2012-12-20-Lightline TeaM

Session

Opening

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, we come to you tonight with heavy hearts struggling to feel through layers of shock, and with exhausted minds trying to understand recent events. And so we pray most earnestly that you be with us. Help us feel your presence within us, with all that equally incomprehensible assurance you give us this way. Help us feel you. Help us come to know you and our Father. And through your love and your understanding, help us come to know and understand each other. In this we pray. Amen.

Lesson

Personality

Michael: Good evening, this is Michael, and Mother Spirit and I share your heavy hearts for this is the essence of divinity. This is the divine nature, this sharing. For it is God’s sharing that brings out the Creation and all the personal beings that are part of his circuit, part of his experience. So in your sharing even your grief with each other, this is the essence of your divine nature for I remind you, my children, you are part of the Deity Absolute just in your shear existence, just in the cosmic fact that you are. You are a creation of God the Father. It is he who created this personality that we say is your essence. This means it’s not that you have a personality, you are a personality and you have a personhood of body and mind and spirit and soul.

• Gifts from the Trinity

In this season of giving, this season of sharing, let me offer a kind of remembrance of the gifts you’ve been given. I just mentioned your personality, this being that you are directly from God. With this comes his ability to do your best to unite all these elements of you, for you are one of the most composite beings, being physical and mental as well as spiritual.

Then you have the gift of the Eternal Son of Paradise--your spirit, your creative spirit. This is what enables you to escape the “fetters of antecedent causality”--as your Urantia Book puts it so nobly--all the purely animal and physical, causes and effects. This creativity means you can bring something right out of yourself, something that gives you an alternative that you’ve created. This is the basis for choice, this realizable, genuine alternative that you are actually exercising almost every moment of your waking life. It’s this gift of creative spirit that designates you a being capable of free will dignity: this precious gift.

Then there’s the gift of mind from the Infinite Spirit, the origin of the Cosmic Mind, which our dear Mother Spirit kind-of funnels down and augments and adapts for your human order of personal being.

There is a nigh equal gift to these, and this is not only these bodies you have, but that they are also unique to you, even being of the human order and recognizable to each other as human beings. Each one of you is physically unique. We’ve used the example so often of looking at one of those old-time photographs of a large family, maybe of a mother and father and ten siblings, brothers and sisters. Each one has their own face. Each one has their own unique personality. Each one has their own unique inner life that they share with Mother Spirit and me, and with their Father.

There’s still another gift that you have, my dears, not only of personality and creative spirit, body and mind, but you have a presence of God right within you. This, you might say, is not only the Supreme, but even the Ultimate gift that makes you not only one with the Supreme Being--God’s Over-soul of the whole Creation, but presages your Ultimate, unending destiny. This of course is the gift of the Father to indwell you, to be a part of you, called a Thought Adjuster because his presence within you can actually give you discrete thoughts, can suggest things if you are open to them.

Dialogue

• Stillness connection

And so we’ve taught many times of a kind of meditation of being still for once in your life; I should say once in your busy days with all your plans and projects, all the necessary things you do to control your time here. You can have stillness as an extra-continuity in your life, something you do religiously every day. Just open yourself to the Father and what he can offer you. Have a conversation with your Father.

If you have questions, questions that you desperately at times need help with, do your best to articulate these to yourself and to him, so his answers can be that definitive. Don’t be surprised if it’s the very next thought that occurs to you. Don’t disregard this as only some kind of reaction of your own. It can be his help precisely because it can come “right out of the blue”--as you say. This presence of God within you needs this opportunity. This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy as well all the other kinds of meditation--perhaps pondering some mantra, some expression of truth; or some puzzle, some metaphysical puzzle to help enlighten you. But just be still for a while. Just sit and think. Don’t try to hold your mind a blank artificially. Just let it be. Take notes, if you want, of the marvelous thoughts that occur to you and you’re afraid of losing--least they disturb your stillness.

Soul

• The special reality of soulfulness

Finally as an adjunct to this presence of God within you, my dears, is another supreme gift. It’s the experience of your life as it is seen from God’s point of view. And so this is a transcendent reality. This is where you already have one foot over in what we call the morontia realm, this combination of spirit and human existence. It’s how God sees all that you are, and all that you have been right from the very beginning. His vision is an enormous, enormous part of you and, for its very enormity, for its very spiritual nature, it is something your ability to access can be questionable.

It’s something you have to make room for in your life because, my dears, this is your soul. When I say make room for, I mean make room for consciously because your soul is not only a God-authored story of life. It is not some passive thing that you must await the next phase of your eternal life--you must go through the portals of death--in order to have a greater feeling and touch with your soul. This is something you can experience more and more now the way your soul--the way this God co-authored version of you--is influencing all your waking moments, and even your dreams--no small amount your dreams.

