[tmtranscripts] Michael 2.21.05 - Taking Responsibility For Your Projections

[JERRY LANE]

Dear Folks,   Here is Michael from last Monday.  Did you receive my 
transmission of Nebadonia on 2.14.05? - I don't see it on the TMArchives 
list.  If you need me to send it again, email me at Nytrayn at msn.com and I'll 
resubmit it.  Thanks for your good work!  Take care.  Jerry

Michael 2.21.05

Marin TM Group


Dear Michael and Mother Spirit,    We thank You for the insights You have 
been giving us, primarily because they are a gateway on how to contact You 
and to feel Your presence.  Then also, because You know our hearts better 
than we ourselves, and You know how we want to love and help and share our 
lives with our fellows, we thank You for showing us how.  Amen.

Good evening, My children.  This is Michael.  Things are moving along well 
on the planet.  This may be difficult for many people to credit because the 
first stages of spiritual contact and growth and expansion result in a 
polarizing of various aspects in your life.  If you think about this, you 
can see this as a coming into focus of various elements that were before 
rather hazy or commingled in such a way as to render them too nebulous or 
vague or abstract for you to get a good hold on for practical use.  But by 
these different aspects of your life coming into sharper focus, even though 
this may be troublesome at first - long delayed and put-off necessary 
activities for better health, or a clearer comprehension of the forces 
impinging upon you, and then clearer ideas of a creative nature – they are 
showing you the next few steps you need to take.

All of this requires an increasing clarity in your perceptions, both 
internal and external, and an augmentation of your spiritual creative 
powers, your ability to start something new in this ongoing realm of time 
and space.  These are creations right within time and space, that even 
though they have precedents, there is something absolutely new beyond a mere 
recombination of older elements.  As a personal being created by God, you 
have this potential.  In fact, you are using it constantly, though often 
unconsciously.  You are co-creating your own reality, moment by moment, and 
it helps to be aware of this so you can take responsibility for your 
creation.  Otherwise you may often feel fatalistic as if you are being swept 
along by events beyond your control, unaware of how much you yourself are 
creating the events, and then the immediate post-event interpretation of 
what just happen to you, which is mainly what you remember.

So welcome this clarity.  Welcome this spiritual challenge bringing things 
into sharper focus, separating one thing from another, though this sharp 
scalpel of spirit may seem at first like unnecessary surgery on the living 
tissue of your life.  Still, welcome it, and do your best to understand it.  
Try not to blindly reject or deny new concepts and perceptions, even though 
they disturb some old, comfortable familiarity with everyday objects and 
persons and events.

When you feel yourself fully emerged in, and conscious of this constant 
creativity going on, not only without you but right within you, it can feel 
a bit queasy at first, as if you are opening your chest and laying your hand 
right on your own living, beating heart.  This takes some getting used to.  
You have a righteous caution about this increasing power that you are 
capable of exercising, but this is the way to go.  Do not be afraid of power 
as such.  As your textbook introduced the concept, let Me repeat it: the joy 
that is possible for you when you know deep in your heart and soul, and you 
can say to our Father: It is my power - my will, that Your will be done - 
and mean it.

This is how the world will change, one person at a time, when each person 
perceives what they themselves are creating, however much it has always 
appeared that it is just happening to them. You call this, in psychological 
terms - projection.  Your own unconscious creativity appears as if projected 
on a screen in front of you, and you do not recognize it as your own.  And 
so you do not own the responsibility for it.  People often react to others 
as if these others were initiating any number of threatening or improper 
behaviors, when it is just their own interpretation they are reacting to.  
And so the strife goes on.

There is also a collective component of combining these projections.  This 
is what mankind is slowly emerging from - tribe against tribe, city state 
against city state, nation against nation, all along getting caught up in 
group projections.  Call them racism, or sexism, or nationalism, or 
cultural-ism; all these are ways in which larger and larger groups of people 
can project their own fears onto others, and so, react as if these seeming 
realities were something outside of themselves to fear.  Then you have what 
you call a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the fear of each group soon leads 
to aggressive behavior, and so creates a righteously fearful situation.

So how do you put an end to this except as each individual person achieves 
the ability to withdraw their projections by realizing their own heretofore 
unconscious creativity, and step into a gloriously conscious partnership 
with God - braving to take their life in their own hands, and proceed with 
all the glory and caution that is their human potential?  Practically 
speaking, you have a kind of barrier of strangeness, of unfamiliarity, of 
newness, to get through.  When you are used to a more or less static world 
of crystallized notions and relationships, it is quite a step into a living, 
organic one.  Hopefully, just these words alone can pique your curiosity and 
your imagination.

