2011-06-30-Growing Through Experience

Session

Opening

Prayer: I would align myself with spirit by petitioning our Divine Parents and thanking them in particular for these gifts, these gifts of each other that are so magnificent. When something happens like, you lose a friend, it really comes home for us to appreciate the magnitude of each of us that you have given to the rest of us. They all are in some way the reflection of the Father's love to the others where an expression of that divinity to those around us. I think that is what we sense when we have a loss like this, there is a gap in our perception of this gift of goodness, our ability to see this expression of the divine through this particular individual. So that is what I attempted to remind people at this memorial is that feeling of loss we were feeling was because there was so much goodness there, that we truly appreciated the gift and we can never fail to recognize that in all of our relationships, we are that gift. We all have the power to change the world. Rick [Giles] changed my world, he changed many peoples world. We will never be the same and we each do that for people around us by just being a manifestation of the Father's love. What greater gift in the material plane than to give the gift of one to the other. Thank you Divine Parents for this gift. May we realize and be in awareness of the significance of this, not just when they are gone but each moment that we are privileged to have them. Help us to make it so in our lives. Thank you.

Lesson

Support

Michael: [Mark] I would pick up the opportunity, the invitation that you offer, I am Michael and my dear associate is in recognition that I have been about a great deal lately, at least in conjunction with our relationship. I have felt that I needed to be close in these times and so I have made myself readily available to be summoned at a moments notice as it were, to join in the group even as we enjoy now, to bring my peace and grace and add it to the totality of the equation that we form at this time.

Whenever my children are in distress, I am keenly aware and I am drawn to such occasion as any one of you would be seeing one of your brethren in distress. There is an overwhelming natural tendency to want to swoop in, rush in and be of some assistance as a difficult time occurs to another. You witness their distress and you are drawn to try to alleviate it in whatever way you can. If they are in need of medical attention then that becomes your priority. If they are emotionally distressed then your desire turns to one of camaraderie and companionship. If they are distressed by loss, there is a great desire to reinforce the idea that they are not alone and that this loss is merely an aspect of the whole, to provide some perspective so that the individual who is in distress may realize the order of magnitude of the event.

The human family is a reactive bunch and when they encounter life's misfortunes or mishaps, they tend to react and perhaps even overreact with an unwarranted level of concern and interaction. I call you all to witness that in your experience with growing in the spiritual plane, this growth has provided you all with an enhanced perspective, a way to see life from a different platform of awareness, the platform which encompasses such things as the eternal nature of the very essence of your being, the fact that we are in a family unit together, you and I, the fact that I have made for you this life and all that is in it, that I am concerned about your welfare, that as Divine Parents we watch over you and provide all that you have need of.

Perspective

If you have true awareness that these things are so, then you cannot help but to see the transitory phases and experiences of life as just that, transitory phases and experiences. They may seem extremely large when you encounter them, they may feel overwhelming and for a time they may be overwhelming. But to those who have grown in spirit there is an inner strength, an inner peace, an awareness that you may use to interpret all that goes on around you and this is what you are building in your pursuit of spiritual awareness, this greater paradigm with which you can view all that transpires.

Having this greater paradigm most certainly smoothes out some of the rough edges of experience and makes for a more balanced interpretation of the events of life. This is the greatest gift that is available to you and in fact, this is a gift you must give yourself. You are here by virtue of your own choice to receive this gift, to work to find this gift, to seek to embrace this as your own. When you do so you are enhanced, you are grown in the process and as a result, you are forever altered and changed. You are not as fearful now as you were one day before you had the skills and awarenesses. You are not as timid as you were one day before you knew you were a child of God so definitely. You were lacking direction at times in your life and now you find yourself with the conviction of purpose and direction.

All these are as a direct result of your efforts at having pursued them, having developed them, having accumulated them to yourself. Now it can be said that you are in true ownership of these principles, not just in peripheral awareness of [them]. This is a gift that is available through accessing the spiritual realm and the gift we are so pleased to offer and have accepted. I will tell you that when you do accept these gifts, when you do embrace these truths, when your life changes as a result of having done so, when your choices indicate your values and these values have come from this higher part of your being, that is a gift to me, that is a gift to us who have put this entire gigantic enterprise into motion.

Agondonters

For you to have had success even on this planet of Agondonters and it can be said, in a world of darkness, for you to achieve the light and find the universal divine values obscured by the material reality around you, that is your gift that you give to me. That is the gift that I take away, your success, your accomplishment, your achievement in this realm not only benefit you but they bring such great pleasure to the parents. And so I will always remain available through your times of challenge and as well through your times of success in having mastered living your life in accordance with your highest values. To me, that is the ultimate reward for all that we go through to get there. And so I congratulate you each and every one who have taken to themselves this responsibility and have excelled in effort to accomplish this ability within yourself to develop this higher aspect of your being and then to come from this place as you then reinterpret all that life has to surround you with.

