2008-08-19-God, Creation, Siblinghood of Personal Beings
Marin #157
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: God, Creation, Siblinghood of Personal Beings
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
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: God, Creation, Siblinghood of Personal Beings
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, What can we say to our spiritual parents, the Creative Mother and Holy Spirit, and the Creator Son and Spiritual Father of us on our world, and so many more? We love you. We love you for who you are in yourselves–the personalities you have shown us and shared with us through all the laughter and tears, all your power and your playfulness, your teasing and laying the truth on the line. We love you for all of this.
We love you for who you stand for, the Universal Father–the God of all creation, the Eternal Son–the God of spirit, and the Infinite Spirit–the God of action and cosmic mind/connection. We love that you stand for these beings and it is through you, and as you, we connect with them.
We ask you excuse our lingering pantheism, the way in which we take so much just as-given, forgetting that everything we experience is a creation, everything from the taste of strawberries, to the smell of a rose, to the feeling of a friend’s arms around us in a loving hug. It all existed in potential in your minds, and in God’s mind before it found this actuality in our lives: everything we experience. So we ask you help us keep in mind that reality is being continually created, not only for us, but through us, and with us, and as us as well. Amen.
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my children, this is Nebadonia. My, what a greeting. We humbly accept your love. We glory in it and, if we could blush, we would. (laughter) In a way we do. We look forward to a time when you’ll be standing directly in our presence and able to perceive our glowing nature.
Lesson
Creation (God, the creation, the brotherhood and sisterhood of personal beings)
Meanwhile here you are and here we are with you, very much a part of you–my Holy Spirit and Michael’s Spirit of Truth. Our Father is very much a part of you as well and has been from your earliest memories. Just wonder how many ideas, especially those really good ideas you’ve had all your life, came from Him. Yet too how many came from your own, creative God-given personality, this unique being that you are? Think of all the unique combinations of people you have known that no one else has. This is what makes your soul so much uniquely yours as well. No one else has that particular combination. No one else has had the same experiences with the brotherhood and sisterhood of personal beings that you have.
This forms the great Trilogy of God–if you will–the pure creativity that is springing forth as the creation itself on the grandest scale, the total universe, right down to what you are creating in your own day to day life with those decisions you’re making with your conscious self, the you that you know. This is the brotherhood and sisterhood of all personal beings, from the seven Master Spirits of Paradise on down, layer after layer after layer, until we get to a human being, equally a spiritual/co-creator being in his or her own realm.
I do agree with the realization in your opening prayer that it is difficult for you to conceive and acknowledge that everything that exists is created. In this sense nothing just happens. Even God, as your Urantia book puts it very poetically, even God escapes the limitations of infinity and absoluteness–as paradoxical as that sounds, by fulfilling Himself and all of eternity with creating a nigh infinite number of finite beings, and sharing their lives with them. So you in your own lives, like little mini-gods–if you will, you bump up against this same reality and the need to fill it.
You are most like Him in your creativity, in your response-ability, your ability to respond ever anew to all the life around and within you. There is this something, this someone who responds, even if you can’t directly get a handle or hold on this point of departure that you are, that both God and His spirit–that you call life–is right in there with you, projecting you moment by moment as if into reality. Yet, of course, there is no outside to reality, which is why there is literally no way you can stand outside your reality as a personality and grasp yourself as an object. In other words, my children, you are more than you can perceive as body, mind, and even spirit. Similarly, in considering how our Father is not only everywhere in time and space, but also transcends them, there is no way yet you can grasp this truth either in all fullness.
Still, Michael and I do introduce these truths to you, my children, simply because they exist. These are dimensions of reality that do exist and it is good for you to stretch. Your very attempt at comprehension is itself strengthening, and it keeps you humble and in touch with that which is greater than you. It keeps you wondering about the potential for growth you can feel within yourself. Thus you mitigate some of the impatience of being a finite, living being without infinite energy, without infinite knowledge and intellectual capacity, without an eternity of human living on Urantia before you.
