2011-07-11-Ways of Spirit
Marin #205
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Ways of 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
3.1.1 Free will
3.1.2 Attitude
3.1.3 Language
3.1.4 Experience
3.1.5 Stillness
3.1.6 Self-righteousness
3.1.7 Subjectivity
o 3.2 Dialogue
3.2.1 Focus
3.2.2 Expression
3.2.3 Journaling
3.2.4 Memory, Soul
o 3.3 Closing
Topic: Ways of Spirit
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, Welcome. It occurs to me that means: Well!—come!–and here you are–you’re already here. So tonight, Mother Spirit, as before with a Lightline with Michael, there’s been a request that you address some of the issues that have arisen on TML. And since I don’t even know how to characterize these issues, I’ll just let you comment however you wish to. We do appreciate your comments and we do our best to live by them. So thank you so much. Amen.
NEBADONIA: Good evening, this is Nebadonia–Mother Spirit. Yes, I will gladly accept your invitation and, since you’ve opened the door for me, I will be more than happy to walk through and see if I can clarify some points. First of all I would like to reiterate what Michael said in his last meeting with you. As you know, we are very much an old married couple and, from a human standpoint, very much of one mind. That’s why we say “we” a lot. I can only emphasize what Michael put rather emphatically, and that is, we do not tell you what to do. We do not tell what to think. We do not tell you how to behave even within yourself or with others.
Free will
The ways of spirit
We can only offer suggestions, such as: have you thought of this; or have you considered that? We can offer insights, our major lessons being all these many years the kinds of beings you are so you can have a fuller appreciation of all the dimensions of reality that you exist in and relate to. We can offer you a viewpoint from our side of things, our point of view, and give you a keener sense of what this point of view means so that you can more fully appreciate and evaluate different lessons coming from different kinds of beings through all the different transmitter/receivers. So you had a very, we think, very fruitful discussion just on the difference between us speaking authoritatively, and authoritarian-ly. It’s in this later sense we refuse to do. We will not tell you what to do in this authoritarian sense.
Let me explain why. First of all, my dears, we call you our children as a token of affection with no condescension whatsoever implied. We are alike, children of God, and we call you our children as a token of affection. And also, we are glad to say that you are not ours at all. You belong to yourselves and to God. You are not children. You’re not teenagers, or high school kids, or college students. You’re grown men and women, many of you with of whole lifetime of soul-wealth, and a big part of that soul-wealth has been your study, and your enjoyment, and your love of the Urantia Book. So once again: you are not children, not to us. You are mature men and women. But you are human beings and it would be most inappropriate for a Creator Son of God and a Mother Spirit to use—especially for those of you who credit what we are, and this very process of communicating with you—for those of you who love and respect and honor us–it would be most inappropriate for us to use this disparity of cosmic position, any more than what you would tell someone with a slightly different viewpoint or intellectual capacity, and take advantage of them for that very reason. There’s no way we can tell you what to do for this very disparity.
We honor your free will. We and our Father designed you and gave you creative spirit so that you might have self-generated alternatives to very practically, very realistically choose. Furthermore, this method of communication is not so precise and exacting as we can tell you what to do, shall we say, from one t/r, one transmitter/receiver to another. This is for you to evaluate. We can only offer the suggestion, to keep in mind insofar as this is a spiritual communication from your Mother Spirit to your spirit: like calls to like. To most the greatest essence of spirit is all-inclusiveness. Spirit is that dimension of reality that includes everything, culminating, in a point of understanding, in our Father who is spirit, and who literally experiences all of creation directly. But this mode, this means of communication is not so exacting that we could use it to settle certain disputes between you. This is your response-ability of how you respond to us whether you’re listening to an audio version of this or reading a transcript.
Attitude
The critical importance of attitude
Here I would like to get into the whole importance of attitude. You recall your Urantia Book defining that critical term as both your willingness and your ability to relate to all that is not-you. And from the standpoint of your personality, my dears, this means even your own body and material mind. Your willingness and your ability to relate. Most of you recall the long discussions—and again we consider them very fruitful discussions—surrounding the chapter in the Urantia Book on the colored races, and your beginning to appreciate how that chapter was written by the Life Carrier Sons of Urantia. There are some of you that, because you approached that from a certain position, a certain lifetime of understanding, and wisdom, and soul wealth, took certain passages of that chapter to color not only that chapter but the whole rest of the Urantia Book.
Language
This is the importance of attitude because it has been suggested that if Michael and I are really who we claim to be, certainly in our lessons here we could put them in such a way that would preclude any misunderstanding. Certainly we know you, we know human comprehension well enough so that we could forestall any misunderstanding. Any yet, my dears, this is impossible. There is nothing that can be put into language that, if approached from a certain point of view, a certain attitude, that cannot be totally misunderstood, cannot be taken entirely the wrong way. And so again, we can only ask you to internalize this psychological fact: you are co-creative beings.
