2010-03-22-Seasons of Living
Marin #186
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Seasons of Living
2Group: Marin TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Michael
2TR: JL
3Session
1Opening
1.1Adventure, Uncertainty
1.2Health, Habit
1.3Truth, Faith
1.4Balance
1.5Mind, Body
1.6Curiosity
2Closing
Topic: Seasons of Living
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, We thank you for your recent series of lessons on how to become aware of, and how to deal with, some of our more intractable physical problems–defining a bad habit–for now–simply as one that’s unhealthy.
This last year we’ve had a very vigorous national debate on the role of government in our health care–just where the many and interrelated responsibilities lie. We do take your point that that no amount of after-the-fact care can make up for years and years of neglect when it comes down to an individual human being of free will dignity. I’m informed that a large percentage, perhaps way over half, of our health care costs are due to chronic illnesses caused by those choices we make, and most of this is due to a few things like smoking and drinking, junk food, serious drug abuse–prescription and non-; all of these coupled with far too little physical activity. We take your further point that until these habits can be become more conscious, an individual has no choice in changing his or her behavior.
We thank you for presenting us with the problem honestly, that as human beings we can only choose an ideal like better health and move in that direction from a position first of consciousness, but also then toward something better, some practical, realizable choice of something better to put in the place of those things we’d rather not continue. We are thrown back upon our essence of being spiritual beings, creative beings who need to–both individually and collectively–alone and together–create these alternatives for ourselves and for those we love. We thank you for stating the human dilemma so plainly. Amen.
MICHAEL: Good evening, my sons, this is Michael. Mother Spirit and I receive your thanks, and we thank you in turn for, first of all, just being here, and then too for really doing your best to open your hearts and open your minds, open your feelings and your understanding, your hunger and curiosity to know more about us and yourselves, and each other. This is that marvelous, marvelous gift of God’s–this living thing of curiosity springing up. It’s that part of your human spirit and mentality that Mother Spirit augments with her own being: your thirst for knowledge–just the pure facts of life; then how you correlate and put them all together in understanding–all the infinite connections across time and space you can discover between them. Her Holy Spirit augments your courage to use your power to explore the wonder, to get into the inner and outer adventures that await you, and embrace them with enthusiasm.
Adventure, Uncertainty
(The seasons of living)
You say of the very stuff of life–the fun, sometimes too is the scariness, the terror of the terrible, for in this adventure of living you will all know to some degree physical pain and injury, mental anguish and uncertainty, spiritual exhaustion and loneliness. There is that essence of the adventure that will try you, and it does take a mature wisdom to whole-heartedly embrace this trial, for you don’t know–at first–this is how you grow. Your childhood willpower blossoms like a little flower, totally unbounded, yet meets the firm edges of other-reality, either the physical stuff of the world, or your compatriots, and all your wild imaginations and dreams, all your childish, youthful gleefulness for simply more, do meet those objective edges of reality and get trimmed back.
You go through your internal seasons of, first, spring time–blossoming with boundless ambition. You do have your summer times of accomplishment and accumulation. But then because of only half-conscious overreaching, you suddenly find yourself as if up in the air, off the real ground, and comes the crash. You are in a kind of fall, an autumn when the cold winds of reality start to trim you back. Where you were once blossoming–extending yourself in all directions–you find you are being pruned rather severely with what may seem to be personal mistakes and mis-estimations of the world, of people.
Then comes the winter when you have to withdraw back into yourself, hibernate as it were to mull over all that that last inner round of seasons has been. You do all this a little every day: evaluating. You rest, pondering all these things, and sleep, and heal. Then here comes another spring inside, and now you’re a little wiser. You’ve got a soul and it’s grown; it’s more active in your life. Now your intentions blossom forth again, maybe just to get through the day, but you have a bigger, hard-earned real ground of experience to stand on, so your desires are a little more down to earth, a little more practical, a little more realizable. You’re learning. Off you go again into a new adventure that is partly your own–along with the rest of the universe. You’re taking the next step, a necessary step, my children, because the adventure has no end to it.
About the time you’re getting nice and comfortable in this human life on Urantia, you’re just totally whisked away. You awake on another world, an architectural sphere with its own plant and animal life, and Morontia material. You’re in a body that’s so transformed we can give you only a few hints as to how expanded all of your physical senses and inner spiritual sensitivity and understanding will be. You’ll be overwhelmed at first with the simple fact of having survived–in that place, all about you–yet there is still another step to take, and another, as you walk out into that more soulful world with a glorious new spring time inside.
