[tmtranscripts] Center for Christ Consciousness - May 26, 2003

[Donna DIngillo]

Center for Christ Consciousness
Larkspur, CA

Lesson from Michael
May 26, 2003 -- Choosing to have Him help you through life


Greetings.  This is Michael.  What you are about to experience is an
enhancement of your perception of more human complexities of my
personality.  As you know, I was able to perfect my human thoughts and
desires to be in accordance with my indwelling Father Fragment.  And you,
by your study of your Urantia text or by your own internal longings and
desires, are now ready to appreciate these deeper perceptions.  I am here
to bring this to you as your mind increasingly expands to the truth.

Human life can be simplified into two domains of choices:  doing that
which serves your own self-interest, or doing that which serves the
wisdom of the Father’s plan.  One is essentially a component of the
animal nature; the other an expression of the divine working through you.
 

Where, in your thinking and feeling, have you found it to be the most
difficult in following the Father’s will for you?  Each of you will have
a certain unique way where you feel a conditioned reflexive response that
is a part of your rudimentary animal nature; that interferes with your
higher desire to do the Father’s will.  See if you can identify that
place within you.  (Pause)  Now if you have a perception of this, ask me
how to overcome this; ask me to share with you how I overcame the very
same thing that you are experiencing.  Invite me into your mind now and
let my presence, my truth illuminate you.  (Pause)

You see, my children, I shared the same evolutionary struggles of life as
you do.  How well I understand, how well I appreciate what you must
undergo as part of your growth—part of your spiritual development—that
will free you from the trappings of this raw animal nature.  You may, in
your struggles, come to me for guidance and understanding.  You may ask
questions of me to teach you the higher response and the more spiritually
fragrant behavior that will charm your fellows, inspiring them by your
goodness.  

I did not walk through my human life alone.  My Father became such a
pivotal companion at a certain point in my development that it was
inconceivable to me to embark upon any life decision without having “a
little talk with my Father who is in Heaven.” And so you too, like me,
have this added benefit of coming directly to me, not only as your
Creator-Father, but as your human brother as I understand the conditions
of this planet and I am familiar with the particular mind type of
Urantians. 

Tonight, as you gain a greater perception of my influence within you, I
ask you to consider using me as your guiding inspiration to follow the
Father’s will.  I trod where you are now walking.  I paved the way for
you to achieve this just as I did.  So this path on which you traverse is
not one for you to walk alone.  I am your constant companion. I am your
source of inspiration and encouragement.  What will your choice be?

Now, take this time, ask Mother—your Heavenly Creative Minister within
your mind— to weave these words of mine into your being; to inlay them,
to activate them as a stimulant for greater soul growth.  Feel Her
presence as She weaves this into you, threading the fibers of wisdom into
the looming consciousness of me.   (Pause)

My presence within you is a constant source of companionship.  The
question you must ask yourself:  Will I turn to Michael as my father, as
my brother, as my friend?  I know in your hearts your answer.  I
understand the shortcomings you face.  In coming to me as you face your
shortcomings, you will be educated from both the human and divine
perspective of the situation in seeking my counsel and availing yourself
of my wisdom and guidance.  You may now give voice to your comments when
you feel so compelled to speak.

Student:  Thank you, Michael, for your presence tonight.  As always, I
seem to find the answers here in your presence and in the stillness. 
Thank you for your patience and your forgiveness and your acceptance. 
I’m trying to understanding to why I feel the need to take a vacation
from such goodness.  The other thing troubling me is the profoundly
complex question of politics and the use of military force.  I don’t want
to ask you about that – you’re pointing the way toward having an open
mind on these matters, and it’s too complex to go into.  I hope to
understand these matters as they apply to different situations just by
trying to be open to all the various points of view, and perhaps to call
on you when my advice and opinions is asked by my friends;   simply
because of my age and military experience.  Thank you for your comfort.  


