Michael—January 23, 2006

Marin TM Group—Mill Valley, California—U. S. A.

MICHAEL—T/R-JL

(General spiritual development)
(The limits of empiricism and materialism)
(Creativity is the hallmark of spirit)
(Worrying about oneself and the world)
(Be still and let your soul talk to you)
(The balance between negative and positive)
(A hallmark of wisdom is a sense of proportion)

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Although You’ve let us know several times
in the past that Your order of being is so multi-dimensional, You don’t
require what would be a counterpart of human patience. Nevertheless, we
want to thank you anyway for bearing with us, for never leaving us but
staying close with a love that is unconditional beyond our comprehension.
You know it takes us awhile, and many steps, to go from experiencing reality
as purely physical, or even physical-psychological, to one that is permeated
with spirit, such as You have been teaching us. So we thank You for Your
love that knows no bounds. Amen.

MICHAEL: Good evening, My beloved children. This is your father, Michael.
I thank you for acknowledging Mother Spirit and I, and striving to feel the
love We have for you. For this is one of Our fondest desires--that you can
actually experience Our love and Our presence as you go through your busy
days. Yes, We do realize how radical a transformation of your reality it
is, We have been calling for you to attempt. To experience this will be for
you an infusion of spirit into your human reality that you modern souls have
so thoroughly and necessarily been trained to weed out, to eliminate all the
superstition and what you might call the false spirituality of the past ages
of mankind.

(General spiritual development)

In this, I heartily recommend reading your Urantia book for it gives you an
outline of the general spiritual development of mankind. Each of you
parallels this evolution as you grow through childhood and adolescent and
come into your maturity. You too, as a very young personality just starting
out in the world of experience, live in a world that is somewhat amorphous
and primitive in that your notions and actual perceptions of the world are
thoroughly intermingled with your immature emotions and superstitions.

If you think back upon your early childhood, I’m sure you can all recall
times when the whole world about you utterly collapsed and came crashing
down about your little head. You simply couldn’t keep it all together, and
your cries of despair were not merely for some small incident that was
happening to you. You truly felt a very deep, almost existential worry as
emotion took hold of you and shook you like a rag doll; until this tidal
wave would every so slowly subside, and leave you to yourself once again.
Then you could hesitantly catch your breath, and look around, heave a mighty
sigh, and start out again.

Being born in a relatively modern age where the empirical method of
demonstrating natural law has been in effect for many centuries now, you
soon learned from your family, and were taught in school, a world view in
which both mental and spiritual considerations were very rigidly excluded so
that you could focus in on a very strict, mathematically perfect cause and
effect: natural law. Here, whether you were specifically taught it or not,
objectivity was the ideal, even to the point where some very scientifically,
empirically-minded folks almost totally discount their own inner reality,
and consider real only what can be proven to another. This is literally all
they perceive, and so they feel themselves existing in a world totally
devoid of spirit. Understandably then, their concepts of spirit tend
towards spiritualist phenomena--ghosts and such. This is what spirit means
to them.

(The limits of empiricism and materialism)

It was during the heyday of this empirical method in the latter part of last
century, and the early part of the twentieth century, that there came about
a great social illusion: that by eliminating the so-called spiritualist
phenomena of superstition, and everybody becoming purely objective,
certainly society would achieve an utopian age very shortly. With everyone
being so objective, there would be no more disagreements between folks, and
then nations. War would quickly become a thing of the past because
agreement would be so obvious.

But as we all know, that has not been the recent history of Urantia.
Instead the conflicts kept getting larger, right up to a Second World War
where tens of millions of individuals perished. Mankind has only slowly
gained a greater maturity by first grudgingly acknowledging, then ever so
reluctantly accepting the equally valid dimensions of mind and the
importance of understanding human psychology. Beyond this, there is a
reaching out for a deeper understanding of what spirit is.

Now We give you these lessons where We are defining the physical and the
mental and the spiritual dimensions of human reality very differently.
Spirit is not an isolated realm. Spirit refers to the realm of personal
beings, created one by one by God himself, God who is spirit. It is the
nature of God to want to share His reality, His creativity, with innumerable
sons and daughters, reaching from the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit in
the Trinity, all the way down to the trillions of worlds inhabited by
human-type beings such as yourselves.

This is spiritual reality, all these personal beings. It is very
contra-distinct from impersonal, non-spiritual reality--the whole physical
cosmos of millions of galaxies of matter and energy obeying strictly
mathematical, unvarying law. But even they are created by personal beings
who go out from Paradise and start the gigantic whirlpools of spiral nebula.
And as you know, even human beings have some control over this impersonal
reality. Your minds just naturally reach out to manipulate matter and
energy, starting with the most primitive tools, all the way down to, in your
current age, your delightful computers.

(Creativity is the hallmark of spirit)

This creativity is the hallmark of spirit. It is something new blossoming
within the continuity of everything that has gone before. You as a personal
being experience spirit most consciously when you are creative. At every
moment when you are acting, and not just reacting, you are creating. You
are exercising your spirit. You are bringing something new into reality
just by staying abreast of the living, ever-changing present moment. This
is your spirit.

