Saturday, 15 October, 1994
Michael: Good evening, Bivalia. How are you?
Bivalia:[a] I am well, Michael, thank you. And you?
Bivalia: Okay, are you? Is that all?
Michael: I guess so. It's no secret that in this life I never feel much
more than okay - sometimes considerably worse. And I'm not going to pretend
otherwise in the guise of what I consider false positivity.
Bivalia: I do not ask that of you. But if you had a wider perspective, as
I assure you you will one day, perhaps much sooner than you realize, you would
realize that you are much more than okay, that a glorious future lies ahead of
you, and of me too, for you and I are really the one at the deepest levels that
count the most.
Michael: I dare say you're right; but I just don't have that awareness as
of now.
Bivalia: That's quite all right. You can take all the time you like to
reach that awareness; there's no hurry whatsoever. But I do appreciate your
desire to reach that point as quickly as possible, and I can assure you I am
doing all I can to help you achieve this, as are many of the Masters who have
connections with you.
Michael: I hope you're right.
Bivalia: Of course I am. You don't get to be a Higher Self without getting
to know a few things in life, even if I am somewhat less than omniscient. But
even that's only a matter of time. All beings in the universe are evolving, and
getting ever closer and closer to knowing all things. But because there's an
infinite amount of knowledge, perhaps we never get to the point of knowing it
all, but we get ever closer to that all that time; and, what's more important, we
get to a point where we know, if not literally everything, at least everything we
need for our own well-being and perfect happiness. I know you feel you are far
from this point, but the time is coming when you and I will achieve perfect
unity, and you will reach this point where you will be able to know anything you
want to know.
Meanwhile, you are a little late reporting to me, are you not?
Michael: Well, it crossed my mind a few times to have another session,
but, you know, things come up which put it off.
Bivalia: Yes, I know. And yet things have been happening to you, things
that it would be good to talk with me about, have they not?
Michael: Well, well, you're beginning to sound like Sananda - "have they
not?", indeed.
Bivalia: One tends to pick up little habits from those one associates with
and those one loves.
Michael: I guess so. Anyway, I hope you're not offended at my tardiness
in reporting to you.
Bivalia: I was only speaking in jest. You don't have to write these
sessions if they are a burdensome chore. But I like these sessions with you, and
I think you do too, once you get down to it, even if it's difficult for you for
various reasons to get round to it.
Anyway, would you like to tell me any news you might have? Something to do
with Kuthumi, perhaps?
Michael: Oh, it's just that, as you probably know very well, Kuthumi
channelled through Ralčah a few weeks ago, and, I forget how it came up, but I
asked Kuthumi a question or two, one of them about composing music. And we
also talked about the fact that he was Johann Sebastian Bach in one of his
incarnations. And, you know, he offered to work with me, helping me compose
music, which I accepted. I'd be silly to turn down an offer of musical help
from J. S. Bach, I suppose.
Well, for a couple of weeks I did nothing about it, and felt vaguely
guilty; but, you know, my place is so crowded and messy composing is just
about impossible anyway, and I don't often feel inclined to even try, when, as
so often happens, what I write is rather mediocre anyway - with some notable
exceptions. But then, even when I get a first-rate idea that seems quite
inspired, as seems to happen every now and then, almost invariably I don't
finish it for some reason, and I lose the thread of the idea. And once that
happens, it's quite difficult to pick it up again later.
I think the problem is that while I like the idea of writing wonderful
music and getting inspiration, and all that - it seems very romantic and
magical, somehow - I don't, on the other hand, much like the hard work and
grind that composing really involves, the self-discipline you must exercise to
actually get it done, and completed. And self-discipline is something I
almost totally lack.
Bivalia: Well, that need not continue to be so for the rest of time.
Michael: Well, anyway, about three weeks ago, Mum happened to say to me,
"It's a year ago today that Granny died", and I thought a few times over the
next couple of weeks that it would be nice to write a little piano piece in
memory of her: not a gloomy funereal sort of piece, but a nice happy peaceful
composition which would somehow reflect nice memories of her. I tried to
start a piece, but it wouldn't seem to come. (I'm not sure if this was before
Kuthumi's offer to help me compose, or not. I'd have to check a few dates on
that.)
I put the few bars of this piece aside, and a bit later, a different idea
came to me. And this time (I think the first serious attempt to
compose after Kuthumi's offer, if not the first attempt altogether), the music
just seemed to come out, and it was very good. It's not on the level of a
great symphony or anything, and doesn't even pretend or try to be. But,
within its scope, it's very good.
When I say the music just seemed to come out, I don't mean it was like
channelling, where I just wrote down something that originated from outside my
mind. It originated in my mind all right (as far as I can tell), and I made
decisions about what to do, and all that; but once I knew what I wanted to do,
the music just seemed to fall into place somehow in a way it rarely does with
me. It just seemed to do what I wanted it to. I just wish I could do that
all the time.
Bivalia: Well, if you continue to keep in touch with the Masters and
continue to work with Kuthumi, I'm sure you will be able to do that more and more
as time goes by, so that you need never look back again.
Michael: In actual fact, whether it's a suitable piece for Granny's
memory, I don't know. That was the inspiration, but the piece is a bit like
ragtime in style, with a syncopation reminiscent of that style, but with a
more classical expressiveness. I really don't know if this sort of style is
at all appropriate for Granny's memory; perhaps something a little staider
might have been better for that.
Bivalia: It doesn't matter. That's what came, and your thoughts and
feelings, which went into the music, are good ones, and very likely they are
helping your grandmother in the realm where she is now.
You are thinking, aren't you, that it was not quite the sort of music she
herself would have played on the piano, and that therefore it's not an
appropriate memorial to her?
Michael: Something like that. She had rather conservative musical
tastes, and it's possible this piece might have exceeded them, although not
really radically.
Bivalia: It doesn't matter. It is not for you to try to guess what she
would have liked or not; and as for her playing the piano, she played only by
ear, didn't she? And the sort of music she did play might have been limited in
scope merely because of lack of technical ability. No matter, whatever the case
about that. You had the idea, and this music you wrote, which is undeniably full
of feeling, is what came out. It is valid simply because it is what you felt. I
can assure you, if you had set out to write a piece in her memory and had been
overly concerned with what you guessed (perhaps quite wrongly) she might have
liked, you would have produced something stilted and routine, not with the
feeling your piece in fact has.
Michael: I suppose you're right. Anyway, I can only write the way I feel
(just generally, not only in this instance), and for some reason, this raggy
style seemed to come out. It's a gentle sort of lilting ragginess, nothing
really jangly or rattly, which some ragtime pieces can be. It's got quite a
lush style of harmony, and it begins a little wistfully, with a really subtle
dusky sort of harmony a little reminiscent of certain types of jazz, although
without the hard-driving sort of feel a lot of jazz has. Rather, it's a
gentle lilting sort of tune, quite haunting.
It begins in A-flat minor, a key with 7 flats in it (the maximum
possible), and a couple of musical people (at the Church of Antioch where I go
every few weeks) who saw it said things to me like, "Are you a masochist or
something, writing in 7 flats?", and the like. (I might point out that I must
write the music in the key in which it comes, no matter how remote or
difficult it might be; and those keys with lots of sharps or flats are only
difficult to most people because they're not familiar with them; but I
actually tend to like using those keys a lot.)
After the wistful theme, the piece moves to a new section in C-flat major
(also 7 flats), and it just seems to burst out into soaring melody. I've
written one melody in C-flat major, and part of a second one to come after
that, and related to it. These parts are a little more straightforward in
style than the minor-key bit, and have a lot of feeling in them, and even a
lot of tenderness. (Incidentally, C-flat major is nothing other than my
favourite key, B major, in enharmonic disguise.)
I intend to come back to the wistful bit again, then conclude with the
major-key part again, this time in A-flat major (only 4 flats this time), and
extended a little bit, so that the whole piece will be in an A-B-A-B form.
You see, the piece isn't finished yet, but has progressed enough that I can
see that it's good. In fact, it's unusually good for me.
Bivalia: Well, this is very interesting. It certainly makes one think.
Could it be a coincidence that Kuthumi offered to help you, and then this
happened?
Michael: I don't know. I certainly didn't feel Kuthumi's presence, or
anything mystical like that. I would really like to be able to feel mystical
things like that. But I certainly wonder if it's more than a coincidence.
And when I had a past-life reading with Sananda (channelling through Ralčah),
he confirmed to me that indeed Kuthumi had been with me helping me, and was
ready to do more, and better.
But not only did I not feel Kuthumi's presence, but when I started the
piece, I even forgot to call him in at all (sorry, Kuthumi!). Only when I was
part-way in did I remember, and then I called him to help me - but still felt
nothing.
Bivalia: That doesn't matter much. Feeling things like that will come as
you develop spiritually. It needn't prevent you from getting the benefit of the
Masters' help. And I'm sure Kuthumi wouldn't be offended at your forgetting to
call him. The Masters are beyond taking offence or feeling slighted; they
wouldn't be Masters if they were still caught up in all that stuff. To say
otherwise would be like talking about an honest man who just happens sometimes to
rob banks; it's a contradiction in terms.
Michael: But what about free-will and all that? The Masters sometimes
tell us they can do nothing for us until we ask, because they can't interfere
with our free-will and impose themselves on us without our consent. And I
didn't ask when I began the piece.
Bivalia: While it is true they cannot impose themselves on you, when we
talk about your asking them, it doesn't necessarily have to mean asking in words,
like a prayer (although that certainly is one way of asking them). If all along
it was your definite intention to ask Kuthumi's help, that would be sufficient.
Yes, I would definitely say so; you do seem to be getting in tune with the
Masters more and more, and I would say that's what happened.
Michael: Yes, it's strange. Even other people whom I would consider much
more advanced than me seem to comment on the way I seem to be close to and
intimate with the Masters.
Bivalia: My friend, you are not as far behind some of these people as you
may think. As for the obvious ways in which you are different from those people,
there are special reasons for that, as Sananda has told you, things to do with
previous lives, the persecution you suffered for being steadfast in truth, which
has caused you, at certain levels, to close up and retreat into a shell of
forgetfulness. But Sananda spoke truly when he told you at the Crea workshop
that underneath you were still maintaining a thread of truth, and that in this
life-time he had come to call you back to a full knowing of who you are and what
your purpose is.
Michael: Yes, I remember. It does seem to fit me in certain ways, and
Crea wouldn't have known me from a bar of soap, so she couldn't have just made
it up herself, I guess. And I do seem to be feeling a bit closer to some of
the Masters. I must say Jesus, or Sananda, means much more to me now than at
any previous time in my life with the more conventional religious views of him.
Bivalia: Do you still feel sceptical about the reality of the Masters, and
other spiritual things?
Michael: Well, in one way I do; but if assuming their reality leads to
results like this piece I'm writing, I'm quite prepared to give them the
benefit of the doubt. All my rational analysis of things, I still believe to
be valid on its own level. But that doesn't seem to lead anywhere satisfying;
only to a materialistic view of life, and with the spectre of death, and no
life after death, hanging over my head all the time, making life quite
pointless. I've decided to try to be open-minded about spiritual things,
however little proof there may be for them. There's nothing to lose, except
perhaps a misplaced pride in the scientific way of looking at life, which I
think I'm a bit less enchanted with now, and perhaps a lot to gain.
Bivalia: I'm very glad to hear you say that. Perhaps you are using your
heart a little more and your head, well not less, but more in the places where
head-stuff properly belongs. You aren't making such a god out of head-stuff
now. And one benefit you might get out of composing music, if you can get back
into it again, is that it will encourage your heart to develop, because music is
at least as much about feelings as about intellect, if not more so.