Being of mind, and with an experience of your body in your soul: this is what gives so much meaning to your everyday life as you grow older. You acquire a soul. You earn a soul. Your soul, along with you--your personality, is another potentially eternal part of you; absolutely eternal in the Supreme Being—God’s soul if you will, God’s perfect memory of you that will continue and will always be, irrespective of whether or not you choose to continue on into eternal life--another great choice of yours someday. It is not only this meaning your soul gives to your life, but, being so spiritual, it’s your soul that gives value to your life. Not only what things mean to you--these associations, but what value does something have to you. How does it move you?

This is the active role your soul plays in your life, and it’s that delightful, absolutely wonderful quality you can recognize in each other. One of the greatest compliments you can pay another person is that they have great soul. It’s because these souls of yours are earned, earned by living experience.

There are so many philosophers from the very beginning who have wondered: what is the purpose of life--human life, personal life? It’s the biggest “why” question you have. Why any of this? Why all of this? Why does God do this?

This is your experience. This is your spiritual value as a personal being. More than just an intelligent animal, you have this spiritual dimension to your personality. You have creative spirit. You are earning a soul. So while your personality never changes--it’s literally this changeless of God’s gift right within time and space where everything else is changing--it’s the part of you that will be still you a million years from now. But you are acquiring, you are earning this soul

• Soul = spiritual significance

As Mother Spirit once taught, your soul doesn’t contain every hotdog and hamburger you’ve eaten, no matter how delicious. But your soul does contain all that is of spiritual significance--all that has influenced your values in life. And so we say: while your soul does contain your worldly experiences, and does indeed contain all those impersonal elements of your life that have value to you, all the physical things that you relate with--your homes, your property, your cars, everything, this whole physical world about you; all the living things--the animals, the trees—still!--the shining stars in the firmament of your individual souls, my dears, are all the people you have known. For compared to all these inanimate, and even, I should say, animate living things about you, every other person you know is truly what we call another little walking infinity. For they too are each a personality direct from God. They too have a body and mind from Mother Spirit and I, the result of a whole planetary evolution of life. They too have a soul they are earning by living.

Balance

• A sense of proportion

We have offered so often this Urantia truism: A hallmark of wisdom is a sense of proportion. Think of how as a youngster you were often involved in endless arguments, right along with your philosophers, of comparing this and that. So much of your social and political life is all these comparisons, often falling back on immature statements of pure principle, not realizing that all principles, every one, is delimited and conditioned by others.

And so in all of your discourses, especially your political and social life, let your wisdom come forth, and be encouraged to feel for this sense of proportion--not only this or that contending thing should be done, but what are the proportions here as you relate to each other physically and socially? This is that hallmark of maturity. This is, again, something that you earn—a sense of proportion. It’s what you have by being in touch with that which is so much greater than you.

Yet you have the humility of realizing from time to time how difficult this can be, this sense of proportion. Because when you get to another living human being, your sense of their reality goes off the scale. How do you have a sense of proportion amongst human beings? What is the value of a human being?

Tragedy

• Evaluating certain events

My dears, Mother Spirit and I wish to offer for your deep consideration: that you be easy and patient with yourselves when you are trying to assess the meaning and value of certain events, because they do go off the scale. Sometimes only a certain amount of time, a certain amount of continuing human experience, can, in a sense, grow over and somewhat encapsulate something that is boundless, something that cannot be evaluated because, like I say, it just runs off the scale.

These you know as the tragic events in your lives. And so give yourself time. Be patient and loving with yourselves and with each other. Let your hearts go out to those who are suffering, even though it causes you to suffer yourselves. This is not only the meaning of even a single individual human life, but the value. It is incalculable, even to Mother Spirit and me.

We actually have what would be to a human being a nigh eternal experience of literally trillions of our children. We know--we experience how death is not any kind of end, but only another beginning, another glorious beginning for those who have so much, so many others in their soul.

• Empty souls

And so tonight I would ask us all to pray for a soul that has not so many within, whose whole life experience has been so empty of others. Consider how this deprives this poor, lost and lonely personality of all that is so incalculable to you? Your souls are so enormous with so many that you have known, and have shared so much with, that it goes right off the scale to imagine what it would be like to live with so few in your soul. And yet this impoverished soul can look around and see all that the others are sharing, all the other souls that contain so much. Let us pray for such empty souls and the pain they endure.

