Dear Mother Spirit and Michael,    Here we are again, gathered in our familiar circle of warm bodies and curious minds, creative spirits and hopeful souls; gathered to hear the latest installment of your insightful story on our being human.  We do thank you for presenting your viewpoints on our lives.  For by way of your reflection we can get a feeling of what it is to be the two of you.  Thank you for these lessons on appreciation--ways we can be more conscious of what a gift these lives of ours are.  For this we are truly thankful.  Amen.

NEBADONIA:  Good evening, my children, this is your mother, Nebadonia.  I always hope you get some feeling too of what a delight it is for Michael and me--to say these precious words: my children.  This is our true relationship, our fundamental relationship, if you will.  It is within this context we are also dear friends.  We share ways in which we’re not only complementary, as parent and child, but alike in being children of our Universal Father.  So in spite of our being ancient beyond your comprehension, and enormous (Mother Spirit chuckles) beyond your wildest imagination, we have much in common.  We too are experiential beings growing what is analogous to a human soul--of all the experiences Michael and I have had since we left Paradise, long, long ago when we came out to this part of the galaxy to have our adventures, to create and raise our children.

(Personal human experience)

As Michael said last time, in addition of these very long lives we’ve had, we’ve all the ways we share your lives with you--the transcendent fact you are completely transparent to us, my dear ones, and in this we enjoy your experiences, your souls, even in a way yet beyond you.  Because of this, because of Michael’s being so utterly intimate with literally trillions of trillions of personal children of ours, still there was that thing called personal human experience for him that, as we have said before, has no substitute in all of God’s creation.  This is what you are involved in.  This is God’s gift of you--to you, as is the surrounding time and space universe also His gift to you into eternity and infinity.

There is a qualitative difference between beings such as yourselves born with, shall we say, about 99.99999 percent--or some other playful number--of pure potential, born with a potential for eternal life of which this first planetary phase of yours will be one billionth of your life some day.  Still and all, you are--right here and now.  You already participate in the Deity Absolute by your very existence, an existence that is ever transcendent to whatever changing state of consciousness in which you find yourselves.  

So there is much to be humble about, my children, just in contemplating your own transcendent nature that you were born with.  And so, moment by moment, you achieve and actualize this potential with an experience that is all your own, unique in all existence.  Space-wise this is because there is no other being where you are, enjoying your unique viewpoint.  But even more fundamentally, because you were originally created a spiritual being who co-creates your own reality, the very uniqueness of your personality makes this creativity of yours equally unique.  In primitive societies this very feeling of uniqueness, of being not quite like anyone else, can be terrifying and lead to a kind of huddling.  The terror of difference in these primitive souls, feared as isolation, leads them to eschew as much of it as they can and cling together in a hopeful uniformity of rigidly enforcing a thousand and one taboos.  But then, of course, there are those surrounding tribes of all those other weird people, with their weird, frightful ways, and the incessant warfare that ensues.

And to a degree, you recapitulate this in your life as children. This is part of your experience of how, in certain phases of childhood and adolescence, you do your best to submerge and hide your own differences in the group, to become one of it.   In doing so you do find--with the help of my Spirit of Counsel--you do find ways of sharing what you have in common, what you can agree upon is real.  From this point of view these are great triumphs for you personally and for the general human race through the progress of civilization.

This common reality you are able to create among yourselves by conscious consent determines the ways you are able to share your experiences.  This is what it is to be a spiritual experiential being and you can find no small glory in this necessity for experience--even though you may, at times, be embarrassed with your own needs and curiosity--your human hunger to know more, to assuage some of the helplessness of knowing so little--when young.

Think of all these stages you’ve already come through with this necessity for experience as part of your being; your relentless curiosity.  This is the innate, God-given drive that has so often seemed to deprive you of any deep rest, so much so we’ve mentioned how it was a marvelous creation of your philosophers and religious folks of the past to come up with something called meditation: deliberately doing nothing; or, if you will, it’s doing a very special activity of daring to bring a halt to all this drive, this hunger for worldly experience, and just purely experience who and what you already are: sitting still, doing nothing else.

Yet for those poor, driven souls who, as Michael said, can never quite feel they are--there is always something terribly missing, some incompleteness, some hollow they can never fill--they’ve been chasing after themselves like after a horizon that retreats as fast as they chase.  You have the tragic irony of a person’s inability to embrace the only way out, and that is, the way in--having the experience of their completeness and fulfillment in an inner awareness of themselves, our Father, and Michael, and me.

