2008-06-02-Natural Law
Marin #153
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Natural Law
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
3.2.1 Natural Law
3.2.2 Feeling, Thinking
o 3.3 Dialogue
3.3.1 Memory
3.3.2 Growth
3.3.3 Creation
3.3.4 Inertia
3.3.5 Belief
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Natural Law
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, We do enjoy getting back to our regular Monday night meeting after a few weeks away. We’re following your advice and joyfully taking a break from even our deeper spiritual activities together, then enjoying all the more getting back to them, renewed and refreshed with another perspective, for we know through our own daily meditation that you and Michael are always with us. Your presence is always here whenever we call upon you.
Reflecting back on all our many lessons, we want to thank you for your deep insights into our human condition. We’ve come to experience how understanding is a real power which enables us to live ever more expansively, to stretch out while at the same time avoiding becoming fragmented. Our understanding literally ties everything together so we can approach with courage and curiosity those unexpected events in our lives that pop up, as they will–those we can’t understand immediately but have to call upon you and Michael to help us get a handle on this new thing in our life. Because you are always here, so too can be our own indomitable spirit that we grow with your help. For this we are most thankful. Amen.
NEBADONIA: Well, greetings, my children, this fine June evening. This is your mother, Nebadonia. I’m very happy that you can feel me more and more in your minds and be more and more assured in your spirit that we are both children of God, both given personalities by God himself, and then provided with a rich environment indeed, as your expanding senses and understanding reach out and out to discover a whole universe surrounding us.
Lesson
Natural Law
We thank our Father for that aspect of His creation you call natural law that is unvarying and true. It does repeat itself absolutely right down into the subatomic nanosecond and on out across the billions of light years to the furthermost galaxies. This is that genuineness of God’s creation in the pattern of things, the way energy forms into matter, and then both are in turn transfigured and patterned by life. Consider the living part of the cosmos that our Father sustains moment to moment. I know that, now you think you’ve got a pretty good loop thrown around biological activity, it might seem odd for me to say that God’s sustaining power is life. God’s spirit really is the life in the cosmos, that living spirit of His that He bequeaths not only to His own personal children across the cosmos, but even to the plant and animal life of a nigh infinite variety just on your one planet alone.
Think of all you have experienced of beauty in those living configurations of matter and energy you call flowers, a tree, your happy kitten or puppy fresh from the store, cavorting about. Think of that enormous spectrum of living beings not yet personal, but still with a kind of character, a rudimentary personality if you will in their slowly accumulating experience of life–the touch of wisdom in an old dog. Here you glimpse one of the real secrets to God’s infinity, for what human being needs thousands upon thousands of varieties of spiders; yet there they are. Who needs all that teeming life in the oceans no human being will ever contact? Who needs all those billions and billions of trees no person will ever see?
God just pours forth this life out of Himself. He sustains it. But not for this continuing outpouring of God’s love and caring, life would cease in an instant, the universe, the cosmos would collapse. And so, my children, I invite you to feel if you can what I mean. It is somewhat extra-dimensionally both within and beyond time and space, this presence of God, this sustaining power of His that you cannot put under a microscope or weigh on the most delicate scales.
As you hear my words or read them later, see if you can feel what I am referring to. Perhaps you can intuit it, this dimension of spirit, this origin of everything you experience whether material or energy, your own life or those of your fellow human beings. It’s most easily perceptible as value. Not only do things have a meaning and relationship, an understandable quality, but they also can have an ineffable yet perceptible spiritual value to them. Equally, in times of extreme stress, life can seem almost devoid of value. You can realize that this experience wouldn’t get too severe but that life would not be worth living. You, who have gone through your own midnights of the soul and have been severely tried with anxiety, or doubt, or pain, or loss, know of what I’m speaking.
Feeling, Thinking
We’ve offered a kind of thumbnail definition when considering whether feeling or thought is the more fundamental human reality. Clearly feeling is the more comprehensive experiencing of your life, my children, but over a million years of evolving civilization you have put words to it–words to things and events, words to feelings, words to emotions. It is in this sense we mean that thought, this self-expression inside you, is where and how you finely articulate feelings. So consider the spirit of this, the value of this statement. Think what it means when the words you are thinking and exchanging have no feeling, no experience behind them. All of a sudden you can find yourself and others in realms of pure abstraction, detached from whatever reality, if any, that originally gave birth to these concepts.