Michael: I guess you're right. I wonder if excessive emphasis on
intellect and mistrust of and distaste for feelings was one of the things that
made writing music seem to decline in my life in recent years.
Bivalia: I would say that it's part of it, although it's probably not quite
as simple as being just this or just that.
Bivalia: Well, what are you going to call the piece?
Michael: I don't know. I still haven't quite got around to deciding
whether it is a proper piece in memory of Granny, despite what you say. I'll
just have to think about that a bit more. And then, even if I decide it is, I
can't quite decide what title would best reflect that anyway. The only idea I
had was to call it simply "In Memory", with a subheading reading something
like "For my grandmother, Gertrude Pauline Turner, 1897 - 1993"; but somehow
that sounds a bit pompous, and I seem to feel uneasy about displaying such a
title publicly.
Bivalia: I don't see what's wrong with it myself. I'm sure other composers
have done a similar thing.
Michael: Perhaps so. I suppose I have a few hang-ups about displaying
something so openly emotional in public.
Bivalia: Perhaps that is one of the things you could beneficially work on
in this life-time.
Michael: You may be right. I can't really say much more now than that I
need to think about it further.
Michael: There's another thing about Granny's death that bothers me a
little.
Bivalia: What is that, dear one?
Michael: In the year since she died, I don't seem to have gone through a
grieving process. I cared about her, and we were quite close in a way, but I
don't seem to be conscious of missing her. I know it sounds awful to say
this, but I must be honest with you.
Bivalia: Thank you for being honest with me; but what else would I expect?
What you have just told me might be because, deep down, although you may not be
conscious of it now, you know that she is better off where she is now, that she
is being looked after, and that in your astral travels at night you are able to
meet her and help her.
Michael: I'm not aware of doing any of that. But I hope she is better
off where she is now.
Bivalia: Of course she is. She isn't half-blind, half-deaf, mentally
vague, and arthritic there. She has all her faculties there, and is really
enjoying life much more than she did during her final decade or so on Earth.
Michael: Yes, it was awful, those things that happened to her health in
her final years. I think I was especially close to her as a child, perhaps
the closest of all her eight grandchildren, and even right up to her death, I
think I remained the closest grandchild.
But it has to be said that she and I inhabited different universes,
especially during my adulthood. If a stranger had got to know both of us
separately, he would have not had the slightest reason to think there would be
anything whatsoever to draw Granny and me close together. And I was sometimes
conscious of this gap. It was a relationship that was close in some ways, but
which didn't connect at all in other ways. Quite different from my
relationships with certain other people.
Bivalia: Of course; this is the way. You do not have the same kind of
relationship with everyone.
Michael: And it must be said that, in the final years, it almost felt at
times as if she weren't really there fully anyway. Her life was constricted
by partial blindness and partial deafness, the latter of which made
conversation difficult physically, and she grew vague and forgetful, which
made conversation difficult mentally and emotionally, so it's almost as if
when she died, she had already been partly gone anyway. I wonder if that's
why it had less impact on me than I expected.
Bivalia: It seems quite possible, from what you say. When you say she was
partially gone, you probably meant that as a figure of speech, but it may be more
literally true than you realize. When we say elderly vague people are away with
the fairies, this is very often quite literally true. They do leave their bodies
at times, and do spend time in the astral or higher. Doubtless some of them are
aware of nature spirits, or fairies, as you commonly call certain varieties of
nature spirit, and perhaps some people may be drawn to them, or to other features
of the higher realms. You see, many popular figures of speech have more literal
truth in them than many people realize. Your dear grandmother might indeed have
been "away with the fairies" or "spaced out" or "not with it" or "with her head
in the clouds".
Michael: Maybe; but all the same, it was sad to see her declining so
gradually over a decade or more, and for years before her death, I was aware
that, because of her difficulties, and perhaps partly because of some of my
own difficulties, our relationship didn't seem quite what it used to be.
Bivalia: This is so to some extent, but not nearly as much as you imagine.
She did not view your relationship as declining or more restricted in any way. I
think your view is being influenced by that special magic and wonder that seems
to infuse and pervade childhood, when your relationship began and grew, and
because that magic often does seem to evaporate in adulthood, the relationship
seemed to you duller than before. (Never fear, that magic will not be lost
forever! I know you do think wistfully of that sometimes. A time will come when
you will be aware of the spiritual reality that was the true origin of that
magic.)
To her, things looked rather different. As she grew older, and was more
restricted in what she could do, she continued to value your company, perhaps
even more than before in the final years. You were very dear to her, and still
are, and, you know, your explanations of metaphysical truth to her, crude and
primitive though you may think them, have been an enormous help to her, and are
helping her right now in the realm where she now lives.
Michael: But she didn't even seem sure whether she believed it all or
not, and I don't think she understood a lot of what I said, even though I
tried to explain things clearly so that she wouldn't get over her depth.
Bivalia: It matters not in the slightest. She knows more now, thanks to
those guides who are now helping her, and thanks also in no small measure to what
you told her. This made it enormously easier for her to accept the help her
guides are giving her now. You in effect prepared her in advance for what was to
come now.
Michael: Well, I hope you're right.
Bivalia: I can assure you this is so. But I won't rub it in too much for
fear that full knowledge of these things may make you lose control of your
emotions and cry, and thus interfere with this session.
Michael: I think her firm Christian faith would also have got in the way
of her accepting some of what I told her.
Bivalia: This is so. And much of what she believed was not truth as we see
it in the higher realms, and the knowledge you shared with her has helped her
greatly to get beyond the limits of dogma, and to accept a broader view of truth.
Michael: Well, all this is very nice. But why didn't I grieve for her
much? Why don't I miss her now? Why does my life just go on as normal?
Bivalia: Because you know the truth of things deep down, things you may not
be aware of in your conscious life, but which still have an indirect effect on
your conscious awareness. You do not miss her as much as you might expect
because you still spend time with her at night, and still help her. You may be
totally unaware of this, but it prevents the sense of missing her from building
up very high.
You spoke of the impression that she didn't seem fully with it in her final
years. In a manner of speaking you could say she had already partially loosened
her ties with your physical world, and that death merely completed the process.
You spoke of the sadness of watching her decline. This was a form of
grief. You had grief at losing her, but you see, just as she loosened her ties
gradually over many years, as her mind got vague, your grief was gradually
expressed too, in the form of watching her decline, and being aware that your
relationship didn't seem quite the same.
You never called it grief, because it was too gradual; but, because of
this, when she died, you didn't feel as much sadness as you expected, partly for
the reason that I explained before that your awareness of her true condition
after death and your ability to be with her during sleep made such sadness
unnecessary, but also partly because, over those years of decline, much of your
grief had already been released gradually.
Also, because you knew how difficult life had become for her, your sense of
loss was much tempered by almost a feeling of gladness, of relief, for her, that
her physical difficulties were now over, that it would be to her as if the bad
dream was now over, and dawn had broken.
Michael: You borrowed that from C. S. Lewis.
Bivalia: I plead guilty. Where I am, we have no sense of possessiveness
about ideas; we gladly share them with each other if they are apt. Jack Lewis,
as he is commonly known, is a beautiful being with insight into many things.
I certainly hope you aren't going around feeling guilty for not breaking
down into total grief, for not weeping and wailing and gnashing your teeth, all
the traditional image of what grief is. There are indeed people for whom grief
is literally like this: they visit the grave religiously every week for years and
weep tears over it; they keep bedrooms for years exactly as they were at the
moment of the loved one's death.
I can assure you that this would not help your beloved grandmother in the
slightest. Perhaps this is an extreme form of grief, with the grave-and-bedroom
bit; but even the more normal signs of grief, carried on over months, the weeping
and feelings of sadness and guilt over all the things you failed to do for the
loved one - all those things do not help the loved one at all.
If you did things like this following your grandmother's death for any
length of time, indeed, it would sadden her and would tend to hold her back to
the Earth plane where she doesn't belong any longer. Every time people behave
this way on a protracted basis, and feel these emotions for long periods of time,
it creates ties between the one who has died and the physical world; and these
ties tend to hold her back, like myriads of threads tying her down that she must
break in order to be free. She can do this, and will receive help in doing this,
but it makes her transition more difficult than it need be.
I'm not talking here about giving expression to the normal feelings of
grief, perhaps even a bit of regret or guilt, that most people are normal enough
to feel after a loved one has died. It is normal to do this for a time; it does
no significant harm to the departed one. What I am talking about, and what is
particularly harmful to the departed one, is carrying these feelings and this
behaviour on over long periods of time.
Be glad you aren't doing this, that her other relatives don't appear to be
doing it either - not regretful. And certainly don't feel guilt over not giving
the usual signs of grief, or not feeling the things you think you should.
There's no "should" about it; you simply feel what you feel, and don't feel what
you don't. That really is all there is to it.
Michael: No, I'm not going on a guilt trip, not feeling guilty or
anything. But all the same it bothered me a bit.
I didn't feel a thing at the funeral, you know, not even when the coffin
was brought into the church. And I must say one of the hymns sung at the
service went on a bit too much for my liking about "the Fiend" and "the Prince
of Darkness". And the usual church teachings that were referred to at various
times tend to give me a heavy dull feeling somehow.
After the service, the gathering at my aunt Joan I.'s place afterwards
just seemed a normal family gathering (to me, at least), and life just then
went on, although I did write about 5 pages about my grandmother as part of a
long letter to a friend of mine who lives in Greece, Roger G.
But, otherwise, life just went on normally, and I think I was vaguely bothered
a bit at this.
Bivalia: There is no need to be bothered even a bit. Your apparent lack of
grief is because of the things I have already said; that is all.
Michael: I hope you're right.
Bivalia: And I wouldn't be bothered by your lack of feelings at the funeral
other than the heaviness and dullness you mentioned. If "the Fiend" and "the
Prince of Darkness" were the order of the day, I think it would be a little too
heavy for my taste also. And your lack of supposedly "appropriate" feeling at
the service, and the heavy dull feeling you got, were probably simply due to your
deep awareness of truth, and your recognition that much of "churchianity" is a
very limited view of truth indeed.
Michael: Only once or twice, soon after Granny died, did something seem
to happen to me emotionally. I play the organ for the Eucharist every few
weeks at the Church of Antioch (a sort of New-Age version of Christian faith,
a bit like the Liberal Catholic Church), and there's a bit in the service
where prayers are said for healing for the sick, for the dead, and so on.
After Granny's death, Franck, the Australian Archbishop of the Church of
Antioch, who was doing the service while I played the organ, mentioned her,
and for a little while, while I was sitting at the organ (not playing at that
moment, fortunately), I seemed to feel tears welling up, with an uprush of
emotion. But I had to suppress it, because I thought I might lose control of
myself and cry, right there in front of everyone in the middle of the
Eucharist when I had to keep control of myself to finish playing the service.
I would also have been embarrassed to cry in front of other people.
I think it also happened a week or two later, again when her name was
included in the prayers; but, other than that, I haven't really felt anything
much at all.
Bivalia: Well, it might have been nice if you could have felt free to cry
openly in front of the congregation, all of whom would have been supportive; they
are all people you know and like, whatever differences of outlook you and they
may have. It wouldn't have interfered nearly as much with your playing as you
think.
But I understand why you didn't feel free to cry openly. No matter; in
spite of that, you were able to release some of the sadness you felt. Be
thankful that you didn't have the agonies many people do in coping with grief
caused by the death of a loved one. Be assured that it doesn't mean you didn't
love her less than other people.
You may not be as aware of loving others as some other people may be, but
that is simply because you have in this life always had a problem about emotions;
difficulty in feeling them, uneasiness about them, a fear of appearing
sentimental and weak, and difficulty in even being aware of things like love.
It matters not, dear one. This is one of the things you have to work on in
this life. You are not as badly off in this respect as you think.
