[tmtranscripts] Michael 6.6.05 - Prayer

[JERRY LANE]

Dear Folks,     Sorry for the delay in getting this out and thanks for your 
concern.  I did skip Memorial Day, but here's Michael from a week later, and 
Nebadonia 6.13.05 soon to follow.  Jerry.

Michael 6.6.05

Marin TM Group

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit,    Another special evening has come around 
and so we come to You with open hearts and open minds and ask You to help us 
be aware of the special presence of Yourselves that You bring to us.  We 
want to thank You too for this series of lessons in which You are showing us 
there are many more dimensions to being human than we are aware of.  We 
thank You for painting a picture of the kind of lives we are capable of 
living - tuned in to all these extra dimensions.  Amen.

Michael:  Good evening My children, this is Michael, your immediate 
spiritual father, and a son of our Universal Father with you.  Indeed all 
personal beings in this vast universe are sons and daughters of God.  We 
look to Him and we can appeal to Him for His absolute and infinite power and 
guidance to be given to us in the most appropriate way judged by His wisdom. 
  And so we open ourselves in prayer most especially for that which we 
cannot know by ourselves alone.  In the humility of opening ourselves to 
that which is greater and wiser than us, we strive as much as possible to 
recognize what is, almost by definition, unfamiliar - that which we cannot 
anticipate.  So we have to keep in mind when we make a petition to higher 
spiritual sources, the next step is in receiving this insight, this new 
strength or, so often, the new direction we need to take in our spiritual 
journey.  We have to be ready to accept what comes to us, initially without 
prejudice, for any kind of pre-judging this important information will only 
block it or reject it out of hand.

When you offer your prayers be as thorough and precise as you can be, first 
to help yourself by acknowledging what it is you feel you need.  This will 
then help you so much in being able to accept the answer.  As We have 
cautioned you before, there is often a gap, a period of time which comes 
between your petition and the answer.  Think of this as the time it takes 
for you to realize what you have just asked for, for your prayer changes you 
and helps you see the situation you find yourself in; expressing your 
situation and what you feel you need helps bring you into the present 
moment.  Then it takes a certain amount of time for you to turn yourselves 
around from this expression, to turn the focus from yourself toward that 
great Out There of the dimensions around you where We spirit beings dwell – 
while still We will answer you within a kind of Universal Inside that we all 
share.  So this gap between your prayer and the answer you receive is 
entirely a function of your own being ready.  Spirit is capable of answering 
you instantaneously from the vast potential They have of spontaneous 
creativity.  But at the same time, since We are so sensitive as to hear your 
plea for help, We wait upon you until you are ready to receive Us.

Don’t worry you are tying up Our time, My children, for We do not require 
what you know of as human patience.  The more spiritually unified and 
capable of being spontaneous you become, the more you are paying attention 
to what is, as you put it - coming down - this moment, the less patience you 
will ever need.  You will be acting more fully in accord with all the 
potential in the present moment, and there will be no part of you, in a 
sense apart, unengaged, waiting patiently.  So We hear your prayers and We 
answer you as soon as you are ready.

This may take some time, this turning about within yourself, this going from 
expressing your situation and your needs, to then letting that fall away and 
rising fully up into the present moment -  open, expectant, yet still and 
peaceful throughout, so you can tune into and receive the subtle message of 
spirit which is in itself a kind of spiritual triumph.  This is the 
willingness to feel the uncertainty that we have been discussing – 
uncertainty because you do not yet know the answer.  So think about this.  
Realize that immediately after your prayer you may feel that chasm of the 
unknown opening before you and mistakenly think you have done the wrong 
thing, or are turning in the wrong direction.  But this is the right 
orientation – opening to the vast inner reaches of spirit. So you wait in 
devout prayer, feeling a kind of emptiness, a broad field of 
super-consciousness, expectant, hopeful, and ready.

         Often the answer will come as a great idea.  This may be the 
immediate presence of God who lives right within your mind and makes 
suggestions as your own thoughts.  Many times you will only recognize the 
source as your Thought Adjuster when you are truly self-aware of how stumped 
you were just the moment before, so when a new idea comes at you, as you say 
– out of the blue, and is startling in its appropriateness - how it seems to 
be both deep and broad in addressing all the facets of the problem - you can 
know for certain this was your Thought Adjuster.