This was the basis for my lesson on feeling what it is to be a complex being, and getting some notion of balance in your life, a unity in your life of body and mind and spirit. An over-emphasis on any one of these can lead to an unhealthy condition, for this is what it is to be human, and feel these limitations.
Focus (The focus of feeling)
Consider too the focus of your feeling. For the effort it takes to pick up something gives you the experience of that object and just how real it is. This is where self-forgetfulness is so necessary–to feel not only that effort in your body, but to feel the object too, is to have that as a real experience because that thing is real. Self-absorption, trying to hang onto yourself, self-pityingly only feeling the effort cannot give you that; it cuts you off from the delightful thingy-ness of things–their independence from you, their fact.
The same goes for your mental problems that take concentration and study and creative wondering to solve. That effort is what informs you what they are, and what facts they stand for. And so it is as well with spirit. The very feeling/perception of something there, something that can’t quite be grasped cognitively or fully explained or shared, is tickling your own spirit and letting you know it’s there. This you experience as intrinsic value, this dimension within your experience when you are prompted to consider what something or someone is worth to you.
This effort of yours, stemming from the Supreme Being, is fulfilling your human destiny, day by day. This is the seeing and welcoming of physical and mental and spiritual challenges that are meaningful and worthwhile, and fill your soul. This is what you will carry with you for it is your very finiteness at this stage that gives meaning and value to everything you do. At this stage of the game, my children, you are dependent on your living mechanism of mind and body and spirit. This is your identity now. In your coming Morontia phases, you will again be dependent upon another kind of body and mind to have conscious identity, and have again the ability to relate to all the impersonal matter/energy of creation around you.
So tonight I would have you consider and wonder and think about this balance, and find fulfillment in having wonderfully physically active, and mentally challenging, and spiritually worthwhile experiences. Embrace every day. This is your life. This is what it is to be human, and this too is God’s creation. Existentially He’s always had the essence of you, but experientially He has to actually have you to enjoy your life along with you. He is this kind of partner of yours, and in some nearly inconceivable way He is fully committed. There is no holding back, there is no part of Him that is not fully engaged in His creation of your life.
This is why He delights in your freedom, in the growth of your freedom through your decisions, in your conscious self’s ability to respond to all the rest of Him. This is God: this is the creation: this is the brotherhood and the sisterhood of all personal beings. It’s all for you as much as anyone else, because all of them are yours, my children. So you too belong to them. You too have something unique to offer. Now I sense a lot of questions and comments. (laughter…) Let’s open the floor to them on this our fourth anniversary of this particular group. I am assuming you all know each other. (…and more) So don’t be shy.
Dialogue
Student: Good evening, Mother. I hear you talking about, tonight, a need for change. Not to try to paraphrase it, but in a sense as human beings we are an antidote to God’s infinite perfection by being imperfect and finite, and so that much we enhance God’s experience. But I personally find it very frustrating sometimes that I am imperfect, yet desire for perfection: things seem so far from ever being quite good enough. It makes it hard for me to relax and enjoy it and then just sort-of refresh myself in God’s infinite wisdom. I get a little angry like I am tonight, so maybe you could help me see a slightly enlarged perspective–for it would…(she laughs)…be nice…
Freedom, Anger
NEBADONIA: Yes, my daughter, you are up against the very nature of your freedom, with how limitless that is even for such a finite being as yourself. Because as we’ve so often mentioned, your curiosity, your wonder, your drive for perfection to know everything and do everything, to experience everything, these were not put in you just to torment you, though that is sometimes the immediate result. (group chuckles) That very frustration you feel in being human is part of being human.
