2008-02-25-Your Personal Spirit
Marin #149
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Your Personal Spirit
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 Dialogue
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Your Personal Spirit
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, We welcome you and thank you for these thought-provoking and spiritually insightful sessions. It takes us human beings awhile but, however slowly, it also seems very inexorably we can feel your understanding soaking into and transforming our own. And so we wonder. We would be ever so happy to directly perceive spirit–who wouldn’t?–but we wonder if this is possible. Is spirit something directly perceptible, or is its actual presence only a function of our understanding–to us? You say that spirit inter-penetrates to infuse value into all we do perceive, and so can we literally perceive it in our world, in our companions, and in ourselves? Amen.
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my dear children and friends. This is Mother Nebadonia and I graciously accept your welcome and your questions.
Dialogue
Thought Adjuster (Your personal spirit)
As we have so often said, there is a spiritual dimension to your personality, to the personal being that you are. And it is a fact that spirit can be aware of spirit directly. Right within yourself you can contact Michael and me, and the presence of God in your mind, that fragment of Him that He bestows upon you.
Yet, as Michael said last session, while your personal spirit is part of your uniqueness as a God-created personality, it remains ineffable, ungraspable, like the horizon that seems to run away as you pursue it. But let me suggest that you try. Reach inside yourself, in your stillness, to wonder: who am I? What am I as this living, continuous point of departure out into reality, even that of my own body? What is this experience of myself on the inside that remains so numinous? Perhaps as you reach for yourself in your most fundamental being, you will discover this is also the point of contact, in super-consciousness, with your Father Fragment.
Michael went into some detail last time as to the ways in which you and your Father Fragment are not one, of how you are an individual within the spiritual encompassing of our Father and His whole material creation. Yet paradoxically, my children, as this is only another way of pointing at your most profound, individual spiritual experiences, it is these very experiences that lead so many to believe with their whole heart that they and all the creation are nothing but God: individuality is an illusion. This is because you are touching that transcendental element or dimension of your being–transcendent to yourself, for as you try to get a handle on the kind of being you are, you are approaching a pure creation of God’s. As Michael said, there is some final kernel or nubbin of uniqueness to you that you can share with God alone, or with Michael and I, your immediate spiritual parents, standing as we do as intermediaries and connections to God as well.
This is deep inside you; this is a pure spirit presence that is there to contact and perceive directly. It is partly the direct input of your Father Fragment’s thoughts. It is also my Mind/Spirit Adjutants that I remind you of; you are born and live in me–my space. You have been given by me an adjutant type of mind, distinct from that of the other personal orders of beings such as angels or Melkizadeks. You have Michael’s spirit, the Spirit of Truth that gives you a heightened ability to sort out the truth from the error as they come your way. You could seem to be very crowded inside with our spiritual companionship, but all of our inputs are so pure, so spontaneous and up-to-the-instant creative they must of needs filter down through your previous understanding and knowledge, even unconscious conditioning.
This is why one of the objectives of your stillness practice is to relax your ever pressing existential need to grasp hold of what is happening to you in terms of the past; just relax to allow something new to occur. We recognize how profoundly difficult this is at first to relax and allow our spirits to come through in all their spontaneity and unpredictable newness and originality. This is also why our spiritual communication inside you can never be demanded and demonstrated like an independent physical fact.
(Your spiritual orientation)
Now, your spiritual orientation toward all this input of ours–these thoughts, these augmentations, this truth-discerning ability, your orientation does affect your perceptual reality. Take the example of two people walking towards you; let’s say fifty or sixty feet away, over a soft grassy lawn, wearing tennis shoes, so there is no sound whatsoever. They are just for the moment pure sight–pure light. Let’s say further, one you’ve known for many, many years, accompanied by a total stranger, someone you’ve never seen before. In terms of pure light waves, as Michael said last time, you are recognizing and interpreting them in your mind.
But even though this means you may not be able to achieve some purely objective perception, it by no means implies there are no persons there whatsoever. And though your friend comes with a whole accompanying wealth of shared experience, even with the stranger think of how much you receive just by sight on the most gross levels of size, age, sex, racial or ethnic group. In the clothes they’re wearing, think of all that says about their social class and culture, perhaps further defining their age and demonstrating their personal idiosyncrasies. Then too you have how they’re walking towards you, and how this person and your friend are relating with each other. You wave and your friend waves back, and the stranger gives you a big smile.
