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<P class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face=Tahoma>Michael—<st1:date Year="2007" Day="15" Month="10">October 15,
2007</st1:date></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">Marin TM
Group—</SPAN><st1:place><st1:City><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">Mill
Valley</SPAN></st1:City><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">, </SPAN><st1:State><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">California</SPAN></st1:State></st1:place><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">—</SPAN><st1:country-region><st1:place><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">U.S.A.</SPAN></st1:place></st1:country-region><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL—T/R-JL<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(Time)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">(Welcoming asking what is
best to do)</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(True
discovery: living on the edge)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(Grow in
consciousness)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(Work and
fun)<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>(Loneliness and unique individuality)<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(Spiritual
ambitions)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>Dear
Michael and Mother Spirit,<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>We thank you for your lessons on how to realize and then transcend our
unconscious conditioning to achieve a greater freedom of will and living by
tuning in to the spontaneous, creative realm of spirit.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We ask you to help us achieve this not
only in ourselves, but help us see this in others; help us see through their
unconscious and unintended impulses and habits that mask their own original
personality.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Help us to help them
achieve a greater freedom of will, and give us the courage to welcome this
whether their will coincides with our own or not.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In other words, help us grow to be more
like the two of you--our divine parents, and our Universal Father.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Amen.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Good evening,
the two of you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is
Michael.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I want to thank you for
your persistence and for your loyalty, your dedication to these meetings, and
what each of you brings in your own separate way to them.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For as you, D, bring your uniqueness of
personality, and you, J, are able to suspend yours to transmit, I really enjoy
this combination, this special energy we can create together.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Once again I offer the two of you and
all who will come to read these words my own invitation to visit with Mother
Spirit and me in your stillness as regularly, on the one hand, and then just as
spontaneously, on the other hand, as it occurs to you during your
days.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(Time)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>Whether of
the longer periods we’ve recommended--setting aside a certain amount of time
irrespective of whatever effect you’re experiencing, or the little
mini-meditations you use for punctuation all through your days--just remembering
to sit down and tune in to us if only for a few minutes; this invitation opens
the door to what I would like to address this evening, your concepts of time and
temporal reality, and how they affect your life.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For this too is a continuing chapter of
learning about your unconscious conditioning that comes from the various notions
and usage’s of time you were raised with and accepted as matters of fact.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>Your
Urantia book states, and it is true, that your personality is endowed with its
own realization of temporal sequence, and this was true as well hundreds of
thousands of years ago in those primitive men and women who had little sense of
duration, or future, as you do now.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>So this sense of time, of one thing following another, of before and
after and next, is inherent on your God-given personality.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You’ve even had your imaginations
stretched when the book mentioned that on Paradise there is no time as you know
it, since all motion/activity is volitional, but still the citizens there have
this innate sense of sequentially along with the other hundreds of dimensions of
existence you have yet to encounter.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>I would
like to compare this mental time as you know it, as the human race has developed
it over just the last few millennia, compare this to the physical development of
your metal alloys, the really fine steel you’ve learned to make.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For just as this material helps you form
the most exquisite tools that you use to make your modern world, so too it can
make the strongest bars of a cage that can imprison you most securely.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And so it is with your concepts of
time.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>These concepts are your most
useful tools for organizing and directing and controlling your ever more complex
lives, and yet at the same time, form the most rigid bars that determine your
lives—I’ll offer this notion—quite unnecessarily.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Mother Spirit brought this up last week
in terms of how, for so many of you, the future seems to exist in a way it
really doesn’t.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In the most
profound way, the future does not exist at all; yet this statement will seem to
some fatalistic souls radically improbable, almost silly.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You have all your plans of what to do
tomorrow and you are very assured that, baring some improbable catastrophe like
an airplane falling on your house while you are asleep, you are definitely going
to meet your friend at exactly 11:35 at a very precise place out there in the
world.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And you probably will.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>But all
this only exists now as you are thinking about it.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In this sense the future never
happens—ever.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is always
now.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But in this everlasting now
you have as a race developed such a facility with measuring duration, with
fragmenting sequence with your creative, spiritual imaginations inventing
time-measuring machines, you’ve created a wonderfully shared reality called the
