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<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: center"
align=center><FONT size=3><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">Michael--</SPAN><st1:date Year="2009" Day="2"
Month="3"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">March 2, 2009</SPAN></st1:date><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">Marin TM Group--Mil Valley,
</SPAN><st1:State><st1:place><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">California</SPAN></st1:place></st1:State><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">--</SPAN><st1:country-region><st1:place><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">U.S.A.</SPAN></st1:place></st1:country-region><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT
size=3>MICHAEL--T/R-JL<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Stillness
meditation)<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Transcending your body/mind by keeping
in touch with them) <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Contacting your soul)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Real security)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(The inside and outside of experience)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Manifesting God’s will for you)<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Humility)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Forgetting yourself to rediscover
yourself anew)<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: center"
align=center><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Dear Michael and Mother Spirit,<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Dear spiritual parents, dear
close friends and companions of all of our days on earth: welcome. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We gather together in this sacred
space.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We come together to meet
you, and discover to our delight you’ve already come so far to meet and befriend
us. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We truly appreciate this.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thank you for helping us understand the
transcendent nature of our human lives--so difficult to grasp from the
inside-out. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You give us the
subjective feeling to help us understand the objectively stated truths of our
text, the Urantia book, for it was surely put together under your auspices.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And for this too we give thanks. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So say on, dear parents. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Abiding in your love and peace, we are
here to listen. <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-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Good evening, my dear children, this is
Michael. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Tonight I would like to go
deeper into what Mother Spirit and I have mentioned before, and that is the
nature of the meditation we invite you to bring into your lives. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>When the Urantia book was conceived and
then put together by many different spiritual personalities coming from far away
to co-author the book, we were aware you had so many traditions of different
kinds of meditations, we didn’t think it necessary to more than briefly allude
to them.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yet recently we’ve decided
to make this a principle point in our lessons, not so much to add one more kind
of meditation to those you’ve evolved over the years, but to point out the
reflective essence of all of them.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Stillness
meditation)<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>This is a way of introducing
stillness--to some, at first, a foreign-seeming activity which has often been
expressed as a paradox or a self-contradiction, stillness being a not-doing as
contrasted to your usual activities. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We choose to avoid this contradiction and
call it an activity, a definite doing, especially in your very time-regulated
modern lives where you literally take your manufactured time as some kind of
natural law, as if Mother Nature were wearing a wrist watch.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You can become enslaved to this kind of
time and so we remind you that, in addition to this mechanical time, there is
also organic time. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Mother Nature
has a beating heart, not a wrist watch.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It was upon her rhythmic cycles that you first conceived the notion of
measuring this moving dimension, this dimension of motion.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>One of the gifts of meditating is taking
her time out of clock time to feel your organic
reality.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>If it helps you to meditate, my
children, consider it a paying of profound respect for the psychical dimension
of your lifves you often overlook--or even consider with disdain, as if you were
pure spiritual beings already and having a body was such a drag on your lofty
thoughts.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Rather, with being
distinctly aware of your organic reality by contrast, you can grow in
appreciation of being already a personality, a changeless, timeless being
directly created by God, capable of being very distinct from the real, divinely
evolved and living body you possess. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>It is upon breaking the unconscious
identification with your body that you can have an appreciation of it as a
possession, perhaps--hopefully, something to respect and take care of. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is your body and its
senses--mille-second by mille-second--that give you the instantaneous awareness
of not only itself, but the whole world it puts you in contact with. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So as you meditate and feel your
breathing, feel your heart beating, you can return again and again to this part
of your home base--this marvelous vehicle you were given free to take care of
and enjoy. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Some consider with bitter, deep irony
the pain they feel, because without this information, most of the few, rare
individuals ever born without any pain receptors generally lived very short,
terrible lives.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It pays to respect
and understand pain this way as a source of information that is intrinsically
difficult to ignore.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Remember well
your childhood accidents and realize what a necessary gift pain is to put you in
the correct, respectful attitude towards your body.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Think of your modern medical society
that constantly offers pain relievers, a godsend to some, but which, if misused,
can be a way of suppressing symptoms so you can go on doing the very thing that
is harming you. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>There is also a
thin but very critical line between understanding pain and accepting the
information it is giving you, and being masochistic, crossing the line and
