It was for this that I was created. And just as for you yourselves, my children, what a delight it is to fulfill our destiny with those very abilities you noted, that are bequeathed to us. What a joy it is to exercise these abilities and, in your case especially, to learn these abilities, to expand them. And, if you can, accept our promise to you that this learning, this expanding, need ever stop. This is part of your birthright--this possibility of eternal life. Life, as Michael noted in his last Lightline conference, is something that is so much a part of you, you cannot literally get a hold on it, but merely, profoundly, wonderfully exercise it.

Tonight I would like to talk about a very spiritual part of you—spiritual in your experience of it. This is somewhat departing from your normal way of categorizing things for I wish to talk about the physical part of you, your human bodies. From the standpoint of your pure personality--what for you is almost a point of departure, your continuous, instantaneous point of departure into human experience--your body seems to come and go. Some of you are so closely identified with it, it’s so unconscious, that hours and hours, even, seemingly, days of your life can go by without being aware of it while being totally absorbed simply in the perceptions it gives you and all the things you can do with it, all the good work and play.

It depends on the kind of your mediation whether or not you are physically aware of yourself. For as you know there are meditations designed specifically to put you in a total mindful state--I should say mindful of mind alone, mindful of spirit alone--in which your body is not registering at all but almost, seemingly, as something to escape from. You have that question Michael recently addressed, “Am I a living physical body that occasionally becomes aware of spiritual dimensions, or am I a spirit having human experiences?” As Michael noted, you are actually one indivisible being of personality, spirit, body, mind, and soul.

So ask yourselves, wonder about this: how often are you purely aware of your body when it is not, you might say, rather consumed either with pleasure or pain? And even the contra-distinction between these two: extreme pleasure being a kind of ecstasy—ex-stasis--out of body kind of pure emotion, is contrasted to that physical-ness which is rather undeniable without an enormous amount of mental discipline or your more modern drugs. For this is the very purpose of pain, to be a rather undeniable attention-getter, calling your personality’s attention to something gone wrong.

(One type of stillness)

This is why in one of the kinds of mediation that we have suggested—stillness--is being still—physically, yet keeping in touch by what may appear to be a rather artificial device of keeping track of your breath, shall we say counting your breath up to ten, over and over, just in order to stay in continuous awareness of your body when you are not using it as you normally do.

What a challenge this is to begin with!--how you drift in and out, lost maybe for minutes or longer periods at a time in some memory, some soul-reliving, some trying to work through a current problem you have. But just to be aware of being physical, just to feel each breath and be still enough to feel your own heartbeat in your chest? You count your breaths and suddenly find yourself at some number, and yet with no real, true memory of how you got there. So you start again: number one…number two…. Or you find yourself counting breath number 23, and realize you have “been away” somewhere for long minutes.

We offer this meditation as a kind of respect that your personality can pay to your very physical-ness--to feel yourself breathing, feel yourself just sitting there as your mind tends to entertain itself with a thousand and one things at first, what some of the long time meditators called the “mad monkey” just dancing around. For how else can you be aware of your mindfulness, your state of mind and your state of emotion, your health, your very being, independent and, in a sense, cut free from any other activity?

For many folks who try this for a while and actually find it so difficult, they rationalize, “What a silly non-activity--just to do nothing, just to be still.” What a waste of time when they might be doing something. But we persist. We persist in encouraging you to spend some time of your day just being--just being alive, just treasuring and honoring this ungraspable thing that keeps you here. Perhaps not here-and-now--who knows where your mind may be wandering--but honoring and treasuring the purely physical forces and impersonal part of your human reality, that part of you that follows absolutely God’s physical laws of chemistry and physics. It’s the very gravity that’s holding you in your chair; the physics of your skeleton and musculature; the profound and as yet unfathomable chemistry that converts your food into energy, energy to sustain all these physical perceptions of sight, and hearing, and touch.

(Another infinity)

Your very physical body is another infinity to you, and not only to you individually, personally, in the limit on the number of the millions of books on the human body that you can read and understand. Still these billions and billions of cells are all interrelated and working together. Think about bringing a certain quantitative evaluation into all this infinity of qualities; to put it in a word: health. What is your health? What is your status in this dimension? What is it that affects your health? Maybe a better way to put it would be: what doesn’t affect your health--personality, body, mind, spirit, and soul?

