2009-01-12-Soulful Company in Hard Times
Marin #162
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Soulful Company in Hard Times
o 1.2 Group: Marin TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Nebadonia
o 2.2 TR: JL
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
Topic: Soulful Company in Hard Times
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, Here we are, heading into a new year, very shortly getting a new leadership in political and social realms while, as a society, it seems we are in the midst of the most difficult economic times we’ve seen in many decades. We appreciate your lessons pointing us at those spiritual tools we need to develop to get through these times, helping not only ourselves but our fellow brothers and sisters as well.
Hopefully these hard times, since they are real and are upon us, can be a counterpoise, perhaps even a cause, for a renaissance with less emphasis upon the excessive material aspects of life and more on the spiritual. For if as you say the realm of spirit is that of value, then this is precisely what we need to do–maybe for not only for the first, or second, or third, but even for a fourth or a fifth time: stop and evaluate how we are spending our resources and our time. Help us take your lessons to heart and understand what you are saying–either from our own experience, or from what we can imagine of your examples. Help us embrace with our hearts, with some joy and anticipation, this necessary re-evaluation that is upon us. Amen.
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my children, this is your spirit mother Nebadonia. I welcome your prayers. Michael and I will do our best to be your closest companions through these times. Think of us not only as your mother and father who, incidentally, refuse to tell you what to do, but also appreciate us as your dear friends and advisors, and cheerfully seek our advice–however the choices are always yours. You can find this not only inside, and in the story of Michael’s life as Jesus, but in all these lessons that come through so many different transmitters. I think when you read a lot of them, our personalities will come unmistakably through.
Lesson
Friendship (Soulful company in hard times)
As Michael emphasized last time by walking you through the stages of a difficult decision, even as you approach this need you become aware of how much of your reality you are responsible for–how much freedom you have, and how much of the situation is simply given. Hopefully as you relax deeper and deeper into your meditation, the chain of previous decisions in your past come to the surface, reminding you, you are the co-author of your life. And as you recall the important decisions you’ve made before, your own soul, my children, can be good company and give you reassurance in these inherently lonely moments.
Never hesitate to pray–literally, to ask for help, yet here too you have a definite part to play, for the more accurately you can express your need, the more precisely we can answer your prayer. This is your half of the work, if you wish to look at it this way. Be still enough and then deep enough and wide enough to really entertain everything that’s involved. Ask to see the entire situation you find yourself in. What part of it is you?–what part have you caused? What part has been handed to you? If you find yourself right on the cusp of free will, so close you can almost taste it, and still the right decision, the right action doesn’t seem to come, be patient. Give yourself time. If you will, hang out on that spot for a while and know it well.
Most of you of some maturity have discovered what a blessing it is to be able to sleep on a problem. You’ve all heard stories of great scientific discoveries that seemed to come overnight, yet were truly the result of years of studying a problem until it reached a certain ripeness. So don’t be afraid of these moments of uncertainty. When all is said and done, my children, you are a unique, creative personality, and after all things are taken into consideration–even what you feel to be our answers to your prayers; still it is you stepping off. It is you doing the deed. It is you who needs to stay open, bright-eyed and open-minded to the results. This is your part in the creation of your life, and it is your desire, your ambition to have this whole process be ever more susceptible to your free will. This is the inner drive, the spiritual drive, the wonderful responsibility of knowing what you want to do, then seeing if it works or not.
This very need to decide ever more responsibly in hard economic times, need not be limiting, but, as in your opening prayer, can point you at a very primal spiritual determination: what has the deepest value to you? For it is upon your personal life that the larger social and political questions depend for answer. If you want to take better care of yourself and your family, even your stuff–your possessions: this may require a great turning around to getting full use out of something before it is nonchalantly discarded, like your health.
(Waste)
It is true that Michael and I do see an enormous amount of waste in the developed societies, simply by comparison to what others on Urantia are dying or living stunted lives for lack of–even food and shelter, the very basics. You have the saying that necessity is the mother of invention. But it’s your evaluation of necessity, of what you really need today, this is an essential part of your soul and character. How wasteful are you in comparison to what?–to what waste is ideally possible to eliminate? These are questions you need to ponder deeply. Consider too, in a stabilized population no longer increasing as much as it has through most of human history, plus with taking better care of your stuff–your homes, your cars, your appliances, your tools; you suddenly find yourselves in a superabundance of things. You might wonder, in terms of your society as a whole, where does the enormous productivity of people go then?
