2026-01-07-A New Year

Session

Lesson

Dear friends, greetings. We join with you at the beginning of your year. We see you seeking progress, seeking understanding, seeking direction. When the cycle renews, often it is seen as an opportunity to take stock, to observe what directions might be beneficial to pursue and although this is true at any time, regardless of time of year, month, or day, it seems the symbolism is the greatest trigger point toward establishing new routines. The symbolic date allows you the opportunity to ask yourself, what do I want to accomplish? Where do I want to be or go or do? We encourage you to seek these answers within, with your Creator, to know that the responses will come, whether consciously or unconsciously. It seems our purpose here is to provide support toward that purpose, to perhaps clarify or add insight, or to respond to your queries. Of course, you each know that if you want us to tell you what you should do, our response will generally be to focus you within, to ask those questions of the One who knows you better than any other. So as we establish this pattern for the new year, let us be together, converse together, allow you to share your thoughts, your questions, your dreams or ideas.

I will respond to a question that was posed this week regarding how much of this contact is made up, how much is simply creating paradigms so that one can move forward within them to establish patterns and progress?

My response is that you might be surprised as to what is actually occurring and what is simply the romanticizing of the soul. I say this because sometimes what you hear may not align with reality, but when you align yourself toward your Indwelling Spirit and seek for reality, this is a soul romance in and of itself, and truth manifests when the soul romanticizes.

Does it mean that every statement is factual? No, it does not. But if we were to have the mission of creating a factual, authoritative establishment of Michael's reality on your world, we would hardly embark on an unseen series of ministrations that ask you to step aside from your current reality to accept a new reality and begin to listen and respond to these impulses, these transmissions that are being sent to you. No, if facts were our primary purpose, there would be a more undeniable presence, visible or audible, that could tell you simply what reality is so that you can adjust and move that direction forthwith. But as it turns out, that is not Michael's mission.

Michael's mission, as has been outlined to us, is to draw closer to you, utilizing the agencies on your world, utilizing your Indwelling Spirits, and to create a relationship where you must exercise your faith and seek answers and listen and respond and share what you feel is the reality being expressed to you. And as you are human, in your humanity, errors are made. But even so, because a great degree of your desire is to align with reality and to hear truth manifested, the values have emerged nevertheless. You have recognized the values of truth, beauty, and goodness, not simply having read those words on a page thinking it sounded cool, but actually lived in the experience of hearing ideas shared with you that have changed you in your soul, each of you, that have caused you to explore not what appears as value, but what is value. You have struggled with your impulses and desires to explore better ways of reacting and acting within the world. Look at yourself two, five, 10, or even 30 years ago and have empathy for who that person was then, as you know now what you know.

Does it mean every idea you believe about the universe is real? No. But you know in your hearts, in your souls, that there is value in the practice of stillness, in the practice of listening, in the practice of hearing and expressing what you feel is coming to you through this exercise, and you have become better by it. And this is the value of this mission.

It is not the pronouncements of some fantastic future. It is the small moments that shift you ever increasingly toward our Creator that aligns you with the desire to do good, the desire to love one another, the desire to be of service, not only visibly in the large activities, but in the small moments as you go through your days. This validates the mission far more than any pronouncements or any authoritative statements about what is happening can do, because primarily the mission of Michael is realized in the individual recognizing the fatherhood of God, and in doing so, opening themselves to become a better participant in the brotherhood of man and in the universe of universes.

Dialogue

Friends, are there other thoughts or questions or ideas you would share today?

Q2: Just that I think your efforts there were much appreciated by all of us and very eloquent in the way that they were presented to us, as well, which helps, I think, the overall understanding and deepening of the resonance within us. At least that's how I was sort of feeling as I tried to soak it all in. So thank you for that.

Thank you, my friend. That was our intention.

Q3: Good evening. I'm trying to understand how people who seek for the truth and discover in Jesus' teachings something valuable for their minds, for their souls and how it adds to their lifestyles or philosophy of living, allowing them to become a follower of Jesus' teachings. I would like some perspective on the types of Jesus' followers, like disciples and also apostles. Could you please give us some perspective on that?