You might wonder, well then, where do these concepts come from? If you consider a moment you will realize you are inundated with concepts: from all your mass media–television, the movies, the internet–from all your friends and acquaintances. You are constantly encountering all sorts of reasons, all kinds of connections and meanings. You may have been deliberately trained or indoctrinated in certain concepts and ways of behavior far beyond your experience so far, all preparing you for experiences you are headed for. But until you have those experiences these concepts remain abstract.
This is one way in which people can go astray in their lives–deliberately led astray or wandering off on their own, desperately trying to understand and derive meaning from dogmas and doctrines many times removed from their own personal experience. I think you can see how this leads to feelings of meaninglessness like building up a house of cards or blowing up a big bubble, either of which is bound to collapse or burst.
You have all kinds of sayings about people loosing their ground, floating away, being spaced, feeling their life is loosing its meaning and value. Your very imagination and identification–your wonderful abilities to follow along someone else’s ideas and meaning–can also lead you far astray. This has been one history and cause of warfare, people getting caught up and identifying with various organizations, nation/states with whose leaders and their policies they had very little direct experience or knowledge. In fact, the slow growth of democracy in the human race has depended upon the conscious breaking down this tribal/primitive identification, society as a whole reaping the rewards of more and more individuals coming forth and putting their own grounded, real experiences into the mix, keeping ideas up to date.
This is part of the process of maturity, my children, when in a sense you turn around within yourselves. You set about to question all the concepts and connections you were given as a child. You start to feel and credit your own soul, your own unique experiences. You realize an increasing wealth of your own thoughts, your own thinking processes, your own reasoning, because they are based on something personally real. This is becoming grounded again. This is being able to trace back what you believe to their origins. Yet so many folks have a very negative attitude towards this process. They call it being disillusioned. But that’s precisely the desired point. You get to have a conscious choice of whether you want to continue in some illusion, or seek further the greater reality it pretends to cover, a reality you can call your own discovery.
This is the movement of spirit. This is spiritualizing your everyday life, when your mind takes in and fully appreciates/values what your hands find to do, what you are finally deciding to do. Other folks’ notions of what you should be doing, who you should be, will still be there, but seen for what they are. Again, ironically, as you break out of other persons’ projected patterns on you, supposedly for you, and you become who and what you are for yourself, this is your great spiritual gift even to those who may not welcome your deviation from their expectations. Now they have a chance to become dis-illusioned too.
This is daring to be, daring to discover, and it is the basis for all true, growing, open-minded democracy within you and without. This is the movement of living spirit in your soul, in your personality. This is how you find Michael’s peace. You find it in understanding–understanding based upon your own irreplaceable, priceless experience. One definition of Light and Life on a world is when each individual no longer sells themselves and their experiences short, but everyone is in there contributing their own truth and receiving their due recognition.
So be of good cheer, my children. Never hesitate to slow down or even stop cold and wait for value, the perception of spirit, to catch up. Let all the abstract evaluations, all the outworn notions of who you are and where you are drop away–even if it means counting each breath as it comes, just moment by moment glorying in the fact you are alive, you are alive by dint of God’s outpouring love. Stay grounded. Stay in touch with the real stuff of life. See yourself and your fellows as the little walking infinities you are. And be in my love.
Now is the time for those questions and comments, if you have any.
Dialogue
Student: Thank you, mother, once more. Thank you for your support and your love and your understanding. The question I have is, how does one let go of the past? How do I let go of my past? I kind-of get that’s what you’re talking about tonight, letting go of the concepts of that have been pushed on me–about me.
Memory
(Recovering your true past)
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, it’s a matter of seeing through all those fixed concepts, those second- and third-removed abstractions–your worrying about their notions about your experiences, if you will. Get back to the original experiences as they do exist in your memory, as they do exist in your soul. The question becomes one of: how do you get in touch with your own soul, with the spiritual record of your life?
Student: Exactly!
