[tmtranscripts] Michael 10.17.05

[JERRY LANE]

Michael—October 17, 2005

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

MICHAEL—T/R-JL

(Gravity—Physical, Personality, Spirit, and Mind)
(Stillness orientation)
(Universal soul)
(The many facets of reincarnation)
(Deciding from inner oneness)
(Decisions—handling disappointment)
(Enlivening relationships)
(Instantaneous mind reactions)
(The great hunt)


Dear Michael and Mother Spirit,    What a great blessing right out of the 
blue the Teaching Mission is becoming for us.  Most of us have only been 
associated with it for a few years now, but we are finding Your insights and 
Your suggestions not only ring true, but they work.  We know in our hearts 
that we are changing and growing because everyone around us appears to be 
more responsive; and this, we know, is how it works.  So thank You again for 
helping us understand the complexity of our own nature.  Amen.

MICHAEL:  Good evening, My sons, this is Michael.  Yes, it is good to get 
back together again.  I enjoy your camaraderie when you do get together and 
just enjoy each other’s company.  This is always the most precious aspect of 
human association, as you expressed it one time--just being here.  So the 
pains you take to get here are a token of your sincerity, augmented by a 
good healthy dose of Mothers’ Adjutant of Counsel, the mind-spirit of Hers 
that leads you to a warm and generous gregariousness.

(Gravity—Physical, Personality, Spirit, and Mind)

There’s definitely something about this that pervades all of God’s reality.  
Even on the totally impersonal level of energy and matter, when you think of 
gravity, you can think of it roughly as everything trying to get with 
everything else.  Everything attracts everything else--as your textbook 
informs you, all the way up from the “huddling proclivity” of the one 
hundred ultimatons that go together to make up an electron or other 
elementary particles, and bring the whole physical universe into existence.

Our Universal Father has His personality gravity or drawing power, a circuit 
or phase of His consciousness by which He enjoys the experience of all the 
personal beings who exist, who came originally from Him.  So the Thought 
Adjusters within you that provide you a measure of His consciousness, His 
suggestions and help, are also known as Mystery Monitors--if you will, the 
means by which He monitors or experiences what you do.  This is why 
everything that you experience of spiritual significance becomes a joint 
possession of the both of you.  Talking about getting together, this is one 
of the great events you have to look forward to--the day when you and your 
Thought Adjuster, your Mystery Monitor, fuse together to become one being 
fully expressive of your soul.

In similar fashion, the Eternal Son of Paradise has His circuit of 
consciousness, spirit consciousness, which ties together and draws all 
living personal beings to Him.  This is His connection with you, for you are 
all, whether male or female, you are all in this sense His sons, ascending 
sons of the Eternal Son.  I myself look upon the Universal Father and the 
Eternal Son as My direct parents.  This is why I am classified as a 
dual-origin being, because I came from the two of Them, and I enjoy a 
continuous consciousness, as you will too some day, of the Eternal Son’s 
spiritual drawing power ever pointing towards Paradise. This especially 
encourages more primal evolutionary beings to tune into Him and, become one 
with a fragment of the Father, find your way home someday. This is spirit 
gravity, its own special kind of connecting and drawing power.

Then you have the Infinite Spirit of Paradise, the God of action, the origin 
of the Cosmic Mind enabling personal beings such as yourself to connect with 
a living body, and ever whispering in your ear, through all of My 
daughter’s--Mother Spirit’s dimensions of Mind Adjutants, that you were 
given your marvelous bodies so that you could do things.  This is your 
treasure, your joy, your power.  This is the power of mind intrinsically 
reaching out to express itself in material realms.  It is not for nothing 
that you are called the tool makers.  This is truly what has given you 
dominion over all the tooth and claw of the natural world.

