2006-04-17-Spiritual Symbol Of Water
Marin #87
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Spiritual Symbol of Water
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: Spiritual Symbol of Water
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, We thank you for these lessons that help us explore and understand all the dimensions of our human reality that we are capable of perceiving, then achieving by way of spirit. They give us such hope, for Your lessons remind us that what so often appears to be fixed and immutable is actually responsive to us, and what may seem impossible can actually be accomplished. So our hope grows as we accept the responsibility for what is happening to us. Thank You so much. Amen.
Lesson
Michael. My beloved sons, this is your father, Michael. This is your brother, Jesus. But above all I am your friend. As difficult as it may be for you to think of Me this way, this is what I treasure most. For I mean this as literally as you can take it deep in your hearts, think of Me as an equal friend, someone you can talk to, someone you can feel very close to. Remember Me as always having been by your side, all those many times you might have felt were talking to yourself alone, perhaps reasoning things out, trying to understand why things were happening; I want you to consider you were talking to Me and I was your co-equal friend.
Friendship (I am above all your friend).
As Mother Spirit and I have said recently, this does not require any condescension or diminishing of Ourselves to be with you this way. It is Our greatest reward of being a Creator Son and a Mother Spirit. If you will, this is what makes Our lives worth living. This exchange of friendship is the deepest bond between two personal beings, and I know you were all tickled when your Urantia book informed you that between all personal beings in the next phase of your eternal life, between all personal beings there is a “smile equivalent.”
Even if you are standing in front of a Seraphim who is more than a million years old, who would appear to you now–as a human being–as pure fire, pure energy–just one Seraphim; when you meet one face to face, you will recognize when they are smiling at you and reassuring you of their love for you.
And so I invite you to think of your Celestial Family as very dear and close friends, because They desire this kind of equality. Their essence is one of a spiritual unity that is as yet impossible for you to do more than imagine, but isn’t this the joyous anticipation you have of the next phases of your life to come? We promise you it will be far, far beyond your wildest imagination, because it will be real.
So We acknowledge this is a matter of faith for you now. It is a matter of belief. But it also stands to reason. It does not require any kind of split or divisiveness between your heart and your mind to entertain what are to Us facts, what is to you a matter of faith. It does not require you in any way to surrender your own human need to try things, to experiment. In fact We ask you only to reserve judgment in order to entertain possibilities, to suspend only your disbelief.
As Mother asked you last week, realize and give yourselves credit for the courage it takes sometimes just to feel, to suspend your defenses of callousness or indifference. For this helps you achieve, here and now, the ability of openness We talk about. This is a constant letting go of the past and having the raw nerve to hang yourself out over a chasm of the unknown on the slender thread of faith.
What joy it brings Mother and I to hear your lively discussions of how you’re actually doing your best to put Our suggestions to the test, and the rewards you are finding, especially in your inter-personal relationships. This way you know that, when all your friends seem to be blossoming about you, with a great sense of humility and thankfulness you thank our Father that He’s helping you to blossom. And so I’ll say it again, What fun! What joy there is in this discovering God’s ways and how they work. How marvelous is this all-encompassing, all-embracing nature of spirit, for how else could a whole bunch of finite beings, such as yourselves, get along?
You have to find a way of making room for everyone. And so We acknowledge this is a challenge for you. It has always been a supreme challenge for a species who came out of all the tooth and claw there is, and gained dominion over it. Indeed it is only by respecting and acknowledging all the warfare that your species has come through, all these hundreds of thousands of years, that you can appreciate the task before you. You will find such great joy when, in your own life, you can suspend even the most subtle warlike tendencies that occur simply as you rub up against each other in your ever closer-knit relationships.
Inclusiveness (The spiritual viewpoint is all-inclusive).
This is being able to achieve a spiritual viewpoint, to see situations in their wholeness, an ability to accept certain seeming paradoxes of human nature. It gives you hope, for the spiritual viewpoint is all-inclusive. No one gets thrown aside. No one gets sacrificed for some imaginary greater good. The whole notion of the end justifying the means collapses in a realization of here and now. Each moment is both the end and the means. Each moment is the culmination of all that went before, and the threshold of all to come. So yes, there is hope. You are justified in keeping this flame burning in your heart.
You have a wonderful expression, to dare to hope; to go for it–to try these spiritual experiments and adventures. This is the essence of life itself. And yes, because certain things are possible, you can feel them as a demand–a general social and cultural evolution–the Big Plan for your world. You can feel dwarfed by the relentless nature of this evolution, because there is no stopping anywhere. But with faith you can trust that God is friendly.