Michael:  The complexity of this world’s situations can be best
simplified by knowing that the Father’s plans have not yet been fully
instituted in the hearts and minds of the residents therein.  This
aggressive, self-serving animal nature triggers raw primitive survival
responses that when you couple ideological differences into the equation,
create the potentials for war and war-like behavior.

You have earlier in your comment also identified the same struggle within
you – why you must vacation from goodness.  It is this raw nature that is
now somewhat rebelling against those potentials within you that have yet
been totally activated.  This, my child, is perfectly acceptable.  It is
a natural process that you are undergoing, as it is the stimulus for you
to choose how you will live.  After a time you will get tired of having
this vacation from goodness, and your spirit within you creates that
feeling of uncomfortableness that will stimulate you to again choose the
better way.  Do you recall how important it is for you to make choices as
part of your soul growth?  

Student:  Yes, I constantly pray for self-honesty so that even if I
cannot follow the right way, I can always be aware of what it is.

Michael:  And as you grow more spiritually mature, you will find that it
will not be enough just to know what the better way is, but to actually
choose to do it – to become it, to realize it, and thereby fully
actualizing those potentials within you.  Your brethren are at varying
stages in their development.  Some people are still entirely rooted in
their raw animal behavior, but most are somewhere in between in this
process of becoming living vessels of the Father on the planet.  Is it
your choice how much you wish to develop in this lifetime.  This is why
my presentation to you this evening was given:  to help you in those
extra miles of circle attainment for you to find the Father within.  Has
this answered your question this evening?

Student:  Yes, Michael, you definitely read what was in my heart this
evening.  I just recently read one of your visits here I missed.  You
mentioned in the context of gardening, not only the sunshine and water,
but also the necessity of pruning.  I have been trying to take that to
heart.  I feel at times I’m rather bushy and shapeless and a bit shy of
the pruning.  But I know in my heart it is necessary.  

Michael:  Bare your human nature to me and your Mother.  In reality, you
cannot hide this from us, for we are intimately acquainted with every
thought that you formulate within you, with every feeling you enjoy or
disdain.  In presenting yourself for pruning to us, you are simply
allowing yourself to grow more beautiful.  It is this simple.  Present
each unlovely branch or thorn to us in faith—in anticipation—of what will
grow out of it.  Be joyful that you have developed the requisite trust
that allows such a choice as this to occur for you.  The more you present
yourself to us, the more beautiful you will become.  If you feel this
resonate deep within your soul, why would you ever shy away from it?

Student:  I know you mean that rhetorically and it has no answer, except
that it is a bit of a mystery.  I think we can get so caught up in the
mystery of why we avoid the good that it is simply better just to drop it
and let it be a mystery.

Michael:  But the mystery is a place of faith.  It is where you activate
your faith.  If the mystery is being avoided, then my question to you, my
son, is have you asked for your faith to be stimulated and increased?  

Student:  My faith is accepting your understanding...my understanding
from your point of view of this animal nature where I have spent so much
of my life striving for a oneness in acceptance.  I perceive even in the
animals around me the infinity of the Father.  I’m reluctant to accept
this thing called ‘animal nature,’ but I do accept it on faith as a way
of understanding something.  But I do not yet understand it.  It seems
like a bag to put all negative things in.  All my life I’ve hesitated to
give that reality.  And yet I must admit that there is something that
rebels.  That is the quandry....my faith is in accepting this vision that
started with Welmek and the teachings.  I’m slowly getting a feeling of
what you mean of ‘animal nature.’

Michael:  These words are presented to stimulate certain ideas in your
mind of transcendent growth.  Had you been created as an animal such as a
dog or a horse, you would hardly be aware of the potentials of the divine
within you.  Animal life is part of the Father’s plan and so is human
life.  For the purpose of this exercise this evening, the qualitative
distinction being made here is that there are certain endowments you have
inherited of animal nature that does not befit a growing son of the
Father, a child of divine dignity and destiny.  In presenting yourself
for pruning, you are allowing that which does not befit you to be
transformed into something more exquisitely useful, spiritually fragrant,
cosmically real that is a certain reflection of an attribute of the
Creator in Paradise. 