When you pray to Me, My children, it helps greatly to remember Me in your 
heart, and I mean this quite literally.  Think of how still and peaceful and 
how sensitive you have to be to feel your heart beating as you are just 
sitting there in prayer and not, shall we say, just finishing some powerful 
physical exercise.  So this is a good way to tune in to Me.  Spend some 
minutes just feeling your heart beating, marveling at this life force within 
you.  As you tune into your feelings on all these levels of your physical 
heart beating, the sensitivity of your mind to do this, and then the 
spiritual peacefulness you can feel in this assurance of life, you will be 
more and more open to the gifts I can give you, the answers I can provide, 
the pictures I can paint in your mind of the next step to take.

Here I am always working with Mother Spirit in this dimension of worship, of 
thankfulness for life.  And Mother, though all Her adjutants of mind 
ministry to you, can give you a sense of the vastness of our own past.  She 
can help remind you of all the years and years of human experience with all 
the many people you have known.  She can give you an appreciation of your 
own hard-earned wisdom which can help you elaborate and refine the response 
you are getting from spirit.

Since your own mental processes are often so slippery to you, so hard to get 
hold of, or slow, or still, We would suggest when you have a particularly 
serious prayer you utilize something as simple and yet profound as a paper 
and pencil to write it down.  Here again, just expressing your situation and 
what you feel you need will help you acknowledge your reality and how you 
perceive it.  This will help prepare you for spirit’s response.

Then as you feel for your heartbeat, as you open yourself in wonder at the 
life coursing through you, as you sit in thankfulness to our Father and this 
gift He has given you, and you start getting the good ideas, the 
understanding, the insights, write these down too.  Give them an objective 
reality there on the paper so you can further acknowledge that something is 
happening.  For it is ever true, My children: you have to give spirit beings 
Their reality for the very reason that it is within your range of freedom to 
deny this for yourself.  You have to acknowledge where you are and what you 
are asking, and then you have to acknowledge what you have received.  You 
have to make it real, to act on it.

Finally, never surrender your ability to choose, your innate human dignity 
of will.  Here We have encouraged you to separate these two different 
aspects of your reality: knowing the right thing to do, and choosing to do 
it.  We offer you this tool and salute the courage it requires to not deny, 
but to accept and strive for wisdom, for knowing what is right or the best 
thing to do, for being open to receiving this in prayer without in any way 
initially blocking it with notions of how possible or desirable it might be. 
  Open yourselves to truth.  Hear what My Spirit of Truth has to offer you.  
Write this down to help you remember it.  And then decide whether you will 
do it, or not.

This decision can be somewhat independent of the wisdom informing it, and 
this helps you accept the fact you are making a decision, rather than trying 
to smother or deny the wisdom.  I think you can sense immediately how this 
requires you to stretch even further to hold both your wisdom and the 
perhaps less than wise decision, but this stretching is essential in order 
to keep that truth alive in you, so for however much or little you may be 
able to incorporate it today, it will still be with you tomorrow.  There 
will be time tomorrow for tomorrow’s decisions, when you will be another, 
hopefully more mature, more fully grown you.

This is the essence of prayer, and putting it into action.  This is the 
stalwart and courageous facing the enormity of what you do not yet know.  
But you can do this with hope, and beneath the temporary and reoccurring 
uncertainty that is so much a part of this opening yourself, you can feel 
beneath this, down on the bedrock of your life, the realization you are a 
child of God, and the absolute security of that.  This is the uncertainty 
with security We invite you to experience, and know the joy of the spiritual 
triumph contained within.

If you have any questions or comments, My sons, I will be glad to hear them.

Student:  Yes, Michael, I’d like to ask for more understanding on the quote 
of “keeping the conscience void of offence,” as we wrestle with everyday 
necessities and spiritual value attainment.