Apostleship and discipleship has been explored in various documents, such as your biblical and the Urantia papers, and even other secondary works of direct and indirect religions related thereto. Discipleship is your acceptance of the love of God in your heart and your participation in the greater family, both on your world and beyond. It holds with it a level of commitment to trying to be the best that you can be. It does not necessarily reach the levels of apostleship until you have committed to actively engaging to spread the message with all who would listen, not necessarily shared by words, but many times with actions, yes. Apostleship is a commitment to being of service in the kingdom, to directly promote the ideals of the kingdom, consciously, committedly.

And thus, there is this sort of delineation between believer, committed believer, and actively committed believer. The believer recognized Michael's mission when he was Jesus, and decided it was true in their heart. The committed believer, the disciple, chose to actively become a part of the movement, let us say, to participate within, to share back and forth, to recognize one's place, and to seek understanding from those realities that are deemed the highest - the Creator realities. And the actively committed believers are those who decide to engage with the realities in a way that seeks to share and manifest those ideals in a way that others can recognize and choose to accept, potentially.

So, I'm not sure if this creates the picture any further than what you already understood, my friend, but simply that there is the level of knowing that something is true, then the decision to be a part of that truth and to live in it, and then the decision to actively manifest and to share that truth to the best of one's ability.

Q3: Thank you.

Q4: I have a question. In the active commitment, what I have practiced is another level of it, which is I'm actively reaching out to our divine parents and my celestial team to help me be better, to actually give me insight, wisdom, and words as to what I can do better in my personality, in my way, in my habits, and in my thinking. And I would then also add that I'm asking for clarification on how I can do better and how I can manage my human emotions better. That is something that is not spoken of in any of the spiritual paths and not something that we hear spoken of very much at all from our celestial team. But for me as a therapist, it's very important for me to actively polish my own internal diamond awareness of myself as well as the greater realities that you speak of. So I would ask for you to comment on that. How does that fall into your description of this paradigm?

Thank you, my dear. That is the perfect follow-up question. For you have led us toward how one can be a believer, a disciple, and an apostle all at the same time. Life does not require you to choose one or the other. The true apostle is consistently and constantly seeking to better understand, to better shine their diamond, so to speak. And to do this, they are exercising in the area of discipleship, this area of knowing one has a place in the kingdom and can connect with this reality and seek understanding so that they might become better by it, quite honestly. And then, whatever they express can be of a higher value as a result, rather than the often misled desire to do the big things, to change the whole world before changing oneself, before submitting one's self to that relationship that ebbs and flows, that seeks guidance to better manifest in one's actions what they have learned from that guidance rather than, perhaps like stabs in the dark, trying to say things or do things that will make everything better without having that anchored relationship that you speak of, that seeks to understand continuously.

You know that Michael spent much time in prayer, seeking to understand, and his oft-used phrase was, "Not my will, but yours be done." And this is a reflection of this practice you speak of, to better understand from within what you can do that will make you better, that will hopefully provide better outcomes in your own actions in the world rather than trying to get the world to come around so that you can be more happy in it.

Q4: Right. That is really, thank you very much, the point. I seek to improve myself not for glory or recognition, but just to be a better version of myself so that I can hear, see, and do God's will. That's the whole point and we don't, I don't hear that spoken of very often. It's always from this position of prayer so that, help me Lord, make me feel better, make me feel better. And that is something that I'm very acutely aware of that feels self-centered and still in the ego-based level of the human mindset. I don't want to be stuck there anymore. I want to have a higher mind to see the larger issues and the bigger, more important issues at play in my life and in my surroundings and in the world and in my clients so that I can lead them to develop skills so they can see that pattern recognition in their own lives So thank you for clarifying that.

Yes, you understand. And let us afford those, perhaps self-centered efforts to find God, some leeway and give grace to those brothers and sisters who are reaching out and maybe don't fully understand, yet, how the relationship truly manifests. Recognize in those moments of them asking to feel better, asking for help, slowly the soul can begin to understand that the work must be done from within. And so we don't completely discourage those efforts that might seem juvenile (not to be demeaning), because we know that juveniles eventually become adults. And so, just as you speak, I am sure, with your clients many times, the level some are at is very basic and sometimes struggling to even be basic and yet you have a capacity to afford them the opportunity to come around by being in communication and relationship with you. And so likewise, each of you, all of you, have grown slowly to become less self-focused and more focused on the greater relationship, knowing that the self is taken care of by allowing one's self to be in that relationship with the Divine. I believe there were other questions.