As Mother Spirit said last time, the situation is ever changing, yet ever the same for the increasing understanding of your personality. You are growing; your past keeps getting larger. In this human life of yours you are earning this realm, this material, living plant and animal world, and so you will always have this. You will always be able to perceive and relate to the evolutionary worlds of the cosmos. You’ll always feel a kinship with all the different, various orders of human beings. This past of yours is literally being captured by a presence of God. This is your soul. It is to you now an enormous, extra-dimensional Morontia reality that you have to grow your consciousness in order to encompass it on the day you merge with it and its co-author.
You have a future that you rightfully give the name eternity. But you will spend all eternity fulfilling–filling out, if you will–that concept. Right now it’s just a word symbol pointing at something you have only begun to experience.
So far, as a human being, neither past nor future has any personal existence for you outside of this eternal now in which you enjoy your ever changing consciousness of being. Your memories and forecasts are dependent upon, in part, the workings of your material mind based in a living physical brain and nervous system; and general health. Yet as your Urantia book informs you, you are super-minded. Your God-given personality endowed with creative spirit makes you more than just a super animal. You are a personal being with all the powers and responsibilities of a unique being who can, in the final analysis, relate totally only to God’s presence within you. There will always be an irreducibly inexpressible part of you and your experiences you cannot share even with your own kind–just because you are unique: something that is just yours and God’s.
Further, you are to yourself a mystery insofar as your past, as captured by your soul, is unfathomable. To soulfully relive even a few moments of your past in all fullness you have to sit down and totally give up your awareness of your present surroundings, perhaps by listening to a piece of music from that time. Then too your memories constantly change as your understanding and your soul grow, for as your soul is a more perfectly balanced, part-spiritual entity, the more you are in touch with it the more you achieve a balance and understanding of the past that is more than just memory. Simple memory, without the depth and breath of soul, is always partial: memory is always just your part, and then only as best as you can remember it. Your soul contains your life as seen from God’s spiritually all-inclusive point of view as well.
Health, Habit
(Health and unhealthy habits; the role of faith)
And so when you approach something like a bad habit–something established in your past that seems to arise spontaneously all by itself–these impulses are generally part physical craving for a good feeling, and part psychological realization–immediate reward that something works. Material mind and body are obviously living intertwined and this felt relief is both physical and mental, yet spiritual too insofar as it is being valued. You do have to find and create something of greater value–something to replace this dependence–that works too, only better–with greater freedom. This has to be the choice because, as Mother Spirit noted, there is truly something to give up. There is that immediate physical comfort and mental reassurance of what has worked in the past: but at what cost? There is also, to give up, just the fun of being bad–deliberately doing what you know you shouldn’t, and/or flaunting social regulations–the fun of breaking the law. It’s also just that pure, irresponsible fun of irresponsibility–nonchalantly choosing to not respond to, and try, what you do know better. You have to replace unhealthy ways with more fun, more feeling in both body and mind of growing good health.
True, there sometimes is that gap–for some an enormous chasm of sickness–between your intention, already weakened by bad health, and that time when, after you have successfully given up this bad habit, you can start to feel the willpower and physical strength, along with the mental clarity and genuine reassurance. So it’s not only your will power but your faith that carries you over that gap of just, truly, giving something up; faith that something even better–if you will, will come about. We call this faith because nothing else will do. This is why your more successful programs to help folks give up really severe addictions do start with a recognition, by faith, in something greater than their selves. This is your connection with spirit, your reaching out to someone greater than yourself for company and council. Sometimes it is this essence of prayer that helps you acknowledge to yourself the predicament you’re in. It’s your faith in creative spirit–your own and Other, greater Spirit–that gives you hope and enables you to act on things not yet seen or felt. Faith in spirit bridges the gap between the ideal–the better health hoped for here and now, and the real–when it starts happening.
We ask you to have faith, my children, even if you feel you cannot yet directly access it and use it. Have faith in not only your Creator but also in His absolute and infinite wisdom. He knows how to create beings such as yourselves and endow you with spirit, with a portion of His creativity: you are co-creator of your future. He does this out of absolute and infinite love for His children: it’s your freedom. He has given you a way to create your way forward–always with His help right within you, and with Mother Spirit and myself beside and within you as well. We’re here. Together with you we will come with that new life you need: beyond that it’s your choice.