This step by step ascension progression is well outlined in your text.
Now is the time of actual attainment of putting forth in motion that
transformational pruning process of outgrowing those evolutionary
potentials and actualizing your divine destiny.  Is this more clarified
now?  

Student:  Yes, Michael.  I think where you mean animal nature, I think of
specific terms of greediness, complusiveness, short-sightedness, etc.  Is
that what you mean of the animal nature?  That there are all of these
possibilities what we outgrow.  I think my concept of human freedom is
that they are always there, but as the text says, they do not have to be
expressed.

Michael:  The negative attributes you identified are a distortion of the
potentials of the Father’s attributes operating within you in an
unspiritized mindal environment.  What I am referring to in speaking of
the animal nature is a certain hereditary endowment that you share with
your animal ancestors that you are outgrowing.  Animal nature does not
change.  Human behavior, human ideas, human free-will choices grow you
out—move you forward—from that which you share with your animal
ancestors.  You may not fully appreciate the purpose of animal life and
why it is so important for humans to outgrow this.  But it is part of the
larger plan of the Father in this fundamental gradation of intelligence
leading from the most basic forms of physical matter moving up from all
the various levels to the divine, sublime, perfect essence of Spirit
Source.  That which you share with your animal ancestors, you will find
at some point in your life is no longer useful to you.

Go within and seek guidance.  Spend time in spiritual inquiry and asking
for a greater expression truth as to the purpose of animal life as it
impacts human spiritual growth.  Allow what you have come to identify in
your own mind to be overshadowed with the truth of God’s plans, and you
will see more clearly that which is your divine destiny.  Do you
understand this, my son?

Student: Yes, I do.  You have a wonderful succinct, direct way that I
treasure the transcripts of our discussions, Michael.  You are sometimes
so succinct, so precise that it’s hard to hold.  It’s a treasure to read
and re-read.  Thank you.

Michael:  My dear child, you are making good progress as you expand into
the mystery of cosmic growth and spirit attainment.  Enjoy this time of
growth more even though those annoying habits that you still retain
irritate you.  Truly, this is your opportunity to go within and to
present these to me and your Mother for transformation to the eventual
point that you can find one of these annoying habits and say:  “Oh,
goody, there is another one I can be relieved of.”  This is our delight
to help you overcome.  It is only your choice that thwarts us from doing
this for you.  Keep growing, keep presenting yourself for pruning, and
you will be overjoyed with the beauty you see emerging from your soul. 
My blessings of peace and love are upon you now.  (Thank you.)  (Pause)

Student:  Last week when Mother and I spoke about self-justification—that
it keeps me from feeling the presence of the Father within me, there is
real strong wall keeping the Father from fully enveloping me.  During
this week I really felt it—felt that defense within me.  I saw it play
out in my daily life.  It feels so hard to let go of—it’s so real—that
self-justification, that I hardly know what to do with it.  It’s so
strong in my body and psyche.  This morning something else was bothering
that added edge to my personality: a sense of indignation and
self-righteousness—when people hurt other people either knowingly or
unknowingly.  I have a hard time with people who profess to be spiritual
or religious and be humble servants of God, yet their words do not
represent that.  This feeling of self-righteousness comes up within me. 
I want to reprimand them, especially when they hurt children.  So all
these feelings come up within me.  I was thinking, how would Jesus handle
that self-righteousness, self-indignation, and self-justification?  I
feel them so strongly within me.

Michael:  (in a very gentle and loving tone)  Who are you to judge?  Who
are you to look into men’s hearts and to pronounce your sense of
standards upon them? I want you to ask this question of yourself now.  

Student:  I’ve asked that question because I know I’m not perfect.

