2006-03-23-Joy Of Living

Session

Opening

Jerry: Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, come be with us, or rather since you are actually and really and truly here all the time, help us be aware of your presence. Help us in our moments of stillness to be aware of you and our Holy Father right within us. Bless our efforts to contact you all through our busy days, just to stop from time to time, and from the depths of our hearts say "Thank you." Amen.

Michael: Good evening everybody. This is Michael. I certainly do welcome you this Thursday evening here on Urantia. As you know, if you have been reading these transmissions, it is quite a delight for Mother Spirit and I to be able to contact you this way. We can feel within you what a treasure it is you to be able to talk with us so directly. But we always remind you that you can talk to us any time, any time at all.

Lesson

Clear your mind for a few moments. Take a deep breath. Just feel this glorious, glorious time you have of being alive. Say hello. It doesn’t even have to be formal. You can say, "Hi, Dad. Hello, Mom. Thank you so much for this life." And then feel if you can, my children, how we thank you for this recognition, for this appreciation. For we are able to live through you; our joy is in yours. Your pain is ours too. And when we can feel each other, you can be aware of us experiencing your life with our mutual Father. What joy this is.

I would like to be this main message tonight, is the almost inexpressible joy I had as a human being. Your beloved Urantia book says that you should not think of me as a man of sorrows. But tonight I would like to put it much more emphatically and positively than that, and just tell you this enormous joy, not only I but all my followers had. Excitement at times, with all the troubles and tribulations we went through, but enthusiasm, the feeling that we were discerning the Father’s will and being able to follow it. This joy was so great that we shared that this is truly what enabled my followers in those trials they had to go through themselves. This is what sustained them, not some of the more profound truths, in a philosophical or even psychological sense, but the joy we were able to share, the good times we had, the effect we could see we were having on the folks around us, and then their delight too, coming back to us. I don’t know that this was ever fully captured or conveyed in the Bible or even The Urantia Book, so I want you to know it right here and now. What a delight! What joy we shared during those days, walking those roads, meeting the people.

Now this is something you too can try to appreciate within your own lives, the joy that finding God’s will, the delight this can bring to your hearts, the assurance it can bring to your minds and to your spirits that there is a soul developing within you capturing all this. So everything of spiritual significance like this that you discover and share with your fellows, this is forever. These moments are what you will most treasure throughout eternity, is what you can share and give to each other. All these material things surrounding you have their own delight, their own uniqueness and kind of a projected soul, if you will. All those familiar, beloved little things you have. But what you will remember most, what forms the greater part of your soul, are these folks around you, are your dear friends, your family. This we would have you appreciate. This we would have you give value, for this is the dimension of spirit that really knows no bounds.

And what a blessing it is when you can see those around you as what we’ve kind of coined a phrase as "little walking infinities." To realize the amount of soul that is behind those eyes that look back into yours, this is your discovery, this is the greater reality there, these are God’s greatest creations. And then some day, of course, you will look around in not too mild surprise to see that there are other personal beings beyond number, almost beyond kind and type for you to discover.

So this I would ask you to remember of this evening, my children, to appreciate the sheer joy of discovery, of sharing, of this divine spark that you encounter every day of your lives. Treasure it, hold it dear to your hearts. And when you have a time, just say, "Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Mom. We appreciate the gift of our Father to all of us."

Now there is quite a gang here this evening, so if you have any questions or comments, we can share those too.

Dialogue

R: Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Mom. And I love you. And I really appreciate hearing that enthusiasm and joy are the whole reason for doing things, although some times for me its hard to remember that when I get bogged down in the emotions of things and I try to remember that you’re there uplifting me. So I thank you so much for that.