(The real, deep fun)
Yes, you do have to go through this trial, this gap of not knowing exactly what that better life will be. That awaits the passage of time and involves everything and everyone else. You are not there yet: that’s your orientation, your spirit of truth. Here’s where your faith comes in: that your Father has given you the means to create your part of the future. Nothing shy of this will do. This is that better life by definition. This is where you realize–make real–that you yourself have the creative power to be happy, to know a growing, ever greater good even beyond need–by free choice, just for the fun of playing with God.
So consider these things in your meditations. Give part of your day to exercising your faith. Open your heart to feel. Open your curiosity to wonder. Open your mind to greater understanding of where you are, and what works, and what doesn’t, and why, and at what cost. Have faith in yourself, my children, that you are this creative spiritual being who will go on into eternity creating your way forward with evermore constant, conscious activity, lead by curiosity and faith, rewarded with still another step to take into infinity. This is not some one time thing you do, my children. It is moving into an ever more dynamic relationship with your self and all that is–the rest of God’s living creation.
The future is unbounded: get used to that. Welcome it. Look forward to playing a healthier part in it. It is yours.
Now if you have any questions or comments this evening, let them come forth.
Student: I don’t have any questions, Father Michael. Thank you for the clarity you bring to life; and that life is really very exciting. It’s all moving forward, irrespective of how it looks like from time to time.
Truth, Faith
(Learning truth with faith)
MICHAEL: You’re very welcome, my son. Mother Spirit and I do register the spiritual suffering of our children. Urantia has been almost unique, with only a few other worlds, of being so bereft for so long, in human development, of the presence of a high spiritual Son living on the planet with his material staff. And then later, also a continuously present Material Son and Daughter–Adam and Eve–would have helped further a world-wide culture where these truths we offer would be felt from birth. As it is you have to learn these truths with faith; they are not yet an intrinsic part of the broader social fabric in which you’re raised.
You have been evolving your civilizations–your means of being civil with each other, in a way, alone but for spiritual presences within and without. You can feel lonely. You can feel being not only separated from your spiritual parents and God, but worse, with no conscious awareness of the soul-fulfilling spiritual dimensions of reality at all. That’s actual for many: they feel only the mental/physical unsatisfied hunger for something more. The real, good feeling and security of creative spirit is still only potential for them. And this is a large part of what all these unhealthy habits are trying to compensate, to fill up the time.
To these tortured souls the idea of meditation seems beside the point; as in: What’s the point! To one who has been killing time–your very apt expression, a few minutes of highly-conscious being still and paying attention can seem an unending hell because it does open time up to the bottomless present moment of, perhaps, enormous pain and sickness. Yet it is in your deliberate meditation and prayer you find the willpower and the faith to open your hearts and minds to God’s presence within you, and start a conscious relationship.
So carry on, my son. Mother Spirit and I are happy you are finding this clarity in what we offer, and in your life. Be in my peace. (Thank you)
Student: Yes, Michael, I don’t have a question but more a concern about my own lack of fun in my life, or lack of faith or initiative to step out of the encasements I put myself into, overworking myself. I don’t really listen to my soul and my body enough. I’m not really unhealthy but I’m feeling a lot of discomfort and pain and stiffness. Everything’s really sore from all the work and sports I’ve been doing, and I am trying to take this as a notice I should be paying more attention. So in thinking about stepping out into a more creative life–there’s a lot of fear in that for me, like maybe I should drop a few clients; but in this economy? Yet I don’t want to live my life always having to work for a living…but still not be irresponsible.
I did participate in a retreat last weekend that was really powerful, called Great Freedom; and before that, in what I mentioned–something called Quantum Touch that was quite interesting as well. I am open to new things, but my body is telling me something else. When Donna was here, transmitting, it was my Guardian Angel coming through and prompting me to initiate some action from her perspective. So…??
Balance
(Finding a living balance)
MICHAEL: Yes, my son. The greatest reassurance I can give directly is that, with your hard-earned wisdom, your feeling for a kind of balance in your life between work and play is a necessary, ongoing thing. This is a part–(Michael chuckles)–of being a human being. You need to provide for yourself, your children, your old age. You can feel good about this orientation. You are learning how to weigh things in that balance, both through your meditations and your spiritual quests.