Michael:  Would you wish to be judged by your own standards when you are
acting less than perfect?  Why would you wish to subject someone else to
this harsh judgement when you yourself would not wish to be diminished by
it?  This is your opportunity, my son, to come into that place of desire
to know another person from the Father’s perspective.  How do you think I
was able to handle something as horrific as my hours of judgement and
crucifixion without judging my accusers?  It was only from this enhanced
vantage point that I could look down upon them and say, “Father, forgive
them, they know not what they do!”

The attitude of self-justification is one of the fundamental barriers for
you to truly see this from the Father’s vantage-point.  Here becomes a
valuable choice for you.  Which is more to you:  your self-justification
or seeing this from the Father’s vantage-point?  Only you can answer
this.  

Student:  What I noticed when I experienced that this week of how it
keeps me from fully experiencing the moment and appreciating those other
persons or myself, it feels so old.  I mentioned to Mother that it feels
so primal.  

Michael:  It is a familiar defense posture that you have taken deep
within you.  But now, my son, have you found it is time to step aside
from this and into a greater perspective of the Father?  The first thing
you can undertake is to ask yourself the question of this choice.  Once
you have made this question through sincerity, in true honesty and
humility, ask your Mother to frame a new idea within you of adding more
weight and substance into seeing it from the Father’s perspective.  Ask
for an expansion of this ever so slightly to increase your understanding.
 Then you will find that as you do this, the weight that holds the lure
of the self-justification will gradually recede or release its control
over you.  You will emerge into God’s viewpoint and begin to see the
world from His eyes.  Take your time.  Feel the weight.  Feel the control
that this has on you.  Go into your desire to be a living expression of
the Father, and ask for this greater perspective to stimulate new
feelings of love and joy and understanding.  This will take some time as
you identify more fully with seeing things as the Father see it.  Call on
me, call on your Mother, and we will be there to help you shed the old
skin of judgement and justification as you see more clearly through the
Father’s eyes and through the Father’s heart.  Do you feel you are now
ready for this, my son?

Student: Yes, I am, because I do not like this unsavory feeling within my
being.  It seems to be really accentuated these past two weeks where I
can see it face to face.  I never even really knew it existed so dominant
in my being!  I don’t now like its feeling—I do not like how it sees the
world through the layers of judgement.  Because ultimately, I’m judging
myself.  

Michael:  And so, now you are ready to emerge from this unlovely
characteristic that has been operating within you.  We are here to help
you overcome this, and know that your victory is imminent now.  Here
again, this is your choice.

Student:  There’s only one choice.

Michael:  Have you any other comments?

Student:  No, that’s enough for now.  Thank you.

Michael:  Dear children, these habits, characteristics, and tendencies
that you find annoying are all worthy of translation:  rebirth through
transformation of the Mother’s action within your mind creating new
levels of the Father’s love, the Father’s loving character within you. 
Come to me more joy-fully in presenting these habits, tendencies,
thoughts that you find troubling. I will help you overcome each and every
one of them.  There is no limit of the help I can provide to you.

Let this evening’s lesson and experience stimulate you more.  Come in to
me and think of me in desiring to be free.  Will you honor me by allowing
me to assist you more fully?  Will you honor your Mother by coming to Her
to each day and asking for Her purifying action to release you from all
these troubling habits?  The light of our love is waiting to shine forth
through you with greater translucency and magnificence, so you can too
provide the way for others to find the healing in their souls that they
crave.  
Realize, my children, you are not doing this merely for yourselves, and
how this will help you brothers and sisters, how this will transform this
planet.  See this more as part of your cosmic responsibility and one of
the duties of being a child in the family of God.  But it is a duty of
joy and light-heartedness.  And the freedom that you will feel from the
release from the old as you take on the clothing of the divine will be
nothing short of sublime.  The choice is yours, my children.  Choose
wisely.  Good evening.