Dear Mother Spirit and Michael,    We all here have an abiding thankfulness for the two of you visiting with us this way so we can have lively conversations and just feel the warmth of your presence.  We also thank you for being the occasion for us to get together like this, and enjoy each others’ company.  It’s been many years now of a wonderful reassurance in our lives of just what complex creatures we are, so unknown to ourselves, still so much sheer potential with only a few years of life in starting to write that big book of our endless futures.  But then--I forget from time to time--it’s our Father who is writing our souls, is it not?  So thank you, dear Parents, and you too, Father, for these lives, and for each other.  Amen.

NEBADONIA:  Good evening, my children, this is Nebadonia.  Michael and I are both happy to accept your thanks.  We do enjoy this relationship with our children, though it staggers your human imaginations to wonder about just how many children it is that we have.  We ask you to have faith in what we say is true, that, just as with our Universal Father being no respecter of persons, so too Michael and I see and experience each one of you as an unbounded, unique being.  We don’t compare individuals with each other.  True, you’re all roughly in that basket called “humanity,” but you also share this status with those on millions of other evolutionary worlds.


(Universes of personal beings to experience, and embrace)

So please have faith that we do experience you fully beyond how you can yet experience yourselves.  In this we have a faith in you more than you can yet have in yourselves.  We have followed so many children, not only through their first, human lives, but on through all the Morontia phases, on to the System and Constellation levels, your training here on and around Salvington, then clear across the cosmos on into Havona and, ultimately, Paradise, before you return to us, finally Final--a member of the Corps of Mortal Finality.  And here, an eon or two later, back with us for a visit, you’re still only just beginning. This should be in no way daunting, but a celebration deep in your souls, this reassurance of an endless vista splayed out before you and coming to you in the fullness and pace of God’s time, set before you by our Father.  So much you share of His nature: so much of His own nature He has bequeathed to you so that you too can know, deep in your heart, deep in your soul, as with Him: I am!

And the universe echoes with that joyous cry: I am!  Then to look around and see--(Mother Spirit laughs)--there’s a nigh infinity of beings somewhat like you, even personal beings not like you at all.  They all--we all--share that essential great goodness of our Father’s.  We are!  And we have each other. I teased you once before with the notion that every new order of personal being you will meet will add several more dimensions of reality to you, because each has its own relationship to time and space, its own distinct personal reality that they enjoy.  Just as they enjoy meeting you and learning about all you‘ve come through, so too you will be tickled to meet these fantastic beings so far beyond your portrayal of angels and others, there’s so much wonderful delight out here. Your world is so very distinct, along with those others which went into rebellion against Michael and our Father, in that God’s way, God’s truth, is not so obvious in your individual lives and your societies.  This is what it means, my children, for you to aspire to and become an Agondonter--one who can act on faith in the absence of such obvious proof of God’s will active in the hearts of men.  

On most of our worlds--almost without exception--the Father’s way, and Michael’s, and my ways for you are really apparent.  There is not quite the same quality of faith required because the divine path, initiated and sustained by a loyal Planetary Prince, and both Material Son and Daughter, is being followed, reflected in all their institutions and relationships.  If you were suddenly transported to one of these worlds of about the same age as Urantia, it would seem like Paradise enough.  

Think of having every two parents on your world being what you call saints, raising enlightened children, and this reflected in all your societies and relationships. Michael talked last time about having a deep respect, if not outright awe, with what your forebearers have had to come through on this benighted planet.  It is true there is so much of these evil ways, and just ignorant ways, arrogant ways, continuing.  You still read about massacres of hundreds of thousands of people occurring on your world, here two thousand years after Michael’s visit.  Not only your news but more so your entertainment is filled with violence just to get some little stir out of cynical, calloused, jaded personalities.

