2005-12-19-Spontaneity, Prejudices, Starting From Zero
Marin #74
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Spontaneity, Prejudices, Starting from Zero
o 1.2 Group: Marin TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Michael
o 2.2 TR: JL
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Spontaneity, Prejudices, Starting from Zero
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Merry Christmas. Welcome. Come join us. Help us all You can to feel Your presence, and keep You in our hearts. Michael, we thank You for reminding us just how much this world of ours has changed since, and because of, Your life with us, and we feel very blessed, as we enter the third millennia, for this change to have come about. People are relating more and more to each other as God’s unique children, in spite of the enormous growth of our nation states, and our cultural and racial divisions. We know there is still much work to do along these lines of individual recognition, but we accept this charge in our own lives, and thank You for it. Amen.
Michael. Good evening, My sons. This is your father, Michael. How good and refreshing it is to be here. I am always happy to bring you so much of My own instantaneous kind of being, and help you expand into now. For this will be the sign and a measure of your growth in years to come.
Lesson
Spontaneity (Spontaneity and depth).
At earlier stages of maturity as a personality, you can only achieve a real spontaneous and instantaneous relationship to your surroundings by giving up a proportional amount of depth. If you want to think of it one way, there is only so much of you around, and as you relate to what is immediately happening to you, you pay in shallowness for this instantaneous responsiveness. But as you grow, as you mature, your relationship to time also expands. You can maintain a greater depth of soul, a conscious relationship and feeling of all that you’ve known, all that has gone before. At the same time you get a more acute perception and an ability to respond more spontaneously to a living reality.
We looked at this before in terms of going from generalities to specifics. When you are a youth and an adolescent, you simply don’t have the experience yet of quite a few different individuals. You have to think in terms of generalities in order to think at all. You absorb these from your immediate family and friends, these generalities which are often prejudices, but they provide the context within which you can have some meaning, some way to relate to your fellows. And so it awaits a more broad experience for you to outgrow these generalities and begin to see people one by one.
If you are open to this, if you welcome this and look forward to it, it is such a reward. This is the true wealth you acquire in your soul, all these separate individuals you come to know and with whom you share your life. As you are able to relate more spontaneously and freely, more adequately to the person in front of you by dropping the superficial generalities you once clung to as a kind of early pseudo-wisdom, so your real wisdom grows deeper and deeper. The present moment expands more and more as these events are surrounded by greater reflections of meaning, greater associations and relationships on a spiritual, soulful plane.
This reflects in your perception as other individuals having greater and greater value to you. They are no longer just one of a type, but they come to stand alone, stark and obvious in their individuality. This can be yours as a general trend of maturity. And as you achieve it phase by phase, you are ever so incrementally adding this to society. For this too is the way the world itself grows towards maturity. It requires all individuals grow in mind and spirit. As the human world gets smaller, and the different nations and cultures come into closer contact with ever more spontaneous and instantaneous reactions to each other, they can welcome this great diversity that history has provided.
There is a very righteous fear among many peoples of the world of a kind of cultural homogenization, a real loss of age-old traditions and meanings. The world requires this growth of maturity I’ve been delineating. Everyone has to grow their ability to accept, understand, and welcome diversity, and be ever more spontaneous, open-hearted, generous, and relaxed, self-confident in the face of it. This is how a world culture progresses. This is the only way to come into ever closer contact with change, and yet at the same time, keep all this enormous wealth of the past. This is how you keep in touch with the lives of your fore-bearers with deep respect and appreciation for the lives they led. Just generally, the lives they led were so much more difficult than the ones you are capable of living today because that initial clash of cultures, all through history, often led to near obliteration, the genocide of whole peoples.
Stillness (Your home base in spirit).
This is how you stretch yourselves. Your stillness practice gives you a home base with spirit, a continuing contact that builds day to day on itself. This home base you return to helps you grow your self confidence, your sense of yourself beyond and deeper than any specific job you are doing, or other personal relationships. As you grow your home base in spirit and gain this self-confidence, this literally is the letting go of prejudice, the needing to pigeon-hole the next person who comes your way.
This self-confidence is more than what you generally know as ego, your own self-perception. As necessary and valuable as this self-perception is, if you are not careful it can grow too inflexible and artificial. It can hold you back like trying to wade through stiff axle grease up to your waist This is what sometimes binds people to past mistakes because their self-image is not confident enough to accept the living, changing aspect of human life.
