2007-05-14-Meaning & Value, What Is Our Soul
Marin #129
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Meaning & Value, What Is Our Soul
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: Meaning & Value, What Is Our Soul
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, Once again we get together to pool our interests and our devotion. We ask you help us experience your presence here. We joyfully suspend our disbelief and trust that what you offer us is truly without conditions, without any kind of strings attached. For you have let us know: you trust our evaluation of what you have to offer. And so we thank you for your faith in us. Amen.
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my dear children, this is Nebadonia, your spirit mother, Holy Spirit of Nebadon. I welcome you all this evening, and especially you, my daughter. It’s good to have another female here. (chuckles) Michael and I do treasure the devotion you bring us, and the openness with which you trust where we lead you. What a joy this is, being in stillness here together. Just let yourselves relax in our embrace. We are always here. This is our nature. This is our purpose, and it is our delight. Some day when you are able to open the Morontia Records, you will be able to see Michael and I as when we first came out from Paradise, all those billions of years and millions of evolutionary worlds and architectural spheres ago.
You will be able to enjoy with us how we’ve grown with our local universe. We are both of Paradise origin, yet like you, our children, we too are experiential beings. We too have our own souls–all of our experiences. We too feel the need to keep growing. This is part of God’s great gift to us: that we earn our souls. It is never all downhill from anywhere, or any-when. Thus too we are ultimately stripped of pride, for the reward for our courage is that it is still needed. In this we trust in our Father, and we thank him for this necessity.
Lesson
NEBADONIA: Tonight I would like to go deeper into something that Michael and I have both initiated, for we feel there is some doubt or confusion about our statements that even warfare and conflict and crime give meaning to your lives. We feel some of you have a notion that meaning only pertains to that inner positive spiritual intent that most humans do have. Yes, there is great truth in the spiritual fact that most are doing the very best they can, day to day, to find meaning and value in their lives. But meaning, my children, is more than just what you might think of as those positive things that occur within you, or happen to you. Meaning encompasses all experience. Think about this a moment. For those tragic individuals who through pure coincidence do know so much pain and sorrow in their life, this is what life has meant for them. This is meaningful. Indeed, from a spiritual standpoint there is nothing meaningless that happens.
Ultimately the Supreme Being gives meaning to everything out here in time and space. Mostly for you the term meaningless only refers to that which is not yet understood, that for which you have yet no living context, no way of putting something in a relationship with what has gone before. Even recognition means recognizing, to know again. So too there is that ever-new part of reality that is not always immediately recognizable, but that we tease you into trying to perceive anyway. We say meaning refers mostly to the mental part of your makeup, your ability to associate one thing with another. If you say something, and someone asks you what do you mean, you try to put that same essence simply in another phrase, another example. In this you are merely, yet profoundly, feeling for the identical underlying reality that you articulate in words. We’ve given you the example of how so often, when the spiritual value of something–some once beloved activity, some relationship–when you feel the value draining away, you often register this as no meaning. But it is not. The loss is more in the spiritual realm than in the mental.
When you lose spirit and become disconnected from your spiritual home base; when value seems to be draining away like dry sand through your fingers; I think you can see now how there is nothing more meaningful, nothing more terrible. This is the contra-distinction between meaning and value. So when we say that even those terrible aspects of life–deliberate cruelty, truly evil acts–do have meaning, we’re also pointing at the necessity to accept these realities, these facts, and not gloss over them. These have been real events in people’s lives. It would be a kind of spiritual insult to their souls to deny or belittle these facts. Rather, if you would help them, yourself, go beyond these real events, then you must counter-balance this real soul content of theirs with something good, something beautiful, something loving. They will both be meaningful, yet the goodness and love will be of greater value and different essence, coming from a deeper, more spiritual source. Indeed, they come originally from God himself.