You look at other people and think their emotions are normal, and that they
have a normal capacity to love others. You look at yourself and compare yourself
with what you think other people are like, and judge yourself as unable to love.
You are mistaken, beloved one. You might be surprised if you could get
inside the head and heart of those other "normal" people and really feel how
things are for them, how unloving they sometimes feel, how messed up their
emotions are. Many times, they are putting on a front, dictated by what they
think other people expect, or good manners, or a sense of propriety, and the
like.
You, my friend, do have a strong tendency to just show what is there. You
almost don't know how to pretend things that aren't real. This is why people
sometimes think you lack social graces, and sometimes regard you as a little on
the tactless side. Although you try not to hurt people, you tend not to bother
with putting on façades because of what people expect. Perhaps you have a slight
feeling that, as long as you're not actually hurting or offending others, others
should simply take you as you come.
But it makes no difference to your real feelings. You may have certain
emotional problems that many other people don't have to contend with, but you are
not deficient in the emotions that count, such as love and compassion. And be
assured that huge numbers of people also have harrowing emotional problems that
you are spared.
Michael: And perhaps there was another form of release of any grief I
might have had. I don't know; but I'll tell you and see what you think.
Bivalia: Please tell me, my friend.
Michael: A year or two before Granny died, she fell ill. I think she had
a fall, if I remember rightly, and because of her frailty by this stage (she
was about 94 or 95, remember) it hit her much worse than it normally would
have done. I forget the exact course of events, but I think she was
immobilized, got stiff, and developed respiratory problems somehow, and had to
go to hospital. Anyway, the details of how it happened don't matter now.
She was in the Bellbird Hospital in Blackburn, just half a mile or so
from where my parents lived at the time, and I visited her once.
A time came when she seemed to get weaker and weaker, and she refused to
eat. I fully expected to hear any day that she had died. I went about my
life as normal, but every now and then I allowed myself to ruminate on what it
might be like if she died. I'd never lost anyone as close as that before, and
really didn't know what it would be like, but from what you hear sometimes, it
seemed that grief is one of the most terrible things a person can experience.
Anyway, as these thoughts went through my mind, I felt the bittersweet
emotions of long-ago childhood memories with their special magic, which Granny
comes into in all sorts of ways, and I felt tears almost coming, but, once
again, I didn't allow them to come out fully (even though I was by myself at
the time). Also, this music seemed to come into my mind, and it appeared to
be the opening of a symphony in B minor. I wrote it down, feeling vaguely
uneasy about the idea of getting musical ideas from contemplating someone's
death, especially someone I'm supposed to care about.
And I can tell you, those couple of dozen bars I sketched were, and are,
very good, too. I decided to write a symphony in B minor based on this idea.
Bivalia: And you were telling me you felt nothing at all. If this isn't
releasing of grief, I don't know what is. It's just that you sublimated it into
musical inspiration instead of weeping and wailing, so you didn't recognize just
what you were doing.
Michael: But you're forgetting this happened a year or two
before Granny died.
Bivalia: It doesn't matter. You were anticipating something you felt was
very likely to happen within days or even hours, and which was at least certain
to happen within a few years at the most. If you cope with such anticipation in
the right way, it can count as releasing grief.
Michael: Well, the music is rather elegiac in feeling: rather sad, almost
funereal, but with very intense feeling - and a certain tenderness at the same
time. I've rarely written anything with such intensity of expression.
Bivalia: You were releasing much, my friend, even just in those couple of
dozen bars of music, unfinished as they are. You would be surprised if you could
see what those musical thoughts created on the astral plane.
Michael: And I decided to make a symphony out of it, but it wasn't going
to be all sad like the opening. It would cover a wide range of feeling in its
various parts. And I thought I would let the conflict between the keys of B
major and B minor play a role, representing the conflict between life and
death, and the very last chord of the symphony would be a combination of both
B major and B minor, representing the unsolved riddles of life and death. It
would be a soft long-drawn chord, just fading away into nothing, fading into
eternity. (B major is my very favourite musical key, actually.)
And I thought if I can go on to write the whole thing, I would dedicate
it to the memory of my grandmother, because even though she was still alive
(and, as it turned out, she lived a year or two more), I knew she would die
long before I finished the symphony, because such a symphony would take me, at
least, a long time to write.
I'm rather afraid of death myself, actually, and have always been. If it
doesn't give the impression of being an obsession, that's very likely merely
because death for me still seems some decades off, and I can conveniently put
off thinking about it too deeply (but it already looks ominously closer now
than it did in my childhood). Although, I don't know, actually I do think
about death a lot, not necessarily morbidly, but just from a philosophical
point of view, wondering if it really is the end or not. And of course,
experiencing or anticipating the death of someone close tends to make you
think about death more than normally.
I thought the symphony could perhaps be a bit more than a memorial to
Granny, that it could perhaps be about death in a general, almost
philosophical sense. I would use it to really explore my feelings about life
and death and karma and rebirth, and all the ideas of that sort that I have
difficulties and ambiguities about. And indeed, the music I wrote does have
something of the feeling of the deep things of life to it, there is a bit of a
feeling of life and death and karma to it. I can't describe why, but it just
somehow feels like that.
Bivalia: I think it would be very good for you to go ahead with what you've
just been describing to me. You will be able to ascend if you want to, and not
die as it is usually understood; but if you don't feel that deep inside yet,
those feelings about death still have to be dealt with.
Michael: I suppose so. Anyway, impossible as it seemed, Granny finally
rallied and recovered with no permanent ill-effects. And I seemed to let the
symphony go, and went on to other things.
And then a year or two later, in September, 1993, Granny suddenly died
without warning, with no illness or anything leading up to it. She died
peacefully in her sleep one night, and the doctors said she would have felt
nothing.
Bivalia: She is blessed indeed, isn't she?
Michael: I'm not sure what you mean.
Bivalia: I mean that she had help in her moment of death. It was not for
her to have a traumatic death.
Michael: I don't see why anyone should have a traumatic death, actually;
but they do.
Bivalia: That is a complex matter, and I don't think now is the time to go
into it. But if you saw things as they are, and not merely as they appear, you
would see that even so-called traumatic deaths are enormously less traumatic than
they appear to those left behind. But it is true that your grandmother had a
very good death indeed, if you can speak of it in such a way.
Michael: Anyway, my uncle, Granny's son, David I. (her name "Turner"
was from a second marriage), went to visit Granny the next morning, and had to
break in when no-one answered the door; and he discovered her dead in bed. He
told Mum, Mum told my elder brother Peter, and Peter called in on me that
afternoon on the way home from work (which he had left early) to tell me the
news.
As soon as I opened the door and saw Peter there, I just knew what he had
come for, even before he said a word. He told me briefly what had happened,
and my first words were "Oh, hell". I didn't cry or anything, but I think I
felt a bit shaky. I walked with Peter to the tram stop and waited with him
until his tram came, and we talked a little about Granny; then I went back
home again.
I don't know if I should be ashamed of this or not, but I must admit I
did continue working on the computer program I had been writing on the
computer at the time Peter called. Computer programming is something very
intellectual and almost mathematical, not emotional at all.
I think I was a bit shaken, but what else was there to do? There didn't
seem to be much use in sitting down and weeping, and that just didn't seem to
be coming anyway; it isn't that I was suppressing it. I certainly saw no
point in pretending to go through the motions of something I just wasn't
feeling. I was feeling something, but not in the way many people might have
expected (if they knew, that is - I'm not usually in the habit of talking
about feelings to other people).
The rest I've told you; I didn't seem to feel as much in the weeks to
come as you might expect.
Bivalia: I think you handled things very well, all things considered. But
there was more feeling than you realize; it just expressed itself in ways you
didn't recognize for what it was; and, as I said, you had already dealt with part
of this before your grandmother died. I keep telling you, don't worry about it.
But you are doing well to tell me all about this now.
Michael: I almost felt the tears come again just now.
Bivalia: It does not matter, loved one. Let it happen if it wants to. If
it gets too much, we can close the session and continue later. But I think you
would like to finish this story now that you have come this far.
Michael: Yes. I don't think anything really drastic emotionally is going
to happen now, more than a year later.
Anyway, a bit later, I don't know how long - perhaps some days or maybe a
week later - that symphony in B minor came back to mind. I found the bits I'd
already written, and, you know, further ideas came for it. And they are good,
too. There's no doubt in my mind that there's the makings of a great symphony
there, if I can continue at the same level.
Bivalia: You can; in fact, you can continue at a higher level. What you
have written there is only the beginning. But you have to do it, and get down to
it, and stick with it. It won't happen overnight; writing a symphony has been
described as the biggest intellectual achievement a human being is capable of, to
which I might add one of the biggest emotional achievements too.
Michael: It's funny that Granny's death somehow reminded me of the
symphony again, and prompted the additional ideas I wrote down. It seems
almost ghoulish, somehow.
Bivalia: It's not as unusual as you think. Great achievements in the arts,
the sciences, and other areas too, are often prompted by the deep human emotions,
the raw basic components of the human make-up, by deep grief, by anger, by peace,
by happiness, by joy. Make use of it. Ask St. Germain to transmute your
feelings into great music; don't feel guilty about it. St. Germain is with me
now, and is offering his help.
Michael: Don't go on like that; you're beginning to make me feel like
crying again.
Bivalia: Okay, I don't need to get too heavy on you now. What I've already
said will no doubt start a process which you will continue with in your own good
time. But a jolly good cry might be very good for you, you know, when you are
ready for it and can face it; I think there is much pain stored up within your
mind and your feelings, much anger, bitterness, sadness. St. Germain is asking
me to remind you that he is always there to help you transmute this into more
upbuilding feelings and deeds.
Michael: Thank you. I've got a horror of crying. I cried rather easily
as a child and even a bit into my teens, sometimes over things that seemed to
get to me at the time, but which now appear embarrassingly trivial. At school
once upon a time I was called "cry-baby" if I cried, over being bullied, for
example (which happened often), and kids used to chant, "You've got the cutest
little baby-face". Maybe that's had an effect on me.
I was followed by whole gangs of kids all over the school grounds as I
desperately tried to escape and find a quiet place somewhere, and the gangs
used to chant "Mary, Mary", until I just wept and wept. Then they would make
fun of my crying too. (The "Mary" was because I had two brothers called Peter
and Paul in the same school, and, you know, the reference was to the singing
group "Peter, Paul and Mary" who were very popular at that time, the
mid-1960s.)
If I managed to hide somewhere, they would sometimes hunt me down like a
pack of dogs in a fox-hunt. Even the toilets were not safe; they would climb
over the walls of the cubicle I had taken refuge in. Sometimes I couldn't
even have a piss unmolested. (Ever since those days, I have never been able
urinate in a public urinal, and I believe this stems from experiences at
school during this time.) And they would sometimes use a degree of physical
violence too. Sadistic little snotty bastards they were; I used to wish they
would burn in hell forever. To just kill them would be too good for them.
Also, perhaps another thing was that Mum and Dad sometimes told me to
grow up if I cried too easily or too often, although they certainly weren't
anything like the school-kids. Anyway, whether it's these things, or
something entirely different, my general attitude now is that I would bust a
gut in the effort not to cry sooner than let it happen, no matter how great
the pain, and especially in front of other people.
Bivalia: Children don't know how cruel they can be sometimes. It would not
be true to say they meant well - it was manifestly obvious to you that they did
not - but their intentions might have been merely to have a bit of fun, but they
probably didn't have the slightest idea of the full effects they were having on
you. Their behaviour doubtless stemmed from much unhappiness and deep insecurity
in their own lives.
