2005-07-04-Willing to Act, Animal Laziness
Marin – MAR#54
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Willing to Act, Animal Laziness
2Group: Marin TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Michael
2TR: JL
3 Session
1Opening
2Lesson
3Dialogue
4Closing
Topic: Willing to Act, Animal Laziness
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Prayer. Dear Spiritual Parents, this is our prayer. We, Your children, seek to know Your thoughts and feel Your presence. So we invite and give permission For You to use whatever means You in Your wisdom feel are appropriate. Also on this day of celebrating our independence from political tyranny and paternalism, we ask for your help in growing our spiritual freedom from the tyranny of traditions and the paternalism of arrogant, condescending dogma. We ask this in Your power and grace. Amen.
Action [Willing To Act & Animal Laziness].
Michael. Good evening My sons, this is Michael. I echo your celebration of independence and your desire to grow in your spiritual maturity. It’s a noble and worthwhile, you could even say essential, ideal. For in a way you are constantly spiritually picking yourselves up, dusting yourselves off, and bracing yourselves to try again. And it takes courage to feel this whole process and not skip over the more painful moments by trying not to be here and know. This is the nerve it takes to really feel yourselves living.
Lesson
There is an intrinsic inertia in physical life that is often referred to as a kind of animal laziness, for animals tend to get rather sleepy when their stomachs are full, and there are no courtship or other interests about. I would have you appreciate this as a conserving of vital energies, and with this appreciation try to really feel what it takes to get going. This, My children, is sheer willpower – of which there is no substitute.
[Getting Yourself Going With Stimulants].
True enough, there are seeming substitutes. You call them stimulants and there is no culture yet on earth which has come into existence without its own favorite stimulants. This is the main purpose to which you put these psychotropic or mind altering or enhancing chemicals. This is how you get yourselves going. Even this wouldn’t be so bad if you could see them as a temporary crutch, much as when you sprain your ankle or twist your knee. But it’s as if you get used to moving around on crutches, and never aspire to walk on your own, so to speak. Ironically these stimulants are potentially too valuable to use so nonchalantly, day in and day out.
Some of your elders many centuries ago used these stimulants for ceremonial or truth-discovering purposes. But I would ask you to consider them as crutches that keep you from exercising and developing the healthy muscle of your spirit called willpower. This is the old-fashioned notion of gumption, of doing things simply because they should be done, or because of some freely chosen ideal. Think of willpower as a kind of a bio-chemical independence and see if you can’t welcome and celebrate this.
Tradition [Enslaving Traditions In Part Due To Lucifer Rebellion].
This echoes your prayer of being free from those enslaving past traditions of social and cultural usage which have more negative impact than positive. Some go back to being instigated during the Lucifer Rebellion where you had a number of extra-human rebel beings here on Urantia deliberately, out of the strivings of perverted minds, trying to thwart rather than encourage the goodness developing in their human subjects. These were basic impulses of loyalty and love and affection, even a God-implanted idealism so that parents could visualize a kind of progressive evolution in which their children would have more of the good things of life than what they knew.
Calagastia and his followers here on Urantia deliberately tried to thwart these plans, not so much for self-aggrandizement, as initially, but after they had made their fateful and terribly wrong decisions, for the irrepressible need for self-justification – to persist in their folly. They chose this rather than summoning the courage to open their minds to the possibility they had made a terrible mistake. And as you have been informed, here we are some two hundred thousand years later and many of these rebel spirits right up to recently have kept refusing the mercy and the rehabilitation I constantly offered them. This situation continued until such a time as the matter was taken out of My hands and they were obliterated by authorities greater than I.
This led to all these thousands and thousands of years of incessant warfare, extending a phase of planetary evolution that is usually encompassed within a much shorter and much less bloody period.
Peace [Solution To Endless Warfare Is With Great Growth of Individual Spiritual Freedom].
As Mother Spirit taught you last week, the only way to put an end to this is with a enormous growth of individual spiritual freedom and courage so that, in a moral dimension, every person begins to pull his or her own weight. This means individuals being willing to expend the effort, sometimes the enormous effort required to get to the bottom of things in his or her own life, and making decisions relying on his or her own inner sense – in concert with Our help and with the help their Father Fragment. In other words, individuals will need less and less political or ecclesiastical authority as they grow in spirit idealism, so that some still existing very large, monolithic, dogmatic institutions of church and state can be allowed to pass away.
When you look at societies as they have existed in history, there was a balanced total psychology occurring where the slaves needed the pharaoh and his chief priests everywhere as much as this ruling class needed the more enslaved lower classes. Each needed the other in a kind of social contract that could only be superseded ever so gradually as each individual took on for himself or herself the full responsibility for all the aspects of human being – physical, mental, and spiritual.
