2008-12-29-Nature of Personal Time

Session

Opening

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, As we rev ourselves up and focus ourselves down these next few days, getting ready to party on that admittedly arbitrary moment between calendar years, we ask you help us stay still and calm at heart. Help us realize what we’ve been informed, that just as God in His absolute and perfect memory becomes the oversoul of all creation, the Supreme Being, so too our own souls, co-authored by the presence of God within us, hold for all eternity our human experiences which seem to run past us so swiftly and are gone.

Help us be aware of this deep mystery that personal time is. What does the Urantia book mean when it says we realize space by a process of synthesis, yet we realize time by a process of analysis? However: it assures us that both time and space are our true home; so help us feel at home in this living mystery for whatever pain or sadness it may hold. Help us keep our faith that--ultimately--this eternal now contains unbounded joy in simply being alive. Amen.

MICHAEL: Good evening, my children, this is Michael. Mother Spirit and I do wish you a happy new year. It gladdens our hearts when you reach for that deeper happiness that you express as joy. Some of your metaphysicians have correctly discerned this is truly part of our Father’s basic nature, this deep and abiding joy in creativity. So too this is your innate nature as a spiritual being. Yet within this first stage of your eternal life, involving a largely unconscious quotient of your creativity, you might wonder how much you are generally aware of co-creating this present moment, this eternal now.

Lesson

• Time (The nature of personal time)

With any corresponding inability to respond to that quotient that is your own creation, your own doing, this leads inevitably in the fullness of time to pain and sadness, to what you call mistakes, misperceptions, and misconceptions. As your Urantia book puts it, and we’ve mentioned a few times: the endowing of imperfect, immature beings with even a relative degree of creativity and free will, leads inevitably to tragedy. This is part of God’s response-ability, and He does respond to the sheer potential for all the harm that personal beings are capable of doing to themselves and to each other. If you will, it’s within His existential parameters that such things are even possible.

This possibility is necessary for personal beings to be free to express themselves along a whole spectrum of goodness to evil as part of their basic nature, so primal you do have the existential possibility for both to occur. Yet this mere possibility is only realized and compounded when it is intentionally performed by personal beings capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. This is tied to another great distinction some of your human laws consider, the whole dimension of intention, for in this you recognize that much of the evil and harm that is done is unintentional, the consequence of unconscious misperceptions and misconceptions coupled with a lack of thinking.

Mother Spirit spoke last time about the deep mystery here as you confront particular, discreet acts. Partly it’s the humility she spoke of--realizing your inability to finally judge anyone--that can, however, be a source of wonder and amazement as you pause to consider another person and wonder about that balance within them of unconscious and conscious intention. Where exists the dividing line of responsibility?

The psychological cause and effect called projection means you more or less evaluate what others are doing based upon your own understanding of yourself. Feel and judge yourself by rather immature narrow principles of black and white--all right, all wrong--and you will tend to see others the same way. But if you are capable of feeling yourself to be a living balance of abilities and inabilities, conscious choices and unconscious habits, open-mindedness and cultural conditioning, then you will be able to comprehend and see yourself and others with a greater degree of fullness of your common human estate. And so grows your comprehension of human history, and the present. Both become much more transparent and understandable.

• Freedom (Personal, individual freedom)

With this ever greater understanding you’re capable of suspending any kind of superficial, knee-jerk judgment. You begin to perceive that not only you yourself but all others too are somewhat impenetrable and incomprehensible for the very uniqueness of their being personal creations of God. This becomes unbounded freedom of expression into ever deeper mysteries when you can realize yourself and just let yourself, and others, be unique. Personal, individual freedom of every man and woman becomes your measuring stick of societies: how can you grow this? The expression of yourself while being able to respond fully to others--allowing them to express themselves, might come out just fine.

This is touching that deeper joy of recognition that lies beneath the surface of happiness and sadness. This is that true intention that is contra-distinct to just re-acting to whatever comes your way. This is the deeper self you have mentioned, calling it God’s will and intention for you. Seeking to know God’s will and intention literally feeds your power of choice. You are growing in accord with reality, and not only with that which has been and is, but also more and more into that which is possible in an expanding, growing, ultimately personal universe, God’s and yours.

It is a mystery and we can only tease you to envision a world of evermore free-willed individuals coming from a highly conscious and fully accepted ability to discern what is right and what is not, what is supportive and what is harmful, what is progressive, what is regressive. Let this discernment, this curiosity, this search for the truth of what is right and what is wrong, what is better, what is the best to do in each living situation--give this free reign within yourselves, irrespective of whether you choose to do it. Just make the choice to be open to your own better nature. Let that nature and all your soul have free expression within you. Then choose what to do in the light of this.