future.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>With first the written
word, and then printing presses and books and magazines, and now the enormous
expansion of detail with your digital machines, this agreement, this social
contract between you all in the living present has taken on a reality quite
independent of any one, or even any group, of you.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>All nation/states of your world have an
unconscious agreement as to what day it is, and even some rough agreement as to
what going to happen tomorrow, though of course in the competition between them
there is some disagreement about they would like to have happen.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>That
competition and contention can lead, as it has so often in the past, to very
active warfare.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Indeed, it is right
within actual warfare when each side is doing its best to surprise the other and
come up with what is not expected that you can experience the greatest terror of
not knowing what is going to happen next.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>The increasing randomness of modern warfare where your future can be
destroyed--you can be killed or horribly maimed from someone flying at six
hundred miles an hour, forty thousand feet above you--is a rather gruesome but
all too real demonstration of my point tonight that time, as you know it, is a
largely unconscious social convention.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">(Welcoming asking what is
best to do)</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>I would
ask you to bring this point home and feel it within yourself.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In my last lesson I mentioned how so
many of you would consider it a failure to be brought to a moment of not knowing
what to do.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You consider it only an
ultimate lifeline to cling to, your ability to sit down and ask God: What do I
do next?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yet I would like to offer
the radical suggestion that this can be instead a marvelous spiritual
achievement if sought voluntarily long before desperately needed.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is a way in which you can break
those rigid steel bars of conventional or habitual assumptions and with a joyful
heart and a gleeful anticipation ask: Father, what is the best thing to do
today?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You can see how welcoming
this suspension of your normal, conditioned concepts of time can open up the
reality you call the future by realizing it does exist only as a shared mental
projection.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>That
future you experience inside as so objective, so out there, so absolute and
determining, is your own construct.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>You can transcend it so you have it consciously, rather than it having
you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is an expansion of
consciousness for these notions of time only have you from your own
habituation.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>They have no other
reality.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>If you wish to be free
from this social conditioning you must take the time—no pun intended—to break
free.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You must devote part of your
life to freedom, to sitting down and realizing just how much you are—now, and
just how plastic, how flexible is that projection you call the future.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>This is
another aspect of your maturity, my children.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is yet another dimension in which
you need to stand unique within yourself in your spiritual essence, independent
from all those around you, to be of greatest service to them as well as
yourself.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For in a way you are all
in this situation together, and until and unless one of you breaks free of
unconsciously held assumptions of an immutable future, none of you will.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>With this freedom of realization you can
help fulfill your prayer this evening.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>You can help others be free in this same way, first by being the example,
then by expressing to them these same truths I’m offering you
now.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(True
discovery: living on the edge)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>What
exactly is it you will discover when you sit down to ask of yourself and our
Father’s presence within you: What is the best thing to do today?<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>That is precisely what I cannot answer
now because of the very glorious, wonderful, delightful essence of it is: you
cannot know until you try.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>True
discovery is a qualitatively progressive experience you cannot second guess or
only half-heartedly anticipate.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So
the better you are able to accomplish this, the more spontaneous and liberating
will be each separate time.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You
will realize to an ever greater degree what we’ve been offering as the notion
that time is not repeating itself.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Each separate moment is unique, and there is an enormous quotient of this
uniqueness you can realize within it, of what has never happened before, and so
is open to your will, your determination, your ability to influence.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>You are
capable of emerging from your past conditioning and living ever more in an
eternal now, letting go more and more of those steel bars of your own
imprisonment in notions of what has to happen.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In your own personal life you will be
helping along all those around you in what is another facet of a general, racial
evolution.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>First for yourself, then
for all the others, you will be approaching a greater truth, a fuller
consciousness, a far deeper and broader reality of possibility and
potential.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is how you increase
your potential, my children, how you develop your flexibility, how you delight
in bringing yourself to the edge of the vast chasm of the yet unknown, and enjoy
standing on the edge, more and more open to whatever may come next. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Whatever will come next will seem more
amenable to your will, while at the same time you will be more open to the vast
concourse of cosmic events, and their evolution, that is our Universal Father’s
will.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For this freedom is His will
for you, just as it is Mother Spirit’s and my own.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We literally enjoy your greater freedom
