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This was originally posted on 6/17/08. Thanks to the hard work of CHERYL for making this possible so quickly! Based on the combined videos of my recorder and Cheryl's phone, we were able to transcribe the session as best we could for your reference and archiving. A document version is attached to this post for your convenience, as well. I have taken the liberty to add or change a very few parts of the session that just did not flow well or make much sense. The spoken word is so different from the written word, so I apologize for the meandering way I channel vocally. I tried to clean it up a bit here. I also forgot to bring up after the session that I KNEW something was mis-channeled; that something had come through that was misinformation, or a mistake, but not until I saw the video did I realize what it was. I've corrected it in this transcript, but it was when Michael was giving examples relating the Goals to the Alive Factors and they related Server/Change to Submission... it should have been Re-evaluation. Nothing huge, but it was still some bad channeling I wanted to correct. I am posting the fairly raw transcript here before posting publicly because I just wanted you to have it asap. I will post it publicly later this week. Enjoy! MICHAEL SPEAKS Mid-Atlantic Region Gathering June 14th, 2008 VIDEO/AUDIO TRANSCRIPT Courtesy of OceanCheryl MICHAEL: We are here, and hello to each of you. Please bear with us as we come through because it takes a little bit of time for us to get a smooth flow going through Troy, but it should be cleared up as we progress. So again, hello to all of you. We understand from Troy that the question posed to us, or the topic posed to us, is that of differentiating between "living your life," and "being Alive." And as with a great many words in our system, in our philosophy, there are nuances that are worth exploring, and this would be one of them: the difference between "living your life" and "being alive." And as with several parts of our teaching, we can put it into a system that can be used by you as a reference so that what we share with you today is within reach of your daily living. And as with a great amount of our teaching, it may or may not seem unfamiliar to you. For most of you it will feel rather familiar, as we put it into a system of seven frames of reference. So first we will define what we would have as the definitions for "living your life" and "being alive." We could say that "living your life" is simply maneuvering through your days in reaction to stimulation. When you are simply living your life, and we are saying this not in a way that is to describe it as "less than" or unappealing, or bad; it is simply a different way of living, and it is a very common way of living, but when you are simply living your life, you are living in states of reaction, for the most part, through being stimulated by events, people, or things. Your choices become less empowering, and more towards the side that we described as reaction, more passive. You react to things that happen in your life and you build upon this. What can happen as you live your life is that you build a foundation based on these things, and then it is very difficult to get out of those patterns. So what we will describe to you as ways "to be Alive" are very simple redirections in your day--to--day living, so that maybe you can make a change that you would prefer. Because while it is quite fine to live your life based in reactions and stimulation, it can get tiring. It can be difficult. And if you don't prefer those, there are other options for you to choose. To "be Alive," then, may be obvious to you in that your day-to-day living would just be a matter of conscious choosing. What you do with your day is your choice. How you respond to the events, and people and things in your life is a matter of response, not reaction. You are present in those experiences, and so you are "Alive." You are experiencing; you are not avoiding. If you are afraid, you embrace that fear as a form of information, and you do not let it dictate your choices for you. So a very simple way of defining "being Alive" is simply being able to consciously make your choices in a direction that you would prefer. Now what we'll do is describe some areas that we feel need to be in place to understand the difference between living and being alive. And the first place we'll start is with the concept of Change. In order for you to feel Alive, to be Alive, change is an important part of existence. It is an important part of being on the physical plane, or on any plane for that matter. Things change. To be alive is to be open to this change, to allow the change, to make an effort to do things differently than what you have been doing, if things are not working. So in order to be alive, to feel alive, allowing for making the effort for change can go a long way, a lot farther than you might have anticipated. When change happens TO you in a way that seems like it is an imposition, you still have the ability in those moments to make conscious choices in those matters, to respond to the change rather than to react to it. But what most of the students that we know do in order to feel alive, which in reality is simply living, is do the counterpart of Change, which is Crisis. In order to feel alive, many of you create, find, attract crisis situations into your life on a regular basis, and this keeps you feeling alive. Whether you like that idea or not, it is an exciting prospect for Essence to have the sense of being alive, whether it is in that form or in the other form, whether it's in crisis, or in active change, or conscious change. But many of you default to allowing life to change only during moments of crisis. As we said at the beginning, there is nothing wrong or bad in that, but it does help you to look at the spectrum of your days in your life to see whether you're living from a matter of default, where crisis is what propels you forward in your life, or whether you are at least countering that with active efforts to make change and conscious choices as a form of direction. As we go through these, if you feel you would like to make a comment or ask a question, feel free to do so. The next area that we feel brings an aliveness to you, to your life, is Beauty. And by this, we mean the ability to look at your life and see the bigger picture, to be able to look at your patterns of existence and find the beauty in them, to be able to understand where you are in relation to your past, and your anticipations of the future. Seeing your life as a tapestry that was created by you, and not just imposed on you. Keeping in mind that the more active your choices are, the more likely your life will look a little prettier, or beautiful, than those who are a little more passive in choices, and living from states of reaction. Often, when living from that state, life doesn't look as beautiful. But at any moment you can shift your perception to find the Beauty by looking at the patterns, looking at what has led up to where you are, and making your active choices from there. This does not just include the bigger picture of your life, but the bigger picture of other people's lives, looking at the beauty in the world as it is, regardless of war, regardless of poverty, regardless of health issues. This does not mean you do not care, but that you find a way to see the beauty, and this can be tough for many of our students, to find a way to see the beauty in the hardships that some or many fragments endure for a lifetime. And by beauty we do not mean that you are literally seeing something pretty, but finding an appreciation for the awe in how it's all ultimately working. When you are not able to make your conscious choices, and live your day--to--day state from a place of being alive, then this particular area that we refer to as "finding the Beauty in life" defaults to Chaos. And this is where you start to break down the patterns that are in your life into what could be termed ugliness, or confusion, feeling as if life is happening TO you, instead of FROM you in your day-to-day living. When you have defaulted to reaction and stimulation, it looks like life is a mess. It looks like the world is a mess, or that others are a mess. Acknowledging that you may not grasp the bigger picture is the first step towards being able to see the bigger picture. Allowing room though, in your consciousness, to trust that you are part of a pattern that you have created, or a part of a pattern that you are interpreting from your