Thanks to all of you who came out to support our "first" BlogTalkRadio chat! I thought it was a great success, and I'm looking forward to more in the future.

[Shepherd begins with a comic routine...]

Welcome to the Michael Show, winner of 7 Golden Orb awards for Best Talk Radio on the Causal Plane! Starring your favorite entity, MICHAEL!!! With special guest fragments, king-cast warrior Michael, warrior-cast king Michael, priest-cast king Michael, and many, many more! With sidekicks Ed McMahon, Dave Gregg, and Shepherd Hoodwin.

Brought to you by Carnation Instant Milk, the perfect food for your baby, now with GMO milk from cows with genes spliced with Michael's! So your baby will get all that good Causal nutrition it needs to grow up to be a Michael channel someday.

And now, Heeeeeeere's Michael

[Grounding exercise omitted]

Opening Comments

 We regard each of you as a healer. What heals, ultimately, is consciousness.

When you start to offer healing, you might feel, at first, an increase in discomfort. As a healer, you are vulnerable--you must be in order to heal--when you expose yourself to less-evolved energies. An inexperienced healer can sometimes feel overwhelmed by them, as if you were hit by something. The way to handle this is to focus strongly your attention on the qualities you wish to bring. The three basic universal forces are love, which aligns with inspiration; truth, intellect; and beauty, energy (or manifestation). In any situation in which you feel something destructive or ugly, you can call upon these qualities.

For instance, let’s say that somebody says something nasty or unfair to you. He is likely dealing with some difficult issues that may not be all that much about you personally. Sometimes, a person has just built up a lot of frustration and is letting off steam, and you are there, so it is dumped on you. What most people do is engage, because it triggers their own frustrations. Many actually see this as a good opportunity to dump, too: "He is dumping on me, so I will dump on him." It's sort of like mud wrestling, getting down and dirty, both letting off steam even if they are muddied and bloodied as a result.
 
This comes under the heading of "growing through pain." When you consciously become a spiritual student (everyone is an unconscious spiritual student) and take charge of your own evolution, you begin to understand that there are alternative ways of dealing with such a situation.
 
Unfortunately, most who have aspired to this have thought the only alternative was to stuff down their frustrations, slap on a phony smile, and try to get through it. That does keep a lid on things, which is sometimes the best that can be hoped for. However, for more advanced students, you can deal with your frustrations in a number of other ways.

There are therapeutic techniques that have been pioneered in alternative psychology in recent generations. For example, if you feel angry, you might hit a punching bag imagining it's the person who is bothering you, but with the intention of getting it out of your system but not doing psychic harm to the person (we are not speaking here of the equivalent of sticking pins in a voodoo doll). In other words, you hold a loving intent to release the old pent-up energy, which may also have little to do with the person who is triggering you. It could, in fact, go back to your childhood or even past lives. The person’s offense may only be the most recent and relatively small layer of frustration.
 
Even more advanced, still, is to handle it in a kind of meditation where you relax and invite all your pent-up frustrations to come up in the environment of love that you are creating in your personal space. You may invite that frustration to tell you its stories as if you were a loving therapist, parent, or friend listening to someone who needs to unload. As you witness your own unpleasant experiences in a way that says, "It's all right now. I love you. Go ahead and let this out,” you may not need to act out the aggression physically.
 
However, sitting with it in meditation may make your body want to move in some way if these old energies are stuck in it. Even if they are from a past life, they may be in your body now. So if your body wants to move, go ahead and move it in a safe way so that you don’t hurt yourself or your environment. You may want to hit something but you might just want to move in strange ways; it might look like you are having a mild seizure or something similar, since your body is releasing old, crippling energies. Sometimes, you might cry. Tears can be quite healing--they often accompany the realization of truth; they allow you to let go of something.
 
Now that you are aware that there are ways you can release your frustrations, you may have less of a need to engage with the person who is being inappropriate and who is triggering your desire to be inappropriate, as well. This is an excellent foundation for later forgiveness, not only of this person but of all those who have contributed to your many layers of frustration.
 
