2006-06-05-Nature Of Spiritual Beings
Marin #94
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Nature of Spiritual Beings
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: Nature of Spiritual Beings
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Tonight we want to thank You particularly for these wonderful Handbooks On Being Human You’ve been giving us. You are able to present to us, that is to our conscious selves, what we can know about ourselves. You help us understand the spiritual principles and presented facts of the Urantia book as if from the inside-out–how these spiritual realities impact our inner life. And so we thank You for this great reward You’ve helped us experience. Amen.
Michael. Good evening, My children, this is Michael. I thank you in return for your appreciation of the teaching mission that Mother and I, and Our other Local Universe Sons and Daughters are involved in. Urantia has had such a checkered and unique history Our whole family feels that whatever effort We can give you to help you, in a sense, catch up and remedy some of the terribly painful disasters that have stricken the whole human family; whatever We can do to help is Our gift to you. We are happy and thrilled to be of service.
Lesson
(The nature of spiritual beings).
This is Our nature and so it pleases Us greatly when you can put Us to use. We want to be used this way–as your Parents, as your Friends. It does Us good, even as a Creator Son and Mother Spirit of millions of worlds. Every son and daughter, whether of a human or higher estate, fulfills us, and so We are more than pleased when Our efforts have a good effect in your lives. For it is also Our nature not to compel any kind of obedience or even a specific reaction to Our offerings.
We know this would be a short-sighted, short term effect. But more importantly, We would do nothing to cramp your own exercise of your free will. This is what is most precious to Us, in you, and We hope to always encourage you to treasure this yourselves. The very definition of the kind of beings you are is this potential for free will that God grants you as a condition of your existence. Yet it would be going too far to state that you are only human to the degree you can exercise your free will. Even if this ability is largely latent and only potential, still this entitles you to the full human estate and deserving of respect, both from your Celestial Family, and hopefully more and more from and to each other.
But the realization and the exercise of your free will definitely augment your human experience. This is literally how you take hold of reality and discover what works, and what doesn’t. We’ve talked a lot recently about the complexity of being human, for you know yourselves primarily from the viewpoint of your consciousness. It was a great leap forward when your more modern psychology was able to express the notion of an unconsciousness part of your human being that more or less had to be inferred from people’s behavior. Simple observation of mentally disturbed persons showed they were often acting out certain learned behaviors, but unconscious of either the primary cause or origin, and even more tragically, of the effects. This was the realization that people can do what they choose not to do, and not do what they choose to.
Also the phenomenon of projection is so much easier to see when another person projects their values onto those around them, completely unconsciously and independent of whether these values and behaviors are externally there. But then, how to internalize and accept for yourself that this is an intrinsic part of consciousness? From the standpoint of your conscious self, all value and meaning you experience as outside of yourself, seemingly intrinsic in your surroundings, has a lot of its origin within you, if not in its genesis then certainly in its recognition. Another person outside of you can have value in and of themselves, but you have to perceive it and recognize it before you can experience it.
(How to achieve self-determination).
My last lesson mentioned how all these unconscious factors condition your consciousness, and so long as they remain unconscious and unrecognized, this conditioning limits your ability to freely choose, independent of it. In a word, you are still being—determined–by that which you do not consciously realize. So look at the recognition and acceptance of this as a sign or indication of both individual maturity, and also a growing maturity of society and culture; if you will, a process the whole world of Urantia needs to be involved in even more. For without this viewpoint, without this acceptance that you are being conditioned by your own unconsciousness, your projections stand in the way of your perceiving a more objective, broader, deeper, God-created reality.
There is a natural hesitation to accept responsibility for something that seems to be–not you. And if you take the view that responsibility limits you, limits your freedom of action by having to be responsible for what you do, an immature person chooses license, or simply acting without being responsible. Yet as long as this viewpoint dominates your thinking, you can never be free. You may feel you are more free, and that accepting responsibility is somehow going to cramp your style, but accepting the psychological and spiritual truth of what I’m telling you now is the way to true liberation, is the only way to exercise your free will. Taking response-ability–accepting the need to acknowledge and respond to others gets you out of your own self-created smaller world, and concurrently develops real abilities.
(Fundamentalism).
Your world has long experienced a phenomena in all cultures, all societies–something you call fundamentalism. In essence a fundamentalist is a person who believes within himself or herself, they are so fundamentally in accord with reality they needn’t entertain or explore any contrary viewpoints. They already know what’s totally right. They believe they are literally holding the living, fundamental truth of life itself; and this gives them the great power of license.
