2005-06-13-Personality
Marin – MAR#51
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Personality
2Group: Marin TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Nebadonia
2TR: JL
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
3Dialogue
4Closing
Topic: Personality
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Welcome! We welcome Your presence into our lives – tonight, and tomorrow, and all the days of our lives. Then to think that we will be under Your close and loving watch care for the next…perhaps tens of thousands of years as we traverse the breadth of our Local Universe until someday, with a final hug goodbye, You send us off into the galaxy. So, we certainly thank You for helping us get started. Amen.
Nebadonia. Good evening My children, this is your Mother, Nebadonia. How good it is for you to think of what must be for you almost incomprehensible reaches of time compared to the few short years you have lived already. But this is good. It puts the events of your life into a broad context that is absolutely real in its potential. It does you very good to think of eternity, as We have suggested, by putting yourself in the picture. When you think of the endless worlds you will visit – evolutionary planets and architectural spheres hanging in space like gigantic Christmas tree ornaments, always put yourself in that picture. Realize that you will be there.
Lesson
And though you will continue to grow, both in your experience and your understanding of that experience, you will always be the unchanging identity that God created initially. This is your essence. This is the God-created personality that you are, that makes you unique in all the universe. So you can glimpse another profound balance of two nigh infinite qualities. One is an essence of personality who was complete the instant He created you, and will be forever complete – not exactly in time and space, yet always associated with some form of energy reality as you are now.
You will always have a very discrete and real body with which you will be able to connect, to perceive, to influence the impersonal reality of matter-energy on whatever world you find yourself. So you have this part of you who you really are, that does not need to change but, like a tenacious thread, will tie together like beads on a string all the coming days of your life, just as it has all those you have already lived through.
For this unchanging personality, this unique being grows in a spiritual way. You will continue to experience and as you grow more and more in spirit and in the powers and ability of spirit, so too your creativity will grow – your ability to joyfully enter into God’s continuous renewal of both all the persons of the universe as well as the physical universe itself. Though you may go through boring and somewhat stagnant periods from time to time as a human being, you will soon leave this behind. More and more you will be able to enter into the continuous creation of total reality – which includes you.
I know this seems fantastic to you in your present state. You wonder. Where am I going to put all that? I already feel stuffed with experience from time to time. I feel so world weary. I don’t know what to do with what I already know. My heart is already filled with the love I have received from so many friends, and given to so many. Where can I put the rest of my life, let alone an eternity of novel days? Certainly I must hit some place where my whole soul screams, “I’m full!” But We have a big surprise in store for you. And it will not in any way ruin the surprise you will experience someday by telling it to you now, your soul has no limits.
No limits can be put upon your personality either. For this reason nether We nor any other being shy of God himself can pretend to define exhaustively even what personality is. This is a pure and direct creation of God, stark and alone in its uniqueness. Every personal being contains something of His mystery. Even We, your spiritual parents, do not even try to plum the depths of you, Our children. For of course, We prefer it this way.
Is it any wonder that Michael, when He was among you on Urantia, felt blessed as a Creator Son of God to sit down for a while and marvel at the human children playing around him, climbing all over him, laughing and giggling? You are Ours, and yet we are all the Father’s. And here, as in so many other facets of reality, you see the hallmark of balance in His handiwork. When you look on your total being, see this balance between a pure essence who does not change, and a pure fragment of His; and now a combination of you and your Thought Adjuster – your soul, which is nothing but change and growth. No, you will not in any way dissemble your surprise the morning you awake on the Mansion Worlds and look around with an unfathomable recognition.
So much of your human life has been influenced by this Mystery Monitor of God, this will be one of the greatest surprises of all, this unfathomable quality of recognition right there in a place you have never been before. There’s such a transcendent appropriateness to all of Gods’ plans, the way in which He constantly surpasses your deepest longings and wildest hopes. This is surely part of His delight, for it is so much of Ours, and so much too of those of you who are parents and know the joy of surprising your children with what they dared not even hope or imagine. Yes, this is all very fantastic, yet it is real.
So don’t be shy about questioning any of it. Gods’ creations not only withstand, but welcome any kind of scrutiny you care to bring to bear. There is no top or bottom or sides to Him, especially with those creations of His you know of as your fellow human beings. Everyone you meet is this unique creation like no other, however slowly or hesitantly growing his or her soul, wealthy in spirit beyond their own knowing. So We invite you, My children, to stretch your imaginations and dare to hope, reach for all you can understand, grow to your fullest in appreciation, and still…and still… God will surprise you tomorrow.
If you have any questions this evening, we have time for them.
Dialogue
Student. Mother, it’s good to be back in Your presence again. I was just wondering if we can create our own reality apart from creating our perception of reality? Can we or do we have a relationship with our life and the thoughts we have, and do the thoughts create our life? I’m not quite sure what I’m asking yet.
Nebadonia. Well, My son, I sense in you several concepts. You are curious as to the interrelationship of how they affect each other. You have a concept of reality in an objective sense as it exists independent of you. You can be very certain there is a world there with a history of millions of people who lived before you were born, and which will continue after you die. So there must be something “out there.”
