2002-09-28-Reflections of Michael

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Topic: Reflections of Michael

Group: N. Idaho TeaM

Facilitators

Teacher: Michael, Elyon, Nebadonia

TR: Ginny, Jonathan

Session

Opening

Michael (Ginny TR): Greetings, my friends. I come in your midst as your sovereign and your friend. It gives me great joy to witness the yearnings and aspirations of your spirits in trying to accomplish the will of our Father. It is indeed a sight to behold, not only to me, but to all who are in attendance. As mortals you have your struggles, but you are doing well in your striving to become more and more spirit filled and God conscious. It is indeed true that the more time you spend in this rarefied atmosphere the easier it becomes for you to make decisions to speak, to offer help that is supportive and spirit filled, that comes from a loving heart and a willing mind. Each day as you make your small attempts to illuminate your environment and to share the light of God you become more adept and more relaxed at your performance. Any frequent practice always makes the performance easier. I come today to encourage you to continue in this manner with your desires and your attempts to become more and more luminous, and to become more and more effective in your ambassadorship. Be assured that I am with you always and continue to serve you even as you wish to serve. I give you my blessing, my love, and my peace. I take my leave.

Jesus

Elyon (Jonathan): Hello, my good friends, this is Elyon. I am going to share with you some reflections about Michael. It eases Jonathan's mind to know that I will speak about Michael, that it was not Michael to speak through him on this subject. You have delighted our master son with your open discussion today regarding the needs of your fellows and your own abilities to minister to them and your reflection upon your own growth in regard to the needs presented to you by others. You have studied enough to know that Michael underwent a series of bestowal incarnations at various levels of creature life in Nebadon, and you are aware of his final bestowal on Urantia as a human. Being the Creator Son he is, he has all the qualities of the Father. As Son he carries these divine qualities into his universe and begins to manifest them as he brings about the creation. You each strive sincerely to understand your fellows. You struggle with the conflicts inherent in the fact that each of you is dual-natured, both spirit at the core and housed in animal form, and that you are distinct and so is another. In that state you may not always see exactly from the same vantage point. Michael has created a wide range of creatures, orders of beings of differing temperaments, aptitudes, and inclinations. Within each order again this diversity reveals itself from individual to individual. Being the creator, the source from which all these variations of creature being derive, he does understand these multifaceted manifestations, yet it was and still remains of vital importance that he underwent being each creature, for it revealed to him a perspective of living not found even by a creator who oversees creature life.

Imagine the experience of growth that Jesus underwent as he sat in a circle around a campfire with his apostles and looked into the eyes of Peter as he was troubled, as Judas struggled, as John rose up in enthusiasm, as Thomas doubted the efficacy of their actions. This experience was received by the human Jesus. Michael the divine suspended intrusion into their inner beings so that the complete creator could encompass the experience of a creature, one who needed to extract the feelings and thoughts of another, to wrestle with understanding, to compare ones own experience with the experiences of another. Though this Creator Son is the origin and source of the Spirit of Truth, as Jesus he too did not have that Spirit of Truth bestowed upon him just as the apostles at that time did not. Now having experienced this state of otherness, being a creature among creatures, and coupling this experience with his divinity as a creator, he has accomplished a feat that I can describe only as experiential power in order to distinguish it from the inherent divine power of a Creator Son. Today you have expressed the very emotions, you have undertaken the very investigations, that Michael did when here on earth. Today you are blessed with his spirit presence. As you minister to your friends and as your friends provide opportunities for your own growth, remember always his presence with you and within another.