This too you can meditate deeply upon and, as was discussed last week, feel 
the origin of your mind being something more than just your physical brain.  
For all personality in intrinsically minded with powers of reason and 
association, and memory.  Those of you who meditate very deeply and have 
gone beyond duality into a transcendent oneness, and experienced a highly 
conscious cessation of all manifestation, have experienced upon returning 
the fact that all perception is based upon the duality of subject and 
object.  Yet it all happens within the unity of mind.  This is the 
connection, this is what is expressed in that philosophical equation: thou 
art that.  We touched on this in terms of objectivity and subjectivity--that 
however objective a perception seems, you are still, nevertheless, part of 
it.  Psychologically you call this projection, for you are literally 
encountering yourself in everything seemingly exterior to you.  This is the 
realm, the power of mind.  This, if you will, is the connection, the 
mind-gravity of the Infinite Spirit coming down right into your individual 
lives, day to day.

And so, My children, you see how things hang together.  When We speak of the 
many dimensions that you will encounter, this is what We are pointing at. 
This is what We mean when We say that the endless stretches of time before 
you can be very full and, even more than in your present life, moment by 
moment fulfilling.  There is an immediate feedback and reward to life within 
each moment if you can but perceive it and feel it--feel yourselves living.

(Stillness orientation)

A wonderful tool or orientation to keep in mind in your stillness, is to 
feel your heart beating.  For some of you this takes a bit of doing, but it 
points the way.  It points the way to deeper stillness just in order to feel 
your heart beating without feeling for your pulse in your neck or your 
wrist.  Just be evermore still to feel your heart beating in your chest, 
evermore still and deeply immersed, soaking in My Peace, to observe your 
breath without affecting it.  This too is a marvelous ability to 
acquire--how to observe things without changing them, when they are part of 
you.

So feel My peace in the stillness within all these dimensions of gravity, 
gathered together by personality: the connection of spirit, the power of 
mind, and the tenacity of material and energy.  Can you feel how composite 
you are as beings made up of these different dimensions?  If you wish to 
pull them all together, think of your spirit-infused personality uniting 
your body and your spirit through the mediation of mind.

(Universal soul)

Then consider there is still one more dimension, My children, the one We 
have been pointing at throughout this whole series of recent lessons, the 
other dimension that holds all the activity, the happenstance--the 
experience of all your own everything, through eternity--your soul.  There 
even exists that highly personal aspect of God’s soul as a kind of summation 
of everything happening to all the personal beings out here in time and 
space--the growing Supreme Being.

For this is what we all are.  We are living beings, all with a relative 
autonomy within a single living Being.  This autonomy, this freedom within 
the larger situation is something we can realize and nourish, recognize in 
each other, and even grant each other--this freedom.

So carry on, My sons, you’re doing fine.  You’re growing.  I very much 
enjoyed your prayer this evening, how you know deep in your hearts that you 
are growing more open with the perception of how everyone else around you 
seems more responsive to you.  Isn’t it marvelous when you pay attention, 
and all that out there responds?

If you have any questions or comments, bring them forward.

Student:  Father Michael, I understand that…I have heard somewhere that we 
have access to energy patterns of all those who have gone before us, and 
somehow that got tied into reincarnation.  I’m just wondering what are they 
talking about--energy patterns?

(The many facets of reincarnation)

MICHAEL:  Yes, C, the whole subject of reincarnation is somewhat difficult 
to approach for the reason that it means so many different things in so many 
different cultural contexts.  In  one way, as you are sitting here this 
moment you are a continuing energy pattern, and We’ve suggested that your 
very essence, your unique personality, endowed with spirit and life, is the 
continuity within this ever-changing energy pattern.  Therefore personality 
is the persistence of something that does not change, but serves to unite a 
whole lot of different dimensions that are in a constant, living flux.

Consider that, at the same time, all this incessantly dynamic impersonal 
energy and matter, making up your bodies and obeying what you call natural 
law, absolute cause and effect, represents the unvarying continuity of this 
natural law, whereas your personality, not bound so tightly by antecedent 
causality, is relatively creative.  You can literally bring something into 
existence that, even though many of its elements have precedents, still the 
thing itself is in its totality an act of creation.

If you wish to consider your physical body alone, your scientists have only 
recently come to an intellectual grasp of how the pattern for an entire 
person can be contained in a little dot, a human egg about the size of a 
period at the end of a sentence, fertilized by a truly microscopic sperm 
perhaps one thousandth its size. So down in your DNA you have a most compact 
and minute example of a persisting pattern of matter and energy within the 
living protoplasm of these two human reproductive cells combined.