Then you introduced the concept of your perception of this reality. As Michael pointed out in His last lesson, there is no way you can experience a purely objective reality, because you affect it. You are necessarily a part of the reality you perceive, first of all because you are in reality, you are a fact of reality. And second, this perceived reality is coming in through a screen of your own familiarity and what you are accustomed to looking or listening for, what you anticipate the next moment will bring you – as well as the pure physical energies impinging on your sense organs. This has been a human puzzle for as long as men and women have tried to understand this relationship in their philosophy, where does the subjective world end and the objective one begin?
As a human being do you ever know an object in itself, or do you know only your perception of it? How close does your perception fit the object as you might imagine it exists in an objective way? These are mysteries for you to decide for yourself, in each separate instance. They are worthy of your study and your thought and your reasoning. So to the degree that your mental state, and attitude, and training, and cultural biases or prejudices influence your perceptions, so too does what you know of as reality become a consequence of your thinking.
But it can go the other way too. If you have an ideal of objectivity and you strive to be open and let the pure raw data of reality itself inform your thinking, this can become a way of growing by adapting to it. This is why We have tried to help you perceive both that aspect of reality that is continuing day to day, and that part of reality which is alive and constantly being renewed so that each day is not like the day before, nor will tomorrow be exactly the same. You can sense the limits to your concept of a purely objective perception of reality, and understand how this perception is experientially impossible to achieve.
There are no such limits on subjectivity. You might think, well, forget the subtle stuff, if some solid, visible object is coming my way, I will certainly perceive it! And yet some folks don’t, and suffer the impact. In the extreme case of various kinds of mental disease where brain function is gradually lost, a persons’ subjectivity becomes their whole world and they lose their perception and ability to cope with the world and the people about them. So there is no limit to how far a person can sink into pure subjectivity, clear to the point of insanity or death. Then it depends very much on what culture and society this person finds themselves in as to how they will be able to maintain their life as they lose or distort their perceptions of themselves and the outer world.
So objectivity is a good ideal to strive for. We encourage you to open yourselves and embrace as much of that outer world as you can, especially those other personalities walking around in it. This can be another balance to your own inner spiritual life, your own inner memories and feelings, understandings and intuitions. That outer world out there includes the whole universe that you will never find the end of in all your billions of years of adventure to come. Does this help you understand these relationships, My son?
Student. Yes it does. I expect that after reading the transcripts of this lesson it will be a lot clearer. I have another question. You and Michael have mentioned many times being open to reality – other people and the world – and I’m not certain what that means.
Nebadonia. Let’s use what we’ve just discussed. Looking at a person from the outside, somewhat as an object, or objectively, you would say this person is open if their attitude, their willingness and ability to relate to what is happening all around them, seems to be in accord, with a really full functioning. Subjectively, from the inside-out, this is how you will experience being open. The world around you will begin to grow both quantitatively in the sheer amount of what you can notice and what seems to naturally influence you, and qualitatively – the world takes on a depth of meaning.
People seem to emerge from a crowd of anonymous faces to become this person, then that person, every face unique and full of meaning. Reality is of so many dimensions, and so bottomless, there is no end to this opening. You will experience it most simply as your life getting better in every way you can conceive of it. This will be a fact, something happening. This will tell you, you are opening and not closing down. Your life is simply – more. Does this help you?
Student. Yes, it does. And I was thinking that, as You were speaking, that being open to reality is living life not through a veil of fear, but through a veil of love. Because I notice when I’m fearful I have a tendency to shut down, and not view people as being children of God, but negatively, meaning to harm me. And that’s not always true.
Nebadonia. Here, My son, your intuition has lead you straight to the primary cause of shutting down or, for some unfortunate folks, never opening much to begin with. You are very correct. Fear is the main reason that people either turn off their perceptions or fail to realize how distorted their perceptions are becoming – even to the point of paranoia and extreme hallucinations. Fear creates a terribly distorting haze between you and what may be not only harmless, but actually so beautiful as to dispel fear.
But I would ask you to think of love, not as a better or even the best kind of a veil, but rather the absence of one. Love can be your attitude, your willingness to relate to events and people by striving to increase your abilities to do so. As you are more and more capable of loving and accepting love, the veil of fear, and cultural or racial or sexual prejudices, all these subtle blinders keep clearing more and more until, with perhaps with no small shock, you realize when you are seeing clearly God’s creation, especially your fellows, there is no bottom to any of it, or them. This is not just some psychological projection, even of love. This is love enabling you to see what is real. Can you see the difference, My son?
Student. Yes. One is very positive, the other has a great deal of negativity involved in it.
Nebadonia. Well, there is a kind of romantic projection that you’ve all gone through, generally as early as fifth or sixth grade, where you were seeing through a veil of love. It was mostly your own projected fantasies which had to withstand two or three broken hearts. This was your having a crush, or puppy love as it’s called – and yet We would certainly not want you to have missed this either. True spiritual and soulful love is a kind of clearing of vision. Fundamentally it is what connects all personal beings much as gravity connects all impersonal reality. As it is God’s greatest gift to us, so it is our greatest means to discover what is real. Do you have any more questions, My son?