Why entertain doubts of your own unconscious conditioning, or the fact that how you see the world is largely due to how you’ve been indoctrinated? Why open your mind to other ideas and notions of reality when you already posses the full truth? Why be bothered feeling contradictory or contrary feelings when you can blank them out with a dogmatic self-assertion? Of course, these are all rhetorical questions. The real reason you welcome an open mindedness and seek many different opinions and viewpoints is because you accept the psychology that you yourself need to examine the origin of your own ideas. You open yourself to many other different people’s opinions so you can see them more as they see themselves, beyond or through your own projections of who you once saw them to be.
It takes courage and faith to go down this path. From the viewpoint of adolescent or clinging, lingering immaturity, it seems needlessly self-limiting. It seems like a lot of work to understand different viewpoints when there is such an enticing, comfortable laziness in just accepting what you’ve been told due to the accidents of your birth.
Here is where it helps to be truly cosmopolitan in the sense of striving for a world viewpoint, including as many cultures as you can encounter. This is enormously facilitated in your world today through your mass media, television and the internet, if backed by the principle of a free press. Now you can more easily accomplish a number of broader viewpoints of what life is, fundamentally, for others. In keeping with the stretch this occasions, and the faith it takes when you start to feel that stretch pulling your once monistic notions apart, you must go through a kind of fracturing process in order to avoid simple-mindedness. This is a dangerous passage to a future greater wholeness, but no one who wishes to be truly self-aware and in possession of an ever expanding free will is spared this journey.
For a long time now this has been the goal of what you call a liberal arts education, where you are purposefully exposed to a number of arts and sciences considered the minimum of what a young cultured person should experience. So keep in mind, My children, that you are truly, at the most fundamental level, a spirit-endowed personality.
Objectively you are a creature, that is to say, a creation of God, starting out at a particular point in time and space. Subjectively you are only your conscious self, and it is a blessing of humility to be able to perceive the enormity of the surrounding world in which you find yourself. There are certain modern notions that much decry an egoistic or egocentric view of things. Such as when people thought the universe rotated about the earth, so an egotistical person sees the world pivoting about them. Still in all, you need a strong and ever more refined, growing sense of yourself.
And it is a further blessing of humility to remember that you are your ego to yourself. For this sets you free of illusions of objectivity, which remains a goal, not a possession.
(Reality is liberating).
The basic principle I am teaching here is that what is real liberates you, while what is unreal, in the sense of false motivations and unrecognized projections, binds you tight in a snare of misdirected efforts and unwanted effects. These are principles to help guide you to being open-minded in all your thinking, and remembering, and to be open-hearted in your feelings. Deny or suppress nothing whatsoever, but grow to encompass all you can perceive and imagine. Then you are approaching the all-inclusiveness of spirit. Then you are building that ineffable quality of character, that–something there–Mother taught you last week. This is the main purpose of your human life.
You are an experiential being growing a soul, growing character, and this is potentially an eternal treasure. So joyfully accept as many viewpoints as you can embrace. As Mother invited you to do last week, see if you can be a democracy inside. Sure enough it may seem a bit complex and messy, compared to some simplistic notion of rigid, dogmatic, fundamentalist assurance you already know all there is to know; just as your political democracies can be rather messy and contentious at times. But as you say, it beats whatever is in second place. So don’t fear the stretch or the temporary confusion the complexity sometimes brings. There is an economy of energy within your mind that deems it proper to expand and stretch only when you need to. So exercise your mind like a muscle. Use it.
Welcome this wild mix of mind and body and spirit–Mother Spirit, and Myself, and your Father Fragment–as well as all the people you’ve ever known in your soul; then graciously offer this wonderful storehouse of your human reality to service. Play the part of true spirit. Never seek to coerce or simply overwhelm those who may be a little less developed than yourself. Rather, forget yourself. Let go and open wide to take in the next moment, another day. This is where the fun is, so I invite you to enjoy it well. If you have any questions or comments this evening, I enjoy them as a gift from you.
Dialogue
Student. Thank You, Father Michael, and Mother Nebadonia, and Whoever else is around, for all the help I got this last month. I appreciate it very much. Also, I’ve been looking at how much I’m circumscribed and conditioned by fear. I’m afraid to make certain decisions that would open me up to, maybe criticism or… I’m not exactly… what. A lot of things I don’t do I want to do, I can’t do because I’ve been… I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say right at the moment. Like I want to be a transmitter/receiver, but I find myself not doing anything—not practicing, not contacting my Teacher as often as I could, not maintaining, not being in stillness. I don’t know why I don’t do these things, which are obviously beneficial to me and others. Do You have any insight as to what is going on–anyway?
(Fearful things that never come).