Spirit of Truth

This is a bonding force for unity. Your country experienced an act of aggression, and for a time you all felt some togetherness, a coalescing sympathy, and a temporary unity which over time appears to fragment into the diversity of all your own individual opinions and sentiments. The unity is not gone. The diversity is the mosaic of your unity. The variety of creature types is precisely the will of Michael. If any one creature order were more important that would have been his only bestowal incarnation. But he incarnated on every level. The Truth Spirit of Michael is a combined force of the divine nature and the creature experience. This is why his good spirit was not spread abroad in Nebadon until he completed his creature bestowals. You, though you live centuries after his visit here, are as much a contribution to his Spirit of Truth qualities as is anyone else, for he truly was human. Aligning yourself with his presence you receive as well the experiences that he underwent in all his bestowals. You will however not gain a direct awareness of any episode, but you will be able to draw upon the resultant wisdom; you will be able to receive Michael's insight, for, as he just told you, he is with you always. When his apostles fretted, when they were overcome with zeal, this became the experience of our Sovereign Son.

Today as you adjust to the trials of others and as you acknowledge and act upon your own struggles, carry it in your faith always that supremely Michael fully understands. He understands you; he understands that other one. When you reach in compassion toward your fellow, Michael reaches back to you in his Spirit of Truth. Michael reaches to the other from you, and this is your unity. Another may hold entirely different opinions than you. You may never fully understand your orientation. Michael has experienced both and every shade of variation between you, to every side of you, above you, and below you. Unification in spiritual harmony is had in the experience of the presence of Michael in his Spirit of Truth. Even the Father's presence, the Thought Adjuster, does not have this same coalescing effect, for as you have understood, this divine spirit is the Father Fragment; each distinct, discreet, and your personal gift. However, Michael is spread abroad encompassing you all collectively. Your unity in the Father is in the fact that you each have received His divine presence. You are Father blessed equally. Your unity in Michael is the fact that you share in community his divine presence, the Spirit of Truth. The Father indwells you; Michael permeates you. The Father is your Father, and you are all His children. Michael is your brotherhood; he is your togetherness. When you seek to understand your fellows, you are acting in the realm of the Son. When you seek to understand yourself, you are pursuing the Father. Be light upon yourselves as you mature in your spiritual dimension. Rest assured that there was many a night that Jesus spent awake wrestling with the perplexities of human relationship, stirring to understand how another thinks and feels and what his relationship would be to another. Michael knows. Michael understands and is fully capable and ever present to assist you in your discovery of solutions and your refinement of your talents. He has placed his arm upon your shoulder. As you place your arm upon the shoulders of your fellows in need, the circle is complete, for his arm is upon them as well. This is the manifestation of his Spirit of Truth. I have completed my discourse and would receive your questions if you are holding some at this time.

Dialogue

Counsel

Evelyn: We were talking earlier about giving advice, how and when. It was pointed out the time when Jesus was sensitive to the yearning look in someone's face which told him that advice was welcome. How do we develop that talent, to know when our advice is welcome without asking? Maybe we should just ask.

Elyon: My advice is that you assume a position of equality and that you make that known to the other person. The difficulty with advice is its tendency to verticalize the relationship, to put the one giving advice above the one who is receiving it, willingly or not. This is the reason for the admonition that you give advice only when asked for, for in the asking the element of sharing enters in. It is wise of the one who has advice to give to make an effort to tip the vertical tendency over into a horizontal level of sharing. The art from which you may better accomplish this is found in your choice of words and even more importantly in your expression of compassion and in your humility. A guideline that I offer is that you further develop your discernment of another's signals that indicate a request for advice, for they may not be verbal.

Secondly, watch your own motivations. Ask yourself, is your desire to present the advice sincerely to help fill the needs of the other? Or is it on some level only gratifying yourself? It is not so much -- for I know you all well -- that you are looking to make yourself appear holier and more accomplished and attained than another, for I do not see that. But a little more subtly, is the pleasure derived in expressing wisdom? and this is not wrong. It is a joy to have attainments that we call wisdom, and it is a passion to express these insights, and it is love that seeks to give them. But it is the human who often does not understand these mechanisms, and so simply remind yourself that you are seeking to be of assistance entirely for the other individual's benefit, and that may require saying nothing at all. It may require waiting weeks, months, or years until the advice may be offered. Now I wish to play with this word "advice", take a knife to it and cut it up. Let us split the word into "ad" and "vice" and put an extra "d" in there for understanding. You know that a vice is an external act, item, that is used inappropriately to give one a sense of well- being or gratification. Vice stands in contrast to virtue. If you are moved to advise another, ask yourself how you may add virtue, to demonstrate, to present, in your own composure qualities of being that another would wish to assimilate. They will readily then seek your advice. I hope this helps.

