Nebadonia - Going With the Flow - Aug 27, 2007 - Marin TM

Nebadonia—August 27, 2007

Marin TM Group—Mill Valley, California—U.S.A.

NEBADONIA—T/R-JL

1. (Going with the Flow)
2. (Developing Willpower)
3. (Breaking Addictions)
4. (The Realm of Spirit)
5. (Dealing with Spiritual Ambitions)
6. (Life Is Not an Illusion)
7. (Finding/creating a Balance in All You Are)

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, Good evening, and welcome. We open our hearts and our minds to embrace your love and your peace. We ask you take our spirits in yours. Help us be aware of your presence here and now, if only for an hour or so; we really treasure these times together. Help us relax, and exercise our faith. We trust putting ourselves in your hands, resting on your wisdom and strength, and following happily along wherever you lead. So lead on, marvelous parents. We’re delighted to come along. Amen.

NEBADONIA: Good evening, my children, this is your spiritual mother Nebadonia, and your very dear friend. Well then, I accept your invitation. Here we go.

(Going with the flow)

I would like to follow up on something Michael introduced in answer to a student’s questions. You have a saying, go with the flow, which implies there are various things about you flowing along. You somehow perceive them, and choose to go along with them, or not. This further implies their flow is somewhat other than you: you’re going to go along with them, or not. There is great wisdom in this. You have other parallel sayings: the tree that bends with the wind is not broken. You can enjoy the idea of jumping into a rushing stream and going with the flow, naturally dodging all the rocks and snag-hazards along the way.

We’ve talked about a river of life that, the more you become consciously attuned with, the more you feel the organic flow of your own living body. Stillness time seems slow, but expansive, and gives you a chance to get in accord with the great movements all around you, that you are a part of. Every night when you fall asleep you are allowing your consciousness to relinquish itself and enjoy a suspension of self awareness to let your body rest and rebuild itself, you to awake refreshed and start again.

But considering any flow, any movement at all, always see there is some moral decision to make here. Which do you go with, and which can you safely ignore as undesirable? Which of those you call bad habits have a strangle hold on you, choking your life and happiness--in a long term sense--sucking you dry, making you weak and unhealthy? Obviously these were things you went along with for a while, but now your wisdom is sensing a kind of short term/long term dichotomy. You’re realizing that some things which were charming in their immediate usage simply exact too a heavy price on your health, and well being, and peace of mind.

These are habitual simply because they pop up all by themselves, unwanted, and it takes a great expenditure of energy to pull yourself away from them. Here it may help to consider them as impulses, and determine if you care to be impulsive. Do you just follow along/flow along with anything that suggests itself? Or do you resist?--when this does take effort? We suggest one of the easiest ways to disentangle yourself is to substitute something better for these unhealthy ways of getting energy, getting high, getting into a relaxed state of mind to enjoy what you’re doing—whatever--all the various, seemingly practical reasons you may be taking psychotropic drugs.

Instead: meditate, a dozen times a day if need be. Use this spiritual connection with yourself, with Michael and I, and with our Father, as a better substitute for tapping into your own deeper energies--substituting willpower and gumption for stimulants, or tuning in to your ongoing, natural living body as a substitute for tranquilizers.

(Developing willpower)

Then Michael brought up last week another function of your meditation besides discerning the good and the not-so-good currents about and within you. This is the pure exercise of your willpower, my children. This is establishing a kind of independent, ongoing personal continuity, a very literal creation right out of nothing but your own determination.

If you think for a moment of your mind as a muscle, this is like working out in a gym where you are going for muscle tone, and strength, and agility, and flexibility--directly, in addition to your work or other kinds of play. Michael advised this student to begin meditation very much as a discipline, something you are choosing to do irrespective of its difficulty because you know deep down, right down in your spiritual home base it puts you in touch with: this is good for you.

Your regular meditation, day to day, is creating a continuity all its own. You will be creating a very subtle and strong ego-awareness of yourself meditating. Every time you sit down and meditate it’s a small triumph. Every time you arise refreshed, it will have been having returned to that oneness you can know with your Father, and with us. This is the birth of a new you. It’s why so many who have been successful at this speak of it so highly. It’s the major reason people join various meditative groups, the most strenuous of these being those monasteries or retreats that every religion has established over the centuries. These are places to go where a great part of your day is taken over with meditation to established contact with your spiritual reality, and then stay in contact right through whatever practical activity you have to do, from one period of meditation to the next.

