2007-07-09-Being Physical
Marin #138
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Being Physical
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: Being Physical
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Nebadonia and Michael, Holy Spirit and Creator Son of Nebadon, Welcome. Welcome to this meeting held in your honor. We do try to imagine the kinds of beings you two are, and how it is possible for you to maintain such intimate contact with all your children across, or within, perhaps thousands and thousands of cubic light-years of space. We try to imagine this reality. Then you talk to us and you seem closer within us than we are to ourselves, more aware of our whole beings than we can be. So we enjoy this kind of stretch too that you tease us into contemplating. Strangely enough, or paradoxically enough, it seems to bring us all that much more down to earth, and aware of what mysteries we are to ourselves, what unknown dimensions we encompass. Thank you for heightening the adventure. Amen.
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my children, this is Nebadonia. Well, keep imagining. Perhaps this helps you stay grounded because it is exercising the innate spiritual abilities you have, even as mental/physical creatures. Sometimes being hyper-aware of the extension of space all around you does give you a feeling of your real concrete-ness by a kind of reflection–all that emptiness, and here you are very solid and compact within it.
Lesson
(Being physical)
There is a glory too, my children, in being physical, however your bodies are so definitely finite, surrounded by space. For though you can step on a scales and see how much you are, what the attraction is between you and this world you are standing on, you are an infinity to yourself, physically–all the minute processes going on within you, all the billions and billions of cells. Only recently in terms of mankind’s history, you’ve had electron microscopes to show you this unfathomable detail that comprises you. The value you derive from this information is such a spiritual shinning in your mind, feeding that curiosity that I delight in augmenting.
What a rebirth of wonder this can lead to with an appreciation of your physical lives: feeling the breeze on your skin; all the fragrances of springtime stirring in the air; the taste of your favorite food; now your marvelous electronic devices bringing you a whole world’s history of music at the touch of a button, the wiggle of a mouse; and then your vision that places you in a very distinct, unique spot, like no other.
This is the spirit of the physical, the value of “stuff,” reminding you that it all originally came from the Father or one of his designated and uniquely equipped helpers–the Architects of the Master Universe, the Paradise Primary Master Force Organizers. Think of the billions and billions of years of material evolution in the galaxy it took to create the elements in your body. This too is what we mean by completeness: each moment is the fulfillment of all the time that has gone before it. As Michael said last week, there is no need for all of this. Ultimately it’s all God’s will–in the aggregate. For within this aggregate are all the endless trillions of personal beings, each with their degree of freedom and choice of destiny, their future in their own hands, helping shape the destiny of all.
If you get the notion from time to time it’s all too marvelous to capture in language, you’re right. And so we tease you with how much more there is awaiting you. Like the vast space you feel yourself within, making you all the more concrete and actual, so too contemplating your limitless future can, by reflection, bring you all the more into the present moment, this particular here and now–right now–that has never been before and will never be again.
Then you have notions of momentum, different kinds of personal momentum somewhat akin to the physical kinds that apply to all the stuff around you. This is especially true in the highly mechanical reality you live in, casually tossing about thousands of pounds of vehicle with hundreds of horsepower of force. You get the intimation that the whole universe has a purpose driving it along; or you may feel a bit of discomfort if you can’t determine what that purpose is. But you can observe everything is in motion from galaxies on down to atoms, and everywhere in between.
It’s all dynamic so perhaps, you think, your own life needs to build up a kind of momentum too, piling achievement upon achievement. It may be some kind of economic bottom line, or other doing, that has to keep increasing in some measurable way. You feel, yes, now I’m really moving, now I’m getting somewhere. You scorn those who seem to be going nowhere, by your own measure. These notions are universal, part of your culture.
So with respect to your own personal lives, my children, this momentum is not really physical, is it? This is not exactly what you mean by talking a walk, going for a jog or a run, or climbing a mountain. For many obviously it’s measured in terms of material possessions. Different levels of society are determined by that kind of measurable bottom line, so much so you call it ostentatious, where material objects–property, homes, cars, yachts, airplanes–have more a symbolical role of pure wealth far beyond any kind of direct engagement. This too is a kind of momentum many folks build up and try to keep increasing.
But you notice we’ve now stepped over into the mental realm, especially when the symbolic meaning of an object far outweighs its purely practical usefulness. This is where material objects lose all their direct and/or intrinsic value and become measured purely comparatively, solely as more wealth than someone else’s. The pure materiality of the object almost vanishes behind this symbolical comparison, for this is what fills the owner’s mind. Life can get very abstract trying to maintain this kind of momentum.
There is also a more subtle momentum some of you enjoy, that of amassing pure knowledge. You become addicted to consuming facts, yet hopefully learning and correlating/understanding all the bits and pieces you’re taking in as you try to increase your spiritual realm of value and wisdom.