Your ego can literally become a caricature of yourself, and you need to realize its limitations as a self-construct by relaxing more and more into the awareness of who you are in spirit, living spirit, spontaneous, quick-reacting spirit. It is this self-confidence that enables you to be self-forgetful. It is subtle. It is not something you can really possess. It’s an ability you achieve by letting go, trusting in this new, growing desire to relate ever more spontaneously, and at the same time ever more deeply, ever more wisely. This is the living fountain from which love and compassion spring. When You’re confronted with suffering, you are able to respond. You can realize the spiritual triumph in doing so. What a precious gift, what unforgettable memories of helping another. What a precious gem for your soul.
It all comes from this home base in spirit, this identifying with a living presence that you cannot grasp hold of, but which can be yours nevertheless. This becomes your home because you truly earn it. You pay for it with faith. If you practice your stillness religiously, you can achieve a fresh experience of it that keeps going beyond your own notions of what it should be. It is teaching you this because it is what it is, each separate and individual time. It is how you can grow in both spontaneity and depth. You do not have to trade one for the other, and be deep–but ponderous, or quick and lively–but shallow.
This is the true reward of growing older. This is the expansion into spiritual wisdom that both your body and your mind need more and more. Your material body especially needs this wisdom in its older age. You need to put this presence of mind, this security of spirit, right down into your fingers and toes. Just as you must often exercise your mind like a muscle, so too you have to think yourself into your body, more and more, and not be driven out by stiffness or decrepitude. This is that wonderful oneness you can develop within yourself. It is so critical if you become physically injured, you don’t disown and abandon this injured part of yourself, but you take care of yourself with real love and generosity of spirit. Respect and cherish your health and see it as Gods’ greatest gift.
All these are wonderful dimensions of being human, to enjoy. They make it possible to have a fulfilled life, a life that keeps growing and expanding right up to the moment you consciously let it all go, and take a small step across the threshold into the next world. This is the ideal, and is possible. Each of you can achieve it in your own individual way. It takes faith, for your faith is like a pathfinder who goes out before you, enabling you to always stretch beyond what you have accomplished. This is your true home. It is how your personality continuously rediscovers itself as a creation of our Father. This is the full circle of going out, gathering in your soul harvest each day, and returning home. This is the stillness at the heart of your most rigorous activities.
Your Mother Nebadonia and I are within and beside you, always. But here in your stillness is especially where you can find Us. Come visit Us often. Let Mothers’ love and My peace heal you and reinvigorate you, to truly look forward to the next adventure.
Do you have any questions or comments, My sons?
Dialogue.
Student. Father Michael, I have a couple of questions, if I may. One of them is, both You and Mother have mentioned, from time to time, that the Heavenly Father keeps our heart beating from moment to moment. Is that a literal statement or a figurative statement? The other question is…I suspect that when I re-read and study the transcript I’m going to find the answers. Because I find it’s hard to pay attention when the information starts getting close to home. So I had a hard time paying attention tonight because I fear being open to people–both to let them in, and let them know me. I’d like to get over that, and it sounded like tonight You gave us the answers. But I’ll take anything more You’d care to say.
Receptivity (Heart-beat; being open).
Michael. Well, C, My son, the way in which Mother and I have referred to our Father keeping your heart beating is both literal and figurative. (chuckle) You chuckle because I think you are getting used to being answered: all of the above.
Student. Yes.
Michael. It’s literally true that God not only creates life but is life itself. The whole universe is, in a sense, the body of God, and we all move and have our being within Him. If you wish to think of it this way, it was His idea in the first place, to surround Himself with all these livings beings of so many thousands and thousands of different types.
It’s also figuratively true in the sense that not only He alone keeps your heart beating, but you yourself have a hand in this. I referred to it a bit ago as your being open and welcoming those inner choices and disciplines that lead to ever greater health. For you have the ability, the free will choice of stopping your heart, not only through some rather abrupt suicide, but simply through neglect. Think of the stress that some people put upon their hearts through various forms of greed, be it for material possessions or gluttony; either mental stress or physiological stress. We could only wish them some pity for their poor body. So like everything else, your heart beating is a co-creation you share with the Source.
