2006-12-11-Insight & Foresight, Wishes & Wisdom
Marin – MAR #113
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Insight & Foresight, Wishes & Wisdom
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: Insight & Foresight, Wishes & Wisdom
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Mother Spirit and Michael: As we approach the season of celebrating the birth of a Creator Son as a small baby human on our planet, we feel again that familiar pull. On the one hand we have the hopeful expressions of an ideal—peace on earth, good will to men; which seems to make all the sharper the lacerating shards of reality—the pain and sadness that people deliberately inflict on each other. So once again we ask your help in accomplishing this stretch you have called upon us to attempt, standing firmly on our understanding of the real, and our acceptance of it, yet never forgetting to stretch so that at least our fingertips can touch the ideal. Amen.
NEBADONIA: Good evening my children, this is your mother, Nebadonia. I want to thank you for coming out on this blustery winter evening to share this visit with me. I know it is a very genuine and heartfelt warmth you derive when you do make an effort to follow your heart, to go where you know you are loved, and you can love in return. This is the real stuff of this, or any other season of your heart and your soul.
Lesson
Tonight I would like to talk about the living balance that constitutes human experience, and how, just as in your prayer this evening, it does call for you to stretch and keep open to these two polarities, these two ends of a moral continuum that sometimes seems to have you on a rack. For feeling that balance tipping back and forth between good and evil, between what is possible or only probable, between what is real and what is ideal, the feeling of this often comes across as a kind of anxiety and insecurity. We’ve labeled this as the impenetrability of the future, which can back up into, and overshadow your present.
Let me suggest that this feeling of the living balance of these possibilities is the very essence of life itself, especially human life where you are beset by certain economic determinism’s. Here I’m referring to those aspects of your life—food, shelter, energy, time—in which decisions must be made of this or that, where, considering mankind as a whole, there has never been enough. I’m suggesting that this feeling of uncertainty tipping back and forth is largely uncomfortable because of some mass cultural illusions being held that actually represent a kind of immaturity, both of the race and the individual.
This is understandable. There is a need to constantly clear your present moment of certain past considerations because here comes a whole new bundle of considerations out of the future. After a tragic event you speak of finding closure, some way of wrapping up the event, some way of encapsulating it, or closing it so you can get on with your life. Yet there is also abroad recently a good sense of honesty, of sharing, by those who have lost someone dearly beloved, or those who have gone through some traumatic experiences, where they will confess that, even years and years later, they still have their nightmares, they still have their sadness and moments of depression. It seems there is something in them—wise or unwise—that needs to relive these moments and experience them again, keep them open so that they add to the meaning of life. When there is no closure, when you feel things opening up again beyond your control, this leads to an anxiety to feel this living balance tipping back and forth. You long to have it over with. You long to have it finished and settled.
Mankind has always dreamed of a golden age, sometimes putting it in the past as if it actually happened once upon a time, and in this the fall of Adam and Eve from grace does remind us there was, at least an ideal purpose of a Material Son and Daughter who actually did come to earth, whose children were to biologically up-step the aboriginal human races so that within forty or fifty generations there would be almost no persistence of negative biological traits. But there were also once illusions of the “noble savage,” illusions of tribal communism where everything was joyously shared equally.
This is where your Urantia book, and your more modern history, and even the Bible—concerning more recent centuries, go to some pains to remind you of the hundreds of thousands of years of incessant tribal warfare based on the principle of an eye for an eye, leading to revenge and retribution as a stark necessity of life. Those tribes who did not immediately avenge some aggression against them would simply be enslaved and dissolved/digested. You are reminded how all of the larger political/social units came about through conquest, right up to the nations of the present day. Even so-called voluntary alliances between tribes, or later, sovereign states, came about solely to address a balance of power against other alliances. This is the true history of your planet.
Yet you had the introduction of a counter-balancing or competing principle, one that fully accepts with insight the one of an eye for an eye—retribution—and simply asks with foresight–projecting this on into the future—how can one put an end to this? And this is the principle of forgiveness and love. This is the understanding that sooner or later there has to be an undeniably arbitrary decision that the retribution stops now, with you. However ones gross sense of justice is offended, however much one knows of certain horrific acts that need to be retaliated, there has to be found some way to forgive ones enemies, to embrace them and turn them into friends.