From the standpoint of your personality in which your awareness of your body comes and goes, we offer this mediation of stillness. For you have another few, if not millions, a few hundreds of thousands of books in your own language on what constitutes the connection between body and mind, and the interplay between them--how a certain kind of mindedness of all the mental abilities you enumerated--how they are dependent upon a healthy and alert body for these very abilities and the extension of them. And then in turn, it’s how your mental attitudes towards nutrition, towards exercise, towards play and work with your body; it’s how these themselves immediately affect your body. In extreme cases, think of those individuals who, for various reasons, became so depressed that their life was no longer worth living, and they quite literally simply gave up and died. All the old, romantic notions of dying from a broken heart are not entirely romantic illusions, but things that people have experienced.

So this body-mind connection, this inseparability, is also a wonderful thing to meditate on and literally feel this growing ability of your mind, your total mind-awareness, to stay with your body, even for at least one counting of your breath from one to ten. What an accomplishment this is for some!

This is why in all of your religions--your evolving human institutions—every one does have something that is often referred to as a retreat, and not only for those men and women who are living a purely religious, devoted life--literally living their lives in continuous meditation--but also offered for the lay-person a chance to meditate with them. Consider how, when you find yourself seated next to someone who has been meditating for years and years, beginning at five in the morning or so, how you can feel like the “mad monkey” just by comparison to how still and profound their meditation is. Think of the courage it takes to accept--even provisionally because Michael, or myself, or some friend recommends this--think of the courage it takes to stick with this simply being aware of your body, being aware of your breathing and your heartbeat, how you’re sitting, what your body feels like minute by minute.

There’s a wonderful quality in this continuity, my children. But it is one of those things that, like any other ability, like picking up a guitar or sitting in front of a piano, this is an ability that you yourself have to earn. It is not enough for someone else to tell you that the water is sweet, that the heartbeat is strong, that your lungs know what to do. This awaits you. We can only assure you that this very kind of, at first artificial-seeming continuity, this very tenaciousness of consciousness to follow your will and stay with your breathing in spite of whatever wonderful or horrific idea comes along, means to have them both, for this is not a shutting off of mentality. This is not some either/or of mind or body. It is the very ability to enjoy them both simultaneously.

Once you have learned to do this for even more than ten minutes continuously, you find that this strange, marvelous continuity, this toughness, this tenacity of consciousness begins to serve you well when you get up from your seat and go about your day. You are touching something here. You are earning something here. And this will stay with you. This is the one thing that can begin to really positively affect your life because as you get this tenacity of consciousness through greater and greater things, either remembered pleasures or even present pain, you find a way to deal with these things--not by ignoring them or trying to escape from them, but embracing them and working your way through.

So your soul begins to come forth--consciously. So all the little barriers, all the unpleasant memories and associations that separate you from your own experience, fade away. With the reliving, the full reliving of these experiences, you rediscover your beginner’s mind of who and what you were, and how you were, before you became who you are. This unbroken continuity, this unbreakable continuity—this is your personality.

But enough teasing, my dear ones. For those of you who have earned your stillness, this has hopefully been for you just a delightful review. And for those of you who have yet to master this ability, we can only invite you to come on in. This is the living water, and the water is fine.

Now if you have any questions or comments about this or anything else: welcome.

Student: Dear Mother, I recently had a vision of myself as a young man, and switched back and forth in perception of feeling and seeing myself as a young man and then seeing and feeling myself as an older man. I really experienced the unity and the part of me that hasn’t changed. Is that soul?

(Personality and soul)

Nebadonia: Yes, my son. It is the experience itself that seems so startlingly fuller and more total than just a memory--a kind of an outline of what you did. This ability to more fully relive who and what you were at a certain point, this is an ability your personality is developing. The experience itself is coming from your soul. As we have taught so many times, because your soul is being co-authored by a presence of God himself, this is where the fullness, this is where this extra-memory comes from. It is an experience that you are more--in terms of mind, you are more than just brain activity. You’re more than just physical cell association, if you will. You have this extraordinary soul-dimension that is part of you, that literally does give value and meaning to your everyday activities. This is that continuity you feel: that through all these hundreds of thousands of millions of “beings” you were, minute to minute—through all this changing, growing being you were, there is this continuity like a steel cable, tying them all together.

This is your personality. But your personality is able, now with maturity, with the techniques you’ve found, to tap into your own soul--your own eternal possession; this is so great an experience that many people, not aware of our definition, yet feeling for what personality is: this soulfulness is who they feel they truly are because it is who they truly have been. Does that explain somewhat our view of the difference between personality and soul?

Student: Yes. Thank you.