Now, when such a world becomes real to the fullest extent right inside you 
and all around, when there is less and less familiar, how do you proceed?

We are your guides, My children.  This movement from a static, familiar 
world into a living one is a spiritual journey.  Remember: the personal 
presence of your Mother Spirit, Myself, the Fragment of our Father who lives 
in your mind, all the enormous host of celestial personalities surrounding 
you - is with the help of all of Us that you effect this change within 
yourself.  And so, step by step, you lose an old, hardened, calloused 
relation to things as the new, living, more spontaneous and creative one 
takes its place.  There is truly nothing here to fear.  In one way, you will 
just be becoming conscious of an underlying evolution which has always been 
here.  This is the river of life, My children, in which you have been 
unconsciously swimming all your life.  It is something you can soon become 
comfortable with.  Here We are making a distinction between being 
comfortable with a creative power - both within you and without - that 
supersedes and replaces what you now think you need as familiarity.

The secret to this process is, as We have teased you with a bit, a relaxing 
and trusting this new life which is struggling to come forth like a little 
plant breaking through concrete.  This new life that is possible for you is 
struggling to get to you as well.  Let it happen.  Relax into it.  Feel this 
huge river, this cosmos-wide river, this growing, evolving body of the 
Supreme Being of which you are a part. Feel this.  Breathe it in.  Let it 
inspire you, however wild and impractical it may seem at first.  Take note 
of what it suggests.  These will be not only new concepts and perceptions, 
but new ideals – creative spiritual signposts .  Ideals: something to strive 
for, something always a little out of reach but showing you the way.

You have to act on them to realize them.  You yourself have to taste this 
water of life to know how cool and refreshing it is.  But then this is how 
you know what works and what doesn’t.  Trust yourself.  Trust your hearts, 
My children.  Trust that you really want to do the right thing.  Trust that 
the right thing is the most joyous, fun, exciting, and rewarding.  There are 
so many strange notions floating around that somehow the right thing is 
boring or uninteresting, but that only means that these individuals have not 
yet encountered it.

This is food for thought, My children.  I encourage you to read and reread 
My words over and over to inspire your imagination.  We of your celestial 
family do not tell you what to do only because this is your responsibility.  
This creative power you have as a personal being created by God is what We 
want, most of all, for you to exercise.  There are no blinds here.  Nothing 
is being withheld from you.  On the contrary, We say: More power to you!  
The greatest evil in the world is done by those who feel powerless and 
fearful inside.  The saints of history, those men and women who lived their 
lives for their fellows, these were the truly powerful people.  These were 
the people in touch with the planetary, even cosmic trend of spiritual 
evolution, and so helped those of their day along one more step.  This is 
the adventure that can be yours.  It is not just waiting for you, it is your 
own future potential self trying to emerge.  Day by day, as often as you 
can, just relax what you are doing, check in with Us, and allow that 
struggling little flower of your soul to break free.  Then the world will 
see a blossoming like no other before.  It will be happening within you and 
all around you just as soon as you can let it.  We are here, My children, 
calling to you.  Come join Us.

If you have any questions or comments this evening, I would welcome them.

Student:  Father Michael, you’ve answered some of the questions I had, 
although once again there’s a basic one, that is, something is holding me 
back and I don’t know what it is.  I don’t know how to access it to get rid 
of it.  I perceive I’m slowly growing spiritually, but I don’t get involved 
with stillness.  I don’t contact my teacher.  I would like to be involved in 
the Akashic Construct, and I would simply like to grow spiritually and 
access that power potential for whatever use You would care to make of me.  
But something holds me back from all that and I don’t do anything.  One more 
week has passed and I’ve done very little - and I have the time.  If it’s 
fear, I don’t know how to overcome the fear.  If it’s something else, I 
don’t know what it is.  I would appreciate any input You can give me on this 
subject.

Michael:  Yes, My son, I think you are confronting a supreme irony of this 
psychological projection I mentioned: there is literally nothing – there - 
holding you back!  There is nothing wrong with you.  Let that soak in a 
while.  There is nothing wrong!  (Long pause)  That seems an impossibility, 
doesn’t it, with what you just told me?