What is all the more important for you is to perceive and forgive with a deep understanding of all that has come before you and is still persisting.  It keeps you from getting discouraged and cynical yourself.  It also gives you a way to constantly renew yourself in an ever present now, this living, dynamically changing now of a growing understanding.  For you have to come to some mature relationship with all the evil in the world, and by evil I mean the deliberate harming of others.  Let that be sufficient definition for now.  It is what you are raised with.  In your media-saturated society a person by the age of eighteen or so may have witnessed hundreds of people being murdered in every way imaginable by the script writers. And so let your hearts go out to those who feel so devoid of their own personal lives that they, as you say, live in the tube, and get their notions of the world outside only from that.  There’s so much melodrama it often masks the true drama in peoples’ lives--the loving, caring giving of life to each other.



(Wisdom and a sense of proportion)

One of the most difficult things to convey to our children here on Urantia is the proportions we see.  From our viewpoint seeing the full personalities, and then the souls of our children, all that they have come through, all they’ve been conditioned and indoctrinated to believe, still and all the love and the caring so totally overwhelms the evil a hundred to one, a thousand to one.  This is that enormous glow of love, and human sacrifice, creative spirit, caring and sharing; this is the enormous spiritual glow of humanity on Urantia.  This is what we see.

If I might tickle your fancies with a vision, my children, this is how you will be able to see yourselves upon awakening on your first Mansion world--just that one step further than where you are now in your ability to see each other’s souls and character, and even your own.  You will be utterly amazed, so don’t think I’m in any way spoiling the surprise. In spite of all these persisting evils and bad adaptations to reality; in spite of all of that, see if you can detect this enormous family of man.  Think of the evolution going on and how your major cultures are inextricably being shoved together in the next step toward learning how to live together as one interconnected and highly communicative peaceful world; the dream of the ages.  We see it happening so fast compared to any time, even the recent past.  It gets down to individuals having to adapt to these foreign cultures with their different meanings and values impinging upon them now.  So be not dismayed with what your more mass media presents.  Rather, know from your own deep inner experience the true measure of humanity, and how, way deep down inside, if you could only see them as we do, you’d see all these strange folks have their God-given uniqueness in common.

I’m not talking about some homogenization of culture, but just the opposite.   It’s how your whole world is mightily struggling as it comes into intimate contact with such differences, struggling to keep their cultural identity while being open-minded toward others.  The only way out of such an impasse is to grow.  You keep all that you have been, and all that you have done, and revel in the fact your personality and your mind are intrinsically limitless.  You just keep growing.  You keep adding to all that has come before, and in this, my children, we are all alike in the Supreme Being of experience.  This is the true story of what is happening here in this constant evolution of experience and understanding in everyone. So let yourself be thrilled with the spectacle that you are a part of.  You will, in time, come to encounter it, and take it in, and make it your own; another dimension, and then another, to those you already inhabit.


(Allow yourself to have faith)

 My children, allow yourselves to have faith.  Let yourselves see with the eyes of spirit this fountain of creativity, personality, and character in all your fellows.  You are all in one way or another, in each your own way, earning this realm.  It’s all preparation for those to come.  As Michael says, be of good cheer--even when the adventure gets rough.  Have faith and trust in the One who created this adventure for you.  And think of us from time to time.  Just think: Hi Mom!  Hello Dad!  Thanks for me. If you have any comments or questions this evening, we delight in them as well.

Student:  Hi, Mother, you mentioned the other orders of beings having a different kind of reality than ours and that we’ll learn--be able to appreciate their level of reality?  Is there any way of explaining that?


(Different orders of personal beings)

NEBADONIA:  My son, let me take an example of, shall we say, a seraphim.  Because of their different makeup--literally--their form, their consciousness and the way they are minded--the more vast extent to which they can contact impersonal reality--the stuff of the universe; they literally inhabit a different subjective reality than you do.  You’ve been informed of some of their powers and their abilities which, to a human being, seem rather fantastic.  The only way your common, shared experience approaches this is in your science-fiction, for even that enables Michael and I to speak in terms of dimensions--which would have been completely incomprehensible a few centuries ago.

