Nebadonia - Being Mother Spirit - Prolonged Meditation - Nov 12, 2007 - Marin TM
Nebadonia—November 12, 2007Marin TM Group—Mill Valley, California—U.S.A.NEBADONIA--T/R—JLDear Mother Spirit and Michael, Welcome. We welcome you with the bright eyes of our souls and the yearnings and hopes of our hearts. Help us feel your subtle presence here with us as we hear your inspirational, insightful words. We especially enjoyed your last series of lessons on what you mean by us being creatures of free will dignity. You taught us how to grow in that dignity through realizing and then transcending with creativity, reflection, and courage—spirit, mind, and heart, the limitations that condition our free will. So continue on, dear parents. Could you tell us a little more about what you mean by this being a social grace contributing to others, as well as a personal spiritual achievement? Thank you. Amen.
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my dear children, this is your spirit mother, Nebadonia--daughter of the Infinite Spirit, spirit mother to the whole host of inhabited worlds here in Nebadon.
(Being Mother Spirit)
Tonight, before I answer your question directly, I would like to take you on a mind journey. Just breathe deeply and relax; let yourself expand. Ride along on my voice or, for those of you who will come to read these words, maybe read a sentence or two and then close your eyes and say them over again to yourself, for I will be here with you.
Imagine yourself expanding out and out into thousands upon thousands of cubic light years of space. Out you go beyond the architectural spheres of Salvington, past the one hundred constellations of Nebadon and all their architectural spheres as well, out to the ten thousand local systems with their capitals and satellite architectural spheres.
Imagine all the teeming life on them of the different direct orders of sons and daughters of Michael and I, and then peopled with all the trillions upon trillions of ascendant mortals working their way in towards you from what we call the Nurseries of Time and Space. Imagine the thousands of new worlds, some only a few billion years old, being implanted by the Life Carriers, where your own spirit will be guiding their living evolution. Then also imagine, my dear children, those worlds on which animal life is crossing the threshold to humankind, where all of a sudden with an individual, or two--as happened on Urantia--a certain quality of decision is made and instantly your Spirit/Adjutants of Wisdom and Worship find response in their early human minds; and immediately their experience becomes part of you own consciousness.
Expand that consciousness to almost four million evolutionary worlds with all their endless trillions of human inhabitants, all their lives being part of your own, tenderly held within the space of your own being of those thousands upon thousands of cubic light years of space, with millions and millions of blazing suns, solar systems, evolutionary worlds, all those architectural spheres. That’s me. This is what it is to be the Mother Spirit of a Local Universe.
Now with all that, imagine what a delight it is to be able to tune into a single human being as he or she simply sets their own personal response aside for a while so I can talk with you this way, address my children directly, and interact with them--carry on conversations. Imagine worlds only slightly more advanced than yours where this ability to communicate out loud--so to speak--is held by almost all the adult citizens of those worlds.
(The interconnectedness of all personal life)
So: you can see I’m quite a social creature. Our lives are totally intermingled. Yours is mine from the moment you personally cross that same threshold and become a creature of will dignity, a fully human being. Also from that moment on Michael and I can come to you consciously in so many different ways, directly and even indirectly, with a whole spiritual family, if you welcome us into your life.
Your Urantia book delineates in great detail, and we have mentioned occasionally, the fact of Universe Reflectivity, a kind of instantaneous communication promulgated into the realms of time and space by the Infinite Spirit--of whom I am the daughter, and whom I help by relaying to my own Local Universe. Tonight I hope to give you some inkling, some feeling of spiritual dimensions, particularly ones that allow for instantaneous communication that transcends time and space to link all the personal, organized life throughout the seven inhabited galaxies.
You could think of this as an extension of all the electronic media just zipping right through your body as you sit here listening to me or reading these words. The fact you can use your cell phone inside your house or vehicle means those microwaves are vibrating right through that material, even your own body, without disturbing that material or you. Though it is not accurate literally but only somewhat by analogy, you could understand spirit as a much higher vibration that transcends and interpenetrates the slower physical frequencies of time/space.
