2012-08-01-Origin of Spirit
Marin #217
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Origin 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 Lesson
3.1.1 Discernment
3.1.2 Subjectivity
3.1.3 Reflection
o 3.2 Dialogue
3.2.1 Ethics
3.2.2 Sexuality
o 3.3 Closing
Topic: Origin of Spirit
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Lesson
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit . . . Oh, excuse me, this is Mother Spirit’s turn. So: dear Mother Spirit and Michael, welcome. Always and forever, welcome. We hope to have your company from here on out, and, as you tease us with that word “forever,” it’ll be something we have to experience to really appreciate. But it would be hard to imagine a time in which you aren’t a part of us, augmenting our own natural abilities, Mother Spirit; and you, Michael, giving us the orientation with your Spirit of Truth. This is valuing, spiritual valuing all that we don’t know, all that lies in wait for us the next minute, or tomorrow, or the next day; or, as you say, forever. It’s the orientation towards something bigger than us, and yet whose author, our Father, designed us to be ever more open to experience—and giving us our capacity to store our experience as knowledge.
We do come to know things because we’ve done them. And as we accumulate a certain amount of knowledge as children, the other facet of your Adjutants, Mother Spirit–the whole dimension of understanding—gives us the ways we put all those little bits of experience together and find out what works, as well as what doesn’t. It’s hard to imagine a time in which you would not be a part of us, pointing us in the right direction and giving us the extra spirit to embrace it. So thank you very much. Amen.
MOTHER SPIRIT: Good evening. This is Michael. I notice that there’s a crowd of one tonight…
Student: I thought Mother Spirit was speaking.
MOTHER SPIRIT: Excuse me, this is Mother Spirit. . . . I’ll start again.
This is Mother Spirit. That’s a little TR error there, thank you. To be honest, Michael and I are not quite separate in this person’s mind yet. As your Urantia Book cautions you, don’t be too put off if you cannot distinguish the exact source of spirit in your minds. Whether Michael or myself, or even our Father, we do have such a point of origin for you that you cannot always distinguish between us, just as you cannot always distinguish between what is our input into your mind and what is your own spiritual creativity.
Discernment
Origin of spirit
After a while you do. Sometimes you can recognize the point of origin. Just as we’ve taught before, it’s those ideas that seem to come right out of the blue and so perfectly encapsulate the whole situation. It’s the point of view that is so comprehensive and so startling–startling true to you in that moment, you do know it is from someplace above even your own highest mind and creativity.
This is our delight–to tickle you with these possibilities. And it is reward enough for us when, irrespective of their origin, you take them in and do your best to entertain them, give them room in all your previous experience. And then test them out and see how they come through for you.
This is your own inner assessment of truth, my children, and what is true for you. You notice there are two components here. One is your assessment of truth, and you also notice I mention you are involved. For only our Father possesses truth. Only God is so extensive that he, with his personality circuit, literally experiences what every personal being in all of creation experiences. Only he in his omniscience is also perfectly aware of all the material aspects of the creation. Only he is everywhere. Only he is omniscient and omnipotent. It’s why many of our lessons have been about this omniscient way he chooses to use his power, including all the ways he reserves his power that you may enjoy an ever increasing free will.
The truth for each of you is necessarily an aspect of your personality: it’s a very personal thing. You do have physical facts that you’re involved in, including your own body, but it’s how you take these things. It’s your take on reality. It is what we’ve called your own co-creativity, the fact that you are involved in creating everything you experience, even your own body and mind. You’re part of your reality and this very fact, the inseparability of you from your own experience, and your own understanding of course, plagued generations of your philosophers because there was a notion at one time among folks that there was a pure objectivity possible.
By undergoing certain kinds of practice, meditation and intellectual exercises, it was believed possible for a person to arrive at a purely objective reality. This, for them, seemed the only way out of the incessant warfare based on disagreement, and not only in the conventional sense but even in the warfare of their philosophies of life. If only people could achieve this objectivity, they would become God-like. They would escape their own subjectivity and peace would finally be possible because some kind of total agreement would be possible.
