Mind & Spirit: Meaning & Value

Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, on this first evening in summer we pray for your help and your guidance. Help us open our minds and our hearts to feel and register the meaning in your words. We know you are right inside us, actually a part of us along with our Father. Yet at the same time our free will is literally your creation. It was your idea, once upon a time, to endow your children with free will, and so we acknowledge too that what we receive is so much our own choice. It’s what we let into ourselves, and how we let it affect us. In this we are doubly thankful, not only that we have your presence as part of us, but also we have this extra gift of yours, our own free will and our sense of being our own person. For all these gifts we do thank you. Amen.

Michael: Good evening, this is Michael. Mother Spirit and I are warmly accepting your prayers and your devotion; and we definitely know our Father feels the same way about all his children. He too is so much a part of you, so much a part of your very thought processes--as you say, spiritualizing your everyday life, hopefully giving you this feeling of an extra dimension beyond what your physical senses can tell you.

There is a whole spirit component--actually endless, endless spiritual dimensions--all around you and part of you, part of your universe situation. Though you will wait upon the next several phases of your eternal life to register these dimensions more directly, more succinctly, now your own intuition--as you say, your own gut feelings--sometimes can give you a sense of the overall situation. This gives you that wonderful sense of humility, of being in touch with something so much greater than you, that is--so surprisingly!--devoted to you. Spirit is not only part of you with your feelings of free will and choice, it is this sense within you, my children, that is your truest guideline into the future. For when all else is equal you move in the direction of freedom, you move in the direction of greater choice in the future. This is a very sure thing you can count on, this evaluation, this spiritual evaluation of greater freedom.

To some who have more of a sense, not of freedom but of license, of just doing whatever occurs to them, this is a paradox or a direct contradiction. Yet as you get a greater sense of humility, a greater sense of tuning in to that which is surrounding you and encompassing you--literally spiritual law, God’s law, God’s will--this leads to ever greater individual freedom. This is so obviously true in the physical realm where the more you understand the immutable, absolute Laws of Nature, the greater freedom you have in going along with them and avoiding injury, avoiding dead ends because you wanted to do something that is literally physically impossible. Think of the enormous freedom the human race has achieved over the centuries, the deeper it understood Natural Law.

The same is true in a different dimension. In terms of the more mutable laws of psychology, all the different aspects of your minds, your human mentality; the greater understanding you can have of each other in this realm means the greater cooperation, the greater freedom you can allow each other. The same is true in the spiritual realm. The more you can understand and go along with God’s will, with the laws of value, the greater meaning and understanding--and just the overall experience of life--you can have, because you’re not, in a sense, banging your head up against some spiritual impossibility, say, trying for ever greater value and power in your own life at the expense of others. You can avoid dead ends like this that only serve to isolate you and cut you off from the spiritual community, especially including your fellows.

So freedom is a potential of yours, not something that you are automatically given as are your physical bodies. Yet it is something that is endlessly developable, if you will. You can keep developing and growing your own individual freedom indefinitely. In an ultimate sense, after perhaps millions of years of growth and development in experience out there in the universe, your will can be ever closer to God’s will, the will of everything that is. Now you can be so much more attuned to not only your own smaller situation, you might even say the things of your planet, Urantia, but after you have dozens and then hundreds of worlds--natural worlds and architectural spheres—and literally hundreds of thousands of friends of all different orders of beings; when you have all this under your belt you can be so much more in tune with God’s will that extends over all this.

So it’s not a paradox. It’s not an oxymoron. As you come closer to a great immutable way of things, you actually have greater freedom. It’s real. It’s something you can experience. And it is truly the way you can feel your way forward into the future. Because if God’s will is that you grow in your freedom, this gives you your own inner sense of which way to go.

Just be wise, my dears, on those truly great decisions you have to make. Meditate and open yourselves to all that spirit has to give you, all the guidance that we can provide. And then reflect. Enjoy this two-hundred-percent-ness of life where you not only have your life as you’re living it moment to moment, but you can reflect on it, understand it. Let yourselves yearn for this deeper understanding of why something happened to you; of what you chose to do; or perhaps even refused to choose: and how did these work out? This is the reflection on not only on your freedom, but what did you choose, and how did that work out? Reflection: this is how you grow towards ever greater freedom by accepting responsibility, and growing your ability to respond.

Michael: You’re welcome, my daughter. I wanted to kind-of approach head-on what is to some folks a paradox, or an impossibility: that by opening yourself and tuning in to something greater than yourself--which from one angle would be a kind of absolute determinism, almost like fatalism: it’s actually the opposite. It’s a way of growing your freedom. So thank you for your thanks, my daughter. Be in my peace.