Life on the physical plane is designed to be frustrating. If everything were smooth sailing all the time, if nothing got in your way, there would be no learning. You could say that there is more frustration than there needs to be, but the level of collective frustration is a collective choice. For most of you, your society has chosen a high level of stress and complexity in order to accelerate learning, but that has also accelerated wounding. This gives you more opportunities to practice your healing skills, so, ultimately, it can be useful.
 
Still, you can individually choose to remove yourself from some of the frustrations of your situation; for one thing, you can chose to interact with fewer challenging people. You may not be able to eliminate them entirely, but you can probably reduce them. When you are no longer looking for people with whom you can get into a fight so that you can express some of your stored frustrations, you will certainly have fewer combative people in your life.
 
With practice, you can more successfully deal with your desire to react negatively by enfolding your reactions in love, truth, and beauty. If you are not able to fully release your frustrations in the moment, you can be increasingly confident that you will be able to do so when you get the chance to spend some time with them. However, sometimes a personal attack seems to come out of the blue, and you are not ready for it; you might feel viscerally like it punched you in the gut. You hadn't established a space of light that could repel it, so it takes you by surprise.
 
This is actually easy to deal with if you have your wits about you. That is that key, because when you are taken by surprise, you sometimes lose your wits. However, if you hold onto them, the first thing to do as a healer is to establish a strong intention that your own pain is connecting with those universal forces and is dissipating rapidly. Mothers instinctively knows how to do this when they comfort a squalling baby--just "be" with the hurt part of yourself, and it will quickly recover, especially if you have been practicing this. Then, as a healer, you can look at the other person in the same way: with compassion.
 
This is not to say that you should be in denial of the fact that this person upset you, but you could also remind yourself that she is probably hurting, too, perhaps having a "bad day," or would not have acted that way. You can afford to be generous in this regard when you already know that you can take care of yourself, that you don’t have to be her victim. Even if there is some momentary sting and things are coming up for you, you know that she can’t really hurt you long-term. However, if you try to be generous when you do not have this confidence, it will be harder; the generosity will not be so unconditional. It might come out as something to the effect of "I forgive you, but I still hate your guts."
 
That kind of statement is common in how people approach relationships. It is an improvement over "I am going to get revenge," but it is not as satisfying as being able to truly forgive, which, in this instance, involves disconnecting from the personal issues and not making them your own, not carrying their attack with you, nursing grudges and so forth.
 
If you think that you are not a skilled healer, all you need to do is use your ability to imagine things, such as a calm, peaceful, grounded state of being. If you are more visual, envision what that would look like; if you are more sensual, conjure what it would feel like. In both cases, hold the idea that you are creating this. If you stay with it long enough, you can arrive at a place where you feel as calm as you wish to feel--your result will reflect how much time and energy you invest in this intention.

What is holding you back from total relaxation? There may be a block in your body that draws your attention when you ask this question. If so, go to that spot and bring your loving presence to it. That alone might be enough to dissolve it. Also, when you are in the flow and are connecting with higher universal forces, you have access to information you might not otherwise, which can help you find out what is stopping you from feeling good, and help you release it.

Noticing your breathing and letting it be relaxed can help. Also, you might recall a time when you were out in nature and felt great, as if you didn’t have a care in the world: All you hear are the sounds of the birds singing and the breeze in the trees. Your body naturally feels that it is part of that environment; this is how it wants to feel. Let your breathing come into alignment with nature.

People often breathe and otherwise resonate in alignment with their human environment--for example, their workplace, where perhaps people are agitated. Sensitive people tend to feel that right away, and your heart rate and breathing may speed up as a result. Instead, you can take charge and stay in alignment with the heartbeat of nature, and then you might be able to calm down people around you rather than you taking on their wound-up state.

This sort of thing becomes easer and easier with practice. If it is not something you have worked with before, it will be foreign, of course, but after a while, you can learn to do it almost automatically, and you will feel better in your life as a result.

