2009-05-04-The Great Adventure
Marin #168
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: The Great Adventure
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
Topic: The Great Adventure
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Thank you for these delightful and empowering observations on our human lives. They help us keep our feet on the ground of our physical bodies and our minds, respectful of our physical and mental health, yet also remind us that we are not totally bound by these aspects of our being. We have this other dimension of spirit, the part of us that is creative and personal and gives us our own unique take on ourselves and those around us.
Help us be responsible for our own creations, even though there is no dividing line we have ever found between in here and out there, our own subjective creation and the objective world–even our own bodies. Still, help us be aware of and responsible for what originates within us. Also, help us feel your presence, and the presence of our Father within us. Help us face this enormous vista you’ve laid before us of a whole universe to cross, co-creating our own path every step of the way. Help us face this sometimes difficult adventure that is oncoming without stop. Help us face it with a bright eye and a courageous heart. Thank you. Amen.
MICHAEL: Good evening my loyal children. This is your father, Michael. If you will allow me, I’ll bask in the glow of your enthusiasm for a while. (long pause) Thank you for keeping these fires stoked in your souls, the part you choose to play, not only in coming here these evenings to feel my Spirit of Truth, but also your willingness to follow where it leads on this great adventure you just mentioned.
Lesson
Adventure (The great adventure)
MICHAEL: Mother Spirit and I do know, and I hereby acknowledge, how daunting and dangerous and difficult, if not downright painful to an agonizing point, it can be, and is for some. For this too is part of being human, this great threat that hangs over you in terms of physical pain and suffering, mental anguish and uncertainty. We ask you to keep your own hearts open to those souls about you who are suffering so.
Mother Spirit’s first lesson in this group years ago was to ask this very thing of you: to keep your eyes open for those needful, hungry, lonely souls, those terribly suffering souls that so long to have even some small respite–your paying attention, your giving yourself to them. This is what fills both your souls with genuine sharing of the more terrible fate that does befall some of you.
For here you challenged with the whole notion of fate, of being just a tiny speck in a gigantic universe of forces and powers and personalities still so far beyond your widest and deepest reach. This is truly what you are involved in. It is with no intellectual nonchalance but sincere caring we do point out aspects of reality like the Unqualified Absolute that come across to you as pure chance, those things that happen to you totally beyond your control or possible anticipation. That is the true chasm of the unknown before you at every step and so it does indeed take courage to take those steps knowingly, in a full awareness of your human frailty and limitations.
(The little cloud of human being)
Yet as Mother Spirit said last time, by courageously welcoming the feeling and the knowledge of these intrinsic limitations of being only human, you can also get some awareness, some appreciation, of a transcendent reality, that other encompassing that is not only all-that-out-there–so threatening and terrifying at times–but you yourself, your own spirit and soul. This is how we see you, a self-conscious self walking along in a kind of cloud (Michael chuckles) of that which is also you, and not only unconscious in some Freudian kind of way, perhaps, but super-conscious–your spirit and your soul–your God-given creativity and the story of your life told by a fragment of God. This is the little cloud of you encompassing you that we suggest you relax into–not only because it is the most efficient way to go about your life, being relaxed in a poised kind of way–however paradoxical that sounds–but this is how you are most capable of responding to whatever arises. It’s an everywhere-other and everywhere-inward orientation–letting go, allowing, trusting your self to be responsive.
This is quite literally your best means of planetary survival. But even beyond this, my children, since you will survive whatever befalls you, by having some appreciation of the way God created you for this first phase of your eternal life–surrounded by this little cloud of you–your spirit and your soul–this is how you most adequately fill your soul. By having this most wonderful awareness of what you are inextricably creating each moment, you escape that damning sense of fate, that self-defeating notion that you have no choice whatever, that in some time-transcending way your future life was already laid out and you are just running along some predetermined track.
