2013-02-06-The Teaching Mission
Marin #223
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: The Teaching Mission
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 Closing
Topic: The Teaching Mission
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, and you especially, Mother Spirit: we wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day. We hope this is not an inappropriate way to address a 400-billion-year-old celestial being, someone who is quite illimitable in both her reach and her intimacy, being a part of us. But we have come to know that you definitely have a very sweet heart, and we’ve been blessed to feel all the love and attention you’ve given us all these many years. We are even further blessed to feel you within ourselves and become conscious of using that help you give us, tying our minds and our spirits together with our intuition, our knowledge, our understanding–all these dimensions of your being that you share with us. So Happy Valentine’s Day, dear Mother Spirit, dear Nebadonia. We definitely consider you as one of our sweethearts and one of our dear friends. Amen.
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my children, my dear friends. This is Nebadonia, your Mother Spirit, and I am delighted to accept your offering, your salutation. This is especially precious to me since in your culture–though it does go both ways, you might say–it leans heavily on the side of the males saluting the females with your boxes of candy shaped like a heart, and your flowers. It is a wonderful thing for the males of any culture to salute their females–their sisters, their wives, their mothers, their dear friends and compatriots who give them life, who literally feel them growing inside for a while. So: I joyfully accept your thanksgivings and your Valentine’s Day greeting.
The Teaching Mission
Tonight I would like to talk a little bit about the Teaching Mission that we are all engaged in. This is the very nature of what I’m doing right now, coming to you through a Transmitter/Receiver. Michael and I are delighted that so many of you have put so much of your life into this mission. You have your wonderful websites which have categorized and archived thousands now, thousands of these lessons and their questions and answers. Indeed, it has been the life’s work of many. You’re even concerned about how to make these archives self-sustaining so future generations can know what it was like right at the very beginning when there were only a few dozen of you doing this kind of work of transmitting and receiving.
For, hopefully, in those not too distant futures, everyone will be doing this very consciously. All over the planet there will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of little groups getting together and taking turns doing this Transmitting/Receiving. For as you’ve noticed, and we readily acknowledge, we are shaped somewhat by the personality we come through, their whole soul’s life experience, in a sense the working vocabulary we have to work with. This is our delight, and even more so when it is equally so for you, when you can tune in and relax your own worldly concerns for a while. Just follow along and enjoy our point of view on you human beings, our wonderful children. For it is true that while there are literally millions of worlds with your order of being on them, we relate to each one of you as an individual. This is our glory. This is our power that God has given us.
This is what we would share with you, and tease and invite you to use, yourselves. Use us. Use your Father’s presence right within you to treat all others the same way, irrespective of your social or even intellectual standing. Do your best to honor each other as equals. It’s what you sometimes call, “seeing God in each other.” See that God-given personality that, as Michael said his last time, is a very strange reality that you are for each other–what we like to call “little walking infinities” that you are. You are not only infinite to each other, but somewhat infinite to yourselves in spirit, body, mind and soul; all beyond pinning down and fully comprehending with this conscious self of yours.
And so we address this conscious self of you, my children. We don’t talk through you or over your heads because it’s is our delight to address you and have our conversations with you as you know yourselves to be, even though we know you to be so much greater, you might say infinitely greater than you yourselves can yet comprehend.
Preserving the you, you know yourselves to have been
I’m pointing at your gigantic souls, the fact that your life experiences have been co-authored by God himself, a Father to us all. We’ve so often mentioned how in your meditations it’s such a precious thing even to relive–I mean fully relive–a few moments of your life when you were so much younger. But they are there. Interestingly enough, God’s version–God’s take–God’s creation/co-creation of your soul is very much as you lived it, as you knew it at the time. So God is preserving this conscious you as you knew yourself to be all along. And as we’ve also taught, to us you are a complete being: there’s nothing missing. So tonight, my children, I would invite you to treat each other this way, especially as you stand for and right-up-front present yourselves as being members of the Teaching Mission.
Michael and I are fully aware that for those of you who have followed our lessons, who have read all the hundreds of them to come down through the years, we do seem a bit repetitious because we are always addressing the newcomers, those who may be hearing us or reading us for the very first time. We are a bit repetitious in our fundamentals, in our basics, yet we would ask you to keep this in mind as you have your joyful conversations on the Internet with each other.