In healing work, you often become aware of things that were there all the time, but you were not in touch with earlier. When it is your intention to heal something, the unhealed factors need to come up in order to come out, so you may feel worse before you feel better, but you will feel better if you see it through. One benefit of becoming more spiritually conscious is that it can help you feel better more of the time.
 
Q. My stomach is lighter and warmer. I've never experienced such a thing before; I had visited healers but never felt anything--this is the first experience I can actually feel.
 
A. Perhaps the effectiveness of this is that we are not merely trying to heal you, but are approaching you as a fellow healer and are involving you in the process. In general, we would recommend this approach. Even if you are doing healing work on a child, you can involve her, inviting her to notice feelings and tell you about them. You might ask her, "If this feeling were an animal, what kind of animal would it be?"
 
Whenever you engage a person you are working with, you will usually get better results, because they are taking responsibility for their own healing. You are working with them and not on them.
 
There are stories of Jesus doing remarkable healings. People tend to assume that he just somehow automatically knew how to do them, but, in fact, he practiced. He had natural talent for it, but did not start out early in life being as good at it as he became after practice and study. He was a particularly powerful soul, but each of you are powerful in your own way. The record says that he told his students that they could do what he did.
 
The Bible stories might be thought of as a “best of” compilation. Most healing work is not instantaneous or otherwise overtly impressive, because it always, in part, depends on the recipient's willingness and ability to receive healing. In addition, each of you can improve your skills--it just takes practice. Working with children and animals are great ways to practice.
 
Everything is energy: E=mc2. There are people who don’t know anything about healing techniques, but their presence is healing because they are full of love, their thoughts are positive, and they have a lot of vitality. When you come into their presence, you feel better. That is being a healer. However, when you have some technique, as well (which does not need to be complicated), you can be more precise and powerful in your work.

 

Q & A

Area code 314: Ok – I had a question about the gospel of Thomas found in the Nag Hammadi library that was discovered recently. I need to know if the Gospel of Thomas is a true reckoning of the life of Christ, and also what is the missing word where Jesus blesses Mary?

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: We would say it is about 55% accurate and the rest embellished. One thing that would help in understanding this is that throughout most of history writers did not feel an obligation to be factual the way that it is taken for granted now. Today, if you were to do what Thomas did you would be expected to tell people up front that the account is partially fictionalized. Through out most of history, writers have felt that they were the ones writing it, and they got to say whatever they wanted to. There wasn’t the concept of ‘journalism’. Yet modern people look back and expect it to be in alignment with today’s sense of journalistic integrity.

Bear in mind that for most of history many people did not read and write and so there was not considered to be a mass audience. Certainly there was no best seller list and no hope of large financial gain for the most part. So, if you get around 55% accuracy, that is really pretty good for the time. Part of the inaccuracy is just the way that people remember things and when the stories are told and retold they tend to be more distorted. If you have some elders in your family they don’t always remember what actually happened; they may have ‘improved’ the story so many times that they only recall the improved version. And then someone else may hear them tell it who has not been hearing the enhanced story and say ‘no that is not what happened at all; this is what happened - I was there’ and that might be their own enhanced version.

There are very few ancient historical accounts that were recorded like a journal at the time. Not many really had the leisure to sit down and write what today would be called journals. That was something maybe for the rich, but because there wasn’t really the audience for the rich’s words back then that there is today, there was also not a lot of incentive to write about what you could later look back at and can say were historical events. At the time they may not have seemed so important.

To a lot of people, Jesus was roughly the equivalent of a Paris Hilton – a troublemaker - someone just stirring up the gossip, so forth. In your own life you may have noticed that you don’t always know what the important events were until you get beyond those.

You asked about a missing word and that we don’t have an answer to. We suspect that was part of the fictionalized account. Do you have further questions about this?

Area code 314: There is also a Gospel of Mary which is supposed to have recorded directly the sermons of Jesus. Was Mary doing that and was she his main disciple?