Michael:  Yes, My son.  I look upon this expression as a way of reminding 
yourself of the importance of intention.  Incorporated in this is a humble 
awareness and appreciation of your human limitation.  You do not always have 
adequate information, either about the situation you find yourself in - 
including all the other folks involved - or even about yourself, what your 
true motives may be.  You find yourself in the dilemma of how, even with the 
purest heart, how can you make the right decision based on such an 
insufficiency of knowledge, of facts?  But when the facts and the associated 
mental meanings or relationships are either lacking or unclear, you can fall 
back on a purity of intention, for this is a spiritual value.   This is 
being - in your expression - free of offence, proceeding with a great 
intention to offend no one, all the while humbly realizing you may.  Here 
you can encounter a blessing if this other person or these other people you 
do not wish to offend have their own spiritual sensitivity which can pick up 
your good intentions, and credit you with this - however awkward or 
seemingly inappropriate is your overture or response to them.  Think about 
what a blessing it was you’ve known from time to time when you misstated or 
inappropriately suggested something, but with a good heart, simply because 
you valued not giving offence, and the other person recognized this and 
immediately forgave any clumsiness of your expression.

So too My son you can be as gracious yourself.  Turn this around and realize 
what a blessing it is you can give to another if, however awkward or 
seemingly inappropriate or clumsy may be their reaction to you, you can 
realize their good heart, their good intention, and return that.  Does this 
answer your question?

Student:  Yes, it greatly simplifies the whole mental process of thinking 
about it, and I’m grateful for this.  Along the same line: I’m also 
struggling with the question of when as we get older we kind of make 
decisions based on thinking, and there’s far less emotion involved.  We seem 
to be breaking away from emotions, or things to feel right, and be able to 
use the intellect more calmly, and it is a struggle to go through the 
transition from trying to feel what is right and more relying on the more 
mature thinking.  Could You give me some help in this area?

Michael:  Here, My son, I would direct you to what Mother Nebadonia 
expressed so well in Her last lesson about the interrelationship between 
logical thinking, feeling as emotion, and feeling as intuition – that 
sensitivity to relationships which cannot be expressed completely in logic 
because these relationships include other dimensions of reality in addition 
to the physical plane from which logic has been derived.  I would ask you to 
seriously reconsider your generalization that mature thought somehow 
separates itself from emotion or feeling.  Indeed this can be a kind of 
mental laziness, even a poison that many folks get into by abstracting 
thought to the point where it is devoid or separated from feeling.  It 
begins to follow some unfeeling and unquestioned inner habit-pattern that, 
when applied to tender living human bodies and minds, can cause enormous 
mental and spiritual pain to your close companions.  Extended socially, the 
very facility with which certain abstract concepts are used for handling 
physical reality, such as mathematics and geometry, then on into certain  
kinds of sociology, then as well for applying cultural patterns left over 
from hundreds of years ago from other situations entirely - old patterns of 
thought now reduced to dogmas of right and wrong, means and ends; this 
facile ability, when it’s used to exercise personal power through political 
organization, can be and was the basis for some of the greatest horrors man 
has inflicted on his fellows.  This was because social and political 
thinking had departed so far from the realm of empathizing with full human 
experience – thought, feeling and intuition – and stepped over into what you 
express as the ultimate political cynicism: the end justifies the means.

Rather I would encourage you to think of maturity as embracing thought and 
feeling and intuition in a very spiritually unified way.  For as Mother 
pointed out, they are so inextricably interrelated.  It would help so many 
folks to realize that what they feel embarrassed about as incompletely 
logical thought is actually a valid expression of feeling.  This can be all 
the more righteously done if it is simply recognized as such.  In other 
words, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this.  This is one of the 
functions of thought, expressed in words: to enable people to share their 
feelings.  And as useful and necessary as pure abstract thought is in realms 
like mathematics and geometry and science, it is only so when directed 
toward understanding the physical world as devoid of personal mind as you 
can make it – the ideal of pure objectivity, which is experientially 
impossible.  For now even your own science’s sub-atomic theory proposes 
there is no final separation between matter/energy - as perceived by the 
body’s senses through a lot of really complex machinery - and mind, as you 
experience these experiments.  In your daily lives this is your success in 
experiencing and understanding both the world and yourself as Mother’s 
inextricably interrelated single reality.  However useful abstract thought 
is in specific limited realms, it is when it is misapplied to achieve 
political ends, when individual men and women and children are reduced to 
mere ciphers in an equation of naked power, you see then the kind of horror 
that people inflict upon each other to gain and maintain control, and I 
personally experienced in the manner of my death.  So I bid you welcome and 
respect all the facets of your human being and do not equate maturity with a 
lessening of any of them.  Does this help you, My son?

Student:  Yes, dear Michael, once again it is a great help and comfort, and 
I can see why Your Spirit of Truth is called “ the Comforter.”’  Thank You 
very much.