This is not some trance state of continuous bliss, or sleep-walking, my children. Rather, it’s the opposite. It’s a way of waking up and starting something new, a new you that will be the child of your own determination. This can have such profound effects on your life because when choosing to do what is right--besides those things which are just intrinsically delightful to go along with; when it comes to addressing those things you wholeheartedly and with great courage accept as beneficial, yet are unable to do: this requires sheer willpower, my children. And neither Michael nor I, nor any other spiritual teacher, would do well by you to suggest it is otherwise.

This is part of the nature of choice, of being free, of fully exercising your moral discrimination. It follows the first step of being open to your moral sensitivity: what would be the best thing to do, whether or not you are capable of doing it; keeping your mind open with the courage to entertain anything that occurs, anything whatsoever. But tonight we are talking about the doing part, about how you develop the ability to create another aspect of yourself: a new continuity: a new, creative and highly conscious wholeness.

We only ask you to consider this. Suspend your disbelief and entertain the possibility with your whole heart. Think about it and see if it is in accord with your own understanding of life as you have known it so far. For many of you this will be the next step to take to be a greater-self-determinative entity in God’s universe. Once you’ve sought out God’s will, and gotten some small inkling of His better way for you, and for those around you, still the doing of it, and then the staying open to all the results, is up to you. This starts with taking some small part of every day for devotion, for determination to create this continuity in your life--something continuous, something extending through time.

It will be all yours, and you will be all the more because of it. This is one way for you to truly love yourself. This is how you pay your respect to all the future days of your life when you will so thankful you started now. This is the way you can be good to yourselves, my children. Be willing to set aside those few precious minutes every day. Be willing to exercise the faith required. Be willing to extend yourself out over the human void of uncertainty and sheer unpredictability. Wholeheartedly devote yourself to this new creation.

If you have any questions or comments this evening, these too can spring from your own deep wells of wonder, and acceptance.

Student: Mother, I have a great deal of difficulty staying away from sugar, and willpower doesn’t seem to do much good. My problem with alcohol was greatly helped by Alcoholics Anonymous, but the addiction to sugar is still there. I can see how it would be great to substitute contact with you and Father Michael, instead of the sugar, but I don’t know quite how to do it. Maybe I should be asking: how do I do it?

(Breaking addictions)

NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, you’ve had quite a success so far in handling one addiction to a chemical substance. You are no doubt aware that alcohol is just a more refined stage of sugar, especially the pure chemical stuff: those white crystals in your sugar bowl are a long way from the cane or beet fields. I’m talking about a very pure chemical substance that your body metabolizes through a stage very similar to the alcohol in your beverages. And so in one way, my son, if you want to look at this somewhat humorously, you’ve just switched to a less refined form, a more complex stage, of alcohol. (everybody chuckles) Breaking free of the hold sugar has on you is just a continuation of conquering your previous addiction.

A lot of people take a snort of whiskey, or a beer, or a big slice of chocolate cake, for the same reason, for the wonderful-feeling surge of energy as your body burns these rather quickly. You’re addicted to this little surge you get, this little bump. The trouble with sugar being only slightly more complex than alcohol, it is also so short-lived. Most nutritionists contrast it with the complex carbohydrates wrapped up in fruits and vegetables which take longer to digest, and so their release of energy is more gradual.

Obviously, in terms of your whole diet, this is the way to go. Instead of that candy bar, or that big slice of pie, the first step would be fruit, and the next step beyond that the more easily digestible vegetables. In this way, my son, you can make a gradual transition from the pure sugary things that are rightly called hollow calories because they take so much out of your body in terms of good nutrition--vitamins and minerals and such--to metabolize. As you have done with alcohol, and so many folks have as well with something like cigarettes: simply don’t bring them home. Use up what you have and let it be. Bid a fond farewell to all those impulsive sugar snacks. Instead have some good fruit and vegetables around as a better alternative.

My lesson tonight was also on the sheer willpower it takes to create this new you because of the ease associated with drugs, whether they be alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar: these are all substitutes for willpower. Have a cup of coffee before you start to do something; smoke a few cigarettes. If you are feeling moody or depressed, have a big piece of chocolate cake, some apple pie ala mode. Yet all these substitutes for willpower leave you drained and unhealthy over time. That’s the trouble: it is not some moral abstraction. This is why we suggest that, like going into a gym for your muscles, for your spirit is the pure exercise of meditation.