Once again you are faced with an irony we mentioned many lessons ago, when you consider how productive the human race has recently been. There’s been not only enough for food and shelter, but enough extra to create all the lasting giant stone monuments that dot the planet. Think of the enormous expenditure of lives and material in warfare and crime. Let yourself see the world from this overall viewpoint and wonder: what is really happening here? Further: what is this unique moment in time in the slow transformation of societies? To give you a little hint and nod, we say there is a universal evolution taking place, and it’s inexorable. Change is coming; it always will be. So rethink the meaning of necessity and understand it for the unique quality that it is. Wonder about this nonchalant tossing away of things and people. Consider deeply the whole notion of waste. What is this potential of human life that is lost? What is this not-fully-used stuff being thrown away by the hundreds of thousands of tons in your landfills and dumps?
This is a great spiritual time of reevaluation, my children. Much of the pain of dislocation in it can be ameliorated if you look forward, if you quit clinging to those unconscious habits which hold you so tightly. Say good riddance to all that nonchalance with which you waste so much. Welcome with open arms this deeper engagement with what you really need and, however paradoxical it may seem, find a greater freedom in it. From our viewpoint there is indeed a brighter day happening for those on Urantia who can recognize it.
So welcome the need for a continuing spiritual evaluation. Welcome the human need to think deeply and to meditate, to feel your way along towards better health, towards more meaning in your life, towards more appreciation. And be in my love throughout. Call upon Michael, and me, and our Father anytime. Then arouse your determination and take the next step.
If you have any questions or comments, let them come from your need, if you wish.
Dialogue
Student: Good evening, Mother. I saw on an 11:11 Angel’s website the statement that our minds are external from our brains. Could you explain that a little bit further, please?
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, actually your mind is both physical and spiritual in origin and composition. What you know variously as of your mentality, your consciousness, this experience is only in part the function of your electrical/chemical brain processes, even if this is by far the largest part for most folks–physical reality. Reflect for a moment on how your consciousness changes and adapts to reality from the first moment of awakening in the morning, then going through your day, to relinquishing itself in the unconsciousness of sleep. Consider too all the human history of experimentation with psychotropic materials where a person deliberately takes something physical into their body to change their consciousness and, through projection/interpretation, change the reality in which they find themselves. This experience forms a personal proof, if they’re willing to see it, that there is no ultimate dividing line between in here and out there, subjective and objective reality. So yes, a lot of your consciousness is dependent upon your physical being and all its living fluctuations.
You simultaneously experience a certain type of spiritual/cosmic mind, a human kind of mind. As your spiritual mother, you can think of me as down-stepping the Cosmic Mind of the Infinite Spirit to my human children on all of our many evolutionary planets. So we say you have a human, Mind/Spirit Adjutant kind of mind as contrasted to, shall we say, the mind of a seraphim or a Melkizadek. These Adjutants are dimensions of my consciousness I share with you to augment what you have personally evolved on your own of intuition, curiosity for knowledge and understanding, courage, and counsel or gregariousness. These you share with the lower animals; my two higher Adjutants of Worship and Wisdom you share only with your fellow human beings. In fact all through the evolution of life on your planet, my Adjutants have been a kind of differential urge, a little nudge, if you will, in the direction of progressive life evolution and advancing human culture. My Holy Spirit always has been a part of human mentality. Does this answer your question, my son, as to this composite mind you have?
Student: I don’t know, Mother; I don’t know yet. I’ll have to read the transcript again. Am I to understand we have two types of mind that are blended into one consciousness, cosmic mind and a human-type evolutionary physical mind?