To turn around and embrace your own physical and mental limitations, to be able to be aware of them, is itself a triumph of spiritual perception. It helps you see others this way and be forgiving of not only your own limitations but theirs as well. It challenges all those superficial, condescending judgments which put you in a box of your own making, the prison of an inflated self. Being aware of the spiritual encompassing that is your own nature leads you to the other great spiritual influences in your life because it is true: spirit can be directly aware of other spirit. You can be aware of the influences–the love and the caring of your Father’s Spirit Fragment, my Spirit of Truth, Mother Spirit’s Mind/Spirit Adjuncts, for you’ll notice that the essence of spirit–living, loving, creative spirit–is what they have in common.
And even though this influence of ours is not intrusive–we value and delight in your free will too much for that–still we invite you to feel us, be aware of us. Take comfort in the absolute security we offer to help you face the uncertainty that is certain to come your way. The adventure gets very rough at times and many go for long periods of time before it makes any sense, before they can rise above their suffering by having some understanding of it. This is what is happening to people even as you sit here, and so to be open to this: the possibility of your own suffering, and the real and actual suffering of others–again another call for humility, for the sheer willingness to be aware of an enormity.
Take time out in your busy lives to get in touch with this encompassing, this surrounding reality that is your higher self, your Father Fragment, Mother Spirit, and me. This is the spiritual reality in which you dwell and it is the most amenable, the most responsive to your will. This is creativity. This is where you start things all your own, and here, in this increasing awareness of your encompassing, is where you learn to take responsibility for what you are continuously, inextricably creating. Yes, there is no final dividing line between in here and out there, even between you and me. Still in all you are a discrete creation of our Father’s, and one of Mother Spirit’s and my beloved children. We invite you to, over and over again, embrace all that you already are and have been as just one more step along the path of what you are becoming.
If you have any questions or comments this evening, let’s see where they come from.
Dialogue
Student: Thank you for all your love and support, Father Michael. I do have a question. I’m wondering what the heart area has to do with spirituality and emotions–other than just pumping blood around the body.
Heart (The human heart)
MICHAEL: Yes, my son, you put your finger right on another aspect of your creativity–(Michael chuckles)–because it’s largely what meaning and value you give it. If you study the history of your peoples across a variety of cultures and times, you find the heart has been given many, many significant meanings and values, mainly because it’s at once obvious, yet as mysterious and ungraspable as life itself. In other words, by the time you learn those yoga techniques whereby you can control your heartbeat, you find you are in quite another realm of mind altogether, where suddenly your heart can seem to subsume or expand to all of space: and the universe has a heartbeat. You feel you are literally becoming your heart; still–it is beating of itself. That’s–(Michael chuckles)–about all you can know at any one moment: it just keeps beating. You can see how all your feelings of power, of life itself, and what we call spirit, are so intimately associated in such a living being as yourself. Tuning in to your heartbeat can be a way to this higher consciousness I just mentioned.
Think of how your heartbeat, so usually beyond your control, is contra-distinct from your breathing–which is fully within your control–at least to the edge of unconsciousness. It’s so much easier to experience your heart beating as life itself than it is to experience your body breathing all by itself–which it does. You can, in this sense, interfere with your unconscious breathing, and usually do as you become aware of it. Just observing your breath without affecting it is a learned ability. So while your breath is truly a taking in of the stuff of life, just because you can affect it gives a greater power to the heart in some peoples’ feeling of spiritual meaning and value.
Ultimately, my son, it comes down to just experiencing your own heartbeat, and touching your own living nature beyond any notions of what it is. It’s just this next beat, and the next. What that can mean to you is without limit. So keep coming back to the real thing, and wondering all that it might be, and let the living part of you be the answer.
Student: Thank you, Father Michael. I’ll have to look into this quite a bit more. I don’t altogether understand what you said.
MICHAEL: Just feel your own heart, my son. Feel it, be aware of it, wonder about it and the power of life it continues to give you. That experience is the answer to your question of what it is.
Student: Is there a special center in the heart area? Is there an emotional seat for us in the heart area, as a heart center?
MICHAEL: It’s all of these, my son, right within a real emotional experience of it. But your experience of it can be greater than any of these–I would say–secondary evaluations and interpretations.
