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Dear Mother Spirit and Michael,    What exiting times to be living in!  We thank you for your viewpoint on all these curious worldly activities going on around us.  As we see through your eyes we are able to recognize, in spite of all the hurly-burly and all the polarization taking place, we are able to see a great evolution towards freedom in all the realms of science, economics, politics, society, and even in religion.  Right in our own lives we can feel that same push in the need to be individual and relate with the presence of God within us, to develop and then come from a home base of spirit deep inside.

Thank you for your help in developing our abilities to respond--our response-ability--to ourselves, to those around us, and to these ever changing situations.  You encourage us to develop our own will so we can seek and discover God’s will, and then have the courage and the determination to be in accord with it as best we can.  You help us value freedom, especially the freedom to question all the remote hierarchies of political, social, economic, even religious authority, and take control of our own lives.

For all this insight and encouragement, this downright soulful assurance from you and the whole spiritual community, we do thank you so much.  We look forward to more contact, more joyous communication with the two of you to make up some more very happy new years to come.  Amen.  

NEBADONIA:  Good evening, my children, this is Mother Spirit.  Yes indeed, it is an exciting time for you to be living through.  Michael last spoke on the meaning of that Christmas carol about the hopes and fears of all the years that were met in Bethlehem the night Jesus was born.  And now I’m sure so many of you have taken his message to heart and found its response deep within you.  You’ve come to realize that in many ways, my dear ones, this is the same path you yourselves are taking.  You can recognize how, when you dare to hope, when you dare to open yourself to possibility, when you dare to take responsibility for your own creativity out in all the world surrounding you, then you relax in the assurance, the deep rest you find in Michael’s peace and in my love; it does open you to all those deep fears and anxieties you may have been denying or suppressing, sometimes for years.

(The fears that arise with hope)

So your first early attempts at meditation and prayer and worship might seem to be bringing on disaster.   What are all these fears springing up, all these mistakes you’ve made in your whole life, coming up once again to plague your soul?  But ask yourself if you would rather have these deep fears stay underground and affect you in unconscious ways in all your relationships with the others in your life.  Wouldn’t you rather have these past events be reviewed in full consciousness, now in a more mature you?  Through meditation in the present moment you are more in touch with your own soul which contains the completeness of God’s view of your life.  It’s with this completeness you can once again revisit your mistakes, your fears, and your shortcomings--however you want to call these things that you do genuinely regret.  Now you can look at them afresh with new eyes and in this wholeness, in this completeness of your being, truly forgive yourselves.  Now, in your conscious mind, you can have the completeness of your past with no dark and hidden events nagging you, driving you.  Now you can see and accept all that you’ve done, and in doing so, my children, you can begin to see others as well, not in black and white terms of all good or all evil, all driven or all lazy.  You can begin to see their completeness in all that they are too.

(Genuine healing)

This is the genuine healing.  This is the acceptance.  This becomes the complete story of your life and a secure spiritual base for renewed hope.  So face all the fear and anxiety; face all the mistakes you’ve made so you can learn from them.  This is what gives you the truest estimate of your enormous soul, for this is the true and complete story of your life and all that it contains.  There is no triumph but that you triumph over some thing.  There is no hope but that it conquers some thing.  For as hope is an intrinsic part of your human desire to expand and live a full life, the very obstacles you encounter--whether material or personal--other things, other people--they too are what give meaning to your life.

One of the most terrifying things a human being can know is the experience of meaninglessness where nothing or no one means anything anymore.  It’s where you panic to be losing the very fabric of life itself, unraveling in your mind.  But in meeting your fears and bringing them into consciousness, you finally have your past.  You really have the life you’ve already earned.  There’re no blank spots.  There’s nothing missing.  Your present moments become so much richer with the true continuity of who you have been all along.  Now, what a relief!--even, ironically, because seldom mentioned in a spiritual context--what an efficiency of living!  You’re not spending half your energy trying to prop up some ego notion of yourself based on little other than denial.