This is all the more critical in today’s world where so many who are caused to suffer are truly innocent of any evil intentions, and have only a racial, or religious, or cultural connection with the original conflict. Indeed it was some small but necessary measure of civilization in these past few centuries when warfare was at least attempted to be limited to the older males as combatants, a principle that fell apart rather dramatically in the last century with the waging of total war against civilian populations.
How to stay open when it costs you this anxiety: this is the challenge. How to thoroughly understand the true history of the human race, yet appreciate against this background of warfare the much more enormous, profoundly greater sheer amount of joy and love and companionship that mankind has known? This sharing of life’s joys and pain so totally dwarfs mankind’s intentional cruelty and aggression. You must realize deep in your heart, from your own evaluation of the meaning of life, just how wonderful—on the whole—has been the story of mankind.
Don’t forget, my children, as we talk about the social/political development of tribes into larger units, finally into the nation states you know, this is just one single thread in the tapestry of your race. In every human life you have those thousands of days just sharing your moment to moment reality with your father or mother, your sisters or brothers, your neighbors or friends. This has always enormously outweighed the suffering caused by evil intention. Life has always been worth it, except for those very few individuals who chose to end their own.
So let yourselves feel this balance. Your sense of morality is one of the great prerogatives of your personality, innate in your very being. You need to feel this as you go through your days. Those of you who are a little bit older and are hearing or reading my words, can recognize immediately how this assurance has grown within you over the years. You can think back on some of your earlier quests for the truth of life and the hopes you would have some definitive experience that would settle the matter once and for all—whether you called it Enlightenment, or Realization, Satori, or whatever Then came the slowly dawning truth that truth itself is alive, and growing, ever reaching out to be all-inclusive. Principles are limited or contained by their opposites. Those who cling to just one principle to the exclusion of all others—shall we say that of revenge or retribution—to achieve justice, forgetting about mercy, and love, and forgiveness, are setting their feet upon an endless round of violence.
Here is another fine balance between your insight into reality–that your mind and your spirit give you by living in the moment and being open to all it contains, finding its counterpoise with foresight—the ability to extrapolate certain trends and behaviors into the future, and allowing this to affect you now. You try as best you can to foresee the consequences of your actions. Without this you are just groping around blind, knowing only what is under your hand at the moment. On the other extreme you have those who are always living in the future. They feel they can only start living when this or that condition finally comes to pass, straining to see so far ahead, and basing their present moment on that, they can literally miss living fully now. This is a kind of paradox if you approach it from the position that there is some settled reality, some final truth, if you could only realize it, for it would be worth any price you had to pay in terms of sacrificing now.
Your greatest security, in your spiritual home base—experiencing your spiritual dimensions—is one of dynamic creativity. Even leaving this home base you experience in your practice of stillness, to more and more continuously realize how you are co-creating that world out there, means you are being more responsible for it, and to it. This is only scary stuff because of the way you approach it. Michael had his lesson on, because of how you realize these different dimensions or aspects of your being–first the material, then the mental, then the spiritual—you have to rise above illusions of materialism, illusions of finding some universal psychology or human nature, to ultimately perceive and embrace the uniqueness of your own spiritual personality, and everyone else’s. Yet throughout this whole process of maturation, my children, you do have a wonderful movement of realization, of discovering things about yourself, about who and what you are, that were always there. These are not inventions so much as they are discoveries. They just take a kind of creative courage to encounter and accept, to not get stuck along the way.
With this comes the one way out of this essential dilemma of being a human being: you grow. You stretch to encompass all that ever was, and discover the miracle of being able to add something more to it. As Michael said recently, referring to a person who had too many melodramatic past instances still plaguing her, the only solution was to counter-balance these very real-seeming events with something wonderful and creative now. On the basis of this real accomplishment, and the insights it could give her on what works, could she foresee a brighter future. Another balance to consider. But this, my children, is feeling life itself as it flows through you, feeling all those tipping possibilities resolving into the one actuality happening. You can find real spiritual confidence in the very ungraspable nature of life. Do you have it, or does it have you? And does it matter? Perhaps in the final essence, you are one with it.