Thank you my dear ones, it is a great pleasure to witness you achievements, to be provided the opportunity to come to you and express this, to have your willingness as part of this reality. These are all miracles which are becoming routine as you learn how to master spiritual principles. It is a joy to share these words with you and to bring comfort where I may and inspiration whenever possible. You are indeed doing well and getting better all the time and I will never tire of reenforcing this truth as I am so granted the opportunity. I now will share this gift of grace that you offer in coming together, such eager and willing participants, for use by others. Thank you for entertaining my words. Go now in peace and I never forsake you, never am far, farewell.

Prayer: [Henry] Divine Parents, we thank you for your intimate connection with the love and light of spirit, this connection into the greater spiritual family. We ask you today to share a bit of wisdom and more love with us today as we strive to come together to express our loyalty, our commitment, our firmness of faith in this great outworking of spirit and human endeavor. We thank you.

Observer: [Henry] Greetings to you this afternoon. I come to you from on high, I am an observer here and am willing to share a bit in this spiritual family of spirit and human endeavor. It is good to see the gifts which you share, the gift of friendship between one another, this love which culminates in the group's ability to [come] together and share space and time with each other in a loving embrace of divine understanding and human will and purpose.

It is interesting how situations present themselves and yield a unique perspective as the passing of a close and intimate friend from this life does. It immobilizes ones attention in a way in which you are completely aware of your own mortality up until this time, what you have achieved, and it brings to mind the transition of a friend and how that friend is beginning a new life. In a certain sense, each day is a new life. It is like meeting a new friend. All of a sudden you have another to share in love and trust, another reference of another person doing their best, supporting a larger group by supporting each other.

Groups, Sharing

Family is truly a gift, the ability to come together on your own and strengthen the bonds which are set between you. This goal of achievement on an evolutionary world for all men and women to come together in a greater purpose than the individual need, is a challenge which even today pretends to bring out the best in all men and women. To find this greater resource within and to share this resource in a family, in a group setting, adds to the group dynamic and the ability to achieve what everyone pretends, the achievement of peace, of prosperity, a trust, a trust so great to be able to take care of anyone in need. This is how the universe is set up as one gigantic functioning family, supporting the family, adding to it as their ability to serve the family with all they are given, to support each other, to focus towards the one will, the one truth and the one expression of greatness.

This tone, this harmony of spirit is beginning to be felt on your world. It is beginning to resonate within the minds of humans on the planet. More and more groups are strengthening by the individuals within them. The next step is for the strengthening of groups to form greater groups and this is just what is happening on your world. Slowly and slowly groups are beginning to meld together and people are beginning to understand the need for a greater sense of purpose between each other. This greater sense of purpose, this need to feel alive in peace, is something that is within every heart on the planet and yes, it is given such tremendous variable of expression that at this time it is not able to fully resonate in a peaceful resolution yet in time this will become evident because the need for peace grows within the heart of all men as you attempt to seek balance with each other with spirit, with the Father which resides within.

Once peace begins to build between a human and divine sense, you are not really satisfied until you make headway in a greater peaceful effort between your brothers and sisters. Spirit is not something that you just hold and keep to yourself, it is something which empowers you to put yourself on the line for everyone else, for each member of the family to be there for them. There is a tremendous need to want to make the world safe and secure for everyone. These are real needs and real desires. The fact that they are not totally manifest in human reality at this point does not preclude that they will not one day be the way in which humans operate because there is a tremendous drive in spirit to bring these truths to bear in reality on your world and many of you are beginning to comprehend and understand this and this grace accumulates. The effort and the detail of work and striving that men and women do each day to make this world a better place for everyone truly builds a strong foundation, the foundation of courage and strength, a foundation of willingness and open mindedness and open armed-ness in an ability to grasp what needs to be done and move forward.

You live in generative times my friends. You live in times of manifestation of the beginnings of experiencing spirit realities in the human condition. As you all continue to love each other and grow in peace, we send you love from on high. We truly embrace the whole effort of all men and women on this world to come into a loving embrace of each other and acknowledgement of the greatness which lies within each of us. I thank you my friends, it is truly a privilege to experience and know that the extraordinary times on your world are on the verge of changing. Keep true to your tasks and may you all live in peace and harmony. Thank you for allowing me this voice here today. I take my leave, again, thank you.

Q: Earlier when Michael was talking, I got to thinking about some of the situations I find myself in. It is very true that I have gained in strength when I came into this association with the Teaching Mission, the teacher corp. I was not a strong person, I was easily cowed and kept quiet for the most part hoping to keep the peace and not make waves and be a genuine peacemaker and so forth. I have found over the years that I have gained in strength and I have risen to the occasion many times and in fact I am feared by, not necessarily [by] some of my contemporaries, but some people because my voice has strength to it that it didn't used to have. People tend to think I'm angry when I am not, I am just forceful and it is not particularly my force because I am a very physically weak person but I was a little concerned how forceful I seem to have become, fearful I seem to be to some people. I wondered if Michael had some counsel for me on that, not just me but for others who may be growing into themselves and be a little startled by what we discover our true self to be. I say that as an addendum to my question because I don't feel out of line in my growth. I feel I've done good but it does concern me, well I'm changed and sometimes I don't recognize myself as myself. With that I await your counsel.