Student: So there’s more to it than I thought.
MICHAEL: Indeed! (much laughter) It keeps you coming back to it.
Student: Thank you, Father Michael, for another wonderful lesson.
MICHAEL: You’re welcome, my son. The only way I could answer your question was by handing you an even greater mystery. But this mystery is one you can literally reach out and touch. Be in my peace.
Student: Hello, Michael, I wanted to ask you about self-healing. I’m working with a doctor who has a medical instrument that shots photons into injured tissue and heals it. It seems to work very well, but one time when he forgot to turn on the machine, and then experimented with that, there was also healing–maybe some kind of placebo effect. Can you comment on these phenomena of people completely healing cancer, heart disease–etc.–through the mind and belief? How can that be explained? Was that what your miracles of healing were?
Healing (Self healing)
MICHAEL: My son, the critical word here is belief. This is the power of belief in both health and illness. You are discovering another–shall we say–absence of a dividing line between body and mind; and beyond this, body, mind, and spirit–spirit value. What you believe and value are also organically reflected. Everyone is very familiar from all your scrapes and bruises of childhood–if nothing more recent–of how the body heals itself on an animal level. But with the human personality and spirit in the mix, with this intrinsic creativity in the way you are perceiving and interpreting yourself and the rest of reality, your beliefs in what causes what come into play and can be self-fulfilling for both health and illness.
You’re alluding to a mysterious causality here–
Student: Yes.
MICHAEL: …what causes certain injuries and illnesses to be healed. On a very mundane level, simply understanding and removing the causes of illness through spiritual insight–say the giving up of unhealthy habits that continue irritating your poor tissues–can be sufficient. On a broader spiritual level, by believing in a certain healing process with all your heart and soul, you are invoking some deeper, more profoundly creative causes to come into play. This kind of total belief of your whole being is often efficacious in getting well. As you said, there is no limit to what has already been scientifically demonstrated to be helpful in reducing the most malignant and wide-spread cancers.
This power of believe has some folks dying of, say, an infected hangnail–(much laughter)–while many have survived on the fields of battle the most grievous wounds, just by their inexplicable will to live. The power of belief is part of that encompassing I talked about this evening, for you all do walk around in a cloud of beliefs as well–those things you are acting upon still shy of proven fact within yourself, or which may no longer be true.
My own miracles of healing were different. They were a result of the power I had upon becoming conscious of my pre-human existence and powers. As you were informed in your Urantia book, once I became conscious of not only who, but what I was–even while still being human–these powers were such I could not dispense with them. I had to be highly conscious of them, least I might use them inadvertently, which actually happened, turning water into wine. From then on they were–with my Father’s approval–deliberate.
No, the type of healing you are talking about, my son, lies in that transcendent realm that is greater than any only partial and ever changing state of conscious. It signifies a unity of the whole being determined to heal itself, and encompasses all of body, mind, spirit, and soul. Does that at least help explicate some of these mysterious happenings?
Student: Yes, it does. It’s a new angle on a great scene. I thank you very much, Michael, for clarifying that.
MICHAEL: As I mentioned this evening, it helps to be not only aware of what you are continuously co-creating–how you are interpreting reality, even your own body–but also how you are, as just-beginning human beings, in possession of powerful beliefs both conscious and unconscious. So keep exploring. This is definitely the next phase for humanity to enter, understanding how these realms of what you believe influence your body/mind. And be in my peace.
Student, with much hesitation, feeling her way along: Good evening, Michael. Talking about beliefs and how we are all so conditioned by the culture we’re in and the upbringing we’ve had; we carry around in that little cloud so many beliefs that are taken for granted? Yet you’ve taught us to drop into our stillness and the awareness of our bodies and our minds, and the whole spiritual realm around us. The awareness of all of that, in the quietness there, opens up to something new that comes to us? We’re able to perceive something which we haven’t been aware of before? Then in confronting that new reality, we can choose differently? We can exercise our will in a new and creative way? That internal experience of reality is where it’s really at–is what you‘re saying?
