Michael061906MarinTM_TheLimitlessImmediacyOfStillness_BeAPersonNotAThing

1. (Personalizing God)
2. (The Limitless Immediacy of Stillness)
3. (Ask Us Any Moment of Your Life)
4. (Relinquishing Oneself)
5. (Escaping Sentimentality; Finding a Spontaneous, Present Reality)
6. (Be a Person, Not a Thing, and Help Others Do the Same)
7. (Initial Challenges of Stillness)
8. (Turn Your Orientation from the past to the Future)
9. (Michael’s Omnipresence)

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, We thank You for Your insights on the nature and causes of impatience, especially so we do not inflict our own upon others. It seems You are suggesting we might need to welcome patience as a discipline. If so, then we ask for Your further help in utilizing Your highest Mind/Spirit Adjunct, that of wisdom, so we can bring the depth of our hard-earned experience to bear on the present moment. For this and all Your other gifts, we thank You. Amen.

MICHAEL: My beloved sons, this is Michael. As Mother introduced herself last week, I too ask you to think of Me as your close buddy, your help-mate, someone you can rely upon. For isn’t this true of any dear friendship? It enables us to give ourselves away, to forget ourselves, if only momentarily, and put the welfare of someone else above our own. While this is obviously a gift, it’s also such a reward, for this truly feeds our souls, this ability to take in another, this opportunity to touch another unique living reality, another living creation of God.

(Personalizing God)

Every time we do so this finds resonance within our own personality. It becomes a transcendent connection of one personality to another. It reminds both of us of our common Origin. In realizing another personality, it helps you so much in personalizing God.

This is still quite a challenge for you with your present day scientific orientation. You are not pantheists, but many of you still consider much of God’s creation to be somehow inherent in the physical universe: perhaps some kind of self-generating qualities. This is why We teach that qualities you feel as values are of a spiritual nature and not inherent in physical reality, or even strictly mental associations--meanings.

When you forget yourself to take in another person--even more, when you act from a center that is somewhere between the two of you, you are able to more fully personalize God by realizing that His spiritual qualities resonate in the shared dimension of your two personalities. This is the love that no man or woman has greater but to give of themselves, even their life, for another. But you can do this in a day to day way by giving up your ego, your sense of yourself, and trusting that you will still be there, you will return to yourself when that time becomes appropriate.

Last week Mother talked about the dimension of time and one way of giving of yourself that is highly rewarding: recognize and relinquish your specific expectations about what the future, sometimes the very near future--the next few moments, will be so you can welcome whatever happens. This is included in what We have been referring to as the bottomless-ness of now, the fact that for human beings there is no limit to how much you can expand to experience the uniqueness of the present moment, your present company.

You generally experience this only in moments of sheer terror, in other words, during that adrenaline boost when you suddenly find yourself skidding on ice, or about to fall over a precipitous drop; or in moments of ecstasy--being out of yourself with sheer pleasure. These experiences illustrate just how imminent or immediate the present moment can be.

(The limitless immediacy of stillness)

But you can touch upon this dimension, this limitless immediacy, in your stillness. It’s just, as you say, it’s own thing. As Mother mentioned, this profoundly deep, bottomless stillness is not something you directly create. There is no magical button you can push to bring it about. It too comes about by relinquishing yourself, by relaxing, by not actively shutting out thoughts but just observing them, detached. For thoughts, when deprived of your identification with them, lose their impetus and just slow of themselves. Your consciousness begins to broaden, often to the point you can have the sensation of how enormous it is there inside your mind--even though this is just your mind’s attempt at a spatial representation of your spirit, which actually transcends space. How big is it in there? It’s interesting to wonder.

Many of you have encountered the timelessness of the Eternal Now. Here you can have a conscious perception of Mother’s and My presence. It would give Me great pleasure, My children, to be able to define or explain Our presence to you, but any definition would get in the way of actually feeling Us. We can only liken it to the most subtle pressure or tingling you can imagine, yet even these are physical events, and spirit really precedes the physical. In your philosophy, you refer to this as essence preceding existence: the essence of who you are, your unique personality, actually precedes your conscious awareness of yourself existing.