And even though you cannot grasp yourself as an object in some final realization of who and what you are simply because you are a living, changing, adapting, creative being with the whole of eternity in front of you, still you can have some sense of the existential dimension of your being.  No matter whatever happens, moment after moment, breath after breath, heartbeat after heartbeat, you still are, and this inner sense of being here and now can continue to grow and expand forever.  There is no limit that can be put upon personality just because it is such a gift and resemblance of its Creator.

So this is what Michael meant when he said there in no substitute for experience.  In his case a Creator Son of God needed to have a human life himself to more fully appreciate what it is that you have already.  This is why both he and I delight in saying: my children.  We’re just blessed to see and feel each of you as the little walking infinities you are.  And so we tease you into trying to see yourselves and each other this way.

This is a short lesson tonight, my children.  I’m going to open the floor to your questions and comments.  I just wanted to mention, since you invited us to say how we see you from our point of view, what it means for us to say: my children--the pride and the awe we have in our own and our Father’s creations.  How you do surprise and delight us.  So be in my love, and I’ll answer any questions or comments you may have tonight.

Student:  Hi, Mother.  Is it possible to give us a little more idea what potential we all are?  You and Michael have said that several times, so I’d like to know a little bit more about it, if it’s possible to explain it.

(Human potential)

NEBADONIA:  Yes, my son.  I’m not condescending or in any way pretending to totally encapsulate human nature, but it is true there are many, many other orders of personal beings and each one has a different relationship to time, potential, possibility and manifest actuality.  Even as I say these words you may feel many different meanings to each one since each has so many connotations and implications for you.

Being in part physical, you are an extremely time-conditioned being, necessarily so.  Part of your experience is to give you an appreciation of time, an appreciation that each moment is unique, that you and the whole universe about you are changing and growing, and in a way never repeating.  Yet for so many who are seeking in vain some stasis, some unchanging reality for reassurance their beliefs are correct, they feel this cosmic movement as if they themselves never quite achieve full being; they never quite arrive.  Your Urantia book talks about the time units of immaturity being such that you never feel you really are.  You no sooner arrive at an ungraspable moment but what you are already departing it; security comes and goes.  Whereas the time units of maturity, more correctly related to temporal sequence--the past and the future--through experience--give you a greater sense of constantly arriving, even of being--in some transcendent way.

It’s in this context, my son, that your innate potential--as we see it--it is very akin to what you think of as possibility.  It’s a true reality, a true possibility, and no illusion either on our part or on yours.  As a personal being given a human body/mind vehicle with which to experience yourself and the world around you, there are many things possible for you to grow into and acquire both within yourself and out in the world.  It’s why we talk about abilities being a kind of soul growth which you are acquiring by experience.

In one way you are bringing into actuality, you are manifesting in real time and space, something that had a kind of reality before this.  You are not born with wings and so you do not have the potential for flight all on your own, and even though it is purely physically possible to, shall we say, do a one-hand-stand on top of a telephone pole--because some of you have done such a thing--because of the family and social circumstances into which you were born, there was no potential directive which led you into this kind of acrobatics.

So this is what we mean by potential, the possibility that, given the right circumstances and your personal creative power, you bring into actuality and do something of your own: you’re doing so constantly.  When we say you are 99.99999 percent pure potential (Mother chuckles) as a beginning human being, we’re paying due respect to the innate potential of yours for eternal life, a life without limit either in duration or expansion.  This is the enormous potential you have that you can only manifest, though, one moment at a time in an everlasting now.

In this sense, my son, you are a little like one of your electronic figures of a glowing dot on a computer screen that doesn’t appear to be moving much at all, but is leaving this wiggly tail behind it in time.  You too are glowing--alive--and you too are constantly here, actualizing your potential, leaving a trail of experience behind you that is being captured by a discrete presence of God as your soul.  In this way potentials are being transformed by your personality into actuals, and then into abilities and soul growth.  The more your abilities grow, so does your potential of what you are capable of doing.  This is a bit academic, but does that kind-of explain what potential is and how, even though it is not yet manifest, it is real?

Student:  It does make it sound a lot more simple that I thought it was, but also a lot more complicated too.  I was looking for something like, maybe, something I could look for that I overlooked in my life, some potential I failed to see.