(Everyone broke up laughing, including Michael–maybe the plaintive note in the air?)
Stillness, Free will (Stillness and freedom of will)
MICHAEL: My daughter, I could hardly put it any better! That’s a wonderful summation of what Mother Spirit and I have been talking about for many years now. Lately we’ve been teaching that your totality is a transcendent reality to your conscious self, so I hope it doesn’t get you to feeling too schizophrenic, like there’s a big crowd in here. But in a way this is a truth of your highly complex being. Angels and others without a material body don’t have such a problematic approach to themselves. You have a you that is always greater than the momentary you, you can be aware of. You are very correct: in taking the time and stillness to feel this, experiencing this, is different than going on another ego trip. It’s actually quite humbling insofar as this–you–is ungraspable.
It’s for this very reason we suggest that, when you are in the midst of this awareness–usually in meditation, but sometimes spontaneously–you don’t overly-try to get a hold on it in terms of your previous philosophy; don’t worry about loosing it the way wisdom seems to come and go. The ineffable quality of transcendence will seem to fly away the moment you try to capture it. This is the allowing, the letting these moments be, a getting over the fear you may loose the moment forever. Have the courage to let even this go as you go back into activity that requires its own intense focusing and concentration on one tiny little thing to the exclusion of all this transcendent encompassing. So be not afraid you’re going to loose this, but merrily let it go.
Student: So sometimes the experience of the ineffable, and the experience of being a physical/material creature, is part of experiencing being peculiarly human.
MICHAEL: Not exactly. Personal beings of all orders do have somewhat the same situation insofar as personality itself is transcendent to its own self-awareness. Personal beings experience themselves, however changing or continuous, still and always in an eternal now. The fact of their personalities being created by God keeps some part ever elusive. This very elusiveness is, in part, their not-yet-actuated potential that has no limit in duration or extent. We don’t know–directly–whether our Father experiences Himself this way, but we do know for certain He experiences all of us as we experience ourselves–this way. How we experience ourselves is absolutely real in His sight. It’s the difference between His absolute and infinite existential being and our experiential being. He is both in omniscience.
Student, after a long pause: Thank you. (more laughter)
MICHAEL: At first these wonderful moments seem to be torn from you–you’re hanging on to their reassuring beauty so desperately; and then woefully sad it seems to have gone. You really have to let go in the trust you will pop up again, like this, to yourself, not only once, but over and over again, until that deeper continuity of your growing soul, that inexpressible spiritual security in the face of uncertainty, begins to reassure you–you are!–even if you are far beyond your own grasp. You are in His hands. That is the ultimate security you will keep rediscovering, over and over again, for each moment’s discovery has to be let go for the next. That’s the reality of the adventure. You loose yourself: you reappear by His will. It’s happening all the time. If you can be still you can experience this. Here too you find my peace.
Student: Yes, Michael. The thought keeps coming into my head that there’s a thin line between sanity and insanity. Sometimes I don’t know which I’m in. It’s opening up to another way of perceiving reality. This last week I had several experiences where my anxiety and sense of fear were really heightened and a whole story went off in my head. It’s hard to get out of. But as I went into quiet and stillness, just watching this fear and anxiety, I remembered there was that other door I could open. I have a choice of which to be: sane or insane; how I want to live. But why the fears? In God’s vision there’s nothing to fear or be anxious about. But all the beliefs I’ve been programmed into believing… In reality there’s so much of our belief system that is really insane, not based on anything real. It’s just perpetuating stuff from centuries ago.
So I’ve been feeling kind-of open in how I react to certain things–opening the door to a different way of perceiving things. It’s unsettling because, as you talked about, it’s feeling the uncertainty too. But I sense the rewards can be so overwhelming. The visions–I hold onto tenaciously. I’m on that thin line seeing what is real, what is idolatry. Sometimes I’m too serious!–(laughing)–like I want to enjoy life. You know. Thank God for stillness; and my little granddaughter.