NEBADONIA: This is your life seen through God’s point of view. This is what I tried to address tonight by giving you some sense of feeling of what spirit is, this living power that permeates everything.
Trace back your values. Think of those times with the most meaning to you as a place to start. They can be some of the happiest times, or other times the most terrifying moments of your life, but in either case when it seemed some broad truth dawned in your mind. You had that unmistakable feeling of understanding something. You can do this meditation/recollection with respect to a particular subject that’s bothering you, or with respect to any person you choose, my son–your mother or father, a brother, a sister, some dear friend or longtime sworn enemy.
So the question is exactly what I talked about this evening: how do you get beyond–by getting before–all these overlaying judgments put upon you, all the thoughts and notions that do not jibe with your real experience? How do you open yourself to what really led you to do certain things? You did get to here, my son, from scratch, starting from zero. Everything you know now, all you understand, has had to come to you bit by bit across the years. So you have to revisit these times anew. It’s what I mean by staying in touch, staying grounded in your true memories.
You should be able to sense a quality here, a spiritual quality when something rings true.
Student: Yes.
NEBADONIA: Follow it. You may have to slowly if you have been painfully plagued by these accusations, by these judgments put upon you. It may feel like a kind of suffering, but you have to build up now, in your present life, the true story. The sooner you start doing this–getting in touch with your genuine childhood, your genuine adolescence–however painful–the sooner the better. This, I think you can see, is the way to understanding. Do you feel you are growing in your understanding of life?
Student: Yes, mother, I am growing in understanding myself–my life and my past. It’s a slow process but it is a process. And it is working. I have faith now it will work out OK, whereas one time I didn’t have much faith.
Yes, my life is getting much better as I am able to understand myself. I still haven’t gotten into a lot of childhood stuff yet; mainly getting over the religious dogma and the negativity that’s going on now.
NEBADONIA: Sometimes it’s difficult to get a handle on that conditioning because it’s still affecting you. So many things are laid upon youngsters, horrific things, out of a kind of misguided love and caring. Sometimes it’s an older generation wanting to insure the youngsters know how hard life can be, or was for them, and so carry on certain traditions, deliberately making things hard for others through some warped sense of instilling meaning that way. But again, that is an abstraction glossing over the inflicting of pain.
As we’ve talked about before, you live in an eternal now. The past is a kind of foreign country to be discovered, to be brought into now, to be brought into your current, greater understanding. But this way leads to forgiveness; not to forgive and forget, but to remember and forgive.
Student: Yes, it does make a difference.
NEBADONIA: Sometimes, my son, if you can see a bit with God’s eye–see with His all-forgiving, all-accepting spirit, you too can forgive those things done to you.
Student: Yes. Thank you, Mother.
NEBADONIA: Well, thank you. I acknowledge your courage in the search. It is not always easy but it is always liberating. (Yes) Be in my love.
Student, after a very long pause: Yes, Mother, I could go on like this forever.
When I was driving home last night just looking around me at all the different peoples’ homes and things, and knowing how there’s certain upheavals going on in peoples’ communities–in their homes and things–it’s because of economic situations and so forth. I was thinking and asking–out loud–what is reality? It seems every time I ask myself that question, it comes from a deeper sense that what is around me is only a shadow of what is real. Then coming here tonight I felt I was only a shadow of what I am, or what I can be, or how God sees me now. Because it seems like so many people are going through such hardships just having food on their tables, or gas in their cars. I cannot conceive this is how human beings were intended to live.
I do have a sense there’s another way to live, another way for me to live, to expand, to experience. But I don’t even know what that feels like! I don’t know what that looks like! So…?
Growth
(Personal evolution)
NEBADONIA: My son, you’ll recall how, from time to time, we’ve tried, anyway, to reassure you that certain qualities of mind and spirit were put in you not only to make you uncomfortable–although that is often their immediate result–but to keep you open, to keep you reaching for what you just got through articulating. For we’ve also reassured you that the better way is always there, for every individual, for every group, for every nation, for every planet. There is an ongoing cosmic-wide evolution, a growth that takes in all that has happened up to this moment, and provides for more: more energy and material; more personalities–personal beings of thousands of different orders; and for each individual–more life.