Q5: My response to what was just said may have a question in it. Is it not a reality that we are all, each of us, perfect humans as we are, but for the recognition of it? Couldn't this have been a reason for Jesus to pray so much to get in touch with who he was, who he is, in order to navigate these various situations that he was exposed to? Each is a precious and only begotten human. Is this not so?

Yes, my friend. We recognize that every being has an element of perfection within them and yet there are the various levels of perfection, which scale from absolute perfection down to imperfection in all aspects. But the recognition that the Divine spark lies within each person identifies the destiny of perfection for each of you. And so, what you infer is true in the sense that one comes to increasingly recognize their own perfection capacities by seeking within, by connecting with that source of perfection, as well as expanding those capacities to actually be able to manifest at greater and greater degrees.

You have often heard it said that "God is no respecter of persons," but I don't particularly prefer that perspective when I recognize from my own experience as a mortal and then as an ascending being that my Father loves each individual absolutely. I prefer the idea that God loves each is a sign that God deeply respects who we are in potential and constantly and consistently guides us toward it. And it is more alluring, quite honestly, to tell your fellows that God loves you, than in a sort of Old Testament perspective, to tell them that they are worthless. See which one will get you or get them closer to God. The love will always win. Thank you for your commentary.

Q5: Thank you for your response. In the readings, I was heartened by the realization within them that Jesus' absolute respect and love for each and every was a manifestation of alignment with deity itself and the clarion call of the universe for love, that His absolute love was a reflection of the supreme reality, the ultimate reality of deity and the whole spectrum of universal existence. So why wouldn't it be the best thing to do here for us? Just love. There's the secret.

Well said.

Q6: I was seeing some images during this conversation that were especially intriguing, Your comment that perhaps Michael spent so much time in prayer to come to understand himself, we read about that in the Urantia book in his 40 days after baptism and his finding himself. He kind of always knew from the age of 13 that he was different. He kind of felt the Father drawing him. So he was not actually a human. When you talk about the love that he's seeing with the eyes of the Father and the eyes of the Supreme, as you say, but he also has the deeper knowledge about why we are as we are. And when we're talking about telling the truth about the world to the people, it's going to be very difficult to explain the Lucifer legacy, to explain the rebellion and the default and what happened to us, our genetics, our mental capacity. Even nature itself, they say, isn't what it should be. Nothing here is what it should be.

So if you think about Michael having maybe been bestowed on a different planet, they were very surprised when he chose the earth and fearful for what would happen. Had he gone to one of his planets in light and life and had his bestowal, then I could see where he would have spent much time in prayer discovering who he was because he didn't have the conflict of the Lucifer rebellion to contrast. And that was one of the reasons why he chose this place so that the light would shine against that darkness. But his love comes from a place of total understanding. And we as humans don't have that understanding. It's not something we grow up with. People are not even taught the basic, really, the basic ways we should love each other. You know what I mean?

So even as we have, some of us, spent 20 years or more in our teaching mission, doing our correcting time, we have evolved to these beings now who can manifest Michael's love better because of what we've learned. That still doesn't free us from having to deal with an unrecovered and unconscious world around us. And this is not only the frustrations that we have, but the gifts, don't you think? The gifts that we have to grow because that knowledge gives us an edge to love people better and accept them, you know, the unconditional love thing. But coming from any other place on the planet where people don't know why we are as we are, I think it's a lot harder.

Q7: Imagine stepping into a nest of rattlesnakes as it must have been like for him. Barefooted. The only way to get along in that situation is to be peaceful and loving and understanding of the snakes.

Q6: He did call it a den of vipers too, didn't he?

Q8: Well, to use an idea from the Lord of the Rings, Jesus did need to keep "the eye of Sauron," so to speak, off of him. He spoke in parables to basically keep the leadership not focused on him. His method was to go about doing good and sharing love and not directly challenging the authorities and what was going wrong at the time, but to focus on what he could bring positively to the situation where he was at until he knew that his Father wanted him to step up and speak truth to power, which then cost him his human life, but obviously not his eternal status. So yeah, just that ability, like you said, to rely on that relationship within to guide him. It's pretty impressive.

Q9: So for us to identify with that is a way of reality recognition. There's the reality. Understanding. If you understand a snake, you can get along just fine with them. It doesn't have to be a mess. In fact, they'll crawl up on top of you and go to sleep for a week.

Q10: Yeah, but they're biting the babies, you know? I mean, it's hard...

(Various conversation continues for the rest of the meeting.)