2000-08-13-Larger Picture

Session

Opening

Prayer: Our hearts are open to learning and listening. We welcome the teachers to come in our midst and speak to us if they will.

"I am Legion. I am glad to be here. I accept your welcome. We are very pleased at your persistence in coming together in rain, or snow, or sleet. (Laughter. "Or gloom of night," said a group member.)

“I've been with you, each of you, watching your struggles to bring the Father's love into your world. I would like to allow Alana to say something to you. You are to be assured that I remain by your sides at this time should you further wish to speak with me."

"I am Alana. Legion and I are by your sides. At every meeting.................. We are grateful to you for this opportunity to bring the Father's light into your world and the Father's understanding to your problems and your life on planet earth, sometimes called Urantia with you.

Lesson

“We have been very pleased to hear the kind of support you give to each other and we wish to acknowledge each of you for your willingness to consult your center within before you speak. It is this task that we wish to support you in accomplishing, the ability to carry the stillness within you, and to bring it forth into your conversations, and to bring it forth into your responses and your speaking to one another. As you know, or are increasingly confident of in your faith, within that stillness is God's love for you, for each of you, both friend, and enemy, which is a temporary situation. Hopefully.

“I say hopefully, because of course from our perspective there is a vast opportunity for enemies to be surrendered, for enmity to be dropped, to be washed away, to be cleansed with God's love. We know that from your perspective life is short and an enemy may choose to stay contrary, or angry, and you may, to your great sadness, experience this disappointment, this isolation from another, until the point of your parting from the earth and your present form of life. And so it seems to you that an enemy might remain an enemy "forever." And so you hope, from your perspective, that you, or they, can resolve the issues prior to that "permanent ending." I remind you, as our friend over there, Mr. David, has expressed earlier, that there is a larger picture. It is our pleasure to tell you that most humans surrender their position of enmity upon discovering their true nature as a child of god once they, too, have parted from the life that is familiar to you.

“This has been a rather long way of telling you that I am pleased with each of you. My love embraces you. I assure you that you are loved. You have within you the power to carry on and to bring light into such situations as are temporarily dark and despairing. I wish that you not condemn yourselves when you experience these "pot-holes" on the path of your journey. Understand that patience sometimes demands more of you than your emotional (experience? emotional reality?) is willing to tolerate. We want to say to you that your thoughts of revenge, or your expressions of anger, so temporary, are acceptable in the eyes of God. Legion wishes to speak to you."

"Yes. This is Legion. I wish to clarify that this acceptance of your emotional outbursts is that very same acceptance that you experience when you consult, when you go to your center within, your stillness within, and ask for guidance. It is an acceptance of great understanding. It is an acceptance that each of you ......(what I recall is a feeling of the teacher's and Michael's deep acceptance of our human vulnerability) ...... God has patience for this because you have demonstrated your choice to love. God. Alana. Myself. Many teachers. Michael. We have faith in your decisions, your choices to love, your commitment to strive to bring our love through you to others. Our faith in you is very strong. I thank you for your faith in us. Are there any questions that you wish to pose to me, or to Alana?"

Dialogue

Q: My biggest one is, Why is it so difficult to come quickly to forgiveness when someone else has hurt you?

Legion: "This is the role of acceptance that you are who you are. You strive for what you know within is possible. You strive to have the level of forgiveness and the depth of forgiveness that you experience as soon as you enter the stillness and seek our love. You strive to have that immediacy of understanding and acceptance that you experience that you have from us. But you must remember that you are very, very human. Love your humanness." Legion.

Q: But we are so limited. We have so many limitations.

"We have no quarrel with your humanness. There is...(no quarrel with your)...limitations. You come to know us with our...... (love for you?)...... you then come to know your self. (I recall a discussion of how our practice of the stillness allows us to know ourselves; to know the teachers and God's love is the means of coming to know ourselves.)

“I would encourage you through tenderness. It is with acceptance of your limitations that you will know the freedom to go way beyond (the boundaries?) of your limitations. Each time you bump up against these, there you will find your freedom. To know a limitation well, you must knock on its door in many ways. This is to discover how to open that door and step through. ............ It is a course of surrender. But how can you surrender something that you have not accepted?

“It is that you hold it in your hand, this limitation, this anger, this enemy. Then you breathe life and love upon it. How can there be love without acceptance? This will be clearer if you recall for yourselves some past struggle to forgive, some past struggle to be patient with yourself to forgive. Then you may recall the surrender that allowed you not only to forgive, but to accept the past so completely that it no longer existed for you. You only knew and understood the present as the presence of love, our love, your love......(God's love)......” Is there any further puzzlement on this that you would wish to express?" Legion

Q Surrender is a difficult concept. We sometimes call it letting go. I recall a teaching in which you counseled Susie to give up her anger to the teachers. Would you comment on this please?

"Gladly. I am here to lighten the burden for you. I am Susie's beloved Devina. I hope to express to you the Way of Surrender. It is indeed a difficult concept. On your planet you have this associated with submission, or loss in battle. I would like to tell you, or remind you, that surrender is also a very joyful experience, one which in your "lovemaking" you have experienced how there can be so many feelings and thoughts and passionate feelings or energies that accumulate and grow and build until sometimes there is even that thought, or that feeling in your body, that you are struggling and can not "get there." Some of you even, once in awhile, have experienced despair that you could not, or would not be able to surrender. But in the moment of surrender, if you will recall, there is a moment in which all this disappears. And something inexplicable happens. There is a certain joy. It is the joy we would have you know........(tape unclear).

"The joy we would have you know is love, our love, the love you have for one another. If you segregate these two forms of surrender, you will continue to feel discouragement with yourself for failing, as you might say, to forgive. But I would remind you that the act of love, what ever form it takes, is an act of forgiveness. (Tape was very unclear for a sentence or two.) You are not meant to be like us, you are meant to be as you are.

"You, dear one, are sincere in your striving to know us, in your striving to know yourself well enough so that you may be a proper vehicle for love. Accept that you must once in awhile suffer the impact of a pothole. This is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of God. Your time frame has been shortened by that idea of yourself as limited in the sense of deficient, or inadequate. We say to you that every step along the way you are loved and every struggle is embraced. We would have you forgive yourself your lack of forgiveness. We would like now to allow a few simple words from our beloved Michael."

"You are loved. You have my compassion for your noble effort to live a life of goodness, truth and beauty. I am always with you. My understanding I give to you. I have lived and experienced lessons in life. I assure you that what you are doing now meets with my favor. I had hoped to leave before all mankind a pattern, an example of communion, of remembrance of God's love. You know, because many have said, to pray. In the learning struggle of life, I turned always to my Father. (He spoke about his practice of prayer, of regularly going aside to talk with his Father. This was noted by others, written down and handed down as the practice of prayer.) My Father's love sustained me. I wish my love to sustain you. Turn to me when you are most in doubt." Michael.

Closing

"This is Legion. We suggest that you have your transmitter share with you what she experienced, what it was like for her when she allowed Michael to speak with you. We have been most grateful for this opportunity."

TR: First my body flushed with goosebumps. Then an intense light began to pour in upon me, surround me. Devina told me to simply step aside, as they, too, were stepping aside to allow Michael to speak. When I shared this after the transmitting session, both group members expressed a similar experience of physical, emotional, and spiritual knowing that He was there. Each felt Michael's love expand into our presence and into their hearts before He spoke.

"We leave you now with a thought. Remember the words, "Do this in remembrance of me." When you go into your stillness take those words with you. We especially encourage you to set aside a moment in time this evening when you choose to go into the stillness in remembrance of our love, and in remembrance of Michael's love. Thank you." Devina.