But as you meet seraphim when you are finally able to perceive them and relate to them on a personal basis, you will have expanded, yourself, just in order to do so.  All your senses will have been enormously heightened from what you know now.  Then as you live with them day to day you will absorb their perceptions and come to understand how they see things.  This will become a part of you.  Though throughout all time and space you will still have this human touch, you will still be able to see yourself and other human beings just as you see yourself now--you are earning this realm for all time--there are yet hundreds of dimensions before you, to encounter and make your own. This is about as far as I can go in describing these other dimensions because they are there in your future.  I can’t simply put you in them or bring them to you now.  You will have to earn them as well, one at a time.  This is your soul, the repository of your life experiences.  As I said, there will be no dissembling your surprise when for the first time you stand in the presence of an angel and are able to see and hear and fully experience their reality.  Your universe will have expanded.  Does this at least give you some notion of what we mean by each order of being having their own distinct reality?

Student:  Kind-of, Mother.  It’s more like an introduction to a very interesting journey.

NEBADONIA:  You have the essence of it.  You will encounter them; you will grow to meet them.  And you will, little bit by little bit, earn and appropriate their reality, just as they will get a deeper appreciation for yours.  That’s the wonderful sharing you have to look forward to.  Be in my love.

Student:  Good evening, Mother.  Thank you for your words.  I really appreciate what you were saying about our ability to grow into the situations we have by exercising our faith.  For me it’s a lot of the time I know I’m experiencing spirit, and being in it and acting on it, and then there are other times when all I can do is remember it.  It’s like just beyond my grasp.  I try to take the next step--just going forward, and it is like going into the dark, especially when it seems everyone else is doing the same thing--just floating around.  It’s an odd and peculiar experience to know that the light is there and you to have to act as if it were--something you have to grasp for and hold onto.  In my world the physical stuff is so approachable, so there or not there; you either have it or you don’t.  But the times when the spirit is so real, and the times when it’s just right out of reach; it’s really nice to know it’s what you expect us to go through.


(The triumph of faith)

NEBADONIA:  Yes, my daughter, what you’re describing is the reality of the adventure.  One short definition would be: when you are in a situation where you can’t know what is going to happen next.  It could be a minor one of walking along a line laid out along the ground, or walking along a tight rope one hundred feet in the air.  It’s why we reassure you the adventure is real, with real consequences.  There is this chasm of the unknown that is the very stuff of human life.  There is no absolute assurance that you are going to get home tonight. As a material being you face a particular kind of threat that Michael touched on last time, and I mentioned tonight how often the real drama of the adventure is lost to so many stuck in the television tube and inundated to the point of drowning in melodrama.  They miss the real drama in their own lives that is potentially there for them.  You have the cold and hard saying--get a life--yet for so many it’s a sad truism.  They are bulking at what you just described.  They live their lives in a retrospect of cloying nostalgia and sentimentality that wipes out true sentiment. In this you are lucky for you are grasping for the essential spiritual nature of the adventure and how all the rewards of faith are only precursors to the faith that will be required of you tomorrow.  And so, my daughter, you are closer than you think--(Mother Spirit laughs).  At least you are beginning to understand that.  

As you say, it is just beyond your fingertips at times, but you do know, or can sense that.  You are realizing how you have to let the doubt go, and exercise your faith and step off.  What is a sad fact to some is a possibility for triumph to others: there is that in human life which can only be known through faith, and it does have its own particular reward.  Rejoice that you are beginning to comprehend the essence of it.  You are getting some hard-earned appreciation for the adventure.  

