2014-07-17-Turning Your Life Around
Lightline #450
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Turning Your Life Around
o 1.2 Group: Lightline TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Michael
o 2.2 TR: JL
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Turning Your Life Around
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Nebadonia, dear Mother Spirit and Michael: welcome. We do thank you for coming to us this way–through this rather imperfect mechanism: but thank you anyway. Thank you, Mother Spirit, for being part of us and helping us to register and realize things, and understand them, and to have the courage to reach for more, especially with those scary, unpredictable things that do happen to us. Tonight I do have a specific request and that is, I have a number of friends, some much younger than I, who are getting in really bad health; and they know it. But we do have the expression of turning things around and so, if you would, I would like you to speak about that tonight. Just what is involved in turning our lives around, especially when we know we are getting into some very unhealthy ways? So if you could speak to that, we would definitely appreciate it. Thank you very much. Amen
Lesson
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my dear children. This is Nebadonia, your Mother Spirit. I second what was given in the introduction, that I am indeed part of you, part of your spirit and part of your mentality. I am the one who stands between you and the Infinite Spirit of Paradise. I am a conduit, the way that you personally, each one of you, is tapping into the Universal Spirit that surrounds you, and surrounds all of us. This is my delight, to be your connection to the Cosmic Spirit–the Cosmic Mind.
Turning your life around
NEBADONIA: Yes, I would be delighted to address what you have invited me to, this business of turning things around, or as you say, turning your life around. Perhaps it would help to visualize this as heading down one way on a two-way divided highway. Up ahead you see a big flashing sign saying Doom or Disability. And there you are, heading towards it on a very deeply rutted road. You can feel all the weight of habit, all the weight of the way you have been living your life, taking you in this unmistakable direction. Now what you need to look out for–not only look out for but also create yourself–is one of those little areas in the divider where you can turn around, where you can do a U-turn in your life and turn things around–turn that corner and go in another direction.
But how do you do this? That is the question you are asking me, so let’s go to our Handbook for Human Beings that we have presented you with before. The very first chapter leads off with not only who you are, but also what you are. Here of course I am referring to personality. This is the kind of living being that you are, a personal being with a whole personhood of all your component parts–which is why a handbook comes in handy, does it not? In turning your life around, I think you are asking me not about those things that cannot be changed, such as your age, or what sex you are, or your general condition of the folks you live with, your family and your friends.
These things are rather fixed in your life. But when we get to personality, we get down to fundamentals, that you are a creature–because you were deliberately created, not only by your human parents, but your personality comes from our Father, from God himself. You are a creature of free-will dignity, which means you have the possibility to cultivate and generate right within yourself, right within your personal essence, decisiveness.
You can make decisions. You can have a free will, if you develop it. This is what it takes to get out of those ruts you might find yourself in, that are grabbing hold of you and determining which way you are going. They are all your bad–that is to say–unhealthy habits. So we have to start off with the fact that this is a choice you need to make. It has to be made in the awareness of where you are headed, what you see up ahead for yourself.
Personal decisiveness and creative spirit
The second chapter of your handbook is called spirit—the creative spirit that you are endowed with. It is part of your personality. It is the part of you that makes your free will possible. You can, right out of yourself, with your own creative spirit, create alternatives. In our highway analogy, you might have been looking for a long time for some way to cross over into going the other way–cross over that divide.
All of a sudden you realize that you yourself have to create that turn-around. You have been going along for a long time hoping things would change, even that something would come along and force you to change. Yet because of your own free will, because of your own choices, that dividing line between you and turning your life around is still there.
You yourself have to create the alternative. You have to be able to look across that divide and see yourself going in another direction; and all that entails. With your own creativity you have to come up with this alternative of what would be a better, healthier life to live.
This is where the third chapter comes in, called mind. This is where, in your Urantia Book, it states this is your most adaptive and flexible dimension of being a person. You have a mind that can articulate all these feelings you have about getting out of the rut, getting over there and turning your life around, heading in another direction. Your own mind is what is going to articulate to you all these creative choices you come up with.
This is where it gets very tricky, my dears, because of the culture that you were raised in. This very culture itself might be very unhealthy. The majority of folks in your culture can be living the same kind of unhealthy lives that you yourself are caught up in. These are the ways you were raised and what you are surrounded with–all your mass media, all the advertising, all the things that are enticing you to continue in this unhealthy way. They too are all in your flexible dimension of mind.
Here is where you have to have some ability of creative detachment, some sense of yourself and your own creative spirit giving you some detachment from your culture and from the way you have been living. These are those ruts you find yourself caught in. You might have been in them your entire life, just because of the way your parents and your friends are living. They too may be creating these ruts on ahead of you in which you find yourself. It’s your mind that can articulate to you what you have been doing. What have you been doing that got you to this point? What are all these choices–or avoiding choices in denial–that got you to where you are now?