This is the way forward, my children. This is the way to avoid denial and seeing yourself in somewhat simplistic black-and-white terms. This is also the way to grow and mature in your understanding of the inevitably of this living balance between right and wrong--fully accepting this will be a component of your life forever. There will never be a time in which this discrimination is not necessary, for this discrimination ever points the way towards God’s will and His intention for you. You will continually, endlessly grow into greater life, and in doing so will not only keep pace with, but be a contributing part of cosmic evolution.

So embrace this aspect of your personality, my dear ones. Welcome it even though--on a human level--it may be somewhat a nag as you reach for that next small portion of a bad habit. Embrace your full humanity so that you may embrace your true soul, your life seen in part through God’s eyes: that kind of totality. As several of you have expressed so many times before: what a great blessing it is just to beam love towards everyone you see without exception; how this simple yet profound intention introduces you to all those around you, right through your prejudices, your generalities; it lets their individual, unique personalities come through.

This is that transparency you wondered about last time that is directly tied to a gladness of feeling your own soul--this totality of your life--informing and giving your life meaning and value. So too this can be reflected in everyone’s uniqueness as you let them be, and marvel then at what comes forth. All these positives qualities of transparency, and spontaneity, and creativity, and discernment are all tied together in the living bundle that you are. They are all mutually supporting. They are little signposts teasing you: come this way. Enjoy us and spread the joy around. Find the ever greater way of just letting yourself be, and others be, and be tickled at the unfathomable, unending mystery that is the real hallmark of God’s creation.

We once compared it to one of those surreal paintings of yours of a fountain bubbling forth out in the middle of the air. For this is truly God, this continuous creation of all of us. So on this cusp of another year coming along, in the full awareness of this impenetrable, bottomless mystery of an eternal now in motion, Mother Spirit and I wish you a happy New Year. We’ll be right alongside and within to enjoy it with you.

If you have any questions or comments, better hurry. Time’s passing! (much laughter) But of course time holds everything as well.

Student: Hi, Michael. Thank you for your support in all these years, and future support. Before the transmission we were talking about a simpler, easier version of the Urantia book to read. Is there going to be an easier one to understand? Is there one of those things in the works?

• Urantia Movement (A simpler, easier Urantia book?)

MICHAEL: Yes, my son: no. (group laughs) But I enjoyed your discussions before the transmission. Stretch your imagination to wonder about the different orders of beings--dozens of them--that composed the book. Remember that nothing can be put into a concrete human language but help being a limited expression to a very particular time and place if it is to be even partly understandable. As your Urantia book informs you, there were quite a few hundred years involved in organizing this presentation that plainly tells you it is an Epochal Revelation, somewhat comparable to only four others in which the celestial family decided to present revelation like this to the human family of Urantia. I’m counting your Planetary Prince, Adam and Eve, Machiventa Melkizadek, and my life as Jesus--in those cases actual living beings to help you along; in this case something put into the English language in the mid and late 1930’s. The authors were fully cognizant of your thousands of religious and metaphysical works representing so many cultures and sub-cultures all over the planet. Remember it was into this mix they decided to drop a presentation which claims to be authored by extra-human sources, discrete personalities of dozens of orders you’d never heard of before.

They faced the immediate problem of validation--spiritual evaluation. Human beings know things both directly and by comparison, so you have the Urantia book as it stands within its own context, plus how it is unavoidably compared to similar types of material. It was the intention that the very complexity of the revelation--its unifying comprehensiveness across dozens of fields of human understanding--would have the effect of being self-validating. It was literally designed to impress as well as inform you, and so its very complexity is a compliment to your evolving intellectual abilities. While it may be beyond the capacity of some, it is also well within the capacity of most, given the desire and the effort. Keep in mind too the way in which you earn this revelation through spiritual effort, and how that effort is required for your soul’s growth.

The effort you make is your participation in the Supreme Being. So again: the complexity of the book is this tribute to your ability. If you will, it’s offering you an intellectual/spiritual mountain to climb, not just some small hill to nonchalantly roll over. As the very size of this mountain is a challenge to your climbing abilities, so too, hopefully, it gives you no small measure of humility, and even some comprehension of the extra-human beings that do exist--all the way up from your planetary Midwayers and angels, to the higher personalities of our Local Universe, on to the Super Universe, Havona, and Paradise levels of reality: hundreds of orders of personal beings administering creation.