Student: Michael, I have a question, and I don’t know that there is a blanket answer, but the question is: what can we . . . From reading transcripts, there’s a seeming urgency, a building momentum about the Magisterial Mission and your--what seems to be--imminent return. What can we do? Perhaps this is answered case by case, but like I say, if there’s a blanket answer, I guess I’m asking the blanket question. What can we do to help prepare for your arrival?

Michael: My son, to throw the blanket off and see an individual person lying there, you know, under the covers?--it’s actually the same answer because the universal blanket, in a sense, covers all. The blanket thing is for each individual to live their life as fully as they can. In other words, at the same time you can be full of anticipation and expectations, those very expectations can hold you back. It’s like you’re waiting for something to happen, waiting for something to show you which way to go, when most of that, actually, as I said earlier this evening, is right inside you.

It’s by opening yourself up and asking, sincerely: Dear Father, what should I do next? What leads to more life? What leads to greater freedom? Help me feel my way along so I can grow in every dimension: grow physically and keep up with this body of mine and give it what it needs--the nourishment, the exercise, the good hard work, the good rest and sleep.

How can I constantly expand my mind? How can I open it to ever greater things? If I have a whole series of beliefs that I’ve evolved over the years, how can I lay that on the line and really be open to something that challenges it, that is almost antithetical to what I believe? How much do I know that? How much am I welcoming that which is almost contrary to what I’ve evolved?

And spiritually, how can I literally increase the value of my life? How can I feel ever more deeply the value in a situation, the value of another person to me? How can I feel and realize my value to another?”

This, my son, is how you prepare for anything, any contingency to come, whether it be some wonderful thing or even some terrible tragedy that might befall you. This is your preparation by living every moment of your life as fully as you can. Does that make sense?

Michael: You’re involved in an enormous undertaking. To be honest with you, your greatest preparation for anything that may come is developing a really heartfelt, wonderful, meaningful ability to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in. This is what freedom is all about. This is what your ability-to-respond is all about. And so if once upon some time to come these greater spiritual things do happen, things that are totally, in a sense, beyond your control, this is how you are ready. You live ready. But I admit this is a great challenge that will always be with you: how do you make the most--for yourself and everyone--of what you’ve been given?

Michael: Do you see what I mean, my son? You’re not dependent upon this or that happening. You’re literally developing the ability to make the most of whatever it is. And that, I admit, is a rather broad blanket.

Michael: Well, my beloved children, if there are no further comments or questions this evening, let me close by once again reminding you, even teasing you, with the supreme fact that while you are definitely an economical being--you have a very limited, circumscribed, physical circumstance with these bodies of yours that need a certain amount of food, shelter, clothing; all the things that definitely tie you into the economical realm, the realm of scarcity, the realm of choice between this and that--let me remind you and tease with the fact that in the mental realm you are infinitely expandable.

And you will, first of all, just in your knowledge--your ability to store experience, which is essentially what knowledge is. And then there are all the thousand and one ways you correlate all these unique personal experiences into understanding. It’s how you can compare your experience and understanding with all the others you meet, to come up with some more universal truths. There’s no end to this, on out into those millions of years facing you in the future: and still, always, always just beginning. There you are with your beginner’s mind.

The same is true for the spiritual realm of value. Don’t be afraid when your life and those around you--those very precious family and friends with their own limitations, their own mortality, their own being susceptible to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, all the terrible things that can happen to people where your own sons and daughters are like hostages to fortune: don’t be afraid of this value that continues to grow. This value you put upon yourself. This value you discover in others and all the situations to come. Don’t be afraid of this value; let it grow.

You’ll discover in time, with faith, this is your true bedrock. The realm of spirit, though so ephemeral-seeming at times to you now, this is essentially what you are. You are this personal being, created by God for this endless experience, for this endless growth of understanding and contact with beings who will give you an ever deeper sense and experience of value.

So you are this expanding nodule of meaning and value, my children. This is your true essence. This is your true purpose for life. Mother Spirit and I are delighted to remind you of this. It’s something you can hold close to your heart through your trying times. It’s something you can even forgive God for the very situations that may be causing you pain and grief and sorrow. You can see the necessity for these possibilities, as well as your freedom, to give meaning and value to your life.

This is not easy, but the difficulty extends the dimensions of what things mean and what things are worth. You, and the others, and the whole situation you find yourself in: these are gifts of our Father. They are truly, truly unfathomable, though fathoming these dimensions of meaning and value will occupy and entertain you forever.

And so, Father, we do thank you for this. Even in the midst of pain and suffering, and not only what we ourselves experience, but what we are called upon to witness in those about us: we do thank you for your transcendent wisdom.


				*Mind & Spirit: Meaning & Value*