Student:  Yes, it does.  But hearing it come from You puts a whole different 
perspective on the, “there’s nothing wrong with me.”  I can tell myself that 
but it doesn’t seem to stick.

Michael:  It’s as if, however, you are waiting for some signal from outside 
yourself.  Yet if you are truly growing spiritually, if you are becoming 
more and more free, if you are becoming less and less determined by what you 
can conceive of as other-than-you, you have intimations of this - as you 
say, more free time.  Think about this.  If you are more and more free, you 
yourself will have to initiate more and more what happens to you.  Do you 
remember a few weeks ago we talked about a very subtle challenge of freedom? 
- as contrasted to folks who spend a great part of their days and evenings 
and nights just getting food and shelter and even some very small 
entertainment or companionship with their fellows?  They are not free in the 
same way.  They are being determined by the economic necessities of life.  
But if you are not, if you have enormous freedom of time and resources by 
comparison, you are not being driven to do this or that today.

Student:  Yes, I see that now.

Michael:  We mentioned this challenge within economic freedom, but there is 
also mental freedom.  You are in a culture and society with literally tens 
of thousands of points of view available – magazines, newspapers, 
television, the internet.  You are awash in a sea of different ideas and 
opinions and ideals.  So with all this economic and mental freedom, what do 
you do with your free time once you have it?  What do you do with your extra 
wealth?  In this sense there is nothing wrong, there is nothing there 
holding you back or determining what you will do.  What do you want to do?  
The ball, as you say, is now in your court.  You are standing there holding 
it.  This is exactly where you have worked so hard – economically and 
mentally – to get to.  With this success, the game becomes so much larger.  
In a very unavoidable way, you are doing what you want to.  Is it making you 
happy?  Is it fulfilling?  If not, you will have to reach out with your 
imagination.  Again, this is that realm wherein We cannot tell you what to 
do because it deals with you confronting your fear of unfamiliar larger 
possibility .  We can just sympathize with your ironic plight.  These are 
very subtle and seemingly strange considerations, My son, so you do not have 
to answer Me now.  Just think about and reread these notes over and over 
many times, and let them soak in.

Student:  I will do that.  Thank you, Father.  You’ve already relieved my 
mind of quite a bit.  It somehow makes a lot more sense now than it did 
before.  I thank You very much for it  - Your guidance.

Michael:  You’re very welcome, My son.  You are encountering some of that 
strangeness I mentioned right at first, for the freedom that success brings 
can be its own puzzle: you can get lost in it.  Don’t forget My peace.  It 
is always here for you.  Soak yourself in it.  Let everything go.  Let 
everything! - come… to… a… complete…… stop.  (Very long pause [very large 
Presence] then, gently…)  This is what you are forgetting, My son.

Student:  Yes…(Very faint)

Michael:  You just have to want it – this…stillness.

Student:  Yes! – I do want it…

Michael:  The we will meet again – here.

Student:  Thank You, Father.

Michael:  Stay in My peace.

Student:  Yes, Father Michael, Bother Jesus, I wish I had some of 
(Student’s) ironic plight.  (Group laughs) I need a vacation.  Somewhere far 
away and warm.  Anyway.  Last Wednesday started off beautifully, doing my 
gardening work, listening to all the birds, all the life that was around me, 
and really enjoying it.  And then as the day moved on I picked up my 
daughter and took her to where she’s staying with my mother.  When we got 
there I could feel my mother was not in a very good mood.  She had me take a 
look at something my daughter's boyfriend had supposedly done.  Then for 
some reason my mother went berserk because the boyfriend had put a tool away 
wrong, even though she had said he could put it there.  She started spewing 
out all these abuses and obscenities at my daughter and me - we don’t 
appreciate her, we do nothing for her, and so forth.  In a moment of being 
reactionary myself, I told her she had double standards – something just 
like that.  My daughter started to clean up – apparently some paint had 
spilled and made a mess – though my mother had been throwing things around 
and making it worse.  So I couldn’t leave my daughter there while my mother 
was in this attitude, making my daughter clean up this mess.  I went and 
helped, and in the process allowed my reactionary mind to be taken over by 
Mother Spirit’s peace, and Yours too.  Then I said my daughter had to leave 
soon, and to let her boyfriend finish cleaning up.  My mother said OK.