For some in terrible pain, or uncertainty, the ultimate faith is to love God, even though He set up human life where such things are possible.  But this is what the situation asks of those who are in it: to love and worship God with all the thankfulness in your heart--despite what befalls you in this intense first life. So carry on, my daughter.  You‘re learning how to let go even those triumphs you’ve known, and their definition of spirit, to stay open to the fact your life is a growing, changing thing for you.  Thank you for keeping faith in me.  Keep feeing my love.  I’ll keep beaming it at you.  (Thank you)        

Student:  You’ve mentioned before how this planet was created for us.  Could you explain that?


(The creation of evolutionary planets)

NEBADONIA:  Yes, my son, the pattern of creating evolutionary worlds, as contra-distinct from the architectural spheres, was not new or unique to Michael and myself when we came out from Paradise.  Ours is one of the younger local universes and we had many others to learn from.  The creation of planets, and then the implantation of life on them with our Life Carrier Sons, is the only way to bring about your order of beings.  Not only Urantia but all of the millions of evolutionary worlds in Nebadon were definitely created to evolve and support your kind of life, living beings with free will dignity.

Student:  I think I was expecting a different answer.  (much laughter)  If this world was made for us, how does this come about for each one of us?  Is our reality really real or only symbolical?   

NEBADONIA:  In your mind, my son, all your experiences have both these qualities of being literal and symbolic, for you know things directly all in and by themselves, and yet you also know them in relationship with other things by comparison and contrast.  This is that symbolical, contextual/meaningful relationship of things.  So you know both ways, and they go playing leapfrog over each other, each reflecting the other in recognition. Student:  I know I know things by comparison to other things--differentiating one thing from another.

NEBADONIA:  But also, my son, you have direct perception, the intuition that I actually augment--the innate ability of yours to recognize and relate to something directly.  You can get such a wonderful familiarity and companionship even with stuff, perhaps with those tools you’ve used for years and years that seem to have acquired their own individual character.  That’s that direct relationship with things you can have.  And if you’ve been paying attention to our lessons, you will have noticed that no two things are exactly alike.  (No, they’re not)  It’s the hallmark of God’s creativity that everything, not only personalities, but every grain of sand on a beach, every snowflake, is at least somewhat unique, and has identity. So we tease you to imagine this heart of yours, you can feel directly, beating forever.  Make that part of your understanding. Student:  I’ll go for that.  Thank you, Mother.

NEBADONIA:  You’re very welcome.  Keep feeling my love.

Student:  I will.  I do.

Next student:  Hello, Mother.  What about organized religion and the benefits of working in churches and other groups like that?  Doesn’t this give a person the opportunity for ministry and expressing themselves, and loving others?--as versus not doing so and being sort-of out in the world free and on your own, expressing your spirituality as you pass by--spontaneously?  I wonder if you can update what the Urantia book says about organized religion.  It makes a lot of warnings that might still apply, but may be getting out of date quite a bit.  You know, it’s sort-of the benefits of having all the traditions and symbols of churches--the rituals and sacred arts, the music.  You don’t get that if you go off on your own without participating in tradition.  So I wonder if you have something to say for us in this our post-modern era?


(Organized religion V.S. being on your own)

NEBADONIA:  Yes, my son.  Well, my most direct advise is: do both, if this tickles your fancy.  You’ve drawn a nice distinction between what you do on your own initiative out in the world, and how you volunteer with a number of other folks to get together and, ideally, share your inner spirituality.  That is very much of the divine nature--this sharing.  I’m just pointing out that the sharing can take place in both realms. The religious experience--the relationship of an individual to God--is somewhat independent of the group experience insofar as the church experience can be, and is as you look at the unique individuals, everything from the most deep spiritual exchange of ultimate values, to, at the other end of the spectrum, a mere social event that can be quite un-spiritual in the sense of only helping prop up some fundamentalist beliefs that ones group is the sole possessor of truth and righteousness.  Often there are both kinds of practitioners in the same organization.

