[tmtranscripts] Michael 3.7.05 - Freedom From Habits

[JERRY LANE]

Dear Folks,    I didn't know you were going to publish these introductions 
to the transmissions or I would have mentioned not only a short period of 
training to transmit, but the years of experiencing Michael's and Mother 
Spirit's very palpable - sometimes intense - Presence at Donna's meetings, 
which fully convinced me of Their reality and accessibility.  Then Donna 
gave lessons specifically designed to help us transmit first a kindred 
spirit - an ascendant mortal, Welmek, with whom we had also had years of 
contact, and consider to be a very close, real friend.  Jerry.

Michael 3.7.05

Marin TM Group

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit,    As You reach to contact us from without 
and right within, help us reach ourselves.  Help us know ever greater 
measures of love, and honor, and respect for our bodies and our minds.  Help 
us be ever more healthy - mentally and physically, not only for ourselves, 
but to be able to help those around us.  Especially let us be good examples 
of how to live strong, healthy lives for our children and our youngsters who 
so profoundly need these examples.  Amen.

Michael:  Good evening, My children.  This is your Father and your Brother, 
Michael.  That’s it…  Just relax and allow My presence to swell in your 
total awareness.  Let the pace of your awareness slow so that you feel you 
are constantly arriving here and now.  You are complete each moment and your 
souls are full of your whole lives’ adventures and discoveries, both what 
you have encountered, and so much too, My children, what you have created.  
I would have you appreciate what you have done for yourselves all these 
years - the attention you paid when it really counted for yourself and for 
those you love.  This is the supreme spiritual price you pay for an 
expansive, creative life: you pay attention.  You seek out those new ways 
that are calling to you, saying, ”Come this way. This is the way to greater 
life.  This is the way to expand your horizons both within you and without.  
This is the way to find those rewarding experiences which help you continue 
to evolve.”

For this, My children, is the critical necessity that life places on you.  
This is the primal condition of life itself: grow or die.  And even though 
you lose so much of your fear of death by trusting in the resurrection of 
your souls on the Mansion Worlds of our Father, whose thresholds into 
eternity you will all know someday, I am concerned with all the little ways 
of dying that you encounter day by day.

Feel your souls as a right-up-to-the-instant alive balance of both healthy 
and unhealthy ways of living.  The only difficulty in doing so is because 
your souls are so much a part of you.  They are so close to you, you cannot 
perceive them as something distinct and fully other than yourselves. They 
are a spirit reality that belongs to you as much as do Mother Spirit and 
Myself.  And so if you think of Us or your own souls as separate voices 
within you, you are mistaken.

I would ask you to recall an experience so common you may overlook it.  
Think of what you conceive, with the moral sensitivity that every 
personality has, mostly as a bad, that is to say, unhealthy habit.  Everyone 
without exception has had these experiences where there seems to be, indeed 
- something there - that records each little triumph and failure.  Since 
most habits are a combination of mental and physiological origin, you 
experience them as impulses which arise of themselves whether they be 
reaching for a cigarette, or a drink, or food you don’t need and cannot use. 
You have all experienced how, if you simply resist this impulse, it will 
fade away for awhile, then return on its own, prompted by this combination 
of a mentally comfortable habit and biological need.  And you have 
experienced how if you can resist this impulse a number of times, something 
positive seems to build up within you that makes it easier to resist the 
temptation again.  In cases of severe drug dependency, the physical part is 
uppermost and it may take quite some time for your body chemistry to adjust. 
But so too there is mental habituation where a certain bad habit is so much 
a part of your lifestyle, or self image, or something you share in a social 
way with your friends.  But this – something - you feel that strengthens the 
habit as you get into it and indulge it, or strengthens your resistance as 
you exercise and increase this ability, this is your soul, My children.  
This is the spiritual record of the decisions you make day by day, however 
consciously or unconsciously.

This – something - you feel at moments of conscious decision is something 
real indeed.  So see these as decisions, as choices you are making, and seek 
first of all, and most fundamentally, to pay attention.  These 
habit-impulses are complex and it helps if you can pull apart all the 
constituent pieces that combine to make up this or that particular one.