Without its enormous detail delving into and unifying all your human intellectual categories of theology, philosophy, psychology, cosmology, geology, history, physics and chemistry, biologic evolution--on and on--without this impressing you--if you will, we couldn’t hope to convince you of the other things we tease you to imagine. We had to strike a balance of how to invite yet not overwhelm your human curiosity, but rather count on that part of you, and your soul-recognition, to keep you reading. I have to arbitrarily stop here, my son, (Michael chuckles) because there is no end to explaining the complexity of the Fifth Epical Revelation--were it to do its work and be that challenging mountain for you to climb. But does that help a little?

Student: It does indeed--help a lot; puts it in a very good perspective. I hadn’t thought about climbing a mountain, but the word stretch comes to mind when you mentioned the complexity making me continue to reach out, continue to stretch out to better and deeper understanding. Thank you, Father Michael.

• Revelation (A mountain of revelation)

MICHAEL: You are very welcome. It is quite a mountain for most who have climbed through it at least once. There’s still a second, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth time…(Michael laughs)..as well. That mountain of revelation has many routes of ascent. Even those who have read it many times are delighted to find little nooks and crannies it seems they are encountering for the very first time. (Yes) So keep stretching. You are definitely fulfilling its purpose. Be in my peace.

Student: Good evening, Michael. First off, we talked about discernment last time with Mother, and the choices one makes--whether beneficial to oneself or others, or progressive or not. It saddens me, what is going on the county of your birth. It seems never-ending, with no discernment at all. I was thinking yesterday about having faith in God’s perfection, and our own--of God’s perfection within us. That word gets misrepresented and turned around as well. I would like to deepen my own expression of faith.

MICHAEL: Yes, my son, perhaps because of our dwelling so much on the mystery of time tonight, it strikes me when you mention the events happening in Palestine, and a seeming lack of discernment; it’s not so much that as being fixed and held tight by the past. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have individuals acting out of a sense of outraged justice, where, in their own minds, to balance out some terrible things done to them in the past, they must avenge this wrong in the present on a tribal level--that is, randomly against the enemy people as a whole irrespective of the individuals involved in the past. I.e. this is not a lack of discernment but of discrimination--indiscriminate warfare and terrorism.

• Violence (Warfare, terrorism, crime: faith)

To understand this you must have some appreciation of the incessant warfare for territory which has been going on, right from the tribal level on up to that of nation/states, for hundreds of thousands of years now. Up until very recent times--especially in the last few centuries of the blossoming of the Correcting Time on your planet--notions of the progressiveness of human nature and relationships were nonexistent: war was a common feature of immutable Fate. Yet this Correcting Time led in time to the hope for a better future. This was somewhat new in human reality, something to counterbalance that--getting even--that again, you must appreciate was the ironclad rule of the past, just to keep from being enslaved. Any tribe, any group of people you might think of who did not avenge the slights or attacks made upon them, would soon be overtaken and enslaved by the surrounding groups. And this is still true over much of the world down to the neighborhood by neighborhood level of the daily lives of people. There is such a thing as valid self-defense, not letting bullies and tyrants of all sizes have their way.

And so you have this sense of justice. But you also see a kind of stalemate in reaching that hope-filled and progressive better future if the past has too much sway, for while it may seem simple-minded on one level to ask when will the crime and the warfare end, that question goes to the heart of your wondering what is faith. We say faith is nearly synonymous with the meaning and feeling of the word trust. To have faith and trust in a Universal Father you cannot empirically demonstrate, you cannot prove to another--and be content with that; to have faith in what your greatest men and women have taught does open the possibility in your heart of this progressive evolution that we tease you with, this notion that things can get better between peoples.

It depends on individual creativity, not being bound by the past but with an ability to create something new, including better human relationships. This is precisely what is needed in these head-butting situations where so many on each side of the divide in that contention are consumed with the past and are all too simply just excitedly re-acting. As we point out, this gives meaning and value to their lives, so they must have the courage to let that go and find in their own creativity a better way for themselves, turning around from the past and looking to the future with faith and trust and hope for their children’s sakes.

This is that living tipping-point, that balance within each one of you moment by moment, that ability of discernment of relative good and evil, better and best, temporal means and results. It helps to pray for folks, pray they find the courage to step forward, naked in their hope, and throw off the centuries of hatred projected outward on the enemy; find the courage to start anew in their own lives, right in the presence of their hate-filled fellows. This is where peace has to start. That does that seem to ring true, my son?