experiences, can help you then to move more towards seeing the beauty, and feeling alive again. But most of you know what we are speaking of: where you look at the world and think that it has more symptoms of chaos than beauty. But the truth is that there is beauty in any pattern, when you look at it from a wide enough perspective. The next area that we feel might contribute to your understanding of what it means to be alive is to choose and create Freedom; in your day-to-day living. Each of you requires a certain amount of Freedom for you to feel alive. If that freedom becomes restricted, it can feel unpleasant. This freedom applies to many levels of you, of course, your spiritual freedom, your intellectual freedom, your emotional freedom, and your physical freedom. Understanding what it means for you to be free, or to have a free amount of choice in your day-to-day living, is important. But what many of you do is fall to the default of freedom, and experience Boredom. Because with freedom... most of our students have come to learn that with freedom comes a need for structure. They go hand in hand; they are not mutually exclusive. With freedom comes a sense of responsibility, a sense of discipline. When most fragments start to create a certain amount of freedom within the life, it becomes terrifying, because then issues of responsibility come into play. Issues of discipline, self--discipline (which simply means a heightened awareness of your choice making process) comes into play, and then what you do is you fall into the default structures, which we could describe as routines, repetitive patterns, or Boredom. You check out, and you let life fall into its own shape or a momentum that you've already started, and this can make you feel less alive. In order to break that you simply need to define what it means for you to feel free in your day-to-day living, and then allow yourself the permission to create the structure required for that freedom to be in place. We will go through each of these quickly, but revisit them if you have questions at the end. The next area that we would describe as needing to be in place for you to feel alive is Love. This may seem obvious, but we are not talking about sentimental attachments, we are talking about true embrace, true intimacy, being able to relate, to resonate to something beyond yourself, and allowing that resonance to come to you from other sources. When we are speaking of Love in this context we are talking about your relationships, your connections, to others... your embrace of differences, your embrace of self. What most of you do as a way to feel alive in your day-to-day living is to sort this experience and reduce it down to what we would describe as Contrast, or comparisons. So in order to feel loved, you compare yourself. You stimulate yourself with the idea of who is better and who is worse, how you are better and how you are worse. And then you feel as if you have an idea of what's lovable and what's not lovable. This, of course, inherently divides you from parts of your life, parts of yourself, other people, and it can become quite debilitating when you are constantly comparing. The next area that we would describe as being needed in place for you to feel alive is Truth. And by this we mean that you have a true form of communication happening in your life; that you are able to listen. That you actually take a moment to comprehend your exchanges, your interactions, what's happening in your life. To look at your perspectives more closely, rather than dismissing them. Because we have seen many students decide what is true without examining that decision. And quite often, when you do not like what you see as the truth, you start to break down your circles of communication, so that you can keep the truth that you have decided is true, without getting feedback to contradict it. So the default version of truth, the default that many of you resort to as a form of feeling stimulated, is to simply return to Entertainment. And we call this Entertainment because it is quite often a form of escape. It is a form of checking out from the reality of Truth into places that either distract you from the truth, or help you to put into place a truth that you find more appealing. It could also be described as lying. But in your day-to-day living, so that you could see where your default behavior falls, entertainment could be the easiest way to describe this. This does not mean that if you enjoy entertainment that you are escaping, but that in terms of being stimulated versus being alive, or feeling alive, many of you substitute Entertainment as a form of reality, as a form of truth, as a form of communication. In fact many of you will use entertainment as a medium for communication with others, so that you can talk about TV shows and the latest movie, without having to talk about what is happening in your life. Even the news could be deemed a form of entertainment that distracts you from the truth of your life, and the truth of reality, because what you see on the news does not reflect the entirety of reality. The next area that we would describe as needing to be in place for you to feel alive is to have a Vision. It is very important for people to feel as if they have a Vision of where things could go, possibilities, potentials, dreams if you will, although we wouldn't particularly leave it as just dreams... but a Vision. And by this we mean that you are able to see all the parts of your life and put it together in a way that it works for you as a resource for making happen what you want to happen next. So having vision, having clear vision, can help you to feel alive. What many of you do instead is default to one of the most destructive words that we have seen in language, which is Hope. And as many were shocked by our take on the word Faith, we would also put together similar responses to the word Hope. Many of you default to a form of Hope that things will get better, you Hope that someone will love you, you Hope that you can do what you want to do. Hope is a disengaged form of creating your life. It is a presumption that something else is going to make things better. It's a presumption that life happens TO you, and not FROM you. And the truth is, that it happens in both directions, but when you resort simply to Hope, you've left out your part. What we would suggest for some of you who use the word Hope is to move into a more empowering way of looking at your future, and possibly use the word Trust. We've always encouraged the word "Trust" because this is based on experience; it's based on its being time-tested, and it's personal. And we use the word Trust to describe the fact that you have had similar experiences or patterns in the past and you have survived them. You have made it through. So it is okay to trust that you will make it through again. This is more of an interactive approach to living your life; a more Alive approach, rather than simply sitting back and "hoping for the best." The last area that we would describe as needing to be in place for your sense of being alive is Spirit. Although there are many who would claim to be atheists, or rejecting of concepts of non-physical worlds, that does not need to be in place for a person to have Spirit in the life. By Spirit we mean that you recognize yourself as a part of something bigger, that you recognize yourself in others, as part of being a dynamic that, at this point, is not quite fully understood. It is a sort of surrender to the magnitude of the force that IS life. It is an embrace of the concept that, however much you would like to understand life, people, God, Essence, us, that it is truly, at this point, not completely able to be concluded in concept. So it could be said that to have Spirit in place is to have a sense of open consciousness beyond your personal philosophies. What many of you do (and we are going to make this more specific to our students) is that you'll default to a need for simple stimulation as you live your day-to-day [life], and you resort to what we would describe as the Supernatural. It must be exciting. There must be something supernatural, paranormal, and this is where you get your sense of Spirit, from this place; this playful, if you will, place of approaching Spirit. And as we said at the beginning, this is not bad. It is not a negative thing. But if you reduce the concept of Spirit, if you reduce the concept of your being a part of a bigger source, to the Supernatural, then you are constantly looking for proof, for something that we, at this point, have not seen capable