So when you feel that anxiety of things moving profoundly, where they never moved before, recognize you have just stepped onto a larger stage of action and reaction, and realize you are beginning to further actualize a potential life that is your very essence, and always was. Here is where you find the real strength to be of good cheer, and meet your neighbor with a supporting smile.
If you have any questions or comments this evening, let’s feel our way through them.
Dialogue
Student (with much nervous laughter): Yes, Mother, once again your topic tonight seems appropriate—finding balance in all the feelings I’m feeling. I had a session with Michael on Saturday, concerning the possibility of a relationship with a woman who is quite young. I was reflecting on the conversation you and I had a few weeks before on an ideal relationship, and the so-called dating game. What I’m feeling toward this young lady: it seems my soul desires to share so much of myself, I feel that life has kind-of taken me on a magic carpet ride. I feel out of balance; I feel a tug of war going on inside me. Either I can resist it, or see where it takes me. It feels rich with possibilities. As long as I stay out of trying to impose my will on her, and just allow it to take its course, then the experience—the wealth of that experience could be immeasurable. But I have no idea, because she is young; yet she must think something of me if she is willing to go to the symphony…
So that’s what’s percolating in me right now, like I’m on the verge of tears so much because the yearning and feelings are so strong. I am keeping a watchful eye on myself.
NEBADONIA: My son, this is a perfect living example of what I was talking about. With respect to a future relationship, you do have those ideals of how you would like it to come out, or develop, yet your wisdom tells you that there is this other person with her own ideals, her own wishes, and hopes, and fears. Tonight I merely wanted to assure you that there is no easy way out. This is the stuff of life itself, this unknowing yet taking a chance and reaching out that occasions a nervous humor as you consider the dating game. Right within the reality of that moment to moment contact—taking a walk, going to a movie or a dinner, whatever—you can’t help but reach for an assessment of the potential; or as you put it: is there any future in this?
That’s the foresight part. Sometimes a very pleasant-seeming present moment can suddenly go hollow with a feeling that there is no future here. That occasions another decision. Do you continue with what is pleasant enough—now, and add that to your soul, or in the economy of never enough time and only one life to live, do you end this relationship so you can reach for another? This is what is entailed. So as Michael gave you his blessings in the attempt, (more nervous laughter…) let me add mine too. Proceed with your eyes wide open. (and Mother joins in)
Student: In some ways it is going against convention, but that’s never stopped me before… (-ditto-) But I am more concerned for her, and what she thinks. So…
But I have no idea where I’m going—as we’ve talked about many times before.
NEBADONIA: As your Urantia book puts it: for human beings insight definitely has to proceed foresight. You have to live as fully as you can today to see what you are capable of, what life is offering you, in order to project. At the same time, you know certain inevitabilities are on their way—possible injuries, accidents, the surety of old age and its attendant decrepitude—all of these are very foreseeable. So there is no substitute for making plans, making provision, giving up something now as a gift to that future you. Even the animal kingdom knows this lesson well, right down to the ants versus the grasshoppers.
Student: What I struggle with is the means to do so. My income at the present time doesn’t allow me the opportunity to put anything aside. Then with helping my children, all I can do is live here and now, and then, as Jesus said, let tomorrow take care of itself, or…you know what I’m referring to. I just have faith because of how my life has been up to this point, that the universe will take care of me, and will provide for me, in ways I cannot foresee. I am open.
I read something recently where it says, don’t let the future rob your faith’s sweet fulfillment. That was so beautiful.
NEBADONIA: Here again we’re looking another balance right in the eye. Keep in mind that provision for the future is not all material. There are those who totally ruin their physical and mental health stockpiling material goods—savings and such—and end up driving themselves into an early grave. Just finding out what is a healthy life, a mentally stable and interesting life, brings about the security of character.