thinking that somehow pain is to be sought.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>An extreme form of this is asceticism,
the mistaken notion there is spiritual glory or reward in pain
itself.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Transcending your body/mind by keeping
in touch with them) <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>One mental activity we give you to
start your meditation and realize a deeper stillness is the technique of
counting your breaths from one to ten as a kind of handle on the physical, a way
of staying with your body as your mind tends to wander off and leave it,
unaware, as may be your normal habit.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>To remain continuously aware of your body while being still is quite a
challenge.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So start with ten
minutes or so.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s a further
challenge to watch your breath so closely without affecting it, but something to
experience--you body breathing by itself.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>You’re learning to observe the ineffable power and presence of life--your
very own--without disturbing it.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>This brings us to the question of mind
and what you experience of it in your meditation. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Just as you slowly acquire an ability to
break the unwitting identification with your body so you can bring it into
conscious consideration and health, so too you can evolve an ability to stop
associating directly with your habitual thought patterns. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is your personality’s power to
observe even the thoughts that come and go in your mind. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Some call this the practice of
detachment, and it is generally difficult for the beginner whose mind is
swarming with all kinds of thoughts and impulses.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s why even a few minutes of
meditation can at first seem like an eternity because they are so immediately
filled with such a blizzard of thought unanchored to any physical activity.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>As soon as you sit down to be still and
you break the connection of thought with some physical activity, suddenly your
thoughts, deprived of this physical anchor, can go wild.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Since your inner perception of time is,
at first, so directly related to your thinking, you can feel that long minutes
have passed; your whole twenty minute meditation is finally over.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Then you check your watch and find it’s
only been five minutes and the remaining fifteen seem like some agonizing
eternity to endure. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So yes, Mother
Spirit and I do know well, my children, what you go through in your first
attempts to be mentally still and deep. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Many simply try to hold their minds a
blank.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>They concentrate on thinking
of nothing, but this is only another kind of busywork that doesn’t work for
long. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You need to arrive at the
very subtle ability of letting your mind become still of itself, and this you do
by, again, like your breath, just observing without disturbing.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Each thought or impulse or emotion is
observed without acting on it, especially with no inner judgment.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Let them happen.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Then let them go: whatever they are.
<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You begin to identify more and more
with pure awareness, and this attitude, my children, is something you
organically grow. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>This attitude of detachment towards
thoughts that you normally think of as yourself?--this is where you begin to
break down those limiting identifications with all you have been so far, in
order to become more present and creative.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>You begin to see your normal, conscious ego/activity as an evolving way
you continue to be self-aware of who you are and have been: you as an object to
yourself.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s a great mode of
consciousness you evolve as an inner tool--this sense of yourself, yet too its
particular conditioning is a product of the culture and family in which you were
raised.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>People in different
cultures and home life do have different forms of ego--ways they were taught to
consider themselves and other human beings. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Along with this increasing awareness,
and as a function of it, something begins to emerge simply called the present
moment.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is your true spiritual
home base.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Only upon personally
experiencing its freedom can you understood then, ironically, it is the reality
in which all that past you felt yourself to be--that you defended so strongly,
and all those future plans you really need to make provision for, are not
destroyed if you relax their grip in this emerging now.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>This is a fearful thing--this letting
go of the seeming certainty of who you’ve always felt yourself to be, and all
the notions of who you want to become--to experience who and what you are, as
there is no top or bottom to this. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It takes great courage and you can only
do so a little bit at a time. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We
once compared this ability to feel an ever more creative and decisive presence
of oneself to picking up a musical instrument.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It takes a lot of determination and
courage, and, in the case of meditation, real faith to keep contributing to this
strange activity you’ve brought into your life. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>This is why, at first, stillness
meditation can be experienced as such an intense not-doing. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In this sense, my dear children, you are
definitely paying your dues and earning a kind of freedom. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is also why so many of your
religious traditions include thanking all those who came before and passed on
this strange activity.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Being still
highly consciously--just feeling yourself living--paying respect to this
ultimate gift of God’s just as it is in its pure state: and so you sit and
fidget and wonder: am I enlightened yet? <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What time is it? <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>How long has it been since I felt my last
breath?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What are these enormous
looping circles I’m going on in my mind? <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Who am I? <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Is this really necessary?
