[tmtranscripts] Michael 8.15.05

[JERRY LANE]

Dear Folks,    Here is MIchael's latest lesson, this one on a very difficult 
subject--the reality of pain in our lives.

Michael—August 15, 2005

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

MICHAEL—T/R-JL

(The reality of pain)

(How to help someone suffering)

(The different kinds of pain)

(Objectivity and subjectivity)

(Tithing)

(The purposes of pain)

(Respect for pain and difficulty)

(The importance of understanding)


Prayer:  Dear Michael and Mother Spirit,    Tonight we offer our prayers for 
Your help, not for ourselves but for our brothers and sisters who are 
suffering and living in pain.  This may be the physical pain of injuries or 
disease; it may be the mental anguish of suffering some terrible loss of 
someone very near and deeply loved, or some natural catastrophe that wiped 
out their home or whole community.  And for some it may be a spiritual 
pain--the sense of meaninglessness, as if nothing means anything any more, 
and there’s no value to what they do or what they see in life.   We ask You 
to minister to them.  Be in their hearts.  Offer them hope and the courage 
to face another day.  For ourselves, we ask You to help us be generous of 
our resources and our time to help those who so desperately need it.  Amen.

(The reality of pain)

MICHAEL:   Good evening, My sons, this is Michael.  I hear your prayer and  
I take it into My own heart and send forth My strength that beats in the 
living hearts of all My children.  Pain is one of the great and deep 
mysteries of life, not only for you human beings with respect to your 
fellows, for your suffering affects the whole spiritual community.  It is 
not an exaggeration or any play on words to say that the angels weep when 
they see the suffering that so many go through on Urantia.  This is 
especially so when caused not by some natural catastrophe of time and 
space--due simply to being on an as yet unsettled evolutionary planet, but 
that very egregious kind of pain and suffering that is a result of the 
deliberate acts of your fellow human beings.

On a large scale this is what you are familiar with as warfare, and yet it 
exists in all of the world on  a smaller scale as what you call crime--where 
one individual very knowing and very deliberately causes someone else to 
suffer, either to rob and steal,  but sometimes with a very deliberate and 
malicious attack, just to gratify their own sense of power.

The deep mystery is in acknowledging this reality when you yourself are not 
caught up in it.  Here Mother and I ask of you to be aware of your own 
limitations in realizing the suffering that another is going through.  Too 
often folks, sometimes all too casually, imagine they can experience this 
suffering themselves, and yet, simply biting ones lip or pinching your 
finger a little bit can bring home to you: pain is it’s own reality.  And no 
one can even begin to imagine the severe pain that someone else might be 
going through.  Psychically you can have some awareness, such as if you walk 
into a hospital room where a friend of yours has been injured, you can 
sense, in a way, the pain filling the room.  So We ask you to be very 
careful about assuming you know what this feels like, and the same goes for 
mental pain, that anguish which accompanies a terrible loss.

One experience We would have you feel is a very natural one of your heart 
going out to those who are suffering.  You can actually feel this all the 
greater if you realize the limitation of experiencing their pain with them.  
Here it’s a matter of opening your heart with a deep respect for the fact 
you cannot share their suffering directly.  But you can open your own mind 
and spirit and ask yourself: how then, can you help alleviate their 
suffering?  What can you do?

(How to help someone suffering)

Where close friends who are injured or have suffered loss, just your being 
present, your company is often the most precious thing you can give someone 
else.  Pain is of such a reality that focusing on it usually does not help, 
but only fills your mind with it’s actuality.  Having dear friends near by 
for company offers the opportunity for a respite and distraction.  You can 
simply fill your mind with another person’s presence and chase the pain away 
for awhile.  It is this mental and spiritual sharing that is actually most 
useful.  This is what works.  So often just holding someone’s hand--that 
basic human communion of touch--is worth more than anything else at the 
time.

Here in offering to be with a friend in pain, even though you can not 
directly experience what they are going through, still it takes courage to 
acknowledge the reality of pain, for you are admitting it’s possibility into 
your own life.  This too is a kind of sharing of one’s basic human 
situation, and acknowledging that each small individual is truly just a part 
of an enormous physical world.  As I often taught while I was among you as 
Jesus: there are, from a human standpoint, truly accidents of time and 
space, natural disasters which no one has caused.  I even cautioned My 
Apostles and My true and faithful followers that even the deepest belief and 
faith in our Father does not preclude these accidents from happening to you.