As for being open, My son, tonight I pointed at a kind of self-confidence that allows you to be self-forgetful, which in turn allows you to let go and be open, Partly it’s a way of getting over a shyness you may feel face to face with others. If it comes from a lifetime of your being so, it does require a new orientation, and nerve! But at heart you have to stoke the fires of your desire to see people deeper, more distinctly. Though it’s not actually perceptible, it’s almost as if they had a charged space about them; so they’re very distinctly there in your sight. This is a challenge because everybody you meet is this oxymoron of a little walking infinity. Certainly there’s space all around them, but it’s infinite inside–they are infinite inside–even to themselves, as you are to yourself.
Some people try to see God in everyone, but make the understandable error of sentimentality, trying to see a universality that only blurs the individuality We have been pointing at. So it’s a matter of letting go and being not afraid. You just continuously relax inside and find your equanimity on the go–looking people in the eye neither aggressively nor defensively; setting aside your own thoughts so you can really hear what they have to say; trusting you will pop-up again when it is your turn. These are abilities, My son that, like all others, you must practice. So keep them in mind as you head towards your next meeting with someone, to remind yourself of what you wish to accomplish. And then, of course, forget about yourself in the moment itself. Any evaluation of how you are doing is best left for later, to reflect upon.
Does this help you envision, and feel inwardly what you might try?
Student. Yes Father, it does quite a bit. It sounds like You’re saying, being present to the moment, and in the moment–forgetting myself, but trusting I’m still there? I can almost picture it, but I haven’t quite got the words to express it. But, thank You!
Michael. Just let yourself be absorbed by this other person. Trust the somewhat ironic, but real fact that coming from spirit, you are so much more for them than some self-generated persona you project as who you think you are. You are always greater than just your own perception of yourself. Relaxing enables you to be more for them, more your truer, deeper self. This also takes nerve, and faith; but these are helped by your understanding. So your striving tonight, to understand, is itself a spiritual enterprise. Think about it, and be in My peace.
Student. Thank You, Father Michael, I will think about it.
Student. Dear Michael, continuing along the lines of what C was talking about, and my concept of what Rodan of Alexandria was stating, (Ed: the Urantia book) how people sometimes slow down in progress due to deep-seated prejudice and fears, I’d like to ask You for help. I’m probably going to go about in the world a little bit more…to help me lower my hidden prejudices and hidden fears. Thanks in advance.
Prejudice (Being conscious of prejudices).
Michael. Well V, you’ve already taken the first step of striving to be conscious of these prejudices–what I often refer to as generalities. You do value and prize this consciousness itself. You do understand the psychology involved of how you have to be conscious of these prejudices to have a choice. You are then aware you have “them”; otherwise, unconsciously, “they” have you.
If you react unconsciously to others, you may have no clue as to why they are reacting back to you the way they are. So it is very much a spiritual grace to respect the subtlety with which people relate to each other. You are then paying them the respect of being able to read you. Otherwise, folks who are not aware of their own prejudices can be rather arrogant in thinking this attitude is not obvious to others. Any kind of smug self-satisfaction like this only serves to alienate one further.
So a genuine desire to know how you are really presenting yourself, is good. As you see each separate person as they appear before you, just notice these general categories, or pigeon-holes you might be trying to put them in—racial, or cultural, sexual, even body type, clothing, social status. If you want, think of these as flavors this individual certainly exhibits, for they definitely are of a race and a culture, a sex, a body type–generally clothed. But what about this unique individual? What about their soul within all these generalities? Does this help you, My son?
Student. Yes, Michael, very much; and it takes some of the fear out of it. Thank You.
Michael. Keep striving for consciousness. Keep striving to be aware of how your awareness shapes others. Strive to perceive the ungraspable, ineffable, living and God-created personality. This is a reward in itself!
As I just mentioned to C, in doing so you are letting the fullness of yourself shine out through any pigeonholes they might be trying to put you in! (laughter). What fun it can be. And be in My peace.
Student. Thank you.
Student. Yes, Michael. I’m deeply moved by what You said about seeing the soul beneath the generalities, seeing the person’s uniqueness, their individual statement of God within them. This was represented in the movie I saw yesterday, a movie called “ONE” by this Yogi who was full of light, and full of love, and full of fun, when he said, “There’s been no one like us before us; and there will be no one like us in the future ahead of us.” There’s only one me; there’s only one V–one C–one J–one Jesus. And there never will, ever again, be someone like any one of us. And it is so moving; it is so awesome to think that. So I pray that every human being will come to see themselves in this light. I thank You for that, because it puts up a whole new way of appreciating every human being, and also appreciating myself.