We are aware that the Teaching Mission itself is not fully welcomed with open arms by the whole Urantia Book community. We are very much aware of this. For those of you who have not only read the Urantia Book and shared that with all the other readers, but have your own personal, heartfelt relationship to the Teaching Mission; we would ask you to take notice and take to heart the way Jesus related with those who disbelieved or even mocked him and tried to put him down. You notice that he never, ever used his greater intellect or even his greater heart and feeling to return in the same mode. This is who he was: this is what he was; and this is what you can be. We ask you to keep this in mind even when you’re deliberately attacked and being put down, or someone is condescending, even sneering at your efforts and at what is so precious to you.
Genuinely creative responses
Here, my dears, is where you show your true personality and spirit–creative spirit and soul, all the soul wealth you have within you of this Teaching Mission–for some of you for so many years. Here’s where you show what you are made of as students of the Teaching Mission. Do you respond in kind just because your own anger flares up and your own creative spirit can come up with the most, even stinky kind of response? What does this say to those who are approaching this wonderful thing–that you’ve known–for the first time? What does this say to those who are challenging you to “vent your spleen” back at them? What has the Teaching Mission given you? What of the Teaching Mission can you show to others? How can you be welcoming to everyone if you make snide comments, even getting into political realms that Michael and I would never think of touching–repeating the talking points of some of your ideologues who can go on for hours presenting only one half of your political life?Please, my dears, for all you value what you have known and come to love and respect: please be careful.
I would carry this even into subtleties of tone. This is where backhanded, snide, double meaning remarks have no place. If you think I’m being too critical now, or even too sensitive discussing something so delicate as tone; what are you students of–that you might think I’m asking too much? Again, my dears, these are just requests that Michael and I make when you stand for us and what we have tried to teach all these years. Keep your hearts light. Tease and use humor. If someone is condescending to you, ignore it. Demonstrate to them, show them what it is to be equal.
Treat them as equals for as Michael and I see you all, they are definitely your equal. This we ask of you. This we suggest and, in our own way, tease you to use your creative imaginations to welcome all the others into what you love so dearly. Let that love show and shine forth. That’s the spiritual fragrance your Urantia Book speaks of. Now, if you have any questions or comments this evening, let’s treat each other like a bunch of flowers—Valentine’s Day flowers.
Dialogue
Student: —so to voice to another, hard to pick up completely: I just want to say, parenthetically, I was attacked in a public…not a public, but directly by… There’s a faction in the Urantia movement, a majority faction, that doesn’t accept this activity as authentic. They want to go after it, call it out… Because it was unnerving, and it’s the first time I’ve ever… ever addressed anything like this. But it was such a shrill thing that I have spent six days trying to…
NEBADONIA: Go ahead.
Next student: It’s my first time–consciously, anyway–being in this presence. I’ve had a feeling following me for most of my adult life, that there are very dark things coming, at least to those of us living in the United States. And I’ve had this feeling, which I have expressed within limits to dear ones. And now, as we’re in this time period, I’m seeing more and more of all of the pieces that validate that feeling that I’ve had.
Feeling the need to act
My question is really very personal because there’s a place at which I feel I need to act strongly, to do something about this kind of dark gloom of control and dominance of a certain type of human consciousness that is antithetical, in my opinion, to a planet of love, a country of love, a country that invites people from all over the world to come here and actualize their dreams. It’s a type of mentality which, unfortunately, we’ve seen too many times. There have been wars surrounding this type of fascistic control, and it goes back and back and back through the annals of human history at some level or another.
And so my question for myself really has a lot to do with a voice that I get, that tells me to give it all to The Mother–to give it all; to just drop into that completely–to find my own solace, but also my own action. At the same time there’s kind-of a male strength here that wants to do something very concerted. I find the two can be at odds to one another, and are at odds to one another. There’s a voice that still wants me to act as a voice, that’s been the voice all along that says, you know, you got to do something about this. You gotta do something really radical about this. And then the other—and that’s my being gently counseled to give it all to The Mother; to give it all, for lack of better parlance, to the Mother Goddess. I’m sure you know more about this than I do, so I’m interested to hear your guidance.
