2011-04-21-Sharing Life

Session

Opening

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Welcome. We want to thank our Father for…our just being here, our just being! We thank him for these unique personalities, these personal beings we are. And we thank the two of you for the kinds of beings we are--human beings. We appreciate your designs, and we also appreciate the Owner’s Manuals you have given us from time to time, these Handbooks on Being Human, in a way holding a spiritual mirror up to us so we can appreciate all that we are given at birth, all we are that so often we are seldom aware of. But it’s good to have you around us and right inside us. Thank you, Michael, for your Spirit of Truth, this orientation to the unfolding adventure we’re right in the middle of. And we thank you, Mother Spirit, for the courage to embrace that adventure. We thank you very much. Amen.

MICHAEL: Good evening, my children. This is your father, Michael, and we accept and appreciate your welcome, not only this evening as you take time out of your busy lives to tune in, but all the times during the day when you just stop to say hello. It’s all these little mini-meditations, these little mini-moments of stillness that we do appreciate. And we hope when you do still yourselves that you can feel and appreciate then that which is not originating within you but that which is simply given, all that is given to you moment by moment, all of life itself with its promise of going on forever and ever. It is easy--with the notion that if there is anything interesting, you might as well start now. It’s going to keep going, forever.

Personality

• Life

So you can rest assured in this. You can take that most precious thing you have of all, you can take time, time to just appreciate being alive, feeling your body breathing, feeling your heart beating. Be thankful to our Father that he got this whole thing going for us in the first place. He’s got this whole creation out there, waiting for you. Even Mother Spirit and I marvel that, with all our experience, we still encounter things that expand our understanding. There is no end to any of this for any of us. For this we are most thankful.

We are most thankful for you, our children. We are thankful that God endowed you with a goodly portion of his creative spirit. Sometimes--even more than you are aware of yourselves--where things are coming from, where things are originating here in time and space--we can appreciate that they are coming right from you, right out of your own essence. What a delight, for there is no end to this either. It’s unfathomable, this mystery of personality, this marvel of creative spirit. It’s ironic that you children are so creative you scarcely credit yourselves with what you are moment to moment bringing into existence.

Just look around the room. Yes, for certain, it has an objective existence; it’s not just your creative imagination. Yet, my children, consider that as you hear my voice, or later read these words, as you look around your room, that particular room is dependent upon you for its existence as a unique reality--for you. Even your best friend sitting beside you whom you have known for years and years is experiencing a slightly different room. This is that co-creation of yours that you are so seldom aware of because it is so seamless, so powerful; it’s comprehensive. It is your personality that is unifying all these billions of little bits of perceptions into a single reality, and there’s a deep comfort in this, once you get over the shock of it, a deep comfort in the fact that moment after moment it still is. It’s still happening because you are. And so you begin to realize where things are coming from. This bottomless, fathomless reality is no other than you. This is God’s gift of you, to you. This is the purpose for you, for you to exist: is to have a life.

Sharing

• Sharing life

Then consider that you can share this amazing happening, this unique happening that is yours and God’s alone. You can learn how; you can grow in your ability to be more like him, to share what you are, what you have, what you are creating with another person, for they are the same kind of being that you are. You begin to understand why we call you little walking infinities, both to yourselves and to each other.

Folks are sometimes overcome with shyness on the edge of this realization that there is something ungraspable, something they cannot pin down about this other person. Then when you realize this is equally within yourself, this is happening moment-by-moment at God’s own pace, it comes over you that this is the way it’s always been: and it’s still happening. Here comes the next breath. Here comes the next heartbeat. And so your shyness is assuaged. You can begin to feel comfortable with the kind of being you are because it just keeps happening, and it will go on happening forever--if you so choose.

This is the rebirth of wonder you can find in your stillness--not what was yesterday or even sometimes a few minutes ago, but this moment, this morning as you sit in your stillness and just feel yourself being alive.

If I might make a suggestion here about this inner reality of yours: you are aware that all over the world now there has been and continues to be this expansion of individual freedom, this blossoming of individuality and creativity that forms what we call an inexorable planetary evolution, perhaps being set back from time to time, but overall keeping pace with the evolution of the whole cosmos in the Supreme Being. For in this inner reality of yours, my dears, you can begin to mirror this outward evolution. You can enjoy an inner evolution of an ever greater freedom. So think about this. Think about being a democracy inside.

