[tmtranscripts] Michael 1.31.05 - Hopes And Fears

[JERRY LANE]

Dear Folks,    Sorry for the delay, I've had to do more of the primary 
transcribing myself - but I'll get better!  Jerry - Nytrayn at msn.com

Michael 1.31.05

Marin TM Group

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit,    Another Monday evening has rolled around 
and here we are once again, tickled and happy in anticipation of Your 
presence.  As we read and reread these lessons You have for us, bit by bit 
we become incrementally more aware of, and more appreciative of the larger 
dimensions of this marvelous life we were born into.  We thank You for 
showing us these doors and inviting us to open them.  Amen.

Michael:  Good evening, My sons.  This is Michael.  What a wonderful time 
this is on Urantia.  There is a carol celebrating My birthday, which goes, 
“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”  For it was 
so - to start something going that, even though it would seem - from a human 
perspective - that not much was really happening in the totality of not only 
Urantia but throughout the whole system of Satania, the spiritual forces 
that were set in motion began to swell immediately.  In spite of what you 
sometimes think of as The Dark Ages, which you are slowly beginning to 
understand were not so dark after all, these spiritual forces that I set in 
motion have been swelling enormously ever since.

This is part of the reason that the Urantia Book was given to humankind - 
not so much to offer something entirely new, but as a summation of normal 
spiritual development ordained before the creation of this planet.  So when 
you get down to studying your own social evolution through the growth of 
families into tribes, into states, and finally into the present-day nations 
you have about you, you can have some appreciation of all the stages of 
growth that every evolutionary planet must go through as it goes from the 
single cells of life planted by the Life Carriers, to the someday future of 
a planet settled in Life and Light.

There are no gaps in this sequence of events.  Every stage must be there.  
While you had a spiritual development such as I inaugurated on this planet, 
at the same time you had the ongoing political and social evolution to ever 
larger units.  And as you students of history know full well, this evolution 
was attended by ever larger means of, and participation in warfare.  Quite 
simply, the battles got larger right up to what you call the Second World 
War, where tens of millions suffered and died or were grievously and 
permanently wounded.

This in no way negates or diminishes the parallel spiritual development that 
was taking place at the same time.  Now we are in the midst of an enormous 
spiritual blossoming.  This is due to factors which are not only spiritual - 
with the adjudication of the Lucifer Rebellion, but also physical and mental 
in human life.  Keep in mind that spirit is that which embraces everything.  
In true spirit there is no arrogance of position.  The spirit world does not 
in any way look down upon or seek to diminish either the physical or the 
mental aspects of human life.  How could it?  These aspects came from 
spirit, were created by spirit.  And so it in no ways belittles spirit, but 
is a part of spiritual blossoming - the enormous explosion of physical means 
of communication on the planet.  There was always one world floating in 
space, but there is just beginning to be the physical means for instant 
intercommunication between the different peoples on this one world.

This was all in the works from the beginning.  Every planet which has 
evolved - and you know from your studies, our own Local Universe has close 
to four million inhabited planets – and by far, most of these world cultures 
are ancient and fantastically developed from an Urantia point of view; all 
worlds, of necessity, go through the stages Urantia is passing through right 
now.  Think of all these evolutionary physical means which are now making it 
possible for an explosion of mental-intellectual challenges and achievements 
all over the entire world as people become more and more intimate with each 
other.

The marketplace of ideas, as it has been termed, is becoming a free-wheeling 
one indeed.  Narrow-mindedness and closed-mindedness are being rightfully 
challenged, especially to the benefit of those so afflicted.  This is where 
the all- powerful, all-encompassing love of spirit welcomes all.  As in My 
human time, two thousand years ago, those who were the most impoverished in 
body and mind and spirit became the most blessed with the good word of the 
truth of the fatherhood of God and the all-encompassing, all-welcoming, all 
joyously loving nature of His Spirit.