Student: Yes, very much so. I’m glad you added courage because one needs the courage to act on the faith and the trust. I know in my own little life, I’ve had to make decisions which were not very popular with those around me--my own family; in a sense, acting on a higher outlook of how we were created to be. As Anne Frank said in her dairy--I’m paraphrasing--despite what had been going on, she still believed in the goodness of man. And that’s always there. That’s what we have to cling to. Despite what is going on--this tragic mess in Israel and Palestine, God’s will and the truth will prevail, somehow, because it is there underneath the veil of prejudice and ignorance, illusions and emotionality. If you’re a prisoner of the past, I don’t see that as free will. Free will is being conscious of who we are as creations of God, and living from that place…

Sorry…I’m going off on a tangent… I had this warmth of energy going through me and wanted to express that. It’s been on my mind. It’s like endless generations there!--born into this; and that’s all they know. Anyway, I do thank you.

• (The perpetuation of conflict)

MICHAEL: You’re right on that mark. We say free will is actually defined by not being bound by the fetters of antecedent causality, or if you will, simply the past. No matter what led up to this moment, there is something in you that can come up with something else which has not yet been. The difficulty is in convincing people of the degree to which they themselves are causing the impasse, when their notions and feelings of the enemy are precisely their invalid and unconscious projections, seemingly--out there--and not inside. As Mother Spirit said last time, it’s people wrapped up in evil and, through misperception and these projections, getting more and more detached and removed from any kind of objective reality as they create and cling to their own self-generated and closed-minded notions of what is happening. You have the irony that they can fearfully feel themselves to be less and less secure--which is true--but that the situation is entirely someone else’s fault and can be solved out there. Add to this personal dynamic the enforced indoctrination by cynical, self-serving, power-seeking leaders and you have the seemingly endless perpetuation of conflict you see.

All through history a small number of dedicated men and women, ten percent or less, have been able to control the larger number of their fellows. So that dedication, that discipline can work for good or evil. A tiny but recalcitrant minority can keep the hatred going and sell out everyone’s children’s future.

Student: What can I do in my little life? All I’m doing is painting the walls in my apartment and waiting for the next adventure, the next prompting: and participating in these teachings--which I do feel are very profound. Our basic nature is being compassionate, and acting out of love. But there are times when I do feel limited by time and space, and I ask myself why. Why do I feel so limited? These are things that come up.

• (Limitations and how to transcend them)

MICHAEL: Remember what Mother Spirit said last time that it is your very concrete/material/animal aspect--that is limited in this first phase of your eternal life, yet moving and changing and spiritually alive--that also gives each moment its uniqueness. So not only cosmically/universally this moment never happened before, and will never happen again, but also for you personally.

As to what you can do, you can always start by consciously focusing on your inter-personal relationships. This is where all your understanding, and your desire for understanding the truth of these world events: this is where it originates. Your personal experience with people is the basis for your understanding and insight of human nature across cultural/racial differences; if you will, the common ground of humanity as you feel it to be. When you meet that other human being: this is where all the courage, all the faith, all the trust, comes forth. This makes the spontaneous, lively dance of love and consideration possible. This is where you have the greatest effect on this whole world of yours, my son: right in that next person you meet. This is essentially what I did as Jesus. So feel my peace in these moments too. Just let go and pay attention, and you can enjoy a bit of our Father’s spontaneity and creativity.

Student: Like this world was created for us!

MICHAEL: Amen. And you for each other.

Student: Thank you very much.

Student: Good evening, Michael. I understand you to mean that each individual needs to turn to their own creativity; and then another phrase about being naked with themselves?

MICHAEL: I mean stand naked of all your cultural conditioning that is so comforting to cling to and wrap around you; stand naked in your own uniqueness and personal hope--right within that conditioning that demands you do this or that, yet out of what interpretation of the past? This takes inner courage.

Student: It certainly does! (much laughter) It reminds me of something I’ve been trying to work on for quite a while now, to go to that place where it’s my own creativity, my own self--in a sense reclaim it from my conditioning, and the past, and my upbringing. Parts of that were deadening, weren’t allowed free expression. So I certainly have sympathy for those individuals who are in that situation where they have such an automatic reaction to survival. There isn’t any charted pathway when you get to that place. I know from my own past experience that it’s possible to take really creative action, but at the same time, I get there and a lot of the times I get frozen. I have a vague sense of what is the right thing to do, or the wrong thing, but I get kind-of confused and it’s hard for me take action from that place. I don’t have either a strong enough emotion, or a clear enough vision to compel me forward. I’m not sure really what it is. Using my own free will is so rusty I don’t know how to use it. So it would be helpful for me if I could get a fuller understanding of what the process is, what to be aware of. I feel I could break through what feels like a block to taking the right action.