The scary part for a human being is just how limitless that freedom to experience is, because it takes in all the physical and psychic and spiritual pain that people have known throughout human history. The uncertainty, the frustration, the anger, the not-knowing–no way of knowing; these are all in the mix. This is a hallmark of your freedom, and just how much there is, since God has let go and given of Himself to bequeath to you such a range of possibility of pain and pleasure, good and evil, truth and error. It’s also how much He trusts in your own creative ability to influence your life. Those of you who are parents know how detrimental it is to your children’s growth to do too much for them. Yet there are those who curse God, who hate God in the agony of their pain, and this too He understands.
This is the price for your freedom. We can only assure you that He is paying it with you. There is no time, no instance in which He chooses not to be an experiential being as well as an existential one: His total nature is one–absolutely unified. He is fully committed to His children and everything they experience. And again, this is where only faith and trust in Him will do, because there is nothing shy of these that can forgive Him for the very possibility of pain, of evil, of error. These too are what make your soul your own. As one of you realized a lesson ago, this is what broadens and deepens your soul, and why it contains everything of spiritual significance you have had to endure as well. And so in your prayers, my daughter, just do your best to love Him for all He has put of reality on your plate for you to handle. This is your life; you too are creating what it is; and anger only cuts you as well as Him. Does that help clarify the situation?
Student, very moved: Yes. Thank you.
NEBADONIA: Be in my love.
Student: Good evening, Mother. I’m going to speak now because as I look around and see people doing or acting in ways… You know when you first meet them you don’t think, OK, here’s a person acting out of fear. You think, how can you be so abusive, or how can you be so callous and cold? What I’m finally getting is, in my own personal experience as of late–a particular person that I’ve had a lot of anger towards, now I’m trying to decide how much anger I’m going to have at this person. So if I’m feeling guiltless myself, if I see that person, or I see my brother and sister as guiltless, only making mistakes, they’re not this horrible, intentionally mean person; they just don’t know any better. All of a sudden it gives me the freedom to say I just see and understand their wounds, their trials, their interpretation of life, and step into their shoes for heavens sakes and really feel what it is to be them. If I feel bad at this and I can get rid of guilt in my own life, then it’s like this feeling is dawning on me how to weed out the guilt and the fear, and notice how they’re inherently beautiful. I just…it brings me to tears because for so long I’ve stuffed my anger–so much anger, and I just couldn’t trust people. You know, you get all this stuff and it sticks in your muscles–you know, the fear and abuse.
I had some memories come back last week in a holographic nature of something that was terrifying and horrible and unpleasant when I was three years old. It was weird; it was like they were coming around at me again. Anyway, I finally went walking, and I was crying and listening and praying and saying, Wow, now I’m making connections as to why I’ve had such out of control anger, such unreasonable, inappropriate anger on people that would be just like a weapon. I would just jump the gun on people and expect the perfection that C was just talking about. But when I break down my expectations and see my brothers and sisters as guiltless, I’m thankful I’m having these ecstatic moments of joy–I thank you and Michael so very much. You say to create abilities in our minds because it’s in our minds that literally everything is necessarily a matter of will. So we have to see and sort out our creations that don’t serve us and don’t have value. Judging people and expecting perfection here is not serving me; it keeps me at that wall of separation of people. But when I see them guiltless I can embrace them with all their horrible things.
I’m getting carried away here but I’m learning to break through my own anger now lately, and my own expectations, and see the world in a whole new light. I’m looking at folks now, going: my anger is not justified. It’s how you were speaking about how it scars us and how it holds us. It’s funny because that stuff’s been on my mind all week, and you brought it up. I feel you so strongly tonight. I was just in the car going, I love you, Mother. I love you, Michael. I feel so connected and before I was always so separate–you know–such a little Lone Ranger, and it was my expectations of wanting that perfection, wanting everyone to see things the way I did. And thank you for listening.
Anger (More on anger)
NEBADONIA: Well, my daughter, your personality has been working overtime here. (group laughs) You’re expressing a wonderful unity of understanding and knowledge of how things are connected, and what really leads to what. So it’s very good inner science understanding cause and effect. Also you’ve touched your real soul too in a way we’ve been recommending, of just relaxing and allowing moments from your past to swell fourth in a fullness that is beyond your conscious memories–your conscious ability to recall. This is why catharsis can be a very genuine experience–very liberating.