Subjectivity
Spiritual subject self
But there is no escaping, if you will, your own subjectivity, simply because you are a spiritual being. You yourself possess a creative spirit. It’s part of your personality, your personhood. Some of your philosophers have recognized this in saying, “Thou art that.” Whatever “that” is that you’re experiencing, you are part of that.
From our point of view, the only way to peace is when more and more folks recognize and take responsibility for how they themselves are interpreting reality. This is an acknowledgment of your humanness, if you will, and granting everyone else the same respect. This can lead to a greater sharing of your life with others because you grant each other this freedom, just as your Father grants you freedom right within his rather immutable laws.
There’s a certain factor that God puts into human life that actually allows you to make mistakes. It gives you this freedom to learn and adapt yourself to what you discover are the unchanging laws of his and of nature’s. This is the only way to peace–when folks treat each other this way and take responsibility for their own creativity, and grant that same freedom to others, just as our Father grants you that freedom.
On the theological level, it’s not that God cannot create perfect beings because he does. But he’s actually giving you the opportunity to participate in your own evolution. For you perfection is a goal, and we tease you with just how long a goal that will be, clear across what you know of as the universe and then some billion worlds beyond. And still you will just be beginning in eternity.
The question is: how do you achieve, then, the feeling for what is truly objective and out there apart, separate from you? Where is the dividing line between that and how you are taking it? Here is where your own internal philosophy comes in, your own philosophy of life which, whether you’ve thought about it or not, you have one. It’s all involved in your basic fundamental feeling of things. As I said, this is how you take things. This is what you’ve learned that works. This is what you call reality and how it works, including you.
Reflection
So reflect on this. Consider, then reconsider things rather than just wading through life on a purely one-time, catch-as-catch-can basis. Give yourself time to reflect and think about things. Here is where we suggest the practice of stillness–if you will: stop taking in a lot more activity and be still enough, regularly each day, to let things reoccur to you. This is opening up an enormous trust in your own mind, in your own self. You still your own goal-oriented plans and what you need to do to get through the day; you take a break from that and are still. Give your whole being–your personality, your body, your mind, your spirit, and your soul—give this totality of you an opportunity to suggest things. Just as Michael said in his last lesson, this is the surest way to enlightenment, right within yourself.
For those of you who are just starting out, there might be a whole backlog of traumatic experiences to wade through, to relive and to come to some greater understanding about. But this is how you achieve an ever more spontaneous, creative, and perceptive present moment; not by escaping the past, but by so thoroughly understanding the past–welcoming it, knowing it, reliving it–it’s no longer plaguing you. It’s now conscious, and not unconsciously driving you along.
We one time said that for a lot of folks living is like trying to go through life looking in a rearview mirror. They have so many things driving them from the past they have great difficulty being present. We can only assure you that this present moment is, like you, partly yours and, like you, it’s alive. It’s not repeating itself. There’s a cosmic evolution, as well as a planetary evolution, as well as your own evolution always going on. And as you tune into this, as you become ever more present, creative and spontaneous, you find this is where the greatest amount of fun is. This is the real joy of life, of feeling this living being that you are a part of. This is appreciating that God is giving you life and living through you, experiencing all that you are.
So this, my children, is my recommendation tonight: to have more life at least orient yourself and grow your ability to be more in touch with what is truly objective and not-you. It’s how you come to know yourself and make some consideration then for how your point of view is shaping what you experience. You come to welcome the fact that you are inextricably involved. You come to really, thoroughly enjoy it, this lively dance. Now if you have any questions or comments, let’s dance along with that.
Dialogue
Student: Mother Spirit, if we lived our lives just by doing to others as we would have them do unto to us, as Jesus has taught us, and no other thing, how would that be for each of us? I mean, that’s what I try to do. Am I on the right track? I read scripture but this is, I think, the most important thing.