It has been very rare that either political or ecclesiastical rulers voluntarily gave up their power, for they were indoctrinated into a feeling of righteousness in their position as much as their subjects half-unconsciously worshiped and venerated them. So it’s taken these many, many centuries, and this was one of My great teachings when I was on earth, the fact that society is comprised of individuals, and it is only by encouraging each individual to assume this full responsibility for themselves does the state and the church slowly evolve in freedom of response. This is still going on, on your world, My children, and I ask you to keep this general trend of planetary evolution in mind as you weigh your necessary evaluations of world events taking place.
This is the ideal of the evolution of individual freedom that is necessarily a part of your evaluation. This is the trend of the ages, and it still has a long way to go. This is one of the goals of the Teaching Mission, and this accelerated pace is possible now that the spiritual quarantine of the planet has been lifted and the remedy for so many of the fallacies – the faulty thinking, the useless and sometimes deliberately enslaving traditions – is at hand. So rejoice with Us. This glory in our Father’s gift of freedom is going so wonderfully.
Someday the planet will celebrate a day of general independence from its own past and, ever so ironically, this freedom from the past by taking up your residence in the power of spirit in the present moment, will give you a larger ability to appreciate the past and all the sacrifices your parents, and grandparents, and those before them have made for you.
So let us welcome a Happy Earth Day of Freedom, someday certain to come. If you have any questions or comments this evening, we have the freedom to share these too.
Dialogue
Soul [The Soul As A Parallel Reality].
Student. Father Michael, I thank You for the freedom You’ve given me. I had most of my question answered in the meeting before Your message started, unless You have some more to say about accessing my soul.
Michael. Yes, My son, I appreciate that your question shows you have understood what We have been saying about the human soul. You fully credit Our assurance that you do have this part of you, this living part of your being that is not your personality, nor your present consciousness. It’s almost a kind of parallel reality to the one you know.
It is fully you and yours insofar as it depends upon your moment-to-moment decisions of what you do – that is, those parts of the events you experience which are not just handed to you by the world you live in, nor the other aspects of your day to day life over which you have no control. But insofar as you have the spiritual freedom to choose, and this too is a growing thing, you determine what your soul will contain.
Yet the co-author of your soul, this pre-personal Fragment of God who takes on the activities of your personality, does so from a viewpoint so much larger than yours. So your spiritual growth is necessary to the way in which you gain access to your soul. Seeing that it is a spiritual construct, contact is dependent upon your spiritual sensitivity much as your vision is dependent upon the sensitivity of your eyes.
Mind [Using The Mind To Relive The Past].
Since you do exist in the present, but your mind may not be focused here, We have informed you that it takes creative spiritual power to relive moments of your past. So this spiritual ability is also your doorway to your soul. Your stillness is a growing spiritual ability and focus, I might say un-focus of present concerns. Since your soul is in a Morontia advanced spiritual state, the most you can do is make room for it and invite it to come join you.
You can deliberately, consciously pick out some past event you might want to revisit. In addition to the memories of your personal mind, make room and make time for your soul to supply that exquisite essence, singular to that particular moment, to help you enjoy that in this river of time, each moment is somewhat unique. Because in the largest way of looking at it, God doesn’t have to repeat Himself. God is the bubbling fountainhead of that river, suspended in the middle of Himself. He includes you. Does this help you, My son?
Stillness [Stillness Is The Key To Accessing One’s Soul].
Student. Yes, Father, it does. It will get more clear than it was. It looks to me as though stillness is the key to accessing ones soul.
Michael. Very much so, especially in your little mini-meditations all through the day. It’s like giving some other part of yourself permission to pop up when it wants. You make room for it by consciously inviting it to do so. This allows your present moment to expand in meaning, in relationships which allow the spiritual values to be more apparent – with everything and everyone surrounding you. But just as your Thought Adjuster is difficult to perceive as an independent entity because it is so much a part of your life and so close to you, so too My son, your soul is in this same position. This truly is who you have been, and are. Rest assured your soul is constantly informing your consciousness of spiritual values. Does this fulfill your curiosity?
Student. Yes, Father, it does. Stillness looks to be the key, and that’s what I need to practice…is stillness.
Michael. Yes. This will also enhance your ability to perceive the soul in others. This is what you recognize as character. There are some deep values there in another person that are hard to put your finger on perhaps, but you feel it, you feel it from inside you because your own Thought Adjuster is letting you know, Yes! – here is another person who has really lived. Rest now and be in My peace.
Student. Thank You, Father. Once more, thank You.
