2005-05-02-Emotional Development
Marin #46
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Emotional Development
2Group: Marin TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Michael
2TR: JL
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
3Dialogue
4Closing
Topic: Emotional Development
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, What a pleasure and a relief it is to remember to take a break during the day, just to relax and be still and feel Your presence. Thank You for Your guidance as to how we can experience our freedom through our own creativity, and choose ever more wisely what we should do; and then, once we have made this choice, forget ourselves in the full commitment to what we have chosen. Amen.
Michael. Good evening, My sons, this is your spiritual Father, Michael. Now -that’s it. You all know well by now how to feel for Me within you – so often My presence is just to encourage and help you to feel.
Lesson
You go through many stages in your life with respect to your feelings. Just recently We asked you to remember what it was to be a child and have the world come down all around you, have your emotions sweep you away on a tidal wave crashing through your soul. And so for however long, you were utterly lost to yourself. Then slowly this terrible wave of emotion would subside and with halting, desperate little attempts, you could slowly regain your breath and find yourself sitting there tossed and tumbled in your life, but ever so thankful the tsunami was slowly receding and giving you back to yourself.
And so you learned to harden your heart, how to stay above this rising tide of feeling and just ride it out. Your growing ego self-awareness was slowly earning you a small measure of buoyancy on the surface of your emotions. As you became more and more aware of yourself, more and more continuously you sought to disengage yourself from your family, sometimes even your best friends, in order to realize yourself as an individual, someone your own. Your curiosity was peaked to wonder very specifically, Who am I? Here your sense of yourself and your own inner freedom was so often dependant on a cultivated indifference – to be somewhat detached from those around you. Consider this was a measure of budding wisdom so you could have some choice of whether or not to go along with your peers in whatever wild suggestions were being made.
Then as your school ended and you were expected to leave home and go out into the world, you braced yourself against feeling too much all the fear and anxiety that was a part of this. Yet often about this time, if not sooner, when the possibility of romance came your way, you might of noticed that your cultivated indifference had become a blanket affair which was not only suppressing fear and uncertainty, but your ability to love as well.
Also about this time many of you had experiences where your feelings, just because they came from the total, affective part of your nature, were able to catch your attention and bring to your consciousness very real dangers. You realized this was not some sort of over-done paranoia, but a very righteous caution about impending situations. Then too these global perceptions, these intimations and feelings could be useful assessments of your fellows, and the people around you began to be infused with an extra dimension.
Now the temptation became one of being overly judgmental, being carried away anew on these assessments of others which suggested you could judge an entire person. For example, it was not that someone might be telling you some small white lie or minor fib, but what you would pronounce, Liar! Often without realizing it you would be playing God and pretending to yourself, or actually telling others such things, as if somehow you could assess a person’s soul.
But as you persisted in your spiritual growth and you grasped the general principle of not being judgmental, you began to make a quantitative distinction between necessary and self-honest assessments of, say, an exchange with someone, and a condemning judgment. And so you took an enormous step in being free. For as you let go these judgments, these pretentious total evaluations of other persons, so you were able to stop doing this to yourself. You could more directly discriminate both your own strengths and weaknesses as you pulled away this blanket of alternately feeling you, or others, were completely good or bad persons.
So now We encourage you to keep going along this same dimension of ever finer and more delicate sensitivity. As you learn how to let go of pre-judgments based on race, or cultural differences, differences of sex or age, size or shape, and you make room in your heart and mind for all the individuals who come your way, so too every little step like this frees your own self perceptions and self evaluation. This leads to a greater intimacy and honesty within you, and becomes another way in which you can grow.
You’ve probably encountered other individuals who were so incapable of acknowledging even a simple mistake, and then got so caught up in defending themselves, in retracing all the steps that led to the poor decision, they were not capable of opening themselves to a better way of doing whatever it was. This was probably unconscious on their part, but all the more limiting for that reason. For them there was no power in “now,” because they kept insisting on prolonging the past. In this context, think what a spiritual triumph and relief it is to realize you are experimenting with your lives – necessarily, wonderfully so. For from this perspective, finding out what doesn’t work and being fully open as to why it didn’t work, can often suggest what might work. And even leave you joyfully anticipating trying the next step.