Our encouragement to hope and to try, to explore and to joyously accept the adventure of life, is the way to not only exist, but to thrive. Trust that this spiritual pressure is your own intrinsic nature, and step off again. Welcome the unknown as your true home. This is where you will find Us, My children, My dear friends. Come join Us. Dare to hope. Feel the wonder of the surprises in store for you. Let everything collapse occasionally, and be drowned in laughter. If you have any questions or comments this evening, bring’em out.
Dialogue
Student. Michael, I have a question of interest, something I’ve been looking at more closely lately. I’ve been learning more and more about the unique characteristics of water, and I would like to ask–I’ll phrase my question in such a way to try to gain a better understanding of what water truly is. What is the spiritual reality that is the physical counterpart of water?
Symbols (The spiritual symbolism of water).
Michael. Well, My son, you have just, perhaps inadvertently, tickled Me a bit, because water is one of those marvelous–I could say qualities as well as substances–that is spiritual in the symbolic sense of an enormous complexity of qualities arising from absolute simplicity. So you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, when I tell you that I couldn’t even begin to exhaust all the spiritual significances of this seemingly simple and yet so innately profound fluid.
By simple I mean, take the element that supports combustion and is most commonly, on your world, used to create energy–in other words, oxidation, whether a bright bonfire you might love to dance around, or the process within the cells of your body that generates the energy that sustains you. Think of combining this with the most simple of elements, hydrogen, the starting point for the whole table of elements, and you have something that is like neither, but is the fundamental substance required for life itself.
Think of the different states that water exists in, both as a solid and a gas, all those hundreds of trillions of cold snowflakes, each with its own unique pattern; then the power and temperature of live steam. What do these have to do with that tinkling brook running by outside your door? Think of water as the universal solvent, the very polarity of its molecules capable like no other fluid of pulling things apart. Its ability to dissolve so many substances necessary for life gives it its utility. Even you, My friend, are a large part water.
So these are some of the spiritual qualities it can represent–fluidity, and universality. But here, as I said, My son, I could go on forever, or direct you to the poets of your race who have made this marvelous substance the essence of their poetry. But I think this gives you some notion of what water means, does it not?
Student. It certainly expands my understanding. I guess, to simplify a bit in my own mind I would say, water is to the body as spirit is to soul. I guess that’s a very simple expression of the essence of water.
Michael. Well, that’s a bit of poetry itself.
Student. I’m fascinated by its qualities of being able to respond to love, in the work that’s been done with ice crystals and how they change when they are given loving energy, and how they retain memory; all very fascinating.
Michael. I’m not quite familiar with these experiments you allude to, for generally speaking, as your beloved Urantia book informs you, the direct manipulation of physical reality by mind is a Creator prerogative. Would you explain this phenomena a bit more thoroughly?
Student. There have been some works recently that have been published in several books about how ice crystals react to different words. It’s how a water crystal reacts to the word, I love you, or the phrase I love you; and another one how it reacts to the phrase, I hate you. One crystal is quite beautiful, the other one is quite distorted. So this work has been published. Even in a bottle of water that contains a label on it that has beautiful phrases of love, the crystals will be quite beautiful from this water; and so that’s what I was referring to.
Michael. Yes, My son, but I don’t know that I can agree with this analysis. It would seem there are some superficial judgments being made of the effect of a quality of intention upon physical reality. I’ll leave it at that and encourage you to follow these experiments further.
(Human mind and spirit do not directly affect physical reality).
The physical world would not be as you experience it were it so amenable to human emotion; and this is so absolute and profound, life as you know it, as it has always been known, would be markedly dissimilar. So I ask you to entertain this understanding and simply reserve your judgments for a while longer as to what is actually involved in these experiments. Keep an open mind to this cause and effect you are postulating and, if you can, imagine to what extent all of human life would be different if this were so.
Pure water is not, in itself, alive. It is neither plant nor animal, even on the most minute or fundamental level. Do you understanding what I’m saying?
Student. I’m sorry, I’m just confused at the last sentence about the comparison of plants or animals, and the statement that pure water in and of itself is not alive.
Michael. All life as you know it on Urantia is either plant or animal, or a few very rare surviving cross-over types that are difficult to classify as either. It’s one thing to realize how emotion and intention can influence another living entity, and quite different to see how what’s essentially a realm of mind, and of spirit and intention–such as anger or love, hatred or affection, can affect a non-living substance. And so I asked you to keep an open mind about these experiments you have encountered. Does that help your understanding?