This is the time for your mini-meditation. This is the most crucial time for 
you to practice a moment of stillness, a moment of relaxing into or toward 
this impulse in order to understand it better and better.  Contact the 
spiritual reality of your soul, that - something there - which just showed 
you how to feel, and then be reassured, that if you can resist this 
particular impulse, this time, it is a small triumph that is being recorded. 
  It counts!   And each little meditation, one at a time, can steadily 
suggest that alternative life you need, to replace what you are doing 
otherwise.  Pure negativity does not carry the day.  Just an aversion to 
what you know is unhealthy or unproductive does not get you anything 
concretely positive.

There is truly something to acquire here, My children, waiting for you, and 
this adventure is not in any way just another, even if better, habit.  This 
adventure is paying attention to and perceiving a continuously renewed 
reality that your Mother and I, and our mutual Father, are providing for 
you.  At first you may have to trust Us that this is potentially real for 
you - there is a different kind of life possible for you, and you need to 
help Us create it - right at those moments when you are feeling another 
impulse to continue the old, unhealthy aspect of your life just one more 
time.  By paying attention you will be stepping into a perfect opportunity 
that is, by definition, somewhat free of the past, for as you go toward 
spirit, you are going toward spontaneity.  You are going towards the ability 
to create something new right within your ongoing life.  The spiritual part 
of your personality has this intrinsic ability, but you must exercise it 
like a muscle to know that, like a muscle, it is capable of growing and 
becoming stronger.

For several months now We have been helping you find the way, helping you 
discover true indications of this moral dimension within your lives.  This 
is an inner compass, My children, you were born with.  But unfortunately, 
for so many of you, no one told you you had it or how to use it.  But when 
you do use it by making moral decisions, it is your soul that records this 
part of the adventure of discovering what is right and healthy and 
strengthening, making a record of it you can feel and enjoy.  All cultures 
and societies have this injunction: don’t be impulsive.  But often they 
don’t  tell you how.

One parallel example I could give you, familiar to those in your particular 
society, is in handling machinery.  Most of you can remember from when you 
learned how to drive, how careful you had to be at first not to follow just 
any contrary impulse that might occur to you.  For if you did, you quickly 
learned how that impulse led immediately to an accident where something 
material was damaged in a very undeniable way.

But in the realm of health, just because your physiology was so developed 
over millions of years, and these tender bodies you inhabit are in their own 
way so tough and resilient, the immediate results of unhealthy impulses are 
not so obvious as a crumpled fender.  You need to regain that freshness, 
that caution as when you first got behind the wheel of a car.  Bring this 
same attitude to your day to day life and you will find that, just like 
learning how to drive, you will be learning – actually, earning - a base 
where creative ideas and ideals can find a home.  This will be your new 
life, your healthier, stronger, more powerful and rewarding ability to 
discover and follow God’s larger way for you.

Nothing, My Children, is rewarded so wonderfully as courage.  As strange as 
it may seem, it takes courage to practice your stillness for the very reason 
that this is the gateway to your soul, this is the way to the new life that 
is possible for you; for deep down inside you where you are truly one with 
yourself, you know this.  Go towards it.  Let this hunger for oneness within 
you grow.  At first you may feel only the hunger, the need for a better 
life, but this is good.   Find the courage to embrace it.  Feel the hunger 
of your souls, My children.  Embrace this curiosity that can renew you.  
Break through the barrier of fearing greater possibility, fearing what this 
freedom can lead to.  These all seem strange challenges, I agree.  But 
otherwise free people are dying day by day for want of the resolve to feel 
this renewal.  But once you do, My children, there is that - something there 
- that reassurance of your soul and your whole celestial family - cheering 
you on.  So be of great heart and pause whenever you need to feel Our love 
and hope, as often and for however long it takes.

If you have any questions or comments, I am always glad to be here for you.

Student:  One of the questions I have is: my mind wanders a lot during these 
sessions.  Are these the impulses You were talking about that can be 
overcome little by little, or maybe all at once?  I don’t seem to be doing 
too well with them.  Also, I feel You stop my fear and I’m just beginning to 
recognize it as fear, instead of something else.  Is this also one of the 
impulses You’re speaking of?