Something must be badly wrong with a person's life for him to take pleasure
out of deliberately hurting others, and even then showing no mercy whatsoever
when the victim's distress becomes obvious to him. Or if even then the victim's
distress is not obvious to the bully, that just shows what profound darkness the
bully must be constantly living in. Perhaps such people will learn better one
day, but I fear in some cases the lesson will be neither easy nor quick. When a
person is long-accustomed to darkness, letting in the light can be painful
indeed, and some will not let it in until some circumstance forces them to -
perhaps something that makes the darkness they inhabit even more painful still
than they find the light. It has to happen sooner or later - no-one stays in
darkness literally for ever. The God-forces of evolution towards the light
pervade the entire universe, and even hold it together, and nothing and no-one
can resist this forever.
Your parents meant well, but were misguided about the role crying plays in
human emotions. If crying were such a despicable and bad thing, so unnatural,
why do you think humans ever got to have the faculty of crying? And as for
"growing up", as certain people call it, I suspect that if a great many more
people had not "grown up" so quickly and so thoroughly, and lost touch with their
real feelings and their own inner wisdom, your world would not be in the trouble
it is in.
Not that I am advocating childish irresponsibility for your entire adult
life, although just a little of that might not go amiss. But there are a lot of
trappings of adulthood that most humans tend to take on as they grow up which are
much less central to a true concept of adulthood than is commonly believed: this
includes much pretence and false values and mindless conformity to the so-called
norm.
The reluctance to cry is one of many examples of this sort of thing that I
could cite. In general, what most humans call "growing up" (as contrasted with
what real growing up is) is basically a gradual process of mental and emotional
ossification, the hardening into concrete of set patterns of behaviour and
thought that are arbitrarily determined by the mass thinking of the society you
grow up in, no doubt aided and abetted by your mass media, which I think you do
well to largely avoid.
Michael: I hate seeing anyone cry, especially adults, and most especially
men, because I know they must be suffering very badly indeed to reach the
point of breaking society's taboo against crying. I don't despise them, think
they're weak sissies or anything like that, but, rather, feel for them; but I
just hate witnessing it.
Michael: But I suppose I'm using crying as a diversion here. We were
talking about my grandmother. But I don't suppose there's much else to tell.
Bivalia: You have released much. There was still some sadness left which
you weren't all that well aware of, and this discussion has brought it to the
surface. It had to be done sooner or later. So, you see, in various ways at
various times you have expressed grief, and one by one mention of these has come
up in our conversation.
Not to be forgotten is the 5 pages you wrote about your grandmother to your
friend Roger G.
Michael: He didn't comment about it in the next letter I got from him.
Bivalia: It doesn't matter. Perhaps he found it uncomfortable to bring up
with you. But, for all that his musical interests are very different from yours,
and even his outlook on life, he's a very accepting, non-judgemental person. I
can see why you feel free to write to him about things you've never told anyone
else at all. I hope you won't lose touch with him, despite his being on the
other side of the world for some years. He is a good person for you to confide a
lot of personal things to that you want to talk about but for one reason or
another can't discuss with most people.
Michael: I don't think he's interested in spiritual things all that much,
although I have written about such things to him to some extent.
Bivalia: That doesn't matter. As I think we've discussed before, there's
more to spirituality than outward beliefs, which are often distorted by the
particular set of limitations a person has taken on in a particular life-time.
Many Earthly religions make a big mistake in assigning eternal importance to what
spiritual beliefs you have with your physical mind, claiming that your eternal
destiny irreversibly depends on the cultural accident of what religious beliefs
you happen to have encountered and believed in.
Michael: Well, I suppose that's part of the attempt by some religious
authorities to exercise power over their followers.
Bivalia: Yes, although of course some within the hierarchy are also
victims; you are probably aware that many priests and other church officials are
very well-meaning, even though limited by the dogma they have come to believe in.
Michael: Of course. I have known such people myself, whose sincerity I
don't doubt.
There's another thing about Granny's death I rather regret; and that is
that I didn't see her or speak to her for weeks before her death. I wonder if
she was a bit hurt and wondered if she had offended me in some way, which of
course she hadn't. But Mum sometimes said if for any reason I didn't ring her
up or visit her for a couple of weeks, she wondered aloud to Mum whether I was
offended with her for any reason. And of course Mum assured Granny that this
wasn't so. And I would then ring her up and we'd arrange a time for me to go
and see her, and I'd stay the night, and we'd play Scrabble, or just talk.
But, unfortunately, I left it too late this time.
Bivalia: This is unfortunate; but it's just one of those things. I
wouldn't attach too much importance to it. Even if in fact she was offended at
the time, I'm sure it wouldn't have lasted very long. Her love for you would
have overridden that quite quickly; and her level of awareness is much greater
now in the realm she now inhabits than before.
Michael: There was no particular reason I hadn't been in touch with her
for a few weeks. There've been times before when this has happened; and there
would be other times when I was in more regular contact. I suppose it came
and went in cycles.
Bivalia: Of course. Most things do; very few things of this sort maintain
a constant pattern.
Michael: I am very disorganized in my own life, and this seems to affect
my behaviour especially at certain times. One effect of this can be to cause
me to neglect contacting people I would normally keep in touch with.
Bivalia: Yes. You should not regard yourself as in any way to blame for
this. You were not to know your grandmother was about to die, especially when it
happened absolutely without warning. It is simply unfortunate that your lack of
contact coincided with the time of her death.
I don't think it would be profitable to debate the question at this time of
whether on the higher levels there were reasons for this or not, but simply leave
it that it just happened that way for whatever reasons - call it chance if it
makes you feel better - and it is not worth worrying over.
Michael: Also, perhaps I sometimes put off ringing her up, because
conversation did get a bit difficult, not only because of her hearing, but
because, as I told you before, she did get a bit vague, and this made it very
difficult to know how to talk with her without being condescending. I suppose
I succeeded in some fashion most of the time, but it could be difficult at
times. I once felt encouraged a few years ago when Mum said to me that Granny
had once told her, "Michael is the only person who doesn't talk to me like an
old lady".
Bivalia: That is very touching, and a wonderful tribute.
Michael: I suppose so; and I don't suppose in that comment she meant to
reflect badly on others who presumably did, at least at times, speak to her
like an old lady; and if they did, I realize that some people may perhaps feel
a bit self-conscious talking with someone very old, especially if the elderly
person is also getting vague. But for all that, I still wondered if she found
me boring at times, because I think I can be a bit of a bore at times if I get
on some hobby-horse. I tried to strike a balance with Granny between being
too intellectual on the one hand and too trite and inane on the other hand.
But it really is difficult to achieve that when someone is getting mentally
vague. It sometimes got hard to avoid recycling the same topics all the time.
Bivalia: I know. With her mental faculties restored now, and free of the
limitations of her wearing-out body, I'm sure she would understand. One day, the
two of you will laugh together about it. I'm sure she wouldn't want you to
torment yourself with regrets over any of these matters. You haven't committed a
great and unpardonable sin, you know.
Michael: Well, I don't know if there's anything more to say about this.
In fact, I had a couple of other things to talk with you about, but I spent a
great deal more time on this than I expected to. In fact, I don't even think
I had any idea we were going to get onto the matter of Granny's death at all.
Bivalia: No matter. We have accomplished much.
Michael: I think we may have been overdramatizing the themes of grief and
guilt, you know. We've talked about them a lot as if they were constantly
tormenting me all the time, when they're not. About grief: well, I've already
told you I didn't seem to feel much grief most of the time; and as far as
guilt goes: well, although I've mentioned a few things I might have felt
guilty about, such as not feeling grief, or about getting musical ideas from
Granny's death, or about not seeing her for a few weeks before she died -
although I might have been tormented by guilt over these things, I haven't
really. Perhaps I felt a bit uneasy once or twice, but that's about it. So I
suppose we've been overdoing the talk about grief and guilt.
Bivalia: Overdoing it? I don't know. These thoughts were within you, so
it was appropriate to talk about them. It doesn't matter that they may not have
felt intense; the thoughts were there, and you did well to bring them up. We
have done a lot of good work now. You have accomplished yet another step towards
your final ascension.
Do you want to continue with the other things now, or not?
Michael: Well, let's see. I don't know what the time is now, but if I
quit the word-processing program for a moment, I can find out from the
computer. I think it's getting very late in the night, though - Sunday
morning, that is. And I want to get myself something to eat too. I suppose I
wanted to talk a little about the past-life readings with Sananda, which
elaborated on what Sananda told me through Crea - and Sananda's original words
to me were so loving and tender, and yet so encouraging, that once or twice
rereading them even now has almost made me feel a bit like crying.
Bivalia: He is a most lovely being, isn't he? And you are very dear to
him, you know. You have shared much over the millennia.
Michael: And you know, when we were looking at my life during his life as
Jesus, and talking about me walking with him on the way to being crucified as
he carried his cross, I almost cried then too, just as we were talking about
it.
Bivalia: Between him and me, we might yet make a good crier of you.
Bivalia: You're the only one who forbids it, and certain other people if
you let them forbid it. Certainly God doesn't forbid it.
Michael: I suppose I feel a bit doubtful about whether I could have such
an illustrious background as to have been a close friend of Jesus. I mean,
it's a bit like those fruitcakes who claim they're Napoleon or Cleopatra.
There must be dozens of Napoleons and Cleopatras and perhaps even Jesuses
inhabiting various mental hospitals.
Bivalia: Well, you haven't made the claims yourself. It isn't quite the
same. You have simply been told these things uninvited by an entity who claims
to be Jesus himself - so it's straight from the horse's mouth. And you don't go
round boasting about it to all and sundry, big-noting yourself; you only tell
people who are receptive, and after careful thought about whether such telling is
appropriate or not.
Michael: Yes; in fact, in an odd way, hearing the message from Sananda at
Crea's workshop made me feel strangely humble, even though I suppose it's not
very humble to call yourself humble. But is it really Jesus, or
Sananda?
Bivalia: You have to decide that for yourself. There is no proof in the
scientific way. I think it was indeed Sananda, but for me to say that proves
nothing to you.
But do you have any reason to doubt it? If, as you say, you have decided
to try to be open about spiritual matters, which is the only way to investigate
anything spiritual, you would do well to give Sananda the benefit of the doubt
until some reason comes up to indicate otherwise. And certainly, as you yourself
acknowledge, Sananda does seem to show a deep, tender love that would be very
difficult for an impostor to imitate.
You cannot prove it in the ordinary sense, but if you remain open-minded,
your awareness of things will develop to a point where one day you will just know
whether or not it is true.
Michael: Anyway, I've just checked the time; it's not quite as late as I
thought, but still rather late: about 4.20 a.m., in fact. But I don't think
we'd better go on too long now. My fingers are a bit sore, and it would be
disastrous for a computer addict like me to get R.S.I. (repetitive strain
injury). With the mess my place is in, I bet my chair and table and so on are
not what they call "ergonomic" - that is, specially designed not to give you
R.S.I.
Perhaps next time, maybe tomorrow or in a few days, we can talk further
about my discussions with Sananda, and about an experience I had a week ago
where I went for a walk and seemed to have an awareness of nature after
calling more than a dozen Masters to be with me.
Bivalia: By golly, Mike, you do seem to get around, don't you? You move in
high society, spiritually speaking. Who did you whistle up?
Michael: Oh, God, Sananda, Nada, Mary, Commander Ashtar, Athena,
Commander Soltec, Quan Yin, Archangel Michael, St. Germain, Hilarion, El
Morya, Kuthumi, Serapis Bey, Lanto, Baniah, Wotana, P'taah, and perhaps a
couple of others. And you too. And I also invited beings from the Ashtar
Command, the Great White Brotherhood, the Space Brotherhood, and the angelic
realms who wished to join me, and maybe one or two other general groups such
as those - it's difficult to remember a long list of names, but you get the
general idea. And I think my guides too. And I think Mother Earth was in my
thoughts a bit too.