Now you can truly rest in an open mind.  You’ve met all your fears and all your anxieties.  You’ve learned from all your mistakes.  You’re open-minded so you can welcome learning from the mistakes you’ll make tomorrow.  So you try things unafraid.  You know for certain the joyous, if ironic, fact that the only bad experiment is the rare one that teaches you nothing.  This is how you sit loose to life.  This is how you enjoy the flexibility of a living being--enjoying your own body and mind united in dynamic health, and not just living for some fixed abstraction of mind alone at the expense of your poor, suffering, mistreated and ignored body.

This is using your creative spirit, my children.  This is inclusiveness--all inclusiveness.  This is living without denial, without trying to bend everything coming your way to some self-satisfying prejudice.  This is seeing and delighting in events and people in their temporal and individual uniqueness.  You’re not worried about maintaining the continuity of your life through all this enhanced appreciation of the particular: you are that continuity!  Your potentially eternal personality is the living connecting link!  Your world is partly you!--and so each event that comes to you is seen not only in the continuity of time, the assured cause and effect of Natural Law.  You begin to perceive that dimension of God’s creativity--shared with all personal beings--that is new and unique every moment.  If you can meet the challenge, what a delight it is to see how the universe and everyone in it--including you--is not just endlessly, tiresomely repeating.

What is there to hang on to?  Everything changes, even your self-conscious you, growing and maturing, yet your unchanging personality continues as the connecting link that realizes--makes real--all else.  It is you, along with a presence of God himself, growing a soul.  And this, my children, is the purpose for all of this--if you will, God’s desire to share His creativity, His power, His enjoyment with you, along with an utterly innumerable host of others.

This is hope realized.  This is hope in action. This is the function of hope, to open you to more experience.  It’s almost a definition of the wrong thing to do, the wrong way to live, if it leads to a closing down of your ability to experience--especially to experience that new, never-before-happened, never-happening-again part of your life.  So be gone dull habit!  Be gone clinging to some notion of unchanging security.  Rest assured in Michael, and me, and in our Father.  Know with assurance Who it was who created you, and created you as the very kind of being you are.

You are the connecting link in an eternal present.  You are the center of your universe.  You have a home base right in your own spirit.  This is the glory of a human being--that you can know an intimacy with a material living body that, although it’s quite infinite to you from the inside-out, still all the same gives you a touch with material reality and an appreciation of time in this first life of yours like no other order of being.

Each of you, my children, will transverse a whole Superuniverse of amazing worlds and different orders of personal beings before you end up in Paradise someday, a Finaliter, yet discover that final day is only another beginning.  You are a creative spirit in possession of a whole realm of physical, and mental, and spiritual reality like no other.  Feel this in yourself.  See it in each other and see if it doesn’t bring a rather spontaneous smile.  See if you can see the soul in another’s eyes.  Know with assurance that you and another make up a universe just between the two of you--two infinities enjoying each other.

(Mother Spirit’s blessings)

This is Michael’s and my blessings on these last few days before a new year, as you count the time.  Yet midnight on the thirty-first will still be the same as a minute before and a minute after.  You are the continuity.  You are literally the living cord tying everything together.  It’s almost as if, my children, strictly from the point of your personality, you are not moving at all.  It is all happening all around both within and outside you, and still, here comes something new from your own spirit’s co-creation, moment by moment.  You are most like God in this sense, in something coming out of your very own unique essence, realizing and determining that entire world out there for you.  So rest in this ultimate assurance, my children, that you are!  You are existence itself, for you and for those others that you love and are loved by.  This is what makes it a happy new year beginning every day.

Now if you have any questions or comments, I’m most happy to receive them.

Student:  Thank you, Mother, for your constant love and support without cease in our lives.  I truly appreciate your being here, and being here with you.

NEBADONIA:  Thank you, my son.  What a glory it is for Michael and me to have such children that we can talk with, and laugh with, and share so much.  It seems so hard at times to get our children to accept all that they are.  Your world has been uniquely blighted insofar as it has been several hundred thousand years without a Son of God living on the planet and teaching all these things from each person’s birth, developing world-wide cultures where it is a uniformly accepted fact of your spiritual nature.