Even more recently you are discovering that you inherit from your parents, 
and grandparents, and great-grandparents, and so forth back into time, many 
subtle traits beside just the color of your eyes and hair, the way your nose 
and chin are shaped.  This too is a kind of reincarnation.  These too are 
continuing and repeating patterns of energy that you enjoy and influence you 
as you are sitting here this evening.

Yet there have been erroneous notions of cause and effect linked to this 
greater overall concept of reincarnation. If we look at your essence, your 
personality, this does not reincarnate in successive human lives as some 
philosophies and metaphysics postulate.  Rather, you can look at your whole 
first life as a kind of womb.  You have a universe to go out and explore.  
You do not need to hang around this one planet indefinitely, over and over 
again experiencing life on Urantia.  You have a System, then a 
Constellation, then the headquarters worlds of your Local Universe of 
millions of inhabited worlds--just getting started.  Beyond these are many, 
many galaxies, and then the billion individual worlds of Havona to 
experience on your way to Paradise.  Your personality is a direct creation 
of God’s and, when you think about it, has to start somewhere.

So some of the ideas of reincarnation do have a strangely intuitive kind of 
truth to them. Some of the olden ideas of human beings reincarnating from 
lower forms of life have a certain validity insofar as from the time you 
were a fertilized egg, as an embryo you recapitulated the whole evolution of 
life on the planet.  Your physical being actually did this; your body came 
through all these stages during gestation.  And so every human being does 
recapitulate the evolution of life on the planet from the time the Life 
Carriers sowed their original living protoplasm many eons ago.  And most of 
these phases and stages of evolution still exist on the planet, from the 
little amoeba all the way up to yourselves.

These are various ways you can look at reincarnation as continuing patterns 
of energy.  You will literally be reassembled on the Mansion Worlds and 
given a much more glorious kind of body with which to, once again, relate to 
not only impersonal matter and energy, but with all the other personalities 
as well, human and, initially, the lower forms of the celestial.

But again I repeat, personality itself is not a continuing pattern of 
energy. It is something far beyond any conception of matter or energy.  
Personality is even the one thing can be added to spirit, illustrating the 
Father’s primacy of personality over the Eternal Son’s manifestation of 
spirit.  Now does all this answer your question, My son?

Student:  Yes it does, Father.  It’s almost more than I can deal with.  But 
I begin to see that the energy patterns I thought were simply genetic 
antecedents that, while they culminated in me...that my personality is a 
gift from our Heavenly Father.  Irrespective of all the things that went on 
physically before I got here, my personality is a gift from the Heavenly 
Father to me, and it begins now.  It began with me and it will be with me 
forever.  So it does make quite a bit of sense.  Thanks.

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

Student:  Dear Michael, I would like some further help with decision making. 
  I know when You were on earth, You had some very big decisions to make, 
and You were really focused on the problem at hand.  I seem to be having a 
problem.  I’m dealing with too many variables--health, debt, roles to play, 
responsibilities, commitment, finances, relatives, and my Thought Adjuster’s 
plans for me.  Maybe You could help me to weigh these things.  For instance, 
put my Thought Adjuster’s plans at a higher weight with some of Your 
spiritual pull, and simplify some of this decision making.  I’d love to hear 
Your comments.  Thanks.

(Deciding from inner oneness)

MICHAEL:  Yes, V.  I see you striving and reaching towards the unity that 
Mother spoke of last week--the idea of having integrity within yourself, and 
towards yourself, in the sense of being integral, being one within yourself. 
  I elaborated this evening what a composite being you are to give you some 
appreciation of what you are confronted with.  So don’t be too hard on 
yourself for not having already accomplished it.

This is something that you will be progressing towards for thousands of 
years, because this kind of integrity, this kind of oneness of mind and 
spirit and body, impulse and desire and accomplishment, this kind of oneness 
is also rather bottomless--or infinite, if you will.  And so as you make 
steady and constant progress, it is also part of the potential of your 
personality to keep growing along this dimension towards oneness 
indefinitely.