Student. I can do that, thank You.
Michael. This is another facet of openness. This is avoiding any rush to judgment with such intrinsically interesting phenomenon. So I thank you for your openness. Be in My Peace.
Student. Thank You.
Student. Father Michael, thank You for your offer of friendship. I had always looked upon You as being a powerful being. That’s not a good way of saying it, but that’s the concept I had. I read, years ago, one Jesus paper a night for a while, and I got a flavor of Your personality as Jesus. It’s very nice, very pleasant, and also, by comparison, so is the Heavenly Father’s personality pleasant. I’m kind-of wondering if that’s an accurate way of looking at it, as we’ve been told God shares everything, and that’s one of the most apt descriptions of His personality. Also I was wondering what You meant by, You are right next to us all the time? That ought to be enough questions for a few minutes anyway.
Michael. Yes, My son, we certainly can appreciate this quality of divinity that is best expressed by the English word, sharing. Everything begins with our Father’s desire to share His absolute and infinite reality, not only with his co-equal partners of the Trinity, but also with a whole vast array of different orders of personal beings quite beyond time and space. And then too, as We say–out here in time and space, He originated a universe in such a way that every single personal being within it gets to participate in its ongoing creation.
(Michael’s friends—two thousand years ago).
And what a marvel that is; what a joy.
Student. Yes.
Michael. Yet so many of the stories of My life on Urantia–the comprehension of My life with you, have failed to capture the joy we shared, I and My dear friends. But I knew in My own heart it was because I considered them friends, while they were so often over-awed with My power, and would unconsciously tend to set Me away from them by their very reverence; still it was My friendship and the friendship we were able to share–the joy of that, the fun we had, the enormous amount of laughter we shared. This was really what stayed with them. This was, if you will, the proof of My own divinity. That with the power I chose to exercise on a few occasions, still it was My continuing desire that they be My friends, that was to their human souls proof of My divinity. Do you understand?
Student. Yes and no. Yes, I see I had put You, set You aside from me as something higher and better, as opposed to a friend, and I had also forgotten about the joy that was expressed. But I don’t understand why recognition or the experience of Your joy correlates with divinity.
Michael. They could recognize this desire in My heart to be their friend, even while I was their teacher, even as they addressed Me, as was their custom, as Rabbi, or Master. Their respect often overwhelmed their love. But they could feel My love for them, My desire to be their friend.
It was quite unique in their experience of anyone with power, and so to a degree I was a paradox to them–someone with so much more power than anyone with political, or military, or ecclesiastical authority, yet friendly.
They had direct experience of My power, yet over and above this, they could recognize My love, and My somewhat incomprehensible desire to be their friend. And in this I was an example of our Father’s divinity, and His desire to share with you all you are capable of. It was this love, this desire to be their friend, that won their hearts and filled their souls, and showed them another level of being friends with each other. This was a large part of My mission—to show the ways of God to man, that man himself might learn how to be a true friend. Do you understand, My son?
Student. Yes, much more so than before. It’s very satisfying. Sometimes the words friend, or love, become just words and not an experience, but I am more and more experiencing the word love and friend as an actuality. I get the picture of You as You are now, and the Heavenly Father is, not as someone far off. I guess it was the old Baptist upbringing, the old church upbringing—the awesome power—that sort of thing. I was told Jesus loves me, God loves me, but I never had any experience of it, until now. So thank You.
Michael. You are very welcome, My dear friend. I think now you understand how I could say that I am beside you, always.
Student. Yes.
Michael. Thank you for welcoming Me into your life.
Student. It’s a definite pleasure, more and more expanding into my life, and I welcome it.
Michael. Then let us go forward together, side by side.
Student. I’ll go for that!
Autonomy (A good friend is distinct and autonomous).
Michael. This is the joy Mother Spirit and I know, although We manifest Ourselves to you somewhat differently. She is more right within you as part of your very thought processes, augmenting the intrinsic powers of your personality; and My Spirit of Truth dwells in your heart to help you sort out your rather complex human reality. But I myself am beside you, deliberately apart from you in the way a good friend is. Just think about this, My son. A good friend, out of his or her love for you, is distinct and autonomous, and of a greater spiritual value for that very reason. And so I enjoy being beside you, for in this way I can be a kind of dear company, reassuring you that you are not alone. What delight we know when we realize this together.