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>The human mind has been likened to a
wild horse that takes a great deal taming, yet that taming can only be done with
love, and consideration, and respect, with hope and faith in achieving something
beyond thought that cannot be grasped, let alone perfectly articulated. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But it can be experienced.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And meditation not only adds these
moments of reflection to your soul, this living presence can actually be a
doorway to your soul. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Here in this
ever expanding consciousness of just being alive, you can relive moments in your
soul because you are not grasping them as with a particular memory. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You’ve all known these wonderful moments
of realization, of enlightenment, that seem all so brief as soon as you try to
capture them.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It seems a miracle
how complete and moving they can be, and you have to find a way of letting them
be. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is how you can know in
deep reverie that your soul is there, and it is a spiritual creation, far, far
beyond your ability to imagine or remember on your
own.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Contacting your soul)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Here in your deep stillness these
spiritual transcripts of moments of your life come to you as a sure touch of
timelessness just in the way they feel.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>So while in one way stillness is like other activities, say some beloved
hobby, as an exercise of your willpower, something you are choosing to create
that has its own continuity in your life day to day, it’s contra-distinct from
habits which are characterized as intrinsically unconscious repetitions.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Rather, it’s the means to break out of
habitual, knee-jerk, unthinking and unreflective ways of doing things. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s the expansion of a living
consciousness of now, the eternal now that is your true home. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s getting in touch with the creative
spirit that’s also your possession.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It becomes an opportunity to create in highest consciousness that which
is not so strictly bound by the past. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>This is where you rediscover yourself
anew. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is also where you have
some choice, some say in re-inventing yourself, for it takes all that willpower,
first to start, and then to continue doing this strange thing.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Ultimately, my children, this is nothing
Mother Spirit nor I, nor anybody else, can prove to you insofar as these are
moments of self-discovery.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We can
only tease you into giving it a try. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The experiences will be unique for each
one of you and, as we’ve mentioned before, there will be a large quotient of
what you experience in stillness that will remain effable beyond your ability to
grasp, or even share with others; but nonetheless real.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>This ineffable reality is what you
share with God, and is your truest link to Him and His presence within you.
<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is the way, the means by which
you establish a relationship with the Mystery Monitor within you. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Here in this swelling, burgeoning sense
of now you become ever more still and clear of all your concerns coming out of
the past, all your worries about the future. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is within this growing clarity you can
distinguish His ever-present gift of discrete ideas and ideals. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Again: I cannot anticipate what this will
be for each one of you for that is truly between you and our Father, for here
you find yourself more truly.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Once you have begun to experience this
ever so subtle but ever increasing certainty of your real actuality, you’ll find
that it is truly tenacious indeed.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>This detachment of constant letting go of oneself, this
self-forgetfulness that is one and the same with open-mindedness, begins to
stick with you more and more through the day.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Your soul begins to pop up all by
itself, sometimes as an ironic reflection on what you’re doing.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>So be not afraid of this, my children,
even though it will challenge and break through your habitual identification
with this or that group, this or that set of values. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Initially it seems to destroy the
security of whom you have always thought yourself to be, but you will find that
for every iota of yourself you forget, you will be rewarded ten-fold or even a
hundred-fold with a real living world that has lain hidden to you before. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For this is how you grow. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is how you break through all of your
immature prejudices, how you see through all the screens of generalities and
cultural conditioning, how you find the courage to open yourself to the yawning
chasm of the future opening at you feet--your true human
condition.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Real security)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>For this is your only real
security.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is your spiritual
self, possessing the pure awareness in which everything else takes place.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>All perception is a matter of contrast
and it is only by breaking identification--the unconscious habituation with
things--can you realize the degree to which they are, or aren’t, part of
you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Realize that as you withdraw
your seemingly necessary prejudices of who or what reality is supposed to be,
you have the opportunity to discover more and more what it is in itself.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You may make the amazing discovery that
not only are no two persons identical, neither are any two things.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This becomes the sure hallmark of God’s
creativity, something that can be a constant
marvel.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>So I can only tease you to come on in:
the water’s fine. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is Mother
Spirit’s and my true nature.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This
realm of an eternal now is what we and all the spiritual community inhabit.