Not to make a mystery of this home base, it’s just a conscious recognition of your profound reality. This is--something there--that does stick with you, and changes all your other perceptions. Spirit generates time-flexibility so you do not need to exercise self-discipline in order to be patient. Think about it. Discipline is a positive quality of being able to make yourself do something you know is right. This implies you are somewhat split in your attitude towards something. Part of you is reluctant, yet you have an ability to carry through in the face of this reluctance. This is a great ability for a just-beginning personality still a long way from being united in all the living aspects of your being. In spite of this lack of unity within, you can decide to do what feels right.

And so conversely, the more you are united within yourself, the stronger, the more complete is the function of your personality. The greater your ability to relinquish yourself in order to stay with a living, dynamic, changing present moment, the less you need to make yourself do something--like exercising patience. In this you approach being like the more purely spiritual beings who are so attuned to the fullness of the present moment as a transcendent, God-created reality, they have no need for a human type of patience. You’ve all known moments of this, of being right in sync, fully a part of something happening where, fortuitously it seems, you’re doing the right thing effortlessly. And so these moments seem magical. This is being a part of something transcendent to you, and realizing it.

This is a kind of living reflection, not after the fact but right in the moment, as if you were surrounded by a lot of little spiritual mirrors helping you realize what is happening in such a subtle way you are not disturbing the process. You have that famous saying by one of your ancient philosophers: a life without reflection is not worth living. That is a bit overstated, for life itself is always of supreme value. But to enjoy this reflection, this magnifying enhancing of an event right while it’s happening, is to know that part of this reflection comes from your deep meditation, helping you achieve this wonder.

This, My children, is the reward of faith, of being out there, of going where you have not gone before, and finding the reward of that courage. For the essence of faith is this extending yourself where you are not yet certain, extending yourself forward without any specific expectations but just from a general, wise sense: this is the right thing to do now.

(Ask Us any moment of your life)

This is what you can ask of Us any moment of your life: Dear Michael, dear Mother, dear Heavenly Father, what’s the right thing to do, right now? The only price required of you, My children, is sincerity. You must strive to do what you know is right. Your personality, your soul, needs the feedback that ensues. You extend yourself in order to get the reward, the answer from Greater Reality whether this actually was the right thing to try.

It may not have been. So you have to be open to reality’s answers. You have to accept that this was who you were, and what it was--this time--and let this become part of your soul, part of your wisdom. Even your ideals must be open to this quest for reality. For even your most cherished ideals can be inappropriate: too much, too soon, out of sequence. Mother mentioned you must be based on the real. I’m just giving you some means of distinguishing it.

So consider your stillness is this reflection, this augmentation of your being you cannot directly create, but you can let it come about because, ultimately, it is God’s desire for you to grow this way. He wants to share His spirit with you, and you were created with this latent ability, this potential.

This was never hidden from mankind, but to conceive of, and then actually carry out this at first strange activity of relaxing into an ever higher consciousness, is something only very few discovered on their own. Stillness has remained for the most part, part of revealed religion. Mother and I are a part of that continuing revelation, pointing you at this way you can discover so much for yourselves, right within yourselves.

Now: if this lesson has stirred up any reflections within you, let’s have a look at them.

Student: Father Michael, thank You for Your lessons and for Your support in my life, and Mother also, and all the other Beings involved. Just when I think I have a handle on something, You or Mother say something that expands it quite a bit, which is fine.

I don’t understand what You mean by relinquishing yourself so you don’t color the next moment. I can’t quite remember exactly what You said. I’m thinking when I leave here tonight I have a ways to go home, and I’ve been doing it pretty much the same way for almost two years. I know all the twists and turns, and all the speed limits of the road. I don’t think that’s what You’re talking about, but I’m not sure what You’re talking about. Could You clarify about being in the moment, or relinquishing yourself, especially when you’re dealing with someone else--relinquishing myself so I can be there for them in the moment?

(Relinquishing oneself)

MICHAEL: Yes, My son, you recall the lessons where We pretty much defined your ego as simply your own sense of yourself, and yet how this changing, shifting, living sense of yourself is only a tiny fraction of who you fully are? How do you contact and use this greater part of yourself? An oriental philosopher/painter put this quest as: after painting bamboo for many years, I finally, simply become the bamboo, and let it paint itself.