Bivalia: Well, you certainly don't do things by halves, do you? I'm
surprised you didn't blow your brains out with that little lot. Those fellows
(and ladies too, of course) pack a mighty punch, you know. You were playing with
fire then. But I suppose they would be careful not to give you too much for you
to handle. There's a lot of love and wisdom there, as well as power, you know.
Michael: Well, it may be a coincidence, but I think it had quite a
powerful effect on me. It was quite impulsive actually.
On Saturday, 8 October, I was at my parents' place. They were away for a
couple of days in the Barossa Valley near Adelaide with my uncle and aunt, Bob
and Pauline S., who were visiting from Spain. I was there to
look after their cat, Priscilla, while they were away (she's quite a cute
little pussy-cat) -
Bivalia: Yes, I can see quite a bond of love between Priscilla and
yourself; you have helped her evolution quite a bit over the years - and I dare
say she has helped yours too.
Michael: Well, I'm glad of that. Both of those. I am the only person
Mum and Dad like to have cat-sit when they go away, because Priscilla's rather
shy with people she's not used to, and frets a bit. She accepts me just like
Mum and Dad themselves, however.
Bivalia: You see, you are not really deficient in ability to love; I think
it is simply that you don't like using or even thinking the word "love"
- but you know about it, even if you describe it in other ways.
Michael: Maybe. It doesn't feel like it though. Well, anyway, I had to
walk to the shops to buy something, and it was perhaps 15 minutes away (I
don't drive). My parents' house in North Croydon is situated quite high on
the slopes of a long hill or ridge, in a road that runs almost parallel to the
top of the ridge. I had to walk to the southern end of Neuparth Rd. (the road
they live in), turn at right angles to the left and walk down quite a steep
slope to the shops. I think I started talking to Sananda on the way, nothing
special, just philosophizing a bit the way I tend to, and also telling him
what parts of the higher teachings I had difficulty with, and how I found it
difficult to accept the fact of pain and suffering without judging it as bad,
which I usually do.
I got the thing I had to and started walking back up Exeter Rd., pausing
to wander a bit in an overgrown vacant block, for no reason other than to
enjoy looking at the trees and weeds and clumps of blackberries, and so on.
When you go up Exeter Rd., it gets steeper and steeper as you go along,
and past where Neuparth Rd. turns off to the right, it goes right up over the
ridge and down the other side, where it eventually comes to a dead end.
Well, I turned into Neuparth Rd., then quite impulsively decided to go
back and go on up Exeter Rd. to the top of the hill, and explore the nature
reserve which extends all along the ridge and down the other side (opposite
the side my parents' house was one), down to the bottom of the valley on the
other side. My parents had been living here two or three years, and I had
been visiting about once a week, and yet I had never explored round there.
And yet, as I looked up the hill to where all the trees at the top overlooked
the row of houses in Neuparth Rd., there was something about it that somehow
reminded me of the world of my dreams. I can't explain that; the area has
never itself featured in any dreams (that I remember), but there's just
something about it that reminds me of places that have been in my dreams,
sometimes repeatedly.
Bivalia: I know what you mean. I think you have quite a bit of sensitivity
to the subtle feelings of dreams, even though you can't always explain it
clearly. You're one day going to have immense fun exploring the world of your
dreams in a fully conscious way. There'll be so much you recognize.
Michael: That sounds interesting. But I'm going on a bit, not letting
you get a word in edgeways.
Bivalia: No, no, never mind. Please go on. Take your time; this is
important. You mustn't ever feel rushed when you tell me anything.
Michael: Well, anyway, I think that's why I wanted to explore it. When
you go up Exeter Rd., just after it passes over the highest point of the
ridge, it veers away to the left; but straight ahead, there's a really rough
dirt road going on straight ahead, right down to the bottom of the valley, and
up the other side. The nature reserve is on the right, and just an odd waste
area on the left, with trees in it.
Well, seeing this gave me a bit of nostalgia, because it reminded me of
the many similar dirt roads that abounded in Belair and Stirling in the
Adelaide hills where I spent a good bit of my childhood (oh, how idyllic that
now seems, even though I know those years had their own particular
unhappinesses).
I may strike some people as cold and remote and hard-bitten, but, given
the right thought or prompt, I can quite quickly become a quivering mass of
bittersweet nostalgia.
And one of the things that some people may think eccentric about me is
that I often seem to see beauty in things like weeds, overgrown grass, untidy
empty blocks, rutted dirt roads, and the like. They sometimes have touches of
that magical atmosphere to them that I've spoken of to you before. They're
just a little bit of natural chaos not arranged by man to suit his ends, in a
world that sometimes seems too orderly and regular. I love looking at unmown
lawns, you know; the longer they've been unmown, the better. And I especially
like those little white daisies that sometimes spring up in them in their
hundreds, which my mother regards as weeds spoiling the lawn.
Bivalia: I know what you mean. I think I share your view about these
things. I think you will really love some of the wildflowers and even weeds that
can be found in the higher dimensions of the universe, the astral and even higher.
Michael: If you look at certain weeds without preconceptions, you can see
beauty in them; some of them have a lovely symmetry to them. I think one of
the things I like about the composer Percy Grainger (apart from his wonderful
music, that is) is that as a child he was given a patch of ground to grow his
own things in; and he grew weeds there!
Bivalia: Perhaps he and you will have a lot to enjoy together one day. You
would be surprised to know how many of the composers you admire most know of your
existence and would like to help you musically. You stand out more than you
think in their sight, out from the musical scene of your time, because of the
fact that you are not, by and large, in tune with the musical world of your time,
and are more in tune with the musical world of those composers you admire. And
people with similar vibrations tend to be noticeable to each other, and are drawn
together. And there are not many composers alive in your world today with
vibrations so similar to those of the composers you admire. And you also stand
out, of course, because of the great musical talent you have, even thought it
seems to be blocked for now. But we're about to change that, aren't we?
Bivalia: And there are composers in the higher dimensions who can help you
too, both now and in the future.
Michael: Well, that's something to look forward to. Perhaps I'll have
lots of composers for friends as well as Masters.
Bivalia: You will, indeed.
Michael: Well, when I was a child in Belair, I think I could get even
stranger than liking unmown lawns and weeds. Back then, near where I lived
there was a retreat house belonging to the Anglican Church, and in the vast
grounds there were woods and fields, and I used to spend quite a bit of time
there, occasionally with my brothers Peter and Paul, and probably more often
by myself. I suppose I was trespassing, but no-one who saw me seemed to mind
(you very rarely met anyone in those woods and fields; it was so quiet and
peaceful). There were nice wildflowers there, which I sometimes used to pick
for Mum.
But the strange thing was this: in one place there was a hollow which
contained a huge, ancient rubbish dump: old cars, discarded, rusting objects
of all sorts. You're not going to believe it, but that place was quite
magical to me, in a way. I suppose unmown lawns are nothing compared to that.
Bivalia: There's no doubt about it: you were different as a child, but you
were so unaffected. You were just yourself, and it sometimes made people
uncomfortable; it sometimes cause them to think you ill-mannered or naughty or
eccentric. But I love you for your genuineness and unaffectedness.
Michael: Thank you. Anyway, I've strayed far from my story.
Bivalia: It does not matter.
Michael: Back to the walk I took a week ago; I'm up to the dirt road
which reminded me of Belair and Stirling.
I walked down that dirt road, then came up again; and as I thought
dreamily of old times, and all the long walks I used to take when I was a
child (which was a very solitary time generally for me), I just had an impulse
to ask God and those Masters (the ones I named before) to be with me. I had
already been talking with Sananda, the ever-present Sananda, as I said
before. I'm getting quite fond of the old boy, in a way - Sananda, that is.
I'm afraid I perhaps don't show due respect and deference to him, but instead
get rather familiar.
Bivalia: He likes that. Don't worry about deference and all that. That
may be the Churches' way, but it is not the only way. I don't think it's the way
Sananda prefers it himself, but of course he respects the sincerity with which
many people in the Churches approach Jesus, and he gives them what they want from
him. He has a wonderful capacity to take people as they are, and accept their
way of doing things, their way of speaking to him and thinking about him. He is
equally at home with being addressed as "O Holy Jesus, Perfect Son of God and our
Blessed Saviour" and "the old boy" as you just put it.
Michael: I'm glad of that. I've never been much attracted to the idea of
strict religions or teachings which say you must do things this way and only
this way. I always used to have the idea you must always be very reverential
and churchy when talking to God or Jesus, for instance, and since I'm not very
good at putting on a reverential front, I think this cut me off from anything
spiritual for many years. But I think I'm beginning to get more intimate with
the Masters, and perhaps even beginning to feel friendly to God.
Bivalia: That's great. I'm sure God has been waiting for this, and is very
glad now. And so are the Masters glad; they rejoice for everyone who is able to
come closer to them and to God.
Michael: When I talk to the Masters, I might be walking along, and I
might interrupt myself briefly and say, "Those are lovely daisies there", or
"Isn't the sky beautiful just now?", or "Will you excuse me a minute? - I'd
just like to say hullo to this pussy-cat" - or something like that.
Bivalia: Wonderful - wonnnnn-derful! You mustn't ever feel that
anything is too trivial or worldly, or not spiritual or sacred enough, to speak
to the Masters about, or to God either. You would say such things to a close
friend, wouldn't you?
Bivalia: You wouldn't constantly be wondering, would you, whether this
close friend was always judging you, thinking that such and such that you said
was silly, or whether something you had done was shameful, or anything?
Bivalia: Well, it is the same with the Masters, only more so. And it is
even more so with God himself. He is a close friend too, and you can be just
that intimate with him. Forget all the churchy stuff, if you don't feel
comfortable with it. It is not for everyone. And don't feel guilty to be with
him if you think you have done something not quite right. I can tell you, he is
not constantly scrutinizing you to see if you come up to scratch or not. He
accepts that human limitations sometimes cause you to do things that might not be
as much in tune with spirit as they might be.
And I can tell you, God himself, as well as the Masters, was delighted to
be with you on that walk, and he himself delighted in the things along the way
that you delighted in. If only you could get a glimpse of God, you would be
astonished and delighted to see how child-like and even quite undignified he can
be at times, when it is suitable to be like that. He does not stand on his
dignity in the slightest, even though he can be very dignified when it is right
for that manner.
Michael: Yes, I'm trying to see things that way, although it isn't easy
to throw off years of conditioning.
Bivalia: No, of course it isn't. But our beloved Mother/Father God has
infinite patience, and will wait as long as it takes you to draw close to him.
Michael: Well, anyway, when I came up the dirt road again, I turned left
into the nature reserve and wandered a little up and down some of the paths.
It was pretty well continuous woods, although not really thick. I don't know
if they are in their perfectly natural state, before humans came along, or
not. Eventually I went down a path that went diagonally down the other side
of the ridge, which then curved up again when it was near the bottom of the
valley. But at that low point a smaller track branched off at right angles,
straight down into the valley.
Just a hundred yards or so down, I came to an opening in a fence, which
was the end of the woods, and walked through; and I came into this great open
area, square in shape, straddling the valley from one side to the other. On
the other side of the clearing I could see houses, and the end of a dead-end
road. But the clearing didn't slope down into the valley and then up the
other side; instead, crossing from one side of the valley to the other was
this great rounded ridge, covered in grass. The ridge had obviously been
built up by humans, and clearly wasn't natural. Quite likely this area had
been cleared with the intention of building more houses there.
