Nebadonia - Free Will - Determinism - Oct 08, 2007 - Marin TM

Nebadonia—October 8, 2007

Marin T/M Group—Mill Valley, California—U.S.A

NEBADONIA—T/R—JL

1. (Free will)
2. (Standing alone and unique in your spirit)
3. (Unconditional, if only momentary, dedication)
4. (Determinism—accidental or purposively set up?)
5. (What exactly is your authority)
6. (The nature of time and possibility)

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, Tonight as we think back over the years on your many lessons, we want to thank you particularly for the love you show for us, and the respect you have for our abilities of understanding, by answering our questions so directly. At first it often seemed you were going to some obscure depths, but in time we came to realize you were actually going to the root causes of whatever effects we were mentioning. Then other times when it seemed you were going way off the track and far afield, we came to realize you were setting up the historical, or cultural, or spiritual context in which your words would have a more precise meaning. And so we have come to trust you and appreciate the presentation of your viewpoint for both the depth and the breadth of your vision. For this we are most thankful. Keep coming to us as directly as we can handle. Amen.

NEBADONIA: Good evening. This is your Spirit Mother, Nebadonia, and I appreciate your invitation. You’ll have to excuse Michael and I if we do speak at times just slightly over your heads, to get you to reach, for sometimes we know better than yourselves what you are capable of understanding. We wish to offer you these spiritual connections—as you say, our viewpoint on how your human reality is constructed.

(Free will)

Next to the always supreme fact there is a personal God, a Universal Father of all personal beings, which then makes all of you His children and of a single family, perhaps the third most important fact, and one of your nature that we have tried in so many ways to express, is this matter of your free will.

This is what Michael emphasized last week when he recalled for your benefit the moment in his life as Jesus when he was most human. Toward the end when he was fully cognizant of also being Michael—a Creator Son of God, he did in way stumble, he did hesitate, he did experience an awful, bottomless, yawning chasm of doubt. And in that moment he did ask his Father if he could pass on the coming events he could foresee so well.

As you have no doubt noticed, my children, Michael and I are not only hesitant, but we almost universally refuse to tell you what to do, though this is often your direct or even slyly indirect appeal to us. In this you must trust we are not only bound by, but we fully accept and even glory in the extent of our wisdom, and in our knowledge, within ourselves, how much we truly love you and would do nothing in any way to hinder the spiritual growth we know you are capable of. So our major function as your spiritual parents is to help you realize your own abilities, realize both the necessity and your glory too of deciding things for yourselves, even realizing your independence from us in choosing your own courses of action.

This is the essence of your maturity. As we put it once, though you are raised by authority, starting out as you do as a helpless, bloody little bundle of life, then being raised by the authority of your family and your immediate social group; by the end of this process of maturing—indeed, in order to complete your adolescence and gain your maturity—you must decide for yourself in your immediacy before transcendence—before your need to keep growing: you must decide what is unconditionally real--you.

(Standing alone and unique in your spirit)

This is the final movement by which you become an individual. It often means standing alone within yourself among all your fellows, even those you love and are loved by most dearly. This you must do, my dear children, not only for your own benefit, your own spiritual growth, but for theirs as well. For this soul-acceptance of your responsibility as a free-will creature is not only necessary for your own further growth, it is the most precious gift you can have to offer them as well: your true self.

We’ve talked about finding your own voice, realizing your own perspective, and what a Herculean task it is. And you are just starting this in your first, human life here on Urantia. You will pick it up over on the other side just where you leave it off here. But I want to point out that even as you need to stand alone in spiritual essence among your fellows here and now, you will have, on another plane of existence, just joined the spiritual community. You may even look around in mild surprise right here on earth, to realize that, for the first time in your life, you are truly no longer lonely. You will have joined us.

There is almost no exhausting talking about your free-will nature because of that very nature being so boundless and endless, so multi-dimensional. It is how you are putting your first human foot forward on the eternal quest for God himself, and His will, His best way for you to proceed—always up to your choosing. This is the trust and the faith God puts in your hands. You have it within your power and abilities to make the choices that will eventually, ultimately lead you to becoming Final—a member of the Mortal Corps of the Finality on Paradise, an animal-origin being who has traversed an entire galaxy, and all the experiences of that journey; plus the billion worlds of Havona; and now stands a Final Son expressing in your soul as much of the full range of the Supreme as a one-time mortal can achieve. This is the potential within you, the possibility that lies before you. It is all based on your day to day decisions, your free-will choices, your making real the potential that is a gift from your Creator.

All this was bound up and implied in God’s answer to His Creator Son Jesus. Essentially, when Jesus asked that the bitter cup of so much foreseeable pain and sorrow might be passed, God’s answer implied: Yes. Yes, my well-beloved Son. It is your choice. Do as you think best.