So let me tease you with the notion you might be doing just the perfect thing in your reaching, for that reaching is based upon your intuition that life is transcendent; there is always that something there, that something more. I tried to express this tonight just as an irreducible, if ineffable, feeling of spirit, of value. Or, at times, its loss–most disturbing and threatening.
I see you as a human being doing your best to stay open, but the way you are going about it does at times make the real seem only a shadow. This is just a reflection back–if you will–from the deep intuition you have that life is transcendent, that what you see happening is actually more some unfathomable potential than real. Let me change that to: more potential than you can yet realize yourself, and this is true. You are still tadpoles. But you do have the desire to grow into a frog, and beyond; a little frog that will some day have crossed the universe on into hundreds of dimensions totally inconceivable to you now. You can intuit this potential of which your present ability of realization is only a beginning step, a shadow of what it will become. Still: you are; you are real and complete nevertheless.
So in your curiosity, your wondering, entertain the idea that this might be exactly what God had in mind. You will be crediting than only He, along with Michael and I, can see and experience all those hundreds of individual people in all those homes you are passing. There is truly no way you can generalize about any of them, materially and mentally, let alone spiritually. Those generalities are your own abstract notions that your powers of belief can make seem real, and make the real seem a shadow.
From your expanding media you can have some notion of what the world situation is, and how many people are truly starving to death, dying of disease and malnutrition. Michael and I have talked about the enormous glut of power your developed cultures so casually enjoy by way of abstract notions of progress. So I talked tonight about getting back down to something more spiritually grounded, more solid in your experience, and not being–as you say–strung out chasing hollow examples of social wealth, some ever increasing bottom line, irrespective of the spiritual costs along the way. You are sensing this, my son, and it is good you do, but this is a very general observation, not necessarily applicable to those folks whose homes you are passing.
This is your own way of trying not to rest content in smug self-satisfaction, and this is good–your questioning yourself and your way of living as much as you can. We encourage this: along with resting totally in Michael’s peace and my love, and just being/experiencing how you are, beyond question or doubt: both. This is the flexibility we speak of, the spontaneity, the creativity. So keep striving to be self-honest.
Student: Yes, because sometimes I do question, and wonder if I’m living the life I even want to live? I don’t know if I am. If I’m not in touch with what is real and true, but only a shadow of that, I don’t know if I can answer that question. Especially if I overwork myself: it’s no. But I don’t know any other life. I don’t know how to create such a different life, one that’s far more satisfying and fulfilling. Maybe it’s just my attitude, and being happy with what I have now. That’s that nagging part. I don’t know how to expand into something greater because I don’t know what it is I truly want. I can express all kinds of platitudes about it, but they’re just words. I want the experience and the feeling, and to live it. Other than that, what’s the point?
I see all these people scurrying around, trying to do something, trying to make something of their lives, saving for retirement, and then you die. (exasperated chuckle) I hope I’m making sense.
NEBADONIA: This points at the priceless value of Michael’s peace, of your stillness: to really just be–totally. To get back down to real experiences, the reality you seek. You are familiar with all the sayings of how the more you chase after reality–as some notion–the more it runs away. You have to be still and let the real thing come back and settle over you, with a deep acceptance of whatever’s happening. You have known this, my son, from time to time.
Student: Yes.
NEBADONIA: Still, your curiosity of what more there might be is also necessary. From our point of view, you are creating your own, moment to moment largest-possible life already. And this is a growing accomplishment; your soul is growing larger: you are growing. Just keep current with this, day to day, and keep wondering. That is part of the dues you need to pay, part of the spiritual work you are engaged in. It’s seeking God’s will, the best way forward by dint of His very existence. And though you cannot yet experience it, we reassure you that retirement and death are not the end, but just the barest beginnings.
There is so much you can ask yourself and want to know that cannot be answered in one short lifetime. This is why it takes some courage, and perhaps no little bit of humor, to thank God for this curiosity that’s plaguing, and welcome it instead. Kicking back in some form of self-satisfied bliss is only another kind of death right within life. You do know you’re alive. You’re continually trying to grasp the ineffable, so I’m just teasing you with what a blessing it is to know spirit is there, to wonder about these things.