There was a stream in the valley, and it passed under the ridge via a
pipeline. But the ridge went right across the valley at right angles,
hundreds of yards across. As you looked to either side, the grassy area
sloped down from the ridge gradually, until on both sides it reached the level
of the stream, by which time it was at the edge of the clearing. These were
the points where the stream entered and emerged from the pipeline. There were
trees in the valley, both upstream and downstream, although not as thick as in
the woods I had just emerged from.
For some reason this clearing fascinated me, seemed to have a unique
atmosphere to it, a sense of wonder almost. As I emerged from the forest, and
walked up the slope to the ridge (which didn't join the forest quite where I
had emerged), there was a sense of hugeness, of expansiveness. It almost
reminded me of those glorious hills in the film The Sound of Music,
just a bit. (Looked at objectively, this was not nearly so grand as those
Austrian hills, but the effect struck me at the time, anyway.) And I was
reminded of a scene, I think from The Sound of Music too, where some
people were walking over some hills to escape from the Nazis, and the scenery
was beautiful, and there was just this sense of wonder as they escaped and
made their way over the hills to a new life, full of promise and hope. You
know what I mean? - it's difficult to explain.
Bivalia: I know precisely what you mean, Michael. There are many beautiful
thoughts in The Sound of Music.
Michael: It somehow reminded me of a scene I once wanted to depict in
music (and tried to, but didn't get very far with it). It's just an image of
a tropical island, say in the Pacific Ocean. I don't know where I got the
image from, years and years ago, but in it, there's a sleepy little town by a
harbourside, and behind the town rise these lovely hills, and there are trees
on the slopes, lush trees, not too thick; and if you climb up high enough,
they thin out, and near the rounded top of the hill it's very open, with just
grass and maybe a few bushes, and the most lovely wildflowers in the grass,
with soft warm balmy breezes wafting through. And the sky is a glorious blue,
with just a few patches of cloud of that wispy summery type which seem magical
at times, and the sun is nice and warm but not too hot. It's quite a vivid
image, and I can almost see it in imagination, in quite a bit of detail.
There's a very recognizable atmosphere to the place, and it is full of magic,
like paradise.
Michael: I don't know why this scene came to mind, quite different as it
is from the clearing where I stood.
And I was also reminded of the adventures I used to read about as a child
in Enid Blyton's Famous Five books, and those stories were often set in
scenery which was beautiful, and the author mentioned things along the way
like wildflowers and streams and sunsets, and those stories were full of
wonder to me, routine though they may be in literary quality.
But the whole atmosphere of the Famous Five stories seems to pervade the
feel of my childhood (even though my life was nothing like that of the Famous
Five), and I think in subtle ways still influences me. And there seemed a
very companionable feel about the main characters in the book, the four
children and their dog Timmy, there was a good feel of fellowship between
them, and it all seemed innocent and wholesome, somehow. The books are much
criticized, but I can still see good points about them too.
Anyway, these thoughts and many others passed through my mind as I stood
looking at that clearing with its sense of openness and hugeness, sharing my
thoughts with God and the Masters. I felt flooded with half-formed ideas for
a great and wonderful novel I would like to write about that sense of wonder
that is so elusive, that indescribable longing for the eternal. I thought the
novel could span the whole universe, and humanity could break free of all its
limitations and suffering, and could travel in space and explore space and
learn the secrets of the universe; they could leave the physical world, and do
astral travelling, and explore the world of dreams and all the higher
dimensions and have wonderful fellowship, and all sorts of other wonderful
things. You know what I mean? There was more to it than that, and I've
probably forgotten half those thoughts, which were so elusive and evanescent
anyway, but what I've said gives you a taste, anyway.
Bivalia: I don't know why you tell people you're not very good at feeling.
I think you're wonderful at it, and getting better the more you write.
Michael: One of the annoying things about this sense of magic is that you
can never quite grasp exactly what it is. I'm sure what I've told you is only
like the shadow of the real thing; and the feeling sometimes seems to fade if
you try to pin it down too much.
Bivalia: That's because the fullness of this reality cannot be fully
understood in three-dimensional modes of thinking; the words simply do not exist
to describe it exactly. It's like your dreams: you've commented to various
people how impossible they are to describe, and how even when you can describe
them partially, they simply sound absurd and self-contradictory, and yet how much
they can, in spite of all that, seem to have their own self-consistency, their
own emotional flavour, their own sense of deep meaning, and a deep haunting sense
of familiarity, as if there's something about this you feel you should remember,
even though you don't.
Michael: Yes. The sense of wonder I'm talking about is a bit like that.
Bivalia: I think the best way for you of coping with it is to write stories
such as the one you just mentioned, and write your music, following all the
wonderful ideas that come to you. Keep asking the Masters to help you. Follow
your truth (as you've been doing for thousands of years!). All that will help
you develop your consciousness of these higher realities which you are trying to
reach, which you have been longing for since you were a tiny child. It will help
you get closer and closer to them all the time.
Michael: I hope so. You know, it's weird, but even as I type this,
there's a sense in which the computer screen containing these words is just a
bit like that clearing itself. I can't explain it any better than that; I
suppose it has that in common with a dream.
Bivalia: You are becoming very aware indeed. You become aware of all sorts
of subtle connections when you raise your vibrations. What is happening is that,
astrally, you are connecting the scene itself to your words, and to the area of
space in which you are sitting, and that connection is spilling over, astrally,
even a bit into your computer itself. I think these connections are even taking
place on the mental plane, too, if I'm not mistaken.
Don't laugh at this, but your computer has a spirit too, quite a nice
little spirit, actually, not quite on the level of a pine tree spirit, but it has
a lot of intellectual energy in it; and you are helping its evolution by writing
things like this on the computer, and spending so much time with your computer,
and sharing your light with it, and writing programs and lavishing so much care
on those programs and taking pride in doing your work more than just adequately.
You have talent in this area of computer programming too, you know. I'm
sure Commander Ashtar would be happy to offer you a job on his starship one day
if you would care to do some work in this area for a good cause.
Michael: Well, working with Ashtar would always be nice. I'm quite fond
of Ashtar.
Bivalia: He is fond of you, too, my friend. And we all know that when you
say "quite fond", you mean, in a mode of understatement quite characteristic of
you, that you mean "very fond".
And by the way, he says he is perfectly happy to take you on in chess one
day, and you can try to beat him like you promised, but he will take quite a bit
of beating.
Michael: We shall see one day. I shall have all of eternity to practise
my chess.
Michael: Well, win or lose, I'm sure it will be enjoyable to have some
games with him.
By the way, how can you tell whether my computer has a spirit, and what
it's like? Are you clairvoyant or something?
Bivalia: Ultimately, everyone is, but I don't need that to tell. It's just
a matter of considering the essential nature of a computer, what it is used for,
and the like.
Michael: You say everything has a spirit. Let's try another. What sort
of a spirit has my Sony tape recorder, the little portable one with 5-inch
reels?
Bivalia: Ahh - it has a tendency to soak up auditory vibrations, and has a
lot of music in it, nice music; it even has a bit of Sananda's vibration in it.
It's not very good at conjuring up new patterns of music, but great at repeating
old ones very often, and it has a memory like an elephant. It's got a lot of
your energy in it, that and the other two similar models you have, because you
have many memories associated with them.
Michael: What about, let's say, that big black brief-case I often use?
Bivalia: It has silent musical vibrations in it, and tends to
swallow up other entities, and is so formed that it does not easily let go of
anything it absorbs unless it is opened out. What, my friend, do you wish to
turn this into a fortune-telling session? But what I have said is mere
tautology: I have only said that a tape recorder records then plays back music
and that a brief-case holds things and that you keep music in yours.
I would like to hear the rest of your account of this wonderful walk you
took before we forget about it.
Michael: Well, anyway (to continue about my walk), going into the
clearing was a bit of a sidetrack from exploring the path in the forest a bit
further up the hill; but then I decided on a further sidetrack from the first
sidetrack, and I decided to explore along the valley a little. There were
fences nearby, belonging to back-yards which abutted onto the area near the
stream (on the side of the stream opposite the forest, which was only yards
away on the other side), and there was a rough path near the fences. I walked
along a couple of hundred yards and saw a group of pine trees in a field
ahead, and decided to go that way.
Well, after looking round there, I decided to go back to the clearing and
then back into the forest and back to the main path I had turned from. I
lingered in the clearing some more, still trying to capture the atmosphere of
the place, and went back into the woods.
Bivalia: Aren't you leaving out a couple of details? Perhaps some of the
most important parts of this experience?
Michael: Well. What to say about that. You really want me to bare my
soul, don't you?
Bivalia: What else is the purpose of life?
Michael: I don't know if all those beings I called up (God, and the
various Masters) were really with me or not, because I didn't directly feel
their presence or anything mystical like that; but perhaps they had an effect
on my thinking as I walked through the woods, through the clearing, and then
along the stream, because as I talked to them and looked at everything I was
walking past, I noticed myself thinking along lines that I was perfectly aware
most people would consider symptoms of incipient schizophrenia or worse,
perhaps even psychosis, and which even I myself might at other times so regard.
Bivalia: What do you mean?
Michael: I mean that I felt an strong urge to go up to the pine trees,
despite it being difficult to find a way through patches of mud without
soaking my leaking shoes, and that I eventually got there, and I said hullo to
the pine trees, it's been nice to meet you, and I mean that on the way back I
had an absurd fascination with the clearing on the edge of the woods, and
talked to what I thought might be the spirit of that place, and that I passed
a little group of mushrooms in that clearing and said hullo to them, or to the
spirit that was there, and that all this seemed quite natural and sincere to
do.
That's what I mean by thinking along lines suggestive of insanity....
Don't tell anyone, will you? I don't feel quite ready yet for the men in
white coats to come along with their syringes and straitjackets.
Bivalia: You speak in jest, I trust.
Michael: I've got a psychiatric history as long as your arm -
Michael: - and I was diagnosed as autistic aged one or two, and have been
to nearly a dozen psychiatrists at various times of my life. [b]
Bivalia: So what? Nothing could be less important than that.
Michael: Some would say this experience was evidence of my need for
another psychiatrist.
Bivalia: Forget it. What do the headshrinkers know about these things? I
believe psychiatrists have an unusually high incidence of emotional disturbance
themselves; many probably get caught up in the astral constructions of their
patients, many of which are quite elaborately unattractive and limited to almost
an awesome degree, sort of like an astral and mental prison. You could probably
counsel some of the shrinks, rather than the other way round. You're into
expanding your head, not shrinking it.
Michael: So talking to pine trees, and imagining the spirit of a clearing
is not a psychiatric matter?
Bivalia: Hurray! At last it's sunk in!
This was a very spiritual experience, you know. You had a very high degree
of awareness of the spiritual realms, at a deep level of your being.
I wouldn't worry about insanity, schizophrenia, and the like. One only has
to talk with you for a few minutes to see that you're not insane. And as for the
schizophrenics, psychotics, and so on you jokingly compared yourself with: why do
you think they experience the things they do, anyway? Why do they see monsters
or pink elephants or fairies, or anything else out of the ordinary?
You may be sure that it is because they are using psychic faculties and are
really seeing things in the astral world. They really do see pink elephants,
fairies, and so on; but their ability to see into these realms, and their
emotions, are way out of control, so they create many of their monsters astrally
and simply see what they've created. The fairies, at least, may have already
been there, but the mental patients' ability to see them just comes and goes;
they have little control over it, because they have no control over their
emotions, and the astral world is the world of emotion.
But your position, my friend, is nothing like this. So what you said about
schizophrenia is nothing more than a joke.
No, I won't tell anyone in your world, of course. As for people in the
higher worlds - well, all those you called upon know all about this anyway, and
every one of them was with you, you know, just as you invited them. They know
about this, and cherished the opportunity to be with you at this time; but from
their point of view there's nothing weird about what you have just described.