Michael:  Yes, it is a comfort to accept the full humanity within you that 
God has created.  So be in My peace.

Student:  Yes, Michael.  When we last spoke privately and I outlined the 
situation I’m in, You said I inherited this.  And You said it three or four 
times.  I was wondering what You meant by that? - that I inherited this 
family and this situation.

Michel:  Well, My son, I was trying to help You appreciate the complexity 
with which things confront you in choosing to be with another person.  You 
inherit along with them all the people they are associated with – children, 
parents, friends.  It is how to appreciate the fullness, the complete 
package - if you wish to think of it this way - that you inherit somewhat as 
you inherited so much else in your life: your own family, and immediate 
society.  This is not the inheritance which you more narrowly think of as 
material possessions you acquire when your parents die.  When you are born 
you inherit the whole…kit and kaboodle, and it is a token of wisdom to 
realize this - that in this sense nothing is simplistic.  Almost every human 
being lives in the midst of a fantastic complexity of relationships.

Student:  Yeah.  You also mentioned many times that the decision is mine, 
totally mine, of the direction I am to take - whether I move into a bigger 
home, or to part ways, or various other…manifestations.  Let’s say I decide 
to stay together and have a family, and my daughter, and move into a bigger 
place, and that is my decision.  Is it fair for me to presume that since the 
universe knows my needs and the needs of all those involved before we even 
articulate them, and this could be on the material level - that the right 
habitat will manifest, and the funds to take care of all of this will 
manifest?  Do I have the right to presume this, because of the intentions I 
have put forth?  And also one more thing: will this also affect the 
spiritual growth of everyone involved in a positive way – including myself?

Michael:  The shortest answer would be simply: No – to your presuming on the 
universe, and to whether you grow spiritually – Yes, it’s possible – that is 
up to you.  I put it so bluntly so you can feel the intended impact of what 
is actually your freedom, because this freedom entails or contains the 
possibility of making a mistake.  You can choose a certain course of action 
and set out for it, and the universe only promises you  a consistency of 
God’s and Higher Spirits’ continuity.  Physically, the sun will come up 
tomorrow, gravity will continue to stick you to the surface of Urantia.  The 
Spirit of the universe, the Supreme Being will continue to grow.  But for 
all the individual persons around you, each with their own free will – an 
enormous complexity of desires and responses – the universe cannot help you 
in this.  The universe cannot promise you anything along these lines without 
abrogating their freedom.  Keep in mind what I just said about intention.  
Yet even this is limited to the degree you know your own intentions.  But if 
your mind and your spirit are open to what We have been teaching about 
making decisions - being very clear as to why you are doing things, what 
kind of information you are basing these decisions upon - about yourself and 
about all the other folks involved; and you make a decision which involves 
the physical consequence of moving; you may still arrive at a situation 
which is much worse than the one you are in now.  That’s a possibility.  We 
can only offer the discipline of being very honest with yourself.  Then if 
the situation does become worse – no matter what happens in your life – you 
have a clearer idea of how you got there, and you can learn from this 
experience.  You can increase your store of wisdom, and make a better 
decision within the new situation.

Student:  Of course life does give one cues toward a certain direction, or 
there is a certain inner intuitiveness about what one needs to do for 
oneself.  So hopefully I will follow these inner cues so that the decision I 
do make and actualize will not result in something disastrous.

Michael:  This is your good intention.  But it does not insure or guarantee 
any results whatsoever.  Your feeling of life giving you signals is just 
your own projection, for life includes all living beings of which you can 
only know so few.  Rather, it is a way of objectifying what you said in your 
next sentence was your inner feelings about the situation and what is the 
best direction to take.  Yes, this is what you have to go on.  And the more 
clear you can be about this, open and honest with yourself, the more of the 
complexity of the situation you can understand, the better will be your 
chances of growing, and everybody growing as you proceed into the future.  
But in all of this you are also - absolutely fallible.  It is only with a 
full appreciation of this fallibility of the very best intentions can you 
arrive at the humility of accepting your human condition.