Student: I will be still with all this. I do know that’s the way to experience reality, or truth.
NEBADONIA: You are becoming sensitive enough to detect when you are more or less being taken out of your spiritual home base by all you cannot anticipate, but must embrace as best you can.
This is insight into your human reality.
Student: Well, thank you. I just hope one day I can feel the joy I’ve been able to see other people experience, see in their faces. Maybe in my deep rest and stillness–have this pervade my day no matter what comes up.
Creation
(Created in God’s image)
NEBADONIA: Again, be careful of your projections about what other people must be continuously enjoying. All through eternity there are those moments of genuine temporary accomplishment when you can rest for awhile on a little plateau. But then…(Mother Spirit laughs)…but then, God and His creation are infinite, and another aspect of it will call you forth to begin again. There will always be a need for courage. There will always be that which is opaque until you are right in the middle of it. It’s the infinite cosmos you’re headed for. Yet there is also in your God-given personality that spirit which is not only equal to the adventure, but actually a corollary of it, the way in which you and God are very much alike. Your personality is very much in His image of what to do with eternity. So be in Michael’s peace, and my love, from time to time, and see if you can’t find a way of just lightly letting go to accept you are real, just as you are. Then off into the fray again.
Student: Thank you.
Student: Good evening, Mother. First off, I want to express my gratitude for everything you’ve brought into my life in the past couple months–spiritually. It’s given me great opportunities to practice feeling spirit, and then being able to act in the world on it. It’s truly in many ways been an amazing journey. I’ve gotten to the point where I can really get to the place where I find it hard for me to take in spirit–especially your spirit–because of the way my mother couldn’t really give me enough nurturing affection. It feels as if it’s resistance, and I can see how it affects my ability to take action, and follow spirit’s leading of what’s the next thing to do. I find it hard to get over a certain inertia because of this.
But I have gotten to the point where it’s almost enjoyable–(laughing)–even though I feel a gritty kind of resistance in there. I don’t have any particular question, just to say I really appreciate your patience to be with me, and help me learn how to take things in. Thank you.
Inertia
(Feeling and overcoming inertia)
NEBADONIA: Well, my daughter, I’m so delighted you can feel me, right through your resistance to falling into the trap of only thinking who I am, or associating me with your human mother. You are finding ways of remembering, and experiencing, who I really am, and how I enjoy giving you those little nudges to help get you going. You have a very well developed caution about being self-righteous, and so keep in mind, along with this caution about puffing yourself up and loosing your ground–now you’ve found some–a certain amount of inertia is inevitable. It’s part of your being a physical being; plus your wisdom also suggests you not waste energy–you consider–you look before you leap. All this is very worth while, and in and of itself, almost a definition of inertia.
So there is no simple way out of the quandary, but rather one of embracing your human complexity, and not beating yourself up. Rather than denying or running away in your mind from inertia, feel it, right as you do the next good thing. I think you’ve already discovered, it’s always there. You do not have infinite energy, nor infinite wisdom on how to go about things. You are still learning these things; so don’t be too hard on yourself.
We’ve said before that guilt is just a self-motivating technique, and a very inefficient one at that. It’s better to be self-honest and say, perhaps, I feel lazy today. Maybe be lazy, and enjoy it from time to time. You see what I mean by flexibility here–by variety? Sometimes by being lazy for a day and thoroughly getting your fill of it, you’ll find there is such joy in being in motion again. But if you’re constantly driving yourself, you can very quickly get abstracted and away from your real, spiritually united ground–divided against yourself, refusing to feel.
But a determined focus on here-and-now, and feeling even the terrible effort it takes to get moving at times, is good for your soul. It’s the meaning of human life. This is what it is. It’s what you find it moment to moment, not someone else’s theory or notion of how it should be. It’s what it is for you, and what your own intuition and imagination suggests can be more.
So carry on. I’m delighted you’re not mistaking me for your earth mother, and granting me some enormous encompassing, for you are living encompassed in my love, and it is my delight when you can feel it, and get strength from it. So thank you, my daughter. Let’s keep on going on together.