Although all this seems out there in your friend and this person, consider your own mental associations and evaluating that is instantaneous, and seems to give you so much information about them. Then as they come close, your friend introduces the two of you and you begin to talk together–such an enormous precipitation of information. After a while you can deduce so much in terms of personality and character and background from their language–how they speak: the words they use, the inflections, the tone. There’s their whole attitude, as you say, their body language; and all the expressiveness of the human face.
Some of you consider this pure psychology, still just a dimension of mind, disregarding those spiritual adjuncts of my mind that are helping you: the basic intuition of putting all this together so you experience a cohesiveness in the two living beings in front of you; all the knowledge and understanding that is coming across and recognized; the courage and the sense of community and companionship with which you enjoy each other; augmented, perhaps, by some deep wisdom and thankfulness just that this happy event is happening.
Even Michael’s Spirit of Truth is helping you sift through what this friend and stranger are saying. In this situation, my children, let me point at the spiritual dimension that is not exactly perceptible in terms of your five basic senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. This is the spirit/creative aspect of intuition. So much of your friend and this new person, you are intuiting spiritually. These are those dimensions of them that, similarly enough, you cannot usually directly perceive in yourself: personality and soul. You intuit them, and not always infallibly. Only in this sense are the spiritual dimensions of them perceptible. But if you are open to it, as your own spirit-personality and -soul respond directly to their spirit, you can get a real sense of their uniqueness among all the people you’ve met in your life.
Intuition (What your creative intuition is doing)
So when you think about it very carefully, it’s not a matter of physical perception, this creative intuition, but after a while of association with this new person, you may get a strong sense of their character, the spiritual quality they have built up through living experience, reflected in your own: deep calls to deep. Now reflect further that even in all of the seemingly only physical perceptions and mental associations I’ve mentioned before, in every one there is a spiritual component. You can call it subjectivity; you can call it your own input. It could be prejudice. This is that co-creation we’ve talked about that is always happening in your perceived reality. It is most exercised, if not obvious, when personal beings meet each other.
So, my children, whenever you meet another human being, to a varying degree you are meeting yourself–your interpretation of them. What you recognize in them, within yourself, can very well be there, but perhaps not. You do have that saying, you see what you want to see. You have all the famous or should I say infamous cases in your law courts of several witnesses standing side by side and seeing the exact same thing, yet describing it later quite at variance to each other. So in this sense–to answer your question this evening–yes, spirit is perceptible, yet not directly in terms of your physical senses, if isolated by definition. But in your complete–that is to say comprehensive experience of the outside world and each other, with this understanding, yes, you can literally see spirit. It is not for nothing that it has been compared to the wind you see tossing the tree tops.
You can realize what your spirit, even God’s spirit, is doing. This is the very goal, indeed the height of religious understanding. This is what the greatest teachers have talked about when they pointed out that living a religious life is to live in a magical-seeming world of spirit. I say magical-seeming for in some ways this is like regaining the innocence of childhood when all these distinctions of the different aspects of human reality were not yet differentiated. But they are only alike: they are not the same. The mature vision of the faith-son or -daughter of God–who has had the experience of adolescent separation and has learned the discrimination of what spirit is and what it does–their vision sees everything from the evolved unity of worship and wisdom.
At one and the same time you can have both a highly focused, extremely finely articulated physical and psychological perception and understanding of human reality, and see spirit as something distinct, yet too see how your own spirit and creativity infuses everything like a perceptual extra dimension. As Michael said when he was among you, unless you see your reality through the eyes of a child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven, which is always potentially present. Certainly upon first encountering this fully mature vision of the world, the experience does seem quite magical.
As one ironic school of philosophy puts it, for quite a while after this experience you “stink of enlightenment,” you run around happily bubbling over and harassing all your friends and loved ones with your vision. As we said before, there can be no gainsaying this experience, this human awareness of the absoluteness and infinity of living spirit. What a marvel, what a truly wonderful growth of being united within yourselves, my children, when you can look about you and literally perceive the world from all these stages you have come through.