Ginny: Jesus effected people without saying a word. There must be many ways we can develop ourselves to be more effective.

Elyon: Yes, and the utterance of the man who said, "Behold the man" encapsulates precisely what you have just said.

Ginny: There must be inner qualities that are much more attractive than words.

Elyon: Indeed.

Reflection, Morontia Bodies

Evelyn: When brainstorming in the leisure after the moment it's easier to come up with alternate ideas than right when something is happening. It isn't the same situation.

Elyon: No, however, this reflective interval is beneficial and is a technique Jesus used with his apostles subsequent to any encounter with the masses. It allowed them to orient those events with higher teaching and to reconcile any feelings of failure or displeasure from what may have happened. These sessions of clarity derivation, though they make the prior experience seem so clouded with misunderstanding, they step you forward to a more effective approach at a subsequent time. You have done that today in your discussion, as you have shared with each other your own shortcomings as well as your successes in offering help to another. One day you will receive a morontia form, and this vehicle for morontia manifestation will be a thrill to you. You know the joy of driving a brand new car (Some in group: "No, we don't!") Everything works. This will be similar but greatly magnified when you resurrect and take on a morontia form. Everything works. And your ability to discern another's expressions will be clearer. Languages improve. The crude forms of hearing apparatus you have now will no longer be. Sound is augmented with vibrations your ears cannot hear. Your vocal expressions will also be expanded with tonalities you cannot express through your throats. Your eyes will see more deeply into the soul of another than they do now as they gaze upon your fleshly forms. And advice will be more appropriately timed and more likely well received.

Growth, Experience

Ginny: We need to learn to allow people to do their growing. It may be hard to watch someone suffer, but it's a growth time for them. They may not see it as they are experiencing it, but they will see later on. We might interfere with that growth.

Elyon: This is profoundly insightful. Any parent knows that repeated admonitions to a child to refrain may fall on deaf ears. When a child does actually engage in the activity which they were counseled to avoid they suddenly and finally realize the truth. But it was not truth in the admonition; it was truth in the experience. Though that does not mean you let them stumble blindly into their calamities, for any parent seeks to protect their child. But stages of growth require certain episodes of experience to build a true foundation for their growth to continue to ascend upon. I may add on this topic of advice that, since sometimes, as you have indicated, they must undergo an experience that rather than providing beforehand a "you ought to" or "you ought not to", you could provide rather options. This may be undertaken. Or this. Or another action. You have then provided the potentials for decisions on their parts rather than limit the freedom of their experiences.

Closing

Nebadonia: This is your mother, Nebadonia. My associate Michael has told you that he is with you always. This word "always" is a time word. Forever and always. I likewise am with you always, and my always is an "LL" all ways, for every element, dimension, every situation, any manifestation of being and things in this universe I give. Go with Michael, and as you travel with him it is my presence that you travel through. This may be hard to understand, my little ones. You know me as your Mother Spirit. You know Michael as your Creator Son. We are the apex of all there is in Nebadon, and we are not only source and origin, we are your destiny within Nebadon. Given origin and destiny, it goes without saying that all that transpires in between not only has our full attention but has our full participation. I embrace you. I embrace you in the crudest forms such as dirt which gives you the sustenance of food. I embrace you in breath which sustains your life. And I embrace you on levels far more subtle than this. In all ways I am with you. We are with you.