These are the real dimensions we tease you with, the ones you will have a much greater experience of in your next Morontia state. For as you grow in the Morontia life through hundreds of personality-manifestation modulations, this is what gives meaning to that growth. You’ll be encountering more and more dimensions of spirit as you go along and your Morontia body is re-keyed, as it were, to pick up ever greater numbers of these dimensions. So as Michael says, just let it blow your mind a bit. Enjoy a bit of awe that all this, which is so far just a part of your imagination, all this really exists out here. It’s all going on, all these endless trillions of lives of so many different orders of beings, all concurrent with your own human life.
This is part of the potential you have, my children, that this will be yours to enjoy some day as your personality constantly grows and modulates. You are made for this. You have the potential to expand, to grow, to encounter and encompass all of this without limit. Just think: after the billions and billions of years it will take you to reach Paradise up through the seventh Superuniverse and Havona, you will still have six more other Superuniverses to explore. So can you get some feel now, my children, of the inter-connectedness of all of this personal life, some real sense of the living body of the actualizing Supreme Being?
I know it’s hard to conceive of some kind of personal reality, some real Person who encompasses all of this, yet still is distinct from God the Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and the seven Master Spirits of Paradise. These are just hints of all these other dimensions you will encounter; but all this is real: it’s all really happening.
It’s an enormously social group out here, all connected instantaneously right through time and space. Their natures are most profoundly different from that of human society and human cultures by the more mature free will dignity of all the component personal beings. Just as you grow into your free will estate as you mature, so the spirit realm is just a fantastic extension of this where the key words are spontaneity and creativity. There is a limit to which we can push your words and still keep your understanding somewhat coherent and unified without becoming simplistic. But I can say that our experience of reality is much more instantaneously detailed and spontaneously creative, just fantastically expanded from what you know now.
Think of your beloved ascendant-mortal friends who can transmit to you much as I am doing this evening. Even they who have not yet gone beyond your Local System, their spirits can be in what you would think of as many places at the same time, while they have a discreet body much more subtle and real than the one you inhabit. If all this sounds fantastic, good! That is my intention. It is my delight to tease you so to stretch your imagination and take you out of yourself for even a few minutes. Relax in your human space, then come back to yourself and feel all the more solid and real because your "now" has expanded just a little more.
(Becoming both more individualized and sociable)
And so you see, my children, how the members of the spiritual community are both more individualized--since each soul is much more self-realized in its God-created uniqueness--yet at the very same time more sociable, able to interact across all the different orders of personal beings--ascendant mortals, Melchizedeks, Seraphim, Cherubim, all the student visitors from other realms, then all the Paradise origin beings intermingling in amongst everyone.
This is the way you too can grow, for ongoing human life need not be a zero-sum game. Spiritual growth allows you to become ever more aware of your uniqueness, and embrace it, without going off on what you call an ego trip, some mere illusion, born of insecurity, that actually diminishes who and what you are. The security gained in touching your real self, your own soul, allows you to forget yourself in this newfound confidence, let go, and become more sociable.
Some years ago your beloved Welmek gave you an exercise of beaming love at every person you see, without exception. Many of you who really, soulfully tried this have experienced how it introduced you to all the unique individuals all around you, you were theretofore screening out through any number of subtle prejudices. Having this strength and courage of character, this desire to love, to beam your love and your good wishes to everyone, has made you more soulfully wealthy by allowing all these other individuals to register.
To answer your question this evening, this is what you have to offer others, this increased sociability along with a clearer and more sharply focused perceptible character. What you call character, my dear children, I think you can realize now is only, but no less than, the perceptible aspect of your souls. As we have said before, it’s not so much that some poor individuals are cursed with a bad character, as simply a lack of character. They’re still being driven too much by general animalistic and primitive human tendencies and have not yet grown into their full, mature human estate and potential. Michael recently went into how this immaturity affects even ones perception of time and the reality you call the future, as one feels relentlessly driven along.
Again: this can be the most wonderful social responsibility that as you grow in your own character and soul and are able to beam this out to share with others, you enrich their lives too with this extra…dimensionality--I’ll call it. You offer them the liberation of soul-wealth to the very degree you’ve achieved it for yourself.