of being proven. This does not mean that you cannot have your personal experience that allows you to validate your experiences; this is not what we are saying at all, but looking for proof of Spirit is quite often a failure, because they are very different dimensions of experience. So allowing room in your day-to-day life for Spirit, for the existing philosophies and perspectives and ideas and ideals, can allow you to feel more alive rather than simply living by looking for proof of Spirit around you. And we realize that we trudged our way through these concepts through our channel, but we will pause here before going into other layers of it to ask you if you have any questions regarding it. And if not, then we may have questions for you. NICK: I have a question. The concept of freedom for people who seem to really have a strong need for freedom in their lives, that's like a recurring theme beneath the freedom, do they tend to also have, or to fall back on, addictions? MICHAEL: Addictions can fall into place for most of these areas. It's not really exclusive to one or another. We are looking to see if there is anything that stands out, but we would have to say that it is not exclusive to the area of freedom, but that the type of addiction that might occur is usually specific to an area, of one of these areas. So if a person has a strong need for freedom and then falls into addiction, that may be a way for them to be finding structure. The addiction forces them into positions where others may intervene to create the structure, and redirect them into a way that brings them back to a place of responsibility and personal choice. So we can't say that it is exclusive to any area. Other addictions may be related to other areas that we could give examples for if there is a necessity for that. If not, does this answer your question? NICK: Yes. MICHAEL: Next question, if there are any. We will give you a moment to think it through. We don't want to put everybody on the spot. GLENN: I am curious to know, what would be the best method to determine how true our Truth is, or whether we are establishing a false Truth and defending that, or actually using a right method of finding Truth. MICHAEL: We would say that if you are bringing a sense of Truth to your days, then that sense of Truth needs no defense. That sense of Truth needs no escape. It need not be imposed. When a person has created a Truth, or has discovered a Truth, or has found an alignment with the Truth, or is sharing a Truth, there is simply no need for it to be defended. That is the clearest and easiest way that we can respond to that question. It does not mean that you have concluded the Truth, but that there is no need for you to protect it. There is no need for another person to accept it. There is no need for another person to understand it. That it is simply your Truth. That does not mean that it is going to be an ultimate Truth, because it's very difficult, as you know from working with our material, that there are various levels of Truth, and most of the time you are going to be dealing with personal Truths, which are not always going to be the same as everyone's around you. Personal Truths are simply that, your personal truths, but you can determine whether these are personal truths that are bringing you a sense of aliveness versus simply living, if you can ask the question, "Do I defend these or do I hide them?" And if you hide them or defend them, or avoid, or escape, then you are probably creating a deceitful approach to your life. You are simply moving into lies and entertainment. Do you understand? GLENN: Yes. MICHAEL: Any other questions? Well, what we can do now is point out another layer of the information that you might find helpful in terms of your overleaves, so that if you look at your role, or your Essence, and your casting, and find which of these particular areas [of aliveness] they match up with, which we'll get into in a moment, it can give you an idea of areas where you tend to default, and where you may have challenges in terms of simply living or being alive. The Servers or Server--cast fragments may have the most difficulty with Change, and defaulting to Crisis. It is very fruitful for many Servers or Server--cast fragments to feel as if they are saving the day, as if there is something being rescued, or challenging the resources of a Server to make things better, and so it can default to Crisis. Actively making choices for Change are inherent qualities for the Server because they CAN make things better, by their own definitions, but quite often this is prompted by Crisis situations. (note: Here Sandy has a fit of coughing, and Server Sheryl goes to get her a bottle of water, saying "here I am, jumping up again" as if to illustrate the point on cue. Michael smiles.) The Artisans or Artisan-cast among you may find Beauty as a form of strength, but also having difficulty with issues of chaos and overwhelm, and trying to control the patterns of life rather than observing and finding the Beauty in them. As we go through these, if you are of the roles, or the casting, you are welcome to chime in if these are resonating with you, or making sense to you, and you are welcome to ask for further details. The Warriors, or those who are Warrior cast, can have the strengths of providing Freedom through structure, but also defaulting to boredom, routine, and confinement. The Scholars or the Scholar-cast fragments resonate to the issues of Love, and for those of you who are Scholars or who know of Scholars, also know that there is a great deal of struggle with the issue of comparison, or contrast, gauging, and anticipating. Sages and the Sage cast, of course, will resonate to the issues of Truth, and possibly default to Entertainment, as we discussed already. Lies, self-deceit... and we don't describe those words in a way that is particularly as harsh as they sound, but they can be quite subtle, and very simple; that you tell yourself one thing about yourself, and try to prove this to others, or that you tell yourself something about others, and constantly look for evidence of this, and so forth. SANDY: How about telling yourself something about yourself, and then trying to prove it to yourself? MICHAEL: What is your question? SANDY: I was just wondering if that would be similar to what you were saying: if that would be a latent tendency for the Sage, to try to make it true? MICHAEL: If you are trying to make it true? this is a question that's not quite as specific as we... SANDY: Let me try to rephrase. You were saying that the Sage might have a tendency to tell themselves something about themselves and try to make other people believe it, and what I was wondering about was if there is the same tendency to try to make yourself believe it. MICHAEL: Yes, but, we want to make it very clear that there is a difference between trying to better oneself in one's own eyes, or to grow into a concept that one might have about one's self, but usually, if it's in the case that we think you are describing, then the self-deceit is much more difficult to sustain. And so yes, it's true that you can decide what's true about yourself, and then try to convince yourself of this, but we are looking at that, and it's very rare that it doesn't include trying to get others to believe it, so that you can [believe it, too]. Do you understand? It's usually not an isolated event. It's very difficult to lie to yourself without trying to find somebody to mirror that lie back to you. So it could be said that yes, that's a possibility, but it's a little more difficult and usually does include other people. If not, then it goes toward seclusion, isolation, avoidance, and distractions. The Priests and Priest cast, of course, resonate with the Visionary strengths in the world, and in life. Being able to see the potential, bypass logic in order to see how everything can come together as a resource for an idea to be implemented... but they are also the ones who'll be the first to tell you to have faith and Hope, and to blindly move forward in your life and "hope for the best". And the Kings and King cast, of course, resonate with Spirit and often default to a distraction with the Supernatural. And we can go into more details for any of these if any of you would like. Keeping in mind that we are speaking in terms of your role and your casting. If you would like to see where in that system you might have some strengths and some defaults, you can also translate your profile by looking at which axis or role your overleaves resonate with, and interpret it from