Your personality is endowed with creative spirit, and everything you experience is at least half you. How many dozens and dozens of lessons have we given on this supreme fact. Just consider that the full awareness of your own co-creativity is what so many of your religions and philosophies have called Enlightenment, Satori, Samyak-sambodhi–(spelling?)–the ultimate seeing into the nature of reality. And yet your co-creativity, even as you hear my voice or read these words later, is so powerful, so transparent, so much a part of you that this is the hallmark of a kind of ignorance, if you will. Michael said in his last lesson about the need of the personality to identify with something, and so you identify with this self-construct you call ego; and necessarily so.
So the question remains: how can you get human beings who are co-creating their own realities, who are totally unconscious of this; how can you get them to accept responsibility then and be able to respond to what is for many of them an absurdity? They identify totally with this self-construct of an ego, and their reality for them is totally objective. Then consider too, that even if a large proportion of the world leaders—socially, politically, financially, militarily—were, shall we say, over the next six months or so, to have this great enlightenment experience, and accept responsibility totally for what they themselves are creating, you could have paradise on earth in a very short order.
Experience
So this is not some little thing–this attitude that each of you brings to everything every moment of your life. This is especially true with something that purports to be a pure–or as pure as possible (Mother Spirit chuckles)–spiritual communication with a Creator Son, a Mother Spirit, or an Avonal Son. Keeping this in mind, how can any human being say, let alone know, let alone categorize or define another person’s spiritual experience? Think about that a moment. Think about the people you know. Think about their inner reality that they too are co-creating from a unique personality, from a whole lifetime of experience, and wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and then their soul–this divine part of them that is giving so much meaning and value to their life. How can any person say what another person’s inner spiritual experience is?
The impenetrability of another’s inner spiritual experience
Yet, as you know, there have been some attempts to do this. You yourselves of the Teaching Mission are having your own inner spiritual experiences invalidated, even by other readers of the Urantia Book. And what can you say in this circumstance except that: this is my experience. What can you offer them except: this is my experience; this is what it has been for me–all these wonderful transcripts from so many different kinds of beings that have been so much a part of my life. And yet not go that extra unnecessary step to say: this should be your experience too! This is the way you should see it! You know how difficult it is when you are being attacked on your own experience, not to throw in that little dig, not to respond in kind.
Stillness
So this, my children, is all we can offer, all we can suggest, is that, number one: know and accept your own inner spiritual experience! And stillness is a great way to do this. Know that not only are you a personality with a body/mind, and spirit, and soul, but you have three great spiritual influences as part of you: your Thought Adjuster, Michael’s Spirit of Truth, my own little boost in your very mindedness. And grant that every other human being with whom you relate is also this enormously complex living being. So when it comes to something like a lesson or a transcript from some other T/R, do your best to entertain it.
By that it means have enough confidence in your own inner spiritual reality that you can take it in totally in its own context. Don’t be afraid to be so uncritical, because that very attitude of criticism can totally distort anything that can be written or said. Take it all in and then, in your stillness, just let it sink in, unafraid, because all of you is still there. There is your whole lifetime of wisdom and soul-wealth. Really entertain it uncritically. Try to appreciate it for what it is, and then let your full self, your total self evaluate it. Perhaps read it again. This is one way of avoiding certain trigger words, a word or a phrase that can throw you off and have you misinterpret the entire thing, just as a few words in that chapter in the Urantia Book has poisoned so many folks against the whole rest of the book.
Self-righteousness
Pitfalls to spiritual discussion
And then in your discourses, we suggest you give each other this kind of respect, for how can you know another’s inner spiritual experience? This way you avoid some enormous pitfalls, one you’re familiar with you call being Holier-than-Thou, like: my Thought Adjuster is better than your Thought Adjuster; or, I’m more in tune with my TA than you are. How can you tell another person what they can or cannot get from another transmitted lesson, another celestial personality being transmitted as best they can? Michael mentioned being careful about your characterizations, which for some of you are very much a part of your figurative speech. Here I would like to give you one example of characterizing certain folks who like to tune in to the Teaching Mission List and just enjoy it, who might feel inadequate or shy or incapable of even responding.
But to label them “lurkers!” You don’t have to go to a dictionary for the exact denotation to get the connotation of that word “lurkers.” All the implications of that, all the normally criminal implications of somebody just “lurking about,” just because they enjoy so much what you are putting out, and yet feel, as I say, maybe too shy to get engaged. You would denigrate them and chase them away? This is what Michael meant about some of your characterizations almost approaching a political cartoon.