It helps, of course, when you have your own child in your arms; or paddling along beside you, hanging on to your hand for dear life; or having a heartfelt discussion with your teenage son or daughter. How wonderful when you can feel within yourself all these stages of individualization you’ve come through. You can see why some folks refer to this as a great circle, leaving the magical, mystical wholeness and oneness of childhood in order to find it again after a lifetime of searching and wondering. But I prefer to think of it as a double spiral, for you are progressing ever upward towards super-consciousness of the creation, and ever inward to touch Michael and me, and the presence of God.
So I’m certain, my children, you can experience this if you creatively imagine what I mean right along with my words. For while you cannot prove to anyone else what I’m pointing at with them, anymore than you can pick yourself by your bootstraps, you can intuit who you are, what you are. This can indeed be your closest and best friend. This is not some kind of schizophrenia, splitting into many pieces that don’t know each other, but rather the opposite: this is the fulfillment of being unified in full consciousness of all you are, and are doing.
This is being ever more conscious of the perceptible and palpable, personal and soulful parts of your being, imbued with spirit, enabling you to perceive this spirit in all of God’s creation surrounding you, within and without. Physically and mentally you are an object to yourself–you have a literal body and definite ideas; and so keep reaching and wondering through them, my children. Keep imagining creatively. See if you can detect just how you are spiritually co-creating yourself in your human life.
This is the religious goal of the ages, this consciousness of spirit. This is what you share with all those who have gone before and blazed the way. We assure you that, as they found their way, so can you find one which is uniquely yours, both for you and for your Father’s other children, for this is also your most precious contribution to all those about you. This is what they could never create on their own: you. So give yourself away. Go forth, my children, in all the bright, new days of your life to come, even through those dark midnights of your soul. See if you can perceive spirit everywhere. You will be recognizing within what is truly there.
If you have any questions or comments this evening, let’s enjoy their spiritual touch as well.
Dialogue
Student: Mother, I am somewhat… I’m relieved that I’m not able to see myself except through the eyes of others. I thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t see me except for the way others interacted around me–what they did or what they said. (sigh) So it is a relief. Can we contact you or Michael like any time we want to, or are there specific times that’re better than others; or are you there… just always?
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, let me answer your question first. We are always here. We are of an order of spiritual beings who do not need to rest or relinquish our consciousness as you must do from time to time. We are always here, experiencing you just as our Father does. We experience your total self in a way that, in order for you to see yourselves as we do, you must grow to approach our estate, the nature of our being too. So tonight I offered a few more insights as to how you can see yourselves as we do, how you can realize the spiritual dimensions that are uniquely yours, part of you and very distinct from what God and Michael and I continue to give to you. If you will: your spirit is God’s gift of you, to yourself and the universe.
Identity (Who you are: reflection and self-awareness)
As for realizing yourself directly or through the eyes of others; while it is true that there is some ultimate part of you–your total self, that will remain for quite a time ineffable because your nature on this level is so outside of your time-and-space experience; still I hoped to give you tonight a feeling of yourself that is not dependant upon the refection in another person’s eyes. It is what I mean by being good company for yourself. It’s the difference between being simply alone for awhile, yet not lonely. It is your conscious self acknowledging there is so much more to you–your essential personality, and soul–all these people you’ve known, all your experiences–forming the transcendent self you are, that Michael and I perceive you to be: this is real. If you cannot directly perceive it, or get a handle on it, you can intuit it. You can know deep within yourself how you absolutely are–in this sense, complete. You are a cosmic fact–(Mother Spirit laughs)–my son, potentially eternal by your own choices. And this can keep you in the very best of company. Can you get a sense or feeling of what I mean by who you can be for yourself?
Student: I get a glimpse of something, but I’m not sure what it is. There’ve been times when I’ve been alone, and lonely, but that’s not happened in years. I’ve been alone a lot, but I haven’t been lonely for years. I recognize there is something about me that is real, but I just accept it. I can’t really experience it or I can’t explain it. The Father Fragment is there, and my Destiny Guardian is around, and you and Michael are around, but that’s…there’s something more that’s me–in me, or as me. I’m not quite sure how to put it.
NEBADONIA: That’s it! (much laughter…) That’s you.
Student: Ah!–got it! I think… (…and more)
NEBADONIA: I guess you could say loneliness is that psychic experience you are capable of when you are spiritually immature or possibly just spiritually exhausted, and this other dimension of yourself seems to be painfully absent. You feel so profoundly there is something missing. As a young child you can feel lonely just in the temporary absence of someone you’re used to. It is also why in full maturity you get to a point where there is something there, however ungraspable it is–which you’re realizing right now. But then so too is God, who is your father, who created you. He too is the greatest encompassing, the greatest surrounding beyond what you can conceive. And so to a lesser degree you are to yourself. You are that something there to keep you company.