Last week Mother Nebadonia gave you examples by which you can feel this
spirit all about you because it is real, it is inseparable from what you
know as total reality. Total reality, or Truth Itself--that which is true,
that which actually exists, includes spirit. From your human standpoint,
these terms are not identical but very close: Total reality; Truth Itself;
infinite and eternal life; God. This is how the human race will grow in its
maturity as it begins to understand more and more how thoroughly spirit
permeates all of reality.

Spirit is the very person-able-ness, if you will, within reality. Above all
God is a person, an absolute, and infinitely existential, but still personal
Being, and this, for many of you, calls for the most supreme faith-led
understanding. You are so used to living in a very physical reality of
impersonal natural law, and here We come, presenting you with a whole
hierarchy of hundreds, even thousands of different kinds of personal beings.
There are spiritual beings extending all the way up from your familiar
seraphim, to the Ancients of Days who administer a galaxy of a hundred
thousand Local Universes such as Mother Spirit and I relate to as Mother and
Father. So stretch your imaginations, My children, as much as you have to.

Think of some dear friend who may live a thousand miles away from you. It
requires an exercise of imagination to realize this person is living right
now, this very moment, going about his or her activities, or maybe just
sound asleep. It takes an enormous exercise of imagination to realize that
these thousands of different kinds of personal beings exist right now, and
are activity going about their business. Yet this is reality, this is the
truth, and though it will always be more than a bit beyond your
comprehension, for that very reason it promises you a never ending adventure
of discovery.

This is not only what exists this moment throughout all reality, but this
reality itself is growing. This is spirit, My children. This is creativity
itself blossoming out in endless trillions of personal beings throughout
time and space, and even beyond. This is why you can have confidence in the
reality of truth, the reality of God, not as something far away, but as an
encompassing that holds you in its loving grasp as close to you as you are
to yourself, for this is your nature too. Welcome to the family.

If you have any question or comments this evening, exercise your spirits and
let’s hear them.

Student: (Ed: this student spoke so softly not even the digital recorder
could pick up much of her voice. As you can tell from Michael’s answers,
she was quite worried about her own progress and that of the world’s in
general.) Michael, I feel aware and you can see it…expecting to hear a
major shift in the earth everywhere. I don’t know how to embrace it
personally for the better. I want to thank You for the shift…in the earth
that …now in the best, heal the time… I don’t know what to make of it. I
put my…and ideas and feelings and emotions and other things… I know it’s a
good sign. I still don’t know what we can do with it, past all of these…and
effects of being human and wanting the things. Can You give this the
tiniest…many things that can go on.

(Worrying about oneself and the world)

MICHAEL: Yes, My daughter, I do feel the worry within your heart and how
you feel torn, largely because you are striving in your life to achieve an
ideal. You are struggling to grow and evaluate how you are doing. I wish
to acknowledge and reassure you of the courage this takes--just to be open,
open to as much as you can perceive. You wonder deeply not only about your
own life, but the world about you: how are things going? You wonder: not
only are they getting better or worse, but how are they getting better, how
are they possibly getting worse? Then: how do I fit into all of this? What
can I do? Am I actually helping this so deeply longed-for growth and
evolution, or am I holding it back, holding myself back?

So give yourself credit, My daughter, for the courage it takes to be open
like this. For this is the most profound thing you can do. If you wish to
grow even more, strengthen yourself along these very lines. Wonder even
more, for this will lead you to what is your unique contribution. This is
literally how you find yourself, moment to moment and day to day. To live
within this field of questioning may be somewhat discomforting at first.
But don’t fall into the illusion of thinking that everybody else, or even
most other folks, have it easier. For trust when I say that those who do
not question themselves, and wonder what is happening about them, are still
somewhat sleepwalking.

This questioning, this being open is the price, if you will, of greater
freedom and discovering who you are. For you are gaining an ever greater
sense of yourself. You are constantly striving to answer these questions
that only you can answer. But you do have Our help. You do have your
moments of stillness in which you can concentrate yourself, concentrate this
wonder by, paradoxically, relaxing. Let go of the striving, even for an
ideal, and just deeply soak in your real living being like sinking into a
warm Jacuzzi.

Make sure at least once a day, for as long as you can devote to it, My
daughter, you just totally relax. Feel your breath. Feel your heart
beating. Feel Our presence right within you. Forget about the ideal for
awhile and just totally accept who you are, where you are. Allow your
spirit to reassure you that you are greater than you can ever consciously
grasp hold of. This is your soul. These are all those thousands and
thousands of hours you have lived, all the experiences you have had, all the
people you have known. Trust they are there. Trust also the truth that the
spiritual part of you is growing. But you have to suspend your striving
momentarily in order to feel it, to realize it. In this deep peace--this
home base of spirit, We’ve been calling it--is where you find your new
departure.