Student. Yes!—I am very delighted to know that!—very delighted to understand that. Thank You, Michael.
Michael. Thank you, C. Be in My peace, and share My joy.
There followed a very long period of, I would say, joy…
Student. Yes, Michael. It’s like my mind is open to so many ideas and thoughts and experiences… Never a dull moment! (laughter) And I choose it to be that way! It’s interesting–Your response to R’s question about the water, because I have seen those same experiments. They actually have a book on that—the photographs. One of the things mentioned was that human beings–a greater percentage of our bodies is water, so water responds to these thoughts–negative or positive. So look at how the human body must be affected by these thoughts. That was one of the things that was brought up. Then I just now went through, in my mind, a whole series of books which have been written about the power of positive thinking—As A Man Thinketh (Sic?)—and so forth and so on. But to think of these experiments in a different light, because water is not life, makes me look at it in a different way. So I will do that.
As to the idea of our friends, I’ve recently seen You as a friend—someone to talk to or confide in, because the idea of a friend is that we are of equal footing, we’re equal. And there’s unconditional love. And that you are there through times when things are good, and when times are not so good. So the idea–when people tend to exalt You, and put You removed from themselves, I guess that was not what Your mission was all about. You wanted to show that we were equal, that we, in exalting You, ought to be exalting ourselves—each other–our divinity.
I’ve always wondered about a statement You made, about we can do greater works than You. I always wondered what You meant by that?
(The greater work involves courage, the inevitabilities of meaning itself).
Michael. My son, this just points to the courage it takes, and the courage that has been summoned and expressed at times, for people to be friends with each other, to reach across vast chasms of distrust, and painful memories—thousands and thousands of years of tribal warfare where every assault had to be answered least you be quickly enslaved by the surrounding tribes. And so courage is a part of this greatness that men and women have achieved at times in the past, and are still achieving.
This is why I have called your attention to those few pages of the Urantia book they call “the inevitabilities,” (Ed, pages 51 and 52) of how the human condition and situation is in this sense a deliberate, divine creation to make possible such qualities as loyalty, faithfulness, trustworthiness, truthfulness; how all these qualities can only exist in the presence and the possibility of their exact opposites. Truth only has great value within the possibility of falsehood. Loyalty shines like a beacon against a background of possible betrayal.
This is the meaning of meaning itself. This is what the spiritual realm, the Celestial Family knows as a kind of transcendent unity, this quality of simple but profound friendship. This is the quality We call the “smile equivalent,” this ability of beings of vastly different orders to so love and have good intentions towards each other, and share in a joy of recognition–that you just expressed as a kind of rough and ready equality—this granting an acknowledgement, each to each, of these good intentions towards one another—this joy in sharing that is the very essence of God and His most fundamental nature. This is what I and My close friends shared, and, in sharing, became the examples of loving spirit that has been passed on down through the years in all the true and genuine religions of mankind.
So yes, for you beings raised and trained and indoctrinated as you have been, to accept Mother Spirit and I as friends is quite an accomplishment—even, for some, a bit scary, because they cannot then push away or hold at a distance the quality of friendship We embody. But one step at a time, My son, one small step at a time. It is difficult to really and actually open your arms and welcome the whole world as a friend, particularly toward those individuals who wish to do you in, as I encountered.
And so as I said before, I thought it was such a wonderful blessing that I could of necessity stand up to some of these individuals with no animosity whatsoever in My heart toward them. I could see about them what they could not see about themselves–literally, their own spirits and souls. This was how I could go to My final hours with My heart full of forgiveness, being their friend almost in spite of them. And what a surprise when we met again… (a real burst of laughter) and they realized I had only love for them.
(The relationship between mind and spirit, living and non-living reality).
Thought
About your first point, My son, this is why I made a distinction between a non-living substance, water, and the living cells that make up your body. This is similar to the correction We made one time to thinking of the Lucifer Rebellion as having some kind of persisting energy, for energy is totally impersonal. The legacy of the Lucifer Rebellion is actually carried on in behavior, which is the background, the environment in which generation after generation are raised. In the same way it is not the water within your bodies which has some kind of mystical correspondence with water outside you, but it is the living cells that make you up that respond to your mind and your spirit. To a large degree–not entirely–there is a spiritual content within thought; but insofar as your thought is a physiological activity of your brain cells, thoughts do directly and immediately affect your whole organism, they are part of it.