This is the whole realm of mind–of intuition, and knowledge, and understanding. It’s also the courage to get out of those ruts, as hard as that is. You might be a little out of control for a while trying to cross that divide over into going a better way and turning things around. Some poor folks have never done it yet. They have no experience of turning things around. They don’t know it is possible. This is the scary part of all the effort it takes to wrench yourself out of those ruts. Who knows what is going to happen next? These ruts are kind-of comfortable in their familiarity.
Mind and body
Of course this leads into the fourth chapter of your handbook, your physical-ness—your body. For so many of you, this is actually part of those ruts you are caught in, the way your body has adapted to and developed a hunger for certain bad habits. Your body will generate right out of its own habituation the craving for all the terrible things you are doing that are ruining your health. Again: Michael and I make no judgments here, but why we use the word unhealthy. This should be your own assessment according to what your body is telling you–that you are getting weaker and you are developing various diseases that are within your possible ability to turn around, and get better.
Again, we are talking about those life-style changes that are within your potential ability to make, because it is also your body that can be your truest evaluation of what you are choosing to do. Most simply: are you getting healthier? Is whatever you are trying–shall we say to give up a bad habit, a very pernicious, difficult bad habit: is it working? For as your body can generate the desires, and impulses, and cravings quite regularly, so it can also be an enormous blessing–if you can find a way of turning things around. If you make that decision; if you make that choice; if you exercise your free will and get the human, free will dignity of that choice, of being free from that unhealthy habit; this is what your body will rejoice in telling you. Yes!–I am getting healthier. I am getting stronger. I have more energy now, and more hope.
These are physical things. Then there’s the fifth chapter of your handbook, the other part of you that isn’t only your own memories of the past, because God’s hand is involved here. This is your soul. This is the full record of all you have known, all you have experienced, all you have been: your totality to date. It’s not just superficial memories, because in your deep meditation you can go back to moments in your life, so fully, that you relive again where those original little ruts started. Perhaps they were your folks, your own beloved mother and father with their bad habits, that you simply inherited as you grew up.
Maybe that is where it started. But now it’s to actually take the time out of your present life to relive those moments and to forgive all those bad influences, and forgive yourself by re-living, by making them real again. Tap into your soul and have some benefit of God’s point of view, a more objective point of view, even though it is not yet absolute for you–you are not yet totally enlightened and at one with the presence of God within you. Still, with your greater maturity now, and all the years you have lived, all this is within your soul.
Experiencing your soul in stillness
So the greatest technique of all–to get all this started—is to open that handbook and really feel all that you are. This is where we recommend the practice of stillness. Take time out of your busy life with all of its habits–good and bad–and just be. Sit down and, with your personality, choose to do this. You’ll be choosing to sit there and let whatever comes up, do so. Let your own creative spirit suggest things; suggest that better, more healthy and stronger life. Let your mind go and, if necessary, simply wade through all those thoughts that come, wade through them all with some detachment.
See what is occupying your day-to-day life. What might you be denying and keeping out of your mind that is causing all this ill health? Have the courage then—and let me help you with this courage–to face things and let all these ideas come. Check them out. Look them over. Get the feeling of them. Every morning get a new feeling of where you are.
Meanwhile you’ll be sitting upright and actually practicing goodness with your posture and with your breathing. You’ll be giving your body some attention, and some respect! We have offered one little handle you can hold onto during this trying time, and that is counting your breaths up to ten. Stay in touch with your breathing and your heart beat, rather than wondering off somewhere. Stay in touch with your body as you are meditating. Feel it. Feel what is right with it. Feel what is wrong with it.
Get all this feedback from your own physical being and have the courage to accept where you are, however unhealthy, however full of pain you might be. This is where moments of your soul can come forth to remind you that you are a child of God’s. You have the potential for turning things around. This is how you start. This is how you get out of those ruts–first by being aware of them. This is where you get the good ideas about how to cross over that center divider and go off in another direction. It’s how you turn your life around towards health, and strength, and happiness; and all that that might take, perhaps a whole change in lifestyle; perhaps even a change in company. It could be your own family or your own friends who are helping you be so unhealthy in all your habits.
Michael and I salute your courage and remind you, here: this is what it takes. It takes courage to extend yourself into the unknown and give things a try. If you are not certain whether some things are healthy or not, suspend them for a while. Whatever the habit is, give it up for a week or two and see what happens.
Adventure into the unknown
NEBADONIA: This is the adventure of being a human being. As we have talked about before, this is what you are involved in, my dear ones. Life is an adventure, and the sooner you accept that, you’ll be accepting that you are always dealing with some quotient of the unknown. You are heading off into an enormous creation that so totally dwarfs your wildest imagination, because this is God’s creation out here that you are heading out into. It is even part of your life right now.