But we are where we are, you and I, and as we’ve been teaching, this rather peculiar and unique world situation of yours does have its compensations.  More courage is called for, but then more courage is forthcoming.  There is more fear, but then there is the hope that triumphs over it.  So thank you, my son; let’s carry on and enjoy these challenges together.

Student:  I’ll go for that!

NEBADONIA:  Yes, this is the divine sharing that is the delight of life.  Be in my love and have a happy new year.

Student:  Yes, Mother Spirit.  You said that we co-create with you and the presence of God within us.  Do we create everything that transpires in our lives?

(Co-creating ones own reality)

NEBADONIA:  My son, we call it co-creation because you are in the midst of not only God’s creation of a universe, but also in your everyday social, and political, and economic realities, you are involved with all the other human beings as well surrounding you.  So your reality is a co-creation in how you perceive and interpret all this for yourself.  There is an objective reality out there, even your own living body which obeys physical and chemical laws.  It’s how you take all this that is very much up to you--your ability to respond to all that comes at you.  In addition, consider what comes from your own personality, your own spiritual creativity introducing something uniquely yours into the mix you perceive and express.

Student, laughing:  That’s more palpable.  Because there are some philosophies or teachings out there that say that we are creating everything that happens to us, whether it is positive or negative.  Like, let’s say, someone’s house burns down.  Well, somehow they created that experience.  There’s some notion of Karma, or just thinking negatively--always having a fear about that--that caused it.  Or someone wins the lottery, on the other extreme; they created that, somehow.  They were open to that.  Could you comment on that?

NEBADONIA:  Yes, my son, that seems to be a philosophy of pure subjectivity, that your own inner life is solely responsible for everything that happens to you.  But from our standpoint, that is literally denying the objective existence of a whole universe full of--even on your one world here--billions of personal beings who are interacting with you, let alone enormous natural forces of weather or geology--hurricanes and earthquakes and such.  Even on the smallest scale, you can be a very good driver and still be blind-sided by someone who is totally out of control.

Things happen to people.  From our point of view, it’s only a great pretense for a person to say they understand, or their philosophy comprehends, the total cause and effect in the physical, mental, and spiritual complexity of events surrounding a unique individual’s life interacting within his or her society.  To us it’s a better part of humility, and much more accurate, to acknowledge this transcendent complexity of forces and personalities involved.  This is the basis for your humility, this perception of the enormous encompassing involved in your, and everyone else’s, life; and yet not fear it.

But it is a challenge.  Something totally unforeseen and having no direct or even indirect cause on your own part can happen--say a terrible car accident that leaves you crippled.  That is a huge challenge that life has thrown at you.  The worst possible thing would be for someone to heap guilt upon you right in the middle of all this, saying you somehow deserved it; implying they could somehow know so thoroughly and totally why you brought it on yourself.  What a terrible pretense!  What human arrogance!

Student:  Yes, it could lead to being afraid to think anything new, or step out the door.  Yet there seems to be whole countries whose social systems are based on that kind of thinking, that phony kind of Karma.  Everything that happens to people, they somehow deserved it, so if they’re born into some lower caste, then that’s their due, and they always have to be that.  Imagine the oppressiveness of that.  It seems the notions of Karma, or reincarnation, or original sin, are just man’s attempts to come to grips with their own sense of evil--why that happens to people.  It’s because of original sin, or something they did five lifetimes ago.  It just seems absurd.  It’s not taking into account what you mentioned about the real complexity of reality and how there’s something new and different in each event.