(Be still and let your soul talk to you)

This is where it comes to you. This is where you let your whole soul speak
to you about that next step. This is where you face your fear of stalling
out, or being stopped, because you choose to stop. You choose to just be,
and begin to realize how enormous your soul is, how strong your spirit is.
Welcome the whole Other-power of the spiritual world, My daughter. They
love you and long to nourish your own self-power. You are Our beloved
child, and you are growing into your own personhood for yourself. So don’t
be shy about feeling your own power. Does this give you a feeling of
yourself, My daughter? (Yes… Yes)

Yes. This is the peace that heals your worried heart. We are real. Mother
and I truly love you. Be in My peace.

Student: Father Michael, a friend of mine asked me why is negativity so
prevalent, or so much more obvious than the positive in our lives? I’ve
noticed in my own life that the negativity is in the headlines, and the
positive things I’ve done got the footnotes; but I’ve noticed since I’ve
been in the twelve-step AA program, that changed me a lot, and it’s about
equal now. But it doesn’t explain why the negativity is there, so
prevalent—like in the Middle East—the media—why is that?

I would also like to thank You for the AA program. It’s saved me and
countless others from a miserable existence and death.

MICHAEL: C, My son, I very gladly accept the graciousness of your thanks.
Consider too, as I know you do, all the wonderful dear souls that created
that organization. This too is real spirit—individuals who have found their
own ways out of a deep, dark hole of despair, then found a way of reaching
out to another, and so together faced that despair and conquered it. You
remember a few weeks ago We offered the insight, a tool if you will, to help
you perceive a better proportion between what you call the positive and
negative influences and happenings.

(The balance between negative and positive)

Remember that in your mass media there is a ongoing and incessant
competition for viewers and listeners. So what you call news, supported by
advertising, is highly sophisticated entertainment. Those of you who are
old enough can remember the early TV commercials, whether they were selling
toothpaste or cars, were pretty much just the presentation of facts, until
ever so slowly came creeping in humor, irony, surprise, story-telling; which
understandably sold more toothpaste and cars. The same goes for your news.
But after several decades of this now, as the viewers and listeners get ever
more sophisticated and even jaded—mentally callused if you will, it takes
more and more to get their attention.

Now let’s think about mankind’s million years of struggle for survival.
This is still very much in your wold soul, and it filters right down into
your individual lives. Once upon a time you could say: And they lived
happily ever after. And that seemed like the final end to the story: they
got married and lived happily ever after. But now you are more mature and
sophisticated, and perhaps jaded, all these positive aspects of life can
seem very temporal and fleeting. So in this context, what is permanent to a
human being is severe loss, death, terrible injuries. These are undeniable
and irrevocable. These are forever, within the scope of your lives. And so
these are intrinsically more sensationalistic. These catch the attention of
the human race which has had to struggle these hundreds of thousands of
years for survival. This is what We meant when We said your mass media is
focused on these negative aspects that, like little knife-points, can prick
you awake.
‘
The only antidote for this, My son, is to be more thoroughly grounded in
your own day to day life. Begin to perceive the enormous social contract
happening which enables you to get from point A to point B through a busy
city; the fantastic understandings and agreements that bring the food to
your table, the energy to your house. You have to renew yourself and throw
off these layers of callused being jaded to appreciate this remarkable
agreement between peoples of the world. From Our standpoint the evolution
of human society, the depth of maturity of the world culture that is
growing, is proceeding at a great pace forward, and positive. Strive for
this sense of proportion. Realize how much of your mass media is focused on
the negative as a kind of indulgence in fear. This is why We have been
giving lessons on the reality of spirit, so you can renew your vision and
begin to perceive how much love there is between the peoples of the world,
how truly small and getting smaller is the warfare and strife. As the
world-wide media comes into focus on the very real and personal tragedies
that do happen, they are, however, being broadcast to the whole world; you
can only keep a sense of proportion by appreciating all the love within your
own life. Does this help you, My son?

Student: Yes it does. It puts things more in perspective. And I’m also
recognizing that I do experience more love in my life. And that does make a
big difference. Thank You.

MICHAEL: You’re very welcome. Understanding the nature and the orientation
of your mass media helps in realizing why its focus is as it is. As much as
any chemical drug, this fear-mongering can be an addiction holding millions
captive. An extreme example of this is your horror movies; but fortunately
in your films you also have those that are devoted to the portrayal of love
and faith, happiness and humor. So try to see things from Our perspective
of spirit. The world is maturing, My son. The appeal of love, friendship,
faith, comradeship, these are really what are holding society together. And
so you can rest in My peace.

Student: Thank You, Father Michael.

(A hallmark of wisdom is a sense of proportion)

MICHAEL: Well, My children, we’ve come a long ways tonight. It is the real
fervent desire of Mother and I that you be able to perceive spirit in its
workings more and more every day, you be able to see the love that permeates
not only your human reality, but all the spiritual family above you.
Remember that a hallmark of wisdom is a sense of proportion. Rest deeply
day to day in this home base of spirit right within your own life, for this
is the only thing which can balance out this sensationalistic negativity
that your culture is currently addicted to. Know deep, deep within yourself
that most of those other folks out there are doing the best they can day to
day. Simply do what you can to help, with Mother’s love and My peace. Good
evening.