This can be that genuine accomplishment, the notion of which we introduced before. It’s the only thing that really works to counter-balance truly tragic events. The human mind, if not utterly destroyed by pain and suffering, has this miraculous ability to heal itself, to once again achieve a living balance and reconnect with the spiritual dimension of personality that is always there, just sometimes out of reach and perception. Personality is always intact. It is of a spiritual essence, no matter what happens to the person. The soul transcript, the personality’s potentially eternal possession, is earned. The soul is an accomplishment of the personality vouchsafed by none other than a fragment of God himself.
But what a wonder when a living person can regain his or her soul while still in this life. Then once again the blossoming of spiritual goodness, and truth, and beauty, restores value of this miraculous sort to a living person. Let us we remind you, dear children, you are earning this realm day by day. Though you will go on to encompass hundreds of successively progressive Morontia lifetimes and encounter dimension upon dimension of kinds we cannot even express to you; still this human realm, this point of departure, will always be here for you. You will never lose sight or touch with it. You will have earned it, and it will forever be a part of your soul and your ability to perceive. If you have any questions or comments this evening, let’s add them to this store of what we have known together.
Dialogue
Student: Mother, thank you for all your love and support, and for all the guidance you give us. My question is: I’m a little confused about the word meaning, and the word value. It seems to me that they’re both connected, but I suspect I’m not even sure what meaning means. I guess the question is, what does meaning mean?
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, you correctly intuit that both are thoroughly inter-twined for the very reason that both your mind and your spirit are so enmeshed. Michael and I detected some confusion as to how the negative aspects of human life also get to be meaningful, and so this is what I wished to address tonight. As long as you are able to maintain what you call sanity and some small balance whatsoever within your mind, everything that happens can have meaning to you. To attempt to grasp the meaning of meaning is a little bit like trying to pick yourself up by your bootstraps. But mostly meaning means putting everything in a living context so that everything is capable of relating to everything else.
If something seems meaningless it’s because it doesn’t fit in and has no discernable relationship. Between meaning and spirit: spirit is the more fundamental reality, containing what we call mind; and yet they are almost humanly inseparable. The Infinite Spirit, being the origin of the cosmic mind, through me and my Mind/Spirit Adjutants, relates your personal spirit to your living collection of impersonal energies and materials—your body–for that is the main function of mind on the human level. Tonight I just wished to draw a distinction between these two terms insofar as they are not absolutely synonymous of each other. In a way you almost are spirit; you have mind. Spirit originates that value you both give to and discover in reality. Meaning is the way in which you associate this with everything else. Does this help clarify the nearly inseparable?
Student: Yes Mother, it does. I can see something but I can’t explain it. Everything has meaning, even what we would call negative occurrences like war and crime. All that has meaning somewhere along the line for someone–actually for everybody. Does it have a spiritual value or a meaning for the world too, not just an individual?
NEBADONIA: Yes, for in this sense the world is none other than all its individuals, otherwise the human race is just an abstraction. But of course no human being can even begin to encompass this people-world. From the standpoint of the Supreme Being, or God, there is no meaninglessness. But then there are no accidents from that point of view either. There is a perfect comprehension of everything that exists, all causes and effects. Does that help?
Student: Yes, it does. I have a feeling I’ll have to read the transcript several times. Thank you very much. It is much clearer than it was. Thank you.
NEBADONIA: You are very welcome my son. Be in my love.
Student (again): Mother, I have another question, if I may?
NEBADONIA: Certainly.
Student: Our soul transcripts: are they pictures, or words, or both—like looking at a movie? Or just what is it–if you can explain it, that is.
NEBADONIA: My son, the contents of your soul are such a spiritual-complete-transcendent reality, the closest analogy I could portray for you would be like science-fiction time traveling. But rather than being some disembodied eye that goes back and, as in a dream, sees yourself as you were when you were, shall we say, ten years old, it would be more like going back and being that ten-year-old—with all the sights and the smells and the sounds, but above all, that encompassing feeling, the whole, felt, wrap-around reality of what it was. That is your soul, my son. And that is why we say it is huge beyond your wildest imaginings. A fragment of God literally takes on your experiences. And so this is the essence of those experiences.