NEBADONIA: Exactly, my son. Part of your mind is dependent on your physiology, your brain and this whole living organism you are, and part is the pure spiritual aspect–with my augmentations–of qualities you have in and of your own self. Just physically you have intuition, the ability to take in sense phenomena by the billions every second and create a coherent reality out of them. But my mind and my Holy Spirit actually help you do this. So yes, this consciousness you know is both physical and spiritual. You know it’s physical because as you take in one of your material substances, everything changes, both you and, however subtly, all that out there. It remains a matter of faith for most of you that I myself–my Holy Spirit is actually part of your mentality, augmenting your own inherent abilities. Is that a little more clear?
Student: Yes. I’d like to ask where is the mind located? Is it a location?
NEBADONIA: It depends upon which part you’re referring to. (group chuckles) Part of it is very directly attached to your physical body. Without your brain activity you have no consciousness; you are asleep or in a coma. So that’s primal. Yet part is me, part is my augmentations to your spirit personality’s awareness, if you will. And these are inseparable. They’ve been that way your entire life, and the whole history of your race.
Student, laughing: Thank you for your augmentation and your support.
NEBADONIA: As you achieve a greater and greater success in stillness, as you are able to relax the surface busyness which has to do with your immediate concerns, as you gain the ability to relax this, my son, you are in a sense rising into your higher consciousness, broader and deeper, and here is where you can contact and feel our spirit input. Here is where the spiritual functions of intuition and understanding and courage come into consciousness ever more distinctly. Also, right where your higher consciousness in a sense fades away, you have the input from your Father Fragment, the presence of God within your mind, literally helping you form thoughts–which is why we call His presence a Thought Adjuster. Here you have His help making your thoughts more spiritualized–broader, more creative and spontaneously appropriate to the present. Keep in mind, my son, that as you approach the realm of spirit you are approaching the realm of creative origins, His and yours.
While it might seem to you that physical mind comes first, and then the spiritual–because that was your personal experience, in terms of origin it’s exactly the opposite. Your essence, your personality, is a creation of the pure spirit of God. So as you meditate, as you still your physical and mental aspects, you allow this spiritual originality to come forth. You can even establish a conscious relationship, just as Jesus did, with this presence of God within you. What you call saints–those persons who lived a great part of their lives for their fellows–were such individuals who could tune into God’s will for them.
So it’s a little hard to say exactly where this mind is. (Mother Spirit chuckles) Your human type of consciousness tends to roam around a lot, sometimes being almost purely physical, other times being extremely spiritual. You do, after all, literally infuse your physical and mental aspects with spirit.
Student: Yes.
NEBADONIA: Does that seem to answer your question or give you some greater notion of what you are as a very complex being, my son?–yet how all these aspects are tied together into one self-awareness? That’s the function of your personality; to tie everything together into the experience you call you.
Student: I guess I had over-simplified the matter quite a bit. (group laughs again)
NEBADONIA: (laughing): Well, that’s what you get for asking these kinds of questions. Please keep doing so; and be in my love.
Student: Good evening, Mother. I’ve been having difficulty focusing on organizing what I have to do, like my mind is not working right on a physical level, and the harder I try to focus, the harder it gets. Is it possible to help by meditating more deeply to allow my spirit to make up for any perceived deficit of the physical mind? How much is it able to do that?
Stillness (How does meditation work?)
NEBADONIA: Yes, my daughter. The answer is most definitely yes! This is where the spiritual, creative mind can be allowed to expand by a decision of your personality–to meditate, to reflect. This is one of the functions, if not the main function of meditation. Stillness means allowing your physical/mental aspects–so closely interrelated–to rest and calm; which does take a decision and determination in the face of other immediate demands on your time. It also takes courage to slow down and come to a stop under pressure, and begin to exercise your faith. You will at first be acting on the evidence of things unseen, sitting down in the faith this will do some good; this relaxing of any pressing demands can lead to greater spiritual sustenance. We even called it a home base one time, something you slowly accumulate that comes into being as a product of your meditation. Something begins to emerge to consciousness, and this is spirit; conversely, you’re becoming more sensitive to spiritual prompting and reassurance.