(You are mirrored in what you do)

NEBADONIA:  Yes.  Although not perfectly--that would be another arrogance--there is a relatively valid way to see oneself reflected in the mirror, the feedback you get from interacting with ever-changing objective reality.  Yet so many are unaware of how their own attitude, their own values and judgments are coloring everything that comes to them.  We mentioned one time about how, if you’re cheerful and walking down a city sidewalk, most everybody is looking to catch a little bit of your energy, and smiling back.  Whereas if you’re feeling down and in a mean, grumpy mood, people can sense this and react to it so instantaneously, closing down in self-defense, you’ll be getting your own expression thrown back at you.  If you’re not aware of these very subtle human connections, you’ll end up all the more down and grumpy, blaming all those out there for your situation.  You’ll have lost the initiative to turn things around.

(Accidents of time and space)

You’re right, my son.  This was where, when Jesus was asked about why a man was born blind--was it something he had done in a previous lifetime, or something his parents had done--he answered, in essence, that from a human perspective, there are accidents of time and space.  It’s only on the level of the Supreme Being that there are no accidents; everything is totally comprehended.  It is certainly the better part of humility and self-honesty to acknowledge this.

Student:  But is there the possibility, or potential, that when one is more aligned with the Father’s will, then the prospect of accidents or negative things happening to a person are lessened?

NEBADONIA:  Oh, very much so!--especially in terms of inner personal/spiritual reality, because God is spirit; in other words--all-inclusive.  To seek and follow God’s will is to be more open-minded to greater possibility, including considering what accidents might happen.  You’re less likely to be blind-sided when you’re sensitive and open all around, inside and outward.  In addition, God is loving, the original source of all those positive qualities you can perceive in life.  The more you are willing to experience and then project these positive qualities--especially in inter-personal relationships--it does generally lead to a happy and fulfilled life--barring accidents, of course.  (Mother Spirit laughs)  We can’t contradict ourselves here.

Student, laughing with her:  I understand.  Sometimes accidents just happen and challenge us to accept God’s, or the universe’s ways.  But if we let ourselves become more one with our Father, and His will for us, it’s not from a place of fear, you know, like God-fearing Christians; that’s probably a detriment to becoming more in tune to who we truly are.  It’s like uncontrived.  It’s like you said so many times--resting in love and peace, relaxing into that possibility, and opening up to what’s next for us.  If we go along God-fearing, like God’s going to punish us if we don’t follow His will--which has been hammered into us by our religions down through the ages…  We can see what’s happening in the world as a result of all that deliberately created fear.

NEBADONIA:  One of Jesus’ main messages, and a major difference between the Old and the New Testament, was that God is a loving father who wants only the best for all His children--no exceptions.  God certainly doesn’t condone any kind of threat of harm or oppressive teachings in His name.  As Michael recently put it: no one can force their inner spiritual understanding upon anyone else; it can only be offered.  It was how he lived his life among you, as Jesus.  

Student:  I just started a new book whose author has a different interpretation of Jesus’ life.  He points out, at that the time, the oppressiveness of the Jewish religion which had so many laws and commandments, like 630 of them, and where a woman had no rights.  Jesus wasn’t so concerned with Rome and its occupation; he was concerned with how his own people treated each other.

NEBADONIA:  Yes, they were the ones who put him to death; however Roman law dictated that Roman soldiers do it directly.

Student:  The celebratory nature of life was sucked out of the people because of their own Sanhedrin and the laws that were imposed.  You couldn’t do this; you couldn’t do that.  You couldn’t breathe--almost.   Anyway, that’s what I gathered in the first few pages of this book.

NEBADONIA:  We mentioned once an overview of human civilization would be how only recently the tribal level of society has lead to the nation/state level, all the while their security considerations have led to endless warfare.  The leaders tend to enforce their rules to insure control, but then, in a reversal of your common saying, can’t see the trees for the forest.  These hierarchies of authority who feel, because of their own inner anxieties, it’s necessary to control the people, come to consider only the over-all strategic political view and loose sight of the individuals involved.