Here you are identifying with spirit, with a loving and welcoming attitude that embraces whatever may come. This does not guarantee you will not be swept away again, from time to time. Rather, We are encouraging you to deliberately let go of yourselves to see not only the ultimate futility, but the terrible limitation of hanging onto yourself fearfully and tightly. Then give yourselves credit for the nerve it takes to forget yourselves and join in some shared activities with your friends.
This is the glory of self-forgetfulness. This is being open to feelings. This is remembering fondly all the stages you have come through with respect to your emotions. Yet as many times as Your Mother and I have recommended you relive moments of your life, you still may not be certain as to what We mean. Essentially We’re saying that since each period of your life is somewhat unique, if you can just stop and relax to let previous events pop into your mind, it’s almost like time-traveling in a science fiction sense. For some few moments you can really feel what it was like to be, say, fifteen again – and realize so much about the time in between then and now.
You are probably most familiar with this encompassing of feeling as it is associated with a particular piece of music. This is one fringe benefit of your pop culture that changes from decade to decade. You can hear a song that was popular maybe, thirty or forty years ago for some of you, and it can bring back a pure feeling of what you were doing then, that can capture the whole mood of your life at the time. This is what We mean. Now imagine this enormously deeper and more total, persisting almost, as I said, like time traveling, and you have some small inkling of what your soul is. This can give you some appreciation for what your Father Fragment – the presence of God within you – has to offer you when the two of you become one.
Never fear to be still. Never fear to relax all your self-conscious, ongoing drive. The convergent, sharp focusing of your attention that is necessary and so useful at times, is only one of many modes of consciousness. Let your attention be divergent. Feel for a kind of global perception coming in from all around you space-wise. This is your higher consciousness, and beyond it you make contact with Us just by being open and receptive.
The realm of spirit is one of spontaneous creativity, the very essence of freedom. The personal beings who are truly free – experiencing and enjoying this ultimate power? – who wouldn’t choose to love? Here there is no limitation in connection. Here there is that magical mathematics We tease you with, how one and one make three, because between you and I the connection is our Father himself. This is His love that pervades all reality, and becomes ours. It enables us to enjoy each other freely, without constraints or conditions. This is what transforms us. Once you taste this pure essence and thrill in its reality, who wouldn’t choose to be a part of this? This is both the fulfillment of completeness and the promise of eternity – more to come, forever.
Rest in this peace awhile, My sons. If you have any comments or questions this evening, we can connect this way too.
Dialogue
Student. Father Michael, thank You for Your encouragement and enlightenment. The question I have is, How does one “let go and let God?”
Michael. Ah yes, My son, this is the eternal question, is it not?
Student. Yes, ah…I can see a small part of…yes…this is the eternal question, but mostly my focus is like, how do I let go and let God today, or tomorrow or the next day?
Michael. I only meant that this is something you will be learning forever. If you look back on your life with an open mind you can probably recognize times when you had great success in knowing Gods’ will, and experiencing the delight of triumph in being in accord with that will. I might suggest these were the happiest and most spiritually fulfilling moments of your life.
So realize this is not something alien to you. You have known moments of letting go and being aware of a spiritual encompassing all around you. The easiest and most immediate way of – letting God – is by perceiving what He is doing. Just as you know the wind is blowing when you see the trees tossing about, it’s a perception and appreciation of His constant creativity We have been pointing at now for many lessons. Since human perception is largely a matter of contrast, We have been trying to help you isolate this constant creativity so you can perceive what We mean.