So open that handbook to get a feeling for all of who and what you are. Exercise your creative spirit, your imagination, to create that better life. Be totally open to your mind. Fearlessly let come up whatever will in your meditations. Look at them and pay some respect, some deep love and respect for this poor suffering body of yours that is crying out for help. Let that God portion, that God part of your soul come forth to remind you of this ungraspable totality that you really are. Turn your life around and then have that too in your soul–to have done that and have that ability in your soul to stand you in good stead–forever.
This is what Michael and I do our own best–to give you some feeling for, because it is your free will, my children. It is your choice that we honor and, as dutiful parents, remind you that it is yours to make. This is why you are free. Because it is, and will always be, your choice in whatever situation you find yourself. Now if you have any questions or comments this evening, you can choose to do those too.
Dialogue
Student #1: Mother Spirit, I am very desirous to be a T/R. I have asked for some communication, and prayed about it, but I find myself holding back. Can you give me some help with that?
How to transmit/receive
NEBADONIA: Yes, my dear. This is something that, with this particular T/R, all Michael and I can do at the cusp–you might say–at the final moment, all we can say is: step off. You’ll be entering a realm in which you cannot anticipate what comes next, because that very anticipation is still being generated by your own personality, by who and what you are. And this is the very thing that, if you think about it, this is the very thing you are trying to get beyond. And so it is a mystery. It is an adventure raised to a critical point to where you simply have to step off and trust that the ground will be underfoot.
It is a little like being on the edge of the Grand Canyon, because here we are, and yet all we can say is step off and trust the ground will be under your foot. You’ll be entering a realm in which you cannot anticipate what comes next because it is not—hopefully–coming from you. This is the whole point of it. It would help if you had a group, maybe a couple of friends that are interested in the same kind of thing. Or, even shy of that, you can get one of those little recorders to practice with, because when you speak something, either to some close friends or to your recorder, this is giving this other spiritual being an objective reality.
These are actual sound waves in the air, right? You just have to step off for there is nothing shy of this that will do it. This is where it takes nerve, and even seasoned T/Rs will tell you it never gets any better. It is always the same thing of stepping off and asking for a particular being in the spirit world to speak through you.
So this is the only practice. It’s like dancing. You can sit on the edge of the dance floor and look at those folks out there, and try to figure out what they’re doing. But the second you step out onto the floor, it’s you yourself all of a sudden, and there is nothing shy of this that works. So there are these various exercises, like practicing transmitting with a friend, and asking for help to come to you. Now have you done these?
Student #1: I hesitate. I don’t know why. Maybe I don’t feel worthy, or something. I don’t know.
Dealing with fear
NEBADONIA: Maybe it’s just scary. Maybe it is intrinsically a scary thing. It is like all the fears—as I equated it to dancing–all the fears of making a fool of yourself, or even, with all your heart not wanting to fool yourself. It could be a fear that this maybe isn’t genuine, it isn’t real, or it isn’t possible for you. All these fears are there, but the fear is also partly your wanting it to be genuine, and wanting it to really work.
Ironically, because you feel it has such a wonderful, positive value, that very thing can be fearful. Suppose you can’t do it? Suppose it won’t work? All those things. That is why, again, all Michael and I can say is: you have to summon all your courage and step off some way, if only journaling by writing things down. Say: Dear Michael, or Dear Mother Spirit, or ask for a spiritual friend, so many of which are flocking to the planet now. They are here. All you have to do is ask for a spiritual friend to start giving you lessons, and start writing.
Student #1: OK. Thank you very much for your help.
NEBADONIA: It’s a little bit like looking at a wonderful swimming pool which could very cold, right? Yet this spiritual realm is even beyond that, because you can’t stick a toe in except by trying it. You literally just have to do it. Ask for a spiritual friend to come and be your teacher, and start writing if you want, or talking out loud. Make it objective because until you start expressing this other personality, it will still be your wondering what it is. So have courage, my dear.
Student #1: I am persistent, and I will get there.
NEBADONIA:: And even though it seems very serious, always keep in mind too that it can be a lot of fun.
Student #1: Yes, thank you very much.
NEBADONIA:: Right. Michael and I send you our best, and wish in a way we could give you a little nudge.
Student #1: Seems like I need that a lot.
NEBADONIA:: But you are a free will being, my dear. It is your choice. And that is your glory.
Student #1: Thank you so much.
NEBADONIA:: Be in my love.
Questioner #2: Yes, Hi. This is Name and I am following–I believe I am following you. I have found a job in the mountains of North Carolina and I will be moving there soon. I feel like you are leading me there. It just feels right, and I guess if it feels right, that must be…. I try to listen to you through my heart and my soul, and I believe this is doing your will. I don’t know why I need to move there, but I do have a job, and I’m looking for a place to live. I’ll be moving in a couple of weeks. It is my prayer that I am following you and not something else. How do I know that?