This reflection is also an augmentation of your intuition, knowledge, and understanding–but especially your understanding–the connections, if you will–how you connect all the pieces of raw fact into meaningful patterns. Think of how you can be stumped–as you call it, and stop mid-step, held still by pure instinct in a kind of automatic, self-forgetting meditation until you get an idea of what to do next. Then there are all the little mini-meditations, the ponderings of great variety and degree you do throughout the day. You’re still bound to a large degree to your physical/mental organism, and certainly any kind of physical or mental impairment takes a great toll on your ability to focus and decide, but this is precisely where meditation and creative spiritual thinking is needed to overcome these deficiencies.
Journaling (Keeping a spiritual journal)
Now consider how Michael and I are faced with a kind of supreme yet silly irony–(Mother Spirit laughs)–and that is–with some of our children who could use it the most–their resistance to record or take notes when confronted with a highly complex situation involving many factors and different personalities. But just as in your prayers to us and our Father where the more coherently you can articulate your needs–for yourself, the better we can offer an answer, so too, my daughter, giving your spiritual effort of meditation an objective, physical component–a voice recording, notes, a list to prioritize; all these things–is a way of preserving the moment for the future. You’ve created and maintained a record of that effort. So please consider doing so. Don’t feel it is somehow beneath you even if it is humbling when you face the complexity of a difficult situation. Does this seem consistent with what you feel you need?
Student: Yeah, it helps me see that it’s similar to when I used to have a habitual, panic response to anxiety, but became able to take that into prayer, internally, and head in a more spiritual direction. If I can do that with the quality of the thoughts in my mind, in stillness, that can be helpful too. When you say to take notes?–is that before, or after…
NEBADONIA: During…
Student: Oh!–during the meditation. So the writing, the physical thing, helps bring the spiritual part of my mind into the physical part?
NEBADONIA: Not quite… You’d still be identifying with your physical self. That would be like trying to bring the larger part into the smaller. The spiritual part of your personality–your very personhood–is transcendent to your physical/mental aspects: it contains them. You still your body and calm your mental concerns to let your consciousness expand from focusing on them alone.
You become aware of the greater reality, your home base. It’s creative. It’s where new ideas occur, and ideals emerge. Taking notes, or journaling–as some call it, is making a record of a passing spiritual experience so it’s not lost to a later time; all the while it helps you evolve your ability to realize and express greater truth within yourself–find your own inner spiritual voice.
In addition, you can have such great ideas, you can sit down and meditate for five minutes, and get so antsy with all the good ideas of what you need to do, you pop up and away you go. So it’s a way of saving these ideas to keep from getting anxious they might be lost, which disturbs the flow. These are all means of self-knowledge and understanding, and then preserving it. A spiritual dairy is wonderful for some folks. So just keep something there to jot down the discoveries that occur to you. This can help you focus.
It’s largely a matter of relaxing through impulses for some time and inviting the spiritual presences in your mind to have a say–prayer–hoping they can help you come up with what is impossible for you alone to anticipate. The anticipation is your part, another activity you need to relax. You’re anticipating as best you can with an open mind what will come next, and you have to let it come.
Student: So it’s like taking a problem and bringing it into prayer and stillness, and listening to the quiet.
NEBADONIA: It won’t be too quiet at first; it’s usually pretty busy. We definitely suggest you don’t hold your mind a blank. It’s just spending some time there to see what happens. My only critique would be that sometimes you think and speak of mental states in terms a bit too space-oriented–as going to a place, like, “I need to go to that place where I decide,” as if there’s a deciding-place and you’re not there. That can be a hindrance. Actually you’re not going anywhere mentally: you’re becoming more right where you are: you’re transforming. You’re inviting a different, larger form of yourself to happen, a more spiritually conscious/consciously spiritual form. You’re not going anywhere; and the place–so called–is never the same, my daughter, because the moment is never the same. Critically, you can never go back to any place in time. Those previous decisions in your soul that got you to here are for company, not to cling onto as infallible in the present situation.
You’re in a process of letting go the past conditioning of habitual ways of thinking. You’re praying inside, “OK–God, and Mother, and Michael–help me transform myself and become a more focused person.” Then you have to relax out of the unfocused person you are. (much laughter all through this section) No clinging; and that takes courage to let go those comforting and familiar but worn-out things that once worked, but may no longer. But that’s the fun of discovery too. That’s the true adventure. And adventure is what you’re on–either consciously or willy-nilly. I mean, it’s a big universe, and a lot of time, and here they come.