Student: I have, at least, no problems with my health. I feel I do live a balanced life that way. I’m mentally vital and spiritually aware of my place in this universe. I feel life coursing through my being; and love, and compassion. I feel strongly that life is for me, and wants me to excel; and to allow it to be expressed and lived more fully.
With what has been written about, or channeled recently—the possibility of a lot of the population of this planet being decimated, I think it would behoove humanity to raise their level of awareness and absorb God’s reality, God’s original intention of what human beings are supposed to be. We need to raise above our limitations, and do the great works Jesus said we can do. I read in Masters of the Far East: if these people who are just like me can do these miraculous things like walk on water, or walk through fire, manifest money in their hands, or assist someone with healing, then every human being can do so as well. We don’t have to be limited by what we see around us, by our beliefs and conventions. There is so much more to our lives. As you have said, we are infinite potential; it’s time we started living that, and allowing it to manifest.
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, these are the ideals that, if you stop reaching for them, you stop living fully. This is the essence of faith, the confidence of spirit that ever beckons you forward. Faith helps you perceive an universal or cosmic growth, an evolution taking place, and striving to be one with that. This is the deep feeling that this is the natural order, this ability all personal beings share with their Father—the creative growth of soul. Spiritually, soulfully, all of reality is expanding.
Student: We need to break out of our boxes of self-imposed limitations and conventions. I don’t know the exact wording of the saying, but why are we trying to solve today’s problems with the same though processes that created them?
NEBADONIA: Yes, this is the individual creativity needed to evolve, to emulate our Father and come up with something new that does not deny the past, but includes it and appreciates it, and finds a way forward. And it is happening all around, sometimes so fast people protest of future shock, that it is happening too fast. There are a lot of the old ways, especially of revenge and retribution, that have to give way to a loving and forgiving allowing everyone to live. This takes enormous inner security and faith, to be content to live ones life, and let your neighbor live his or hers without demanding he or she live as you do. That is still the sticking point for most of the disagreements on Urantia today. That inner self confidence, that inner valuing of all life, is a spiritual creativity.
Student: I do thank you and welcome your and Michael’s validation of the security within me, and the idealism I have, because I know in the past—I’m not saying I got reprimanded—I was asked to be more cautious with my idealism, and not be so analytical—so to speak. But I see this is mankind’s way out, to honor the God-self in himself, and in all others; to see as God sees; to love as God loves; to create as God creates. That would be heaven. It’s here, if one will just see it, and allow it to be embraced. We are all little heavens, but I know that’s hard to fathom with all that’s going on in the world. To some it may be inappropriate because of the suffering and the pain.
NEBADONIA: Yet another balance between the potential and the actual…
Student: Yes!—that seems to be where I’m at. But I do thank you for your blessings regarding my interest in this young lady. What is the point in resisting? What is to be feared? So…
NEBADONIA: You are very welcome, my son. We do wish you good luck in all your endeavors…
Student: And you will be with me as I go on this date… Please… (much laughter)
NEBADONIA: We’ll be there for both of you. I hope this evening I’ve given all who may come to read these words some insight as to the desirability of feeling what may have occasioned anxiety in the past. Hopefully this can lead to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the complexity of your kind of being where you have different aspects of yourself acting somewhat independently at times. Because there is a wisdom to that. In his discussion Saturday, Michael mentioned the anxiety you will feel approaching a new person, or a new job, a new situation—what actors call stage fright, which is actually the deep wisdom of foresight within you releasing enormous stored energies so you can come up to the moment. You feel yourself queasily shifting gears inside in preparation. So it is nice to know that right beneath the surface anxiety of feeling yourself being moved, you can have confidence in this deeper wisdom/energy that is rising to meet the occasion. This confidence is another priceless pearl you have to earn, yet that earning is helped by reflection; sometimes even by the stubborn courage not to panic–(Mother chuckles).
Closing
This is what we mean by your being an experiential being. The larger purpose of your present life is to experience, to be open to experience, to be aware of and to eschew all those life-robbing techniques of avoiding experience. Always remember, my dear children, nothing of true spiritual value is ever lost. Every spiritually meaningful experience is yours forever. Be in my love. Good evening.