If you wish to think of stillness as having an active and passive component, 
We have been suggesting mostly the passive in which you relax all activity, 
all striving as much as possible, just to let yourself expand, especially 
into areas you cannot anticipate.  Just open yourself, not even knowing what 
you are opening yourself to.  That is the purpose--just to empty yourself so 
your Thought Adjuster, and your own deeper personal consciousness and 
super-consciousness can have some access to your conscious mind.

Stated so objectively, this is rather tricky for it may sound alien or 
without purpose—to just sit there, yet most folks are doing it all the time, 
but in very short bursts.  They’ll pause for a few seconds to let some new 
idea occur to them, or they’ll sit down to meditate for a minute or two, 
until they get the first great idea, and then off they go again.  So here’s 
where persistence pays off.  And because this is usually so shallowly 
indulged in, for this kind of stillness it’s good to persist for a certain 
period of time, shall we say setting aside twenty minutes or so, twice a day 
if you can, for just this type of relaxing and opening.  To help you do 
this, at least initially keep a pencil and pad of paper there too, otherwise 
you will be so worried about loosing those good ideas that come, this alone 
will be too distracting.

This leads--in addition--to a kind of active stillness in which you can 
focus on a particular problem—say, your finances, or some person.  This is 
more like contemplation where you are focused on a particular thing, but 
then staying open as to new ideas about this person, or situation.  Go to 
school on yourself, My son.  Sign up for the V University.  (laughter)  And 
like a student before a professor, take notes.  Keep in mind last week’s 
introduction about a sense of proportion and assign values from the realm of 
spirit to the different aspects of your situation, and write them down, 
especially since, in your present stage of culture, you are, generally 
speaking, so visually oriented.  It really helps to outline or make some 
kind of schematic diagram of your situation--the relationships between 
people, or your financial alternatives, to see what your choices are.  This 
is what I mean by going to school at your own university, and taking good 
notes so this time is not wasted and allowed to slip into some altogether 
too vague suggestion or notion.  Really plumb the depths of what you know 
for sure and, as in our other discussion on decisions, you’ll find the 
decisions tend to make themselves.  One choice or alternative will stand out 
as being far superior.

Still, My son, keep in mind the open nature of ultimate decisions, as we 
also talked about.  At their ultimate reach, decisions can seem somewhat 
arbitrary because finally, when all other factors appear rather balanced to 
you, you yourself have to weigh in and make a choice depending on what you 
want.  The more you are conscious of this, and remember it well, the more 
full can be your appreciation the choice was yours.  This is what keeps you 
from later making some superficial, altogether too partial a judgment on 
that decision.  So as you strive for simplicity in the spiritual 
sense--integrity, oneness--you avoid the exact opposite: simplemindedness.  
Does this help you my son?

Student:  Yes it does, Michael, especially the “act of stillness.”  I find 
myself sort-of waiting for some emotion, or some concentration of feeling, 
but now I see some of the elements that You mentioned--with the visual 
aspects, and the notes, and also adding what I want.  I think decisions will 
stand out a little more clearly, and be well thought out.

And I can see now this sort of decision making is going to be with us all 
the way up to Paradise, and I’m thrilled with the idea of this 
hunger-tension for Paradise Perfection being lessened from time to time, so 
we feel the progress.  I’ve always liked that concept in the Urantia 
book--the hunger tension for Paradise Perfection--because it makes me feel 
that I can move towards that with a little more safety and stability.  Thank 
You.

MICHAEL:  The hunger tension you speak of is the drawing power, the 
spiritual drawing power of the Eternal Son, acting like a compass ever 
pointing you the way.  But also: what I am suggesting this evening is 
nothing new.  People all through history have found great assistance in 
writing out their ideas--sitting down to think with a pen and paper to give 
objective reality to their thoughts as a kind of record continuing through 
time, they could refer to later.  For essentially you are writing to 
yourself in the future.  And this is the very essence of planning.  It is 
using some of your now for yourself in the future.  This is being good to 
yourself.  And it’s the most fundamental kind of discipline.  So, good luck! 
  (laughter)  And be in My peace.