(Individual reality)

This was the case when Jesus walked the earth.  The leaders of social and political power were so concerned with their limited over-all view of “the people”--so-called, they pretty nearly chocked the life out of the folks who comprised it.  Jesus’ teachings were about the reality of the individual, however they are grouped in society, and for whatever reason.  They are individuals.  That is the living reality.  It was because of Jesus’ teaching that women were both granted, and achieved, the greatest freedom and equal status with men, reflective of the relationship between Michael and myself.  That’s become another wonderful blossoming in your world today.  Think of all the now more free-wheeling spiritual creativity of all womankind being encouraged and released for the betterment of their societies, as well as in their individual lives.

So when you look to any culture, society, economic system, political system or religion; always ask: what is it doing to encourage the growth of mature self-reliance and responsibility along with individual freedom for all its citizens?  How much do the leaders trust in the people to be their own best guides?

Student:  I think that goes both ways.  I think people are coming to grips with their own reality, and that of their governments.  Something has to give.

NEBADONIA:  True democracy in all realms--science, politics, economics--just general social usage; there is no substitute for individual creativity.  It’s where you get everyone involved, and reap the harvest of everyone’s imagination.

Student:  And what does that freedom look like?  I think people have so many different ideas about what that would look like.  And not just some material freedom, but inner spiritual freedom, and recognition of our instinctive natures, and truth.

(What might free societies look like?)

NEBADONIA:  Yes.  For those poor, hollow leaders who have been, and still are, the most obscenely violent haters among you, with almost nothing inside of a true saving relationship with God; they can only envision that greater freedom as some kind of chaos; just more of what they most inwardly fear--fear for their position; fear for their power over others.  Whereas with the individual who feels the spirit of God within them, filling them to overflowing with spiritual generosity; that is their beautiful, wonderful future evolving endlessly toward even more freedom.  It’s where everyone’s true soul-worth can come out and be more freely and joyously expressed.

Student:  A teacher I’ve been with says the greatest pandemic of this world right now is not just poverty, and global warming, and all the various diseases, but emotional and mental instability.  I think that’s so true.

NEBADONIA:  Yes, and the only real security and stability are in ones relationship with God.  So the more you can encourage that, and be prepared!--be prepared and welcoming of this blossoming of individual freedom--however chaotic it may seem at first--the more you can know you’re really helping.

Student:  One last thing.  If you could use another word other than God for praise--because the word God has so many meanings, and has caused so much unsettlement--if you could use another word to describe the indescribable, what would you say that every human being could relate to?  Maybe there is no word, or sentence, or phrase--other than First Source, or Creator, or Super Intelligence, or Divine Intelligence?  How about to atheists?  What could be the Way?  Maybe there is no one word or statement.

(God’s personality)

NEBADONIA:  Michael and I like to stress the personality of the First Source and Center, and the primal loving nature of His personality--which would not go very well with an atheist who feels ultimate reality is a kind of It, or Just Happening throughout.  Michael, as Jesus, speaking to the human order of beings, referred to God as a loving father.  There are those unfortunate souls who have known only mean-spirited fathers to whom this will not immediately relate, but they can at least imagine by being with friends and their fathers, the idea of a loving, nurturing, supporting father.

Again, my son, each individual will have their own inner irreducible feeling that is their unique take of this truly ultimate Personality, this primal Creator of everything out of a love and desire to share life itself with His children.

Student, laughing:  Very good.  Well, thank you.

NEBADONIA:  And let us thank our Father--for us!  Then let us thank Him for all of us!--that we have not only ourselves but we also have each other, to relate to all through eternity.  Oh!--you have so many orders of personal beings to encounter, and they will tickle you immeasurably.  We delight so much in your delight upon reawakening to know, first, you’ve survived!  You still are!--(Mother Spirit breaks up laughing)  This continuity that you are is still continuing.  And then---my goodness!--to look around and here they are, all these different orders of beings in the whole Morontia/soulful level of life.  Keep in mind what your Urantia book calls the universality of the smile-equivalent.  There is something equal to the human smile between all orders of personalities, for mutual reassurance.

So Happy New Year, my dear ones.  Thank you for the heartfelt, soulful work you do to help make it that way.  Be in my love.  Good evening.