(Sanity and insanity)
MICHAEL: Yes, my son. Well, you covered quite a lot of ground there. (much giggling) There is a perpetuation of understandings of reality–real at the time, but persisting long after the situations which gave them rise; no longer valid. The human situation itself is changing and evolving, enormously so in the last few centuries with your discovery of new energies and how to harness them–a term from horse technology.
But there need be no doubt in your mind, my son, between sanity and insanity. Insanity is just intense suffering that is made all the more terrifying and painful by being highly conscious. A person in such a state of mind, feeling, and perception is literally screaming inside in response to such pain and ugliness, the lack of meaning and value. There’s no such thing as happy insanity. It’s the difference in being a little crazy in any number of harmless ways; and an unavoidable, terrifying suffering–the meaninglessness, the ugliness–even to the point there seems to be some other-than-self diabolical intent that is making things so beyond ones own doing. So let there be no question in your mind about that.
You have good insight that some of the more socially-shared forms of what seems insane are indeed the cause of much suffering in the world. They are persisting phases of cultures and civilizations the human race has had to work its way up through. Yet because of your recent technology, certain self-defeating forms of near-insanity, like nationalism and racism superseding common humanity, led to a world war and the death of tens of millions in a few short years. You are correct that these forms of near-insanity, mostly only half-conscious arrogance and hubris, have caused so much suffering.
(How each time sees itself)
Where you make a mistake, perhaps, is in not fully accrediting how these phases were as real to the people in their time as your world is to you now. And how will these times of yours appear to those only a few centuries hence? You remember the lesson I gave once on how even a so-called illusion has a certain reality we have to give it insofar as it affects real, living people? Every age has its realities which future folks will determine were illusions. It’s a part of evolution and insight. Their insane-seeming ways were not always so to them.
Mother Spirit and I prefer to think about it, and mention from time to time, that to us everything is real, even this unique moment’s worldly suffering you call insanity some would sell their souls to escape, yet may have to await the release of death to start again. So be careful of nonchalantly assigning the state of illusion to this very real suffering that people get caught up in, in their beliefs, in their own warped creativity.
Student: I think that’s what I was trying to understand: what is illusion in my life, and what is real. What’s clouding my sense of who I truly am? That’s the challenge, and that’s what stillness is for.
It sheds light upon itself.
MICHAEL: Exactly, my son. This is how you break your identification with an illusion–in your case, what you’re earlier and quicker recognizing is a hold-over story–as you call it. Illusion is a value-leaning judgment you put on someone else’s reality, or one you yourself have seen through. For you, an illusion–recognized as such–is of the past. It’s no longer real in the moment now; your reality has changed.
Meanwhile, you may well ponder if what is real to you now you may assign the status of illusion sometime in the future. (Yes) But in doing so, my son, you cannot really second-guess yourself in the present. (much laughter) You cannot literally stand in the future and look back at yourself. You can only approach with humility all you consider real.
Student: Right!–very cool.
MICHAEL: All perception is a matter of contrast. Concepts you have; you are more than they in the sense of capturing them in understanding thoughts. You have them; you can never be certain quite yet what beliefs may have you, and what power they have. Meditation is one good way of breaking these identifications so you begin to have them as possessions; they no longer have you. It’s a progressive spiritual evolution of wisdom.
Student: Well–thank you.
Joy (Be of good cheer)
MICHAEL: It’s all part of that tricky dimension of time. It’s why we gave a whole lesson on what is real but not yet actual–potential–and how it grows with you. Your future expands.
So be of good cheer, my children. This very puzzling, ungraspable, transcendent and encompassing reality is actually partly you. The realization can be very liberating. It’s also a gift to all those about you when you try to take response-ability for this which is, in this sense, not yet part of your conscious control. This indeed leads to a highly sensitive humility. It’s a nice ego trim, if you will. The reward is the continuous discovery that you are more than what you‘ve yet experienced you are. This is what Mother Spirit and I are able to perceive. It becomes part of our revelation. We thank you for thanking us for these…observations–(Michael laughs)–on your human nature. Go forward in my peace.