with you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And so we do our best to
lead you up to the edge and get you comfortable just being there, unafraid,
wondering and delighted that it is all now.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So, much of that unreal future you seem
to have needed once upon a time, you can see clearly now was just a temporarily
necessary illusion you’ve outgrown.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>So take a
break, my children, from this ongoing push you feel.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Sit calm and open in your stillness and
let it all fall away.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Realize ever
more this marvelous now that contains all your freedom, all your life.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>If you
have any comments or questions, let them spring forth in this present now we
share so fully. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face=Tahoma>Student:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes, Michael,
I feel like I’m ready to make a shift in my understanding of time, and
timelessness, and living in the moment.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>I can see how our preoccupation with the future takes away from
experiencing our present potential. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It seems like we get fixated on
performing certain duties to insure our future wellbeing whether it be our
retirement, or getting a house, or getting a mate—whatever.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So it really resonated with me—what you
were saying.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>I can see
in my family how they’re not really enjoying now, although having my little
granddaughter around does keep us in the moment.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I do feel at times I’m behind those
bars.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So thank you for
that.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes, my son, I
emphasized the prison nature of your concepts because there are also those ways
in which your uses of time are wonderful and necessary tools so you can relate
with those around you; you can set up dates and make arrangements in planning
your future.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Here the thing to
realize is the difference in consciousness.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The problem is not that you have plans;
these are necessary; you must make provision; you are responsible to a large
degree for what will happen.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But
just how conscious is this?<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(Grow in
consciousness)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>For many
people how they use time is a zero-sum game, and so when we say to live more and
more in the present they can only see this as some kind of terrible
irresponsibility, living willy-nilly with no responsibility for what they’ve
done in the past, no plans for the future.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>And as long as your consciousness is a zero-sum game, that is true.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>That’s another prison to hold you
tight.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But the way out of this
situation is to grow in consciousness.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>So we’ve offered before the notion of reliving parts of your past as
consciously as possible to actually escape their determinism, to stop doing
things habitually that were established in the past.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Do things consciously with choice.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>Yet this
choice does take effort.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You may
have to improve your basic health to have more energy to expend in this effort,
to be conscious, to be free.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Sitting down in stillness to open yourself to something new, something
even more right, something better to do in the next five minutes; or this
evening when you get home all tired, and tend to fall back into your habitual
patterns of resting perhaps a little mindlessly: you can see the need to grow,
and in what dimension is this growth.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It is predominately in spirit.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It is how you spiritualize your mental and physical life.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is one of spiritual value, valuing
your understanding of the nature of time--how living more and more consciously
in the present moment actually gives you a truer sense of your past and your
spiritual soul.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It also augments
your understanding of the true nature of what you call the future.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is the only way to insure it too will
grow in possibility as you grow your present potential through increasing
decisiveness.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>Also you
are quite right, my son, this is one of the ways in which these little
spontaneous creatures—(Michael laughs)--these children of yours, do help you
stay here and now, because that is all they have so far.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The greater the realization and
understanding the parents have of the nature of time is another facet of the
evolution of human, social interaction.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>The greater your understanding of time, the greater will be the
understanding your children inherit.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>This is another roundabout way in which you help each other
grow.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>Student:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>As you were
speaking I thought about how we’re always thinking about<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>retiring,
at age 65 or whatever, and then not doing much after that—maybe a little
golf.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But what happens, I think, is
we limit ourselves with that concept.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>We stick to a job or lifestyle that may not be beneficial, but we stay
with it because it will provide for our retirement.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And we’re living longer lives, so our
retirement is longer too.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But like
for me, I have no provision for so-called retirement, but if I allow myself to
live and work in the moment, and be open to other possibilities, then who knows
what my future will look like.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So…I
don’t know where I’m going with this, but there are those concepts we seem to
hold onto along with time and the future.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>And we sometimes do ourselves injustice with
that.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I can see