The true faith sons of God, those individuals who are able to realize so much of the next Morontia/soul phase of life while still being human on Urantia, through their power of faith, through their courage of realizing and expressing their true uniqueness of selfhood: these are the persons who serve as shock absorbers within the general population, cushioning all the wild egotism of others’ over-exaggerated and extravagant flights of fantasy, corruption, and predatory behavior. Their contributions are expressed in your ever growing institutions of democracy. This is also the necessity and the glory of free media wherein almost any viewpoint can be expressed. Those with the greatest soul, the most developed characters, serve as shock absorbers offering those with more limited viewpoints and perceptions the ability to recognize a broader, deeper view--as we’ve been expressing it, an enlarged present moment.
(The social function of character and soul)
This is the social function of character and soul. This is literally the glue that holds your societies together right up from the family to the neighborhoods, the cities, the states, the nations. This is the true selfhood that gives life its flavor and forms the basis for the social conventions that allow folks to interact, immediately, today, until something better is created tomorrow. So you see, my children, this is how, as you grow in your free will dignity through creativity, through reflection, through courage and decisiveness; this is how you contribute socially the most essential elements of flexibility and growth. And it is happening. There is a general, worldwide evolution taking place, not in any way mechanically inexorable, but inexorable because you are each of you a child of God. You were created with this potential. Social evolution does depend upon each one of you, for society is no other, in reality, than each one of you.
The whole world is evolving ever faster and more comprehensively as your planetary wide communications tie you ever tighter and tighter together, and your ever expanding and maturing democratic institutions allow for greater individual response-ability. So be of good cheer. Welcome, enjoy, thrill in the glory of playing your part in this enormous, real drama. You cannot literally be a Mother Spirit such as me, but you can parallel my loving outreach, and delight in socializing with my children.
When you consider all those about you your brothers and sisters, your siblings in the fatherhood of God, realize if you can this planetary evolution taking place--even as you seek to address those immediate, necessary, practical political considerations. Keep the ideals of democracy and freedom of communications bright in your mind. Consider all the necessary stages any particular culture or society on Urantia must go through to reach those bright ideals. This is the best way for you to play a part and contribute your uniqueness, and enjoy the uniqueness of all those around you. We invite you to join this great game of cosmic evolution that has been Michael’s and my own from the very beginning.
If you have any comments or questions this evening, let them be an expression of your own deepest self.
Student: Yes, Mother…it seems like my body is here tonight but my mind is still way out there.
NEBADONIA: Good! (they both laugh) That was my intention.
Student: I look forward to reading the transcript because my mind really was expanding out there--just relaxed may be a better word. It was interesting: before I come here I try to lie down and just let everything go if I can. My time was limited tonight so it was like there was a part of me feeling an overwhelming feeling of not truly letting everything go--letting go all teachings, and all the strivings, and all the desires, just to be who I am. Because there is a part of me that gets tired of all that, all that striving or reading about who I can be. There is a part of me that says enough.
It’s kind-of like what the Buddha--before his realization—experienced. He had so many experiences of rituals and practices like yoga and things like that, meditations where each teacher was claiming they were The Way. Yet he always felt like, no, they weren’t. And so he just sat down one day wanting to come from himself and not from any particular point of view, but from pure--I guess--pure intelligence, or pure awareness.
Sometimes I get that kind of inclination. I just want to come from pure awareness, or pure intelligence, or how I was created to be--without all the doing and striving and everything else. I just want to be authentic and real; in reality as it is already here to be experienced. But it’s probably a matter of what went with the Buddha and Jesus, just resting and letting go absolutely. I guess it’s self-mastery, so to speak. (big sigh).
(Letting go to a greater self)
NEBADONIA: It’s wonderful, my son. This is an ability you are growing, the ability to let all the striving go for a while. It’s quite a challenge because as you go through life you are also at the same time building up more ego-reality to let go. We have suggested you think in terms of a living, organic balance between the generally unconscious growth of your soul and your conscious spiritual efforts—the striving you make, to realize this greater reality--almost like picking yourself up by your bootstraps. It is difficult for your conscious self, your ego, to realize it is only a very small part of the totality of all you are, and needs to let go of itself to let this greater reality swell forth.
So we tease you with the notion that your soul is gigantic, gigantic beyond your comprehension, partly because it is a construct of a pure Fragment of God himself, His pure spirit within you, and partly because your current consciousness depends so much upon the electro-chemical processes of your physical body and can only know so much moment to moment. This is why your soul is contra-distinct from your mental/physical memories.