Student: Yes--I understand that, I think.

Michael: Well, think about doing something not quite so much fun. There you are at the kitchen sink, washing dishes, highly aware of yourself doing something you would rather not. Yet the dishes get dirty; they’re piling up in the sink; they need washed. How do you get out of this drudgery?

I suggest that seeing yourself having to do this onerous, boring chore—as a concept--stands in the way of having fun washing the particular dish in your hand right now. That particular little grease spot, that piece of stuck-on mashed potatoes never happened before. The pattern of bubbles in the soapsuds is unique to this moment. You are not who you ever were before, for you too are changing. Yet your notions of yourself standing there suffering some interminable boredom gets in the way of all these perceptions, fills your consciousness—all this drudgery you have in mind. This monumental self-pity… (Michael chuckles) is what you have to relinquish in order to have fun washing the dishes.

With respect to being with another person, you own ego, your own sense of yourself, overlaid with pretensions of who you want to be, or various personas you want them to think you are; all this fills your consciousness with yourself, so who and what they are is greatly diminished. You are clinging to some repetitive former reality like going down the road looking in a rearview mirror of the past, and missing to a large degree what is new in your company. This can become such a social convention that both partners end up mutually creating for each other a bubble of familiarity, of nothing happening. This is most obvious where you have a group of very excited people all talking at once, everybody expressing themselves, but no one listening: no communication: nothing being exchanged. Mother mentioned last week it is such a blessing, such spiritual fragrance when a person has the nerve, the insight, and the wisdom to let go their affectations and pretensions and stand naked, letting their soul shine forth directly, un-self-consciously, so they can really listen, really take in another person. This way you can tease someone out of the social convention of nothing happening—same old, same old, and step into a marvelous, renewable reality—God’s creation—something unique and new coming down every moment like a pouring rain. Does this answer your question, My son?

Student: It clears it up a lot. I feel I’m afraid of opening up to people because they’ll find out who I am, and won’t like it. But I see that that is just a projection and not a reality—except in my reality. I look forward to standing in front of someone naked in spirit—as You say; and see what happens.

MICHAEL: Yes, My son, this is the faith it takes to extend yourself, to put yourself out there devoid of specific expectations, open to whatever happens, trusting in your own innate ability to accept, to create, to adapt, to grow to meet the challenge. You begin to see how your ego--helpful as this sense of yourself often is--can hide the greater reality of your soul—from another, or even from both of you. What a precious gift this is to present instead. Think of those people you deem to have a lot of soul. What is it about them that is so beautiful, so appealing, so valuable? Let this shine forth, as it will do when you just forget yourself. Become interested in them. Change your focus and concentration. Let go the social conventions of familiar personas bouncing off each other.

So tonight I suggest, on your way home, you feel for a sense of this particular night, not last week, or all those weeks before, but tonight—going home. Play with it. See if you can actually, physically perceive how that road tonight has never been traveled on before. You’ll find this is where the fun is.

Student: Thank You, Father—a very interesting challenge, creating a new road—a new experience of the road: a new experience of myself.

(Escaping sentimentality; finding a spontaneous, present reality)

MICHAEL: You can actually do this. Try it with some old, familiar piece of music. Feel for the…dimension--if you will, of hearing it for the first time. I’m talking about a qualitative enhancement of the music, a real exercise in suspending your expectations, your familiarity with what’s coming next. Try this. See if you can develop it as a conscious ability. It’s very similar to stillness. Instead of just hearing/re-experiencing mostly your sentimental memories of the music, you will be approaching the fullness of a spontaneous present reality by doing so. This ability has enormous potential to change your day to day life.

Student: I will do that, Father. Thank You.

MICHAEL: You’re welcome, My son. You can find that ability right along the line of feeling and experiencing My peace, which is also ever new. Student: Yes, Michael. I was thinking how people see through their filters of race and social status—especially in this county. I’m up against that in the people I work for, and come across. Sometimes it’s hard to deal with, if I feel less because I’m just a gardener. It’s not considered high status—I don’t make a lot of money. It seems certain doors are closed to me in terms of friendships or other relationships. So I feel that in my soul, even if I know better. I know there’s more to do with them—who these people are.