Most folks do think of this largely as their soul–all their lifetime experience they’ve earned, all that wisdom that helps them interpret their present moment deeper and deeper, more and more full of meaning. But I taught tonight about a palpable, intuitively perceptible spirit as well.
You are very self-honest, my son. You are right on the cusp of realizing this is something you intuit, not something that can be proven or demonstrated like an objective fact. It’s always partly you; it’s your connection with us.
Student: Thank you, Mother.
NEBADONIA: You’re very welcome, my son. Isn’t it nice to know: you are.
Student: Yes, it is. It’s very nice.
NEBADONIA: You’re more than what you can see reflected. This gives you that social independence and freedom to come purely from yourself, and not just be what you can see is wanted of you.
Your deepest self is your truest gift to others. So rest in my love; enjoy the discovery.
Student: Yes, Mother, There are times when there is nothing for me to do, nothing prompting me, and I was wondering what should I do. Is that a good time to meditate?–or just do nothing?
Stillness (Spontaneous moments of stillness)
NEBADONIA: Let me suggest that you take these times on a case by case basis, and see them as an opportunity to sense their uniqueness. In other words, you’ve had many of these moments of finding yourself free without duties or interests or drives. You’ve reached a kind of stasis, or suspension, and this is a wonderful time to deepen this very awareness in stillness. Don’t think as stillness always or necessarily as something to do; you might miss part of its nature. Be still doing nothing. Just be expectant moment by moment and enjoy nothing coming along.
It will transform into something, inevitably. You’re a living creature with duties outside and interests inside. But the experience can lead to a modulation from who you are to what you are. Let me ask, are these moments uncomfortable?
Student: No, they’re not. They are, as you said, kind-of freeing. Sometimes I don’t want to do anything, and that’s OK. I’m not bored, or anything negative. I’m just there, kind-of wondering.
NEBADONIA: Tonight I talked about aiming for this very thing. It’s an aspect of maturity to have these experiences that are markedly not boring. Perhaps, if only unconsciously, you’ve cleared away this time and space for yourself to just be. And that can be a transcendent experience if you recognize it. You’ll be moving along a very subtle dimension, so just enjoy the ride in this–doing nothing.
Student: The thing that’s good too is to feel this kind-of doing nothing–while I’m doing something! (laughs) Like at my work, and stuff.
NEBADONIA: Exactly. You defined it once as pure awareness–remember? (Yes) Last time Michael mentioned maturing to the point where things that were once mutually exclusive at the same time, you are now able to experience simultaneously; like being busy and being still; like thinking and being detached from your thoughts.
Student: I’m also becoming aware of distractions from that place of nothingness. It’s not really nothing because I feel really full, and as C stated tonight, I never feel bored or lonely. But distractions like turning on the TV, or fantasizing about some relationship, it’s taking me away from what I really want to experience.
Presence (Pure awareness and distractions)
NEBADONIA: Yes. However unconscious they are, creative spiritual insights and desires start to arrange things so these moments happen to you, moments of naturally or spontaneously evolving meditation. You’re not deliberately creating them so much as recognizing when you’re there, as if by magic. All of a sudden there’s nothing to do. Part of you wants and treasures this consciousness of pure awareness, and sees any kind of contamination as a distraction.
This is intuiting your essential nature, your spirit-personality; and it’s when you are closer to the presence of your Father Fragment.
Student: You know, we talked about the difference between the real and the ideal; but if I am this pure awareness, and I’m becoming familiar with this place, then shouldn’t my overt life reflect that? Why can’t I, not walk on water, but why can’t I manifest the talents and gifts that I am?–that I have?
NEBADONIA: Yet this is what you are beginning to manifest right in the middle of some activity. You are getting discrimination, a separation between this pure awareness and what has become only meaningless or valueless filling it up–as you say, killing time. You are developing a sense of what mere distraction is, and feeling much of your life up to now was spent on these distractions.
(Yes!)