You are getting this ability to relax your present awareness in such a way as to allow this greater self that you are--as you express it, that is pure awareness--to emerge. Since this is a bigger now, it is more profoundly beyond your time and space being that so conditions your consciousness. You have to let the quality of your consciousness, generally attuned to present day problems and affairs, modulate to let all these concerns go. And since people have first to be introduced to this possibility, of course it helps when other human teachers do this. You can take advantage of their developing various techniques of meditation which have enabled people for thousands and thousands of years now to get in touch with their greater self, their deeper soul.
If you want to look at it objectively, it’s: how do you get the smaller part of a conscious being--that very consciousness, to let go of itself to allow a larger self to emerge? It takes a strange kind of courage to trust your teachers, trust Michael and I when we say: Let go! You will come back together again! (Mother Spirit chuckles) This is intrinsically difficult because you have to relinquish--by seeing and accepting its profound limitations--the very self you have worked your whole life to build up. Yet in fact the greater you can let go, the more through and deep and profound the rest you can know—consciously, as contra-distinct from sleep, shall we say, the greater will be your experience of soul, your larger self. As we have said, you truly are all of these aspects. (Mother Spirit chuckled again) Even your ego and your limited self-awareness are real; they’re not illusions. But the smaller part has to have the courage to let go of itself so that the larger self can emerge.
Student: Yeah, that’s why I feel a sense of anxiety or trepidation, and sometimes frustration, in what I participate in. It seems bittersweet where you have this expansiveness, but then you doubt the reality of living on this planet. Things can be quite bittersweet, and I feel so limited. It feels really confining and so I was even considering tonight to like truly let everything go like Buddha did, and just be still for however long it takes. But then the call of my day to day responsibilities beckons me.
I just wonder what if I didn’t work for two or three days of just getting through what I normally do in my life--just stop and see what happens? That would take courage to go against the grain of what is supposed to be normal, and supposed to be done, and so forth…
(Prolonged meditation)
NEBADONIA: As you are aware, my son, almost every organized religion which supports some kind of meditation does have its priests and nuns who devote a great part of their life to meditation. And most of them have what you might call outreach programs where the lay community is invited in for periods, much as you suggest, where you can visit and take advantage of their kind of organized meditation schedules. You get up early in the morning and spend the entire day just meditating and having your meals, maybe walking around doing a few hours of physical work to keep alert. That is an available alternative.
If you wish to do this strictly own your own, you might consider that a vacation. Instead of going to the mountains or to the beach or something like that, pre-arrange some way in which you can spend all day, several days in a row, just meditating and following where your spirits leads. The structured meditation communities are there for the asking, generally speaking, across the whole spectrum of religious practices, because it is difficult to do this on your own right from scratch. But it is possible. You see the value of this, but consider what it would become past those first few hours. It could seem like an enormous stretch of time, almost like touching eternity, to do this for several days in a row.
Student: I can see the enormous value, not only for myself but for those who exist around me. If I can express even a small amount of self awareness now, it could have such a positive, beneficial effect towards those who are around me. I think it’s important for our world to have more people, more and more people who are masters of their own selves.
NEBADONIA: Yes. This is the social contribution I mentioned this evening. When you transcend your own limitations and conditioning you become a more spiritually creative and conscious individual. Society at large always has had such a critical need for this kind of leadership. You become the antennae of the race, out there exploring and feeling around for what is possible, making your discoveries and bringing them back to share with everyone else. Remember that so much of this open chasm of the unknown is within yourself.
Student: I feel I have to honestly come from my own experience, not from what I’ve read, or not even what you’ve said, because you kind-of only point the way. I guess that was what I was feeling before I came here, to kind-of shed everything I’ve acquired, and learned, and studied, and come from--be that authentic teaching within my own self, my own soul.
NEBADONIA: My son, this is what Michael and I have suggested is the Herculean task of finding your own voice. With respect to all your spiritual studies, it will be what is internally consistent within you. The important thing to realize now is: that inner consistency of understanding you discover and create will be as unique as you are. This will be your unique outtake from all you’ve uniquely taken in. It will be at one and the same time your crowning spiritual achievement, and the Herculean task to adequately express this understanding to yourself and others.
Student: Hmmm… Wow. Thank you for that.