<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Here is where you find us. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Here is where you can truly experience
the moment by moment completeness of your being. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Welcome
home.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>If you have any questions or comments
this evening, this is also where they come from. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thank you, Father Michael, for the
insights and encouragement on meditation and stillness.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But I still don’t understand it.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I don’t even know if it’s available for
understanding, but I look forward to meeting you and Mother and my Father
Fragment in meditation.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(The inside and outside of experience)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes, my son, again, rather
ironically, you grasp the ungraspable essence of it: it is truly nothing you can
understand from the outside.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>That
is why tonight I wanted to pay my own due respect to what a strange, strange
thing it is to so many who have yet to try it.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>As I said, this is why in some of your
religious traditions folks give thanks that this activity has been passed down
generation to generation.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>In one way it is not so strange as it
happens in brief moments all through your day.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Any time you feel a little stumped and
perplexed you have a little mini-meditation of stopping until a thought comes to
you of what to do next.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Meditation
is just deliberately prolonging these moments.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So when you sit down for the first time
to meditate, we suggest you do it for a certain period of time.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This way you don’t associate it
incorrectly right off the bat with some specific result.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s a little like this
transmitting.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s entering into a
realm in which you cannot fully anticipate what’s going to happen next, and
that’s its value.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You’re just
sitting down to open your mind as best as you can, and suspend your need to
control what happens next.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Generally, at first, it’s quite busy in there; or should I say--in
here.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Deep stillness only comes gradually,
but it can become a new continuity, a strong link in your life, a way of
achieving an experience of this eternal now that, shy of the experience of it,
my son, is quite impossible to imagine.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>So yes, I have to say there is definitely an inside and outside to
meditation.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Like so many other
things in life, it is its own particular kind of experience and there those who
have known it and those who have not.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It’s no fault you cannot yet fully grasp it.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is the requirement of faith--to try
it and then persevere.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Just ask
yourself if you can see even the possibility of discovering yourself ever deeper
and more real.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>As such it’s a
precursor to the next stages of your life to come.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s opening yourself to your Morontia
being, this soulful combination of pure spirit and your own unique
physical/mental life.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s
something you have to earn, just like your soul.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So give it a try.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I’ll do that.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I could see while you were speaking that
a lot of the resistance I have to sitting down and doing all this is a fear
losing control.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I need to see
what’s going to happen next, and that seems to be important, but not as
important as it once was.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I think, my son, you’re beginning to see
how your need for control can be a great
limitation.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is indeed.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You need to experience how the realm of
spirit is the realm of spontaneous creativity, and true creativity is exactly
that which you cannot always anticipate.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It’s that which does not necessarily follow on what came before it.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thank you, Father
Michael.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You are welcome, my son.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I don’t mean to push you into a corner
here--(Michael and student chuckle)--for that doesn’t work
either.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I don’t feel as though I’m in a
corner.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Good.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s just something you have to choose
to do and stick with for a while to give it a real chance.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Sometimes it helps to meditate in a
group, for this is one true spiritual activity of churches or religious
groups.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Well, I’m in a twelve-step program that
suggests a half hour stillness each day.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>So this is perfect.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I look forward to meeting you there.
<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I hope you find just a little bit
more of my peace.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes, I look forward to meeting you there
also.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thanks a
lot.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes, Michael, a thought just came to me
as you were talking about if I gave up uncertainty.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The reason why there is anxiety about
uncertainty is because we’re caught in terms of duality, in that something bad
is going to happen if I make a wrong decision, or don’t do anything out of
fear.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But it’s like what you said
about stillness.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s just letting
go, letting go of controlling the outcome, and meditating without trying to
grasp anything to make something happen, or try to get a certain attitude.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>When we do that the dread that comes
with uncertainty kind-of dissipates.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>We allow ourselves to drop anticipating, proclaiming, in a sense, that in
fact we are opening up to what is beneficial for us.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>As I tell my daughter and other people,
life is always for you, never against you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>But it takes a leap of faith to allow ourselves to drop anxiously
anticipating, knowing that we are being taken care of in a wholly positive way
beyond duality. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>The reason why there’s anxiety or
uncertainty is because I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next
moment.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>There’s the interplay
between good and evil--that kind of thing, but if I allow myself to rest and be
still in this moment of uncertainty, then I’m open to what is more beneficial
for my soul’s growth.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So this is
something that just came to me as you were
speaking.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Very much so, my son.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>As you are more and more able to tune
into God’s will for you, you are simultaneously tuning into His creativity.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>His will is the expression of His
creativity, and literality is what is most beneficial for you from His greater
vision.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yet you can only manifest
this in your life by being more creative yourself, like stepping out of the
repetitive and unthinking patterns you habitually live in.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So it’s not that the concern about bad
things happening to you is unreal.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>You are surrounded by a thousand and one examples of bad things really
happening to people.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You just need
to take a deep break from concern to feel your truly invulnerable
self.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>(Manifesting God’s will for you)<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>This is potentially in store for
you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You very righteously have to
make provision for the future.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You
have to consider things with your God-given potential insight leading to
foresight so you’re not always behind the curve and just re-acting to things too
late.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You have to consider all
this.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But you also need to take a
