an inner battle this can be. And so we know how difficult it is to suddenly start anew to re-examine and re-evaluate our ways of life. You intimate there are some major changes due in our whole society, so help us create the way forward. If society is none other than every single individual one of us, and we are all part of this situation that got us to here, we each need to be part of the way forward. Thank you for pointing us at our own response-ability, however difficult it may be. Amen.
MICHAEL: Good evening, my children, this is Michael. Just relax and breathe awhile and feel Mother Spirit’s and my presence all around you and deep within you. She is that subtle background of your consciousness, and I am this close and faithful friend right beside you all through your days and all through your nights. I am always here. This is the power of my spirit. This is my glory–that I can be this for my children. My life is in you and you, dear children, are very much in me.
Lesson
Love (The love of spirit)
We have tried in many lessons to tell you what marvelous, marvelous creatures you are, being created by our mutual Father. Mother Spirit and I also have a further glory of directly feeling our Father’s love for all of us. So however lonely you may feel at times, however cut off from your own source of life, just find the courage to slow down, come to a complete stop, and let all those worries and panic subside. Just breathe deeply and feel the energy coursing through your body. Imagine and get a feeling of this life you have being eternal.
Remember and feel all the social steps you have taken with your friends to get to here. Feel with deep faith the very reality your soul, your life captured by a fragment of God himself, of which this present moment will be a small but utterly unbreakable link. The Grand Canyon chasm of the future stretches out before you and at times you are fully aware you are standing on the precipice. But that is your human situation, and in hard times like this you are simply more aware of it, simply more aware of the courage it takes to take the next step, not knowing beforehand all that is implied and what results will happen. You are out here in time and space doing the best you can with your own organic, time-conditioned sense of yourself, on a grand adventure, experimenting to see what works. So feel your inner effort. Feel the life force inside of you reaching for the next moment’s discovery.
There is something positive that you are that is continuing here. This personality that is your essence is indeed like a steel cable tying your moments together, and you can feel this from time to time. Yet you need to remind yourselves that you are not keeping your own heart beating. You have to remind yourself that you possess life. It was given to you along with a universe in which to live it, and it is yours. Your soul is yours too, but you have earned it through living experience.
Politics
As you may have noticed, Mother Spirit and I are very reluctant to give you specific advice on how to live your lives in the political realm. We’ve only given lessons on where your society generally is in its present stage of evolution, and something of where you’ve come from in the past. In addition we’ve repeated that wonderful truth that a hallmark of your hard-earned wisdom is a sense of proportion. Now as you face a number of political points of view as to what to do–what the projected results might be, we can only advise you to be as open-minded as possible. Your democracies depend upon each person to be well informed and, even more basically, interested in what your representatives are doing in your name. And as there has been a large amount of polarization taking place, the only way you can get a comprehensive and highly detailed estimation–even of what is happening, is to be open to the full political spectrum, if you will.
Just as these transmissions are limited by the personalities through which they come, so too the current social and political situation is highly colored by your commentators. It’s up to you to break out of any kind of habitual, knee-jerk reaction and use your own creativity to come up with a holistic view of what is needed. Again I’ll repeat: a democracy is dependent upon a well informed people. Yet when there’s an unconscious identification with a particular, limited point of view, leading to a corruption of truth so deep it is cynically taken for granted as simply the current stage of social/political evolution by both politician and commentator, it is up to you to break out first and demand the most necessary of all ingredients–transparency of and access to facts.
Mother Spirit and I are encouraged that concept is getting a wider usage now. It’s up to you to see it is taken seriously. You must be informed. In this you must demand facts and accept that you yourselves have to sort through all these viewpoints to find the comprehensive truth that I help you realize. My Spirit of Truth is this orientation towards wholeness, towards inclusiveness, towards comprehensiveness. True enough, only God in His absolute omniscience literally is truth. But you can aspire to head in that direction. You can aspire to be inclusive and knowledgeable, conversant with all viewpoints–pro and con. Then hold your representatives responsible, able to respond to you.
We have enjoyed pointing you at one of the most helpful aspects of a genuine, emerging world culture, and that is the kind of free-wheeling mass media coming into existence that is beyond the control of any particular political party, or now even nation/state. We’ve mentioned how wonderful it is that, for almost anywhere on the surface of the planet now, you can fire up your little, portable generator, point your antenna at the sky, and bring in the rest of the world.
Diversity (Cross- and multi-cultural pluralism)
We see as marvelous this growth of cross- and multi-cultural pluralism that allows each individual to reach their full potential of expression and realization. It boils down to the freedom of each living individual, not some abstraction of state or society or religion. Mother Spirit mentioned the ironic challenge of almost too much productivity, misdirected and wasted as it is. We tease you to imagine where to go towards making a true heaven on earth for everyone. For even though you live very economic lives, dependent upon food and shelter and other material things, there is enough for all–more than enough: and there always has been. But insofar as there’s always been a world soul on a spiritual level, it has awaited the present day’s growing physical links of electronics to tie the world together nigh instantaneously, to truly make it one world available to all.
So don’t lose sight of this big picture. This is what is happening on a planetary scale, and your current economic difficulties now being so worldwide are simply pointing out this fact of a unified social world coming into existence. Cultures and sub-cultures that never were in intimate contact are being forced to be so. And it’s wonderful that more and more people now have the means to be open minded, to experience and embrace that which is contrary or contradictory to their own way of life. All these points of view–social and political and religious–are what you have to offer each other. So embrace them with joy. Be tickled that those other folks over there can believe in something seemingly so totally different to what you believe in, and can very articulately express it. So listen. Get to know them. This is your possible personal glory in opening your soul to grow in these challenging circumstances.