NEBADONIA:  In that particular sense, my son, potential is conditioned by the same considerations of physical, mental, social, spiritual, and soulful realities as is free will.  It’s rather amorphous and shapeless until you give it the particular form unique to a moment in time.  We can only say that, potentially, your personality has no limits either in duration or how much it can grow.  But you yourself can choose moment by moment what potential you wish to actualize, and this you do by being open to your own innate desire to explore and grow.  So don’t worry, my son.  You have been a complete being all along.  You still have a potential that can carry you on forever.  Don’t think that you’ve used it all up, or that you’ve missed some of it, because it’s all still here, and getting larger. (group chuckles)

Student:  Thank you, Mother.

Student:  I mentioned all those different aspects of time because, from our viewpoint, and our Father’s viewpoint, you’re free-willed and creating your own reality, actualizing your own potential, in ways that are still somewhat unconscious to you.  All of our lessons on your own co-creativity are necessary because its full extent is so seldom conscious to you--how much of your potential you yourself are actualizing.  In this sense your potential is what you are continuously, unavoidably involved in.  So have fun with it.  It is inexhaustible, as is my love.

Student:  Yes, Mother, I do enjoy sitting still from time to time with no thought of doing anything or going anywhere, but just being still.  It’s kind-of cool that way.  About potential, I feel at this time in my life drawn to being more open to experiencing and actualizing something that cannot be rushed or coerced, but only kind-of allowed--you know?  I have an ideal of how my life should be, but it needs to come from an organic experiential place, not some nebulous idealism in my head.  But I do feel, now my children are settled in their lives, it’s time for me to think about what is essential for me.  What is it I truly want?  With all the upheaval going on, and all the changes of letting go and not clinging to old ways of thought that don’t serve me well any longer, I’m like allowing new thoughts to come forth and be actualized.  I’m not pushing anything because I’ve found out that doesn’t go anywhere.  It takes faith to just allow something new to come forth--trusting that it will.  It’s a sense or a feeling of something changing, something good.  So…  I’ll let you speak.

(Allowing your larger self)

NEBADONIA:  My son, it seems to me you’re getting a living touch and even confidence in this potential I spoke of, because it is indeed something you allow to happen based on a thoroughly experienced and--ironically--welcomed sense of your own limitations.  For this only comes about through doing, through trying your best with your own sense of yourself--your own ideas and ambitions.  You discover that what is only self-consciously generated this way is limited by a consciousness that is still somewhat immature--you are still in your first life here--(Mother Spirit chuckles).  And yet with a growing humility of how big it is all around you, then further, in your meditation and stillness, how transcendent you are to yourself, comes the notion of allowing things to happen that originate in your larger being--your spirit and your soul, even the presence of God within you.  

This is not only your life as you can feel it and recall it, but your life as this presence of God has experienced you.  This is truly a wonderful discovery of how by allowing--as you just said--you can achieve a greater realization of your own potential, trusting by way of real experience that this is you, that in letting go and allowing this way there is nothing to fear.  The spiritual community of Michael and me, your Father, your Guardian Angel, all the spiritual beings about you, pulling for you: this is truly what you can trust to be in your own best interest far, far beyond what you can yet imagine on your own.  This is that sense of self that can never be captured and used for ego-centered or selfish purposes of justification, for to make that mistake is to loose its very essence.  

It is more an orientation, as is Michael’s Spirit of Truth, toward openness and wonder, coupled with the courage to let go those comfortable but limiting notions of who you’ve been.   You have to learn how not to fear this living, changing organic reality that at first seems to be chewing up your precious, secure self in some voracious, impersonal maw--as primitive religions have it--but is actually preserving you in the most personal hand of all, the presence of God.  You identify first with your body, but that seems so frail; then with your sense of yourself, which seems so impermanent and changeable.  But there is a deeper continuity you are beginning to experience, and that is something you have earned.  Keep going!--(Mother Spirit laughs)

Student:  It’s interesting.  It’s like I feel like I’m at the place where there’s these doors in front of me where I can open one, but it’s still the same thing I’ve been doing--the same ideas and thought processes; more suffering in a way.  And then another door is someone else’s ideas, some teacher’s maybe.  And then there’s a door that’s just open, and more expansive, and leads to more freedom.  That’s where I want to go, even if I can’t see too far through it--you know?  I just don’t want to be drawn into the old ways of living, the old psychological and spiritual notions that are no longer needed.  It’s like the parable of crossing a river in a boat, but then leaving the boat behind when you get across.  I’m on the other side; I don’t need to hang on to old ways.  I want to be of benefit and not weighed down by old, self-centered stuff.  I don’t want to suffer all that any more.  That is impermanent; that is not real any more.  So: just drop it!  If I can, that’s where the potential; that’s where the power is.  