Inner Life

• Be a democracy inside

We tease you with the notion of the great spiritual influences you have within you: our Father; Mother Spirit with her Spirit Adjutants; my Spirit of Truth; and all your impulses and inclinations, your memories, the whole gift of the culture in which you were raised, all your habits, notions, plans, fears and expectations. But as you begin to identify more and more with your potentially eternal personality and with the transcendent reality of your soul, consider being open and non-judgmental, not denying all these other components, all these other living bits and pieces that you are. Don’t try to rule your inside reality like some petty dictator or tyrant, but be truly open. Be a democracy inside. Allow whatever wants to, to come into you, unafraid. Take each idea as it comes and just let it develop.

Now if you are not used to doing this, you might find that you have a riot on your hands, a real revolution. You might feel overwhelmed with a backlog of things you have denied or not taken the time to consider with respect. But to be open inside, to let whatever come into your mind and to let it have its say; this is how you entertain especially those things that are somewhat foreign to you, shall we say those things that challenge your most deeply held beliefs. This is how you get over your own parochial narrow-mindedness, just by being free inside, just by being unafraid to let whatever might suggest itself. For how else can our Father speak to you of those things you most desperately need because you have been avoiding them for so long? Perhaps it might be those uncomfortable things you may need to consider just for better health.

Once before I teased you with the notion: to entertain anything, everything--whether you can do it or not! Ask with your whole heart of your Father: What’s the best thing to do next? And then let it come. Whether you want to do it or not; entertain it! Give it a chance. For then it is in the realm of consciousness, the conscious you that I am talking to, this you that you know yourself. Then it’s a conscious decision.

Freedom

• Freedom

My children, how else can you conceive of freedom except by having a choice, being able to choose what you do, how you consider things? This is the essence of spirit, not only that it is the creative origin of everything, starting with our Father, and then a whole creation later--you. Come in with your own living, creative spirit out of yourself. This is what it takes to be free to make those choices: to realize that you are choosing. And so what comes next is not just some fatalistic notion of being a helpless pawn with enormous forces blowing you this way and that. You made a choice; here comes the result; and it is at least partly you. This is the realm of spirit, not only as being the creative origin but also being the all-inclusive Encompassing of you and everything else, everything you know, everything you have experienced reposing in your soul.

So think about this. Think about being a democracy inside.

I would like to keep my lesson somewhat short this evening, just to make more time, more room for questions. So if you have any questions or comments on this that I have talked about, or anything else, let me practice what I have just preached and welcome whatever you may have to bring into this democracy of our meeting here. (long pause] Well, does anybody have anything to say?

Dialogue

Student 1: Yes, this is Jack, if I could ask a question. It’s not related exactly to what was being talked about, but I was seeing the passage the other day where it talked about keys to the outer kingdom, and how it might be expressed today--as you were speaking to your apostles long ago; and how the keys of the outer kingdom could be realized in this day. Could you answer that question?

MICHAEL: Yes, my son. How, from this, how did you take it to mean? What does this mean to you, “the outer kingdom?”

Student 1: Well, I understood the outer kingdom to mean the physical manifestation of the brotherhood, the brotherhood of man as it relates to our outward world; as opposed to the spiritual kingdom within which is, of course, the relationship that we have with you and the Father.

Interdependence

• Each is a key to the other

MICHAEL: Well, could you think of one being simply the key to the other? Perhaps that is not too foreign or too dissimilar to what I talked about this evening. Once you realize this very strange, amazing kind of being that you are; when you next meet another person you have some deeper feeling about who they are, what they are. This can be the essence of the connection between the two of you, this essence that God creates. This fatherhood of God can be an experience of brotherhood, not just of some notion, shall we say some theory or principle, but a real experience of what this brotherhood, this outer kingdom of all personal beings is. Can you see how they are connected?

Student 1: Yes.

MICHAEL: Another way of saying it is, only by fully realizing your own spiritual nature can you, out of an extension of spiritual generosity--we call it spiritual generosity—can you grant this to everyone else. There is a bit of irony or a paradox here in that: only as you realize your own uniqueness and take responsibility for co-creating your own reality, can you realize this uniqueness is what you all have in common. It sounds like a paradox but it is just a fact. Does this make sense to you?

Student 1: Yes. Thank you.

MICHAEL: This is the key! This is what opens up all those other people. Actually, it opens you up to let them come in.

Student 1: Thank you, Michael.

MICHAEL: You are welcome, my son. Be in my peace.

Student 2: Michael?

MICHAEL: Yes?

Student 2: I would like to take a moment just to express my gratitude and the gratitude of my wife for the transmissions that we read, and sometimes, as now, hear. Also for about thirty years we have been reading every day A Course in Miracles and the attached Workbook, and I want to express our gratitude also for having your words available in the beautiful poetic form that is the Course in Miracles.

