I have been an avid metaphysical student since college days. Raised Roman Catholic (and with my mothers' relatives mostly Southern Baptist), at first I nearly became a Jesuit, but then began questioning. And questioning. And reading, reading, reading... Christian, Judaic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, Bahai, Sufist, native American, and Wiccan scriptures and literature, from the Rig Veda to the Popul Vuh, the Analects to the Teilhard de Chardin, Abelard to the Q'uran, Black Elk Speaks to Blavatsky, the Qabalah to the Prinicipia Discordia.
I came across Messages from Michael not long after its publication, and though I was still ostensibly a Catholic, I had begun questioning, and it stayed with me, in the back of my mind. I then became a Buddhist, then Wiccan, then-- nothing organized. And came back to MFM. I am generally skeptical and wary of "New Ageism" -- so many adherents seemed to me to be similar to devotees of Dungeons and Dragons, into the trappings and the mystique and not really serious students, or else that they had traded one dogmatism for another. But what I first loved about Michael's teachings was that, far from most other teachings, belief was not required. "Faith" -- which always seemed to me like buying a pig in a poke -- was, far from a virtue, something to be avoided. And the more I reread and pondered MFM, the more rational it seemed, almost intuitive. I had, for example, always believed, at a deep level, in reincarnation: it had always seemed to me incredibly wasteful, not to mention cruel, that the "eternal" state of one's immortal soul was determined by the eyeblink in time that is a single human life. Also, after long contemplation of the incomprehensible vastness of the Universe, the idea of a personal god, especially the narrowly parochial and often petty and petulant god of the Judeo-Christian/Muslim beliefs, seemed ludicrous. Yet I also felt that there WAS meaning to sentience, not so much a "purpose" as "significance"-- hard to frame it in words! -- a feeling that each individual's consciousness and experiences MATTER to the Entirety of the Universe, which is both so vast and yet (considering atomic and subatomic level structure) so intricate and finely wrought. It seemed to me that there were glimpses of truth in most of the religions and philosophies I had studied, but that none were 100% true, by a long chalk. MFM was one of the few sources which seemed to acknowledge much of these things. At first I was resistant to the structures -- roles and soul ages and overleaves -- but if there is symmetrical structure at a Quantum level, and at a cosmic level, why not in the architecture of consciousness? One of the things I most liked from early on is Michael's dictum that spiritual growth WILL occur... consciously or unconsciously. That belief doesn't matter in an absolute sense. (So much for "justification by faith"!) That Agape is "the love that moves the Heavens", as Dante so eloquently put it, that the idea of separation is, ultimately, illusory; and that we are all in the same boat, so to speak. Michael's Teachings also encompass the randomness that is a feature of the Physical Plane, and harmonize the unavoidable Scathing of the Physical Plane with a Universe based ultimately on Agape. SO: after nattering on so long, I would say in sum that what most attracted me to the Michael Teachings is that they seemed to me, if at first only subliminally, to be fundamentally TRUE.
--Be well and happy, all! John M (gilfaethwy)