Michael: Well, you are very welcome, my daughter. The pain, the sorrow, the fear of life are all very real too. This is what is part of God’s plan. This is the reality of being human, and not to be in any way belittled or just sloughed off or develop a cavalier attitude towards, especially as you recognize these in others – the pain and the fear that they know and you may help alleviate by sharing with them, by accepting, by reaching out a hand to make that human contact. These too are real. And so its so important to appreciate when everything tips in its living moment to moment way, and we can recognize the larger encompassing of life itself. We find joy in this absolute, just pure existence that God has given us, and open our hearts to all that life has. So I thank you, my daughter. Be in my peace.

K: Michael, this is your son, K. I have been reading a bit lately in Conversations with God and some other places about the idea of conscious creation – how you created us with this power to create our own reality, that we can do as creators or co-creators. I wonder if you would care to expand a bit upon the idea of our powers of creation, how that works for us individually creating our own visions, our own goals, and also perhaps collectively, how we work together to create our vision of light and life.

Michael: Well yes, my son, you know if you’ve been reading the transmissions how Mother and I have come at this question of the intrinsic creativity of your personality. This is, if you will, the spiritual aspect of your personality. We have even gone so far as to coin this phrase that you are "little nodules of God" out here in time and space, creating with Him your own personal universe as you perceive it, how this is very much a part of what you psychologically know as projection – the fact that what you perceive as exterior to yourself is so much shaped by your own perception of it, your own values.

So this is always happening, this is a part of your personality. To understand this is to become more conscious of it. So the move from unconscious to conscious creativity is necessary for you to have some conscious control of the process. And most critical for an advancing civilization, both on an individual and collective level is to begin to take responsibility for your own creation, to recognize that what you see out there in others, this is to a large degree equally dependent upon you yourself, that as you change the way you look at things through this understanding, through this taking responsibility, these things themselves, whether they be objects or people, are capable of changing. This is the most important reason you strive to understand and move from an unconscious reaction, always behind the eight ball, as you say, never quite catching up, never quite becoming here and now, but always lagging behind. It is necessary to bring these processes into your consciousness to where then you can choose, you can have some choice as to where you will devote your precious will.

I just told a fellow the other day that this creation comes from within you, its part of your intrinsic nature. So you need not wait for some other signal outside of yourself, what you call inspiration, to create. You simply have to step off, be ever more aware, strive to be aware of what all you are doing to yourself, with yourself, with others. This is what we mean by making your creativity more conscious. Then this is the glory and the reward of doing so. Does that help you my son?

K: Yes, thank you very much.

Michael: You are very welcome. Be in my peace.

M: Dear Papa, this is M. I would like to ask you a question about your human technique of reading the other personality when you used to meet them. I’ve heard in different transmissions and I’ve read that the way to understand and the way to read some other person’s soul is to look through into their eyes and really listen. I’d like you to please expand on that a little bit, and also the fact that when I try and see someone into their eyes I’m not quite sure how do that. If I try and focus onto both of their eyes, that just doesn’t seem to happen for me. At least if I try and focus on one of the eyes, that doesn’t seem very natural. So I’m just a little bit confused if I’m missing something obvious, or is there something that I have to grow to learn?

Michael: Well yes, M, you have to back up, you have to kind of compose yourself before the moment. So let me explain. The degree to which you are able to be open and take in another person depends on an inner quality of we could call it self-confidence, or a kind of feeling of your actuality, the fact that in being confident on a very deep, existential level that you are there, that you are not going to go away if you practice what we call the spiritual discipline and blessing of self-forgetfulness.

And this is essential in order for you to be able to let yourself go, and in this eye to eye confrontation, this meeting with another person, you more or less unfocus yourself. You don’t in any way try to you say look from one eye to the other or look through them. Its more or less a kind of unfocusing your attention so that you take in the whole person, and this is hard to explain. You just have to practice it, because it does not mean an unfocusing really visually. You can see this person clearly, but you are so relaxed inside, so self-confident, so able to let yourself go, you can then take them in. There is, if you will, room for them.