Student. Not at the moment. I just feel more peaceful about all of the failed relationships I’ve had in the past – that it’s OK to have had them, and it’s what got me to here, and I can learn from them, and not be poisoned by them. Thank You very much, Mother.
Nebadonia. You are very welcome. That is indeed a wonderful attitude. So for you yourself, and your partners too, for any lingering regrets; as you come to love them and love who you were with them, so too you may recapture the full reality of what that was. And be in My love.
Student. Good evening Nebadonia. I’d like to ask for help in getting ahead of the curve, like getting out of second and third gear, getting into forth and fifth gear, like getting over the crest of the wave and riding it down…and service, positive momentum, the clear-headed feeling of priorities I’ve experienced a few times in life, knowing a better way of serving others…eliminate a lot of fears. So I ask for the general help to feel that (?) might be the hunger-tension of paradise perfection is proceeding at just the right rate. Still accepting the cloud of unknown…unknowingness. Maybe simplifying my life even more. So I ask for any help in that direction.
Nebadonia. Yes, My son. I feel beneath all the examples you’ve just enumerated you do have a sense of being, to use another of your expressions, in the groove – being totally one with the present moment. While at the same time you have ambitions of somehow achieving some supreme or ultimate relationship with your life that you express as, not being right with the moment but actually getting ahead of the curve, or getting into some higher gear, or going over the crest of the wave where you can surf for awhile. This very ambition, if you are not careful to see the limitations of it, can lead to a kind of dissatisfaction which can get you behind the curve, and be a drag, so you have to down-shift back again. Rather than surfing you are suddenly back at the base of the wave.
This is a very common human perplexity. It requires a decision on your part. It might help to ask yourself which is the greater reality, what is happening right now, including all your memories of the past and all your anticipations of the future, or this ambition that, if it is not curtailed and kept in its proper place, can break your concentration and take you out of being in the groove, break this kind of a living, dancing along spontaneity of being perfectly in accord with the present moment. This decision is not in any way just being self-satisfied and no longer interested in growing, but one of not letting any impatience for growth impede your ability to do so. This is seeing that ambition can be not only the cruel taskmaster it has been accused of being, but can lead to an illusion of not only not progressing, but actually falling behind – where it itself is the main reason for this.
It may help you as you go through your days to set aside part of your stillness meditations to really wrestle with these notions of wanting to get ahead, shifting into a higher gear, getting ahead of the curve. Do this with all the vigor and energy you can summon, for a short time, and then set these notions down and leave them behind you and forget them for awhile! Don’t let self-judgement come between you and what you are doing. It can be a haze of petty dissatisfaction that robs you of the fullness of your day’s activities.
For as you know, there is a feeling of being right in the groove, not ahead of yourself nor behind, but right one with yourself in what you are doing that very moment – with no “other you” standing aside with this dissatisfied, petulant critique. It’s a kind of concentration and focus. You still keep in touch with your ambitions and wondering, where do I grow next, how can I grow? But then, ironically, you grow by putting these out of your mind with a decision, and giving yourself one hundred percent to what you are doing. Does this help you , My son?
Student. Yes, it’s true. It’s one of the most wonderful lessons I’ve ever had. And it gives me hope of writing someday of the pros and cons of ambition – the subtlety of it, possibly pride entering in, the fear of defeat and so forth. These are the kind of lessons I’m sure the Melchizedeks are so profound at. So I thank You very much for that.
Nebadonia. As I cautioned you once before, you cannot pick yourself up by your bootstraps, My son. You cannot do one hundred percent and hope to stand outside of yourself and judge what you are doing, both at the same time. So think about this and think about ways of giving each its proper place. And be in My love.
So, you personalities, (laughter) how do you feel about wrestling with all these aspects of your be-ings?
Students. Good! It makes life worth while. It sure is a lot of stuff.
Nebadonia. Well, you are very complex. The last few lessons We have encouraged you to have some appreciation for the all ways your physical and mental and spiritual and soulful dimensions are so alive and, in an very moving manner, informing and influencing each other. This is one of the wonderful rewards of stillness, and it has been expressed by many of your philosophical and religious teachers as, somewhat as you let a container of stirred-up muddy water just settle, so too your taking a break from actively striving to bring all these different dimensions into accord, by just relaxing and letting things be, and just observing as delicately as you can without changing things – which is no small spiritual ability you will have to acquire! (here Mother gave a sympathetic little chuckle) – but this letting things be, letting things settle and clear of themselves, is possible. What emerges, seemingly by itself, but actually with Our help, and your Father’s, is a spiritual unity, the single thread that runs through everything.
Closing
So also rest your incessant strivings, My children. Give your completeness a change to emerge. Don’t fear this. It is not some smug self-satisfaction. It is a gift of God as He created you. You are entitled to enjoy it. Soon enough the world will call you back. Yet the deeper you can be at peace right within it, the more joyous can be your attitude toward it. My love is always here. You can always ride on it for awhile, and coast along. Good evening.
Students. Good Evening, Mother.
