2012-01-19-Self-power and Other-power

Session

Opening

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Welcome. We never get tired of saying that basic thing of: Well!--come. Come be with us. And here you already are, actually part of us. This is such a wonderful feeling of your presence because it’s not intrusive. It’s not telling us what to do. It’s just here sharing our life with us.

Michael, your Spirit of Truth is kind of a little nudge of recognition, I think. It’s something that increases our ability to recognize the truth when it happens, whether we generate it or just encounter it. Mother Spirit, it’s your dimensions of mind in which we live, think, realize and wonder. Then there is our Father’s presence, from time to time making those suggestions: My son, my daughter, have you thought about this… Sometimes these suggestions are so out of the blue, and so apropos we can recognize where they came from. So thank you, dear ones, for your company. We love you very much. Amen

Lesson

Michael: Good evening, this is Michael. Mother Spirit and I are happy to receive your love. It gives us such great power for in this we are like you. We derive such power from those we love and those who love us, those who are happy to share their life with us and add to our souls. In this we are very much like you, my children. We have our own power stemming from the very kind of beings that God has created us to be. We have the spiritual power of creativity, our amazing ability to generate something right out of ourselves. And in your case, being a very time-and-space bound being, this is so critical, this spiritual power of yours, because it gives you the possibility of choice. You are not just a part of the landscape. You are a relatively autonomous being and your creativity gives you this choice, this possibility for free will, and to have your own life.

Power

• (Self-power and other-power)

This is a direct gift of our Father’s--your own unique life, and you share it with us. But then there is not only self-power, there is other-power, the power we derive from being a host, a friend, a companion to God. He is part of our lives, in your case a separate, unique bestowal, a gift of his presence that can generate discreet thoughts. At some of your most trying, desperate moments, if you have the courage to still your panic and ask of him, he can say: Have you thought of this? Have you considered that? The next step is always there and if it is not in your possession, it is definitely in his.

Your Urantia Book says that personality--this personal being that you are--is characterized by morality, an innate ability to choose. Yet we’ve suggested that, like a physical muscle, this spiritual quality needs to be exercised. So in your morning meditations or anytime throughout the day--your little mini-meditations, your little stopping to wander--one of the most devout and truly humble prayers is: Dear Father, what is the best thing to do next? There is that dimension of morality: What is the best thing I can do next? You see this opens you up, and in opening you up, it opens up the world that you are living in.

Reality

• (Realists and Romantics)

Maybe a Realist believes that “seeing is believing”--your whole empirical scientific method is based on this ability to work up an experiment and see what happens. That’s the determining factor. But your Romantics know that “believing is seeing.” Your whole orientation towards reality determines what you pick out of it as significant; what you disregard as insignificant; who seems to be telling the truth; who seems to be fabricating lies. It’s your inner sense of what you believe, what is your personal philosophy of life. This is what you will see reflected. So there is nothing more important; there is nothing truly more humbling and a gift you can give to all your fellows: to know what you believe and know how that is influencing what seems to be basic perception. For a better world, a better society can only come about when individuals more and more recognize their projections, recognize how they are interpreting their situation, and literally take responsibility for it.

Know what you believe. Know how you came to believe it. Know how it is influencing your very perceptions and your relationships with all the people you know; and be able to respond to that. Be able to truly open your mind and take in something that may be antithetical or contradictory to what you believe; and yet there it is! And if it is someone’s reality, why? Why would someone else believe such a thing? But this leads to a true appreciation of what unique beings you are. (Michael laughs) Being close to your family and friends, this new perception, this allowing something to come in and impinge upon you, may challenge you, even change you.

• (Spirit is all-inclusive)

My dears, spirit beings are above all, all-inclusive, and though it is true that only God experiences what every other personal being of his experiences, this is the ideal. As you walk down a city sidewalk, just beam love at everyone, just beam good wishes at everybody and notice how all these individuals, all this wealth of God’s creation, emerges from all your stereotypes. This is how you fill your soul, not only with your material things--which are OK in and of themselves. There they are. They have a material existence and, in the case of a laptop computer, it can be extraordinarily complex in your life. But what do you see in another person’s eyes?