• A big hug

MICHAEL: Well, my son, you are so welcome. I just thank you for your sincerity which is quite expressive. Again, not to put too fine a point on it, but you see: what Mother Spirit and I appreciate and enjoy so much is what you yourself are bringing to those static word symbols that are on the paper; what your own spirit and mind and soul find reflected there. So give yourself, maybe give each other a big hug then for that discovery and the continuing interest in the love and affection you find there.

Student 2: Thank you very much.

MICHAEL: Thank you. Keep searching for my peace; and keep finding it.

Student 3: Michael, there are many people who have a near-death experience and they find that very peace-filled because they come back and have a sense of comfort about what’s to be when they graduate. A lot of times when they do have this near-death experience, and come back, they find they’re just overwhelmed and they want to share with everyone. They mention being loved, being bathed in love, and that kind of love they say they can’t put into words. It magnifies a mother’s love for her child a million times, and it’s still not what they experience over there.

So is it that we are doing something to just come up to a certain point, and then we can’t receive any more love down here? Or is it just that when we are released from our mortal tent that we then can receive because the indwelling Adjuster is able to work with us more? We can just open ourselves up to a whole new universe of love for us. Or can we approach that kind of love here?

Near Death Experience

• Nearly dying, and then…

MICHAEL: Yes, my daughter. I tried to address a little of that this evening. Someone recently mentioned the great earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and a letter that someone wrote about the very fact that, perhaps because so many lost their lives around them--just the fact that they were still alive and coming back from a near-death experience like that--was to once again feel themselves living. It’s more a situation of a suspension of habituation in the deep psychological sense. There is so much of your daily life that is instantaneously habituated. A classic example is, you walk into a movie theater and you smell popcorn, but not for very long. You get in your car and how often do you become aware of, in the sense of being a little boy or girl again, the sensation of being in motion being so overwhelming?

What I am pointing at here is that just to get through your day-to-day life so much of it has to be relegated to unconsciousness just to do it! Then all of a sudden you feel you are dying; it’s all going; you are losing everything; you are bound for the other shore. So you relinquish everything. You let it all go. You find that peace in the sense of total surrender to moment-by-moment what’s happening. All of a sudden, whether you have chosen to step off or not, you are on your way. It is happening. And in that final embrace of the inevitable, there is such freedom in that, that when you find yourself still alive, moment by moment by moment, again you recover that wonder: you are starting all over again.

That deep habituation that you have to have just to do your normal routines is suddenly suspended as after a huge earthquake or a fire. Any kind of devastation or catastrophe has the same effect on people. Women often report this after a difficult childbirth when they were strung out and just hanging on moment by moment to give birth; and it is suddenly over. Again: just to be alive! Just to be alive is enough. It’s more than enough. You just have to hang on moment by moment and be amazed that it continues.

I think that is what it is, my daughter. It’s a rebirth of wonder. And of course it generally doesn’t last too long because it’s the next day, and then the next, and once again you settle in to all those things you need to do, you choose to do, to live your life. By the way, I am not in any way denigrating it. It is a great thing.

Student 3: Is it a different form of aliveness, because we will be alive when we graduate.

MICHAEL: But you haven’t yet. There’s that line in Shakespeare that goes, in Hamlet’s soliloquy, or something like that: “It’s that foreign land from which no traveler returns.” In other words, you haven’t died, and we’ve had many lessons on what it’s like to awake on the other side into a body and mind and spirit, and a whole world, a whole different relationship with reality--that you will never forget that moment. But that is a different moment. This is a near death experience.

Student 3: Different.

MICHAEL: Oh, yes, it will definitely be different.

Student 3: Yes. What will our beloved Adjuster look like on the Mansion worlds when we meet mind to mind before fusion? Since there won’t be any communication, will this mind-to-mind occur right before fusion?

Fusion

• Adjuster fusion, and soul

MICHAEL: It’s a progressive thing. Mostly, when they awake, it’s just a next Big Step. And it depends on how far along…how close and how great a relationship you have while you are still here with your Thought Adjuster. If you think of an extremely primitive man or woman just barely beyond the stage or the status of a savage compared with, shall we say, a more cultured person with an enormous life experience of hundreds of people, all their arts and sciences--all that in them: it’s very individual, obviously. But at first it’s just a more soulful reality. The body/mind that you have is so much more spiritually sensitive, you can be more aware of Mother Spirit and myself and our Father as part of you. But then too the world that you step off into is going to be amazing. The relationship with your Thought Adjuster is something that you grow into. You become more aware of what this presence is doing in your life.