We see anger as something that was put in very primitive peoples to enable them to survive all the tooth and claw of the natural world. So by far the most ferocious animals that have lived on Urantia have been human beings. That pure ferocity enabled them to conquer the predators in short order, but then, of course, they had each other to deal with. From very early times man has been his own worst enemy too–the incessant warfare now for hundreds of thousands of years. This ferocity is always there just below the surface—as you say.
Anger has a valid purpose to arouse your energies for immediate self-defense, but then so very quickly and at a young age, it can take on an unmerited complexity. It can become an addiction, a self-indulgence, to feel all the energy welling up in self-importance and power, especially when learned from ones parents and society as a way to cope with frustration and mistakes. It can be a way of dominating your fellows. It’s become institutionalized in societies from the tribal stage on up: leaders, in their own fears, deliberately generating a collective anger to point outwards toward others, maintaining an internal social peace and cohesiveness–and their control–at the price of perpetual war with the ever existent, even traditional enemy. This is a kind of social, shared self-indulgence of anger and warlike attitude.
So to see through this, as you are doing, is to realize you are not being immediately threatened and your anger is only hurting yourself with the physical stress, mental hatred, and spiritual separation. You’re breaking all this down and feeling connected again, seeing people more and more as they are in themselves. So congratulations, my daughter. Your newfound joy is well earned. Michael and I are right in here enjoying it with you. Continue to feel you are truly in my love.
Student: Thank you so much. I really feel like I’m coming awake. Thank you.
Student: Yes, Mother. On this notion of perfection, I think it’s one of those ungraspable ideas of something that just is. It exists in every moment. I’m not sure what it is: we know what imperfection is. (much laughter) I’ve even thought at times about perfect imperfection. But whatever perfection is, it exists all around us and within us. I mean the sun itself is light; the earth rotates; the way the galaxies are is perfect. The blueness of the sky is perfect. I don’t think we would exist if that didn’t exist within us–the reality of perfection. The only reason we have chaos in our world is because we think we are separate from it. We believe in the other, and our imperfect-ness. But we do have the capacity for imperfection–which for me is the mystery.
But if we all knew this, and allowed ourselves to be still–as you and Michael have mentioned many, many times–and rest when we are experiencing what we call imperfection–such as being judgmental, or full of anger and hatred–but just rest, then the perfect wisdom is there without thinking about it: it just is. If I try to picture what perfection looks like, it’s like going around on a merry-go-round trying to grasp the brass ring: I’m never going to get it. It already is.
So… So thank you. And thank you for these last four years, and the years with Donna– (Ed: Donna D’Ingillo–the first, initiating T/R of this group)–and all the lessons and all the love–telling me I’m only a tadpole–only I don’t buy that. (much laughter) And listening to my questions and my personal dramas and stories. Thank you for this…tonight.
NEBADONIA: You’re very welcome, my son. It’s delightful to have my turn to thank you, thank all of you for the wonderful times we’ve shared. It’s been stressful at times, and bubbling over with laughter so many times.
Perfection (Perfection, imperfection, evolution)
Perfect is one of those things we–again–lay upon you as a matter of faith that there is a perfect Being with the attributes of absoluteness and infinity. There is a great gulf then to human comprehension of this primal Existential Being and the experiential being He shares with so many, with you. We call you nodules of experience out here in time and space, having your own unique lives, building up your own unique souls, adding to the growing personality of God’s we call the Supreme Being–the growing soul of time/space personal experience, of which your experience is a part: that connection is God.