Your Mother and I promise that We will always be with you.  We very 
literally bear your burdens with you.  In times of pain or injury or even 
extreme stress, do your best to keep Us in mind.  Offer Us your prayers.  
Let Us fill you with Our presence as much as you are capable of receiving.  
If you do have terrible times to go through, don’t assume there are any 
particular limits to the help We can give.  Our help is limited only by your 
capacity to receive.

(The different kinds of pain)

This is a very difficult subject to approach, for it is natural and 
altogether fitting, no matter how much or how little you have suffered in 
your own life, to wonder about the necessity for pain.  Why did God include 
this in His created reality?  Obviously on a physical level, it is part of 
the very meaning of life.  It’s an almost undeniable reality in itself.  It 
calls attention to something going wrong, whether it’s a toothache, a 
headache, a cut finger, or even something more serious.  It demands your 
attention.  This is very contra-distinct from the kind of physical injury 
you do yourselves through certain unhealthy habits which can lead to 
terrible physical injury, yet are not immediately painful.  Here I’m 
referring to various bio-chemical addictions.

Just so, mental pain calls your attention to the fact that reality has 
changed in a very undeniable way.  Someone or something that you thought was 
very much a part of you, is no longer.  Parents can lose their children; 
children their parents. You asked several weeks ago how it is possible in 
God’s way of creating the world, that a natural phenomenon like a tsunami 
can come along and so thoroughly devastate those it does not kill outright?  
And I could only answer this was a consequence of living on an unstable, 
evolutionary planet where the very crust of the earth shifts from time to 
time due to strictly natural, impersonal forces.

Last week Mother Nebadonia mentioned a kind of very severe mental and 
spiritual pain which is the experience of meaninglessness, where for various 
reasons, all of a sudden nothing seems to mean anything.  Things seem to be 
disconnecting from each other and losing their relationships.  She mentioned 
the experience of having the wonder and curiosity go out of your life, and 
somehow losing the freshness you once had as a youngster when the world was 
so strange and new.  This pain is also very real and can be more 
debilitating than the physical kind.  It can settle around you like a kind 
of psychic glue, holding you back from wanting to even try anything.  Many 
human beings suffer what you call depression, where all the joy, all the 
enthusiasm seems to have drained away somewhere.

I bring these examples up tonight to let you know that those of Us in a 
spiritual dimension do acknowledge their reality in your lives.  We would 
ask you to also keep their reality in mind, especially with a humbling 
realization if you yourself are not suffering at this moment.  How blessed 
you are; and yet too, how much you must open your heart and let a very 
natural and spontaneous out-flowing of help go to those who are suffering.  
Pray to Us, My children, for generosity, for that wonderful feeling of 
sharing what you have with your fellows in need.  For those of you who feel 
you cannot do this directly, you can search out--by putting time and the 
effort into studying--which organizations are worthy of your support.  Which 
of the many organizations that exist put their resources directly to those 
who are most in need; and then support these organizations to the best of 
your ability.

No, there is simply no denying the reality of pain and the particular 
meaning it holds and gives to life.  Perhaps this above all challenges your 
faith in God’s wisdom.  But it is certainly one of God’s laws, one of the 
realities He created.  Somewhat like the passage of time bringing about 
those changes you find yourselves resisting or wishing they were not quite 
so necessary, there are also certain truths which alike await the passage of 
time to be put in a proper perspective and relationship to the whole of 
life, to finally make sense.  So in the meanwhile, it is very much a matter 
of faith, in the basic sense of trust.  If something truly exists, if it has 
the mark of God’s creation, it really must be--else life would lose another 
dimension of meaning.

This is a subject best not avoided, but fully acknowledged, and even 
appreciated--as a mark of maturity.  This is so you can live your lives 
without fear in the courageous acceptance of all that is possible.  Use it 
all—everything--to fuel your devotion to discover, then align yourselves 
with God’s will.  Open your hearts, My children.  Look reality in the eye 
and accept all that is.  Ultimately you will find it is not other than you.

If you have questions this evening, on any subject at all touching your 
heart, let us share it between us.

Student:  Father Michael, I would like to thank you--I do thank you very 
much for all the changes You have wrought in me in the last few months.  I 
feel much closer to You and Mother, and I appreciate Your being here 
tonight.

The question is: Your last statement--does that mean that I perceive what I 
see…  Wait a minute.  Is my perception of reality all that I have?  Like the 
way I see things; is that it?  There’s obviously a reality quite separate 
from the way I see things.  I thought I had that figured out at one time, 
but I’m not sure any more.  Any enlightenment would be very nice—helpful.