(Further–on health)
Mother Spirit and I have given this series of lessons to help our children put their personal understanding, and their creative spirits, and their curiosity, right down into their bodies. Gently stretch and explore your bodies with all of these from the inside out. Each time is unique, and changing: alive. Your bodies are so often taken for granted and only paid attention when something goes wrong, or during times of pleasure–though usefully so when you’re lost in what you’re doing. It’s how to break the dulling, routine unconscious identification with your bodies and bring them more into consciousness. For so many folks what you call the laying on of hands, or more commonly, good massage and body-work, part of the healing comes from these ways of introducing people to their own body. They get to lay there physically passive while someone else reminds them they have these particular legs, and these back muscles, and these shoulders. This re-introduction brings the power of spirit and mind awareness into their body, and these alone can heal through this inner awareness and God’s presence.
My son, your human life is a life-long study of learning your body, not only because it is changing with the rest of reality, and aging, but also because, as we’ve put it, your body too is another infinity and mystery to you. Not all your books in all your libraries have yet to plumb the depths of what it is, and for you personally, moment by moment, your body is what?–99.99999 percent unconscious processes? (Michael chuckles) You eat an apple and your body converts it into energy for you. You cut your finger and it heals.
Mind, Body
(Stretching mind and body)
This is why Mother Spirit and I suggest that, as you read these lessons, you let your minds and spirits stretch to entertain what we offer. Feel it. Later, gently, lovingly stretch your bodies to feel them too, from the inside. This becomes ever more critical, and useful, as you get older and the joints become restricted with mineral deposits. Muscles and ligaments and tendons tend to shorten. Folks who do find a great deal of physical work in their lives–like yourself–can get all cramped up, the inflexibility putting pressure on any old injury. So you need more stretching, ever deeper stretching as you feel it subjectively, just to keep your objective range of motion; or better, increase it. Becoming all locked-up is the sad and tragic fate of old folks who were never taught these simple principles, yet these principles of mind/body union–yoga, were developed extensively in the Far East and have been in the West for over a century.
So let me suggest this as a daily exercise. Learn ways of how to stretch your body, not by using muscles to pull you into some position, but using the classic yoga positions that let gravity do the work while you concentrate on feeling the muscles lengthen and the joints open up by–relaxing–into the ache. The pain you feel is your body telling you you’re approaching the usual limits of motion here. You have to learn some loving patience to let things relax.
A famous dancer once said that a dancer might know so much more pain in her life just because of the incessant stretching to stay loose and limber; but then look at the marvelous lives of supple, delicious movement they have. So consider this stretching of your body. It’s another way of getting to know yourself from the inside out, another deliberate continuity day to day–another continuous thing you’re bringing into your life to learn and stay in touch with. How does your body feel–this morning as compared to yesterday and all that yesterday held?–or even a month ago?
Now I know–(Michael laughs)–I’ve just suggested another thing to do, but this is one of the most critically useful things we could suggest for our physical children. No matter where your mind and imaginative spirit may–and should–roam, your body obeys universal physical law, God’s law, here on Urantia. Cherish this fact: you have been given a living contact with the real: stay in touch.
Student: Thank you.
MICHAEL: You’re welcome. Be in my peace.
Curiosity
(Marvelous curiosity)
Let me close this evening on that note. For so many it might seem strange that your Creator Son, your Father and good friend, is giving you physical advice. I say again that this body of yours is a living infinity to you, a moment by moment strange land you need to explore. It’s an adventure, a challenge, to accept that you need to know more about yourself–all these bones and muscles. So use God’s gift of spirit curiosity. Let it bubble up. Don’t assume you’ll know how it’s going to feel until you get there and try it. Stretch by relaxing, by letting go deep into that ache that means the muscle is lengthening, the joint is opening–gently! Slower and slower. To relax your body has to learn to trust you will be careful; you have to earn that trust. In a greater sense you’ll be learning simultaneously to trust your body’s wisdom and structures, and how to approach them with love and wonder.
This tender care is the opposite of masochism–the simple-minded idea that if it hurts, it must be good. You’re only going gently beyond the bounds of comfort because comfort, alone, has the tendency to shrink–first your curiosity, then your body: less and less feels comfortable. This is going the other way toward greater range of movement, mentally and physically.
So cherish this marvelous gift of God’s. Treat it well. Learn it. It’s another dimension of who you are and what you are adding to your soul. You will, in time, give it up for something even better, but for now, let your curiosity tickle. Imagine a healthier life. Have fun with this body of yours. Bring it ever more into conscious awareness. Take care.
Closing
Good evening. Be in my peace.