where your intuition is leading you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>You can unconsciously be giving away the present moment for the future in
the sense of: someday I will start to live.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In fact I think it’s a saying of yours
that: Life is what happens while you’re waiting to start living.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>People hold their noses to the
grindstone perhaps unnecessarily out of habit or sheer spiritual laziness,
limiting their activities today with the notion of really starting to live
either upon retirement, or some business success, or when the children grow up
and move away--all these future events that will be quite different when they
actually happen.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Because meanwhile
they are not developing those living qualities and abilities of spontaneity,
flexibility, being here-and-now that they need now, as well as upon that coming
event.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>So the
event happens, or the retirement comes, and they find themselves suddenly cut
off from what gave their lives meaning, horribly adrift in a limbo of
purposelessness, unable to realize the freedom they’ve looked forward to
enjoying.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>They’ve acquired no
living here-and-now abilities, of how to have fun—now.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Strange as it may seem in your so-called
hedonistic, pleasure-seeking society, there are so many perishing for this lack
of having fun—real, true, soul-satisfying fun.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For those who have worked so hard
physically their whole life, retirement can seem like a blessing of doing
nothing, only to perish a few years later in some unexpected activity like
shoveling the snow off the driveway.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>They go keeling over from inactivity, the longed for and accomplished
doing nothing killing them off.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>These are really tragic ironies we hope to help you see
through.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>Student:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Along with the
notion of living now there’s the possibility and opportunity of being open to
other forms of self expression--soul expression.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It seems like most of our lives are
geared to just surviving.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The only
thing I can do now is become more familiar with my soul, my spirit, and my true
nature.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I’ll just keep going
forward in the moment.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(Work and
fun)<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes, my son,
this is what I meant by developing your abilities to live.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I find it interesting you also have a
saying that presents a cynical comment on older age, that as you get older your
fun becomes more like work.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yet the
converse can be that your work becomes more like fun.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Instead of this being a rather cynical
comment of an oldster’s inability to distinguish between the two, I present it
tonight as a great spiritual triumph.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Your fun can be more thoroughly engrossing and taste of timelessness,
while your work can become more spontaneous and satisfying because you are
giving up all these other notions that take you away from here-and-now.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is the total non-separation between
you and your present activity, whatever it is.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The union leads to the expansion of the
present moment you can know now, even in your first human life.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We can only promise you it will become
even greatly more so in your next Morontia phase as you become more spiritually
sensitive.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>Student:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes, that’s
what I desire, is that spontaneity. I do feel at times I’m boxed in to a set of
circumstance of living, and desire.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It’s what prompts me into wanting a sense of freedom from the constraints
I put upon myself.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Although I do
enjoy my life; I do enjoy my daughter and my granddaughter.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I do enjoy my work and the people I work
for.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I really enjoy coming here and
my various other spiritual functions.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is why we
offer you the somewhat artificial distinction—because they are all one in your
living reality—the separation of your life into its physical, mental, and
spiritual aspects.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>While you are
bound up physically by so many hours you’ve committed to doing someone’s work,
you can at least know some greater mental and spiritual freedom within those
committed hours.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You can try to
spiritualize your physical work and make it more
fun.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>Student:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I do feel
gratitude for the opportunity my work has given to me, to, in a sense, ground
your lessons, to know the realizations I have experienced.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So I am grateful for this.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Mother Spirit
did mention what might seem a back-handed kind of blessing: you also have your
spiritual ambitions for more—a need to reach, to stretch.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is with an ironic sense of humor we
suggest you welcome these as well—(Michael breaks up laughing)—in spite of
yourself.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>(Student joins in…)<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is what you get for all that
spiritual study… (I know, I know…)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>But you would have a much less value-sensitive life otherwise.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is literally how you evaluate what
you are doing--even the ambitions that have you on a rack at times.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And so you also need to see through them
as well, to get back to now.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>This is
bringing all the complex facets of your human reality into consciousness.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And though you pay a price for doing so
in terms of loosing a kind of mindless comfort you may think exists in others
around you, you have to see them clearly—these more unfortunate souls—and