(Objectivity and subjectivity)

MICHAEL:  Yes, My son.  I call your attention to a lesson We gave some weeks 
ago on the difference between what you term objective and subjective.  This 
has been a puzzle for the human need to understand oneself and ones place in 
the world.  Many of your finest thinkers and philosophers have taken it 
head-on.

Very strictly speaking, everything you experience has a mark of subjectivity 
attached.  Everything you see, or hear, or touch, or taste, or feel 
physically--coming through your physical senses, is being interpreted by 
your brain and then projected outward as exterior reality.  For example, 
everything you see is registering and being realized by you in your brain, 
yet there is a true objective reality outside you, and it’s the light rays 
bouncing off of it and entering your eye which your brain interprets.

So within this subjective reality of what you experience, there is, in part, 
an objective reality.  A classical example is two people standing side by 
side and looking at the same painting, then trying to discuss it and come to 
some agreement as to what it means, or what it’s saying, or even what it is. 
  For each person has their own unique personal value of spirit that they 
see in this object.

So you may be assured that there is indeed an enormous objective universe 
out there.  Yet just last week Mother Spirit gave a lesson on the 
limitations of a very narcissistic person, where the subjective part of 
their perception is totally overwhelming the objective part--to the degree 
that this person is almost paralyzed in experiencing anything independent of 
himself.  All of his attention is caught up in his own perception of 
himself.  This is precisely why We have encouraged you to let go of 
yourselves and turn your attention outward.  Strive for the ideal of 
objectivity.

If you will, grant the world an independent existence and then do your best 
to wonder what this might be.  Within this wonder and this curiosity is your 
acknowledging to yourself you cannot assume you know what is what.  Don’t be 
caught in any particular viewpoint or stereotype, but feel free to move 
around things--not only physical things but mental things: concepts, ideas, 
notions, evaluations, judgments--all these mental things you inherit with 
your family and your society and your culture.  Wonder about them.  How much 
objective reality do they have?

So, fundamentally, objectivity becomes an ideal, an orientation; and the 
more you are in tune with spirit--its spontaneous and creative aspects, the 
less bound up you are by your own subjectivity--the more you can be in tune 
with My Spirit of Truth.  You become aware that there are alternative ways 
of seeing things and knowing things--of realizing things.  All the while, 
you’re maintaining the humble attitude of being aware of your own 
subjectivity.  Does this help…clarify the picture, My son? (group laughs—the 
pun was obviously intended)

Student:  Yes, it does in many ways, Father.  It brings up more questions…to 
ponder on!-- otherwise we’ll be here all night answering questions.  Thank 
You very much.

MICHAEL:  You’re very welcome.  It seems you’ve taken My lesson to heart 
immediately.  (group laughs)   And be in My peace.

(Tithing)

Student:  Dear Michael, You’ve seemed to answer my question.  I had a thrill 
listening to Robert Cricket talk about tithing and it--I was driving home--I 
had this idea of why not tithe one hundred percent?  I didn’t know why I was 
so thrilled with that ‘cause it’s, I don’t know, it seems too absolute.  But 
now I realize when You were talking earlier--that when you are more ready to 
share your exuberance, or good luck, or freedom from pain, with 
others--maybe in the sense of compassion and empathy and, like Moses, you 
just do even more…  This one hundred percent tithing is maybe an 
old-fashioned way of looking at it, but it was a help to me and I wonder if 
You could elaborate, for the record, and for our own enlightenment.  Thank 
You.

MICHAEL:  Well, My son, there’s nothing much I can say as to the amount a 
person should tithe.  Tithing is a kind of good habit, a regular routine of 
giving so much to a spiritual community that can put it to good use.  It’s a 
reminder to give, an inner dedication or commitment to set aside so much of 
your wealth for others.

But as to how much, this is strictly between you and our Father.  But I 
would suggest that here, as in other aspects of your life, We can only 
recommend you stay open—literally: experiment.  Try one hundred percent if 
your heart tells you to do this, and then see what happens.  Again: it may 
work, it may not.  As I mentioned in My last lesson, it is only by these 
experiments can you gain the experience to know what is what, and assess the 
spiritual value of what is worth what.  So yes, by all means, give it a try. 
Then open your heart and your mind to accept the results.  Does this help 
you with this particular puzzle?

Student: (laughing) That’s another lighthearted way, and I can’t wait to see 
You on Salvington some day surrounded with the Melkizadeks and all the 
glorious, helpful beings.  Thank You.

MICHAEL:  You are very welcome, My son.  Be in My peace.