I mention these different kinds of physical and mental momentum you can experience, you can devote your life to, so you can see how very contra-distinct they are from stillness. In this context, stillness is the absence of momentum, just having the nerve to allow everything come to a stop. You can let all these notions and feelings of getting somewhere, cease. Forget going somewhere for a while and allow yourself to arrive. Withdraw all your projections and extrapolations on into the future, being so concerned to need this momentum increasing, and come back to now.
It’s ironic that for some of you who have such anxiety about the future, you can have an equal or increased anxiety about letting that anxiety go and just thoroughly resting, completely accepting that for this moment, right now, you are full and complete as you are. You’re not certain you can trust yourself to do so. Can you let go this self-motivating prodding of your own anxiety and just be? Can you dare to feel that there is no need for all this momentum, all this accumulation? Because it is true, my children, all this amassing of stuff and useless knowledge can be like a calloused skin covering over your true wealth, your Morontia soul co-authored by God himself within you.
Letting everything come to a complete stop, falling away, can you trust yourself to start up again? If all the pieces go scatter, can you trust you can pick them up again, but now with a renewed spirit and an enhanced appreciation of the value by which to assess them anew? Michael asked you: how do you refresh yourself, consciously, knowingly, deliberately? How do you do this? How do you shed the calluses of indifference, or being jaded with too much? How do you start again with the courage to see yourself with only what spiritual status resides in your soul?
These are choices to be made, moment by moment, and I’m sure many of you are tickled with the notion that your Guardian Angel is more concerned with your eternal soul that smoothing your temporarily ruffled feelings, tickled she is only interested in your choices, in your decisiveness, in your becoming thoroughly engaged in the wonderful, real stuff of your physical life.
We once compared this common kind of reversed human situation to those who cannot see the trees for the forest. They’re living in such an abstract, only-symbolical, hurried- and harried-along way they cannot see and appreciate the individual tree, the particular flower, the unique person standing in front of them. It’s only all “those people” out there. So, my children, ask yourself: what particular kind of momentum you are trying to maintain or increase? Where is your life going or, indeed, is it constantly arriving? Is it constantly settling into stillness and actuality? If not, what are you waiting for? Exactly what is being postponed for some future date?
Which is not at all to say there is no use for plans, no necessity for providing. But to start the truly monumental task of bringing your whole life into consciousness, these spiritual evaluations must be based on present, living perceptions. That’s the real knack of it all, how you shed your calluses and dare to walk out into the world all tender-skinned and tender-hearted. There are different kinds of breezes, my children, in the mental and spiritual worlds as well. It’s my mother’s wish that you can feel them as well as the breeze on your tender cheek. (there ensued a very long and palpable pause)
With all this talk of momentum, you notice how still it has become? Isn’t it nice to feel no necessity? Isn’t it marvelous to feel how the whole creation keeps settling into itself, constantly arriving complete, and only moving on because of a Supreme Will, a truly absolute power? On the human scale it turns everything upside down from your conventional wisdom. Think of your truly powerful people with the ability to give their lives to others–your saints. Think of Michael’s life as Jesus. Could it be that truly absolute power corrupts absolutely no one? Dare to be still and feel all that’s inside you.
If you have any questions or comments this evening, that’s OK. Just drop them like little pebbles into our stillness here.
Dialogue
Student: Mother Nebadonia, I’ve heard references to a Planetary Supreme and I wonder if this is a personal being, and if so, can we get to know him or her?
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, we might review here for a moment what we mean by the Supreme. This is a facet of what you must keep in mind is always the primal unity of the Godhead that does, however, manifest itself in such a way that, to begin to understand it with this blunt tool of the English language, necessitates fracturing that unity into seemingly separate functions. The Supreme Being is that aspect of God that is evolving with the time/space creation as a kind of over-soul, the summation of all personal creature experience out here. As such it refers to an accumulating personal reality that has not yet fully achieved its potential status, or, as your Urantia book puts it—the factualization of the Supreme. It is an ongoing and active actualization of a Supreme personality that you and your experience—your soul–are a part of.
And so it is with the Planetary Supremes. Every one of the billions of evolutionary planets in the seven Superuniverses has its own unique history, a further time/space reflection of the Father’s infinite creativity, if you will. So each has a unique world soul that, like the Supreme Being, is evolving, but has as yet not fully realized—become real—with respect to its unfolding potential. Indeed, when each and every world soul becomes fulfilled and reaches a point where it can grow no further—think of this as a kind of leveling off—concomitantly with the factualization of the Supreme Being, this will signal the end of the present Universe Age.
I know this is rather awkwardly put in your language because this is expressing an enormously soulful evolution of hundreds of billions of years–of the entire Grand Universe–in a few words. Coming back to earth, you relate to the Planetary Supreme in much the same way you relate to the Supreme Being, both being over-souls of their respective realms playing active, involved roles in the evolving lives of their inhabitants, just as your own soul plays an active part in your life. Some of your Urantia religions have expressed their peoples’ experience with this world soul, their feelings of something alive and unique to the earth.