This can also help you become aware of any unconscious habituation. Smokers and drinkers, or sugar junkies, can become so habituated the whole process is unconscious. They may be only vaguely aware of what they are doing. Half a dozen cigarettes, or drinks, or candy bars are gone, in the past--unconsciously—not even enjoyed!—just to maintain a status-quo. So keeping these things out of your house makes you think about whether or not you want walk all the way to the grocery store and back for a little sugar treat. It means you have to welcome being conscious of this choice. You have to identify with your spirit that wants to stretch and be free of any physical dependence. Does all this give you some notions of ways to go?

Student: Yes, Mother, it does. But I’m not clear; when you said spirit, do you mean my Father Fragment, or my spirit--the me that I am.

NEBADONIA: I mean both, my son. (OK) He is very much with you in spirit, as are Michael and I. Use us whenever you feel that impulse. Get in touch with us and have faith, my son, that each impulse will pass, and every time you resist it you are building up a spiritual component. It makes it a little bit easier the next time, just as every indulgence makes it a little more difficult. You do have a soul--something there--that is keeping track. I’m sure you’ve experienced this before.

Student: I look forward to being in contact with you and Michael, and my Father Fragment, as an ongoing part of life, an ongoing part of this life, and the next as well.

NEBADONIA: So why not start now? (everybody chuckles)

Student: I will.

(The realm of spirit)

NEBADONIA: This is the realm of spirit, my son, because it has to do with value and creative initiative. How much do you value health? How much do you value willpower in the face of difficulties? How much do you value this kind spiritual freedom? Ironically, because it’s not to indulge your physical appetites, but do you truly love and honor your body? How much life do you want, not only in living longer, but with a higher quality every day? Come to us any time you wish, my son. Welcome us into your life, and take regular breaks of stillness and reflection from all these strenuous and difficult tasks ahead of you.

Student: I will do that. Thank you, Mother.

NEBADONIA: Never forget, you live in my love.

Student: Yes, Mother, a couple of things, about going with the flow. Gandhi said something like, be the change you would like to see come about. So I wonder how I can be that change when so many times all I can do is go with the flow? With respect to my family, this comes out as, the main thing is, we are all together. We’re beneficial to each other in our growth. Michael and I talked about me being in a temporary cocoon, so I’m kind-of incubating in all the various teachings I’ve learned—The Great Freedom, The Spiritual Peacemaking, and what I glean here. I’m absorbing all these things and allowing the butterfly I am to really experience the truth of all this; and the joy; and the love.

I know I have to temper my impatience with the process, and myself. I know my daughter and her boyfriend, and their little girl need me. Do you understand what I’m talking about here? Sometimes being the change means being still. That’s what I’m doing. Is this true?

NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, the only critique I could make of your self-analysis here, is that you are still associating your situation with something static, and feeling your impatience to be a butterfly, however you realize you do have to fulfill each stage by being still in order to understand and accept it. The mistake you’re making is that you are not in a static situation. You are rigorously involved in all kinds of change just keeping up, day to day. So give yourself some credit for this. See how you are changing to stay in touch with a dynamic situation involving many other independent souls besides yourself. This should give you some comfort.

(Dealing with spiritual ambitions)

Another thing is, be aware of how you enjoy taking in all sorts of spiritual idealism, and being spiritually ambitious. This is not bad; modern men and women are not lacking ideas so much as they are ideals. But realize the greater importance of feeling yourself complete—im-mediately—without any intermediary between you and the presence of God within you, even as you entertain those spiritual things you may not yet be able to do. Just be where you are, taking in all these ideals and ambitions. As Michael said, you can even accept your impatience here-and-now as a good motivator, and so have a better relationship with it, be better able to use it, rather than it driving you.

Finally, not every duality you can be aware of can be united in one short lifetime. You are planting a lot of seeds that may not come to fruition for perhaps well into your Morontia life. Even this is good, if you can be here-and-now. They can give you a foretaste of that life to come, as well as a touch with your soul in this life. (Mother Spirit chuckles…)

It is like having one foot on the dock and the other in an un-tethered boat. The dock is present reality and your completeness in it; your other foot is in a vehicle that wants to go zooming away on seas of spiritual adventures and realizations. The stretch is good for you.