A few weeks ago on one of these Lightline teleconferences I talked about when you become more and more in touch with your Thought Adjuster. It’s the same thing. It’s just another way of saying you become your consciousness, this conscious you I’m talking to right now, my daughter: this grows; it develops. Your appreciation for living grows to the point where you begin to approximate, your personality begins to approximate, in a sense, what your own soul is, because your own soul is partly your Thought Adjuster. So as you approach your Thought Adjuster you also are becoming--the only way to say this: you are also becoming more soulful. The sum total of your being, all your experience, is becoming more and more conscious. And so it becomes the ultimate conscious choice. And it is a choice! You are developing a will all along. You might say it’s a final choice you make before you become another kind of being.

The only trouble is I could talk about it forever! Think back to when you were just a youngster, and then how your consciousness and how your soul have grown your appreciation for yourself and others--has grown from then. So someday you will look back upon this life of yours and have that same kind of feeling of growing. It is this growth that is the essence of what you are. As your Urantia book puts it: your personality is unchanging, but it acquires a soul, and if this growth ever stopped, you would cease. So this is part of you. It’s your very nature.

Student 3: Michael, thank you for the time you are spending with me. I’ll just ask you one more brief question. Faith makes it real. Faith makes everything real. But isn’t truth absolute?--the reality of God absolute? So we don’t have to rely on faith, whether or not we are full of faith. Do you understand what I mean?

MICHAEL: Yes.

Student 3: Faith in our reality.

Truth

(Truth and faith)

MICHAEL: Yes. I put it recently that truth, as such, is an Encompassing, just like God. God’s presence is an Encompassing. It’s what holds you. And it is contra-distinct, you might say, from knowledge. Knowledge is just all the little pieces of truth, but Truth Itself? Only God possesses truth, all truth, because only God can respond to all of the creation. Only God experiences the entire creation. So in this sense, yes, there is an objective reality there in God, but for a human being, for personal beings, you never entirely escape, if you will, your own subjectivity, your own take on this that surrounds you. You get it bit by bit, and you do have the ability to understand all these pieces and how they are related, yet you never possess Truth Itself. But it is an orientation. My Spirit of Truth is an orientation towards this growth, towards this acceptance and understanding more and more of truth. And it never stops! There’s a big universe out there, my daughter, and that’s where you are headed.

Student 3: Wow. That’s wonderful. Someone asked me “What is truth?” and I said, “Well, truth is,” as you taught us, “God is our Father, and we are siblings.” Basically, that was enough truth for me. That was the foundation which I then went on to spread a little more, about the good news that you love us very much and we should never fear. We are never alone. But yes, that basically explains truth. God will be the only one who really every knows truth--the end, bottom line truth. We will constantly be orienting ourselves toward truth, and it is ever changing.

MICHAEL: And you are growing! This is where faith comes in because faith has been wonderfully…I guess you could define it as an ability. It’s closely allied to courage, and trust. Faith is the ability to act on things unseen. Faith is the ability to extend yourself out beyond what you know for sure, beyond what you have already experienced. And you need to do this because it helps you grow. If you want to just hang out with the status quo and keep clinging to what you have already experienced and what you have already known… Well, you can’t do that because here comes reality at you! You’re in the middle of a moving situation called a universe in motion, and here it comes! And here it’s going to keep coming forever.

But to have faith in yourself; to have faith in your knowledge and your understanding; to have the courage to step off because you’re not God, you can’t see the end from the beginning. To have that trust in the process itself, to have trust in God’s love for you in the very way we designed you; it just helps your growth so much more. You have such a fuller life if you have this courage to have faith. It’s an ability. It’s an ability you can cultivate and grow. So it’s a wonderful thing.

Student 3: Thank you. I love you and Mother Spirit, and that you take the time to empower and love us. Thank you very much.

MICHAEL: Thank you, my daughter. Be in my peace.

(very long pause)

Closing

• Stillness

Isn’t this a marvelous stillness we can know together like this? Sometimes you can know such a wonderful stillness, such a peace in your heart, that you hesitate to disturb it. But then the next miracle is that nothing really does disturb it. It’s just waiting there for you, a part of the Encompassment in which you live. You are just taking time out from time to time to notice and appreciate it.

So let’s keep that in mind, my dear ones, that, as I take my leave of you, there is nothing disturbed. There is nothing really ending here. I am with you, and again I invite you to stop from time to time and just say “Hello!” We do love that so much when our children, as your children too, send their love and their appreciation. We pass it on to our Father. So: good evening, my dear ones. Be in my peace.