Think about tone, the very tone in which something is expressed could be extremely condescending or authoritarian. But true spirit, and I’ll say this very authoritatively: true human spirit is enormously humble because it is expressed in the realization of an enormity, the enormity of another person’s inner life. And so it doesn’t hurt at all to be humble, to address each other in that tone of, first of all, acknowledging another’s point of view, to say, Yes, I enjoy your take on this; mine is a little different. This is my experience. This is what it feels to me.
Subjectivity
Mother Spirit’s challenge
And so I offer you this challenge: to fully accept your own subjectivity, the fact that my voice to you now, or these words moving on a page, are at least half yours in how you are taking me; and so much more so for another living person. Here’s Joe, and here’s Bob, and here’s Mary, and each single one of them has their own take on some lesson, some transmitted material. And this is great! You now have all these points of view along with your own. As Michael offered in his last lesson: just be humbly aware of the enormity of this. And welcome it. Now you have all of these to add to your own soul-wealth, to add to your own, personal, single take of those words. For to hear my voice, or read the words on a page, or, shall we say, the notes on a guitar? These are all single, instantaneous facts. You are the continuity. You are literally the melody coming out of that guitar, tying all those single notes together. And so you have every right to be humble even of what God has created you to be. You are the connection. You are that take.
And so: welcome all these points of view. From our point of view this whole discussion about Monjoronson’s reality has the potential for being very fruitful. It helps you all clarify your own thinking. I hope this will help you be aware that there are other people with an entirely different take on the same material. And isn’t this what your human world is all about? How do you live with each other? How you enjoy each other without this appeal to some higher authority? Again, Michael did not mean to be condescending when he said, this is something you need to grow out of. You need to grow your abilities to relate with each other when you have total disagreements. How do you do this? How does your world do this?–when what you are spending on offensive and defensive armaments would (otherwise) create a paradise on earth in very short order. Yet how can you ask your leaders–socially, politically, financially, militarily–how can you ask this of them until you wrestle with it a bit yourself?
And so this is what I offer you this evening; these are all just suggestions. It’s a good exercise in your relating with each other to stay positive, to say only straight positive things out of your experience without the slightest innuendo, or sarcasm, or hyperbole, or exaggeration. Just say: this has been my experience. What’s yours? And glory that there are so many of you. (Mother Spirit chuckles)
This, I think, would help welcome people to your Teaching Mission List. This is how Michael and I would deeply appreciate your spreading our word. Now if you have any questions or comments, we can do that too. 3351
Dialogue
Student: Hi. I would like to feel more centered. I feel like I’m wrestling with a lot of stress, and would like to feel more centered and whole.
Focus
Home base
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son. It reminds me of a time when we talked about a spiritual home base. Some have asked, well, where is it? Is it something I go to, or get from, or find, or just let be? That time we answered: it’s all of the above. It depends on how you are, or where you are, you might say, in relationship to it. A lot of times it just happens, serendipitous moments when you have a little enlightenment, a little satori. Other times it’s something to go after that shows that peace of mind is so valuable above all things. Peace of mind can come about only when you do meet some real problem and resolve it for yourself, even if only to keep it in mind as unresolvable. Other times if you’re really busy, fully engaged, it’s just getting enough time, maybe in the mornings, and sometimes even the evenings; sometime several times during the day–short periods just to let everything possible come to a stop. Just sit there in the middle of whatever it is and pay attention. Maybe you could try to get over any notions of how you should feel, or what this should be. Let it emerge. You do have these spiritual influences in you, my son, and you have your own highest mind where we all meet. Your own enormous spiritual creativity can come up with things totally in concert with us.
Expression
Giving inner reality an objective, physical reality
If there is something that persists, some vexing problem, here’s where it helps to make it objective, bring it into objective reality either by writing it down or typing it out. And now you have such neat little electronic devices such as you’re using tonight, very inexpensive little recorders. Give it voice. In a way you would be transmitting/receiving for yourself. But let it find expression; let us find expression, in you. We hopefully foresee what you would call a paradaisical future in which almost everybody is their own T/R, along with everybody else’s. This can help you enormously, my son, as it did many of the great men of history–your philosophers, your statesmen, your scientists. Give enormous value to your own thoughts, your own thinking, reasoning, and feelings, heartfelt feelings. Give them this objective reality. Have you tried any of these?
Student: I can’t say that I have so much, maybe just a little bit, maybe. But I can see a clear horizon for that.
NEBADONIA: Have you tried any kind of regular meditation, however you define that term; or prayer. Some people call it prayer.
Student: Yes, I pray a little in the mornings, and even do a round of chanting, but I’m not sure what type of benefits I get from that. I’ve been advised by someone I respect to do it, so I am trying.