All emotions have their corresponding repercussions. This is one facet of human reality in which justice is almost instantaneous. A person who commits a knowingly and intentionally evil act of deliberately harming another, immediately if un-self-knowingly experiences a corresponding repercussion that sets him that much apart from a possible better life. Does this fully answer your wondering?—at least temporarily? (laughter) I would not, in any way, wish to quash your spirit of investigation.
Student. Yes, I don’t think complacency is in my vocabulary. I’ve been reading for Easter the idea of the kingdom of heaven. I’m trying to allow it to come into fruition within myself. This past week I’ve felt a dichotomy between my higher self, my spirit, and my lower self, and when I experienced the energy coming from my lower self, my animal self, it wasn’t too pleasant. I felt disconnected, and destructive and dis-harmonious. It didn’t seem life-affirming. Then, when I saw that, and saw what truth, and beauty, and love have to offer, that happened. Then is when I felt connected, and harmonized, and real, not being propelled by some destructive, debasing force. So I’m learning.
Michael. And so you see, My son, why We encourage you to feel everything, so you can have these experiences of what is only partial, or short-sighted, or just temporarily good, contrasted with what then seems to be holistic—what engages all of your being, not only your physical and mental, but your spiritual possibilities, and can suggest a way of going forward.
Student. And that’s what it feels like. If I allow my lower energies to take over, it’s just like death in a sense. There’s no fullness. There’s no life. I don’t want to be there.
(The time dimension of wisdom; and accepting it).
Michael. This is the emergence of the time dimension of wisdom. When I say partial I mean those elements that can feel temporarily good. A classic example is some chemical substance, some drug that gives you an immediate high of good feeling, but the long-term or continuous cost very quickly turns on you and destroys your health, the very basis for those good feelings to begin with. So it’s good to keep your morality right down to earth. Remind yourself that true morality is not some dogma forbidding you to try this or that, but encouragement to expand your wisdom over time, and do only those things which promise greater health, and greater freedom.
This is your soul. This is what your life’s experiments have shown you because you have paid for them. You have learned what lasts and what does not on the deepest level—what costs what. Accepting this real price of experience becomes the means by which you can have it—you can use it. So you welcome your wisdom and don’t try to thwart it, or ignore it.
Student. I think I’ve reached the point where it won’t let me thwart or ignore it.
Michael. May I suggest this is actually your own will you choose to put behind your wisdom, or not.
Student. My free will?
Michael. Exactly.
Student. I’m understanding that more and more.
Morality.
Michael. This is why Mother Spirit was saying last week that true morality can be embraced with your whole heart and mind, with all your feelings and decisiveness, because it corresponds with your deepest desires to have life more abundantly. No other human being can make these decisions for you; nor can you make them with only a part of yourself. Accepting that fact points your way to being free.
Student. That’s right. Thank You.
Totalitarianism.
Michael. You’re welcome, My son. This is a slow and painful lesson that many have to learn, that what you call totalitarian organizations depend fundamentally on the unconscious consent of those so ruled and deprived of their freedom. In other words, an unwitting fear of freedom is the basis for an equally unconscious identification with a particular political party, or even a religious organization; this gives them their power. So be in My peace, carry on.
(The blessings of laughter and joy).
Laughter.
My dear friends, it is so good to hear your laughter. Maybe now you are beginning to realize what I had with My other friends about two thousand years ago–the really good times we had, walking about, doing good. What recognition, what joy there was in the faces of those we met when they saw what we had together. What enormous joy and hope just spontaneously burst in their hearts, that human beings could so relate to each other, and share so much, and be so free, and be so equal. For so many of those we met, the friendship between men and women that we knew, without being distorted or cramped by lust, was a marvel.
They didn’t know that such truly platonic loving relationships could exist. In this I was most happy that the long-enslaved women of the world could see a hope for a wholly different kind of relationship with their fathers, and husbands, and sons they truly loved. What a gift it was for the men to realize these new women, and welcome what they could become. It was, in short, an explosion of individuality, a blossoming of individual souls, a recognition of this smile-equivalent between equals.
Closing
I invite you to experiment, My dear friends. Be here-and-now, be ready to smile. Be strong and self-secure enough, then, to accept whatever response you encounter. I set this before you as a loving challenge, and invite you to enjoy it, and have fun with it. Be in My peace deep in your hearts, your minds, and your souls. Feel this peace of Mine, and let it become your home base that you and I share together. Good evening.