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: We don’t think that Jesus would have made a hierarchy of his disciples. Old Kings are very good at recognizing the contribution that each person has to make and not necessarily in a hierarchical fashion but in a holistic fashion. However, Mary was extremely intelligent and it would not surprise us if he felt that she got what he had to teach better than most. She was quite insightful in her own right. She was not just a student but also a teacher. She had been respected, what you might call, a wise woman, from an early age. She was one of those children who amazed people with her understanding. We do think that she recorded some things, and then we think others embellished, as usual.

All this brings up the question you didn’t ask but is implied: “So what do you do with this stuff when you don’t know what is real and what is embellished or entirely made up”?

The way we would approach it is to view all spiritual teachings that have passed into literature as allegories. It doesn’t seem that important if they happened or not. What is important is do they speak to you in some important way. Does that answer your question?

Area Code 314: Yes it does. Thank you.

Caller: A personal question . . I have a good life a happy life, I am very content, but somehow there seems to be a current underneath that there should be more and I am not quite sure where that might be coming from.

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: What we are picking up in you is that you have creative abilities that you are not using and we suspect this is what you are feeling; maybe watercolors or something like that. Does that ring bells for you?

Caller: I do paint, acrylics, creative things along those lines.

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: Alright then, what we think this is about is going further, taking more risks with this, becoming more adventurous in your artistry. What we are picking up here is along the lines of what you have done so far is a little safer, and you are ready to explore territory that might be a little uncomfortable for you. Your creative voice wants to become louder. You want to play it less safe. Does that fit for you?

Caller: Yes it does.

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: And we think if you will maybe find a teacher who will push you in a new direction, and if you will study the work of people whose art is more abstract, more difficult, less crowd pleasing and understand what they were doing it would help you.

Caller: Thank you.

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: While there is this pause we invite all of you listening to notice the group energy once again, to reestablish your intention that healing flow into you and through you, that this group mind broadcast a healing quality into the world through the internet. So, just visualize or feel or sense that this is what is happening.

Y: My question is I have been having many dreams of vulnerability, I want to ask what these dreams mean, and why now at this time?

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: We were saying earlier that in healing work when a new sensation arises that it was there all the time but you were not paying attention to that level. When you go deeper you become aware of that feeling. Like F’s feeling of cold, this is a blocked energy that was there previously but she didn’t go into that part of her self and didn’t know it was there and once she did, it came to the surface and she felt the cold.

All people have many layers of healing where they don’t heal because that is not where they are paying attention. Many times, when you decide you are going to heal, you are taken through the layers of what you have been holding. In your progress you have become aware of this more vulnerable, wounded place that was there all the time but it was covered up by your pretences. And so, although you may not regard these feeling as pleasant feelings, they are helping you to experience more pleasant, joyful feelings because they are in the way. They are part of the block, and as we were exploring earlier, the way to get through the block is to be a loving presence to them like a mother to a baby. So, to heal it’s got to be ok that you feel vulnerable and wounded. Bringing the inner resources of love, truth and beauty into that vulnerable place can let that place know that things are better now, that the suffering is over, and those uncomfortable feelings can heal and become, instead, part of your store of wisdom and compassion for others.

Ultimately this allows you to feel the beautiful feelings more. As long as these old vulnerable feelings are frozen in place that part of your emotional body is not available to feel the good things. So you are awakening up your whole emotional capacity. But you have to be willing to feel unpleasant feelings to get to the point where you can feel the wonderful feelings. Any follow up?

Y: I felt a little bit of energy open up in stomach, my lower abdomen - like a balloon popped. What do you think that is?

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: That is the frozen feelings, the vulnerable feelings. You also released some rage. Part of it is the very reason we were speaking of earlier, that you now know you can take care of yourself and you don’t need the protection of the rage anymore. The angriest people are the most impotent people. They rage at their environment because they don’t know they have the power to take care of themselves. If you go into a prison or a ghetto full of angry, dangerous, hardened people and you scratch the surface, you will see that all of them are incapable of taking care of themselves. So they have given all their power to what is outside of them, and what is outside of them is threatening. They become angry, they try to fight it to keep the bad things out, and that does make them dangerous but does not make them strong. In a spiritual sense, it makes them weak.