Journaling
NEBADONIA: Well, the the human race in all its various religions, and philosophies, and metaphysics have evolved dozens and dozens of different kinds of meditation. A lot of people think of prayer as talking to God, or to yourself–to your higher self, and then listening. Prayer is most efficacious when you can formulate what you want to know. In other words, what is it you don’t know? (Mother Spirit chuckles) That’s quite a challenge. What is it you don’t know that you would really love to know? Sometimes it’s really difficult: what do you want? We’ve advised before writing it down. Let yourself go, however impractical it all is. What are your daydreams? What would you really love to see happen in your life?–another person, another job, whatever it is. What would tickle you? What would be fun?
Give these reality. Trust yourself to do this–talking with yourself, talking with God; and then listen. You have the presence of God within you, my son, that can actually suggest discrete thoughts. Sometimes when you ask God a question, the very next thought can be that answer. Some of your very best ideas you’ve had in your whole life were his. As we’ve said, there’s a kind of irony in the difficulty of realizing your own Thought Adjuster’s presence of God within you, because it’s always been there; it’s a part of you. So ask a question, and then write down the answer. Does this sound like fun?
Student: Yes.
NEBADONIA: But it’s something you actually have to do… (much laughter…)
Student: Well, in that case…
NEBADONIA: There’s a commitment here. There’s a seriousness involved to take time out of your life and trust yourself. That’s the essence of T/R-ing. You have to trust yourself that you really want to have this contact. You really want spirit to be able to speak through you.
Student: I do have a strong desire to be guided in my thoughts, to find truth as much as possible.
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son. These are like leaving footprints behind in the sand. Whenever you write something or record something, it does have great value in making this objective, giving it physical reality; but also it has the value of being able to read or hear it again. So this can be one of the most precious gifts you can give yourself in the future. A lot of people just simply call it journaling. It’s a wonderful method of having a diary. So many people are so blessed to, when they’re in their thirties, or their forties, or fifties, to go back and read what they wrote when they were teenagers. It’s such a wonderful gift to give yourself in the future. Hey!–I was here! I had to come thru this spot once upon a time. (She laughs)
Student: About memories: are they stored somewhere we can someday access them better than we can with our human minds?
Memory, Soul
Simple memory as contrasted to soul-wealth
NEBADONIA: Why yes, my son. We draw a distinction between what we call material mind, which is enormous. This is what your brain and your whole nervous system is storing–knowledge, the ability to store experience, and then understanding all the thousand and one ways you can interrelate all those bits of experience. And then we can call wisdom the way in which, shall we say, your book learning, your theoretical principles, this level of understanding then is blessed with real personal experience, your life. So a lot of this is what we call what your material being–your body, your material mind is capable of, and it’s enormous, virtually limitless to your present consciousness.
This is very distinct from your soul, because your soul has a co-author of a presence of God. So by comparison your soul is (more) enormous. It exists in another dimension, other dimensions actually. And we even say that the fullness, the real fullness–the taste and touches and smell and how it was at some previous time, maybe as a little child you can remember what you were told about doing some day, but in your soul is that actual experience, not only as you as a child experienced it, but as God saw and experienced it.
So your soul is (more) enormous, my son, and even though you may lose all physical and mental abilities, shall we say as in Alzheimer’s or some kind of disease or something, your soul is being held by a presence of God. It’s sacrosanct and it is already eternal. So, yes, there’s a part of you, part of your living consciousness that is not only your knowledge and understanding and wisdom, we might say your mindedness which is part me and part Michael; it’s also your soul giving meaning and value to your life. This is where we suggest, in your stillness and your meditation, it’s like walking out into a flower garden and letting some experience in your soul come (blossoming) forth. Just marvel that: there it all is, the way things smelled, and felt when you were ten. And then, my son, there’s all the people you have ever known; all the people you have ever known, each one a little walking infinity, also there in your soul. As I say, you have enough to be humble about right in your own being.
Student: Thank you, Mother Spirit.
NEBADONIA: Thank you, and be in my love.
Closing
Limitless mind
Tonight I offered some suggestions, and so I would like to close with what I began with, and that is that, as Michael said, we do not offer these as some kind of good examples. Even that would be a little too didactic, a little too manipulative. It goes much deeper than that. But we do offer these as a good attitude. This is a spiritual attitude, just granting each other freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of spiritual experience, for this is what our Father, this is what Michael and I really put in your design–this potential. You have a creative spirit that gives you this potential, this ability to be free, to have your own life, and to be so much a part of your life. This is first, insight, that leads to the acceptance and then even the glory of all that you are, in the humble, humble, wonderful humility that you can then grant others, and marvel at all that they are. You lose that need to judge, to contain everything. You lose that need to limit others because now your mind is limitless. Like Michael says, you can put a hundred things up in the air, and just wait and see.
So: good evening, my dear ones. Nebadonia, your Mother Spirit signing off, bidding you all to be in my love, and just love the heck out of each other. Good night.