So that’s one thing. Secondly, what You talked about tonight reminded me of a friend who says she always has trouble connecting with the Father—His spirit, because of the way she was brought up. So I wanted to help her experience herself, her own spirit; and afterwards I had the idea that this was what I wanted to do with my life. I want to help people become re-acquainted with themselves. That feels certain within me. So what You talked about is a way of doing that. If I relinquish myself of my agendas, of how I see a person, so I can reflect back to them their own connection with spirit.

(Be a person, not a thing, and help others do the same)

MICHAEL: Well D, let’s see if we can kill two birds with one stone. (laughter—Yes, they are related) Yes, we can put part one and part two together. You have the right orientation of how not to buy into other people’s stereotypes of you. Here you are escaping a subtle net they try to throw over you, first by not seeing yourself as they see you—and this is largely a matter of forgiveness. Forgive them for this may be to a large degree unconscious—they know not what they’re doing. Put a little more effort in being a person to them. Offer a bit of your personal life, some interest or hobby. In other words, give them something of yourself you think they might be interested in.

The other thing is to help them escape their own persona, without being too intrusive. This takes a knack. There’s a way to go about offering to be interested in something personal about them, so they too escape being only a thing—an employer. You’re looking for a genuine interpersonal kind of relationship. And I want to assure you this is, unfortunately, very widespread throughout the whole world. Every society, every culture has these social pretensions and classes. No matter how much certain political theorists tried to create classless communities, communes, communism; it never worked. Even the attempts to have everyone dress the same, like in a futuristic movie where everybody wears the same coveralls with a big V on the front—you know what I mean… (Yes…) it didn’t work. It goes against the essential reality of everyone’s individual uniqueness.

So offer a little bit of yourself, and offer to be interested in a bit of them too. And forgive them. You might even pity those who are so hampered or limited by their own ego status.

For those of your friends who are disbeliever’s through being jaded, or cynical, or disillusioned--disappointed; just being who you are, just sharing with them your enthusiasm, and your interests, and curiosities, your own sense of mystery: these are all facets of the spiritual fragrance with which you entice them out of themselves. I think you already know that this is avoiding like the plague any kind of missionary zeal, which only turns folks off. Just being a healthy, vibrant, curious example of someone who has a true religion—a real, direct connection with God—is always what convinces. Ultimately, nothing else really does. This is what is operating in any kind of a conversion where folks are encouraged to try, one more time, to have faith—themselves.

Student: Yeah. What I said to my friend yesterday was, I wanted to help, and I would pray for her, but there are four billion ways to God, and you have your own unique way, your own connection. I can only support you and offer my own guidance, my own path—what works for me. So I’m not indoctrinating her in how I do things; I don’t even do that for myself.

MICHAEL: This is where you can offer a means, call it stillness, or meditation, or reflection, or wondering—curiosity, relaxing. You just offer these as what works for you, so if she has some little fingertip grip on something to do--which is, as you’ve noticed, what We offer you—neither you nor I can anticipate what she will find. That’s the point of it all. So We share with you how, from a certain viewpoint, this can seem very strange, which is why so much of humankind has missed this simple exercise. Just to sit down and reflect is far too simple for so many—just to set aside part of your day, and relax, let what thoughts come that may--and stick with it--until something begins to emerge out of this singular activity.

Student: When You say we can’t know what we will find, that’s where the faith is. But we know that whatever we find will be profound, and will be for our good.

(Initial challenges of stillness)

MICHAEL: Yes. But ironically, this is why meditation, or stillness seems so pointless to some folks: why should I sit down and do something when I deliberately can’t know what’s going to happen? It brings all their general anxieties into crystallization, and they don’t realize this is also part of the point: so they can deal with them—consciously. Other times it can precipitate so many good ideas of things to do, their impatience gets the best of them after a few minutes and off they go to do something. Just being still is directly thwarting your animal impulses to be busy—or asleep. To do nothing—highly consciously—brings you immediately face to face with your animal heritage. To an animal this represents a kind of death, or paralysis. You might think of some poor animal with a broken back trying desperately, highly consciously, to move, yet unable to do so. This is what stillness represents to that aspect of your being. And to your normal state of consciousness in which you are identifying with the current thought passing through your mind, to detach from thoughts seems impossible.