break and return to your home base of true spiritual security that does,
admittedly, transcend this life with all the pain and bad things it contains for
so many.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>If you will, the struggle
between good and evil is real moment to moment; you really have to deal
decisively with it.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But to be able
to take a break from it and rise above it to get in touch with your own
creativity is also the best way to deal with it.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Sometimes this is expressed as the
power-potential within this everlasting now that you can feel more and more.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>This is the home base of your
particular self, this unique awareness that you are.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You can have a great sense of this, and
with this security you then go out into the world and are able to manifest a
generosity of spirit, an acceptance and forgiveness, starting with yourself
before being able to be this for others. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What a marvelous gift to give yourself
and them.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What a great creative
sharing that is the essence of God’s beneficence towards you both, that you do
indeed earn.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In that sense it is
definitely a doing, an activity, though it may be a highly conscious suspension
of all else.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So when one experiences stillness it’s
kind-of like the ultimate in humility because you are setting yourself aside to
be open to God.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Very much so, my son.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Humility is that feeling you get when
you are faced with something enormous.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Then when you face something enormous,
you are just seeing yourself, and the idea of generosity is that it’s not
contrived, it’s organic.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>There’s a
difference.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s not even thought
about--it just is.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So, I just
notice the difference with that.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Humility)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is true, my son, you can have a sense
of the enormity of your own soul in this state.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But what I think of as humility is being
aware of the enormity of all that is not you.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This can be very scary at first if you
don’t have a parallel feeling that it’s not intrinsically inimical, that life
itself--as you say--is definitely for you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>I used the example one time of being on a beach looking out at the ocean
with a sense of awe of all that out there.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It’s the enormity of God’s creation that is not you.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>At that moment you can feel humiliated
by being just a tiny little speck, or you can feel a grateful humility that you
are able to perceive even a bit of how enormous it is.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>These are two distinct
attitudes.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s funny.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I can relate to it when I sense and see
the enormity of everything of this cosmos, and God.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I can’t exactly see it but I can feel
it; I can feel secure in that; I can feel at home in that.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I can feel I’m being taking care
of.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I don’t see myself as just a
little speck.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I see myself as a
part of all of this great matrix of inter-connectedness.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I don’t see myself as apart, but a part
of all this.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In that sense, I am
that--because there is so much more that I can’t even perceive or
comprehend.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So I feel more at home
in this understanding and this awareness.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>There, my son!--you’ve just gone beyond
duality. (Michael laughs) You no longer feel apart from it all, and that is the
glory of humility. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yeah…hum…<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Well!-- thank you.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>There’s just so much in the moment, in
the eternal now, that there’s no uncertainty here.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICAHEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Your Urantia book makes a distinction
between certainty and security pretty much in a matter of levels, if you
will.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It speaks of marvelous
uncertainty in the endless need to discover what is, the endless journey of
adventure.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yet no matter how large
this uncertainty grows, or how large grows your contact and appreciation of all
the other, there is this inner spiritual security of knowing you are not apart
from it.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Beyond that is the
ineffable awareness that you are!--and in this you participate, you feel one
with the I AM, for you too can say this: I am! <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I am!<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And there you find my peace.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>(Thank you)
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Good evening Michael.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I just want to thank you for such a
beautiful, loving explanation.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I
don’t have the words to describe it, and my feeling, except that I really,
deeply appreciate everything that you’ve given us--coming here and living a life
here on earth, and giving so deeply of yourself.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thank you, my daughter.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s was glorious indeed, yet, in being
human, not always at the same time.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>(Right)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But without that
suffering I could<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>not truly have
been one of you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>Student, with much emotion:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thank you. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>(Forgetting yourself to rediscover
yourself anew)<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>MICHAEL:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So tonight, my daughter, I wanted to
show you the door by which you too could enter and live your life as I lived
mine.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is ironic that the
detachment of meditation--which seems to the overly-impassioned soul a kind of
death or giving up--is actually the key that gives you your life by way of a
deeper awareness of it as a gift, as a possession.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Once you no longer identify solely with
your ego--who you’ve felt yourself to be up to this present now, life is an
obviously transcendent reality of forgetting yourself to rediscover yourself
anew, over and over again.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So you
are really both.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>To yourself you
are your ego--who you feel yourself to be, yet too an ungraspable, uniquely
personal awareness.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>You also have a soul that you cannot
yet even begin to encompass.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But
you will some day when you join with its co-author, an individualized fragment
of God.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Think what a glory it is
you can know so much of this now--if you so choose, and are willing to pay the
strange price of determined meditation.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>We thank our Father that He has such surprises in store for us--to tickle
our souls with such gladness.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And I
thank you, my daughter.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I thank you
that we can share what is so far beyond these words.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thank you for feeling and sharing my
peace with me, and with all of us here. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><o:p><FONT size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma"><FONT size=3>My children: we carry these moments
with us out into the world--however threatening, however inimitable it can
really be.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>That too was part of my
experience here--to accept the crucifixion looming before me, trusting that: I
am!--and I will survive!<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I’ll even
go on to know my Father face to face some day.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So it was with me, and so it can be for
you.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You have my word on this.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Truly: be in my peace.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Good evening.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P><SPAN
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