Keep in mind, my son, this is that Monday Morning Quarterbacking we’ve been talking about, the after-the-fact judging. When you were enjoying these distractions you hadn’t yet developed this contrast. It’s only now you have this more pure awareness that they can appear so. As Michael said, even illusions have a kind of reality for awhile, and can be fulfilling in their own time. Holding all the moments of your life in their own time is exactly what I meant by realizing all the phases you’ve come through to get to here.
So you are growing; you are developing what you want–this ability to keep this sense of awareness and oneness with you as you go out into the multiplicity of the world and your work. You keep your sense of connection even as you’re reaching down to pluck out another weed, prune another bush.
Student: Hmmm…yeah. Just now, as you were talking, this sense came over me. I felt I was…spinning; something was happening. I felt a presence and it was like I was moving. It was very interesting. I’ve never experienced that here before.
NEBADONIA: Then let me say, Hello! (much laughter) That’s us!–you and I. That’s me in you, if you will.
Student: Wow! Hmmm… It’s like my little granddaughter. She’s so full of joy, and very feisty; she wants to be herself. Everyone loves her who comes into contact with her. That’s like us.
I still have issues with her father, but here’s when I think I need to practice what I preach and help everyone who has to live together. Even my ex-wife is more and more around, helping with the chores, and we’re friends, we’re more amiable with each other. I am trying to blend with people with whom I have such differences of viewpoints and values. But I do get caught up in self-righteousness from time to time.
Conflicts (Conflicts with others)
NEBADONIA: Well, you seem to have a comprehensive grasp on the situation, and can see yourself warts and all–which is good. You can see a need to keep growing along the lines of being more accommodating and spiritually creative. When you and others are compressed together in a small physical space it calls for a lot of spiritual maturity to handle things.
Moments of pure awareness can let you rest in a kind of super-consciousness, a deeply moving state that gives you a respite from the unavoidable confrontations.
Student: Yes. The more sensitive I am to peoples’ unawareness–in a sense–the way they see reality, or see me, I can feel when they’re angry or upset, or closed in.
NEBADONIA: Yes. You’re seeing very correctly all these dimensions, and differences in experience, background. Sometimes you have to declare your own space and values for the sake of these other persons’ souls, as well as your own.
Student: Yeah, sometimes other people don’t seem to value what I have to offer. They think they know everything, and that’s part of the reason it’s hard to communicate with them because there is no debate, no real exchange. I’m not into being right; I just want a normal conversation.
NEBADONIA: In these instances you can feel when another person is trying to put you into one of their pigeonholes, and you don’t really fit. It’s like they already know, and are dismissing, what you say before you say it. So see if you can’t playfully tease him out of his need to do so. If he thinks you are either this or that, you have to show him you’re neither; you’re something else.
Student: I get what you’re saying. It will be OK. I know people mean well.
NEBADONIA: There’s no avoiding being the good example, and not pigeonholing what they’re saying; being open to their point of view. This is what Michael and I try to do in our sessions here: not demand anything of you, but convince you we are with you, right in your lives as you see yourselves. It’s why we only suggest, and tease, and play.
Student: Well, thank you.
NEBADONIA: Sometimes it gets down to the nitty-gritty of loving folks in spite of themselves. (Mother Spirit laughs) Just beam as much love as you can for your own strength and development. Do appreciate the good qualities people have. It means a lot that people mean well. And be in my love.
Creativity (God’s constant, sustaining creativity)
I enjoy these seemingly suspended moments myself. Michael and I have a greater ability of living in the moment and, if you want to think of us visually, think of a fountain bubbling up into the air, and think of that bouncing, very tippy-top of water. It’s definitely there-instantaneously; and it does persist, although it’s never the same water. That’s what Michael and I feel we’re resting on, and that fountain is our Father. You’re suspended upon His fountain of creativity as well. So think of this from time to time, my children, when these moments happen to you. Imagine/feel yourself sitting on top of a fountain of pure awareness/energy, and feel yourself bouncing around on something that is definitely there, yet cannot be grasped with anything but insight and intuition.
Closing
This is what your essence is to yourselves. You are that bouncing, living, ungraspable peak being constantly projected into the universe by God. And this is eternity–not only that it will keep happening, because of its Source, but that this bubbling, bouncing essence is eternal in the infinity of spontaneity, every moment that ever was, is, or will be. This is also the essence of our love for you. This is how I can say, be in my love. Good evening.