I think you can understand this by asking yourself, Well then, if there is this constant creativity going on and, as Michael has informed me, this is half of the reality I am living in, why can’t I see it? We tried to point this out as contrasted to the notion of reality just repeating itself over and over, so you can realize God is within you and all around too making each day different. This is one immediate way of – letting God – simply by perceiving what He is doing. You also let go and let God by joining Him in creating your life. In your meditations you can ask, what does God want me to do next? For me to share His loving and creative nature with His children, what loving and creative thing can I do for those I live with, for those out in the world? I could help, say, by contributing my time and resources to any number of good causes or groups.
This is what I meant this evening by relaxing the tightly focused attention that you need to accomplish a complex task involving many steps over a period of time. Just stop this from time to time and relax your attention to feel as delicately as you can, What does God want me to do now, today, this very moment? And persist in this with determination. Open yourself to the uncertainty that is implied. Be willing to feel this uncertainty rather than glossing it over with just another habit, another way of killing time. There might be a period of anxiety to go through as you let go, before you can quite – let God. Does this answer your question, My son?
Student. Yes, it has cleared up a lot of things, and reminded me of a lot of things. There have been those periods of triumph – usually in retrospect – times when I was able to slow down and think of a better way of working than I had in the first place.
Michael. Can you see that in the letting-go process there is bound to be a gap there, a moment in which you are simply letting go without knowing what will come next – because it will not be you, but can be something so much greater than you? If you are not willing to experience this uncertainty right in the middle of you, you’ve not yet let go. This is why it is not the easiest thing to do, and why it requires faith.
Student. I’m not quite as fearful of that gap as I used to be. I sometimes feel as if I’m welcoming it. Other times I don’t want to deal with it. The great thing is that now I’m aware of it more and more.
Michael. Yes, this is the key – a quality of recognition. You asked about letting go. When you do let go it helps to be consciously recognizing, Yes, I am letting go so many ways I do know – how to fill up these next few hours or days – and accepting that this feeling of uncertainty is a part of spiritual life. This can contrast greatly to your usual orientation in which, if you didn’t recognize what was happening, the suggestion would sound absurd and you would wonder, Why should I let myself feel uncertain? This is where recognition is so important, when you forget you’re trying to “let go” – but are succeeding anyway. So when you start feeling this uncertainty, give yourself credit and say, Here I am, Father, I’m open now. What is Your will? This is why there is glory in the triumph. Keep practicing, My son, and be in My peace.
Student. Yes, Father, I guess the idea of uncertainty is where the faith kicks in with the understanding that God is the reality. I’ve been contemplating the reality of what is God’s will, because if you look out it seems as if the world is very authoritative and rigid and inflexible and closed. We know better. What You were saying to (Previous student) – the essence of love and being creative… How did it get to be…turned around from that, to the point of being used as manipulation…and so destructive – the basis for destruction? When the cosmos is love – pure and simple? If someone asks me the question, What is God’s will, how can I answer them?
Michael. Well, My son, I would mention the parable about giving a man a fish as contrasted to teaching him how to fish. If someone asks you what is God’s will, the best answer is to give them a way of discovering it for themselves. This is the only lasting answer to the question because God speaks to each individual – individually. What you can teach through your own understanding and practice, once you know them well, are these methods you have been learning of stillness and meditation, of prayer, and what I suggested to (Student) this evening – recognizing some of the ironic consequences of letting go – in order to – let God.
The question earlier as to how the world came to be the way it is, with the overview of planetary spiritual history the Urantia Book has given you of the defaults of the Planetary Prince and your Material Son and Daughter more or less thwarting the normal planned evolution, a lot can be explained on both the largest and smallest scale – planetary and individual – as arrested development. This was the overview I presented this evening about your maturing with respect to your feelings. It is not that you have to go through these different stages, but that you stop, you get arrested somewhere along the way and you do not keep growing. If letting go in order to – let God – involves setting aside certainties from the past in order to experiment further with what you feel to be God’s will, this involves that momentary uncertainty as you step off into the unknown.