Adjustment

Michael: [Mark] My dear one, it is my pleasure to commune with you about this. I appreciate your strength that you exhibit in bringing such a personal view for public consideration and I thank you. I want to seize on one of your phrases and work with it. It was so beautiful, this phrase of "growing into yourself " because that truly is the essence of what you are observing as you witness that you are not the same person today as you can recall being at some previous time.

It is part of the human experience to witness the actual effects of time and space on your condition at this point of your experience and so you are first granted physical vehicles that enable you, but as time wears on, it is impossible for you not to notice that there has been change, that there has been the effects of time manifest. This is so with your physical dimension as you watch the grass grow, and the children grow up, and the friends pass. This is rather an overbearing, at times, experience of the effects of time. But I assure you that the you that you are growing into, that you are becoming, is a better and better and better version of yourself.

I grant you that it will seem different, feel different, and it will go through phases and you will have to adjust and readjust and at one point you may feel weak and need to prompt yourself to feel stronger. At other points you may feel too dominant and need to be aware that there is a tendency but these are all transient phases, cycles of the big growth that is occurring. So I encourage you to find peace by welcoming and loving every phase for what it has to offer, what it has to bring to you and show to you. Try with your best efforts, all of you, to be of embracing the good that is in all phases of your growth cycle because they will only be here one time, you will only be a mortal now.

These effects of time on the body will only be observed at this point. The entire experience of relationship and friends coming and going and being gone from you, they are only gone from you in the material plane. This will become normal for you to understand as you progress into the spiritual plane but for now it seems as though they are gone. This is a unique experience and these glimpses of contrast that you are given are gifts of grace for you to use to strike some balance in the equation, to have this on the one hand and that on the other, provides for the choice. Thus it is so very valuable to encounter contrast and be provided with this juncture in the road where a choice needs to be made. Which of these two elements of contrast are you more attracted to and then how do you proceed.

So I admire your willingness to observe yourself and monitor the reaction that you observe others having to your interface. This is part of your desire to grow to be better and this desire will bring you to the answers you seek and the balance you wish to strike. Fear not, all is well, all is getting better and better and better. Even when it seems wrong or hard it can still be leveraged towards the good, all things may be directed towards the good and from my perspective, all I see about all that you do are merely steps in that direction. I hope these words find some resonance with you.

Q: They have been very helpful. Just this evening my husband and I were talking about how I'll go along for several days and feel weak and wimpy and hopeless and helpless and then without knowing why I'll rise to the occasion and be strong and capable and making decisions. It boggles me sometimes but I slog on and find out what the next step of the adventure will be because although I try to be consistent and moderate in the changes such that I'm not bouncing off the wall, high and low and manic depressive and all that, I can't help but notice that sometimes I think I'm just getting old and senile but on the other hand, there are moments when I have such a ... I astound myself and as Mark pointed out in discussing his moment with his son in prayer and conversation with the spirit realm, you can't deny those moments, those experiences, so I will forge ahead, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. But I do have faith that I am heading in the right direction and I do appreciate your counsel as you know.

Contrast

Michael: [Mark] You just provided several good examples, one right after the other of contrasts, of the weak and the strong, and the many different aspects to be encountered and observed. That is a wealth of wisdom accumulation. Those are what bring you the true wisdom in life, having experienced with these different contrasts to be able to make an intelligent and appropriate choice. This is such a valuable thing to promote, this idea that everything can be seen as simply an element of contrast. It need not carry with it the baggage of good/bad, extreme, hard, excellent. These are judgements which provide a certain filter with which you perceive.

Rather, if we could look at the events in life as 'Isn't that interesting,' 'More contrast,' 'Oh, isn't that interesting - I observe,' 'This is different,' and see how you feel about it. See how you relate to it as someone who desires to live up to their highest standards. This constitutes the grace of life, the constant ability to observe or make choices and then in so doing, experience the ramifications of your choices and lead you into further choices.

The other concept I will seize on that you offer is this idea of moderation. This is truly a key to navigating your way through any life circumstance. The balance that can be struck when you only are affected moderately is so much easier to find if you are over affected by life and it is too much, it is hard to find a balance at all. So this concept of functioning from a seat of moderation is quite an excellent idea. Both directions, coming and going, one should seek to moderate their contributions to the human dynamic as well as take all things that happen from the human dynamic in moderation. If you can find that place to be, you will find it easy to position yourself neutrally in the middle, not so drawn inexplicably and yet have the conviction of certainty in the direction that when it is your time to choose, when you are at that crossroads, which way you will go. Thank you bringing these points to the surface.

Closing

Q: Thank you for your further embellishment. I really enjoyed the two major points of contrast and balance. Thank you.