And that’s why, when I mentioned–I think a couple of weeks ago–where I get a little upset when people say they know me? It’s because they’re coming from that place of generalities, of projection, of what they think they see: because they have a hard time seeing it within themselves–who they truly are–this uniqueness.
(Starting from zero).
Michael. Yes, D, this is why this evening I approached the subject from the viewpoint of maturity. As Mother reminded you last week, you all start out from zero experience; true enough, with a whole world’s history of heredity right in these marvelous physical bodies you have. But in terms of experience: those of you who have been mothers and fathers know upon seeing that little baby that emerges, it is so awesome–that zero point is. That little creature is dependent upon you to make it through a single day. Remember all those years and years of learning–how to stand up–how to tie your shoes? There are so many little stages and steps and phases you’ve all come through.
The human mind is so constructed that in the absence of a framework within which to think and reason, and have some meaning of relationship; in the absence of such a framework, the human mind is capable of inventing its own. See these generalities as very necessary in the beginning stages of reasoning and thinking, and searching for meaning. We gave the example once before of youngsters getting together and wondering excitedly: What does the other sex want?–the classical question of: “What do women want?” “What do men want?”–as is there were such a thing as “Men” or “Women.” They haven’t yet the experience to fill in the blanks, to overflow the categories.
The natural process of outgrowing these generalities is often thwarted by an insecurity that is not only individual, but cultural, and even racial–in the sense of the human race. The world as a whole is still in its adolescence. Generally speaking, people speak in generalities; they perceive in generalities; they think in generalities. It requires a mature self-confidence based on success, on reality, to reach the point of welcoming diversity, welcoming this fathomless soul that can be seen in each person.
It’s graciousness itself that your art–this movie you speak of–is so successful in portraying the reality of soul. It’s an astonishing revelation of God’s creativity when you think of the endless trillions, of trillions, of trillions, of trillions of beings there are–personal beings–unique beings; from human beings all the way up to the Ancients of Days who oversee a galaxy. These are beings so far beyond human comprehension, We can only tease you with the fact they exist–personal beings hundreds of billions of your years old. Think of the soul they must have! And this still only hints at the nature of God. Do you have any more thoughts on this, My son?
Student. Just the idea that when one comes from those places, the soul, and sees another from this place, sees their soul, that is where true connection exists. If we just come from generalities, and prejudices, then there is no true connection.
In the movie, yesterday, someone had the analogy that we’re all individual pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. We all have our own uniqueness. But along the edges is our connection to each other, where we all meet.
Michael. This is the trust, the self-confidence that you—are! This being that you are is always, necessarily, so much more enormous than you can be conscious of at any one moment. And so in this trust, in this confidence, you let go of yourself. You forget about acting out some self-generated role to play, and trust your own soul to shine out.
(Living without anger or hatred).
This is what really filled My life, as a human being, as Jesus. Those folks I encountered, mostly loving—but: however inimical (Michael laughs) their intentions were, I was so blessed to experience this without needing the self-defensive mechanisms of anger, or hatred. I could truly pity, and reach out to those who were so terribly restricted. There is a presence of God’s will and justice falling upon us like a driving rain–every moment. Those who see others in terms of prejudices, and generalities, can only see themselves, by reflection, as a kind of reflected caricature, and so can spend a lifetime missing their own possibly glorious nature .
So we reach out to them, to see them more full, and complete, and soulful, than they can see themselves. What great, glorious fun when they experience a spark of recognition, and let themselves go a little bit; and really touch another person—you–for the first time. This is the true glory of spirit, the way it reaches out and reclaims another lost son or daughter, for them! Rest in My peace.
(Michael’s Christmas wishes).
Well, My sons, I heartily accept your Merry Christmas! What we talked about this evening, this growth of maturity within yourselves, within the world; this is that true evolution that never stops, either for you, or for a planet, though it’s generally only realizable from the inside—out. You have to be growing in maturity to be able to see it. But this is one of those things you can know absolutely–for yourself. You can be as certain of it as any physical fact, for it can totally illuminate and change all mental meanings and spiritual values. These are the rewards of maturity, the rewards of growing ever deeper, and ever more spontaneously adequate to the moment: both.
Closing.
So I wish you a Merry Christmas, My children. Thank you for acknowledging Me in your lives. I bid you a fond good evening! And be in My peace.
Group. Thank You, Michael.