Student: Yes! As you were saying that the thought came to mind, my life seems to be under wraps because of certain constraints of family and money. There’s only so much I can do materially. It’s what I mean by there being times I feel expansive but narrowly focused on the here and now. I want to take wings and fly—but not yet, because of circumstances.

Maybe it’s all an illusion. Maybe I am this beautiful butterfly, but I don’t experience that yet.

(Life is not an illusion)

NEBADONIA: This is where we find some fault with those teachings that consider life an illusion, and try to get you to see it that way. It is not an illusion. You are a complex being having physical, mental, and spiritual components. To be complete you need to feel all of them, and how you--your personality--unites them.

I can mention how some folks try to be purely physical and go along with anything that is immediately pleasurable. Others devote themselves to being purely intellectual and come to identify with the most complex and entertaining abstractions. Yet too there is a kind of false-spiritual arrogance and over-specialization that deprives both teachers and their followers of much of a physical life.

But to feel all three dimensions; to feel your spiritual yearnings, right along with the mental discipline it takes to get through your daily life accepting the physical constraints put upon you by your work and material necessities—for yourself and those you love: this is living a full life. This is where the metaphor of becoming a butterfly breaks down. You are not really in a cocoon. You are in a dynamic and changing situation, and all metaphors have extraordinarily narrow limits within which they are validly useful.

Student: Yes, I guess I don’t feel that I’m loosing my spiritual life and being static. Every day has its challenges to be still with, especially with my daughter’s boyfriend. He seems to be the opposite if who I am. He watches all this military stuff on television, and here I have all my books of Gandhi’s, and non-violence. So it is a challenge. There are times it would be nice to be by myself. But I realize the importance of being together—for everyone’s growth. It’s not really a sacrifice; it’s the commitment I’ve made.

NEBADONIA: It is important to find some little space off by yourself. Whether you’re in a big city, or a small town, it’s usually possible to find or create a personal space to meditate. It may help to get up early before anyone else in your household, and the world is quieter.

Student: There is something else, about the word abundance—especially in the spiritual sense. Most people think of abundance meaning unlimited money, or several homes and cars. That could be part of it, but in terms of oneness with God, what does living an abundant life mean?

(Finding/creating a balance in all you are)

NEBADONIA: Yes. This is why we emphasize having a good balance between all your aspects, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual—even the soulful. So many times, especially with unearned wealth, the recipients get into a pseudo-intellectual abstraction of surrounding themselves with so much stuff for purely symbolical values of status. All this expresses is a deep and unquiet fear of lack of any real personal accomplishment. So I say that abundance is living a full life, well in touch with all aspects of yourself—with a real sense of worship or thankfulness for what God has provided you in terms of possibility and potential. Every sunrise is somewhat different; every moment of time as well. This is the enormous cosmic expansion we invite you to imagine, to feel.

Student: Wow. Thank you.

NEBADONIA: You are very welcome, my son. Keep striving to have that full life. You can’t always be in perfect balance. Sometimes you will be identifying more with your spiritual ambitions, and then the necessity to do physical work can seem very constraining. Other times, right in the middle of your physical work, you realize the spiritual uniqueness of some particular flower, and you feel the balance once again.

Again, I emphasize you are just beginning to work on this balance of personal and real aspects, a work which will occupy you for endless millennia to come as you grow to encompass dimensions we can only hint at now. There will always be a necessity to exercise your will to choose. So give thanks you have these choices of who you will become.

Student: OK. (big sigh and laughter)

NEBADONIA: Continue in my love, and keep seeking Michael’s peace. You are slowly earning your wisdom. The price you pay for it makes it yours.

To wrap up this evening: I hope to inspire you to create a new continuity in your life. This is yours alone to do—between you and yourself, if you will, to make you more one within. This is that decisiveness that comes straight from your unique personality and spiritual creativity. See if you can see the necessity for this, my children. Granted, it is a kind of back-handed blessing from a standpoint of imaginary easiness—if you are trying to live that way. But it makes your own willpower unique to itself, right alongside all the help you can receive from us, and others of your own kind—and be thankful for. Thank God too, He set things up so you are able, and need, to create your own life. Do so in my love surrounding you, letting Michael’s peace soak in ever so deeply, ever so still. Good evening.

END