You’re most of aware of relinquishing your own ideas in conversation. Instead of thinking of what you are going to say next, or try to carry and maintain your own train of thought, I think you can see now how you have to let this go in order to really hear what they are saying. And I’m sure you’ve all had occasions where no matter how you tried to express something to another person, you can tell they were just thinking of the next thing they wanted to say. They weren’t really deeply interested or perhaps even capable of hearing what you had to say.

So this is what we’ve been giving so many lessons on openness, how to be open. And it requires this self-confidence, this self-assurance that if you let go of yourself, you really see the person, take them in, hear what they are saying. Just trust that you yourself will pop up again and be able to respond even more adequately. And this is what gets to the really lively conversation back and forth, because that is something transcended to both of you, a kind of oversoul, if you will, it lets that come into play. And then it gets really lively. Then it gets really rewarding, because neither of you then know exactly what is going to happen next. Does that help you, my son?

M: Yes, everything rings very nicely. Thank you so much.

Michael: It would take a bit of practice. This ability to maintain an equanimity within yourself, to walk down a busy sidewalk and meet the eyes of those coming towards you and beam love towards them. Just kind of extend yourself towards them, your good wishes toward them, but then accept with total equanimity however they react. You will meet some who will be happy to see you, others might be glaring back at you, or "what do you mean by looking at me?" Others will totally ignore you. But to be able just to welcome whatever comes to you with this inner equanimity, this is what you slowly get only by practice. So good luck in the endeavor. I think you will find it very rewarding. Be in my peace.

M: Thank you.

R: I’ve been practicing realizing that the person has our Father’s presence within them, and the Father within me, and so really there is four persons there, and if three of us are thinking about the fourth person who I am looking at, there is plenty of room for conversation between somebody, even though I am not saying anything. So maybe the Adjusters are speaking with each other, or something. But we’re a group, and we’re for that moment together, and anything can happen.

Michael: I think you’re hitting on a very profound truth here, my daughter, and this is glorious that you connect experiences and feel this. For true enough, your Adjusters are in contact, in communication, although it is not quite what you think of as talking back and forth, but you can be aware of this, and this is where, as M was asking, sometimes you have these intimations from within yourself, deep intimations and feelings that most adequately tell you about this other person. Because if your reactions are not coming from a self-centered need to justify yourself, or even to express yourself, if you truly let yourself go and be like a sponge in those moments, your own inner feelings then can tell you much about this other person’s soul. And it is truly coming from an Adjuster to Adjuster contact. And then this, in a very complex but very instantaneous way, can inform your perceptions as to why this person is as they are. So your intuitions and your intimations, my daughter, are very correct. And isn’t it wonderful when this happens?

R: Yes, and it is practice. It happened once when I was driving down the street, and I just happened to look at the other drivers, and I thought, "they are gone, but there they are, they are still somewhere", and walking through crowded streets and knowing that everyone is accompanying, we are all around together. And some of us aren’t talking, and some of us are, and we all can be listening to each other.

Michael: Well, congratulations my daughter, you are just touching on the Morontia level now. You are having some little intimation, a little preview of what is going to happen over on the other side where this is just so much more obvious. Also there comes into play the recognition in this other person that you recognize them, this leads to a very tight, high arcing, glorious spiral where you are suddenly realizing that you are responding so well to each other. This is lovely because this is love, this sharing those moments with someone else.

R: Can you speak, Father-Brother, to the reality of our participation, or our encircuitment with our Planetary Supreme Urantia, and in these same kind of moments where we are in groups, we are part of the swirling progress and the co-creation of the directions, the realities that we want to see, we’re these nodules of the Father, and also Urantia’s co-creators, co-conspirators, and how there is the feeling of the individual contact with someone and their Adjuster and our Adjuster, but there is also being in the presence, or trying to be in consciousness of our whole planetary creation, our whole planetary society that we contribute to by our actions. Could you speak to that?