What do you feel when you give them a hug and you feel them responding and maybe clinging to you a bit? These are those moments that live in your soul, times when, out of some pure generosity, some overflowing of life and love and good wishes, you reach out. You might even be amazed if you see your hand reaching out to touch someone. But to step off into that, to step off into that unknown of being needed, trusting that there is in you something that can spontaneously arise and meet that need: this is the glory I would share with every one of you, and it’s unmistakable.

Now again I want to keep my lesson rather short this evening to make some time and space for conversation. So you can unmute--I believe it’s *6--and join the party.

Dialogue

Student: Hello Michael, this is your friend and daughter, G. Thank you for being here and thank you for your comfort and encouraging words and for the opportunity to engage in some dialogue and sharing of things. I don’t intend to stay on the phone the rest of the session, I only wanted to, what you might say, lubricate the gears, get the ball rolling. But I do have one thing I will share that came to my mind while you were talking about how it, is how in an instant we can panic. I identified with that so because I have this lung disease that isn’t getting any better, and I can go into a panic so quickly I’ve gotten used to it. I now know when I’m going into it so I just stop everything and put myself in your hands and just go into stillness.

Absolutely nothing else works. But if I just drop everything and lapse into stillness, I know I’m in God’s hands and I get anchored, and focused, and centered. That way I can just focus on this instant and not on expectations of me, or what I thought I had to do, or what I was worried about, or what I was eager to accomplish--whatever it was. Because anything can send me into panic mode, it seems. It’s just amazing how fragile I feel these days. But I do take heart that I have the strength to know enough to run home, to spiritually run home and take cover in the Citadel of the spirit that you provide. So I just wanted to reinforce that idea that, if we can deal with the panic first, it will unfold. This too will pass and we’ll be in a good orderly direction. Thank you.

Practical, Stillness

• (The practicality of stillness)

Michael: Thank you, my daughter. You bring up a very strange word that’s not always associated with spiritual things, and that is: practical. This is something you earn, this being able to be still. And of course the sooner you can get your children started on it the better. (Michael laughs) This is something you earn. You’re building up this home base in spirit--as we called it one time, and it is the most practical thing in an emergency because often you are… It’s a fundamental fact of human life that you can be overwhelmed and not only by an accident where you are terribly injured yourself, but how about if you are driving along and come across such an accident. In these moments of panic your mind can be fluttering everywhere trying to deny or avoid what is happening.

So there is a practical nature of stillness, meditation, trust and faith, that does build up over years and years and can stand you in very good stead. I say practical because there are times when nothing else works. You are in there by yourself, with our Father, Mother Spirit, and myself. But you are in there, in a sense, alone with respect to other people. And maybe in some cases they are depending on you to be together, to start acting wisely, efficiently. But you have to stop, first. Just totally stop if only for a few moments. Stop and gather yourself. Stop and feel your lungs breathing. Stop and feel your heart beating. Stop and feel your hands being able to grasp something and start doing something, after that pause. You have that crazy saying, “He who hesitates is lost.” Maybe in certain circumstances it might be true, but it’s generally the other way around. He who can hesitate, he who has control of himself can, in most trying and terrible situations, do the right thing. That’s where it starts. *It starts with stopping and feeling your spiritual nature. Sometimes a little prayer goes a long ways too--saying, Dear Father, what’s the best thing to do next? That humility can put you in touch with something enormous and literally save the day. So congratulations, my dear. You are finding a well earned respite from some of these panics. You are returning home again and again in a way that will never stop. Be in my peace.

Student: Thank you.

Student: Hey, Michael, this is Cal. What do I need to do to make the most out of my life? That’s it.

Morality

• (Exercise your sense of morality)

Michael: Well, yes, my son. Did what I say about having an innate sense of morality, did that register with you? What a challenge it is, and yet what a necessary thing it is to ask yourself and exercise this, just like a muscle. It’s like learning a job, to do a necessary task. Spend some time to reflect on your life, like what did you do today? What have you been doing for the last week or two? What do you need to do? What do you want to do? With all these dimensions swirling through you, the best thing to do is enter stillness. Take some time out of your busy life and sit down and, if you want to, keep a notepad, and spend twenty minutes living with yourself.

Some people have never done this. Some people live their entire lives with the radio or the TV blaring. Now you have the little walk-about things so you need never be alone with your own thoughts. But this is what you need most of all to get some feeling of yourself. I’m talking about not only getting some ideas, but time itself, time spent with yourself. Who are you? What do you need to do for yourself, your family and your friends? What are the big requirements of food and shelter and all the basic requirements; but beyond that, what do you want to do?