there... which would be too complicated to interpret for everybody, but if you have a great amount, let's say, under the Server [category/column/axis], that resonates with the Server qualities, then you would also want to look at the issues of Change, Crisis, etc. So did all of this make sense to you, and do you see the differentiation in your own lives? Do you see your defaults? Do you see your strengths? And do you see the options that you might have in your day-to-day living to bring about a greater sense of Aliveness versus Simply Living? You are welcome to speak up. We know we have some Sages here. GLENN: Wouldn't the Goal be a factor in determining this search for truth, for being Alive? MICHAEL: Yes, it can be a factor, as well. We simply point out the Role and the Casting because they will always have a great deal of influence during a life. The Goal, and all of the other overleaves, will have equal influence, but what you can do is take each within a context and say that, for instance, if you have a goal of Re-evaluation or Growth, that you might have issues of Change and Crisis, or Vision and Hope. (We can go through all of the overleaves, but we think you can reference this later.) But within the context of a Goal, we remind you that a Goal does not necessarily describe you, or what you are; it describes the quality of life that you are extracting from the life, that you are looking for within the life to experience, and so if you have a Goal of Re-evaluation, you may be more inclined towards issues of Change and Crises, because it brings about experiences that will lend more to your Goal. SANDY: Michael, I am a Sage with Scholar casting, and from the beginning as you were describing the two sides, in each one, in each pair, I identified with one or the other, and I thought "Oh! Oh yeah, that's what I do! But I'm not a Server, I wonder why?" Then you went to Artisan, and on one side I identified with one more than the other, and I went "ok, why am I doing this?" It's like, I have all of these. Could you help me understand that? I mean, I know what you said about following the numbers and all that, but... MICHAEL: We suggest to you the cross-referencing [by Role/Casting/Overleaves] simply as a way to explore further, but all of these [factors for Aliveness] are relevant to all of you. It is not one area or another, although you may find yourself relating to one more than the other, we tried to put together a picture here that is a picture of an individual experiencing the whole of life. And these seven areas seem... [to offer a picture of what needs to be in place for bring about an Aliveness to the whole of life for everyone.] (battery died on the video and ended mid-channeling) END PART ONE BEGIN PART TWO (taken from video recorded as quickly as possible from Cheryl's phone) MICHAEL: .....to you as a form of helping to bring about a sense of wholeness and aliveness, and ask you a few questions as a form of bringing about doing things a little differently than usual, contributing to your first area of change. So, what we would ask is if any of you would like to share an idea that has come to you while listening to this, that you feel you would like to implement, for instance, starting tomorrow. What first came to mind to you to implement differently? SANDY: Ok, I'll go first. I would have to say that the first thing that really occurred to me that I really wanted to make a part of my life is to stop reacting as though life is something that just happens to me. I would really like to have a more positive attitude towards being in charge and making things happen but at the same time the only things that gets me scared of that is that I also feel its important when things don't go the way I planned, to be able to make the best of what is, and it's hard for me to understand how to reconcile those two things. MICHAEL: How to reconcile trying to create what you want, but allow room for ... Well, this goes back to what we described as simply control. There is a great difference between creation and control. If you look at your days, if you look at your life as something that needs to be controlled, then it will become painful when you lose control, when it's not something that you can manage. But when you look at your life as something that you are creating, what you do instead is that you are contributing to your days, you are participating in your days. You are not dividing yourself from the process as a way to control it, but you are shaping it, you are, for lack of a better word, creating it. When things do not go the way that you would like them to go, it is much like... and we usually do not speak in such poetic ways, but it is much like planting a seed, and having that [plant grow and the] flower bloom, you don't know exactly which direction it's going to grow, or how it's going to grow, or its strength, but your ability to respond to the needs of the moment is a form of creation. But to control a plant's growth, which is possible, we are not going to say that it's not, and it may not be the best analogy, but to control it is a form of monitoring that can become exhausting, and is a matter of stimulation and reaction. If it's going this way or that way, there's a reaction to it, but creation is the ability to respond to the moment's needs, if necessary. And we will also remind you to throw in looking at the spectrum that we have described in these seven areas and see what might help you in your situation, and in this case it might be to remind yourself of the concept of Spirit, that there are parts of this that you are not going to understand, and we are speaking from the lowest levels to the highest levels of it, when we say Spirit. Sometimes you just won't understand. This doesn't mean you can't continue trying to, it doesn't mean that you don't try, that you have to resign from trying to understand, but sometimes you won't, and sometimes you won't like what you've begun to understand fully, and the concept of Spirit can help you to recognize that it is a part of being Alive, is allowing room for those unknown factors. So do you see the difference between creation and control? SANDY: Yes. MICHAEL: And does this help you to look at a situation that may have gone awry, and see how responding to it is different from reacting to it? SANDY: Yes, very much. MICHAEL: Next question. CHERYL: I'm a scholar-cast warrior, and on the point of structure going to confinement, I've found the past few years, I've almost gone into a self imposed confinement, justifying it with things like a broken leg, and not being able to leave the house, or feeling like if I can't do anything about a situation I sort of retire into my "cave", and I'd like to sort of break out of that and be able to put a more productive structure into place rather than finding even physical reasons that I must remain confined. I don't enjoy it particularly, but I find safety in it in a weird way, and I'd like to change that. MICHAEL: And your question is how to break that? CHERYL: How to break the habit of a self imposed confinement when I find myself in situations of change or crisis where it almost becomes an excuse that I can't do anything about it because of this self imposed or physically imposed confinement, and I do have physical issues. MICHAEL: Yes, and that is a reality, that's simply a part of the Truth of your life. And to own that is its own form of Freedom. To work within that structure is its own form of Freedom. To use it as an excuse to retreat is a completely different angle, and you do recognize the difference between acknowledging the truth of the situation, and retreating by using it as an excuse; there is a difference. The way to break out of this is often very simple, and that is simply to do something different; to go to the larger picture of Change and implement something different. We don't think that we are telling you anything you don't already know, but it is very easy not to do the different thing. It is very easy to default, and that is fine. Giving yourself permission to have been doing it that way over time is its own form of Freedom. But implementing something different and following through with it looks like one of the only ways that you could break that pattern. So, to be more succinct, we would say that owning the confinements that are in place, the Truth of the reality of some of your limitations, allowing that to be the Truth, is its own form of Freedom. But if you want to do something within that structure, rather than thinking of it as restrictions or limitations, look at it as a structure, then