Nebadonia: Your personality is something that is hard, almost impossible, to perceive directly because it is the perceiving. We talk about an eye that sees but cannot see itself. Your personality is like a point of constant departure for more experience, but still your personality is the fundamental reality that you are. And its task, if you will, its function is to unity all these disparate parts of you into a single experience. But even the singleness of experience, my son, in your soul, is there because a fragment of God is helping you maintain this wholeness and this rather ungraspable fullness of each moment of your life. So it is definitely a sign of maturity when you can relax your present awareness and relive to such a depth a previous time in your life. It gives you that assurance that it’s all there. All the “you” that you have ever been has this extraordinary existence called your soul.

Student: Yes. My experience was kind of unique, I think, in the sense that I saw myself as a young man, and being the same person I am. It made me feel very much like my body being almost like a garment, you know? It was strange in that I saw myself as a young person, but at the same time without the inexperience or without the little content. It was just that part of me that hasn’t changed--is what I saw, I guess. It made me feel like, “Oh yeah, my body’s getting old, but it’s just like a garment,”--that that part of me that hasn’t changed, even beyond my experiences having changed. I was somehow seeing a higher part of me, I think, that isn’t even affected by the experiences, somehow--just that personality unity.

So I guess the main thing I got out of that was just some kind of pure consciousness part of me, that is unique to me, and yet is that part of me that has been consistently clear—just, somehow, me--but without a lot of detailed content. It did give me a sense, now when I see people after that experience, I feel I can see that their bodies may be getting older, and yet I can see that part of them that hasn’t changed, too. They’re still who they are in spite of an aging body. I think it’s a nice perception, you know?

Nebadonia: Oh yes, my son, that’s such a reward when you discover, sometimes, a feeling for the “first time.” When you discover these aspects of yourself, these marvelous aspects of yourself, this gives you the ability to see this same thing in others. This more than ego, more than just a kind of mirror you hold up as best you can to keep a sense of continuity, a conscious sense of continuity of who you are and who you’ve been. You relax that and have as a new experience what is the startling fullness of who you’ve always been--even ten years old, shall we say--and how life appeared to you then--how it felt, how it felt then. This you can begin to see in others since you are registering, even a bit, of their soul.

Student: I do have another question or concern. Whenever I relax I end up wrestling with the tension that is persistent in my body, like around my eyes and jaw and shoulders. And it seems like an endless wrestling match with these tensions, to release them. Perhaps if I spend more time doing that? Or perhaps there’s a short cut to finding peace in that sense? I was just wondering what your thoughts might be or advice on how to become more relaxed and whole more often.

(Stretching—physically and mentally simultaneously))

Nebadonia: Yes, my son, the one thing I could suggest--and that is this is not particular--I’m not diagnosing you, in a sense, and so this is on a very general plane--understand that. So much of this tension is a kind of--think of it as a minor cramping. You know what a severe cramp is, say in your calf muscle or somewhere you literally have to slowly, but as positively as you can, just slowly stretch it out to its limit to let that muscle relax. So it is with all the muscles of your body, all the little tiny ones that control your eye movement, control the position of your head, your neck, and your shoulders.

And so it might seem the exact opposite of stillness, but this is a very thorough-going regiment of stretching because of two things. Number one, as you get older you are fighting a battle with gravity around your back and around your shoulders; you droop your head forward. You’ve probably seen real extreme examples of this called a “widow’s hump”--some poor old lady or man who cannot even straighten up. That could just be an extreme example of what you are encountering. Second, keep in mind that every joint of your body, every vertebrae, every finger, toe, leg, arm, all of this, especially your spine and your neck; every joint is made to move and to keep moving throughout your life. And consider something so seemingly simple that many people dismiss it—posture. This could be what your meditation is telling you when, as soon as you are still, these sore points arise.

As long as you are keeping this conscious contact with your body, don’t be surprised if all of sudden you find yourself squirming around and moving a little bit. For if you want to be perfectly still, then your body is something to take note of. And either before or right after their stillness, a lot of folks go in for a whole regimen of stretching and moving every moveable joint in their body. This is to both to stretch and take out of a minor cramping state those muscles which are tired of holding you still, shall we say, at the computer. But also all those joints of your body are getting stiff with calcium deposits around them. Most folks only have to really move their head--very slowly and carefully-- but in big arches and they’ll feel something like sand grinding in their neck. That’s all those little calcium deposits.

So be aware, my son, of what your body is going through as it ages, and how there’s a kind of natural stiffness in the shortening of muscles and ligaments, and the calcium deposits around joints. They need to be worked on. Think of some of your--we’ve mentioned this before--some of your great dancers who are so supple and cable of such fantastic motion even in their nineties--all the years and years and years of stretching that this is built upon. You literally have to work at it to stay loose, to stay flexible. And that could be what all those little aches and pains are telling you.

Student: Thank you.