Student: Thank you.
NEBADONIA: You’re welcome. Be in my love. I’m always tickled when you invite me in so openly and ride along on what I have my say. Your Thought Adjuster is right in there with you, part of you.
Student: Thank you, Mother, for this transformative gathering–(and everyone breaks up again). I do feel I’m at that place where I’m allowing myself to be transformed. As either you or Michael put it, I’m pregnant with potential. I was wondering what trimester I’m in… (Ed: this is a male student)
NEBADONIA: The first phase of your eternal life.
Student: It’s interesting… When C asked the question, last time with Michael, about dropping everything and just realizing what we want, when that was discussed, I was sitting here and I realized: there is no want. As I pondered that–there was no anxiety–it felt I was really at peace with that. But then I get distracted with my emotional needs, like in a relationship, and it’s not where I need my direction to go. So I have to watch this inner discussion play itself out, and it usually ends in a dead end. It’s like I know better, but I have to let it play out. Then I usually find I have bigger fish to fry.
Michael said to pay attention to my soul, and allow that to become enriched moment to moment; allow it to be experienced and expressed. I do feel at peace in my work, and at home, and I am opening myself up to allow transformation. So tonight that word really hit home. That seems to be where I’m at. There’s uncertainty about how things are going to turn out, but there’s also this warmth of knowing-ness that I’m finally listening to my soul. It’s scary at times–that willy-nilly-ness of just clinging on–my identity is so wrapped up in what I’ve been programmed to believe is what I want. Yet when I let it go there’s so much more–of me. So thank you so much for tonight’s lesson about transformation.
Transformation
NEBADONIA: Thank you, my son, for wonderfully expressing these different states of mind and spirit that do play about. Then there’s C’s wondering: where is this mind?–what is this mind? You just touched several viewpoints; that from this one, things look a certain way, then that modulates and transforms into another. Meanwhile you’re also somewhat detached and wondering if the process is getting bigger or smaller–getting you to a larger understanding or just going off into some little dead-end peculiarity. You wonder, am I choosing these different points of view, or are they just happening to me? Who am I? Where am–I–in all of this? What part of me is all of this?
You’re the unbreakable cable tying it all together through time. That’s the basic function of your unchanging personality. And as I once mentioned, you’re not perfectly unified yet in all your complexity. Yet this is nothing to despair, for you will spend an eternity approaching a personal unity you can only conceive of now as belonging solely to God, for you will be–hopefully–taking in more experience, more universe and time to unify and make your own as you grow. This unity of ever increasing understanding helps your life along. All these viewpoints playing through your mind do inform you. They’re a way of tasting possibilities. You do evaluate–you notice?–you do evaluate where the transformation is going.
Student: It seems like the thread through all of this is faith, faith in that there is so much more to who I am, and allowing myself to let that be, allow that to take hold of me. I mean I see so many out there doing good work, and I’m trying to find my place in all of this. What do I have to offer that is uniquely me? That’s where I feel my transformation is leading. So I don’t want to be distracted by all these things, and I guess that wanting is to know who I am–that unity, that completeness, living life to its greatest potential. I know it’s an eternal thing–I know all that; it’s what I can conceive here and now. Then I can build on that. And knowing that one mind that is mine–I feel that mind is everywhere. It can’t be boxed in or constrained. But just to kind-of rest and allow… I know for myself I need that. I need to do it more–for myself.
Hope (Origins of hope)
NEBADONIA: This is also the origin of the great human blessing of hope. This is where hope is born–in that faith, in that belief that your soul is, as we assure you it is–so much greater than just your fleeting, changing consciousness of yourself. You discover the technique of allowing your soul to come forth, then appreciating what it is doing all the time. Sometimes you register it as wisdom, how your soul’s wealth is influencing you moment to moment.