it becomes a playground of Freedom in itself. Then you can choose within that what you can do differently. There are many things that we can suggest that you could do differently but those are personal matters and we can discuss this with you at another time, but that is the clearest we can get at this point, that you would just need to do something different. There are no magic answers beyond your own efforts. If you are not making the effort, then the change won't happen; then the Freedom won't be there, then the Truth won't be there, and then you'll lose your Vision. Your efforts, your participation, is the key. So if you have resigned to the default, which is fine, and a matter of choice, then there is nothing that is going to rescue you from that, except you. Do you understand? CHERYL: Yes, very much so. I understand that it requires action, but sometimes you don't know which direction to go. MICHAEL: If you are confused about which direction to go, then you would want to look at these options as clearly as possible and simply move in a direction that you feel is most appropriate and then, once you have explored that option, don't condemn yourself to having made a mistake, to give you further proof as to why you should have stayed confined. Retroactive confinement is just as powerful as current confinement, so looking at your past as a pattern of mistakes or as a pattern of bad judgment is its own prison, whereas looking at the opportunities and experiences, and the adventures that have come from these so called mistakes, (and we won't argue with you that it would be easy to call them mistakes, or easy to call them difficult directions,) but there was definitely a beauty in these that you may have overlooked. CHERYL. I agree, there is. MICHAEL: So, when you are looking ahead at all of your options, to avoid choosing those options is still a choice, but it won't move you forward. Moving forward, and knowing you can trust yourself to deal with it, to handle it, to adapt, and giving yourself credit for that, is the only way truly to break out of what you described as your confinement. Sometimes, the options ahead, based on where you are now, which is a result of past choices, can also look like whatever direction you go in, you're going to have to run through fire. CHERYL: (laughing) Yes, it feels like that sometimes. MICHAEL: And we would not disagree with you; we would not say that there was one safer route than another, or to even direct you in one safer route than another, as that would take away your choice, but it is valid that quite often you corner yourself in your life in a way that when you look up everything looks on fire, or everything looks underwater, however you would like to describe it. And you can still get somewhere through that. Getting through that opens up more options, and branching your way forward through your choices is the only way to get out of that space that looks surrounded by fire. We just wanted to throw that in because we don't mean to diminish the experience of being physical and looking up and feeling like your choices are extremely limited, or difficult in making as you move forward, and thinking it must be obvious what to do next, because it should be a beautiful, lovely route that stands out. Quite often, it's not. It's a rickety old bridge that's your only way forward. Next question, if there are any. GLENN: I'm a sage, artisan -cast, and I found great resonance in the concept of retreating into entertainment, distractions, not remaining creative. That's an area I would like to change. I've seen that behavior in myself. I know we are not dealing with polarities, but in the positive sense, you would want to remain creative, and not, as you say default and not let your choices... ...and the other part I resonate with is that, well I have difficulty with actually, is that... how do I see the beauty in many of the choices I have made? Some of them are... you mentioned the word awe, but I would say "awful." I am hoping to find a way to reframe that in a way that, going forward, will give positive results. MICHAEL: We will point out that as you grow within a lifetime, or across lifetimes, you are going to look back and see where things could have gone differently, where choices could have been made in a way that would be more to your liking from your current perspective. It is easy to just look back and see those moments, from "Oh God, look at that hairdo" to the awful, as you say; choices that have been made that impacted others [or yourself] in painful ways. The way to see the awe, and the Beauty is to translate that into the Innocence by looking back at your choices and honoring the Innocence in who you were, or who that person was, in the past. That person did not know, or have the same perception, that you do, now. So, condemning yourself to past choices that were made does not necessarily bring about the opportunity for creativity or the Truth. Instead, it locks you in the past, in a place that is not you anymore. Looking back and finding the Beauty and the innocence can allow the forgiveness that might be needed or required for you to move forward, which of course falls under the aliveness factor of Love. Forgiveness would be included in that. Looking back at yourself and finding the ability to embrace that, to honor the Innocence that was you, however "awful" it may have been, can help you to... telescope, or embrace those fragments [of yourself] that you left in time, to bring about an energy that allows for creativity and the Truth. Does this make sense to you? Does this work a little better? GLENN: Oh yes! Very much so. SANDY: I have a follow up on the same line there. In the process of looking for the Beauty in some of those, as Glenn put it, "awful" decisions, I'm wondering if some of this stuff might not connect with Karmic situations, agreements, monadal relationships. Wouldn't honoring those things some of the time, couldn't they have sometimes caused us to make decisions that from now, to the personality, might look awful, but to the Essence might look validating and fulfilling? MICHAEL: Yes, and that is one of the double--edged swords of being alive, or even living, is that Essence pretty much gets a kick out of everything. And this can be very disturbing to Personality, or to the physical self who has one life, and Essence is enjoying all of the struggles and difficulties and pain that you are going through, in its own way. Not in some sort of sadistic way, but in a way... in the same way that many of you go to the theater, or go to the movies, and lose yourselves in those experiences, knowing you are safe, knowing that you ARE safe and are not actually a part of that movie. Yes, it can resonate with you, it [the movie] can bring out emotions and experiences and fears, but it's not the whole truth, it's not the whole picture. Essence has a little bit of an edge on your life in that regard, that it knows that ultimately, you are safe. This can help you at times in your life, from the angle of looking at the factor that we have described as Spirit. It could also included in that sphere [of Spirit] that you are ultimately safe. You could call it safety, that ultimately, you are safe. That's a quality that falls under the heading of spirit. Recognizing that there is a part of you that may have gained something from what you've experienced, something that you probably at this point, or most likely at this point, do not understand. Give yourself time to understand it, give yourself room to grow into, or grow out of the experience that you've just had, or have had. But we will also point out here, that personality ultimately has the control over the choices within the lifetime. Essence will never override the choices of personality. Essence can have the greatest, most beautiful ideas for a lifetime, and personality is born, and finds itself in many more messes than Essence could have anticipated. So it could be considered a factor that some of the experiences that you go through are a part of a plan, if this is what you mean? SANDY: At least could be, in at least some situations. MICHAEL: You have to be a willing participant in those plans, for them to be implemented. The only time that it's not is in situations of karma, where someone has interfered with your choice. When someone interferes with your choice, in earlier lifetimes [younger soul ages], the karma was created. Karma is easily created, and it is a very dramatic and exciting experience for Essence, because when your choice is interrupted, a lot of reaction comes from this, and karma