2019-03-28-Open Minded Meditation

Session

Opening

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, welcome. I can’t wait to say that word every month: welcome--welcome to our happy group here. We do enjoy having such wonderful spiritual parents right as part of us.

Michael, your Spirit of Truth is an unerring compass of orientation, a way to orient ourselves moment by moment, sometimes in spite of all the conflicting things about us and within us: what is the truth here? Mother Spirit, you’re actually part of our mentality, part of our thinking and reasoning. You are in our perceptions and all the ways we can store these as knowledge, then associate them as understanding everything.

Michael, tonight I have a request. Last time Mother Spirit gave us a wonderful lesson that, if I could summarize, was about our own freedom. It was not only our sense of freedom, but our actual freedom being so dependent upon our creativity. We are literally responsible for ourselves. It is up to us maintain a creative ability-to-respond. This applies not only to those about us and our physical situation, but even to the spiritual promptings right within us--hopefully from our presence of God, our Thought Adjuster. Everything depends on our ability to create an alternative in order to have something to choose, besides what reality itself is giving us moment by moment.

This is our ability and our responsibility to be free, to be a creature with free-will dignity that is our possibility. So, Michael, if you would, could you help us on a critical point? I know you spoke to us on this before, but if you would again: How do we turn things around if we feel we are going in a wrong direction, or are simply becoming overburdened with our own self-destructive ways? How do we turn things around? That is my request this evening. Thank you, and amen.

Lesson

Michael: Good evening, everybody gathered here. What a happy group. Mother Spirit and I are always happy and delighted ourselves to attend such a meeting. As you’ve been notified, and we have mentioned so many times, we are part of you. We delight in conversing with you right within your own being. So send us your prayers, ask us to visit you and be with you consciously within your meditations.

Referring to your meditations, we would like to suggest that they be a time where you are just open-minded. Your requests and all your ways of contacting us--asking us things and suggesting things for the two of us: these are also ways of suggesting things to yourself. All this is enjoyable--actually fun--cotton candy for your soul--memorable moments of things truly worth recalling.

We encourage you to be in touch with us. Make us part of your conscious life. Especially thank Mother Spirit from time to time for augmenting all your abilities to enjoy your life. So consider this kind of meditation of just being still. Take part out of your activities for this one very special one. Just sit down and be still for a while and let come up whatever wants to in your everyday life. These are those things you might have to think about a bit.

It is always good to think: “Dear Father--dear God: What do you have for me this morning?” And then listen, for it could be the very next idea coming from his supreme ability to give you concrete thoughts. That is why we call his presence a Thought Adjuster. He can give you that bigger context in which you are living and have your meaning.

This is a good kind of meditation, just being open-minded. It’s a good practice. When you get up from your meditation, keep the feeling for a while as you look around and take your steps out into your new day. Greet and welcome those with whom you share your life. Keep this open-minded wonder to them, to your whole situation. Look around and marvel that this whole universe is being created not only for everyone else, but for you too.

• (Turning things around)

Now: your request this evening for how to turn things around pre-supposes a desire to do that very thing, a desire that arrives--part and parcel--as contrast. Even this desire, my dear ones, comes from your own creative spirit, and the spiritual influences within you. Your own creative spirit has introduced some contrast between how things are--how things are going--and yet too some other way that is—hopefully--a better way, a happier way, a more fulfilling creative way to live. And yet, how do you do this?

Let me introduce an analogy we have used before, because a good life is not necessarily easy. Even your own Guardian Spirits are not concerned with soothing all your ruffled feathers, or even making life easy for you, but rather, throwing up a lot of choices to be made, to exercise your freedom. So even the best kind of life still has you with one foot on the solid ground of the real--as best you can feel it moment to moment: simply what is--yet your other foot is in a rather untethered boat called the ideal. One foot is on the real solid ground of what has already happened, and is happening--while the other is hopefully kind-of free-ranging that really stretches you. Let’s call it the ideally possible. It isn’t yet tethered to the real because it isn’t yet happening. It’s an idealistic possibility your own creative imagination and spirit can come up with.

Yes, this stretch can be very uncomfortable when your day to day life is constantly throwing up to you: “This isn’t right,” or--more profoundly sometimes: “Is this all there is? This isn’t enough. Where do I go from here? I’ve got this terrible thing happening not only in my whole situation and the folks around me, but right within me--some weakness, some indecision. How do I turn this around? How do I head off in another direction?”

This awareness is partly Mother Spirit’s Adjutant of Courage, just to entertain these ideas and feelings. Let them express themselves. Let the very presence of God within you give you ideas. Then entertain those ideas however uncomfortable they might be at first, however much you might feel a painful stretching and disquiet with your present situation.

• (Deadening denial)

The alternative course is what you psychologically call denial. It is to expend an enormous amount of energy and your own creative imagination to create what we call a “bubble of familiarity” around you, and do your best to deny the need for change.