At times it’s a little sticky because it’s the unknown.  I don’t know what it looks like.  I mean you can say all you want because you’re there--you’re it!  But for me, I could become homeless, or loose my work--that kind of thing.  I think if it’s beneficial to me and those around me, that’s enough.

(The security in faith)  

NEBADONIA:  That’s why Michael pointed out one time that his Spirit of Truth is an orientation.  It’s an orientation toward an endless discovery, and not clinging fearfully to what you already have.  Because you are a creative, spiritual being co-creating your own life, your very clinging onto something makes it into an anchor pulling you down into the past where you drown in a whirlpool of self-justification.  You’ll have to wait for death and the next stage to start again.  But to let go, to allow; this is the reason why, in your stillness meditation, there are no shortcuts.  You can’t make your body relax; you can’t make your mind be still.  It’s that very--making, or effort--that is limited, and has to be relaxed in the courage to accept the next moment’s unknown--that will come forth.  This is the orientation, the trust and the security you can find in your Creator--and the endless adventure of discovery of His truth.

Student:  I can see the need for faith in that, that there’s only good waiting in whatever that will look like.  I’m only letting go an identity I’ve been propping up, that’s no longer needed.  As you say, I’ll still be here, only now I’ll be discovering who I am in a fresh way--a fresh me!  So, well: thank you.

NEBADONIA:  For many to feel Michael’s Spirit of Truth does require this enormous turning around within themselves.  Think of all of those who spend so much of their waking hours justifying something they did in the past.  They can never be easy for that very compulsion.  The only way out is to turn around and, as you have an expression, let the past bury the past.  Totally accept all that you’ve been and done so you can achieve the present, your living, changing, growing creature-hood with an inner spirit that, as Michael has said, can choose to lean in the right direction and embrace the adventure.  It is a Herculean effort and necessity that everyone will--growing out of their childish and adolescent kind of time I mentioned--ever so slowly, through experience, gain this sense of themselves, this faith and ability to trust in their Creator.  So thank you, my son, and continue to be in my love.  You’re getting the right orientation--looking for that open door.  

Student:  Good evening, Mother.  I guess all I really want to say tonight is thank you so very, very much for giving me this life, and the experience of having children of my own.  How very beautiful and wonderful it is, especially as I get older, because I don’t think there are any persons who know me better than my sons.  They do hold me in such high regard.  It been quite an extraordinary experience for me getting the blessing of loving them, and getting their love in return.  I really have been grateful.  Despite all the errors in judgment, and difficult circumstances, it’s beautiful--the love we’ve had for each other--coming from you and Michael and our Father.  It’s just really astounding to understand.  Thank you.

(Being a mother)

NEBADONIA:  My daughter, it seems to me that the love your sons have for you comes from an appreciation for life that you’ve introduced and shared with them.  It is remarkable for them to be so appreciative of life at such a young age, and then even doubly appreciative that they’ve come directly from you.  I treasure these moments with you, I can share as a fellow mother--what it is to be so proud, and at times astonished--(Mother Spirit laughs)--by our own creations.  I thank you for your wisdom in letting them be, letting them have themselves independent of you.  This takes great courage knowing, as you do, as their mother, just how mortal they are.  But you hold your breath at times and let them have their adventures, keeping your fears to yourself while putting on a brave smile of encouragement.  You let them fulfill their own needs to experience, to live.  So I thank you, my daughter, for what we share as mothers.  Be in my love.

(Fulfillment)

And so we do arrive at fulfillment from time to time, for a time.  As Michael says, there is no--final--for that is just another way of saying eternal life.  Or as your Urantia book puts it so succinctly, we of the spiritual family do recognize beginnings, for you truly do begin out here in these nurseries of time and space, but you have no necessary end.  We call you a creature because you were deliberately created, unlike, say, some eventuated being.  Don’t bother trying to look that up in your dictionary, it doesn’t exist there.  But you were created to have this unique experience, enabling our Father in His very absoluteness and infinity and unutterable completeness, to experience--with you--being one more personal being replete, forever.  We have our moments of feeling this fulfillment and completeness, until we delightfully forget ourselves in the next adventure, letting go, trusting that He will return us to ourselves once again.  

Good evening, my dear ones.  Be in my love.