Nebadonia: Ironically, it’s for these very perceptions that some folks will stop their stillness and say, “Well, I feel perfectly fine but as soon as I try my stillness, I’m full of aches and pains.” A rather wrong interpretation, I would suggest. Does that make sense?

Student: Yes. Very helpful thank you.

Nebadonia: So, if you feel this impulse to just move around and stretch out something that aches: be careful, but follow it. And be in my peace.

Student: Thank you.

Student: Could you speak about the different experiences that different people have when they pass on from Earth, like how broad is the variety of experiences, and is there a way to predict what will happen in the beyond for an individual?

(The Morontia life)

Nebadonia: My son, just as you now share a kind of common body--yet all of your surgeons will tell you that all the pieces are there, but the proportions from a little baby, to an old man or woman, to a person in their middle age: there’s a common pattern and yet there’s this infinite variety within it. So it is in the morontia state.


It’s because the soul experience that we’ve been talking about--your life experience, is so unique to you on all these dimensions of a unique personality, a unique body, a unique mind, then a uniform spirit, but how you experience it is unique; and then your soul with all its uniqueness. Nothing is lost in the morontia state. If anything it is slightly enhanced because you are more soulful, because your physical-ness is so different in a way. You have a very discreet body and you walk around on a physical world. You can be so much more soulful because the spiritual part of you is so much more in evidence. Your soul is a spiritual construct so it enormously supersedes just your physical memories, that part of your memories that is just physical brain activity.

In this sense it’s very much the same. You will be given a body that is commensurate with your soul, and there is a uniformity of enhanced recognition that you’re tasting now. As you say, you can see more soul in other people. That’s just enormously enhanced and so, in one way, in the morontia state you are even more individual because you have this increased ability, not only to recognize and register, but the courage to accept another for all their uniqueness. So everything is enhanced, my son.

Hopefully this helps you lose your fear of death and be somewhat joyfully anticipating what is to come.

Student: I think one thing I fear greatly is when I see people who have Alzheimer’s or something, and seem to have lost their minds to a great degree. I find myself wondering if that’s lost permanently. I’m hoping it’s restored to them somehow, sometime--upon death is my hope, obviously, because they are not going to get it back here.

Nebadonia: Yes, my son, that again points out that rather absolute link between body and mind. But it has no effect on their soul whatsoever. And their personality, as you know, is unchanging. This experience of Alzheimer’s becomes part of their soul. It’s a genuine experience, but as it tends towards a diminution of particularity, it is something that is only a very small part of their soul.

They gain their first full soul when they unite with their Thought Adjuster, with the presence of God. This is really when you grow enough in your abilities to all of a sudden assume this. You will be such an enormously changed, grown, expanded kind of being even, when you merge with your presence of God, that were this even to be slightly… I mean you can enjoy moments of reliving parts of your life; you can kind-of visit your soul for a few precious moments; but you have to get back to your life.

There you grow your soulfulness to where you are capable of merging with your Thought Adjuster. So nothing is lost. This is what we encourage you to have: the courage to just even entertain this notion: nothing of spiritual value in your life is lost. That’s trusting in the presence of God.

Student: What a wonderful faith to have. I think I have it.

Nebadonia: It is something you can feel. But beyond that it is and will remain until you actual experience it, a matter of faith, a matter of trust in the very Being who created you. And as you grow in maturity, you trust in this amazingly complex but increasingly unified being that you are. So again, be in my love.

Student: That was a wonderful message. Thank you.

Nebadonia: Are you still with us, David?

Student: I really have nothing pressing, it’s just . . .

Nebadonia, laughing: Well, that’s good. You’re kind-of up to date with yourself.

Student: There are some changes going on at home because my daughter is due to give birth to another girl in the next few days.

Nebadonia: Congratulations.

Student: Yeah. Initially when I first heard--because she lives with me with her other daughter--initially when I first heard that she was pregnant again, there wasn’t as much joy in me as there was when I first heard she was pregnant for the first time. And partly because I really didn’t want to go through, and this with a different gentleman; I really didn’t want to go through all of what I went through before with my daughter and her mate, and all that transpired. There was even a sense of betrayal in that we had made an agreement that she would start work after my granddaughter started kindergarten. And so it took a while for me to come to terms with all this.

I mean there’s nothing, one, I can do about it because she is pregnant. She is going to have a child in my home, in our home. And so it is what it is. I mean I still feel frustrated mainly just at the circumstances. But at the same time another life is coming into this world, and being open-minded about it. It does no good being closed-minded, or withdrawn, or angry, or betrayed, or frustrated. It doesn’t allow for an open feeling, a more expansive feeling.