Denial can be so detrimental and deadening in your relationships to other folks around you. You’re sending them all kinds of unconscious or semi-conscious notions that you don’t want to be disturbed with this or another thing. Yet those who are closest to you, with whom you share the most amount of love, can be the agents for good change and growth.

We encourage a good assessment of what is real moment to moment physically; how is your body right now? How is your mental state? How creative do you feel your spirit to be? What is your touch with your own soul, my dear ones--this God co-authored story of your life and who you have been all these years? Ideally these are all open to you.

You are your own best company with this attitude within yourself of being open-minded, even welcoming, to challenges. These include your social and political notions. How much you are open to their counter-parts and all these loved ones around you? How welcome are you to being right-up-front with them when they let you know your slip is showing, or your fly is open—figuratively? Think of all the wonderful loving feedback your dearest ones can give you. This is partly--and a good part--what friends can do for each other to help turn things around. They give you that more objective outside viewpoint on who you are and what you are doing.

Let me suggest that by turning things around you are literally creating a new you. Isn’t this what this implies? You are going to be a different person. You are going to be heading off into a new direction. You are going to be taking care of things that have been put on hold for a while. How do you do this? Who is this “you” that you have to help create to have the power to change? This again comes back to what Mother Spirit and I have offered so often: a kind of meditation of not continuing in the same-old—same-old routine, but literally taking time out of that just to be open-minded. We offer this knowing it is the most difficult thing for folks who are being driven along by what they feel is just circumstances, some terrible fate of theirs. How to convince them to exercise their freedom?

• (How to keep a new “you” going)

You have to be somebody there. Your personality has to have some continuity so that what you decide today is going to be at least somewhat you tomorrow. This is where you need to set aside part of your life and meditate--just to be with yourself again, and again, and again. You are literally using your creative power to recreate yourself, a self who can make this decision day after day after day to turn things around. It’s how to change things in your daily life where it all counts.

So all this, my dears, is a way of encouraging you to take part out of your morning no matter how busy you are, or especially if you are super-busy and don’t seem to have a minute for yourself. Find those ten minutes to begin with, for you. This is your time. This is your time with us and with our Father.

If you will: this is what we ask of you. This is what the whole spiritual community asks of you. This is what your Father, your Creator asks of you. Give us yourself. In doing so you are giving you to yourself. You are creating a new “yourself” that has the power and ability to choose every morning for that day. Abandon the idea of some enormous choice that is then going to carry you along all by itself; that you are going to make some big decision and that is going to do it. No! That is not freedom, my dear.

Freedom is to choose, and to choose again, and to choose again; to exercise each moment’s choice. And so: enough. Think about it. Meditate on this. Take those ten minutes out. Hopefully they grow into twenty minutes, or maybe a whole half-hour every morning just being with yourself, and with us--recommitting yourself to that new, better way.

Now if you have any questions or comments, let’s do those.

Dialogue

Student: Jesus--Christ Michael, here is my question. When you return, how will the whole world see you? Will it be on TV or from the sky?

• (Michael’s return)

Michael: Oh yes, my dear. That is something that is going to occur in everybody’s heart first. Just as before when I was challenged--as a human being--to perform miracles for the doubters, I replied: That is not the way to the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is by your power, not mine. That is why I say the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

Tonight I gave you a way, a means of tuning in to our mutual Father, literally into God’s presence, to help you find that better way, to help you find that Kingdom of Freedom for yourself. This is how I come to everyone who every day welcomes me and Mother Spirit. We really appreciate it so much when you say, “Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Thank you Nebadonia--Mother Spirit--for being a part of me in my life.” This is one way of recognizing we are with you always, already, my daughter.

Student: I do understand that. I do understand that part of it. It is just that I have been hearing about a “magisterial mission” coming to this planet, and I have been hearing about Jesus’ return, along with Melchizedek’s, along with someone called Monjoronson: things of that nature. This is what I am talking about, like there are going to be some big changes supposedly on our planet with the intervention of celestials--divine beings. That is what I was asking about. Of course, I welcome Jesus in my heart all the time. Anyway, that was the direction I was asking about.

Michael: Yes, my dear, but this is something once again Mother Spirit and I will both take the responsibility to--in a sense--refuse to put a date on what you are talking about. There are already celestial beings who are in control of the planet on the spiritual level.

Student: Yes

• (The reality—and cost—of free will)

Michael: But even your Counsel of Melchizedeks refuses to interfere with your own individual freedom of choice. This is why you have some truly, truly obscene things still happening on earth. It’s where human imagination is being put to its greatest extent to come up with the most terrifying things to do to other human beings. Everything within human imagination is still being used to do unto other people, to control them--right on the personal level of torture, to mass movements of a semi-religious nature to control whole peoples.

There is not going to be any celestial stepping-in to just wipe all this out. That is not what this whole spiritual realm is about. I had the power myself, and I was requested. There were so many disappointed followers of mine because I didn’t use the powers I had when I was here among you as a human being.

Student: I understand.

Michael: So too, I cannot put a date on this.

Student: No, no I never even asked for a date. I did not ask for a date.