This humility can lead you to Those who are greater than you.  It can 
encourage you to ask of spirit what is the best thing to do, even though the 
reception from spirit is still dependant on your own human abilities.  This 
is your human situation, My son, and the more you are able to realize this 
and then humbly and courageously share this with all those involved, you may 
be surprised at the companionship and understanding that can be generated on 
this foundation of truth: no one is infallible.  This is when people really 
pull together, when each recognizes how much they are dependant on all the 
others for a good outcome, and how much the group is depending on them.  
This awareness of your own human limitations is not, I caution you, any kind 
of self-abasement or self-flagellation or masochism or anything negative of 
this nature.  It is the recognition of how the good outcome is dependant on 
all the persons of the relationship working together.

Student:  Yeah, I had a sense that, in order for all of this to work toward 
a  positive outcome, there had to be a unified sense of intention and 
humility among everyone.  It’s quite a challenge having my daughter there 
now, living in the living room, and trying to keep everything as harmonious 
as possible.  I’ve been “letting go and letting God” a lot lately.  And even 
though it’s a challenge with all the various personalities and the pressure 
to make changes, there is also a sense of great spiritual opportunity for 
everyone involved, in order to be…the idea of tolerance and respecting 
others, compassion, and just the awareness that we are all under one roof 
with all our various needs.  So I do see that.  Once again, there’s that 
feeling of uncertainty You have mentioned before, uncertain about the 
outcome of all of this, because things will change, and have to change…  
(sigh)

Michael:  Well, My son, you are showing great wisdom because you are staying 
open to this complexity.  So you can speak from a fullness of experience and 
see the spiritual triumph possible when people are determined to share 
whatever may come. I must confess that so much of your human situation in 
its broad outlines was deliberately created this way by our Father as the 
best way to raise His sons and daughters, almost to insure you would acquire 
character.  Is it not really a blessing when you can be aware of this, and 
begin to glimpse the true spirit so often hidden by the complexity – to see 
His spirit beneath and intertwined through it all?

Student:  The challenge for me is to have this understanding and to see this 
wisdom…but to allow it to unfold, to allow the other personalities involved 
to share in that wisdom, to have faith in what I have come to understand: 
that we are all going in the right direction…eventually…wherever that 
direction might be.  To learn too to let go any position I might hold onto 
so tenaciously.  It's a struggle at times just to be an open vessel of 
spirit…and just let it pull in its own way…in God’s way…whatever that way 
is…

Michael:  Yes.  There is a strength in accepting the irony that as you get 
better and better and wiser and wiser, the decisions keep getting larger as 
well.  Be not too daunted by the fact you are just beginning the first few 
tentative steps in your eternal life, and the decisions will keep growing as 
you do.  Without these ironic facts there would be no real spiritual growth, 
for there would be no necessity for it.  Now to welcome this necessity - 
especially when you feel it weighing on you in the face of the next big 
decision – that is true worship and faith, and acceptance that the Father 
deliberately set it up this way.  But as you make these decisions and can 
look back upon an ever longer lifetime of them - both good and bad, there 
can also exist a self confidence and growing assurance and faith based on 
real experience that you’ve earned, so that your soul is also absolutely 
real.  And you do have those wonderful moments - from time to time - of 
spiritual triumph where you glimpse how it is all perfectly tied together.

Well, My children, it has been a full evening.  Are there any more really 
pressing questions?

Student:  I have some more…but they can wait until next time.  I do want to 
thank the Father for putting me into this situation.  (Laughter all around)

Michael:  Yes! – that’s the spirit!  (Laughs along with the group)

Student:  It keeps me on my toes!  On some level it keeps me alert and keeps 
me alive.  So…I guess.. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Michael:  That is really being in accord with the Father’s will.  I think - 
from a human standpoint - the flavor of reality is often one of irony.  
Irony - if you can glimpse the completeness of reality with a sense of 
humor, for sometimes it comes across as a paradox when you are caught on the 
horns of a dilemma and reality can seem to be frightfully 
self-contradictory, or downright impossible.   But it is not just a pendulum 
swinging back and forth between pain and pleasure, understanding and 
complication, irony and paradox, but it is that growing, absolutely 
existential reality of your soul, your personality’s true possession, that 
can persist and keep growing – forever.  There is something happening here 
that can keep on happening, and it is both you and the purest fragment of 
your Father - inextricably tied together already, looking forward to being 
absolutely fused into one being someday.  Your courage and your faith give 
you a taste of this even now.  Rest in My peace.  And rest also right in 
your own souls.  You’ve earned them.  Good evening.