Yet if you are arrested at a stage where you are trying to disallow any uncertainty at all in your life, the suggestion will sound ridiculous, and in fact many spiritual teachers have been ridiculed for suggesting such a thing. Why open yourself to uncertainty when you can continue to cling to what you already know – especially if you have a concept that completeness and the need to grow are mutually exclusive? You can deny any need to grow further – with all the risks involved – and simply insist you are complete as you are – which you are.
Or, since many people feel incomplete in themselves without belonging to someone or something else, they can also question the nerve it takes to keep growing. It takes a very strong and self-confident awareness – from a great deal of experience of having unintentionally or impulsively let go, and then discovering that you do survive and grow from these unexpected adventures, this long process of maturation – to be able to consciously open and experiment, not knowing what the outcome will be.
Student. It’s kind of like we’re constantly redefining ourselves, or, in a sense, un-defining ourselves. When people ask me, I feel I’m everything and I’m nothing. I’m not just American – I’m global. I’m not Christian, or Buddhist, or Jewish – though I’ve been all of those – I’m letting go these definitions…of certainty in a sense, to be classless, with no political affiliation, and it’s quite freeing to experience this…nothingness.
Michael. Well, My son, I really enjoy your notion of un-defining yourself. That is truly letting go.
Student. I feel sorry for people whose whole lives are based on thinking only a certain way. It’s so limiting – unfortunately, even to the point of killing another human being because he or she doesn’t believe the same way.
Michael. You see what I mean by, it is not that people have to go through these stages of maturity, but that they stop – stop developing their capacity to wonder – their inner curiosity and hunger for experience and adventure; but also the marvelous reaction and reassurance they get when they are perceiving what God is doing.
Student. When I spoke to You a couple weeks ago about experiencing the kingdom of heaven – that it is here and now – and I read in the Urantia Book about how You went out in Your public work and You spoke to the apostles – I realized that was, and is, the “good news” – that the kingdom of heaven is here and now…and how you find it full of potential and possibility…if you let go and let God.
Michael. One way to resolve the seeming self-contradiction of why there is still so much suffering on Urantia if it is the kingdom of heaven, is to realize that the kingdom of God pertains above all to an individual’s dignity of free will. The planetary situation as it exists this very moment is the result of all the freewill choices made by a whole hierarchy of beings – human and above. But again, every evolutionary planet goes through similar stages. It is just that Urantia’s history – I should say, its normal, possible evolution – was seriously set back by the decisions of some of its celestial leaders, both on the System and planetary level. You are still recovering from some of these terrible decisions.
But this is the true kingdom of God – the individual freedom, the will dignity of every personal being, without which all of reality would not be as it has always been, the creation of both God – personally – and all His children. This is our Universal Father sharing His nature with us. This is why We invite you to exercise your individual freedom and creativity and choice so you can personally experience this kingdom of His. And yes, it does require that you constantly let go of what you have known in order to take the next step.
But I assure you, My children, this journey has no end – ever. Recognize the uncertainty and do your best to accept it with His grace and humor. This is the true spiritual triumph of living life light-heartily – giving of yourself one hundred percent, while not taking yourself too seriously. We love you very much, and so We tease you with these possibilities. We are certain they will be yours – as facts, in time. Be in My peace.
Student. Dear Michael, I have often wondered about emotions, and finally learned about all the ways from apathy to exhilaration, and have had various enlightenment experiences, and realized that there is even more to it than mentioned in the Urantia Book. Is there any way for us to understand this a little better?
Michael. Well, My son, I‘ve pointed out some general stages you go through from the time you are a tiny baby with almost no self-consciousness at all, to the point where, as a mature adult, you have not only learned how to suppress or control your emotions in situations where this is absolutely necessary, say around some accident scene where somebody is injured and needs you, but also how to be at the other extreme and be totally open to whatever emotion wants to call to you, Here I am. What do I mean? For these most subtle feelings can be coming from your super-consciousness, your global perception of the whole encompassing situation – impinging upon the spiritual realm.