Second student again: Mother, can I say something here?
NEBADONIA: Certainly.
Student: You just said something to C here that struck me, and I was meaning to ask–because you mentioned to her: we are living the life that we are. But I don’t feel I am living the life that I am. And that’s always bugging me, nagging at me.
NEBADONIA: But my son, then who is living your life?
Student: Hugh? (much laughter)
NEBADONIA: There is a life here.
Student: But…but you know what I mean.
NEBADONIA: This is what I tried to address this evening. How do you get out of your abstract notions of life–beliefs about life that remove you from the real thing, or make it seem an illusion?
How can you feel yourself living and have your thoughts, your understanding, adequately reflect that real experience?
Belief
(The power of belief)
We’ve had many discussions in which you’ve introduced ideas about what human life is supposed to be–according to certain doctrines, and you’ll recall I’ve constantly mentioned that what human life is–as it is–as you experience it–is transcendent to mere notions of what it should be. You’ve spent a lot of time in schools of philosophy and metaphysics that, you’ve stated, make claims about human life being essentially blissful as its natural state, to which I could only reply, along with Michael, that–everything–happening to human beings is according to their moment by moment full and complete, yet evolving natures starting in immaturity and imperfection as new-born babies. The unavoidable corollary to these doctrines you’ve mentioned is that if you cannot feel your life to be essentially blissful, then it must be unnatural–never quite real; which is what you say you’re experiencing.
Student: It’s not that I want to live in a blissful state; that’s not what I’m striving for. It’s just to live as a full human being. I don’t even know what that looks like. I’ve had feelings of what that is, but how I’m living now, I don’t recognize as being a full human being. Maybe that’s something I’m growing into–I don’t know–more a creatively fulfilling human expression of life, and God. So that’s what I’m seeking. But you’re right. I am rubbing up against these abstractions of how I’ve been told to live–what life is.
NEBADONIA: Life is a process of discovery. You are intimating that there is a lot of potential there, to which I reply, yes, this is meant to carry you on indefinitely into eternity, and cannot be fully realized in one short lifetime. But you can intuit that it is there–as potential. Meanwhile, you are living a fully human life.
Also, my son, you may not for quite a while see your own life as Michael and I see it in the full reality of your transcendent personality and soul. For you it is truly a matter of faith that these dimensions of you are there, even if you cannot yet access them and grasp them cognitively. But you will in time.
Student: But then why can’t I–if they are a reality? If they are here and now, and you see me as a transcendent being, then why can’t I access them?
NEBADONIA: You’re still too immature. (and everyone laughs, on and on…) These are spirit/Morontia realities, transcendent to your present consciousness. It’s the way in which your soul is contra-distinct from your recallable physical memories. The situation is part of your present tadpole-ness, if you will.
Student: You know how much I like being called that… (…and on…)
NEBADONIA: …which is why I delight in teasing you with it. But it is apropos.
Student, still laughing: I have legs!
NEBADONIA: It is one step up from calling you an egg, even though you are still in this shell of your first world experience.
It’s interesting to take your feelings of unreality and project them back into the past and wonder: how much all through history have men and women suffered not knowing what to do with their intimations of an ineffable, ungraspable spiritual reality that was and is part of human nature? In a very ironic kind of way, stillness practice, meditation, which helps bring these intuitions to the fore, is the most unnatural thing, and has to be passed on from person to person, generation to generation, as a way to get in touch with the mystery. To the uncultured or material-minded person just sitting still, seemingly doing nothing, is bogus and unnecessary, a self-deluding mongering of mystery where there isn’t any: you could be sleeping, or doing something. But this most un-natural activity, or orientation, if you will, can help you find a great measure of peace, and love, and your own spiritual reality, right along with ours–even in this your first life.
Closing
So I’ll leave it at that for now, my children. It’s great each of you in your questions and comments were reaching for what my lesson tonight meant–how you can get down to the solid ground of your life, yet discover there is an ungraspable spiritual part to it as well, a transcendent if inexpressible value and encompassing you can feel, calling you forth to wonder, making you aware of how far you have come, and have still to go. Think of life without end. And be in my love. Good evening.