At the same time this very nature—what you often express simply as Nature–is difficult of adequate characterization either as a personality or just a spiritual presence, for it is both, and more—part of something larger, as are you. You can feel it. You can relate to it, keeping in mind this is the over-soul of the entire world and its whole history, every personal being who has ever had any relationship with Urantia. Does this help your comprehension? Student: Yes, it does. One thing caught my attention was like…a leveling off of the growth at the end of this Universe Age? That doesn’t mean I’ll stop growing because I’ll be somewhere else, but does that mean the world will stop growing? Will the Planetary Supreme stop growing? I thought there were no limits on growth.
NEBADONIA: Very correct, my son. It’s when the potentials with which the physical universe was created have achieved en mass the status of Light and Life and there will be no more material creation—evolutionary worlds–in the Grand Universe to bring under spiritual control. Every system, constellation, and Local Universe will have achieved its maximum materialization and been thoroughly peopled with personal beings to the point where there is a general stabilization of populations crossing a threshold of, not a maximum, but a sufficiency of spiritual status to qualify as entering the age of Light and Life. The great game, the universe-purpose—and your own–of spirit conquering the material through the mediation of mind will have reached a stage of fullness where the Supreme Being and all the Planetary Supremes will have achieved the personal actuality they are now progressing toward. The leveling off refers to this end of materialization only.
You are right, my son, there will continue to be forever new birth, new personalities created, endless spiritual progress, all added to the Supreme, even while the First Outer Space Level begins to open up and all those thousands of galaxies begin to be peopled. The end of this present Universe Age marks the end of a giant step, but only the first with many more to go. The size of the Grand Universe of the seven Superuniverses is, in comparison to the hundreds of millions of galaxies of the outer space levels, as your Urantia book states, like an apple seed in the city of Paris. We love to tease you with the fact there is a lot of infinity all about—within and without. Spiritual evolution and progress, whether of the person, planet, or universe level, never levels off.
Student: Thank you, Mother. I had misinterpreted it and you’ve cleared it up—the idea of the Planetary Supreme as well.
NEBADONIA: You’re welcome, my son. I wish there were a more concise way of putting some of these complex realities, but we must give due respect to that very complexity as we try to put these true, existing realities into words. But thank you for asking, and be in my love.
Student: Thank you, Mother.
Student: Yes, Mother. I like the idea of stillness being a kind of stopping everything, and to rest. When I allow myself–and it’s not the easiest thing to do–it takes practice to stop the inner dialogue—my wisdom of extraordinarily minded ways of thinking is allowed to be heard. And my life begins to reflect that wisdom, that absolute power of spirit. (heavy sigh) Because I do desire to get beyond, to access a different way of being, of living, to get beyond the programming I’ve been accustomed to since I was born. It feels good to stop, and then go from there. Thank you for that reminder.
NEBADONIA: You are very welcome, my son. It was fun tonight, talking about how some perceptions are enhanced by dint of a kind of reflection from their opposites—like going out on a dark but clear, starry evening and looking up into the galaxy. All that space can give you a feeling of how concrete and material you are. So too can just feeling yourself breathing, feeling your heart beat, feeling this dynamic, organic life within you, give you a sensation of even greater stillness. Consider that your mind can wander about and be preoccupied with things both real and unreal, but your body itself is in reality. It has to obey God’s physical laws. And so an appreciation of your materiality, your physical life, is a way of focusing your mind without holding it a blank, or filling it with some, admitted, truth. There are many kinds of meditation, and some deliberately focus on an expression of spiritual truth–some mantra, some inner sound, some inner vision seeing something in your mind’s eye as real as if your eyes were open. These are all valid means to different ends, each with its own particular spiritual goal.
But stillness is letting even those fall away. Just stay with your breath and your heartbeat. Just watch your mind, which, as you say, takes some practice, for in a way you are, at first, only your distracted thoughts. And you are correct, this gives your Father Fragment, and Michael and myself, an opportunity to be felt, even thought, so you can be reassured: we are! As our presence swells forth within you, so too you can feel yourself becoming ever more real and present. This is the marvelous actuality, the completeness we speak of—not complete that you can develop no further, but complete in the sense of nothing missing. It can get very big in here, as big in here as all out there. You might even perceive/feel/experience something playful, something intrinsically ticklish, as if there were a big smile blossoming within and without: a really Big smile. It could be me. It could be you.