Student: There’s even a fear of loosing my identity; and then who am I--in a negative sense? And there’s a greater, deeper fear of annihilation, of not even existing.

MICHAEL: Yes, My son. This is the requirement of faith, for as your Oriental philosophies say: Netti, Netti—you discover you are: Not this, Not that. This is a simultaneous process of paring away all the heretofore unconscious pretensions and personas, to let your soul come forth. You get through all your familiar ideas of past experiences to get back to the real events.

Student: I remember what my friend said to me yesterday, that because she was not properly parented—definitely not mothered—she never knew what the real thing was. So she has no...guideposts, no guidance. Just like someone brought up in a house with no happiness, how does one know what happiness is?

MICHAEL: This is essentially a lack of confidence in her own creativity, thinking that everything has to come out of the past, and cannot be spontaneously generated from the depths of her own personality, her own spirit.

Student: That’s what I feel is the fear of letting go of one’s identity—of that past. It’s really insurmountable—to her.

MICHAEL: Yet she has been surrounded her whole life with thousands of examples of motherhood. These are in her soul, if she could only tap into them. Strange as it may seem, stillness takes nerve, determination, faith, persistence. These become real abilities you only get by exercising them.

(Turn your orientation from the past to the future)

If you review Our answers to questions over the years, one thread connecting them is Our encouraging folks to turn about and open themselves to the future, orient themselves this way, not with specific expectations from the past, but just with enthusiasm and hopefulness. They need to trust in their own abilities and adaptability’s, and in God’s creativity renewing the universe moment by moment. With others, the more you can be this new phenomena, an unanticipated, spontaneous person right in the face of their inability to be so themselves, what a precious gift you’re offering them. Don’t forget to tease.

Student: Well, I do, do that. (both laugh) There seems to be so many "healers" out there, in this area, of various qualities and intentions, I sometimes wonder if they don’t get caught up in these labels, instead of just…healing.

MICHAEL: I think you are sensing here a kind of subtle one-ups-manship where there is an implicit attitude of, "I’m healthier, or more healed than you." There could also be a refusal to enter a relationship unless one has this advantage: I’m the healer and you are the one in need of healing. Whereas there can be a greater overall health if one offers to be a spiritual equal; and both learn. Otherwise this is just another "game"—as you say--that people play.

Think of the spiritual generosity in seeing people as not needing you. (Say that again?…) This is an offer of equality in your perception of not seeing people as being so needy. You avoid looking about and seeing everyone desperately needing—you. (And here’s my card…{both laugh}) Exactly. And even this is not to say there are not genuine healers who do offer their services for pay, right up front.

Student: I just wonder, with respect to all these ministers and self-proclaimed spiritual persons, how much of that is God-inspired?—or ego motivated? Sometimes people do have a huge experience of glimpsing God’s reality, and want to heal the world.

MICHAEL: It runs the full spectrum from genuine healers who may be going about doing this inadvertently, to those on the other extreme who are deliberately, consciously wounding others, creating the need for their own ministrations for sale. They may be tearing folks down by offering to accept them only if they become dependant. These are the founders of what you call cults, that exist to enslave other folks to their own perverted wills. These are the most direct representatives of Lucifer and Caligastia—Their true disciples, capable of the most horrific obscenities.

The true teachers and healers are more than delighted when their students surpass them and outgrow the need for them.

Well, My sons: the time grows late. So if it’s OK with you, we’ll bring this to a close this evening.

Student: OK, but if You were not just transmitting through J, but were here in all Your glory, we would stay here all night. (much laughter)

(Michael’s omnipresence)

MICHAEL: My sons, I am here all night, for you: any time, any place. This is My joy too. (Thank You, Michael. Thank You, Father) You are so welcome. I hope I’ve given you a few more hints and examples of how to find, and be in My peace. Good evening.

END