This is why when you awaken on the other side in a body that is so much more subtle and spiritually sensitive, so much more of this soul, this cosmic reality you are now earning, will be available to you. The closest you can approach this now is in your stillness when you are able to relax your more surface busyness and concerns, and just open yourself to whatever, little moments will pop out. And oh for such fleeting moments you can have this experience of what once was. This gives you the tiniest, tiniest inkling as to what God’s soul must be; what the Supreme Being must be: to hold all the souls of all the personal beings who have ever been out here in time and space. One day, my son, you will join with your Father fragment, and your soul will be your conscious possession in its entirety.
Student: That will certainly be a day to look forward to.
NEBADONIA: (laughing): And you will not forget it! It will change the very nature of your being. In a way your real eternal life will just be beginning. But that is your soul, my son, and that’s about the closest I can come to giving you some feeling of it.
Student: Thank you, Mother, I can wait until I get there. (more laughter)
NEBADONIA: : Well, be still and let it pop up every now and then, just to reassure you it is there. Nothing of spiritual value is ever lost. That is the nature of reality. (long pause, then, addressing two first-time
Students visiting…) J, and S: do you want to jump in?
Student: Well, I’m happy to be here. I find myself relating to experiences in the past with
NEBADONIA: . I’m experiencing her now in my own mind, as well as through you, transmitting. I can feel the love in the room. No, I have all I need… (indecipherable…)…my own experiences, my own choices. The choices I make determine the experiences I get. It all works for the good.
NEBADONIA: : My son, then you are blessed indeed. But this is me— Nebadonia, asking. I surely enjoy your feeling so welcome here. Michael and I do look forward to these opportunities. But I will always welcome you to feel me right there inside you, and I treasure the extent to which you can.
Student: Happy Mother’s Day. (laughter) I didn’t think I would be celebrating Mother’s Day this year.
NEBADONIA: : I’m happy to give my essence to all my human mothers. I’m happier still when their children can feel my essence in them. It forms an unbroken chain of the Infinite Spirit, through me, out to all of our many worlds. Nebadon is in a way my living body. You are all within me, like little glowing points of light. So I joyfully accept your love, my son. And be in mine. You too, S, are welcome to comment, or not. We all enjoy this shared consciousness and love. And you, D?
Student: Yes; I was just waiting. I was thinking how every breath we take, every action, has meaning. I guess I see meaning as having something to identify with. It’s the basis of who I am. I value these moments of communion. When I spoke to both you and Michael many times, over asking myself what I want–I want to know what I want; and then as I go deeper and deeper in that, I came across this book called The Secret. It’s been out there for awhile. It seems like you’re supposed to manifest whatever you want. But then the question came to me, who is doing the asking of what they want? So that’s what I’ve been asking myself. Do I want that big house, or that car—even peace on earth? So I went deeper into stillness, to rest, and I came to understand that if this is not in harmony with my soul, with my spirit, then whatever I so-called think I want will not come into being; but whatever I need, will. So I’m allowing this deeper understanding, and faith, and confidence, in this realization. Do you understand? (laughter)
NEBADONIA: : Very much so, my son. I’m delighted you’re finding this way of adding your personal input into your life, and discovering that the near-essence of yourself does change, does grow and evolve. At the same time you are growing a trust that there is some super-ordinary wisdom involved here, that is extra-you. It’s a matter of real courageous acceptance, that this wisdom is playing a game of leap-frog with your own self-questioning. To an impatient soul this might be very frustrating, like chasing yourself down the ever retreating bottom of a rabbit hole; and it is for some.