is basically the balancing of that [energy generated from] reaction. It's not black and white, it's not tit for tat, it's simply a balancing. But, as you grow older in soul age, you tend to RESPOND to interruptions of your choices rather than REACT to them. And so karma is less and less a factor in your life. So keeping that in mind, that there is an intelligence in your personality that goes beyond just this lifetime, or [an intelligence] that you have the capacity to access that goes beyond this lifetime, that can help you look at your daily life and experiences, that can look at the experiences that may have been karma, or created karma, and that your RESPONSES can help create the next moment rather than your REACTIONS causing more karma. So we wanted to throw that in there as an observation for where you are now as older souls, whereas in earlier lifetimes it may be true that you are knocked around a little bit like a pinball [in a pinball] machine, and you learn to, you learn within that structure how to maneuver. But even then, personality is a willing participant. Even in karmic payback, for lack of a better phrase, those [instances] are not imposed on you. SANDY: I think I understood that they weren't imposed, but what I was looking at in this, part is hypothetical, but in an earlier life, something happened between me and person B, and they owed me a karmic debt, let's say they killed me, and they've taken all this time, and that karma was never resolved, the debt was never repaid. Now here I am at an old level, and it may have happened at a baby level, and I happen to run across them again could that not lead me to make a decision in my relationship with that person that a few years later looking back at it I say "How could I have done such an awful thing?" Whereas really I was doing what, if I look at it from the point you're saying now, of awe, if I could understand it I would realize that it's a beautiful thing, that I was balancing this thing, and I shouldn't be kicking myself for what I did, because there was a good reason for it. MICHAEL: Yes, you could look at it from that perspective. SANDY: I am going to be more specific. Michael, is this okay? CYPRUS: They like it when we solve our own problems. SANDY: I have had a karmic relationship with a fragment whose life... I caused their death. I wasn't told that I killed them, but I caused their death, and so I had a debt to pay. An agreement was made to make that repayment by giving that person life this time, where they could be raised by someone who was their Essence twin, to be their parent, and I was going to repay the life by giving the life to that essence by the birth, [but giving the baby up for adoption]. So the debt was repaid by the birth. My personality obviously went along with that, and did all that, but for a good many years after that happened, I was sitting around going "How could I have done that? How could I have given away that child?" I could be in horror of the decision I had made but later with perceptive in the way we are talking about today, you could look at the awe of the whole thing, of how beautifully it all played out, that it didn't have to be an eye for an eye or a death for a death. The repayment was made, I judged myself harshly and wrongly for a really long time, but now I can see the beauty of the whole thing, that I couldn't see before. Not to diminish personality over essence but it is all kind of tied together, Karma and personality and essence, and that's what makes it awesome. CYPRUS: I agree with you that it is beautiful, but let's say you didn't have contact with Michael, and let's say you didn't have that opportunity, I think the concept is to be able to see the innocence in yourself at that time, and forgive that person without that external information, or without the pretty picture that you paint. I'm not saying that's doesn't make it easier, and that it's not the way to do it, but to be able to look at yourself without that knowledge and say "I did this, I did it out of innocence", and see the innocence in that decision ... not just forgiving yourself but forgiving others. So maybe even though it is a beautiful big picture, the concept is that you don't always know what that big picture is, you don't always have that all laid out for you all beautifully. And you have to be able to, in situations where you don't have that, still see the innocence in you. MICHAEL: Yes, as Cyprus points out, you may not have had the luxury of, and we use that word loosely, of having the insights that we would offer to you, (and even then you may have rejected them,) as a way of getting out of the pain that might have been caused by the choice of the past. So with or without the information that was shared with you about the past, it's still a matter of choice as to how you interpret the past, how you look at the past, and how you find the beauty of that. Another fragment may have looked at that and found the beauty or the innocence in his or her own way without our information, or another fragment may have received this picture of an awesome pattern of which he or she has taken a part and still left themselves completely condemned by that past choice. So the point that we are trying to make is that it does not matter what information you have, or lack of information you have, or how choices were made, or what influences may have been involved, your perception of the past is still a matter of choice, it's still a matter of interpretation. It is still a matter of finding the Beauty, the Truth, the Love... all of these factors that we have described as being a part of the whole life or a life that is felt as being Alive. All of these factors need to be owned by you when looking at your past, so that it can be interpreted more productively, more creatively, and with, for some of you, forgiveness. If we get lost in all of the causes, in all of the reasons, then you get lost in the default. You get lost in the stimulation. You can look back at the situation that you described, and see it as a beautiful pattern that essences were involved in, or you can look back at it and say from a very simple perspective "I made that choice, and it was the best choice that I could have made at the time." Whether you would choose differently or not is not a matter of reality, it is not a matter of concern. So we hope that we are conveying to you that all of the ingredients you are describing as being factors in the past are not as important as your perception of the past now. SANDY: I guess what I was trying to say in a very convoluted way is that if one defaults to beauty, if one can achieve a habit of defaulting to looking for the beauty, that whether or not you know those specifics, one can then accept the idea that everything happens in beauty, and if you happen to learn the details of it, that's swell, but even if you can't, if you can get to a place of defaulting to beauty you can make it your task of seeing beauty out of the situation. MICHAEL: Yes, except that you will never default to those areas because they require conscious participation. They require choice. So it will always be an active effort to interpret and see the Beauty in your past. We want to point that out because it is not something that you can work to finally achieve; that it will be [permanently] in place, and from now on everything will be beautiful. SANDY: Well no, I don't mean that's something that will happen, but won't it happen more often if you practice that? MICHAEL: It won't "happen," as much as you will make it happen. SANDY: You have to default to something. CYPRUS: Yeah, but Default is not the conscious choice, default is the automatic... it's the reaction, not the response. You have to learn to respond with seeing Beauty. The default is when you just... SANDY: Well that's what I want to do, to just change the default. CYPRUS: Well you'll have to make that choice time and time and time again. MICHAEL: That [default to being Alive] is not going to happen: it's a manual process, because you are not going to stop life from having chaos, you're not going to keep life from having crisis. You are not going to be able to avoid that part of life. Instead, the part that we described as being Alive, is being conscious, whereas defaulting to an area means you have excluded the possibility of the Aliveness factor; Beauty in this case. When you are in a moment of chaos and you make the choice to find the Beauty in it, then you have created a more spherical experience. We are not saying that once you have reached a place where you are able to see the