September is the month of St. Michael the Archangel. Here in one short prayer is all of the usual archetypal thinking about St. Michael and his eternal war against Satan and Satan's legion.

"Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host -by the Divine Power of God -cast into hell, satan and all the evil spirits, who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen."

In previous posts I have mentioned I sometimes find myself in the presence of Michael. This has been going on more or less continuously for some five or six years. In that time I have had some really remarkable experiences. I have been taught many many things about the angelic view of how reality works. The Judeo/Christian archetype is really just a metaphorical bare bones for the reality I have seen and experienced. In some cases, the theoretical physics of Star Trek is closer to the truth than the Judeo/Christian understandings. The real truth is, it's not possible for any of us to understand the totality of the angelic view of truth. All we can do is allude to it--at least at this point in our evolution.

But there are places the myths are so incorrect they do far more harm than good. One of those places is our understanding of just who and what the angelic realm actually is. The first time Michael interacted with me, I had no idea what this being of light was, I only knew it had a presence distinct from my own. The sensation I had was not one of fear, but one of expectant peace. I asked a pretty obvious question: "Who are you?" The answer was unexpected and deceptively simple. The being replied "I am a non organic sentient being, formerly known as an angel." I was stopped in my thinking tracks and had to ruminate on the distinction. In the pause he continued: "That makes you a non sentient organic being." I burst out laughing. It was the first of many times I was exposed to his sense of humor, and the truths it sometimes contains.

The other lesson I had to ingrain from this first meeting, was that Angels were not the property of the Judeo/Christian tradition, but had worked and continued to work with all cultures. The only thing that made them distinct in my tradition was the concept of wings. It's more a product of how we're enculturated to visualize them than a product of their true reality. He implied it was colloquial and provincial, and if I didn't get over it, I would miss their actions in other cultures. (I still think of them that way far too often, and get called on it all the time, but I no longer see them as soley protecting and defending the Holy Roman Catholic Church.)

Relative to an eternal being of light, humanity really is a non sentient organic form of being. Michael explained to me that because organic beings are products of material reality, we are both confined and defined by time. This is true because the manifestation of matter is a product of time.

In the West we think of the defining measurements of the universe as three distinct parts, length, width, height. That's true of the Newtonian universe, but Einstein's theory of relativity added the importance of the component of time. In his system, the speed of light is a function described by time, and this relationship theoretically defines the limits of the Newtonian universe. However, this does not describe the limits of the quantum universe in which angels live and do their thing.

Essentially, as eternal spiritual beings, we EXPERIENCE the Newtonian material universe in the matrix of time, as organic beings; but we actually have our true essence embedded in the quantum universe, which is timeless and transcends the limits of our individual ego material experience. I hope I haven't lost anybody yet.

Micheal and his family do not experience the material universe in the way we do, but they are AWARE of any aspect of it they wish to focus their consciousness on. Not only that, but they have the capacity to change our material reality from their quantum point of view. Depending on the change, they either go unnoticed by us, or these changes appear as miracles.

According to Michael, angels follow a sort of Prime Directive, and that Prime Directive is free choice. They do not change that which they have not been asked to change, AND been given permission to change. This prime directive also applied to Jesus. Permission is given from the Source, which Jesus called the Will of His Father.

I haven't done it, but I suspect if I went back and read the major miracle stories of the New Testament, Jesus acted only at the behest or request of others. Interestingly enough, in the case of Jesus, it didn't take His conscious permission to find Himself involved in miracles, it just took His presence. The story of the woman who touched the hem of His cloak comes to mind. She was cured instantly without his explicit knowledge. He was aware of it only after the fact.

This story illustrates a couple of points. First Jesus was aware of His status as a Divine being who was far more than His earthly incarnation. He was also aware that His earthly incarnation was blind to some of the doings of the totality of His being. He understood that the goal was to give over more control of His earthly experience to His transcendent self which was in contact with, and part of the Source. He also understood that every other person was ontologically the same---both human and far more. It's the 'far more' part, the part in contact with the Source, that often has far more vested in the material organic representation than the part that is living the material experience.

To give an example of this kind of thing I offer the following:

I, at least the part of me that is typing this, might really think it's a good idea for me to win the lottery, but the transcendent me has taken a look at this desire from the angelic point of view, and determined it would be the worst thing imaginable for my spiritual path. That self will not give permission for the reality of the lottery numbers to line up in my favor. I can either accept my constant failure to win the lottery as a message the 'quantum I' might be giving myself, or I can expend everything I own in a vein attempt to win the lottery because my enculturated ego is too vested in the thought of winning to quit. Winning the lottery becomes a walled off desperate need, without any outside reference or larger point of view. The obsession implies zero trust in any other solution and complete reliance on my own thought processes. Reinforcing that by actually winning the lottery would concretize my ego fully in this reality and further cut me off from my transcendent spiritual truth.

Jesus took a different path. He tamed His ego self and surrendered to His Divine quantum self, and His Divine quantum self changed His immediate reality to provide anything and everything He and people around Him really needed. Rather than drumming up the money to feed 5000, He just fed them by manifesting enough quantity of that which was already present. He trusted in the wisdom of His transcendent self and accepted the gifts with gratitude and humility.

In one way of looking at this, He maintained a relationship with His transcendent self which provided for Him winning a form of the lottery when ever He, or someone else, truly needed it.

Jesus didn't set His sights the 'one shot in time' answer, He went after the 'all the time' answer.

Michael has repeatedly showed me that those of the Angelic realm who are assigned to helping incarnated humanity are really trying to get us to remember who we really were and are, even as we incarnated. One of the things He said, which I find really fascinating, has to do with why we would choose to incarnate in the first place. He says incarnated humanity represents God's desire to know His creation through touch. Only in the material universe is touch possible, is feeling possible. I use feeling here both in it's touch meaning, but also emotional meaning. Emotion is also a product of the material organic universe.

Michael pointed out that in Genesis there is the description of the angelic realm as the eternal, incredible, world of sound and light, but it's only in the material realm that you get the incredible world of touch, and the magnificence of sound and light refracted in a different quantum matrix.

This is why to God the material universe is precious and unique, and why Michael and his kind work to evolve it and protect it. Tomorrow I'll discuss Satan and his minions, but don't expect fire and brimstone. It's way more involved than that.