Nor do I find anything whatsoever weird about it.
Saying hullo to pine trees is not such an outlandish, deluded thing as many
people would imagine. Trees have a great deal of energy, you know, even a
consciousness. It is this you perceive when you say or think that pine trees
seem to have a particular feel or atmosphere to them, although you don't know
why, and can't account for it scientifically.
Michael: When I went up to one of those trees, a monster at least a
hundred feet high, I would say, it had just such a sense of hugeness; it was
like a cathedral, almost.
Bivalia: Well, you really were in touch with the spirit of that tree. A
pine tree spirit is a very majestic being. And of course it's not only pine
trees that have a spirit or consciousness. It's all living things, in one way or
another.
It's also in non-living things (as you commonly term them) too: absolutely
everything in the universe has this basic essence or spirit which embodies its
particular character, and you can be aware of this in connection with anything in
the universe whatsoever if you can develop sufficient awareness to be able to
tune in to it.
It is not at all an exaggeration to say that any physical being or
inanimate object or place has a spirit, which is the the real essence of that
entity, and when the physical manifestation (the part you can see or touch)
strikes you as having a certain character or feel or atmosphere, it does this
merely because it reminds you of the spirit, of which it is only a pale copy.
Remember that next time you are grieving any loss of a person, thing, or
situation in life. It is only the pale copy you have lost. Perhaps you can't
feel the real part, but it's there, just waiting for you to develop your
awareness so you can fully experience it. And I can assure you that once you
have the merest taste of this, you would never again miss the physical version of
it, would never even want to go back again to that alone.
And during this walk you took, you perhaps came closer than ever before in
this life of yours to achieving that. When you get that feeling that something
has a sense of wonder, a certain recognizable but indefinable feel to it, haven't
you noticed that if you scrutinize the physical object, searching for the source
of that feeling, the feeling seems to evaporate, leaving you to wonder if it was
nothing more than a trick of the imagination? (But then, perhaps imagination is
real, anyway.)
This evaporation of the feeling is because you have ceased focusing on the
higher dimensions of the object or place or situation or whatever it is. The
physical thing itself doesn't possess that essence in itself, as a mere
collection of atoms. You lose the plot if you focus exclusively on that,
although it can be a valuable help to finding the essence as long as you remember
it is not the essence itself.
It was the spirit the open space you felt, not just an open patch of grass
(although grass too has its own kind of spirit); and never mind that the clearing
was artificially cleared by man, although that fact would make it a rather
different kind of spirit than if it had been a natural clearing.
It was the spirit of those pine trees you felt, and communicated with (a
different kind of spirit, of course). And these spirits are considerably
powerful spirits too, as you felt.
The little group of mushrooms you came across don't have the same total
quantity of energy as the pine trees, but they work on a smaller scale, and have
their place in the universe. This does not make them inferior in any sense
whatsoever. They have their level of energy and consciousness, and saying hullo
to them makes perfect sense from our point of view in the higher realms. I don't
notice any of the Masters who know about this laughing at you for being so
crazy. In fact, the essence of those mushrooms springs from a very delightful
little fairy who was happy to greet you as you walked past, even though you may
not be fully aware of all these details. But you did feel something, didn't you?
Michael: I suppose in a sense, yes. But that could have been my
imagination or subjective feelings, my desire to believe what I know is not
true.
Bivalia: Oh come on! Who do you think you're kidding? Pull the other
one! Here, I'll hold it out so you can have a good tug. You'll have to do
better than that.
You may be fooling yourself, although I doubt that you are doing so
completely; but you're certainly not fooling God or any Masters; you're certainly
not fooling me, and you're not fooling the mushroom fairy, either.
Perhaps the influence of all those shrinks shows a little in remarks like
that. That sort of talk is what some people crudely but vividly call
"mindfucking". [c] Many psychiatrists are experts at that, and write heavy tomes
about it. It's the mental equivalent of masturbation. Some people get quite
high on it, and there's nothing wrong with it; but the problem with it is that it
doesn't lead to a very high level of truth (well at least it is a problem if such
a high level of truth is what you want, which is perfectly obviously so in your
case).
You may get away with that sort of explanation (or explaining-away, more
accurately) in the three-dimensional world of illusion, but not a hope at any
higher level - not a hope. The truth of these things is plain for everyone to
see in the astral and higher; and I can assure you that the fairy was there, and
that it greeted you, as you greeted it, and you did meet the pine-tree beings,
and the spirit in that open place - and so on. It certainly isn't for nothing
that you spent about half an hour just walking back and forth along the ridge
that crossed the clearing from one side of the valley to the other, trying to
feel the essence or atmosphere of the place, and getting all these longings for
you-don't-know-what stirred up, getting ideas for a wonderful story you would
like to write about that sense of wonder.
Michael: I hope you're right. It's certainly a nice idea about the
fairies and nature spirits, et cetera. The feeling gave me perhaps an inkling
of why Aborigines place such value on land, to the point of holding at least
certain parts of it sacred. Perhaps their feeling is a little like what I
felt about these places I walked through. To cut those pine trees down or
carelessly kick those mushrooms with one's foot would have seemed a
sacrilege. The way I felt about those things at the time, I would have been
extremely angry and outraged if I saw someone doing that wantonly. I suppose
this may explain at least a bit the way Aborigines feel.
Bivalia: You're absolutely right about that. The Aboriginal people of your
country, and of many other countries too, have a great awareness of nature
spirits and other entities that help give any place its character. To rip all
this up to dig mines or build cities or rubbish dumps is to them like it would be
to a Western capitalist to bulldoze the banks and to burn all the money, if you
want an analogy that might be better understood in your own society.
Michael: I think I understand the Aboriginal viewpoint better. I mean, I
like the things that money can do for you, that in our society you need money
for; but I don't revere money itself, or the values and institutions that have
been built up around it.
Bivalia: Of course you don't. Or to put it another way, it would be
similar to how a devout Christian would regard spitting on the cross in their
church and urinating on the Communion chalice and throwing the Host down the
toilet.
Michael: I get your point very clearly. Church may not be my main path,
not even an enlightened church like the Church of Antioch; but one thing I
have gained from this church, and St. Raphael's Church of Healing before that,
is an appreciation of the esoteric meaning of the Eucharist, and the way the
service builds astral structures for the inflow of divine power, and the role
various angels and fairies play in all of this.
By contrast, I can't say I ever had the faintest idea from any orthodox
churches of what services or sacraments meant, except for some vague idea of
symbolism, or some concept of the bread and wine somehow changing into the
Body and Blood of the Christ, for reasons that either were never explained
very clearly, or which just seemed absurd.
Bivalia: Well, there is a lot more to it than the orthodox churches
realize, and the two churches you mentioned are (were, in the case of St.
Raphael's) certainly much closer to understanding the real significance of the
sacraments. However that's a whole topic by itself, one which I'm not expert
on. I merely mentioned violating the Host and so on as a kind of analogy to the
Aboriginal view of violating the land.
Michael: I certainly see what you mean about sacrilege, whether in a
Christian context, or in relation to Aboriginal beliefs.
Bivalia: The Aboriginal people have their problems, and it would be a
narrow view of their reality to romanticize and sentimentalize their closeness to
nature too much.
And with the needs of the modern world, where a vastly excessive human
population exists (from an ecological point of view), humanity is dependent on
technology and high energy usage for mere survival, certainly at the level of
consciousness they are now at. Without high energy consumption and technology,
the Earth could not support the five-and-a-half-billion-plus people that now
exist, except if most of those people had a level of consciousness and a level of
mutual cooperation with each other and with nature that simply doesn't exist in
most societies and most people. Without that mass consciousness (which could
literally work miracles) you have no choice but to depend (for the time being) on
technology, high energy use, et cetera, and also the down side of pollution, too
- raping the planet, to put it bluntly.
And, distasteful though native peoples may find this, I suppose they have
to accept it for the time being. And I guess we in the higher realms have to
accept it too, on at least a temporary basis. In a sense Mother Earth too
accepts it, although it pains her. But she accepts it because she sees you
humans have painted yourselves into a corner and have no choice by this stage,
and she is full of love for you, despite the damage you have done her.
This whole situation is why so much ascension energy is being poured down
onto your planet at present, to try to relieve this emergency - and the word
"emergency" is no exaggeration.
So the Aboriginal view of land (at least certain portions of it) as sacred,
even though thoroughly grounded in truth, is not all that realistic in the
current emergency. Humanity simply has no choice at the moment but to mine,
build, use energy, and so on. Immediate chaos and disaster and war and disease
and starvation would result if this were stopped for any significant period of
time. Despite all that, however, when it comes to understanding nature at the
feeling level, the native peoples have it hands down over the vast majority of
Western people. Civilization has not corrupted their values nearly as much as it
has those of Western people - with some exceptions, of course, on both sides.
Your scientists, whose attitude strongly influences your own, Michael,
would do well to remember that there are many things in this universe they do not
see even remotely, and they would do well not to be so arrogant as to claim a
monopoly on truth and knowledge. A monopoly on certain areas of physical
knowledge, yes, perhaps I grant that, and maybe only perhaps; but a total
monopoly on all knowledge, no - the very idea is preposterous. I trust you are
beginning to see that.
I can tell you that you know more about fairies, and the Masters, and the
essence of nature, and lots of other things to do with the higher realms, than an
army of learned scientists with their hidebound materialistic outlook would have
a hope of knowing in a thousand years - unless they change their mind-set, that
is, which in some cases is unlikely for quite some time yet.
Why do you think you find the idea of fairies attractive? Why did you
write a substantial portion of a story called The Fairy Ring some years
ago, and why did you also want to write a piece of music also called The Fairy
Ring, even if you never got round to writing it? Why were you pleased when
at a previous residence you noticed what you thought might be a fairy ring in the
lawn, so that you actually led a couple of people you knew up to it just to show
them, and why were you sorry when, later on, a dog chained up in the yard dug the
lawn up out of boredom and frustration, and destroyed the fairy ring? Why did
you become so fascinated with fairy rings that several times you went to
libraries to find out whatever you could about them, what little was to be
found? Why did you delight in telling various people that in the South Downs in
Sussex, England, there are fairy rings up to 400 years old, and that their age
can be determined by measuring their radius, because they have a regular rate of
growing outwards, from 6 to 12 inches per year? This connection you have with
fairies and fairy rings seems to stand out a mile when you really look at it.
These things don't happen out of thin air, you know. There is obviously a
link or bond or common feeling between you and the fairy and angelic realms (both
of which are part of the same stream of evolution). And how would scientific
investigators or other sceptics account for these subtle feelings? It would all
be psychological mumbo-jumbo, about wish fulfilment fantasies or inability to
accept mortality, or bad potty training, or something of the sort. Perhaps I'm
being a bit irreverent, but I wouldn't even be surprised if some of them trotted
out hoary old chestnuts like anal-retentiveness or the Oedipus complex. (What a
useful word "complex" is for speaking mumbo-jumbo! Yes, it has its proper use,
but I suspect it is overused rather at times.)
Where you get ideas along those spiritual lines - such as fairies, just to
continue with that example - other people would just ignore the ideas, or laugh
or scoff at them. Those people do not feel drawn to these beings. Okay, that's
their cup of tea; but it's not yours, and you don't have to be influenced by
their views about such matters, although certainly you do well to exercise
discretion about whom you talk about such things with.
Michael: I guess so. I give in. You've floored me!
Bivalia: I've only reminded you of what you already know. When you write
stories about fairy rings or atolls or pine trees, or whatever, and create a
world full of beauty within which your characters move, and you create characters
who themselves tend to be almost idealistically good, and you just know
this is a wonderful idea for a story, that's what you know to be truth, not all
the sceptical reasoning. Have you ever noticed how often natural things, and
beauty, and love, and compassionate treatment of pain, and transcendent, even
mystical, experiences come up in your stories, and how seldom do violence, sordid
things, cities, and cars, and televisions, and even, dare I say it, computers?