Michael. Yes, My son, you probably recall your Urantia book giving examples of Morontia Mota–spiritual laws–being the kind of lessons you will immediately be given in the next phase of your eternal life. One of these laws states that many of the worst fears are those of things which never come. This may seem absurd on the face of it, because something you fear and never arrives certainly cannot be worse than some fearful thing that actually happens to you. But it is true nevertheless. This only emphasizes My lesson for this evening. Fears that are not based on anything that can actually happen can be more crippling and limiting because they are not based on reality. A realistic, fearful thing that comes to past–when it does arrive you have some chance of dealing with a particular event.
So even if you do not triumph over it, if you are somehow injured by it, still you have contacted and related with something real. You have that tough-minded saying, that those things that don’t kill you, make you strong. (Yes…) This is a bit overstated, but it is something you have to thoroughly understand and embrace in order for it to help you with a particular fear. For fears are something you must also embrace. You must let yourself feel them with the courageous attitude of, OK fear, do your worst. For this is the only way you can get to the bottom of one, and make this a real inner event. Then you can learn from the experience.
You know this psychologically as facing your fears, probing into them, letting your mind articulate what it is you are afraid of. Let it become specific so you can deal with it. Your faith in your own abilities and adaptability’s comes into play. So look in your soul, My son, at those wonderful times in your past when you have triumphed over adversity, and remember how it seemed worse that what it was.
Student. Yes.
Michael. This is part of the training so many go through to handle fearful situations; which is learning to control your imagination. Think of the hundreds of thousands of years men and women were enslaved by their own imaginations creating so many paralyzing taboos and superstitions, that had to be faced and penetrated in order to get at valid causes and effects.
As for practicing your stillness, My son, I think it helps to consider it not just another effort, another chore, not just another thing you feel you should do, but see it as taking a break. The only difference between stillness and, shall we say just being lazy and enjoying doing nothing—which is also interesting from time to time, to indulge a bit—is the matter of consciousness. You are setting aside small periods to do nothing—only highly consciously, so rather than slipping into a dreamy half-conscious state, you try to be consciously aware of your thinking. Rather than getting caught up in thoughts, you‘re observing them, detached.
(The nature of stillness).
The stillness itself is nothing you directly create, for indeed that would just be another job, another effort. It is more a matter of noticing after ten, or fifteen, or twenty minutes—if you can devote that much time—your mind just naturally tends to slow and broaden. Memories as they occur to you can be more exquisitely unique, almost as if you are reliving some former event, for here you are beginning to touch your soul, the story created both by you and your Father Fragment. So if you’re doing it right, it should be delightful in and of itself. It’s not a job, it’s not an effort.
It is no more nor less than trusting this rather strange and funny thing to do—from the viewpoint of all your other busy activities—actually has some special benefit. As Mother Spirit said last week, there is a–something there–that slowly accumulates, and this is genuine character.
It is a kind of home base and sense of yourself that is a little more subtle than what you normally consider your ego. It’s more like constantly discovering you are more than who and what you think you are, more than you have hitherto perceived yourself to be.
Student. Yes.
Michael. It’s encouraging to feel this living growth.
So it takes a while to get the feeling this is home, because it is rather strange at first, to be sitting there doing nothing–highly consciously. This is what I feel is your reluctance or aversion to try it . You’ve been seeing it as just one more thing to do.
Student. Yes, I see that. I also see that I was reluctant to get in touch with my soul because I didn’t want to see what was there. I see that particular idea is conditioning from the past, childhood upbringing in a fundamentalist religion. I don’t know how I got hold of that one except, well, I just didn’t want to see my soul. So I resisted anything that would show me that, even though You and Mother have said that it is a co-creation of my personality and my Father Fragment, and that, in and of itself, would make it positive.
(Your soul is not your memories).
Michael. Yes. I’ll say that again. Yes! (laughter) Exactly! Your soul is contra-distinct from your memories. If nothing else, then in its very size. You recall the times We’ve told you how enormous your soul is, precisely because it is a product of the presence of God, a story told from His perspective.
Student. That’s a wonderful way to look at it, because I’ve been looking at it from my perspective, which is not very positive at all.
Michael. Those are your memories.
Student. Right.
Michael. From the standpoint of your consciousness, as We’ve discussed this evening, your own soul is something to be discovered.
Student. Yes, I see that now—nothing to be feared but to be discovered, and relished.
Michael. Here is where your stillness opens that door, and can give so much meaning, now, to your memories. It is a way in which your genuine soul’s point of view can inform your memories, which tend to be more partial or fragmented; and if they’re painful, they have a kind of built-in aversion.
Student. Yes.