Student:  Yes, Michael, it seems that what You just said to V about decision 
making, it seems to me--at least in the decisions that I have made in the 
past, and am making now--seem to be stretching me beyond that place of 
familiarity.  Like I’ve had to make decisions in the past, in moving from 
one place to another, that required considerable stretching of my financial 
consciousness, so to speak.  And so that stretched me beyond what I used to 
be.

It seems to involve a stretching away from what was, into something new and 
different in the future, and experiencing the anxiety and the uncertainty of 
that in the moment.  And I think it’s how we deal with that anxiety, and 
that uncertainty, that kind-of allows the unfolding of the decision to 
happen.  So that’s one thought that came to mind.

And then I was thinking about what I was experiencing earlier today, where I 
felt real acute disappointment, and how it affected me in my body, and how I 
looked at that as I was going through it, looking at my own inner dialogue 
and reaction.  And it was interesting watching that, and how I didn’t 
communicate that to the other person I was disappointed with.  And it’s…it’s 
like I could have said a whole bunch of things that were not constructive, 
that could even be seen as mean-spirited, but I held myself back and moved 
on to do something else.  And as I did that, the inner dialogue was still, 
Oh, I can’t wait to get out of this relationship!  I want to move on!  I 
don’t want to do this!  I want to be me!--that kind of thing.  But then 
gradually I just let that go, and saw mercy, and forgiveness, and even 
beyond that, with love.

And so I come through this whole inner dialogue, or inner workings within 
me, seeing all this.  And I’m not saying the disappointment is not there.  
It still is on some level.  But I’m just wanting to know; I guess I don’t 
want to be stuck in some sort of denial--that I’m denying something of 
myself.  I don’t know if I’m making myself clear…

MICHAEL:  Well, D, it seems very clear to Me.

Student (laughing):  Thank You.  Sometimes it’s hard to put these things 
into words.

(Decisions—handling disappointment)

MICHAEL (laughing):  Yes, but I have the advantage of reading a bit of your 
spirit too.

Student: Yeah!  (with laughter all around)

MICHAEL:  The first part you mentioned is very directly to the point on 
decisions, and what a power you have--that you can make a decision that 
changes things, sometimes irrevocably.  You are righteously shy about 
exercising this power, but consider that an aspect of wisdom, of looking 
before you leap, of using as much foresight as you can muster and 
understand, all coming from a deep respect that the power to decide is the 
basis of your freedom.

As to what you went through in terms of disappointment, don’t feel alone in 
this My son, for this is a very common happenstance, and is a direct 
manifestation of your not being one…yet.  You can actually experience 
various parts of yourself arguing with each other…  (laughter)

Student:  Yes!-- let me just interject for a moment…  I do, I see that.  
It’s like….but my heart, in time, if I allow it to, overrides all that.

MICHAEL:  This is the wisdom to give yourself the time, to let things settle 
out.  Because initially you will identify very much with one part of you, 
and then with another part, as they battle back and forth for dominance.  It 
takes a bit of living through these episodes to begin to recognize the 
process.  Someone can disappoint you, or do exactly what you’ve suggested 
they don’t do, and the defensive mechanisms of your mind, build on all sorts 
of cultural and family scenarios, developed over centuries and centuries, 
these defensive mechanisms of your mind can kick in automatically and come 
up with endless and tiresome, even somewhat valid-seeming arguments as to 
why this person is absolutely evil (laughter), or the situation is 
intolerable.  And this can go on and on even when you don’t wish it to.

It is not a purely romantic notion that, from time to time, people do die of 
unrequited love.  People can literally die of a broken heart by convincing 
themselves, if the inner argument gets too strong and relentless, that life 
is no longer worth living.  But if you’ve lived through a number of these 
episodes, you start to recognize the pattern even though you cannot turn it 
off for a while.  You learn to just let it play itself out by seeing it for 
what it is, seeing through all the hyperbole and exaggeration, all the 
wounded feelings, all the defensive maneuvers of your heart center--until 
your spirit-personality regains the upper hand.  You are definitely going 
from something superficial to something deeper, and it does take time.  
Wisdom suggests you give yourself this time and not make any snap judgments, 
or be hasty in reacting.