Student. Yes, Father. It seems like…at this moment I want to curl up and fall asleep. I’ve felt a lot of times when I’ve come here, when it seemed the day had caught up with me and I felt extremely tired, but still I was able to experience Mothers’ and Your presence even with this tiredness. And lately I’ve been trying to break away more from any tiresome familiarity and do the things I enjoyed doing, like hiking, rediscovering the trails that I used to walk many years ago. When I’m on the trails there’s this quietness where I’m able to speak with God and just think about things in my life. I think more and more I desire to come from this place of silence, of quietness – if I’m able to do that.
Today I was contemplating the idea of a statement I had heard in the past, about things being perfect the way they are. In the past I had a hard time with this statement because of, look at the world! It doesn’t seem so perfect. But then as I went deeper into this idea of perfection; in a sense things are perfect the way they are because we are experiencing our own understanding of that perfection. So I gave the example to (Student) and (Student) about if you keep on focusing on poverty and lack, then you create perfect poverty. You create perfect imperfection.
So you reach a point where, I know how I want to live – how I do not want to live; that there is a deeper perfection of God’s vision for us; and completeness. So I just know that I want to change and desire greater silence within my being. Then I can appreciate the change into the unknown of who I am to become, and have the patience to honor the change in others around me.
I guess I do have a question, and this is something I talked to You about privately – about this one capacity. You talked about the freedom even to stop oneself from growing spiritually. Does that mean that one can be so encased in fear and their bubble of familiarity that they can stop growing entirely?
Michael. My son, I congratulate you on your desire for growth and wisdom. I encourage you to keep on loving that quietness, and also what I feel you are re-discovering out there on your beloved trails. It may not have occurred to you that out in the woods you’re in a timeless realm. Some of those hillsides you are looking upon have been that same way for thousands of years. Even your path you are jogging along, you can imagine has been there for a long time, going back to your Native Americans; and maybe it has. You are in a much more timeless realm than, say, walking down a city block where you can spot one particular house made about 1910 or so, and this other one made in the 1950’s; where everything is timed right down to a decade, by style.
Perfection [Completeness & Perfection].
Now I encourage you to reconsider your concepts of completeness and perfection. Completeness is a moment to moment fulfillment of all the past. As one of your wise philosophers said, All the past is but prologue to now. Whereas perfection is a way of stating or grasping the concept of God’s general trend out here in time and space. There is a total, overall evolution taking place – the growth in the physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions of the Supreme Being. In other words, the physical universe, the Mind of the Infinite Spirit, and the personalization of this whole time and space realm known as the Supreme Being, are all growing towards an ever larger completeness. And this is only part of what We can put into human words like perfection.
[What WE Mean By Perfection].
We inform you in The Urantia Book that when the existing seven super-universes with their potential of some seven trillion inhabited worlds, are physically exhausted in their potential for further material growth, and spiritually settled in what We call Light and Life, this is what We mean by perfection – as contra-distinct from completeness. Perfection is intrinsic in the ability to continue growing, as the goal. Total perfection means that growth is no longer possible, it has been finished within a certain realm. Yet even in some far distant future, hundreds of billions of years from now when the seven super-universes of the Grand Universe are settled in Light and Life, that will be just the prelude for the expansion into the First Outer Space Level.
And what will be your opportunities and adventures then? I can’t at your present stage of development even suggest what will be – so far beyond your human comprehension now. But this is more or less what Mother Nebadonia and I, in concert with the teachings of The Urantia Book, mean by perfection.
[Sleepiness & Stimulants].
As for your tiredness and sleepiness, My son; you’ll note this is what I started out this evening encouraging you to feel, especially as contrasted to taking stimulants so you don’t have to feel these. You know of some of your fellows who had gotten into a very deadly habit of taking stimulants to wake up, and then depressants to get a little rest from time to time. It’s what you call burning the candle at both ends. And they did find out it lead to a rather short-lived way of life. So yes, you do have the freedom to chose to stop growing, to stop feeling the effort of living, right into insanity or death.
Student. It’s true – in my sense of tiredness it feels like, I feel like I’m being nourished. It’s like I give myself permission to be tired, to relax, to slow my pace down. It’s interesting. I was on a hike with my friend a week or so ago, and she likes to hike up these steep hills, and I’m not really in the best of shape for that kind of hiking. But I did it and I enjoyed it. Then I noticed as we were coming down my body seemed to want to slow down and just feel where I was at. So I found it interesting watching that, while allowing my friend to go at her own pace. Before I used to go up all the stairs real fast, or go all out in basketball, and push myself, but it seems like I no longer want to do that as I change and evolve. My mind wants to nourish itself and really be in the moment.