Student: It could be all of us. (Nebadonia joins the laughter)
I’m experiencing a situation regarding my truck—of all things. It could be on its last legs and not pass inspection; I don’t know yet; and there’s just no money for another one. I really need it for my work, but I don’t want to get caught up in, for lack of a better word, ordinary mind where I’m limiting my own inner strategy, and worry about it. So I’m seeing this as a challenge or opportunity to be still, to stop the dialogue and programming, and access my wisdom in a way it will arrive in its own time; and see what steps I’m to take. I feel and believe if I allow myself to do this–without panicking—it will be a great leap forward in my experience of faith, and conviction, and confidence. There’s something deeper going on, and I am seeking a better way—God’s way.
NEBADONIA: My son, I couldn’t put it better. You have a wonderful grasp of the situation in all its dimensions—especially the spiritual. You are getting to the point where you can feel yourself on the cusp of a decision, and feel how your trust and faith needs to be exercised—however much a pain in the butt it might be, (much laughter—Nebadonia referring to last week’s lesson) however much you do realize the kind of economic limb you are out on. Trusting that this situation calls for stillness and faith, and being open, is why we recommend a kind of meditation that does not just fill your mind with some other goal, but evidences this deeper trust in yourself and your mind’s ability to reach into higher realms of consciousness to weigh all these real nitty-gritty facts. You are achieving what I recommended earlier in this lesson, realizing this problem is not some abstract symbol for all its spiritual challenge.
So you see the irony that what are often considered the mundane, day to day facts of your life, can really be the most transcendent because you are feeling little touches and intimations of infinity within them, and how you must sometimes wait moment by moment, day by day, for outcomes that are still very much up in the air with you. Student: In a sense my concern is how much am I in my own way? That’s when I feel I need to get still, and be more and more. I mentioned last time to Michael how I feel the universe knows what we need before we are even aware of it. If you go even further with that, then there are in reality no needs; we are never in want because God provides instantaneously. So I’m allowing that to kind-of sift through me and digest and assimilate. I feel if I’m able to grasp that, to be still with that, that really opens up a whole new level of living. But I’m also scared. (nervous laughter) It is as you said, being a pioneer and putting myself out on that limb.
NEBADONIA: Well, everyone is out on their own personal limb. Just having the nerve to feel it and not simply distract yourself in a thousand and one ways; to really feel yourself living as a very concrete, physical being with your life contingent upon so many things; feeling the real economic necessities, and wrestling with them: keep in mind that God provides the needs mainly for your immortal soul, and has deliberately set up life to challenge you, and to exercise you. So when you reason about how he provides for your needs, remember that his realization of you is different than your own.
In one way, yes, there is no separation. God has a personality circuit with which he experiences everything that every personal being does. Yet no other personal being, outside the Trinity, experiences God as he experiences himself and his creation: us. This is why there is both absolutely no separation, yet too a kind of individualized personal freedom that is really unfathomable for human beings. Your own freedom is a bottomless, topless, side-less reality for you to explore. Within this freedom you can experience, even choose, separation to the point of ceasing to exist as a continuing discrete entity in the universe. Student: I guess you’re saying that we’re not separate because we are just principles—God’s principles; yet at the same time I’m a unique expression, expressing and experiencing those principles in my own, unique way.
NEBADONIA: I’m saying there is no separation from God’s side, but there can be enormous separation from the human side: both. People can very validly feel they are totally cut off from God; or even that there is no God. And this can represent a true state of their being. Student: But in the ultimate sense, isn’t that just fallacious?
NEBADONIA: No. Your freedom is that great; it encompasses that choice. In addition, human beings are not yet ultimate; only God is.
Student: I won’t go any further. (much laughter) We’ll be here all night. I know it’s getting late, but one more thing. I felt a lot of self-loathing, and even self-hatred, because I felt like I hadn’t been living my life. I hadn’t been creating the life I was meant to because of programming and misguided perceptions and beliefs. But the more I allow myself to co-create, to stop and be still and silent, then that self-loathing and self-hatred turns into love, and compassion, and empathy, and joy.
NEBADONIA: Yes, it’s a suspension of your judgmental attitude, which is a kind of arrogance you need to get over. It’s wonderful that you are.
Student: Yes. Thank you.
NEBADONIA: You’re very welcome. I congratulate you on your nerve to feel all these various parts of you pulling this way and that, because this is real. It is not some abstract, symbolical momentum you are trying to maintain.
Also, my son, keep in mind all human beings start from zero. You have to recapitulate all the stages. It is not that you have to go through them that is the problem—so no self-loathing is required. The trick is to not get stuck along the way: even here. This is not any kind of momentum. This is that wonderful stopping you’re experiencing, because you discover you are just one more step closer to the Father, who is every moment starting it up again—continuous creation. This too is your potential power.
Closing
So good evening, my children. It’s been another full one. I’ve enjoyed taking us on a big romp around the human situation once again, because it does my mother’s heart good to help my children achieve that boundless inner dimension of myself, and Michael, and our Father. Be in my love. Good evening.