Ethics
The golden rule
MOTHER SPIRIT: Yes, my daughter, that is part of Michael’s orientation, part of his Spirit of Truth–the desire to really engage this other person, this other separate, totally unique being right in front of you. It takes enormous courage to do this because, as you very quickly find out, even with this orientation of yours, doing it with your whole heart, it is not always recognized.
In fact there are those of a much more self-centered, even selfish orientation who will try to take advantage of you. But as long as you trust yourself, and this is your true intention and a part of your wisdom, my daughter, that you keep reflecting on–how you want to be treated in order that you may treat others this way; as long as you are determined to keep growing in this ability, this definitely is the way to greater life. This definitely is an offering, a gift, a spiritual generosity that you are offering. And like every true gift, it comes with no exact expectation. You’re not doing this in order to get something from them. It’s just a pure gift, a way of offering yourself. It’s not some kind of spiritual one ups-man-ship because, as I said this evening, if you are doing your best to take in all of them, this gives you something ever more real to relate to. This is how you have a fuller life because you’ve not just lived in your own little cocoon. You’ve actually touched and been touched by other real people. Does that seem like a way to go?
Student: Yes. It seems like the way to go. I think the intention part is awfully important. If I always have that intention to treat the workers, that are helping me with my mother, treat them the way I want to be treated, and then I always know how I should treat them–like I want to be treated.
MOTHER SPIRIT: Like I said, it doesn’t always work in that sense, but that’s not why you’re doing it. You’re doing it for yourself in the sense of wanting to genuinely know and touch another. And that means opening, opening your self.
As I taught tonight, it’s trying to understand your own biases and prejudices, and doing your best to take them into account. It’s a wonderful thing when you realize you’re prejudiced in a certain way, shall we say, maybe in a racial way. This is not directed at you, personally, my daughter, but as a general rule to learn. As Michael says, lean into what your heart tells you is the way to go. If you have some prejudice, go out of your way to associate with those others that you are prejudiced against. Get beyond your own narrow points of view. That’s the Spirit of Truth; that’s getting to their truth; and then doing your best to be open to what that is. And have you found that works?
Student: Yes.
MOTHER SPIRIT: Do you have a real sense of the individuality of those you encounter?
Student: Yes.
MOTHER SPIRIT: That’s definitely the way to go, to enjoy that God-created uniqueness of every person you meet.
Sexuality
Student: I have another question, Mother Spirit. It’s about, off the subject really, it’s about brahmacharya—it’s a Vedanta term, I believe))–chastity and sexuality. I wonder if being a physical being, being a sexual being, in any way detracts from being a spiritual being.
Spirit and sex
MOTHER SPIRIT: Well, my dear, that’s an easy one to answer by our very definition of spirit. God is spirit. God is the original source and center. And God, as we say, is omniscient. There is nothing happening, especially among personal beings, that God is not himself experiencing.
When you think of spirit, try your best right in your own personal life to think of all-inclusiveness. Spirit includes everything. In other words, a spiritual person is, again, teased along, invited along, yet never prodded along by Michael’s spirit, and spirit always opens toward ever greater knowledge and experience. Spirit is what invites you to experience all aspects of your human reality.
As Michael taught in a lesson or two ago about human sexuality; here again you’re right on the cusp, right on the living, tipping balance between something that is objective–people do come in two different sexes–yet it’s also how you personally are able to experience this. It’s so much you, and yet so much of you is the culture in which you were raised because human sexuality, as it is encountered and enjoyed all across the world, is greatly determined by culture, even the fact that the sexes can or cannot live together, and how their whole social interaction has such a cultural component to it. Yet for you, personally–as a person, it is so much how you take it, even how you have taken it. It’s what sexuality has been for you your whole life. That’s real. It’s part of your soul.