Imperfection is easier to grasp because you have so many concretes examples of it such as we mentioned tonight of pain, anxiety, uncertainty, frustration, anger–that your philosophies have gathered under the term–suffering–as well as conditioned/complex errors of perception and judgment. We have assured you these are not unreal but they form part of your conscious life, and part of the Morontia being you are evolving already–your soul. And you are right, there is within you a perfect, pure spirit, a fragment of God, whose input though, as conscious thoughts, are subject to your conscious will.
There is also a cosmos-wide evolution in every experiential, personal individual, of whatever order, from imperfection to perfection. There is something growing here. Each moment, all of existence, all of reality is bigger not only in terms of more material and energy being created in space–more galactic nebulae and so forth, and not only in the number of personal beings as well across hundreds of different kinds, but in each of all of their souls. You are a microcosm of this. You were dropped right into this adventure, and there is no way apart from destroying yourselves to opt out. Even that would only be temporarily. And so we encourage you to forget yourselves in trusting the primal Author of the adventure, and wade into it. Enjoy it, all the time aware there are those aspects of reality that do take trust and faith–those inner spiritual strengths–to overcome, even to perceive: all that is. There will always be more before you to encounter, to perceive, to get through your own denial and anger and projections to embrace. That is that confrontation with the Other, the infinite diversity of reality. And it’s all real. Even illusions have a temporary reality and effect until they’re seen through.
It is not that God cannot create perfect subordinate beings, because He does. That was mostly an earlier phase of creation if you will–the whole inner universe of Havona. But then with this trial you go through–you are inextricably stuck in, there is the possibility to exercise understanding, courage, loyalty, faith, trust, and effort. Indeed your possible advanced estate is predicated upon effort, which means it too is real. You can earn your soul. There is such a real thing as individuality in the cosmos, and it too is infinite to each finite individual.
So thank you for your love and your gracious thanking me and Michael for these evenings. We’ve certainly enjoyed them ourselves. This is what we live for.
Second student again: May I say something? It’s dawning on me that dropping judgment of others and ourselves allows an acceptance of reality. Time is what gives us the opportunity for this healing. If we can see clearly we can see there is no need for anger. So thank you again for giving me these wonderfully clear jolts of insight.
Judgment (Judgment and evaluation)
NEBADONIA: There is a critical distinction between invalid and self-isolating judgments and those necessary evaluations you need to make as you go through your days. Psychologically, from the inside-out, being judgmental is the enormous arrogance of pretending to possess objective truth, whole and complete. You are acting like an infallible judge pronouncing final sentence on some person or event, even yourself. Whereas with evaluations you are aware they are very subjectively your own feelings and quite limited in their scope and validity. It’s the difference between evaluating/feeling that someone is perhaps stretching the truth a bit–the kind of assessments you’re making continually, and passing the judgment inside yourself, and seeing them, as some kind of irredeemable, total liar. The difference is both qualitative and quantitative. Simple-minded judgments do mask the true complexity of reality and, as you say, need to be relinquished to let the subtle shades of the world and its peoples come through.
Student: Mother Nebadonia, I don’t know if you guys are watching the Olympics there on Salvington, but since I’m taking so much delight in them, I wonder if you could maybe, just for poetic reasons, you could have any commentary on the whole planet coming together to see who’s the fastest runner or swimmer?
(The Olympics)
NEBADONIA: Well don’t forget, my son, Michael and I are right there in every runner and swimmer, tumbling through the air inside every gymnast. I take special pride in my children making full use of my Mind/Spirit Adjutants to do all they can. We do delight that, by specializing as is necessary, the athletes show what can be done with a unity of inner purpose. Here you see a well developed personal control that is equal parts humility in acknowledging the enormous task of walking out upon the world stage, along with the confidence earned through all the years of training and love and caring shared between the athletes and their parents and coaches. This is the development of an inner spirit, and inner fearlessness that enables them to handle the adventure.