Feeling and knowing
NEBADONIA:: Well, my dear, if I may, I’ll use my motherly tough love and ask you to accept the fact that you don’t–yet. This is another part of the adventure of being human. A true adventure means that you don’t always know what is going to happen next–from the extreme of hanging by your fingertips on the edge of a cliff while you are out mountain climbing; or simply going to work in the morning through heavy traffic. This is the essence of being human: you are surrounded by such an enormity, even right within yourself. It’s all I talked about tonight, about being able to turn your life around or, in your case, following what feels right.
You don’t always know. People ask, “Mother Spirit, how do I know you are who you claim to be? Or who Michael claims to be?” And we’ll be honest and say, you can’t always know right off the bat. In your own life this is why you have to actually/physically do things. You have to get your body in motion, and here you are moving off to a new spot, following what feels right. We can only advise you to keep an open mind throughout–forever. You are doing what feels best for you; following the deepest feeling is what is right to do. Then you are actually doing it. You are actually stepping off.
Student #2: Yes, I am.
NEBADONIA:: You have to keep an open mind then, that it may not be right.
Student #2: Right.
NEBADONIA:: The whole thing about being constantly open-minded is to look around and keep feeling what is happening, and be open to all of this. This is living your life to the fullest, is it not?
Student #2: Oh yes!–Oh yes. It is just me and my dogs, and I’m picking up my life. I have been here since 1995, and it just feels right; so I am doing this. I am selling off a lot of my things and moving to a smaller town.
NEBADONIA:: Have you been there before?
Student #2: My first trip was two weeks ago. It’s in North Carolina. I hadn’t been before, and it was an adventure. I am kind-of an explorer and adventurer anyway.
NEBADONIA:: Now I take it–as you say–you are following work?
Student #2: Yes. I found a full time position there as a designer for kitchens. Interior design has been my career, the career I have loved the most. Let’s put it that way. I’ve had others, but I am kind-of going back to my roots.
NEBADONIA:: Then this is a big part of your life you are following, to keep in touch with, and keep being creative.
Student #2: Right. I figured I needed that creativity back in my life more, and that is why I’ve done what I’m doing.
NEBADONIA:: Then I think everything I mentioned this evening, about turning your life around, applies. In this case it is not turning around so much as picking up some original creative things and staying with them. It’s your having the courage to get a feeling for what is creative, and knowing how that very creativity keeps you alive and adds to your life.
Student #2: Yes, it really does. It makes me happy when I am creating.
The challenges and rewards of being creative
NEBADONIA:: There is some challenge here because creating is bringing something right out of yourself that didn’t exist before. You’ll be working for clients and their situation, and helping them design something in their life. So this is working with others and feeling for what is best for them. This kind of connection is so wonderful, and such a sharing.
Student #2: Yes, it is. Thank you.
NEBADONIA:: Well: stay in touch.
Student #2: I will. I’ll be here.
NEBADONIA:: And bring in your meditations too. Don’t forget, I am a part of you. I am right inside you giving you a boost with all your knowledge and understanding and, in this case, your courage. You are stepping off in a very physical way and heading off into a new situation with new folks all around.
Student #2: Yes–new folks, new friends; yes, I am. Thank you.
NEBADONIA:: All my blessings, dear one. Be in my love. Well, my dear ones, I will close this session with giving you all my love and paying my respect for your very ability not to deny, but to feel–feel what is involved in your adventure of being human. This is where your greatest glory also comes in–accepting the adventure and even welcoming it. As Michael says, “Lean into it!”–all the wonders that it brings, all the wonders it has in store and in promise for you.
Living will always take nerve & commitment
For yes, it will always take nerve. It will always take a kind of commitment simply because of what it is to be a personal being, to be a unique being. It’s to be not bound up by some kind of mechanical or even biological cause-and-effect, but to have free will and the willpower to choose. Then you do something in spite of all the unknowns, and in spite of all the fear, and the anxiety, and even all the hard work it takes at times.
This is what your souls thrive on, my dear ones. This is what you call living a full life–taking chances by making decisions. Then after the decision is made, after you are committed, after you have stepped off; to still keep an open mind and not give up, not feel that “Oh well, I was just fated to do this!” You keep your freedom, even to reverse yourself if that is the case.
To be open each moment to the adventure, to the unknown? To thank our Father for creating not only you, but Michael, and me, and all of us–all the orders of personal beings he created this way so we can share the adventure and have company? So I thank you for your company. I thank you for being my children and giving me the glory of having you right within me, as I am within you.
Closing
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my dear ones. Be in my love.