What a time this is, My children.  The hopes and the fears of all the years 
are meeting, and hope will triumph.  And not without your efforts, not 
without your dedicated work, not without your enthusiastic participation.  
What a triumph awaits you - individually.  What amazing good work you can 
accomplish.  This is the power and glory of hope, the determination of hope, 
the strength and the resiliency of hope for those who dare.  The necessity 
for courage is a constant through the ages, and is no less so today for the 
very subtly of the challenge.  By this I mean the subtle challenge of 
freedom.  What do you do with your free time and your extra wealth once you 
have them?  Do you see what I mean, My children?

The move, the paradigm shift as you sometimes call it, from being 
determined, so cruelly at times, by your surroundings - and here I mean the 
untold millions of people who have perished in the long ages past just from 
lack of food and shelter, let alone the predation of their fellow humans - 
for all of this to turn around so quickly for so many in the world - yet 
have this freedom existing on the same world with what is still – truly - 
genocide and mass murder - this is a challenge which has never been faced 
quite this way before.

It is good that the Spirit, a truly Holy Spirit, is capable of renewing your 
perspectives and your desires for truth and understanding, your 
determination to lend the helping hand that is still so desperately needed 
in parts of the world for that basic food and shelter.  No less desperately 
needed in the so-called advanced societies with their subtle challenges of 
freedom – past the freedom from want, the freedom from needing to labor most 
of your waking hours - is the courage to live an open, adventure-welcoming, 
spiritually-thriving life.  This has always been a necessity, My children, 
and ever more so today.  So be of light heart; you’ll only find it in being 
engaged.

Fear grows in direct proportion as you remove yourself from the current of 
life of those around you.  Courage is found in the accomplishment of joining 
with your neighbors to share your lives together.  Welcome to the great game 
of reality.  Take heart, exercise your faith.  Embrace all you encounter, 
all the challenges of the physical, the mental and the spiritual.  Together 
we will prevail.  You will not only survive, My children, you will thrive!

If you have any questions, this evening, I am always glad to answer you.

Student:  Thank You once more again, Father.  I don’t have any questions, 
just a heartfelt - Thank You - for all You do for us, and for me, and for 
actually being involved in this Correcting Time and this Teaching Mission.  
It’s still somewhat amazing to me that this is actually going on.  Thank You 
again.

Michael:  Yes, C, it is amazing, is it not?  Men and women of faith have 
always had to live a two-fold life with respect to their relationships with 
those who believe differently, or believe not at all.  But it is good to 
have so much in your heart, even if you cannot share it entirely as you 
might wish with just anyone who crosses your path.

This in no way diminishes what you can truly know within yourself, and 
between you and I, and it is gracious not to push yourself and this absolute 
knowledge you have within you - this religious experience - not to force 
this in any way on another, but to be respectful, if you will, of their free 
space.  So thank you for your gratitude, My son, and be in My peace.

Student :  Thank You, Michael, thank You Father.

Student:  Dear Michael, I’d ask for general advice as I peruse all these 
different philosophies with my boy - a way of unifying them so that he and I 
can communicate more effectively…ah…sort them out.

Michael:  Yes, V, philosophy is the attempt of the human mind to correlate 
the soul.  This is the work to find a consistent and internally logical 
explanation of the totality of your experience.  This is as necessary for 
your intellectual and spiritual life as food is for your body.  Everyone has 
a philosophy of life whether they know it or not, whether they consciously 
work with it and upon it, or not.  As your life has no end, your philosophy 
will always be incomplete - fortunately so.