Michael: Well, my daughter, this is just further dimension of spirit, it you will. And it is not impossible, but from a human standpoint you can only conceive of the spiritual, the levels, if you will, of spirit such as the Supreme Being, or even the Planetary Supreme, as being rather undifferentiated from your viewpoint. They impinge upon you as just spirit, which is why again we have given lessons that, true enough, all spirit is personal, all spirit emanates, is focused if you will, in some kind of spiritual being. But when you get to the Planetary Supreme, the spiritual counterpart of the experience of humanity itself, you have to keep in mind that as the Supreme Being is the spiritual record of the entire universe of space and time, all the personal beings within it, so on a much smaller level, but equally profound, a Planetary Supreme relates in a sense to the whole. That is it’s nature. That is, if you will, her nature. This is something you can tap into, but this does not respond to you in quite the same way as a more personalized entity such as myself or Mother Spirit, or right within you the presence of our Father. It is a culminating or a summation of an entire planet’s people, and so it is not quite responsive in the same way. It is more something you can tune into and try to feel, but from the standpoint of a single human being it is truly gigantic, is it not.

R: Yes, it is, and the joy you speak of in the individual apprehension of knowing that Father is within us and helping us to co-create out here, is this joy is somehow when I look at the whole of humanity at this moment, and then this next moment, I mean I know I don’t know them, I don’t see them, I don’t feel them, but I know that just my being aware that we are doing what we can or want to or will to do at each moment, that excitement and drive and desire in each one of us to move forward moment by moment is a joyful thing to participate. But not, you’re right, in any kind of personal way, knowing a person, but knowing that we are moving toward the future.

Michael: Well, this is that hunger for perfection that you are also endowed with, and this is very much a part of the spirit of the Father within you that makes those connections, suggests that next step, especially when you yourself cannot. Because you yourself are creative, you yourself can discern what is best for you and, in a sense, humanity.

Where does this whole planet need to go next? Which is part of the reason that The Urantia Book spells out as it does all of the stages of general planetary evolution. This is to give you some notion of what needs to happen next on a planetary scale, and then see if you can incorporate it into your own value system.

Keep in mind that a large part of what Mother and I have been trying to express to you is our view of you and the enormity of just your own individual soul. how much greater this is than you are capable of realizing at your present stage of development, just a human being. And how you almost have to wait for the next phase of your lives to have this become more conscious and available to you. And just grant that this is there, that this is capturing all these thousands and thousands of hours that you have already lived. They still exist in a way that is your true possession. This is just your own single individual soul. So equally, some time in the future, my daughter, you will have this greater ability to comprehend and enjoy the planetary soul as well.

R: It is a good thought.

Michael: Yes, it is something we tease you with.

R: Good parents.

Michael: Be in my peace. I hesitate to disturb the stillness to ask if there are any other questions or comments this evening? They are certainly not necessary.

So my children, can you feel this living expansiveness? This is our practice, this just being aware of life itself. Just being sponges. Just being open to whatever it suggests itself. And there is not limit to this either. This is a kind of resting, a kind of feeling the energy as it flows through. It’s a little bit like floating in a living stream, yet somehow we are not swept downstream. There is something holding us in place while we feel the stream of life just flowing through us. So that where we feel this flowing of life, the more still we become. The more it expands outward. The greater pregnant silence and stillness and completeness that will give birth soon enough to the rest of our lives. And so Mother and I enjoy sharing this with you, for it puts us together, in touch with our Father. And He delights too when we just say, "Hello." And just become aware of his unfathomable gifts, all that eternity that lays before us, capable of being fulfilled.

R: I ask, Dad and Mom, that your will here on the planet be done through me every day in the people that I meet and the work that I do.

Michael: Amen to that, my daughter. Let it be so.

R: Let it be so.

Closing

Michael: So I bid you a joyous and happy good evening, my dear children, my dear friends. Thank you for bringing me into your life. Thank you for giving me reality in your souls, your wishes. Be in my peace. Good evening.