So I can do affirmations all up the ying-yang, but mainly just being present with it and not conjuring up any stories about it; and just being open and seeing how everything is just kind-of orchestrated. I’m not putting any expectation on the outcome and how things will transpire in the coming days, weeks, and months. So it’s just allowing that. I’ve been allowing things more and more in my life as I allow, in a sense, the truth of who I am, and who we all are, and the faith in the benevolence of this cosmos, and just allowing more and more to see where everything kind-of goes.

There are times--and I’ve talked to God about this--where I feel like, especially when my daughter is not coming from a positive vantage, or is not seeing things, or not doing things as I would like her to do and see: there are times I wish like, “God, I want to be more by myself.” Or, ”There’s got to be a different way.” But they come and they go. And then the openness, the expansiveness is there, as it always is. So: that’s where I’m kind-of at.

I’m just seeing the little coincidences, and synchronicities, and intuitions, and how everything, kind-of like I said, is being orchestrated. And there really isn’t much for me to do except just go with the flow of things. You know, just rest and be in stillness, and relax.

(Trying situations)

Nebadonia: My son, above all, let me state this very, very clearly. I salute your courage. This is very much what this is all about, this stepping off into an unfathomable unknown, even day-to-day sometimes, for all of your love and struggle and success in being that open-minded. That’s so precious, and you are earning it through these very trying situations. It calls for great heart. It calls for very great heart for that continuous acceptance and love to be open to the connection. And as you say, so many things like anger or denial offer themselves--just instinctively offer themselves, in order to protect you from that very connection. To wade through these, just be still and let them happen, to feel all these things that come up and still stay true to yourself, and to feel that growth in yourself of strength and courage. I really salute you, my son. It’s something that touches my mother’s heart.

Student: There’s no other way for me to be. People always want me to choose sides or to make choices. But it’s my daughter. What am I going to do? And my granddaughter. I mean it is something so pleasing sometimes. That pierces through that anger or frustration, when I see my little granddaughter when I come home from work. I see her being all comfortable, sitting in the chair and watching TV--just something so simple as that. I see her being so comfortable and relaxed, and the anger and frustration just dissipates.

And so the thing is, too: all I desire to do is to live in, as, and of truth. And that’s it. You know, I really don’t care about people’s points of view, but just the truth. I don’t take sides. I just want the desire to seek and live the truth. And that means being very present, and being present means there’s no expectation of how I would like things to be, or how things aught to be. And no holding onto the past, and allowing the past to color what’s going on now. So the truth is always present. Freedom is always present. How we see each other from this place is, in a sense, that pure consciousness that I was talking about. And once we know ourselves and see ourselves in this way, then we see everyone else in this way. So: anyway.

Nebadonia: Well, my son, you are tasting deeply of my Adjutants, of my mindedness that I am delighted to give to you for this phase of your eternal life. I congratulate you on your openness, your willingness to embrace whatever comes because it means, in one way, you are truly blessed, my son. You are truly having you life. And as sad, as truly tragic as it may seem, there are so many who have found, or have been introduced, even by their own parents, to ways of denial, ways of just numbing-out day after day, week after week, even year after year, putting forth as little effort as possible. Of course, sometimes because of this, they are living extremely, not only short, but extremely impoverished lives in terms of their personalities, in terms of their poor souls screaming for experience. I mean they’re running away from experience.

But to turn into that, turn into that kind of animal, instinctive–  just-wanting-to-escape- and-sleep-and- not- experience–  because life is so painful: but to keep up with your life, as you say, and feel the Presence of the present moment you perceive, my son. I feel you are perceiving the constant changeableness of reality, that reality is not repeating itself.

(Courage)

And here it comes. It comes willy-nilly sometimes. Yet this is the meaning of courage, of the ability, the raw ability, the raw nerve sometimes, to accept what is happening because there are a thousand and one ways of avoiding this. So much of your culture is built upon this avoidance--folks who are constantly entertained, you might say, and not having even a wit of your inner experience.

So in one way, my son, it does my heart good to known you yourself realize what a blessing your individual life is. As you say, all it contains--the truth, the spirit of all-inclusiveness: whatever it is, I am determined to remain open to it, to perceive it, to let it register within me. And there it is, your little granddaughter sitting in her chair. You can only imagine all the anger and bitterness that might have come about to separate you from that very experience of her. As I’ve said before, my son: carry on. You’re doing fine.

Student: Well, thank you very much. It’s nice to feel and have the support.

Nebadonia: Right. Well, your opening prayer was: To know that we are here. It’s something that you earn because we are doing our best to make ourselves available and known to you. It is an accomplishment on your part, too, to know that we are here. So congratulations, and keep being in my love.

Student: Thank you.

END