So I congratulate you on your ability to understand the process, and just 
ride it out.  This is a generosity to your companion.  This is what We meant 
once by taking in a lot of negative karma that you encounter, but then 
instead of revving it up and returning it, letting it die within you, taking 
it out of circulation altogether.  This is another aspect of spiritual 
generosity.

Student:  Sometimes I do feel that, and it sits in me, and I get--for a lack 
of a better word--this bloaty feeling within me; and I feel real stagnant.  
And yet I didn’t do anything, I just felt it.  And so it’s like, what do I 
do?  And I just had to sit in it, and it’s not too pleasant of a place to be 
in.  And all I can do is just let go and let God.  That’s all I can do.  I 
was just concerned that through this process, you know, of being 
disappointed and everything, I was denying who I was.

MICHAEL:  This gets back to V’s concern about decisiveness.  At the end of 
the emotional storm, when you are more back together, you heave a mighty 
sigh and decide then whether or not you are denying yourself--once you have 
a clear picture of all sides of the argument.  You might be denying 
yourself.  There is a possibility you are bending too far backwards—as you 
put it.  You can be taken advantage of, not only to your own detriment, but 
also to the detriment of who’s taking advantage of you.  These are all human 
possibilities.  So at the end of this process, you do have to decide on a 
course of action.  Just keep in mind that it is a positive thing to ride out 
the storm, even though you are left with all the dregs of emotion.  If it’s 
been a violent argument within you, a lot of adrenaline has been flooding 
around, and you will feel this for awhile.  But if you keep your spirit 
clear, you can realize this is just a mental/physiological hangover.

Student:  Yeah, it feels interesting, because I went swimming after this, 
because I had so much energy and I didn’t want to keep sitting.  And while I 
was swimming, I kind-of got a picture of myself, a small…like a little D, 
like a little Buddha within my being, just telling me to be calm.  And that 
seemed to work.

MICHAEL:  Yes.  Since your mind and body are intimately interrelated, these 
aftereffects are largely physiological, but do affect your mind.  It’s 
usually a marvelous and very healthy thing to do, to do some activity, some 
refreshing, creative activity.  By engaging your body, it’s marvelous how it 
clears your mind and restores your spirit.  Put that adrenaline to work.

Student:  Yes, because I notice that when one is in that state of 
disappointed or negative emotion, we tend to forget to breathe.  I think if 
we remember to breathe, then that clears the system.  (another student just 
then breathed out loud) Yes C, like that.  (laughter)

One other question is, when is it better, or good to end or to change a 
relationship--an intimate relationship?  What are the cues, so to speak, of 
that?  I’m not saying that’s going to happen, but what are the cues?  Let’s 
say our relationship has met its purpose and it’s time to change, or move on 
from that relationship.  And I guess you can say, between a man and a woman?

MICHAEL:  I was going to add one more thing about experiencing a great 
disappointment: it’s often an experience of powerlessness.  For while this 
argument is raging within you, you are somewhat powerless and can only ride 
out the storm and give yourself time for it to subside a bit, to regain your 
control.  So this feeling of powerlessness is very valid; it’s really what’s 
happening.  (Yes, I did feel some of that!)

(Enlivening relationships)

With respect to relationships, each is so unique because the individuals 
involved are unique.  Which is why, as an aside, it’s usually not valid to 
judge anyone else’s relationship due to the impossibility of knowing what it 
is from the inside-out.  Each relationship has a life of it’s own.  I think 
you can feel this very strongly when you think about each different person 
you know, and how the dynamic is ever so subtly different with each one.

It’s easy to say that when a relationship seems to stop growing, and 
stagnate after a number of attempts to revive it using all your creativity 
and love and respect for all that has gone before; this is the time to look 
for growth in other areas.  But this is not always easy to assess, because 
relationships can go through stagnant periods and then revive with the 
discovery of some new source of life that both partners can get into.

But that’s generally the major valid cause, when both individuals need to 
keep growing and are better and wiser suited to letting the relationship 
change; perhaps even separating to obey that inner necessity to keep 
growing.  But again, knowing this still does not make the assessment that 
much easier.

Student:  When you said that, I thought, how does one discern that?  I mean, 
how does one know how to differentiate between wanting to grow and expand 
and/or just running away from being uncomfortable, or being disappointed, or 
feeling the pain?  Or afraid of even furthering the commitment or intimacy?