This is what Deity does for you, my children. In those moments of your greatest extremes when you open yourself totally vulnerable to Him, He gives you back to yourself, restored by His embrace. He puts His trust and His love in you so you may truly have yourself: your soul is truly your own. And for this there can be no limit either to our thankfulness that He has created us with this awesome ability—literally—to be. Whether or not you can yet realize it from your human level, from the standpoint of your personality—a direct creation of God, you are already complete. Your soul, the repository of all your human experience, co-authored by the purest fragment of His essence, is vouchsafed by His presence within you.

You are created creatures of free-will potential, and you can choose to do your best to realize it. The means are always near at hand. Just be still, listen/feel for your Father’s thoughts in your own, feel for His presence, and ours, within you. Bit by bit, day by day, week after week, seek His guidance to let all your accidental and provisional conditioning fall away. Dare to stand as an individual among all your well-beloved friends for their sakes as well as your own. Come join us.

If you have any questions or comments this evening, these too are an exercise of your free will.

Student: Yes, Mother, what was it that had to be unconditional in our final steps?

(Unconditional, if only momentary, dedication)

NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, at your present stage of evolution as an individual human being the only thing that can be unconditional is your moment to moment dedication--which may falter from time to time, but which you can decide to renew: helped by your contact with your heavenly Father and His presence within you. This is the way to discover, and then choose—decide—what is unconditionally true for you.

Your conditioning, an accident of your birth, limits your free will, and its realization is a progressive process for you have free will only within the range of your consciousness. You cannot yet be completely unconditional in duration by any means, but you can be so momentarily. And this is enough if you regularly and with your whole heart rededicate yourself to bringing all the encompassing conditions of your life into consciousness, so you can have some choice.

This is both the work and the glory in store for you. It keeps you human to accept this and keep it in mind. As Michael once said, it gives you the humility of realizing you don’t have a grasp on Total Reality quite yet.

Student: There are times where I feel this conditioning within my…expansiveness? I know that seems like a paradox, or even a contradiction. But I feel like Paul when he had his original realization/revelation, but it wasn’t for ten or fifteen years that he was able to go out and teach, or heal. And I know it was hard for him to contain himself. And in a sense I feel the same way. I wonder about the circumstances I’m in. Are they a way set up for my own experience of unconditionality? (Sic) Does that make sense?

(Determinism—accidental or purposively set up?)

NEBADONIA: Yes. Remember our lessons on trying to be as open as you can to all your aspects—physical, and mental, and spiritual? We mentioned how with these, and along with your particular conditioning, there is also both the instinctual and conditioned/cultural fear you were raised with, that do altogether form an encompassing that determines the seemingly objective reality you find yourself in. You do well to wonder—as you are doing--about the subjective aspect of your situation, because so much of your human situation is objective, is enormous, in terms of the world around you in its historical and ongoing development--the way it is tending, caught up in an even greater cosmic evolution and over-control by Deity. You are becoming aware of these enormous determinism’s, and very rightly wonder what is your freedom within them.

To this degree, my son—but not for only you--personally, this greater situation was "set up." Review in your Urantia book (Ed: page 51), so well articulated, the inevitabilities of the human situation. But you must decide for yourself what will be your own individual response to all of these both personal and general inevitabilities.

Student: For example, having to earn a living and have money: beside that limitation, I also feel confined I only know one way to do that. Meanwhile I do desire to challenge my beliefs, but I don’t know how or to what end. I want to get beyond these conditions but, as you mentioned, there is this fear, this uncertainty, this unknowing—putting myself out there—what will sustain me, what will provide for me?

NEBADONIA: So let me ask—not rhetorically: What is particularly wrong with all of this?

Student: Well…I don’t know! (laughing)

NEBADONIA: What I am saying, perhaps this is the very essence of living fully—to be sensitive to all you cannot know except by trying, open to being aware of that huge chasm yawning in front of you each moment, and accepting, even welcoming the unknowable. In other words, there is no way out of simply trying your best moment to moment; nor need there be. There is so much you cannot foresee, but you still need to try because this does not invalidate what foresight you are able to accumulate from all your experience and bring to bear on penetrating the future, providing for yourself and your loved ones.

We’ve suggested it’s a matter of going forward with the effort I’ve just described, and then taking a break from it in your stillness. You return to a home base in spirit that is by no means static. It too is growing with your experience. But you do your best and then you take a break from that very thing. There is possible a genuine relaxation. You go forward by pulsation’s, if you will.

So there is nothing wrong with all your questioning and the conscious fears that are only apprehensions about all that can happen to you as a very vulnerable, living critter here. (Mother Spirit laughs)

Student: This may be only wishful thinking, but what if I do want to be, shall we say, a teacher of these things I’ve been involved in? The only way I can foresee doing that, because it is quite a commitment, is by working part time, but then I need some other means of taking care of myself and my responsibilities. I really have tried all kinds of ways to do that, but nothing has come forth. So does that mean staying put and, as you say, going into stillness? I guess that’s the most important thing. I’m just not satisfied with the context of my life.

NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, you’re wondering if perhaps your ego is setting too great an expectation on what teaching is. Surely your work would allow one evening a week to meet with a small group, just to get started. Break your intention down into small, possible steps. Indeed, you may be thinking of too grandiose a thing, like going from dead stop to sixty miles and hour immediately.

Student: What I mean too is, with some of these established schools of spiritual teachings, I have to go to their retreats, and then abroad, and it’s a lot of commitment. I really value what they have to offer, but the only way I could do that is to minimize my work.

NEBADONIA: Or strike out on your own. Find your own voice that you value so greatly. Sit down and write up what you have to teach. This is the nitty-gritty of the real courage it takes to stand alone.

Student: But who am I? Who am I to do such a thing? I mean, there are so many people out there who have written books, and have ministries. Who am I to go out there?

NEBADONIA: The same as any one of them. They had to face that moment of standing for the first time in front of a group, and opening their mouth, and expressing their truth. You can only know it in the actual process.

Student: But by what authority do I have that right though?

(What exactly is your authority)

NEBADONIA: By the authority of who you are. This is all that convinces anyway. This is all any human being has ever had—essentially, plus trusting in your group to recognize what you have to offer. For if they don’t, there is no way short of being a charlatan to impress them. Even Jesus’ authority and truth was by no means universally recognized and accepted. And even when his life was at stake he refused to perform miracles on command, to convince his accusers.

This is what you long for: to genuinely impart some wisdom, to share what you’ve learned. There is no way shy of just standing there, naked in all your…particular-ness…(Mother Spirit laughs) and simply being who you are. You can start later this evening, if you will, sitting down in your stillness, and beginning to compose what there is that you feel you—uniquely--have to offer. What is there that all these other teachings are not saying? This is one way to go about getting started, of finding your voice. But it is only in the doing of it, sitting down and writing it out, or getting up a small group to share these things: this is the reality of teaching.

Student: Can you actually see me doing that? (breaks up laughing) OK, that’s that sly question you alluded to earlier.

NEBADONIA: Yes, (laughing along) but this is where the future is truly not fixed—if you will. It’s not yet "there," even for a Mother Spirit to see. It comes back to your freedom to choose to do this, or at least give it your one-hundred-percent shot at it. I see the possibility of your deciding to do that.

Student: I will really look at this.

NEBADONIA: In one way, my son, you are trying to get some reflection back from something that has not happened yet, and this is a mental game people use to try to see what’s coming. But this kind of future exists only in your delightful science-fiction. Potential and possibility exist in the present. That was Michael’s meaning that, as you make decisions, as you increase your ability of decisiveness, you create potential here and now, and so you affect what is possible in the future. If you find the means to decide upon a certain course of action, the decision makes that future possible, if not yet actual or assured.

(The nature of time and possibility)

I know these are very subtle insights into the nature of time, and possibility/potential, and what the future really is. We are limited by your current language and concepts, but we can point out there are certain fallacies of reasoning when you imaginatively put yourself out there in a seemingly already-real future. This is actually just one way you weigh possibilities here and now.

So no, I cannot see you out there. (laughter) But I can see you here, genuinely struggling to understand all this.

Student: I guess I’m hoping, or waiting for something to inspire me. There are so many people out there who’ve had an experience to propel them to create something magnificent, or help people to heal, or write great books.

NEBADONIA: But these too, my son, are only your own projections as to what was in them. Who is to say they were not exactly in your situation? Perhaps nothing outside themselves propelled them. There is a nitty-gritty point of just stepping off. It is another aspect of your being a creation of God, and unique, and having to find your own way. All the rest are only guidelines, not actual maps forward.

Student (with a very heavy sigh): This is great! I thank you for your honesty. Maybe that’s the only way you can be.

NEBADONIA: Well, we try to fulfill your invitation, and be as direct as we can. If it seems we are endlessly circling here and now, that’s because it is our common, shared reality. From our viewpoint we have a greater confidence in you than you can yet know for yourselves, just because we can see deeper into your souls, and also your God-given personalities. So many of these yearnings you have cannot be fulfilled in a single human lifetime. But we encourage you to keep feeling them. Keep experiencing all these ungraspable imponderables. They do enrich your lives. They keep you sensitive, and grounded, and very humble indeed. Just the awareness of them is a spiritual achievement.

Time to take another break, another rest, for another week, until we once again rejoin you and offer our presence for your use. (Mother Spirit chuckles) We delight in tracing out all these dimensions with you. It keeps us in our own sphere humble too, to realize the courage of our children as they go forth into the—for them—unknowable. Your situation in its larger reaches and context is very definitely set up this way to help you keep wondering, keep opening. Then close down and let it all go, rest in your wonderful sleep; later to start again. Be in my love. Good evening.

END