In the collective sense, there has always been competition from the very beginning, mostly for food, resources, territory. Even small fish, let alone the higher mammals, are very territorial. Plants struggle and strangle each other for sunlight. There’s competition on all levels with all kinds of life. The Olympics, as these athletic meetings have developed to the present day, are a marvelous, actual demonstration of a growing ability to set aside certain political and territorial competitions for power and the world’s limited resources, and all the cultural antagonisms as well–set these aside for a while. And through your ever expanding modern multi-media, an ever greater part of the world’s populations are able to see each other as individual persons through those cultural differences, and acknowledge that a swimming pool, a race track, a high-jump bar–there is a reality that knows no racial or cultural bias. You have all these athletes sharing these demonstrations of universal natural law–that uniform aspect of God’s creation by which they can evaluate each other and compete on a level playing field.
But you must forgive me cutting this short for there is no limit to what is being demonstrated, and this is a glory of your mass media that more people can enjoy it and see the real truth and beauty and goodness–all those spiritual qualities—in this competition. It’s an actual demonstration of peacefulness and cooperation.
Student: Thank you, Mother. They are beautiful–those young bodies doing such fantastic things.
Student: Thank you, Mother, for your lessons and the love you’ve shown us these last few years. I’ve had most of my questions answered about a change in perspective and the way I look at things–to be re-evaluated. I got that tonight, thank you.
Discipline, Determination
NEBADONIA: You are very welcome. Listening in on your talking–before I began–about conquering bad habits: I congratulate you on your inner discipline, your determination to reach for more life. I’m so happy for you and with you in that matter. (Ed: perhaps I should say this student recently lost over 45 pounds of unhealthy body mass) Through you I know what it takes to turn your life around so dramatically, and I see much beauty and joy in you through these efforts.
Student: Yes.
NEBADONIA: Keep striving, my son, and keep taking breaks from it as well. You’re understanding that stretch now–between spiritual striving and then just totally relaxing in Michael’s and my peace and love, and being happy with yourself just as you are.
Student: Thank you, Mother. Also I really enjoyed what you said on a Light Line teleconference about you loving Michael. I never heard that before, and it’s a good illustration of yours and Michael’s relationship. It’s a good pattern for us on this world and other worlds as well. So thank you for that perspective.
NEBADONIA: Yes, we’re definitely an old married couple, that’s for sure–a few hundred billion years now. (much laughter) Yet our Local Universe is just a little over a third complete, so we too have a long way to go in the current Superuniverse era. But even from this vantage point, my children, we see no end to anything. We wonder, along with you, about those Outer Space levels out there. It’s like God’s rubbing His hands together and warming up for the next big leap in a few more hundred billion years from now. Students: Wow!… Mind-boggling… We’ll all still be here…somewhere…
NEBADONIA: We know this too is a great tease for your intellects–how something can have a beginning and yet no ending–another definition of God’s continuous creation. Best to leave it at that.
Second student, laughing: Yeah, like when are souls born–in what hospital?
Soul (Human souls)
NEBADONIA: Well, we do know that–when the Thought Adjuster appears in the young child’s mind and begins influencing things and taking notes–so to speak–co-creating a soul; although this Father Fragment was around since conception and fully aware of all the child’s inheritance factors and potential. It is a perfect–allow me to use that word–co-creation when a fragment of God’s pure spirit gains the gift of a personality, while that personality gets the gift of a continuing, growing self-conscious identity through the Father Fragment–the possibility of eternal life. What each has to give the other to make the combined being we call an ascendant mortal makes you, as Michael said, a corollary of the cosmic adventure yourself. You are made for it; it is made for you. It is why God is appreciative of your love when you freely give it to Him; why this is only possible by His creating you able to grow your freedom, to begin with.
Closing
So I welcome and celebrate with you, my children, your dawning comprehension and expanding realization of who and what you are, and all that potential you have that will take forever to develop. You are gaining some genuine foresight from all your insight here. Michael sends you his peace, and reminds you to relax into him, accept yourselves totally, and be at peace with yourselves. And keep feeling my love. I do enjoy that so much when I am an actual experience inside you. Good evening.