In view of that perspective, I bring to your attention, from time to time, 
that you are taking your first few hesitant steps in eternity.  I would 
advise keeping your philosophy rather open-ended.  This is especially 
important the younger you are for, before you have much life experience, a 
younger mind lives on a philosophical plateau of principle and generality.  
A young boy or girl might ponder such philosophical questions as: is Life 
Itself getting better or worse?  We smile, and yet this has some meaning for 
the youngster.  And many careful and even anguished long periods of time are 
spent in weighing such things.  For this is how - I will say “we” and 
include Myself once upon a time - this is how we reach out at first, and 
become aware there is such a thing as philosophy, there is this need to 
correlate and comprehend the contents of our souls.  For this very reason, 
this could be the most wonderful, soul-felt experience you have to share 
with your son.  It is something you both can remember with great joy in the 
years to come.  For, sadly, not every father and son share this desire.

Is there anything else you would care to go into?

Student:  I think that will be enough to tie…I hope my boy reads this.  
He’ll certainly get the chance and…I do hear right now it should be an 
ongoing, open-ended thing for our whole lives and beyond; and a good bonding 
avenue of approach.  Thanks for the concept of explaining relationships and 
so on.  I hadn’t thought of that.  Thanks.

Michael:  As you know, there are university studies on the history of 
philosophy, and there is an individual parallel to this.  Those sons whose 
fathers are philosophically inclined, and introduce them to the challenge, 
are fortunate, for the attempt at philosophy very early in ones life 
initiates a way of understanding, a way of self-consciously trying to 
comprehend the context of your own individual events.  As you get older, the 
memories of this very attempt - to understand life itself - become an 
opening to your soul, to your life’s experience.  These memories give you 
another, parallel personal history alongside the events themselves - the 
story of the growth of your conscious understanding.  What a precious thing 
for a father to give to a son.  And be in My peace.

Student:  Yes Michael, it seems like to truly understand life, we need to 
strip away all the superfluous ideas, strip it down to the barest essence of 
what it is all about.  The more I seem to grasp the ideas and ideals of 
God’s reality, it seems like the deeper I go into this understanding, I 
question what I do in my life, how I drift in my life, and how my life 
should be lived.  I question even my idea of earning a living - that I 
wasn’t brought into this world to go to school to study something and to go 
out to earn a living and then to retire and then move on to another life.  
It just seems like the deeper I go into this idea of God’s reality, it shows 
how much we live in unreality and how much we lie to ourselves about what 
life it all about.  And so I’m looking deeper and deeper into that, trying 
to grasp and understand how to live and be in God’s reality.  How can I 
break away from these concepts or ideas that have been ingrained in my 
psyche, generation upon generation - from society’s point of view…(?) the 
more familiar…(?) stripping away all that excess and being in God’s reality, 
or God’s vision…

Michael:  Well, My son, if I might offer an observation: don’t see it as a 
problem but as a process.  When We say that the realm of spirit is 
all-inclusive, that it proceeds and creates the realms of physical and 
mental phenomena - I offered before this tool, and it is only a tool – it 
has its limits, but it is a useful tool - to think of physical facts in the 
material world, meaning or relationships in the mental-intellectual sphere, 
and then the spiritual realm is one of value.  This is what you’re engaged 
in - unavoidably, necessarily, and I hope, delightfully.  As you become more 
and more aware of what you call God’s reality of Spirit, of originating, 
creative power – for this is God’s fundamental, absolute quality – the power 
to create all that exists - as you tune into this realm of value you will 
necessarily begin to re-evaluate your entire life.  This is exactly what you 
have just described to Me; this is what you are doing.  And you are finding 
that certain things suddenly lose value.

Here I would ask you to employ what I just recommended to V – value a 
philosophical perspective on all of this.  See it as your own history, and 
you will notice you came up from being a physical creature in your mother’s 
womb, and as a small baby, before you had much of a mind to use.  Then came 
your family and your culture and your schooling.  As you grew physically and 
mentally, you began to feel certain spiritual qualities of value, and since 
you were fortunate enough to come in contact with different cultures, 
different ideas, different realms of society, you were even able to 
reevaluate the accidents of your own birth - your own family, your own 
school.  And so your mind and your spirit reached out to be truly 
cosmopolitan and embrace the different cultures of the world.  These are all 
steps in the process.