So there you have the whole gamut, and as you live in a very complex society involving so many other people, not all of whose motivations are by any means loving or helpful but sometimes possibly violent or criminal, and you can never know for certain what is around the next corner with respect to your fellows, so We have pointed out a spiritual quality of flexibility, of not identifying with one whole set of chosen emotions to the exclusion of all others. Rather, if you have a conscious and tenacious presence of mind, exercising your power of now, you can trust yourself to be open to any emotion, trust that you can recognize the more insidious ones – anger, or jealousy, hatred, revenge – and let them go.
You needn’t be overly self-critical or worried that these popped into your mind, but give yourself credit for being open-minded. You live in a society whose entertainment media is saturated with every emotion imaginable. So you encounter these. Your freedom is in the recognition and the ability to let them go without being wounded or feeling the necessity to suppress all feelings. And so you dance light-heartily along – in a Shakespearean sense, dodging all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – with a full and wonder-filled emotional life. Does this help you, My son?
Student. Yes, Michael, it’s quite all-encompassing. But I would ask one thing about…as we seem to be maturing – more of our emotions coming from our mind and spirit rather than from our bodies, we seem to feel almost a seamless transition from one to the other. I would like to know more about where do emotions come from? Part of it I know is chemistry, but part of it must be mindful from Mother Spirit, part of it spirit from our Thought Adjuster, and part from our souls. It would be great to know more about that.
Michael. Yes, I think you can recognize a hierarchy of emotions. Some are on what you could think of as a physical/animal-mind level surrounding issues of survival, or procreation. Here you have fear, anxiety, lust, greed, envy – emotions which you might consider the higher animals, like primates, are capable of feeling. Primitive man was associated with a great refinement of these up to purely mental ones connected with learned behaviors such as altruism, selflessness, love and honor, loyalty. Many of these are closely associated with Mother Nebadonia’s adjutants of mind as well as being emotions and attitudes you can self-generate. You can choose to be loyal. You can understand the benefits, both individually and collectively, of altruism, of generosity.
So these emotions are generated on this level – greatly influenced by all your family and societal conditioning. When you get to the spiritual realm you are getting into feelings which are almost beyond what you might call emotion because they are not so re-active as they are thoroughly creative and spontaneous, coming from that mysterious and unfathomable fountain of creativity of all the levels of personal beings from the Universal Father clear down to yourself, that you yourself can not only generate but can tune into and contact. I’m afraid this is a rather unfathomable and inexhaustible subject, My son, but does this give you some notion of the different origins of different emotions?
Student. Yes, I know it’s rather endless, but I’ve always wanted to be able to give away an understanding of emotions. It seems to be so limited in our high school level type philosophy. The Urantia Book has been a great help in actually having the hope of tuning in to feelingly-experience values that You commented about…the creative part of the spiritual ones being less reactive is very nice and a grateful-producing way of thinking about that. So I thank You for that.
Michael. I was suggesting that in a fully mature human being with great spiritual creativity and contact, just because of the nature of your society and its mass media, as well as memories of your own youth and childhood; if you can go through your days with an open mind, contacting all these levels and origins of emotions with a quality of recognition, you need not be injured by the more negative or violent ones, nor need to shut down an awareness of their existence.
For that could be not only limiting, but dangerous. This is where you gain so much, My son, by being non-prejudicial, by growing ever more flexible and resilient within yourself – so on a critical level you don’t kid yourself about what you are confronting. You gain an increasing ability to let in the full person in front of you, and then relate to that full physical, mental, and spiritual presence, for both your sakes. This is yet another dimension to grow in, is it not? It is another facet of what you learn in your stillness, in your conscious decisiveness to live your life openly.
Closing
I think this is a good note to close on. We’ve had a rather vast survey of emotions this evening. As you do open yourself more and more to your own past, and touch upon your soul, so too you will realize that all these stages of relationship to your emotions are still there. And this is good, for you find yourself surrounded by all these stages, both in the children and adolescents around you, and in the adults as well. So accept it all with as much love and light-hearted-ness as you can muster. Then you will find out about, and enjoy – letting go – and seeing God all about you.
Be in My peace. Good evening.