Michael. You recall from your reading the Urantia book, there is a whole order of angelic helpers on the Mansion Worlds called Reversion Directors who teach you how to understand your own past experiences, and especially the painful ones. They revert you back to a former state and let you re-experience some of these memories with your own now more mature, fuller, broader understanding, both of yourself and the others involved. This is what contact with your soul and your Father Fragment can do for you. Again, you should feel this wonderful sense of freedom in your present existence, this expansion of your free will as one more fearful memory becomes understood and ceases to condition you. So why wait until you get to the Mansion Worlds?
Student. I was kind-of wondering the same thing. (Michael joins in the laughter) Both You and Mother have pointed out several times, to get in tough with… no… really relive these memories. And I never could do that. I was too afraid of them. I feel less fear now—more understanding. I’m looking forward to actually freeing myself from those things—those burdens I’ve been carrying around. (heavy sigh).
Michael. There is a lot of forgiveness involved here, My son, both for yourself and for others.
Student. It seems to be easier to forgive others than it is to forgive myself. Slowly I’m learning to accept and forgive myself–as I am. That I learned from You and Mother.
(Guilt and self-forgiveness).
Michael. See guilt, and the refusal to forgive yourself, as self-motivating techniques. There is a necessity for you to evaluate what you are doing, and what you have done, in order to keep growing, in order not to keep repeating past mistakes.
Student. Yes. I just saw also that I wanted not to… I didn’t want to get in trouble with Mother again, and I was kind-of putting You and Mother Nebadonia in that position of being parents, and I didn’t want to get in trouble again, so I’m careful of what I’m doing… And none of that is true, as far as You Two are concerned, or the Celestial Family is concerned. But that’s where I was at the time, up until just a few minutes ago.
Michael. My son, cultivate a willingness to try something new. That is a better way to go about the future than trying to drive yourself to a better behavior through guilt or this not-forgiving yourself. You have a fear that if you forgive yourself, and relinquish the guilt, you‘ll simply back-slide into an ever worse kind of person. (Yes…) So I want you to see the noble desire to be a better person behind that.
Student. Yes.
Michael. I’m just pointing out a more efficient and better way to go about it. Look forward to new behavior, to trying things, to seeing life as an adventure where you‘re bound to make mistakes. This is the way it was all set up. (Michael laughs) You‘re starting out as a highly imperfect kind of creature– (Yes…) compared to what you will be a few million years from now. So don’t be overly-critical about your mistakes.
Simply acknowledge them. Say, Ooops! (Michael laughs again) missed that one! Take it in stride and use your imagination, not to surround yourself with fears and taboos, but to embrace the unique next moment. For this fear, this apprehension casts a dulling pall over the moments as they come. Some poor folks experience life as if nothing new ever happens, not realizing they are causing the illusion that is killing them with boredom.
Student. Yes. I like Your ways of doing things much better than my way.
Michael. Well, let’s see if we can make them–our way. (both laugh at that).
Student. I agree with that. Yes, I will. Thank You once more, Father Michael.
Michael. My son, when the people about you suddenly seem to be inexplicably happier and more open and welcoming, then you know this is really what you yourself are doing. There is that marvelous concept you have of feedback, where you realize your own projected fears and apprehensions are falling away because reality itself is wearing a new face, and is more responsive to you. You find yourself in an friendlier universe, with the further delight of realizing it was always there.
Student. I’m realizing a little bit more the universe really is friendly. I can visualize that the next life is much friendlier than this one, but I had not looked at this life as being too friendly.
(The whole Celestial Family is learning, growing).
Michael. The human situation on Urantia is close to unique in millions of worlds in the hardships the whole human race has had to endure for so long. This of course is one of the main purposes of the Urantia book–to explain why things are as they are, and that even We, your Creator Father and Mother Spirit are not yet perfect either, nor is all our Celestial Family. We are all trying and learning. We are all involved in this great adventure that our Father deliberately created—it and us—in an imperfect state so we might participate in the creation of our own perfection. So realize where you are starting from, My son. Realize how far you’ve come already in just a relatively few, short human years.
Student. Thank You , Father.
Michael. You’re welcome. I thank you for your love, that Mother and I feel so directly, beaming from your heart, and your mind, and your soul. I invite you to feel what I just mentioned a moment ago, that even your guilt and your un-self-forgiveness is basically an attempt to grow, to live a fuller life, to be a better person. So know that this is how We see you, My son. And this is to your eternal credit.
Student. I look forward to standing before You and Mother one day, in this universe.
Closing
Michael. And so you will, My son. You’re not doing too bad a job of it right now. (much laughter, and a few tears of happiness)
Student. Thank You again…
Michael. Let’s say amen to that!
Student. Amen!
Michael. We thank our Father for this love He created for us to share.
Student. Yes.
Michael. Now be in My peace. Good evening.