question that Shakespearean saying: When ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be
wise.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Ask yourself: when is
ignorance bliss?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Is it truly
ever?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What kind of cynicism does
that express?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>Student:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I sometimes
wonder about if there are people who live a very secluded life, who know nothing
about what is going on in the world; and yet they live their lives.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Maybe we who get inundated with so much
information would be better if we weren’t—but I guess not.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We are a human race.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I do wonder if ignorance is bliss; but
that’s not me.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And how much
of your view of another person’s life being simple and purely blissful is only
another illusory projection?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Who
knows what demons and fears they may be experiencing by having no spiritual
respite from the necessities of their human condition?<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>Student:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I just experienced a few days ago: a
person I once knew who seemed to be a picture of happiness and family values,
who had three beautiful children, and a supposedly good marriage of fourteen
years: I read in the paper he shot his wife and killed himself.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>She’s hanging on apparently…<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But no one saw that.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Who knows what was going on behind the
good material front, and all that?<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And the only
way out, as Mother Spirit and I have been suggesting, is to welcome
disillusionment, rather than seeing it as some terrible thing.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>People generally fear being
disillusioned, but they have to ask themselves if this is not something to
welcome, and trust that Reality—being so much a product of God’s will—is not
always supremely greater than their own human illusions.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s always a good trade to be
disillusioned--past the initial feelings of loss.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The illusions have to go to make room
for the real; and make real the choice between the
two.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>Student:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>One of the
prices I feel I am paying for desiring to stretch myself spiritually is the
sense of loneliness.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>There are
times I feel I’m completely by myself.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>I know I’m not alone in the grand scheme of things, but there is that
sense.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>MICHAEL:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And as I said
in my last lesson, I too, my son, experienced this very profoundly as
Jesus.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I was so often humanly
frustrated at my inability to convince even those closest to me, and who loved
me dearly—who would ultimately give up their lives for the truths we had shared:
even at our last super together they were still so totally mistaken about what I
had talked about for years as the kingdom of heaven being within them here and
now.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT
face=Tahoma>(Loneliness and unique individuality)<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>For there
is that other consideration that as you accept a certain individuality and
uniqueness, it is possible to feel the concurrent expansion of your spirit, and
touch God’s presence within you that is the doorway to us and the spiritual
community here on Urantia.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And we
are always delighted when you can perceive us—sense our presence.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>So maybe
we’d better close on that note.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I
enjoy our conversations together, the interplay of Creator Son and human being,
for this is just bringing out into the open, into spoken words, what is going on
within you, and all of Mother Spirit’s and my children, on an unconscious
level.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But ours and our Father’s
input does break into your consciousness now and again. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Mother Spirit is always here, part of
your actual mentality, so it can truly be said you are experiencing her
Mind/Spirit kind of mind here in your first, human life.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>When you awaken in your next, Morontia
phase you will know another, much expanded kind of mentality concurrent with a
much greater facility of accessing your own spirit, as well as
ours.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>(Spiritual
ambitions)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>From the
spiritual viewpoint you are growing, this gives rise to ambitions that can chafe
at your physical and mental limitations.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>So be aware of this, and allow your spirit itself to be humbled and
acknowledge the ongoing necessity of your physical limitations.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Soon enough you will trade this
physical/mental vehicle for another of much greater sensitivity to many more
dimensions of reality.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So enjoy
this one while you have it.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>(Michael laughs)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><FONT face=Tahoma>Take this
as another little reminder to value whatever you find at hand: meaning: enjoy
these hands you have that have made the tools you use, even the mental “tools”
that have created your notions of time.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Use them consciously least they use you.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Grow in this one dimension you do have
immediate control over—the mental.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>You can decide and, to some degree, focus on whatever you choose.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Choose to expend a part of your life
just on reflection, sitting down and being still and opening to wonder.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>That’s where you find Mother Spirit and
me, and our Father, waiting to say hello.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It’s where you can find another measure of my peace.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Good evening.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN></FONT><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>