So, speaking in these galloping generalities we caution you about--(Mother Spirit laughs)--we could say that the most deadening effect of the socialization of the religious experience is a kind of laziness, a falling back from the sharp and cutting edge of the present moment’s really being open to God’s presence within you, falling back into some kind of dogma, some lazy attempt to encapsulate and hold as a possession His living truth.  

Then come all the dead, fixed philosophical and theological arguments so devoid of living challenge.  Though not consciously intended so, it’s as if dogma were actually created to protect the self-righteous person from such a disturbing, living reminder of their Creator’s infinity. Dogma, in this light, is just another species of intellectual denial, denying the essential living nature of truth and love by trying to capture it and hold it still and impotent in intricate formulas.  Its attempt at inner security is so unnecessary.  You can learn to take a break any time and rest, rest fully in your God-given absolute existence, your moment-to-moment completeness, for this is real and of the spirit.  It leads to connection with your larger self and your Creator.  Dogma leads inevitably to exclusiveness.  (Right)  That’s part of its purpose, to separate the so-called holders of truth--us, of course--from the uninitiated--them.

In this case, my son, what every church needs is for all of its members to have that other part of their life, that going out and relating spiritually to all the people who are outside their specific, shared understanding.  That’s the true spiritual challenge.  Then when they get together on their Sunday mornings, these are the fresh and invigorating experiences each can bring and offer the others. I see these two phases as very complementary.  As you point out, the organization, the socialization of religious experience has evolved over the years enormous traditions.  This is that cultural conditioning we’ve given so many lessons on how, at one and the same time these traditions give meaning and value to life, they hamper your free will if they’re held unconsciously.  If not consciously seen as being limited, human creations, but are mistaken for the literal word of God himself; that is fundamentalist dogma.  That is taking human traditions and saying they are so fundamentally God’s word one needn’t go outside and relate to all that other world out there. 

What a self-centered shame--to miss so much of the rich heritage of all the world’s peoples.Seek a good, healthy balance of these different phases or modes of religious experience.  You have your own, unique personality’s inner, direct relationship with your Father in which you can share even that which is impossible to share with another human being--that inexpressible essence of you.  And then you have all the…comparative life--(Mother Spirit laughs)--you share with your fellows.  Those individuals out there totally alone and by themselves can be missing all the rich tradition of thousands of years of evolving civilization.  It’s good for your soul to have both.

Student:  Thank you, Mother.  That’s very helpful.


(The illusion of selflessness)

NEBADONIA:  I might mention one other bogus ideal, promulgated by organized religions as the best way to deal with human reality and relationships, is to go around selfless, as if your true, God-given self were only an illusion to be abandoned.  But that is really just another maximum illusion which renders individuals powerless to do good.  As your Urantia books puts it, far beyond the seemingly selfless notion of--Let God’s will be done--is the greater responsibility of--It is my will that God’s will be done.  For here God finds His helping hand on the end of your arm.  Here you acknowledge your God-given self in order to be responsible for what this self of yours is doing, or failing to do, not only to yourself but to others. All through your history, my children, devout men and women, seeking only the greater good, have gone astray and have evolved very bogus notions of how to be truly loving and caring. 

These too you still have with you.  This is why you need to come back to your own personal experience in meditation and reflection, and open yourself to what is really working, what may have worked once but no longer does, and what are those bright, shining ideals of what might work even better tomorrow. It’s all here, present in a dynamic, living balance.  It’s the tenacity of life itself.  And so we thank our Father for such a deep and abiding mystery.  His transcendent reality, of which your personality too is a part, is like a fountain bursting forth right out of nowhere, right out in the middle of the air, all coming from Him moment by moment.

Michael and I thank you, Father, for these precious children of ours.  We do watch them stumble and fall, and see the terrible abuse they heap upon themselves and others.  Yet we also see them returning, in time, from Paradise, glorious beyond this sun in their sky, beings of finality who have crossed a universe and the billion worlds of Havona, now returned to us with a smile I can only tease you here to imagine. Good evening, my deal children.  Be in my love.