Anxiety (Worry)
Contrarily, as Mother Spirit said, a certain kind of meditation–let’s call it worry–can be forced upon you. Accept it as a sign you are a little bit behind the curve. You haven’t been keeping up on your own voluntary and welcomed need for reflection. Accept with deep humility the possible enormity of what you are facing–to catch up to the present moment, to understand what’s happening from so many different points of view. Trust that all this reflection gives you some real ground of understanding insight from which to launch yourself on your own creative, individual path forward, and get ahead of the curve with foresight. Indeed the whole world, my children, is on your shoulders. Because what you know as the world is inextricably partly you. So glory in it. Glory that in this way you are truly made in the image of God. You are a creative being just as is He, creating the world in which you find yourself. It’s just–shall we say–that the proportions (Michael chuckles) are somewhat different. His creativity is absolute and infinite; yours is changeable and finite by comparison to this eternal universe of His in which you find yourself. But still: you are creatively interpreting His universe for yourself.
This is the great truth that also calls forth humility, acknowledging that you yourself are your own good but most limited friend. It suggests prayer. It suggests you open yourself and honestly and sincerely seek our help. Ask your Father: dear God, what do I do next? Help me see what part I am playing in my own life. Help me realize how I am limiting myself. And please, Mother Spirit, help me find the courage to try something new. We are here for you. We always will be. You are our beloved children. Tonight I just wanted to mention one more way along those seemingly hard-edged political, social dimensions you need to be open minded. You are inextricably in this adventure. You are part of the situation. It is possible to enjoy it, even to glory in the fact you were created this way purposely by God, made in His image, given part of His creative power to determine your own lives. We wish you well. We promise to help you feel His love for you pouring down on your heads like a driving rain. So we ask you take time out, from time to time, to feel us. If you will, let your souls stand out bare-headed and get soaked through and through with us and Him. Be in our peace and our love, and feel His gift of life.
If you have any questions or comments this evening, we look forward to them.
Dialogue
Student: Father Michael, thank you for being here with us. I don’t quite know how to ask this question. What does love mean? What does it mean when you say you love us? What does it mean when you say the Heavenly Father loves us?
(Love)
MICHAEL: Yes, my son. Imagine a light so bright and scintillating, sending out so many thousands of piercing little beams, you can’t look directly into it. Then you have some notion of God’s love for you. That bright light–His eternal outpouring of energy–is literally life itself, not only the life He gave you originally–the unique personality you are–but also the life He sustains moment to moment to give you yourself. This beaming of life itself to you, and as you, piercing you–going right through you as you are utterly transparent to Him, actually illuminates you from within. His knowing you, my son, through and through, as He shares your life and weaves your soul: this too is His love.
This soul that you are creating together is a product of love. The fact that He knows you better and can preserve for all eternity His knowledge of your life: this is love. This is His giving, sustaining, connection, and so it is with Mother Spirit and me. This is our power and our glory as your immediate spiritual parents. God loves you directly, and He loves you through us. In this we are just like you, my son. You too feel and experience His love as you radiate it to others. He is the original source that you can choose to be a conduit for, just as Mother Spirit and I are. You can feel this most personally as simply wishing another well. Mother Spirit and I wish you well; we wish the best for you. We wish you to have the most full and original, creative life you possibly can.
This is how love is articulated in feeling a desire for the best, and you can just beam this. You can be a source of this sparkling, scintillating, life-giving power. Just beam it at everyone you meet and be immediately rewarded–with them–with being able to perceive and enjoy their unique being. The light of love has this penetrating/illuminating power to enable you to see better and appreciate the unique personalities and characters you run across. And that, my children, is reward in itself. Since it is such a beamed power that asks nothing but to shine, what it reveals is always sufficient. It’s why love requires nothing. What it illuminates is glorious enough in itself. You can do this. You can decide to do this and reap the reward of beginning to see your fellows as we do. Is this understandable, my son? I can tell, and I reassure you: you’ve known this in varying degrees all your life.
Student: Thank you, Father Michael. I don’t know yet. I still have to make the decision and I’m wondering, how do I go about beaming love at somebody else?
MICHAEL: First of all, when you notice a person, really see them; let them into you. (Michael chuckles) Then with well wishing in your heart you can think the thought: all my love for you. This is the feeling of love–a wanting them to be all they can be, and then letting them be so–for you. It helps you realize all that they already are–their soul-character. If you actually get into some exchange with them, they will immediately feel this intention of yours, whether it registers consciously or not. Yet you might be surprised how responsive they can be to this very indiscriminate (Michael chuckles again) beaming of well-wishing towards them, for you’re consciously determining your own attitude. You’re becoming the cheerful, well-intentioned person you’d like to meet yourself, for love lets you see and register them, and it lets them see and register you. Love is this connection, the Eros that’s been recognized in your philosophies for thousands of years now; the connective force in the universe bringing and holding personal beings together. It’s contra-distinct from Logos, the analytical function; or Thanatos, the principle of death, annihilation, and separation. Love connects. Love enables. Love rewards. The only difficulty in talking about love is that it’s endless. It’s so multi-faceted, so scintillating and sparkling. But is that enough for this evening?
Student, laughing: Yes–it’s a lot deeper than I thought. But it’s one more step toward getting a clear concept of it. Thank you.
Sharing
Closing
MICHAEL: The one English word that most clearly expresses the quality of deity, of the divine nature, is sharing. Ultimately and originally, God chose to share Himself by creating all these others that we are, and that is love. Love is the power of that sharing, that gift of oneself. There is no separation from His side. His love is the power that brought creation into existence, and holds it all together through time, moment by moment. Be in my peace and love.