While my mother can criticize everything I do and everyone I know, I cannot 
offer anything at all; and this was what I meant about her double standard.  
So today is Monday and I haven’t heard from her since.  I left a message in 
her machine saying I hope she’s well and I love her - but nothing came back. 
  I have a gift for her but she’s too mad at me.  Of course I want things to 
work out, but I have so much to do all the time (Long list followed: work, 
girlfriend, three children, etc.)  I do have an understanding of what my 
mother’s going through, but it seems like she’s become mean-spirited and 
hard to be around.  And this is weighing heavily on my soul.

Michael:  Well, D, I think you’ve just encountered, with your mother, what 
it is like to be on the other side of someone else’s projections.  This 
double standard you mentioned is one way of your realizing this, and trying 
to express to her that there is a different way of seeing things.  She found 
this mess and, from your standpoint, over-reacted to it.  But the 
nitty-gritty – as you call it – is: what do you do in this situation?  What 
do you do when you are attacked by someone who apparently is not seeing you 
clearly, but is seeing you through a haze or distorting lens of her own 
creation?

Several things can help.  One is to go to the source of this agitation and 
this misperception.  Sometimes you can realize what it was in a person’s 
life that triggered this.  I sure you understand this immediately when, say, 
you know someone who’s undergone a tragic loss of someone they love, or been 
attacked, and so projects this tragedy or fear all about them.  Other times 
it is a mystery.  You don’t immediately understand why this person is 
reacting the way they are.  Often you have to try to get on their side, for 
what usually doesn’t work at all is confrontation, because you then fulfill 
and justify their attitude.  If they fear you or feel you have offended 
them, getting in their face, as you say, becomes a way of simply proving 
they are right - as far as they are concerned.  A more subtle judo is 
required here.  Sometimes it helps to just – physically - go and stand close 
beside them and see the situation – here, the mess in the shed – from there. 
  Then it’s harder to identify you or your daughter or her boyfriend with 
the mess.  You’re clearly right beside her.  From this standpoint you have 
to be open to different heart-felt techniques which will not work if they’re 
used in any kind of mechanical or cynical way, but will if they’re genuine.  
Perhaps tease her out of her mood?

You may have to provide the connecting link to companionship yourself – if 
her creative power at the moment is powerless or wrapped up in 
vindictiveness; you have to provide the connecting link of humor, say, by 
offering the question: does she think your daughter’s boyfriend did this on 
purpose?  Does she think this was intentional? Give her a reason within 
herself to relax her own sense of outraged justice.  Do you see what I mean 
by alleviating her aloneness, her sense of being overwhelmed and put-upon by 
the injustices of the world all around her?  All these feelings isolate 
people and make them fearful, and so they go to extremes just to be noticed 
and get some response from all that other world out there.  Do these 
examples help you understand the situation and possible ways of dealing with 
it?

Student:  I know my mother was the one who created the mess – all my 
daughter’s boyfriend did was put this machine in the shed, so what I’ve seen 
is that my mother, on one level, is losing control of her life, her 
security, or what keeps her secure.  So this does not make things easier for 
everyone, including herself.  There’s a lot of irrationality here.  For 
example she complains she cooks  for my kids all the time, yet she won’t 
allow them to cook in the kitchen.  So my daughter asks her, what are we 
supposed to do? - and my mother just sits there and shrugs her shoulders.  
She puts them in no-win situations.  One moment she says she’s glad they’re 
there, the next moment she wants them gone.  So that puts pressure on me.  
Additionally she says I’m letting her down by not taking care of her, yet 
she wants to be independent.  So there’s a lot of mixed messages, a lot of 
irrationality.  If I try to use my humor, that just doesn’t cut it; in fact 
that makes it worse for her – she feels like I’m not listening or being 
empathetic to what she’s going through.  There’s always been an unspoken 
rule in my family that my parents can criticize me, but we  - my sister and 
I  - can never criticize or say how we feel to them.  If we do then it’s 
like hell to pay, unfortunately.  So I can never be totally true with myself 
to them.

Michael:  Well, My son, you have a good understanding of the situation.  
This should alleviate any sense of guilt, but you still have the situation 
to deal with.

Student;  Yeah, right now its like - I just know it’s there but I’m not 
ready to confront her on it, or to communicate with her about it.  I’ll pray 
and do what I can on that level.