To kind-of change the subject or direction, I recently read a twenty-four page paper that more or less tried to debunk the Teaching Mission, saying the transmitters needed to be taken to task for deluding people, and all that. One of the arguments was that the final statement, when the Urantia book was finished, was that the Midwayers or Celestials said: Now you are on your own--meaning the whole human race. But I think the critics are taking that too literally.
Yet I’ve noticed too, among other things, there are certain groups who have an exaggerated sense of being super special, and all that. Maybe if the critics had read some of the transcripts that have originated from here, with Michael and Mother Spirit, I think some of their arguments would be appeased and not hold water, because I know what you and Michael have said. You’ve always taught that our perceptions and decisions are our own, our own choices, our own free will. But I don’t want to get into a debate: it’s just a waste. I don’t mean a waste of energy and time, but I mean there’s always going to be skeptics and people who still believe the earth is flat. So anyway…
(Understanding transmitting/receiving)
NEBADONIA: You’ve brought up a lot of interesting points, my son. Just to address them briefly: all statements, especially in a human language, have valid meaning only within a very narrow, limited context. So when at the end of giving the Urantia papers the statement was made, you are on your own now, that meant that was the end of that particular presentation. The Fifth Epochal Revelation, if you will, was closed at that point. It was a completed work. When you pick up your Urantia book, you notice it has covers front and rear and (Mother Spirit chuckles) a page one and the final page.
We’ve said the Teaching Mission is, for a strictly human parallel, very much like teachers giving living lectures on the textbook of a course. And I think you’ve noticed how Michael and I particularly have often tried to give you a subjective feeling, kind-of like from the inside-out, of what some of the stated objective truths of the Urantia book might feel like for you.
But you are right: we definitely refuse to tell you what to do, and can only entice and tease and invite you to discover for yourselves your own unique will; and how to use it, and enjoy it--grow with it. It’s up to each individual participant in the Teaching Mission, whether as a transmitter/receiver or a student listener or reader of this material, to make up his or her own mind. We certainly suggest you crank up your inner Spirit of Truth to its fullest. You should all by now be walking the line between avoiding cynicism, which is just a kind of overly simplistic knee-jerk reaction of not entertaining anything, while at the same time you should also be developing a very well functioning baloney-detector that tells you when something doesn’t ring true. Interestingly, those can be points of great interest. Similar to when you are comparing all the different systems of philosophy, and metaphysics, and psychology, this is part of finding your own voice to know what corresponds with what, or why not.
This is all a means of self discovery, for even your disagreements with a particular transmission--transmitter or transmitted personality--can tell you much about yourself and what you believe. So hopefully this critic of the Teaching Mission has achieved a certain self-discovery by that very critique. It is to be hoped that he or she has been comprehensive because, as you know, some critiques of the Urantia book have been from folks who read only a few chapters and haven’t the faintest idea of the internal enormity between those two covers; and the same goes for the full extent of the Teaching Mission.
Student: Yeah, I find people who are skeptical about something with a jaundiced point of view about it will always find something to prove their point, and elaborate on that without really taking in the whole picture of what is actually being said. There might be a few transmissions that aren’t totally clear, or more colored by the transmitters: that may happen. There are certain transmissions I’ve read that didn’t ring true for me, but I just moved on. I didn’t put down the whole Teaching Mission for that.
I’m not saying we’re special or anything, but I do try to ask important questions I can really use, and don’t know the answers to--more introspective questions, not just curiosity questions and such.
NEBADONIA: That’s why realizing why something doesn’t ring true is another moment of self-discovery: it can be very useful.
Transmitting is a very inexact science. (Mother Spirit chuckles) As you notice, the different persons who transmit me sometimes seem to be coming from totally different orientations emotionally and intellectually, but in this we work with what is brought to us. Transmitting is kind of a devotion of someone setting aside their own reactions in order to let Michael or myself, or others of our children, come through. And this too is in itself a learning process we encourage every single person to get into, if they wish. Transmit at first for yourself in the process of journaling. Sit down, open yourself to the spiritual community, ask for a teacher, and start writing.
Student: I wonder sometimes how, like in this case with J being the transmitter, how much of what is being transmitted is being colored by J’s own understandings and perceptions and points of view? Can a transmitter express something, say a concept or an understanding, that he hasn’t understood himself--or herself yet?--when truth is truth, reality is reality? If a person hasn’t already--or can’t grasp a certain understanding, can he articulate it as a transmitter?