Do your best to reach out to those whom you feel are this way. Let your heart tell you those who are in such a need of someone to grab ahold of them, and wrestle them to the earth, and hold them down, and tickle them to death. For when they stand up from such an event, they have something in their souls then, to hold against the loneliness.

Welcome all you encounter, especially those whom your own soul tells you need it so desperately. Tease them too into laughter. Give them an event to hold inside themselves against the anger, and then even the hatred--cultivated to cling to.

This is your spiritual essence, my dears, this ability you have to share what you have and what you are. And so in this season of giving, find your true joy in sharing yourself, especially with those poor hungry eyes looking to you for some kind of response. This, Mother Spirit and I ask in the name of our Father. She sends you her love, and I bid you be in my peace.

Now, if you have any questions or comments, let’s share that.

Dialogue

Student: Thank you, Michael—Father Michael, for your message. You are certainly right on about those feelings that people have, who suffer as a result of not knowing you. I join you in your prayer.

• The pain of isolation

Michael: Well, thank you, my daughter. It’s not only their not knowing our Father, it’s their not knowing personally, but being able to see all the other joyful ones who surround them, and who are capable of sharing so much with each other. That’s a pain, too, that goes off the scale. So thank you for your concern, and be in my peace.

Student: Thank you.

Student: Yes, Michael, I wanted to thank you for that. It’s given me a lot to think about. I really appreciate it.

• Singular events

Michael: Well, thank you, my son. Your hearts can grow weary, and your minds can be exhausted with a thousand and one ideas you try to wrestle with—to understand that which goes beyond measure and goes beyond understanding. And yet you do try. You even to do so in your modern media--part of the sharing, even sharing the grief and the incomprehensibility of something that is so singular.

From our point of view, from our knowledge, there are thousands of children every day in the world who are killed and deliberately murdered. Most of this is an adjunct to warfare or for some act of terrorism for political or social reasons; or even from parents who are at their wits end and desperate, so desperate they abandon their children to die.

Then you have singular events that go off the scale because they are not done for political or even social reasons, but just the act of a single person. And so we acknowledge, my dears, that this how you do pay respect to those who lost their lives. We can only reassure you that this is not the end for them, that they are now safe in the hands of our Father. They too will know a new life some day, right with their parents who grieve so deeply now. So thank you, my son, for accepting this hard lesson tonight.

Sleeping Survivors

Student: Yes, thank you again, Michael. A question: will the parents eventually reunite with the children at the age they are when they departed the planet, or do they continue to grow in the mansion worlds?

Michael: They will be united pretty much as when they died, for such young ones have not the capacity, in a sense, to flash over. They join the ranks of the sleeping survivors. For the most part they will be reunited with their parents when their parents cross over. We can only assure you that, as their souls are also the handiwork of God, their suffering is behind them. All they will know from here on out is that joy of reunion.

Student: That’s great to know, too.

Michael: Be in my peace.

Student: Thank you.

Free will

• God’s gift of free will

Michael: My dear ones, let me close tonight with a heartfelt thanks that Mother Spirit and I do send you. We are your spiritual parents and we have our own wonderful humility to know the enormity of what you do try to share with each other, what you take it upon yourselves to comfort each other. We too acknowledge that such a terrible thing can happen--with the most precious gift of all--to all of you—God’s gift of creative spirit and free will: even though it shows to what singular extremes that free will can go.

Do not fear for those who are lost, for that glorious reunion will occur. You are learning. You are learning how to love. You are learning how to open your hearts. Tonight I just wish--with my Spirit of Truth, with this orientation--to encourage you to open your hearts to those who need it so desperately: the poor, lost, lonely ones--the ones who know no other way but to look on at all the life everyone else is having.

• To weigh in the balance

Do what you heart tells you in these circumstances. Let your soul come forth with appreciation for all the times you were tickled to death, and came back to life with such joy in your soul. This is what is needed more than anything else, this kind of love, especially to those who might reject it out of hand, they’re so fearful of their own response, or even lack of it. Give them something to put in their souls to weigh in the balance against what might be occurring in their minds. For this is what your soul does for you all your waking moments, and even in your dreams.

Closing

And so my dear ones, we wish you this very different Christmas. As I said a few Christmas eves before, it is not about me, or even Christianity, or any of the major or minor social religions. It’s about you. It’s about your friends. It’s about those lonely ones that you’re going to reach out to. It’s what’s in your soul that we celebrate, as I too had a human life that to me, for all my experience, remains boundless. It was something that was an encompassing to me too, and something I treasured to the very last moment; and for which I thank my Father.

So let me be with you. Feel for me inside you. Feel for my peace. And do your best to comfort and share this with all your dear ones. Goodnight.