Student:  Yes, Michael, if pain’s a way for us to see that we are not 
following, in a sense, God’s will, that we are separating, in our minds, 
from His reality… Because if it is our true nature to be in joy, then pain 
is showing us that we are separating ourselves from this reality.

(The purposes of pain)

MICHAEL:  Yes, D, this is fundamentally correct.  Severe pain of whatever 
sort is a signal that something is going wrong.  The only limitation I would 
put upon your definition, or your understanding, is that this is not always 
intentional.  A lot of pain simply happens to a person, especially when you 
are rather immature and you almost have to, of necessity, find out all the 
wrong ways of doing things, in order to discover the right one.  Here pain 
is like the guide-rails along the side of a broad path of what is right to 
do, which let you know when you are straying off to one side or the other.

This is especially true for mental or spiritual pain showing you that you 
are deviating from an ideal way in which God would have you live in joy and 
fulfillment.  And as you know, there are certain mental aberrations which 
you call masochism, where a person’s mind is so disordered that they find a 
kind of bogus meaning in pain, and begin to indulge in pain in such a way 
that it is truly harming them physically as well.  This can be indulged in 
to the point where they are institutionally committed by those who really 
have their welfare at heart.

There is a definite borderline between masochism and where one could say you 
have to be a connoisseur of pain.  Here I am referring to the kind of pain 
that is intrinsic to effort, to good productive effort, either in work or in 
play or, say, in sports.  For example, one of the best things you can do for 
your body, especially as you get older, is stretching--keeping all the 
joints and ligaments and muscles of your body very flexible.  In this 
instance pain is just a caution that you are getting near the limits of your 
normal range of movement--that range of movement which will naturally 
decrease unless you stretch and go somewhat into pain.

This is what I mean by being a connoisseur of pain--being very familiar with 
it so that you know when it’s a good pain just telling you to be cautious, 
you are getting near a limit.  With caution and care you can safely go into 
this limit in order to increase your mobility.  Think of great dancers who 
live their whole lives in this kind of pain, maybe much more than what the 
average person will know,  yet in the advanced age of their eighties, even 
their nineties, are moving with a flexibility and truly awesome agility that 
many do not know when they are twenty.  This type of pain, simply being a 
caution, is not the kind of pain you meant as deviating from God’s way.

Student:  Yeah, in a sense this pain actually leads to release and even 
pleasure.  I notice that when I do stretch, I feel renewed and invigorated 
and refreshed, my body feels alive, so even as I go through the pain, there 
is a release.  It’s like the adage: no pain, no gain.  So I can see that in 
the pain of working… sometimes I feel exuberant after a good day’s work, 
even though it may be painful at times, using my muscles and whatnot.

MICHAEL:   This is part of that slowly acquired experience that leads to 
wisdom and discrimination--to discriminate between types of pain.  Certainly 
there are individuals who are so afraid of any pain whatsoever, they become 
totally oriented toward their own perception of comfort.  Then they can very 
quickly and at a fairly young age find themselves terribly handicapped 
because of this refusal to accept any pain or discomfort at all.  They are 
soon almost paralyzed.

Student:  And the paradox there is, those people, in a sense, create more 
pain for themselves in the long run.

MICHAEL:  Exactly.  They find out that in seeking only comfort, the world 
very quickly closes in on them to where nothing is comfortable.  So this is 
a matter of wisdom.

Student:  There are times though, with pain, where I feel like--this is what 
I have said before in the past--my finite being is rubbing up against the 
Infinite.  I feel, I feel limited and want to live more fully, and there’s 
pain in that, in that limitation, that experience of limitation.  But then I 
look at that and I say: this is where I am now, this is who I am now.  The 
more I try to push, or coerce, or want, the more frustrated and painful I 
feel.  I’m not being in joy, which means I’m not being in God.  So if I 
realize this, the pain, in a sense, releases.

(Respect for pain and difficulty)

MICHAEL:  I think the realization you’re trying to reach is one of respect.  
This is one of the meanings to life that pain definitely augments--let us 
say a respect for a healthy, very flexible body.  It demands that you see 
pain in the sense of an unavoidable means to an end, not an end in itself 
which it is in the case of masochism.  In almost every sport there are those 
who have no respect for their bodies, or for pain, who can very quickly 
injure themselves to the point of having to give up this desired activity, 
because they are literally tearing themselves apart.