NEBADONIA: Well, keep in mind, my son, that while Truth is Truth, it is really big. Only God has the full grasp of it all.
Yes, the transmissions are very definitely colored by the transmitter, not as distortions so much as limitations of human abilities of expression—background experience, vocabulary, orientation toward reality. This is where you use your own Spirit of Truth, your own inner sense, to evaluate them. But while a transmitter cannot pass on what would be pure nonsense to him or her, the train of thought itself, the expressing of our viewpoint over a period of time--which is why, incidentally, Michael and I choose to have these longer transmissions—does enable you to ride along on our stream of thought and get a good feeling of our personalities. This helps you sense our presence as if all around as well as through the spoken words themselves.
This stream of our ideation, this chain of concepts need not be dependent upon nor influenced by the transmitter, which is why we often seem to say things in a somewhat awkward or unfamiliar way to get you to rethink things anew. This is precisely so we are not just taking some of your more common concepts and shuffling them around, for this would provide you no new comprehension. It would only be shuffling around some familiar word symbols. Also we try to stay as much as possible with Standard English word meanings and use special Urantia book words as little as possible.
This is what you get of Michael or myself, or any other transmitted person. You get a continuity of viewpoint that should give you a deep inner sense of our personality. It’s partly why I took you on the little mind journey at the beginning of this lesson, to give you some feeling, some small inkling of what it is to be the Mother Spirit of millions upon millions of inhabited worlds; and thrill to the fact this is all happening--every moment of your life.
Student: Yes: it makes my little story to make ends meet seem so minimal, but I’ve mentioned before there is this strange comfort I have in knowing that all that exists, that truth is so expansive in reality. It’s so expansive with a pulsating potential that we can grow familiar with every day and every moment.
(Flexibility—stretch)
NEBADONIA: This is the flexibility we speak of, my son. All the while your creative spirit and your Father Fragment are blowing your mind and stretching your imagination to give you a feeling of the enormity that is God’s creation, the very next second, or even simultaneously, your hand is reaching down to pinch out one tiny little weed. That is an enormous stretch from the largest, the macrocosm, right down to the microcosm of a single small effort. Feel the enormity of God’s creation, yet be able to focus right down into the minutest practical task at the moment. This flexibility is similar to what I spoke of tonight as the ability to be unique in your self-realization and expression, yet not be hung up on yourself, but self-forgetful to become ever more sociable. This is the stretch, this is the maturity, this is an ability you grow.
Student: So, in a sense, there is no mundane-ness.
NEBADONIA: Only if you are not caught up in it. (Mother Spirit laughs)
Student: Yeah--I know that feeling. (both laugh) That’s what I mean by the bittersweet. You may have this expansive feeling of the whole galaxy, or of growing familiar with your potential--these ideals of who you could be, and then you have to go and clean the toilet or something like that.
NEBADONIA: Yet after only so much pure sweet milk chocolate, a little bittersweet chocolate is a wonderful thing. Even sadness gives such meaning to joy. So yes, as we have said before, life was indeed set up this way for your enjoyment, and for your growth--to get you to stretch too, to help you make each moment of your life meaningful and of value.
Student: Yeah, it’s like we’re supposed to enjoy life; we’re supposed to be creative and experience love and joy and beauty and all that. But we’re so…too obsessed with pain and suffering. We’re supposed to have a life of ease--I don’t mean that materially, but ease of soul where we can experience our expansiveness and our mundane-ness as one.
NEBADONIA: And that too, my son, is a kind of maturity you have to grow into, you have to earn. It’s what Michael means by his peace.
Student: Well, thank you.
NEBADONIA: You are very welcome. This has been another full evening. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you for riding along with me, there for a while. I do from time to time get this deep motherly yearning to share my life with you, and get you to wonder what it is to be me. I certainly enjoy the moment you cross over into your full human estate and start to grow in the dignity of your free will. It’s when I start sharing your life with you, augmenting your natural inclinations of worship and wisdom with my own. You help me be aware of and worship our Father--He who is my Father as well as yours. So rest in Michael’s peace, my dear child. Welcome to all of my love you can enable yourself to feel. It’s here for you, right inside. Good evening.
END