Michael. This is partly wisdom as you get older. It is also part of this appreciation I invite you to feel about your animal nature, the wise conservation of energies. It may [be] difficult to feel, and then get yourself going again, but I assure you this is growing in spiritual power. If you can feel this need to conserve your energies, and make those hard decisions of what is worth spending your energy on, you realize you do not have an unlimited amount of either physical, or mental, or spiritual energy. New decisions are required as to how you will spend these precious qualities of your life. Feel the genuine tiredness in all these respects, and develop the will power to get yourself going, for that is truly what you want to do. This requires that freedom from the chemical means that are so available to you in your present culture.
Student. I’ve never been one to partake of that, even alcohol, because I learned at a young age my body wouldn’t tolerate that substance so well. Plus I don’t like the feeling of being out of control, of being vulnerable in that way. I know people can be stimulated in other ways too, through television and computers, so a big time can be wasted – intoxicated by that. I just know for myself I desire silence more in my life – for change.
Michael. Certainly, quiet and stillness and a deep peacefulness in your heart and in your feelings all combine to form the doorway We are inviting you to open and enter. So It is My delight to see you doing so and growing in your appreciation, your actual use of these spiritual values in your life. As you are beginning to experience, they are self rewarding. This can be very immediate; as well as developing over time. Often, like learning a musical instrument, you have to pour energy into your spirit, but there comes a day when this new heart you have discovered begins to sustain itself; then yet another wonderful moment when it begins to sustain and encourage you. Then you know you are really tuning into powers greater than yourself and allowing yourself to use these.
Student. Yes, there seems to be an underlying momentum, a current that’s propelling me forward, and I can feel it really strongly when I go off course in my thoughts.
Michael. Well, My son, you are getting addicted to goodness. (Laughter) Your being won’t tolerate various little sins anymore. This is good and healthy. This is how you not only have a greater chance of living to a ripe old age, but are enjoying life more as you go along. This is as it should be. It’s possible if you are open to the constant feedback from your encompassing reality, if you can be sensitive to it and allow yourself to learn.
[What If I Were To Just Die?].
Student. I have been thinking about that lately. I’m fifty years old and it’s like I sometimes wonder what it would be like to just…die – how people would be affected if I was no longer around. I know it would affect my children, obviously. A lot because of my kids I’m still here on Urantia. But I have been thinking about death and there is even a part of me that relishes it, that looks forward to it.
But I also understand I’m experiencing death everyday – letting go of old beliefs and past perceptions as I open up to a new life. One of the things I’m experiencing with my relationships, especially with my mother and my daughter, is that they see me as I was, and don’t see me as I am. And I’ve changed so much – even with (Name), the same thing. I’m not the same person I was three years ago, two years ago, yesterday; and it’s hard to relate to people because I am dying and being reborn every day. Maybe that’s what I want, and I guess that’s the price one has to pay in dying.
[You Need Not Estrange Others To Grow].
Michael. I suggest this is not necessarily so, if you mean that this estrangement from your mother and your daughter is the price you have to pay for growing. Rather you are going to have to come up with some interesting, teasing ways to invite them to realize this new you. If you feel a discomfort at their lack of perception, it’s up to you, My son, to initiate the remedy, simply because they can’t. It’s similar to when someone mentioned to Mother Spirit once that She had poured several years of encouragement into you, in you group, before She began to ask you to extend this to others. But Her reply was that, of course, it doesn’t work the other way.
Sometimes you simply have to give to others in order to encourage them to see you anew. You can keep it light-hearted. Keep your teasing playful. Put in a few moves they haven’t seen before. Let them know there is a new man in the house.
Student. Yes, I can see the wisdom in that.
Michael. You might consider being downright frisky. (Laughter) Help them, come awake and renew themselves. Invite them into the party, so to speak. Keep in mind what We talked about recently, how your Thought Adjuster can inform theirs that things are changing, how on the borderline between conscious and unconscious levels there is a great communication going on. So it is possible to be conscious of this, of how you affect others. You can take some control of this effect you are having. You can direct it in to more joyous and playful modalities.
Student. Thank You.
Michael. You are welcome, My son. It’s good to see you looking forward to whatever may come. For some poor folks a fear of death keeps driving them along in their life. Assuaging this fear is so much a part of the reassurance of Our teaching now – following, and as an adjunct to the Fifth Epochal Revelation, the enormous detail the book provides of the next coming phases of your eternal life.
By reflection you’re enabled to feel this soulful, Morontia reality already in existence, and growing with your experience, preserving your experience so that this deathless personality that you are will reawaken with the ultimate gift of your Thought Adjuster – your soul. So much larger than what you know now as the memories of your life, you can grow in the recognition of how much your soul is influencing your life, is adding value to all the circumstances and events and people that are your life. Believe Me, our Father feels your thankfulness and He wishes you to know, My children, you are truly welcome. These gifts are His great delight.
Closing
Go ahead in My peace. Good evening.