• (Who are you?—for you!)

Who are you? This is something that no one outside of you in the human realm can fully answer. True, your friends can give you wonderful feed-back. You have a saying, “What a gift God could give us, if we could only see ourselves as others see us.” Your friends can help if you are open to it. Your best friend can sometimes tell you what you most need to hear; and you can trust your best friend to tell you this. Consider it. So friends and associates can all give you this feedback on how they are taking you. But who are you--for you! Only you can make these decisions. Only you can exercise your will power, my son, and choose to go this way, this particular way. That’s a decision you’re going to try, and you’re going to be open to the results.

Then you’re going to sit down and meditate on what you have learned. Now does all of this seem a good way to go?

Student: Yes, thanks, Michael.

Michael: Thank you, my son. It takes enormous courage sometimes to stop and be alone, be alone with your Father. But he’s always there. He’s part of you. He can feed your soul directly. You can’t find this home base outside in all of the swirling unknowable things of life. But here you are. Here you are with yourself. It’s another good time. You are still breathing. God has given you another heartbeat, and then another, and only you can decide what to do with that. So: be in my peace.

New Student: Michael? In the past I have expressed gratitude for A Course in Miracles, and my wife and I each morning read the lesson for the day. We’ve found that to reflect back on the day’s lesson in the workbook in the A Course in Miracles is a good way to get our minds quiet, and to approach the stillness, and reflect and relax for the day. Today’s daily word--today’s lesson in the course was Divine Order, and that’s a wonderful one that has carried me through this day to this moment.

• (Divine Order)

Michael: Well, it’s there; it’s definitely there! You may not always be able to perceive it, or feel it, or experience it, but that’s where faith comes in. Faith is this very unique kind of ability to extend yourself out, out into the unknown. You can do things with faith and trust in that Divine Order that are impossible otherwise. In terms of absolutely knowing for sure what’s going to happen before you do it, that’s kind of limiting. That’s what your whole scientific study is aimed at--what is Natural Law clear out from the sub-sub-atomic particle, out to billions of light years. But the next moment? What are you going to be thinking five minutes from now, right in your own life, you own human life?

With this opacity of the future, to be able to see that Divine Order, and beyond that even, to be able to trust it, have faith in it: this is a marvelous ability and it’s its own reward, of course. You have faith and because of that faith you are able to do something. And because you did something, something happened, and your faith is rewarded. The Divine Order has just given you a little wink.

Student: Thank you very much, and just let me make a slight correction for anyone who is fact-checking. In addition to reading in the lesson in the workbook Course in Miracles, we also read the Daily Word which is a daily meditation put out by Unity. It was Divine Order which was in today’s Daily Word. The Course in Miracles lesson for today was: I am not alone, and experiencing the effects by seeing. (Laughter) That’s good too.

Michael: I think we see a tie-in between those two. (Student, For sure!) It is definitely part of the Divine Order that you are not alone, that there is a Being--The Being--experiencing everything that you’re experiencing and taking it on, literally taking on your life. That is your gift to the presence of God.

Student: Amen, Thank you very much.

Michael: Thank you, my son. Keep going. Keep on reading and also, do just a little bit of pure stillness. It’s not really practicing emptiness. Emptiness can get awful full inside, sometimes, when it’s you and us and all kinds of beings. (Michael laughs) Sometimes your stillness gets awfully crowded in here. But that’s part of the delight of it all. Be in my peace. (long pause) It’s a wonderful merkabah, a wonderful shared consciousness we create in times like this, to instantaneously cross all this space. It can be very still, very open.

Closing

• (Stop and say hello)

My children, if there are no more questions or comments I’ll bid you a fond good evening. I do enjoy your questions and your comments so very much, and that’s why I like to leave more room for them. Because this is what Mother Spirit and I really, really delight in--all these interchanges we have with you, all the times in the middle of your hurly-burly days you just stop and say, “Hi, Michael, thinking of you.” Or: “Mother Spirit, thanks for that little nudge of wisdom I needed so badly just now.” We are right with you and you are our joy; you are our power; you are our delight. And in this we are very much alike. All my love. Rest in my peace.

Good Evening.