For so many folks there is no sense of their real actuality, their being a living and evolving cosmic fact. They are still caught up in the insecure becoming of adolescence. They can only feel their own inability and anxiety to get a grasp on themselves as a fixed or settled fact—which is impossible anyway, since nothing humanly conscious is. They have yet to grow the faith and the trust that there is this other, this unbelievably super wisdom that is actually within them, there to discover. So I understand very well. You very adequately express this game of leap-frog you are playing with a part of yourself, with this other. For that other is us. It is my Spirit Adjutants, Michael’s Spirit of Truth, and your Father fragment, helping you question your assumptions, and providing at times the actual thoughts that tease you into trying again. The evolution is the important thing. This is how you grow.
Student: I do feel that. I was wondering why folks like those who dwell on manifesting and whatnot, why they never stuck with me? It’s like they’re missing the point. I’ve always believed more: Seek first the kingdom of heaven and everything else will come that is needed. And though I struggle at times with what I think I want, in terms of other outlets for my creativity, other work, one of the greatest things I’ve received was the wisdom that there is a time and a place for everything. If I have faith in how my life has come to this point, then I have the confidence to know that when I am ready to participate in other creative endeavors, it will happen. Like when my daughter, and soon-to-be son-in-law, and granddaughter, are ready to be on their own, it will happen. It’s just becoming aware and in tune to a natural order of things without pushing, without coercing, with just being in the moment. It’s all we have. So thank you.
Student visitor again: Yes, I’d like to know about the eternity of now.
NEBADONIA: : The most straight-forward way of expressing this is that it is always now. In addition, from a human standpoint it is easier to see how the eternal past exists in now, for you have your own memories produced by your living, material mind as an example. And we’ve assured you that your soul is a spiritual reality also living in now. But as to the eternity to come, the future has truly not happened yet. When you try to conceive of and comprehend–time, sequence, duration, possibility–from an absolute point of view, you run into paradoxes, seeming contradictions, of how can the Infinite Being not know beforehand, not perceive perfectly on into the eternity of the future? He can, except that the freedom in which he creates, and also the freedom he bestows upon the myriad orders of his personal children, is also real.
You are not just traversing some track, like a railroad train, that has already been laid out through time. There is only predestination in the sense of you being but a tiny part of an enormous undertaking. But that undertaking is so created as to give reality to your freewill choices–within the circumscribed realm of your consciousness. And so the eternity right within now is all these freewill choices of all personal beings; and no less. This is God’s will; he is riding right along with us. He chooses to let us be free. And so in this sense the eternity of the future is this free nature of what is happening now. Yes, God is everything—total reality is one—and–also forms the ultimate or absolute paradox to human comprehension in being infinitely diverse at the same time. That is the infinite eternity—now. Does this make sense to you, my son?
Student: Thank you.
NEBADONIA: : You’re very welcome. There is no way to approach oneness without taking it apart to express real happenings within this diversity. You could say that everything is God, but only God experiences it as such. Shy of that absolute level, this is all just using words to point at something no human being really experiences. Some of your metaphysics got stuck on this point, reasoning that since everything was one, there was no true freedom, no independence of other-beings. People failed to distinguish this is the nature God chooses to give his creation, that eternity/infinity in now is another name for his and other personal-beings’ freedom. There is a real, that is, constantly growing eternity to come because God, and his created children, don’t have to repeat themselves. In other words, it has not all already happened. But enough! (Mother spirit laughs) The trouble with speaking about eternity, or the infinite nature of it now, is that there is no end to it—no pun intended. Be in my love.
Closing
NEBADONIA: That, I would say, is a sufficient wrapper to tie up this evening with a neat bow—which, I am sure, will come undone the minute we look away. But that’s the nature of free beings following their own inner reasoning, feeling their way along. How delightful! What a hell of repetition and sameness it would be otherwise. We thank you, Father, for your good sense of humor with which you endowed us. What fun this can all be, and is, from time to time. Give us the courage to accept reality when it is not. Let us never deny for an instant the reality of pain and suffering either. Rather, let us trust in your wisdom that sees fit to include both in the meaning of life. Amen. Be in my love, my children. Good evening.