So here again, we invite folks to be humble enough to realize the enormity of what sexuality is and has been all through history. Accept response-ability, being able to respond with your own sexual nature. Your ability to respond is such a delight because it leads you to my entire lesson tonight of really taking in another. This is a very special way of doing that. This is a very special dance between folks, is it not?
Student: Yes. So it isn’t going to bring your consciousness down by using your sexuality. It doesn’t make us any more pure to not be sexual, just to be a brahmacharya? (a celibate nun?)
MOTHER SPIRIT: Again, my dear, you’re pointing up the cultural aspect of it. If a culture teaches, and even more importantly, if an individual accepts sexuality as being almost the epitome of a non-spiritual human life, then that is what that is for that individual. That can determine the individual’s whole life in their attitude toward sexuality. We can only ask such an individual to be aware that perhaps he or she has no actual experience beyond, shall we say, a denial of their own and others’ sexuality.
Experience
You are an experiential being: this is your purpose. This is your glory here–your experience. And so individuals raised in a certain culture that looks down upon or denigrates human sexuality in some kind of blanket fashion apart from their individuality, some of those individuals may have the arrogance and the pure unknowing-ness and inexperience to take such an enormous part of human reality and reduce it to a few simple “Thou shalt not’s.”
You have to be aware that is their experience. That is all they are letting themselves know. The opposite extreme, of course, is what you call a libertine, a person who is so promiscuous with almost no reflection whatsoever, that there is no real touching the individuality, the God-given personality of the other person they’re engaged with. This is the totally self-centered, self-absorbed person who is merely using others as a means of self-gratification with no real spiritual exchange at all.
So there are your two extremes, if you will. Fortunately, most folks live in the broad, enormous area between them and have in their souls some of the most tender and touching and real exchanges of spirit that human beings are capable of. Indeed, as your Urantia Book points out, human sexuality is only a spiritual problem for those poor, overly fastidious souls that don’t really want to touch, on a spiritual level, another.
Student: That’s a good answer. Thank you. Very comprehensive.
MOTHER SPIRIT: Again, my dear, it’s something that points up the enormous importance of culture. For those who are raised in a culture that denigrates sexuality implicitly by elevating to some extra-human heights of spirituality the abstention from any, shall we say, physical sexuality: do your best not to be in any way judgmental against them but, in your own way, just take them in as individuals in spite of their cultural conditioning.
Unforgettable experience
And know, too, that within every culture, even those that are ostensibly opposed to physical human sexuality, even within those cultures there are those courageous men and women who escape those strictures and rather silly bonds, at times, and know and have in their souls having touched and been touched by another in some rather unmistakable and unforgettable experiences. That’s part of the glory in their souls. Are there any other questions or comments?
Student: Thank you, no. I have a lot to think about.
MOTHER SPIRIT: And so, my dear, this is where, as you say, the rubber meets the road. This is the real nitty-gritty of human life, not only the fact that you are an individual, a unique being living in the midst of dozens–or for some of you, hundreds of others–but that life itself, all that “other” out there, all those other folks, that whole world surrounding you; where you are at this place and point in history compared to all that’s already happened and all that will happen–this unique point in time: this is what you are. This is your glory of having all of this; if you will, being given all of this. Life is an adventure. We’ve said at one time, it’s like being on the rim of the Grand Canyon and stepping off into an unknown future, not even knowing exactly what your own thoughts might be ten minutes from now.
Closing
Touching
It’s a little scary. No one generally knows for sure just how much time they have here in their first life, and what they will experience. And so there’s nothing as precious as courage–something I do my best to augment within you. It’s simply this openness to experience more; this determination to have a life; this glory of filling your soul with so many others that, as I say, you’ve touched and been touched by. So keep leaning into the adventure and, with us, let us all thank our Father for setting up this whole universe this way as a totally unending adventure for all of us; and in which we ourselves are the greatest gift for others. Now be in my love. Good evening.