The main error to watch out for is what you call “Monday Morning 
Quarterbacking.”  You have to be careful that an older, more mature, more 
cosmopolitan, more far-seeing you does not become overly judgmental of a 
previous you before you had the very experiences which enable you to be 
where you are.  This way you come in contact with, and embrace joyfully your 
true history, because you do it from a non-judgmental, open-hearted, 
open-minded, open-spirited position.  You do not begrudge yourself all the 
so-called mistakes you made, all the seeming narrow-minded visions you once 
had, for they were just steps – necessary steps - in the process that got 
you to where you are now.  Which brings Me full circle to what I was 
advising to begin with – to see this not as a problem, but part of the 
process of maturing.

Some of the pain and effort involved in reevaluating your life is 
unavoidable.  Some of these judgments you became very attached to, and it is 
initially painful to let them go, to keep growing.  But if you are not 
judgmental against yourself, you will find that your experiences have an 
opportunity to live on in you as they were originally encountered, not as 
they were subsequently derogated by judgment.  And so you have to be as 
open, as forgiving, as non-judgmental toward all your days that once were, 
as you hope to be with your fellows around you.  Otherwise you risk losing 
your soul – not permanently, of course! - but it does no good to someone in 
great pain to say that it will go away…sometime.  What you want is to 
establish yourself in such a way – now – that your whole past is open to 
you, and welcome.  Does this help?

Student:  Yes, yes it does – very much so.  I don’t think I was seeing it as 
a problem, but as opportunity for further growth, like the idea of earning a 
living, and understanding the possibilities of that changing – how can I 
creatively change that concept to live in this world?  How does God see this 
– this life, for me, so I’m open-minded about the possibilities as they 
unfold?  There is a sense of excitement about that.  I haven’t got a clue of 
other ways to live on this planet other than what I’ve grown up with.

Michael:  But you are reaching for them, My son, and this is good.  You are 
undertaking a reevaluation, and this is a sure sign of spiritual growth.

Student:  It seems like…I was talking to C yesterday…that no one seems to 
question what being human is all about, or ever asks what life is, how it is 
supposed to be lived.  It’s like so many of us kind-of just go through life, 
day to day, working, going to school, with no real depth.  And of course I’m 
just generally speaking, but no one ever asks the question of what it means 
to be human; where did all this begin?  I think if people started asking 
those questions, then they would see each other in a whole different way.

Michael:  Well, My son, again I must caution you about these generalities 
because very few people actually live there.  You would be surprised how 
many people, all through history, have wondered about these very things you 
are concerned with.  So don’t feel alone in this.. This is something that – 
true enough, in different degrees of consciousness – as I mentioned to V, 
everybody has their philosophy of life that they are working on, because 
there is a need for this as much as for good food.  This is an aspect of 
sanity, of feeling you are living a life that makes sense.  Much of mental 
illness is a loss of this very thing.  As I have invited you to see 
yourselves as complete, and see each other as complete, moment to moment, 
perhaps your challenge now is to look around you and see how much everyone 
is struggling to understand what is happening to them.  The casualties are 
those who have given up, those who have settled back in their bubble of 
familiarity and are no longer striving to reevaluate their lives, and so, 
tragically, aging so prematurely because of it.  Do your best to encourage 
those around you, to never fear to be the philosopher of the group.  Welcome 
others into this state of question, to be invigorated by it.  And be in My 
peace.

Well, My philosophers! –(Group laughs)– it has been an interesting evening!  
It is marvelous how all these different aspects of life are knit into each 
other, because life is truly a living, interconnected web, where plucking 
any one string at all sets the whole thing to vibrating.  Keep your hope 
alive.  As Mother Spirit borrowed a phrase in inviting you to keep your 
beginner’s mind, I will borrow one from one your poets and invite you to 
stay – ever green.  Be in My peace.  Good evening.