Once you feel that coming forth, once you even get the notion of becoming fully united and one with your soul, even with the presence of God within you: that becomes an enormous hope for some totally unimaginable–(Mother Spirit laughs)–unimaginably bright future you. Consider the ultimate transformation you will go through some time when you unite with the presence of God within you. That transformation will totally dwarf the smaller one you call death.
Student: You mention how things change–the impermanence of things. But there’s also the faith in believing in the spirit that is unchangeable and indestructible and is everywhere and everything–that is the basis of all our being–which is God. That’s who we all are.
NEBADONIA: Yes, you are literally this God-created personality, this person-hood you have, this unique being you have. It is the unchanging essence of you that unites and makes real all the changing–other–you experience. Yet you are quite discrete from God, by God’s will. We call you a creature because you were created, whereas Michael is a Creator Son of God, and other personal beings are not created but eventuated. You are a co-creator of your own life, and relatively autonomous in the living creation you refer to as everything.
Student: And therefore as the ground of our being we have the principle of God’s intention for us.
NEBADONIA: That is the ideal: you may not yet be able to perceive it.
Student: But it’s there.
NEBADONIA: Right.
Student: On a practical note: before I sit down to write, how can I align myself to allow God to write through my hands?–to allow my Thought Adjuster to write through my hands? Just be still?
Transmitting (Spirit writing or recording)
NEBADONIA: It helps to be still, and then with your whole soul, my son, acknowledge His reality. Recall how I once said you are a part of everything you experience?–even us, as you perceive us, and feel us?
Student: Yes.
NEBADONIA: And so you have this free-will acknowledgment you can make, to welcome us into consciousness. It doesn’t have to be a ritual; it can be different each time, as you are slightly different each time. But just by acknowledging the realm of spirit, and inviting us into your consciousness, it’s a little like this process of transmitting.
If you want to transmit just for yourself, spiritual presence, it’s accepting the oddity at first of something coming from another discrete personal being. That will be the initiating hallmark of its validity. It will seem very strange at first allowing other beings to express themselves through you, yet your whole desire should be to be as transparent as possible, to let them. So this is a highly conscious relinquishing of yourself, and different from sitting down to write a story or a poem–something like that, coming from your self. They’re very similar, for I’m right in here with you helping you write that poem–(Mother Spirit laughs again)–as my Holy Spirit. But if you want me, or Michael, or your Father Fragment directly, be not surprised that it is the expression of another, larger viewpoint. And then just step off and write. There’s no anticipation. It’s inviting what you yourself cannot anticipate. It’s being comfortable with not knowing what is coming next, because it’s not you. That’s its value. Does that give you some flavor of it?
Student: Yes.
NEBADONIA: Give it a try.
Student: It sounds very exciting and enriching, really. I always feel whole and complete after I write down something from my soul. It makes the whole day that much more enjoyable.
NEBADONIA, laughing: That’s what it is. I’ll say this for J: it’s part of the delight of transmitting–not knowing what’s coming next, but learning to trust that. These little electronic recording devices are really handy. You can just say the thoughts as they happen and not immediately react to them. In its pure state you’ll not even remember much of what came through, since you weren’t reacting to it. You’ll have to wait for the playback to see what was said. Great fun!
Renaissance (Spiritual renaissance)
Well, it’s been an enjoyable evening. To echo what you asked for in your opening prayer, sometimes hard economic times can be the genesis of a spiritual renaissance. The times certainly call for one. It’s keeping your desire focused on that spiritual transformation that is possible in you. It is a kind of welcoming of this necessity to re-evaluate how you are spending your precious resources to avoid that most terrible of things here in God’s creation–that whole notion of waste and all it means. So think about that reality. What is waste? And why is it so terrible? Keep in mind the closest English word for–deity–is the word–sharing. Most fundamentally, God has chosen, and continues to choose, to share Himself with the creation and all of us; or nothing would be. Maybe I should say, no thing would be, for God would just be happy all by Himself. Fortunately for us, or at least for those of us who appreciate being, we can never thank Him enough. And that is our loving worship.
My dear children, I love you very much. Embrace this transformation that is really part of your own deepest nature, coming from your growing soul as you extend yourself out into the adventure of time and space. Once again you discover yet another way you are made in His image. Good evening.