Michael: Excuse me. I thought you meant “when” exactly am I…

Student: No-no-no. I did not ask for a date. I simply said when --when you return, how will the whole world see you? Will it be in the sky, or on TV?--just an example of some ways the whole world could see this happening. When? I didn’t ask for a date.

Michael: Excuse me. I thought I answered you by saying this is going to be an individual thing, in each individual’s heart, not some huge manifestation in the sky, or going on television.

• (Michael’s choice of Urantia, and the historical time)

My dear, I mentioned this one time before. It has often been asked: Why, in our whole Local Universe of planets that are so enormously advanced beyond where Urantia is now--or the other planets that went into rebellion: why didn’t I wait, since things were so chaotic then? Why didn’t I wait and come to earth when there was television. I could go on television and suddenly walk out on the air—like I refused to do in front of the temple in Jerusalem--but show up at the United Nations and walk out on the air? This is why I answered you that this is in people’s hearts.

Student: OK

Michael: This is the when. That is the how--you might say.

Student: All right, thank you for your answer.

Michael: It will not be on television or some huge physical manifestation. In one way so many folks already--and not just in Christianity, but in all the truly loving, spiritual religions of the world--people know me in my essence. This love is what exists in all truly religious people. Mother Spirit and I have said so many times, that the goodness of person-to-person love in people’s lives is a thousand times greater than any deliberate pain that is being caused.

Part of realizing me and Mother Spirit is to realize and see for yourself the enormous amount of loving cooperation that exists all throughout the world today. In fact, it is growing in what you call democracy--republic governments--people controlling their own lives. This is why Mother Spirit and I have pointed you towards a de-centralization of authority where individuality--this God-given quality of human life--is more and more blossoming. It’s where people are able to--and choosing!--this is the important part--choosing to take more and more control over their own lives.

Obviously those whom you call the tyrannical folks among you are not voluntarily giving up any power whatsoever. They are doing the most obscene things to claim and hold it. So it is up to each individual to claim this authority for themselves, and take responsibility as broadly as they can for all aspects of their life.

Student: OK, I believe that is true. Yes, I know… I just going to say, I know there are many good things going on in the world, and there are many good people. There are many great organizations and charities. I also know that the world is in a lot of trouble. Yet I understand that you process it the same way. Yeah, yeah--of course, OK. Thank you.

Michael: Yes, I’m talking about all the individuals-relating-to-individuals all over the world. Mother Spirit and I point you not so much to races, but to cultures and how they are just necessarily slowly evolving…

Student: Which is so good to see.

• (Urantia is inexorably evolving)

Michael: Right, evolving, even though this world is without spiritual authorities—a Planetary Prince and Material Adam and Eve--as exist on 99.9999% of all the other planets in our Local Universe. Here on Urantia it is a person-to-person kind of evolution, but that evolution is inexorable because everybody does have the presence of God within them. Everybody does have a Thought Adjuster. And so we give our lessons on how to tune in, and hear, and follow those promptings which often require you to turn things around. So thank you, my daughter.

Student: OK, thank you.

Michael: Be in my Peace. If there are no more questions or comments, I hope I have made it clear that a good life is in each of your hearts, your feelings, your ideas, even your assumptions and your attitudes--your relationship to all that you are, all that you have been, all that you can be--all those around you.--all this overwhelming, enormous drama, this true drama you find yourselves in--even the terrible melodramas you get caught up in.

The price you pay is: you have to pay attention! Welcome that, even as overwhelming as your life can be from time to time. Stay open to it. Keep reaching for what is real and what is true, especially in the social and political things you get caught up in concerning the different ideas and programs that are presented to you. Your first concern is: What is true?

Then, and only then, can you start to get some notion of what might be better. Where do you want things to go? How do you assert your own individuality right from God? How much are you dependent upon others? And is that good? It can be. Think of the thousand and one little formal and informal contracts between peoples, just in getting out on a busy highway to go to work each morning. All these understandings and agreements constitute culture.

How do you evolve that? It is all up to you, each one of you individually, my dears. That is why it is so scary at times. Everything is dependent upon you, and yet this is the greatest gift that Mother Spirit, and I, and God can give you. This is your freedom, your ability-to-respond.

Closing

• (The growth of freedom and responsibility)

The growth of freedom is the true evolution. This is where your whole world has to go. It is how to recognize and encourage everybody to be themselves. How do you transform societies and cultures to encourage this and find some way for letting this all happen? Everybody has to find greater and greater freedom without impinging on others.

This is what is set before you, is it not? Yes, it is truly scary, but you have it within yourselves to work out all the little details day to day. So welcome the challenge within yourself, and welcome it within everyone you meet. Be open to their feedback you are getting, my dear ones. You know you have a strong, welcome, warm and embracing smile on your face when this is what you encounter coming at you, even from complete strangers. Be willing to embrace what reality--especially from all these others--is offering you, and be thankful for them. And be in my peace. Mother Spirit sends her love, and I bid you a good evening.