• Decision, Stillness (Ultimate decisions and meditation)

MICHAEL: Yes, my daughter. OK. Let’s do it. Just relax a minute and open your mind and feel all of us gathered here. Here we are in this moment. Now entertain the possibility that what you’ve been doing just might be the right thing. I’m very deeply impressed, my daughter, with how familiar you are with that moment of decision, or indecision. I could hardly describe it any better. That is what it is. And you know it well. So you’re not doing anything wrong…(much laughter)…you’re doing the right thing: why don’t you know it? Why can’t you feel it?

It could be--and these are just possibilities for you to entertain--I’m not trying to tell you what to do here--as you approach being creative and not being bound, but being decisive, you become aware of how much you are creating your life--what part you play, and how you feel you. This aspect of subjectivity appears when you see how much you are always interpreting each moment’s this and that. Yet you, my daughter, yearn to grow, to have this process of real-a-lization be more conscious, decisive. You want to be aware of how much you are co-creating your life through mere reacting to past conditioning, so you can take that into account and be free of it. You yearn to be objective, to reach some objective and certain truth, however impossible you humbly accept this to be in any absolute sense, your being human.

The humbling essence of this is a bit like facing a blank wall, a block, of no path ahead, because you’ve just very rigorously eliminated to the best of your ability all the general conditioning of the past, to get to and feel the unique present moment of decision. There no longer is any sure path from the past continuing through the present: there is just you continuing. You rightfully feel no compelling--emotion or vision.

As you feel for: what should I do?--you keep running out, for nothing can tell you. You’re getting down to your self. You can even arrive at an ultimate point where the question arises within you: what do you want to do?

Are you ready to embrace this real freedom of deciding what you want, and accepting then the full responsibility--personally--for that conscious decision? This is something I don’t--(Michael laughs)--need an answer to right now. It’s just something to consider, maybe read over a few times in the future--when this is all transcribed. What you described, my daughter, is an occurrence for those who do achieve a great deal of sensitivity to the point where they can feel everything tipping back and forth, and as they try to arrive at a decision of what to do next, and their minds keep reaching--seemingly ever more futilely--for something to tell them what to do--what is the right thing here: this may happen to them.

Usually to decide you need to stop or slow down for only a few minutes and the answer will come, seemingly automatically: one consideration largely outweighs the others. Yet if you get into what we’ve been suggesting--meditating for a certain amount of time and just writing these good suggestions down, and not immediately acting upon them; as you get more and more still, and deeper and wider in your mind to ever greater truth, you can arrive at a point where it seems you’re stuck. Nothing is telling or compelling you what to do. Not even us. Not even our Father. We respect your autonomy, even as we offer the answers to your prayers.

This is where you have to just step off into the unknowable, and do, and accept the full responsibility--if even for the first time in your life--that you are doing what you want to. Mother Spirit and I can only wish every human being could arrive at this point, and often, of accepting the full responsibility for what they are doing. So congratulations are in order. We can only suggest that you be not afraid of these moments. Don’t run away from them, but rather, let them happen: deeper, wider. Continue your meditations; continue feeling in every way you can for what is the right thing to do, then embrace the responsibility for the degree to which you are doing what you want to. We hope that all your brothers and sisters across this world of yours can learn to do the same, and realize what they are determining--by conscious choice or only by compulsion. Does that help?

Student: Yes, it does. Thank you.

• The Unknown (Sublime uncertainty)

Closing

MICHAEL: Well, you touched upon an essence there. You beautifully, humbly expressed the mystery of being right on the cusp of free will, and yet not always being able to realize it. This is a valid spiritual experience. We only wish more of our sons and daughters could get to that point, and not be afraid of it--that your very uncertainty points the way and opens the door to conscious choices. So: no fear!--that’s the watchword. You are reaching to take responsibility for what you are doing, and in that you have all our blessings, and all my love.

It will be another year--happy and sad, up and down and in and out and all around. This is your human nature, by your Creator; this is your encompassing, as well as is His presence within you. Thank you, dear Father, for their human experience of time. Help them appreciate it, and acknowledge its deep mystery--the hallmark of Your handiwork. My children, Mother Spirit sends you her love, and I bid you be in my peace. Good evening.