Whereas you have the example I gave of some great athletes who are, clear 
into their nineties, amazing examples of grace and movement.  Probably this 
is with the realization of respect, of acknowledging these limitations you 
say you encounter when you start going headlong towards something.  In all 
humility, you can accept these limitations for what they show you of this 
greater reality you just ran into.

Student:  It’s like my reality wants to catch up with my…my idealism.  
Sometimes my idealism is out there, and my reality is back here, and that’s 
where I feel the pain.  But I’m learning to just to be in this reality.

MICHAEL:  Well, it’s interesting you have a differentiation between an 
ideal--which you might think of as self-generated, and reality--which shows 
you the moment to moment limit of what you can achieve--pursuing that ideal.

Student:  Hmmm, that’s good.  It’s like I’m keeping my ideal out there, but 
not bringing it into my present reality…which obviously is not true…  Hmmm…  
But I know when I try to leapfrog ahead, that’s when I feel the limitations 
and the pain.

MICHAEL:  As I discussed with C earlier this evening, you might think of the 
ideal as being the subjective portion.  It’s what your heart tells you would 
be nice, this could be something to strive for.  Yet you acknowledge there 
is an objective reality surrounding you, that is God’s creation, and 
deserves respect--even though it limits, at this particular moment, what you 
can ideally accomplish.

But you have to keep striving for your ideal to make the great discovery 
that in some ways, God’s reality is a bit plastic.  It can be molded, it can 
be shaped to your desire--as your soul grows, as your experience deepens.  
As you learn more and more about what it is, it responds to you.

Student:  That’s our free will; that is: free will.

MICHAEL:  Here I was referring to the fact that God’s reality is God, and it 
is not fixed.  God does respond to you as an individual human being, and so 
you cannot assume you fully know what God is capable of doing.

Student:  Yeah, ‘cause we’re a part of it, Hugh?   Yeah.

MICHAEL:  And you are just beginning.  As Welmek reminded you many years 
ago: you’re still tadpoles, and it is only by being very faithfully a 
tadpole can you grow into a frog someday.

Student:  Just to let You know, I’m not really thrilled with that analogy. 
(everybody laughs)  I don’t feel that way.  I don’t feel like a tadpole, I 
really don’t.  That’s like a couple of weeks ago when we last spoke, You 
said to me, considering a decision to be made: What do I want?  And that was 
really important to hear--in conjunction with God’s reality.

MICHAEL:  Well, My son, this is just Me teasing you--from time to time--with 
the very real fact you are only beginning a very long journey into eternity.

Student:  (laughing) You’re always saying we’re just beginning!  When can I 
be…more on the road, I guess.  Maybe we’re always beginning.

MICHAEL:  Ah!--now you have it! (group laughter)

Student:  Yeah: there is no end. (laughter) Yeah.  Thank You very much.

MICHAEL:  You are very welcome, My son.  Be in My peace.

(The importance of understanding)

Well, My children, tonight I felt it necessary for us to open our hearts to 
confront the reality of pain as directly, as head-on as we could.  The 
important thing here is understanding.  And any understanding demands, first 
of all, coming in intimate contact with what you would encompass in your 
soul.  Even if you are blessed to have never had a serious 
injury--physically, or mentally, or spiritually--remember carefully about 
your childhood.  There were all those dozens and dozens of skinned knees, 
and cut fingers; and then heartaches and disappointments, and so forth, that 
contributed so much to the wisdom you have grown.

For there are rare cases of children born without any pain receptors, 
without any experience of physical pain.  Only in very recent times have 
they had a chance of living very long at all.  This is part of the reason 
this is such a very rare condition--so very few of those afflicted this way 
survived to the age of procreation, to pass on the trait.

We have been encouraging you to regard your own past with some wonder, some 
creative curiosity, and tonight I wish to reopen the subject with this 
awareness of the different kinds of pain you have experienced.  It is 
important you do not fear these memories, so you do not exclude them from 
all your re-realizing your own past experiences.  Let them be included, no 
more nor less than as they affected you originally, for this was simply part 
of your life.  Considered this way, they form no small part of your 
understanding, your wisdom, and ultimately the meaning of your life.

Pain truly deserves your respect, especially when you consider those who may 
be suffering terribly.  Respect that you do not really experience their 
pain, but at the same time open your heart.  Let your heart go out to them 
with compassion and empathy so that, rather than reacting with fear, or 
aversion, or denial, you find the courage to reach out and take their hand, 
and at least acknowledge the reality of what this other person in going 
through.  This sharing is truly one of the strongest and most wonderful 
kinds of love.

Now rest in My peace.  Good evening.


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