Michael:  C, I would say…no.  An impulse is a specific, intense, immediate 
desire to do a certain thing.  Tonight I addressed them as they are 
associated with unhealthy habits, and to resist them I used as an example 
what you have all experienced when you first learned to drive: while going 
along at a fast rate – disregarding any stray impulse to suddenly jerk the 
steering wheel one way or the other to see what might happen.  These little 
impulses can occur to you and yet you have some respect for the mass and the 
momentum of that physical vehicle, not to follow them.  But those 
habit-impulses which lead to bad health can generally be indulged for awhile 
before large effects show up.

What you are experiencing during these sessions is a wandering of your 
attention, and this wandering is more a lack of perception, a type of 
inability.  Perhaps, as you say, you are also discovering some fear in 
following what I am saying.  Let Me ask if you can say what these 
distractions are, especially with respect to what I was discussing this 
evening – how to deal with certain unwanted behaviors?  This might have 
stirred up your memories or your own personal, ongoing battles with what you 
feel are bad habits - may simply have triggered these distractions.  Is this 
the case?

Student:  Yes, but it goes on in every session, not just this one.  I can 
say I don’t want to be distracted, but I can only pay attention for awhile 
and then I find myself off wandering, mentally wandering somewhere else, and 
I can bring it back again to the meeting.  So it’s not really just this 
session, but rather a general thing.  I suspect it goes on in other places 
and at other times, but I don’t notice it as much.  Now I understand, I 
think the impulses were like back in the days when I smoked, I would light 
up a cigarette without even thinking about it – I’d just stop and do it – 
and it seemed perfectly natural and normal to do it.  Even when I heard it 
was dangerous for my health, I did it anyway.  The same thing with alcohol - 
I would just pick up a beer and it seemed perfectly natural, even though I 
knew that too was dangerous to my health.  But I was able to overcome both 
of them, so those two particular things don’t bother me any more.

Michael:  Here you are confronting another challenge of growth: how do you 
grow the ability to pay attention?  How do you feel about this?  Is this 
ability to pay attention growing or diminishing, would you say?  This can be 
somewhat hard to assess because your awareness of this ability, or the lack 
of it – this awareness itself is changing, just as it did with your other 
habits as you conquered them. First you had to be extra-conscious of doing 
these things.  And so, can you make an assessment as to how this awareness 
of your wandering attention is growing or diminishing too?

Student:  I think the lack of attention is diminishing somewhat, but what I 
got from tonight is that…it was…too comfortable.  I kind-of assumed it was 
something I had to live with the rest of my life.  But now I’m beginning to 
see that it is something I can really do something about.  It does seem less 
than what it used to be.

Michael:  Well, the purity of this consciousness you are trying very 
sincerely to maintain during these sessions gives you a good way of 
measuring how your attention is coming and going.  This is one of the 
purposes of these meetings, so congratulations are in order.  This is what 
your mother Nebadonia and I have been trying these last several months - to 
give you a psychological groundwork, and insights as to how your mind and 
body work in conjunction with your spirit so you can begin to perceive new 
things.  So: continue to grow.  Read and reread these lessons to help you 
understand this living process.

Student:  I will do that, Father.  Thank you very much for Your love and 
support.

Michael:  You are very welcome, My son.  I recommend the insightful lesson 
given to V about how to stay alert.  (Ed: Nebadonia 1.10.05)  This takes a 
very subtle attention in order to experience the qualitative fluctuation in 
your perceptions; here, how to actually experience when My voice is getting 
more or less interesting-seeming, My meaning swelling more or fading away.   
Do you follow?

Student:  Not quite.  I’m noticing that I’m paying more attention on these 
one-to-one talks as opposed to the opening lessons.  It seems to be a lot 
easier now than earlier, now I’m talking directly to You.

Michael:  Yes, this back-and-forth is more invigorating feedback.  And some 
of the insights We wish to share with you are of such a nature that We are 
making full use of everything possible, including these recording devices 
and your hard work transcribing these lessons and putting them out on the 
internet.  Your Mother and I can go into a greater depth and detail, which 
might be hard to follow live, so to speak.  This is the reason We encourage 
you to read and reread the lessons to let some of the subtlety of these 
insights soak in and pique all sorts of responses, different each time.  So 
you may be excused for losing Us from time to time.

Student: (Laughs) Yeah!  Also, transcribing the lessons is very valuable to 
me for I get to pay attention then.  But I’m pretty sure it is getting 
easier to pay attention right when this is happening.