The most spiritually powerful people have little reason to store anger. They may know how to use anger but it is not in control of them. If you are in a chaotic environment you may need to establish some boundaries and that may look like anger, but the person who knows how to take care of himself will not be consumed by the anger but will simply use it as a technique to establish order which is for the higher good. They don’t loose control.

So the part of you that is angry is the part of you that feels weak. As soon as you figure out that you can do something to take care of yourself, to protect yourself, you don’t need that anymore. So, a piece of rage just popped out of you.
 

EM: My father passed away a year ago . . . I would like to know how is he doing, what is he doing, is he interested in our life, the life of his family? Is he aware that F made a video of his life and it was in an art exhibition recently?

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: Oh, your father is very much in your lives and connected with you. This is not always the case when a loved one passes on. Sometimes they go off and work on other things. But he is staying quite close to you, and we would think that you would be feeling him around somewhat. The quality of his presence is joyful, sweet, playful . . He is aware of the video and feels a lot of joy relative to that. He doesn’t have a lot of specific plans for his own future but he sees a lot of opportunities for social interaction. He is looking forward to taking advantage of them. We would compare his experience at his time to someone who has retired to a great vacation spot where there is a lot to do and so far he has just been enjoying the beach, let’s say, and talking to his family back in the old town on his cell phone, but he is looking forward to visiting the tourist attractions. He is in a very good place. We don’t find any dilemmas he is dealing with at this time. He has not yet undertaken his full life review but he is not in a hurry to do that; he doesn’t feel that will be very hard to do.

EM: Are dreams about him astral contact?

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: Most definitely. Virtually all of them are. He is staying very close to his loved ones at this time.

M: I am asking if Michael would give a dissertation on the idea of color. I am an artist; I work with color and reference the meaning of color through observation. With the chakras I find, obviously, green is love, yet I observe that what comes through the auric field where green is envy is also valid. I’ve listened to you guys talk about different incarnations and levels of where one is at having different resonances with color, so I would love a generic explanation of color.

SHEPHERD/MICHAEL: We would enjoy doing that. Since we are coming to the end of this time we would also invite all of you listening to see this as a meditation and to focus in on the collective energy that is erasing any remaining difficult energy that is in the space in which we are in and filing it with love, and noticing that you are feeling better when you are doing that, and notice that your ability to take care of yourself, to replace what is uncomfortable with what is comfortable, and to experience the joy of color.

One of the delights that people experience when they leave their physical body through astral travel or pass over is that they suddenly notice there are a lot more colors that they didn’t know about. There is no way to explain them because your physical brain doesn’t register them. Just the idea that there are more colors to be experienced should be a source of great pleasure to all those who love color.

The precise shade of a color has a surprisingly large impact on human experience. Now, interpretation of a color also is somewhat subjective. You mentioned green for envy. That relates to a certain energy that comes up in the auric field when someone is envious. It would be a shade of green that is not so pleasant because it is polluted by the negative emotion. On the other hand most of the natural shades of green that you see in a forest - and there are many different kinds of green - you would see there are all delightful because they are not being blocked or distorted by an unhealed emotion but are full of the expression of nature.

No color is more intrinsically spiritual than another. The blues are obviously more connected with the faster vibrations but there is nothing unspiritual about red. The fact is that you need all the colors in balance in your life to feel your best.

In your home environment the best decorating for you will be those that hold the colors that you need to see the most in your environment. If you live with other people, then you would want to go for a good balance that works for everyone. But certainly the individual’s bedroom could most reflect that person’s color needs. These needs also can change.

We are going to finish our comments. Love and blessings to each of you. We have enjoyed this time. We would direct you to notice that the group energy has evolved quite nicely.
 

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