Beauty in things, that everything will suddenly be beautiful, though it will become easier, or more second- nature if you will, to be able to find those patterns of innocence, Beauty, awe, and you will not feel so trapped in chaos, or any of the other defaults that we have described. CYPRUS: And sometimes you're not always ready to make that choice at the time, and maybe not even ten years later or twenty years later... you look back and you see that you made the choices, and now you feel more comfortable, more accepting, whatever, and you are able to see it, when you weren't able to see it when it was closer. It's not always immediate. MICHAEL: Which would go into the factor we have described as Spirit. Sometimes you simply won't understand at the time. And to give yourself room for that understanding and comprehension is a way of bringing Spirit to it. So it looks to us like we might want to wrap this up and if there is another question we will take it, otherwise we will conclude. KERRIN: I have a quick question. You brought up Spirit, and I'd like to know a little bit about why the supernatural comes as a default. There is much about the supernatural that is real. CHERYL: Just non-physical. MICHAEL: It is not surprising that the King would bring this up. We use the word "supernatural" specifically for the older souls simply because it can become very enticing to look for proof of "other," proof of the beyond, proof of something; another source. But as we said, even in this particular event that you are describing as channeling and we are speaking to you, there is no proof here that we are Michael, there is no proof here that Troy is not accessing some part of his own brain in a creative way that is simply misunderstood. Allowing that unknown factor to be a part of the process is bringing Spirit into the arena of your life. Being distracted with the proof of the experience may have made you miss out on all of the information that we shared here. Looking for the supernatural in this... if you would like us to make the pictures dance on the wall so that the rest of the information is valid, then you have lost Spirit, you have lost your openness to other avenues of information and source. So that is why we have pointed out the supernatural as a default for a lot of the older souls in particular. Because as you grow older and you start to ponder, and truly begin to embrace the idea of having a soul, in a more tangible way than in many of your other lifetimes, then it becomes a conundrum to say " I have accepted that I have a soul, now where is it?" And having contact with us in this way can help bring about the symptoms and the insight and the information that can help you towards that reality, but Spirit will never be able to truly prove itself to you. We will be able to prove to you our existence, for example, when we see you after this life and all of us "wave" at you. GROUP: (laughing) We'll wave right back. UNKNOWN: I have a question about seeing each other after this life. Do we actually get to a level where Michael will be moving on from the causal or another plane, and we have so many other journeys to make, so do we eventually meet up? MICHAEL: Oh, yes. UNKNOWN: Eons from now? MICHAEL: It won't be eons once you are outside of the physical plane because the concept of time takes on a completely different experience and dimension. It's very difficult to convey, but in your linear time it might be quite a while, but outside of this plane it's not quite the same. And as far as your "in between" lives, for instance, we have met with several of you in order to have this group, in general. Not all of you, but a lot of you in this room are here because of agreements that we talked to you about before this life. And it [our having contact with Michael between lives] could be likened to various continents on the same planet, so that there is always communication, and there is the ability to interact, albeit in some ways limited to a certain degree, but none of us are separate, none of us are divided. And eventually, yes, your entity, your cadre, your energy ring, will exponentially grow and learn and do whatever it wants to do in these other planes, and we don't want to use this phrase, but it's appropriate in terms of Time, will "catch up" with us, and merge in a way that, at this point, is a little incomprehensible while divided. UNKNOWN: I have another question. When this happens, do we go on to incarnate in other planets, or other realms? Or once we reach that causal plane and passed that in our own cadre/entity group, do we stop incarnating? MICHAEL: There will be at least two more incarnations for your entity, or your cadre, because you only have, while individuals, the five soul ages, while incarnating on your own... Infant through Old. Infant, Baby, Young, Mature, and Old. But there is still Transcendental and Infinite, and each of you, as an entity, will incarnate one more time somewhere, in some parallel, in some version of your world, to be a part of that experience. That way one fragment will incarnate to represent the experience of the entity as we have described for such people as Gandhi and Socrates being Transcendental. Christ and Buddha, for instance, being popular Infinite soul representations. So there will still be, at least, those two additional incarnations, and most often it will be within the planetary system where most of the rest of the population is still incarnate. UNKNOWN: The planetary system being earth? MICHAEL: Yes. But by the time you are reunited to a point of incarnating as Transcendental or Infinite souls, who knows where your people will be. GLENN: What are Michael's plans for the future? MICHAEL: We have our own relationship to what you could describe as an Entity Twin rather than Essence Twin. Part of our "future" is the merging with our Entity Twin. This twinning is a matter of mathematics and resonance. Within a cadre, for instance, and this is not by any means a constant, if two entities have a predominance of essence twins shared between those two entities, they are Entity Twins. And so, every entity has its own twin, in the same way that almost every essence has its own essence twin. And so, if we were to describe our "future," it's the process of integrating with our Entity Twin and we are working on that. UNKNOWN: Is it exciting? MICHAEL: That would be a matter of interpretation. It is a unique experience. [QUESTION INAUDIBLE, but possibly, "Will you incarnate as a Transcendental Soul and will we be around to experience that?"] MICHAEL: You will be long gone. And that is not a prediction, it is just a matter of looking at the patterns that appear to be in place, or the momentum. But we may incarnate, and we have done so already in a few parallels, incarnated as Transcendental. So it is not a new possibility. We don't really have to do it again in this particular parallel, because we have our channels where we teach in a different way. And in several of our parallels we are working in this same way. But, yes, in some parallels we have already incarnated as Transcendental souls. UNKNOWN: Nobody we'd know, huh? MICHAEL: It's a completely different parallel. [meaning, we wouldn't know the person, because they don't exist "here."] GLENN: I heard there are a couple of issues on what may happen with the next Infinite Soul, including a different Michael channel saying "look at all the trouble Jesus caused when he showed up." And that a soul might incarnate in multiple fragments in various places. So I'd like to hear your insights on all this. MICHAEL: IF the infinite soul manifests, and we've seen it come close a few times, and it usually will incarnate only as a matter of bringing Logos to bear, (which just translates into "helping get everybody back on the same page, to help get everybody moving in a similar shared direction,") but ironically, with the anticipation of the manifestation of the Infinite Soul coming, and having so many fragments being born to be a part of that, many of them very wise and very capable to contribute to humanity even while having a great handful of people causing what you would deem "trouble," has actually helped to bring humanity, people, sentients, back down into a similar perspective, a moving forward together. If you look at the arc of time from approximately the '60s to now, progressively, the world is getting smaller and that awareness in itself is similar to the impact that the Infinite Soul would have brought with the concepts of global village, "green" living; a more responsible dominion with life rather than a dominance