Think about it. It is a sure guide to the real space you inhabit, as
against the things that you sometimes imagine mistakenly are real. And I can
tell you, beyond any doubt, that where you really are is very much more beautiful
and even glorious than you imagine with your everyday mind.
Then look at the music you have always been striving to write, the longings
and feelings you have always tried to express therein. These ideas have much
beauty in them, and are also much inspired by nature. (We'll ignore the reasons
why you have so often failed to complete pieces, which are not related to the
point I'm making now.) Take a look at some of the titles you've selected for
pieces over the years; they tell the story loud and clear: The Fairy Ring,
Moonrise, Sunset, Under the Pine Tree, The Water-Lily
Pool, Blue Horizon, Solar Eclipse, When the Wind
Changed, The Lost World of Vulcan, The Blue Planet - and I
could go on and on; that's only a small sample. I think even the very titles
conjure up a lovely atmosphere of magic and wonder. There's a persistent link
with many beautiful parts of nature, and also with planets and the Sun and the
Moon - things beyond your own planet, these things also being something you have
an affinity with. All very starseed-ish, isn't it?
Then there's that series of half a dozen or so symphonies you want to
write, the ideas for which have haunted you since the 1970s, which you've been
considering again over the last few years. The titles? The Spirit of the
Atoll, The Spirit of the Oasis, The Spirit of the Swamp,
Indian Summer, The River, Mountains, In the Forest,
and so on. Once again the message is clear: some of those titles even
tell one that they're concerned with spirit, so as to leave no doubt
about that, even though, very likely, when you conceived the titles, you thought
you were using "Spirit" merely figuratively to mean the essence of the atoll or
oasis or whatever, in some vague sense.
Unfinished as are most of your stories and compositions (and we won't go
into the reason for that now, it being unimportant in this context) - unfinished
as they are, I regard them as a very clear and reliable guide to the sort of
person you really are, to the things that really matter to you, that are close to
your heart and mind and spirit. Even in the case of ideas you never began, but
simply planned, I can see what those plans created astrally, and with few
exceptions, those astral forms though sketchy in some cases are very beautiful.
I can tell you that the fairies of water-lily pools have noticed the forms
you created astrally by planning (and beginning) The Water Lily Pool, and
that the devas concerned with the Sun and Moon and with solar eclipses have
noticed your plans for Solar Eclipse, a piece you never even began; but
they can't do much with those forms yet because they have not yet been brought
fully into fruition. Even planning these pieces makes a mark in the astral
world; you can scarcely scratch your big toe without someone at some level
noticing it, so you have definitely made marks in the astral even without
bringing your pieces to fruition. But when such fruition takes place, the
fairies, angels, devas, and so on absolutely revel in what has been created. It
is truly wonderful to have clairvoyant vision and be able to see their enjoyment.
So far with those pieces I just mentioned, they only have the sniff of it,
beautiful as it is. I hope a time will come when you be able to bring those
ideas into full fruition, every one of them.
As for the symphony The Spirit of the Atoll, which is a piece very
dear to your heart, of which certain passages have been written, but which seems
to be causing you great difficulty, so that you almost give up hope at times:
well, what can I say? Even though only a little is composed, your vision of the
symphony as it should be is so powerful and has haunted you for so long that it
has already created astral forms which are surprisingly steadfast for a piece of
music still in such early and indefinite stages of creation. It has definitely
been noticed by many of the rich variety of beings who inhabit atolls in the
Indian and Pacific Oceans, particularly the Pacific. They are waiting eagerly
for you to complete it.
If, my friend, you can complete that symphony one of these days, and have
it performed, it will not really be much of an exaggeration to say that you will
create atolls on the astral plane, to which the appropriate kinds of beings on
that level will come flocking. This is the sort of thing music does on the
astral and higher planes.
Perhaps you might like to ask Lord Kuthumi to help you with that; but I
suggest you work up to it in stages by beginning with shorter simpler pieces such
as the piece you have already begun with the beloved Master's help, and perhaps
doing the B-minor Symphony we talked about earlier somewhere along the way.
I know you have problems with following through with creating your music
and stories; but you have more talent than you realize, and a rare feel for
expressing nature in music, and in words. You have much to offer that no-one
else can offer; you have actually created an area in the vast universe of
creative space that is exclusively your own: either you work this area, or it
doesn't get done at all. The same is true of your writing. [d]
Michael: It is very nice of you to say these things.
Bivalia: They are the truth: nothing more, nothing less.
Michael: I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for much in this life. It's
already half over, and I'm getting older all the time, and I'm far from
properly organized to begin in the immediate future.
Bivalia: It doesn't matter. The famous English composer Ralph Vaughan
Williams wrote several symphonies in his seventies and eighties. How many
symphonies did Havergal Brian write at about this age? About 20, if I've got it
right.
Michael: Something like that. Quite a few of them are very short by
symphonic standards, concise and concentrated.
Bivalia: No matter. And what about George Lloyd, the Cornish composer,
whom you have, in wonderment, stated to be one of the most wonderful still-living
composers in the whole world? How's he going now?
Michael: He's in his 80s, still going strong as far as I know, despite
shocking war injuries that severely traumatized him for years afterwards. [e] He
poured out that trauma into his 4th Symphony, the Arctic Symphony, a
gigantic wonderful piece 65 minutes long. Several of his symphonies have been
written in the last decade or so, after he retired from composing for a couple
of decades, and they show no signs of decline in quality.
Bivalia: No, of course not.
Michael: After years of obscurity in earlier life, he now seems to go
from strength to strength in his old age. He's at last beginning to get the
recognition he deserved decades ago. He's amazing, and a great symphonist.
Bivalia: He is indeed. He is a wonderful being. And where's he up to now?
Michael: Number 12 at present. And 5 piano concertos, and I think one or
two violin concertos too.
Bivalia: Yes, but you'd better keep an eye on him, otherwise those figures
may be outdated before you're aware of it. Not only has he written 12 wonderful
symphonies (as well as the other compositions), but he conducts them himself, and
all 12 of them have been recorded, many conducted by him, and many of them
commissioned by an American orchestra that really took to his work. And most of
these symphonies are much longer than Brian's later symphonies, too, which
admittedly are rather neglected now.
Every time you feel like giving up, call on Kuthumi, who longs to help you,
and just remember George Lloyd. Kuthumi helps a great many composers; this is
one of his special missions, one which adds immeasurably to the evolution of the
Earth, and all beings on it, and indeed to the evolution of many realms beyond
the Earth you know; and he is happy to add you to his classes, and welcomes you
with open arms. And forget all those doubts and obstacles you are so expert at
making up. It's more mindfucking, that's all. [f]
In short, to put it in the vernacular, don't come the raw prawn with me.
You can't fool me with all that three-dimensional type of thinking, based on
limitations. If Brian and Lloyd can do it, there's no reason why you can't,
still decades younger, untraumatized by war injuries or the like. If you are
still in the habit of comparing yourself unfavourably with the likes of Lloyd,
saying, "He's a great composer, and I'm only me", forget it. Remember you have
Kuthumi (not to mention God and the many other Masters with whom you have varying
degrees of relationship), and that makes an enormous difference.
Michael: What if for some reason I don't do it?
Bivalia: So be it. That would be unfortunate, but this life is not all
there is; you will have later opportunities. But it would be very good to get a
head start as soon as possible rather than later; it will help you keep up with
things as the Earth ascends to her higher realms. Delaying this work too much
might make it more difficult to get started again when you finally do get around
to it; but it certainly won't hold you back permanently - just for a little while.
Michael: I'll think about this.
Bivalia: By all means, think about it; but don't stop there. Do it. And
remember that, for you, your artistic vision, and your spiritual truth, the one
beloved Hilarion helped you with so much all those millennia ago, are closely
related, and are in fact the same for all practical purposes. Never forget that.
I'm not saying necessarily that that is a general rule for all creative
people: it is for some, and isn't for others, and you are one of the former.
Some seem to keep their spiritual life a bit separate from their artistic work,
which may be quite pragmatic; some are not conscious of a spiritual life as
such. For you, the two are practically inseparable.
This is not to make a religion out of music or any other art-form. It is
the vision you are trying to evoke that is linked with your spiritual truth, not
the artistic activity, just as a church service is not spiritual truth itself but
a path to reaching spiritual truth.
Michael: I guess you're right. Your speech has left me speechless.
Bivalia: Sorry if I seem to be lecturing you too much, but it's important,
and I think you are interested to hear this anyway.
You yourself have often regarded your stories and music as attempting to
embody the essence of your inner landscape (and you know perfectly well what I
mean by that admittedly inadequate description), and you have for many years
quite consciously used them to try to evoke that longing for the eternal, that
sense of wonder or magic you felt closer to as a child, that ineffable feeling
the author C. S. Lewis called "Joy", which he wrote about so eloquently and
hauntingly in a way you immediately understood. Why, his understanding is such I
wouldn't be at all surprised if he is a starseed, for all his orthodoxy of
Christian belief, although I don't claim to have accurate knowledge of who is and
isn't a starseed, except that, because of my special connection with you by
virtue of being your Higher Self, I can indicate to you that you can safely
regard yourself as a starseed. And plenty of people other than myself have
expressed a similar opinion.
At the Crea workshop - which, incidentally, represented for Sananda an
opportunity to speak to you directly that he had been waiting for for many years
- at the workshop, Sananda asked you to keep your thread of truth going, and it's
part of my job to help you do this; and one way is to simply remind you of these
things - things like the reality of that inner landscape, that sense of wonder
you have wanted to express in your arts all your life, the reality of the spirit
world, of the Masters, and nature spirits, and everything that touches your heart
and stirs your longing for the eternal.
It is up to me to remind you of the reality of all these things you so
fondly hope are real, so that you don't lose sight of them or regard them merely
as an infantile delusion the way many other people do. That may be where they're
at, and I'm not about to judge it. But a simple look at the facts of your life
and your ways of thinking, a simple consideration of the things that are really
close to your heart, makes it manifestly obvious that you're not where those
sceptical scoffing people are.
Michael: Well, golly, you've almost convinced me. You'd be positively
dangerous if you ever got into Parliament.
Bivalia: God forbid! But then, perhaps I'd reform it from top to bottom!
And that might be a bit of a shock for some of the honourable members.
Michael: People who talk like you just did wouldn't survive Parliament
the way it is today for five minutes. You'd be laughed out in nothing flat!
Bivalia: Let them laugh for all they're worth, and I will laugh with them.
They already laugh at each other anyway; you have doubtless found Parliament
reminiscent of a rowdy schoolroom when the pupils think their teacher is out of
hearing. At other times they sound like a party of drinkers swapping dirty
stories.
But you'd probably be right in surmising that I would be unlikely to make
much favourable impact along the lines of spiritual truth.
Michael: Well, the sun is well up now, but I had to keep going with the
sheer force of what you've been saying; perhaps I'm getting better at
channelling you more accurately. I called up a largish group of Masters when
I began this session, which may have something to do with it.
I could say more about these things we've been discussing, but I suppose
I've made the important points anyway; but I just have to finish now. I want
to wash before I get to bed because I feel a bit sweaty (it's been quite warm
the last day or two), and I don't want to delay sleeping much longer now.
Thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts with me, and thank you to
God, and to all the Masters and other beings who have been with me helping me
express these ideas with clarity.
Bivalia: Thank you for taking the time to be with me and with the other
beings too. I bid you farewell.
Michael: Good-bye to you too.
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