MICHAEL:  When you truly don’t know, I think it’s a matter of trial and 
being open for whatever results.  This is where you use your creativity and 
your self-knowledge, that great question again of, what do you want--while 
feeling for a spiritual quality of growth for both your sakes.  For it is a 
human possibility, there are very creative, valid separations, whereby both 
individuals are benefited enormously.

This is one of those things which is best thoroughly discussed with your 
partner.  Because any feelings that you cannot do so are indicative of the 
very stagnation you’re trying to create your way out of.  If you cannot 
share these feelings, and each encourage the other to join together to 
enliven your relationship, this itself is a strong indication of 
estrangement and alienation.

A great challenge to keep a relationship growing is to, at one and the same 
time, cultivate greater autonomy and greater intimacy.  It’s like mountain 
climbing, where you each keep leapfrogging one another to keep going 
upwards, helping each other get ahead, so then each partner can in turn help 
the other one pass again.

Student:  So ultimately the reason for being in a relationship is for 
growth, the spiritual growth of each person in that relationship?  No other 
need is as important as that?

MICHAEL:  Well, there may be other responsibilities, such as children, but 
with respect to the two, Yes, this is what I mean by growing closer together 
in intimacy and what both are capable of sharing, yet in such a way that 
each becomes evermore individual and free--so they are not literally just 
stuck together.  This is what true love is all about, this desiring to see 
another growing strong and healthy and free.

Student:  And also true love can mean letting that person go to experience 
that for themselves.  And thank You very much!

MICHAEL:  You’re welcome, My son.  It’s good to explore these things.  This 
is the essence of a good relationship.  It’s where each encourages the other 
to be free past any clinging or, as you know, where some individuals 
actually sabotage the other, trying to limit another out of fear that they 
will simply be outgrown.

Student:  I just don’t want to get caught up in the idea like I need to be 
there for that other person because they need me and the world with fall 
apart if I’m not.  Or I need them because of financial stability--I mean if 
these are just illusions.  I want to come from that core-essence of what we 
have spoken about--spiritual growth.

MICHAEL:  But keep in mind that spirit is inclusive.  As long as you have 
physical bodies and a need for food and shelter, the economic aspect is 
always a part of your life.  So it’s in staying open to all these elements.  
Rest now in My peace.  I think we’ve looked at it pretty thoroughly.

Another student:  I’d just make a comment that the love between Adam and 
Eve, as depicted in the Urantia book, is just like what you’ve been talking 
about.  They went through everything, going through great disappointments 
and barriers, but still—they’re still together now!  It’s a wonderful story!

MICHAEL:  We’re back to the appreciation of a sense of balance and 
proportion between two people, a real sense of the relationship itself as a 
living entity, and how to keep that entity growing.  You consciously balance 
your own intake and output, which means taking in your partner as fully as 
you can, while giving them as much freedom as you can.

(Instantaneous mind reactions)

It’s certainly a hallmark of maturity to be able perceive how subtle and 
instantaneously changing people are with each other.  We’ve touched on this 
a few times before, how, as you’re walking down the sidewalk meeting people, 
you tend to encounter your own expression.  If you’re down and gloomy, this 
is what you are likely to meet in those coming towards you as they close 
down defensively.  Whereas if you’re happy and cheerful and full of energy, 
people will be unconsciously and very instantaneously tuning in to you to 
catch some of your spirit.  You touched on it in your prayer, how you can 
know deep in your heart that you are growing and opening because everyone 
else around you seems to be so much more responsive.

There is a real delight in how alive and responsive people can be with each 
other.  This is why there need be no limits to relationships in the 
instantaneous reactions of spontaneity.

What a joy to find the secret of being at one and the same time ever more 
intimate, discovering new things to share with each other, all the while 
appreciating and encouraging each other to be free--to feel free and be 
self-honest within, working towards inner integrity.

(The great hunt)

You’re well on the track of this, My children.  It’s the great hunt for 
meaning and value.  Enjoy it well!  And be in My peace.

Students:  Thank You, Michael.


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