over it.... so now all of the fragments who are incarnated are doing just that, so it doesn't require an Infinite Soul intervention, which is basically what an Infinite Soul experience is: a form of intervention for a sentient species. At this point it is looking like humanity is going to right itself in a way that will provide sanctuary for the life that is here currently, and also to help keep humanity, or the human bodies, available for incarnation. We will, however, validate that what we have seen of the next manifestation of the Infinite Soul is looking to show up in five different places because of the population. The amount of people on the planet is different from in the past, and having a representative in different places in the world, all represented by a similar theme of being a minority and represented as a child, a woman, a homosexual... we're not sure what the other two may have been, but the Infinite Soul representatives were what would be deemed a minority, a representative of the minority, and would help bring about the drastic changes that might have been needed. But we don't see that as being so necessary at this point. So, currently, it is a floating possibility. Does this answer your question? GLENN: yes MICHAEL: As humanity, or as a dominant sentient species, grows in maturity, then the forces at work that help sustain environment, that help sustain the life on the planet, (which we regard as devas, or devic energy), those devic energies begin to withdraw to a point where the dominant sentience is then responsible for caring for those life forms on the planet that have cared for by them up to that point. It is a process of any sentient species to gain that responsibility for the planet, for animals, for others, and this is why you are seeing so much upheaval in the environment, because the devic energies are not there to help correct it. There are not these "magical forces" to pick up the slack or repair the damages that the sentient species causes, and so this experience for sentience is very similar to a person over the growth of one lifetime, where a teenage child or rather a young adult, has to, at some point, learn to live on his own, and create his environment with some sense of responsibility. And so that is the case with a collective sentient species as well, on any planet. UNKNOWN: There are a lot of people on the planet who .... have really been trying to reconnect with these elementals and undo the damage that has happened. It was getting exciting and really tapping into that. Do you think we will really start reconnecting with the energies that are pulling out? MICHAEL: It's not a bad thing that they are "pulling out." What you are describing is parts of humanity finding themselves going where certain parts of the population recognizes the intimacy with these forces that will continue to remain in place, because there always will be some of amount of these forces, devas; it's just not of such an abundance that it takes up slack, or heals the impact from humans. So when these fragments are making an effort to reconnect, to communicate, to manage this network of devic energies, that is exactly where we would think your species would go. It's just that it becomes a more intimate and validated form of helping the environment and humanity itself. Do you understand? So it's not that devic energies are leaving because they are in a huff over humanity, but that it is just simply the way that it works when a planet houses a sentient species; there is simply no more room for new souls to be incarnated, and to have the Infant soul lifetimes that are so important to the beginning process of your grand cycle. And for those "new souls" that are here and shifting into bringing sentience to species such as Gorillas, you will find that the awareness of devic energy that is required for your own personal growth on the planet expands to include the possibility that dolphins and whales and gorillas have a similar concept of "soul." The only way that the Gorilla population will be able to continue in its exploration of housing souls is if humanity expands its awareness to consider these subtle energies in nature. To have a lot of species suddenly take sentience might not be easy to do. For instance, Elephants were up for consideration, but it's simply not a possibility that we can see because of many factors. The reason that we bring up the drop in devic energy is because as devic energies are participating in the various kingdoms, the mineral, the plant, the animal, they are exploring the possibilities of sentience within a planet, and as those possibilities diminish, so does their interest in the planet, and they move on to others. LU: Michael I have a question about machines, do machines or electronics have a specific energy? MICHAEL: Yes, eventually they can start to become of high interest to certain energies that you could describe as devic, yes. LU: Does that mean we can begin to communicate with them in some way? Can we as humans communicate with machines and electronics? MICHAEL: In what way are you speaking? LU: I find that when I have printer problems at work, I often ask the equipment what it needs or what it wants, open all the ports and doors and look around and try to communicate to see what has happened. MICHAEL: That is not quite the same thing as devic energies, no. That is just an intuitive process for solving problems. And it is an effective one, because when you are doing it from that angle you are not limiting your insights, you're not limiting your perspective, but you are inviting other perspectives, and this means opening up to Spirit, opening up to other sources that may be of help to you. Whether those are your guides or other spirits who happen to be in the room and helping point you in the right direction of a solution, we don't know, but as far as that printer housing devic energies, we wouldn't say that is necessarily true. We can say that the higher the intelligence of some processors, the more interesting it becomes to some versions of devic energy to explore those. LU: Do some high level CPUs and processors have sort of a hive soul? MICHAEL: Not on this planet, no. CHERYL: I have often wondered about the internet being... Well, I used to joke that God had an internet account because of so many coincidences, or our meeting certain people. Do non-physical energies have any influence over it [the internet], or is it just random when people come together, such as us through a medium such as the internet? Is it somehow directed? MICHAEL: We have talked about this before that there is a theory that is not quite accurate that says that you use ten percent of your brain, and that there is all of this other processing that is unused. And we have responded to say that that is not true, but that in this case, we could say that ninety percent of your brain is generating the reality that you are experiencing, is being used to generate the reality that you keep in place to organize and communicate and work with all of the things that you don't have to deal with in your daily perception. As a species grows, some of these concepts [floating in the reality-generating part of the brain] that are metaphysical or nonphysical come into being and they become tangible objects [through invention, or creation]. They become real life, useful tools such as the telephone [representing clairaudience], such as television [representing clairvision]. The concept of the Astral Plane is not unfamiliar to any of you because all of you have died and reincarnated, died and reincarnated, so you "know" the Astral Plane is there, at least that "ninety percent" of your brain does, and so somebody got the idea to create a network that mimicked or represented the Astral Plane. And so the internet is the physical idea of the Astral Plane made form, or at least into the limited idea of the Astral Plane at this point. The Internet relates to the dream state, to the astral plane, and to emotional and intellectual realms that are not necessarily within reach of your daily life, but the Internet allows that to come into your space in the same way that, when you are on the astral plane, it's always at your fingertips, as well. Except you don't have fingertips there. (laughter) So in answer to your question, no it [meeting people through the Internet] is not always random as there is very little true randomness in the Universe, but it does give you a tangible method of using the intangible parts of your brain to connect to other people around the world. And with that, we will wrap it up. Goodbye.