Michael:  Well, C, you have all of Our love, and We salute the courage it 
takes to be so honest.  Be in My peace.

Student:  Yes, Father.  Along the same lines You just mentioned to C, the 
idea that when I’m here I’m losing, I guess, attention or focus on what is 
being said, and trying to absorb what is going on – the energy and 
everything.  Even now I find when you are speaking to C the energy inside my 
head really relaxes me to the point that I kind-of lose consciousness.  Then 
all of a sudden I wake myself up and realize You have said quite a bit.  In 
this sense…thank God for the transcripts because it seems like there’s only 
so much I can absorb.  Then when I do read the transcripts there is so much 
more I’m able to take in.  It is interesting feeling the energy inside my 
head, and the relaxation kind-of takes over my being.  I now know too these 
past few days – Saturday, Sunday, and this morning – I’ve really allowed 
myself to be laid-back for the whole time, doing things I needed to do to 
nourish myself - to meditate and read and write, to walk, and just be in the 
moment as best as I could.  It’s so refreshing.  And I guess one of the 
so-called bad habits that I’m constantly seeking to overcome is the habit of 
worrying: worrying about the future, worrying about my kids, worrying about 
things that in reality probably will never happen: just worrying about my 
existence, my relationship with my mother.  So it’s a constant struggle to 
allow myself to experience…just this present moment, here-and-now, and…enjoy 
this.  It was so refreshing these past few days of doing that, and feeling 
my soul – actually feeling it! – feeling…rich!…(Heavy sigh)  And it seems 
like You Guys…(Laughs)…seem so familiar…it’s just because I…seems like You
and Mother are so much a part of my life…mmmm…(Happily…)

Michael:  Well, My son, you are experiencing the wonder in the triumph when 
you give yourself permission to feel.  When you cease to worry about 
worrying, this is what transforms worry into loving concern.  It is by 
giving yourself permission to worry, to feel - if you wish to think of it 
this way - that you realize you are actually in a process of evaluating what 
you are doing, and facing the challenge of: what do I want to do; what are 
my alternative futures; how much is each one possible?  These are all 
aspects of creating your own life ever more consciously.  You are beginning 
to experience the real soul-felt reward that I wished to introduce this 
evening – this subtle feeling so close to you that it is usually 
imperceptible.  But this can be a – something there – something that lets 
you know that when you indulge an unhealthy habit, this is registering in a 
morally sensitive way.  And every time you can resist the impulse, you can 
feel this too building up, and be reassured the bad habit will in time fade 
away, just fade away, if you can replace it with something more interesting 
and positively life-affirming.  This is truly your soul.  And it is good 
company to keep.

As to what you are experiencing during these sessions, I take it as a great 
compliment to My presence that you feel comfortable enough just to feel Me 
here, and trust that there is within you - something there - recording what 
I am saying.  Then you can get the nourishment you most profoundly need - to 
rest deeper and deeper in My presence.  This is a decision you have been 
making unconsciously, My son, by trusting your Mother and I, and We thank 
you for it.  This way you get to know you are truly Our son.  So never fear 
to rest deeply in Our peace and love.

(Very long pause)  And so as one of your poets said, “You lose yourself.  
You reappear.”  It takes a bit of courage to do this too.  The rest you are 
able to get while you sleep is dependant on this trust in our Father to put 
you back together again in the morning.  Then too it is possible to go 
through your days never too far away from your spiritual home base because 
you can take the awareness of it along with you.  Paradoxically seeming, you 
simultaneously acquire the ability to go deeper and deeper into the 
adventure of your life by going deeper and deeper into self-forgetfulness - 
deeper and deeper into a faith that lets you be fully engaged, trusting you 
will reappear to yourself in spontaneous moments of stillness and 
reflection.  For it is also, sadly, possible for fear to become so great, 
and you to feel the need to hold onto yourself so tightly, that nothing much 
happens in your life.  This would be the greatest waste of all, a death 
right within life.  Yet your trust and your faith and your courage are, if 
you are paying attention, immediately felt rewards in themselves, as well as 
being doorways to something - unimaginably marvelous.

Carry on, My children.  And be in My peace.  Good evening.

Students:  Thank you, Father Michael…Thank you.