Michael:  This is where Mother offered an insight of how to slowly evolve an 
archtypical relationship of parent-to-child into one of being equal friends. 
  It seems your mother is unwilling to do this.  She wants to maintain that 
position of power and authority she once had.  Do you think she is capable 
of understanding this very thing??  Is she open to any kind of psychological 
feedback on the situation?  This is what I meant by providing the links of 
understanding to where you wish to tell her that: Mother, I’m no longer a 
small child – I want to be your friend, and be your equal friend, and I want 
us to transform and evolve this into a true friendship.  She may not be 
capable of this but it is something to try, to offer her insights very much 
as We offer them to you: plant seeds.  Find a way to do this as gently, as 
lovingly, as lightly and delicately and creatively as possible.  Any kind of 
overt power or pressure is just going to make her feel the need to be that 
much more defensive .

Student:  I feel…I hesitate to say she won’t go for that, but I’m not saying 
I won’t try in the manner You’ve expressed to me.  I don’t think she really 
sees me or appreciates who I am.  She desires me to be something else – more 
materially successful.  She doesn’t trust my decision-making.   With her 
being my mother – that is hard to swallow, and feel her bitterness.  A month 
or so ago when I was in her place, she turned around to touch me and I 
reacted by jumping backwards and refusing her touch.  That kind-of sums up 
our relationship, unfortunately.  I mean there‘s love there, and I care 
about her as a human being,  but there’s an agenda to her love, and 
expectations are given.  I have a hard time with that.

Michael:  Well, give it a try!  See if you can find a way to offer her this 
feedback because she seems to feel she is isolated.  Sometimes just say: 
Mother, I love you very much, and I am on your side.  I want to be your 
friend.  I feel you are isolating yourself.  You are cutting yourself off 
from those of us who love you.  We want to have a real friendship here, 
where we can get over these judgements and things.  Tell her: I’m very happy 
in my life.  I’m doing all kinds of good work and have been for years.  I 
have friends and children and a full life.  You’re not a failure as a mother 
because I am not a failure as a person – your son.

But the initiative on staying fresh and new is very much with you.  She may 
not be capable of staying in the now, but is being overwhelmed with the 
past, and not even a true past, but more or less just sentimentality or 
recriminations.  You may have to provide these connections, these ways out 
of the bad situations.  This is just the way it is.  This is your challenge. 
  This is how you can try your best to love your mother.  Refuse to be her 
enemy!  (Group chuckles)  Maybe tell her that: Mother, I refuse to be your 
enemy!  I’m going to love you and just keep loving you.

Student:  I may need time on this one…  I will need time.

Michael:  Now you are dealing with your own reactions.  You expressed that - 
what you are doing now – instinctively – perhaps at those rare times she 
reaches out just to touch her son.  This is what I mean by your staying 
very, very…very present, and recognizing those moments when she is able to 
overcome all her own reactions and reach out to you.  It is so precious for 
you to recognize these moments.

Student:  Yeah…  I know I was so shocked when that happened, when my body 
just recoiled back.  I was really shocked

Michael:  But your openness to, first of all, accept that that just 
happened, and then seek to understand it and let that soak in, is 
commendable.

Student:  Yeah.  And even how I feel right now is quite unsettling - today, 
when she didn’t want to come in to my place to accept her gift…  I know 
there’s lessons to be learned here.  If I’m to be a source of goodness and 
hope in this world, these are the challenges I have to meet head on, no 
matter how taxing and tiresome they may seem to be.

Michael:   This, My son, is what all loving children have done for their 
parents throughout time.  Just as parents have raised the youngsters and 
nurtured them, so too this is an aspect of caring for your mother in her 
older age when she is not so capable as you.

Well, there is much to think about, My children.  And this is good.  This is 
the business of living.  Even more, this is the business of caring.  This is 
the real work in our life for our fellows - truly caring what we do.  I 
offered this evening the tool of how to realize what it is we are doing - to 
accept the responsibility that we are co-creating a large part of what we 
perceive to be The Other.  Then this example of what happens when we 
encounter another’s projections that we feel do not apply to us, or to the 
situation at all.  What do we do then?  How do we defuse the situation and 
reach across that enormous gulf to another person who might even feel we are 
attacking them?

If, underneath it all, there is this essential caring, this intent to love, 
and this is real; this is finally – you can believe and have faith, My 
children – this is what finally carries the day.  This is the truer reality 
of spirit that creates the way forward.  Carry on!  You are all growing.  
And be in My peace.

Students:  Thank You, Michael; Good evening.