Sexually balanced in your soul
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son. Well, first I would say: congratulations! Congratulations for incorporating both the male and the female aspects within yourself. For this is one of the really prime accomplishments of your order of being who just happens to be born one or the other. You’re either male or female, and yet that other half of you is not only out there in her or in him as the case may be, but also in yourself.
We teach that your soul, being co-authored by God, is mainly not all the delightful things you’ve known in life–maybe your home, your car–but the people you have known–all those other friends; all those other men and women you’ve known personally. Then there are those you’ve known through all your media–the hundreds of movies you’ve seen, the tens of thousands of hours of television. These are all within you, my son. It is really wonderful if you can feel both in your consciousness and, as you suggested, wrestle with some archetypes of the female and the male.
I’m sure you delight in the Urantia Book’s presentation of Michael and me as your spiritual parents, standing, as you might think, half way between you and God. And as Michael, as Jesus, said: we are the connection. Not only can you pray directly to God, but you can be aware of Michael’s Spirit of Truth within you, and what I, your Mother Spirit, am also doing right within, tying your mind and your spirit together inside you, as part of you.
Courage
We can only counsel you to be of good heart. Really tune into my Adjutant of courage. So in your mediations, when you’re opening yourself to whatever wants to occur within you, and giving it all due respect and a voice: let it come up. These things you feel vying against each other? That’s good so long as you don’t try to suppress one or the other. You’re giving them voice.
Though your intellect and your mind tell you there are some really serious, both social and political things in your life, again: just be open-minded to all points of view here. Use your media to, as we’ve taught on so often, escape your own culture, even your own upbringing–your own parents and friends, even all your past experience, my son, to be here and now, creative and spontaneous, to make the best of this present moment as it changes.
You’re correct in realizing so much of your culture, varied as it is from a farmer to someone living the middle of great city–all these thousands of little mini-cultures all over the United States. We counsel avoiding any kind of galloping generalities, simpleminded-ness. Rather, open yourself to the enormous variety of social and political thought. Try not to become an ideologue yourself, but entertain whatever comes your way. Trust yourself that you will rise above it, that you yourself will incorporate all these disparate–not only disparate but desperate elements, because, my son, this is where your personal leadership comes in, not only for yourself and for your own life, your own soul, but to show this is possible to all you meet.
So wade into your arguments and, as I suggested tonight to the members of the Teaching Mission, show what you’re made of. Show that you too can incorporate all these warring factions and still see the whole. That’s your orientation with Michael’s Spirit of Truth. That’s your orientation to do your best to keep your mind and your spirit together, mutually informing, because that connects your heart and your intellect. For each is truly lost without the other.
I would say, have courage. Realize that you’re always just beginning in everything; and everything, everything just keeps getting bigger. That’s a promise as well as a caution. Glory in it. Thank our Father that you are the kind of being that can encompass so much. Face the enormity of what you have to with true humility, just in the fact you can be aware of it.
So: congratulations! Carry on.
Student: Thank you.
MOTHER SPIRIT: You’re very welcome. Be in my love.
Student: May I ask another question?
MOTHER SPIRIT: Certainly.
Information and the fears it brings
Student: It’s about the line between the information and the fear it brings–where to not act on it is to be annihilated; to not act on it is to be incarcerated; to not act on it is to be damaged–versus the fear being: is this false evidence appearing as real ideas, yet it’s just information? What can you say about this? This is predicated in the sense of the dark part of the time period in which I’m still determining my actions, and therefore colors what I just said. It’s the idea that if I don’t listen to certain fears, and I don’t act on certain fears, there could be grave consequences.
Religion acts: and acknowledges the re-action
NEBADONIA: Again, I must wholeheartedly agree because there’s that great part in the Urantia Book that talks about religion being your inner relationship to God. It’s socialized in those organizations and institutions you call churches; but religion is your inner relationship to that Totality that your spirit does its best to embrace. And as the Urantia Book says, religion acts! It may not always act wisely. As a matter of fact, when you first start out, it’s almost impossible to act wisely before you have earned wisdom. But religion acts.
What Michael and I have given so many lessons on is to keep an open mind about the re-action. This is what keeps you from being an ideologue and carrying on in the face of, shall we say, everything outside of you telling you you’re going the wrong way. This is the second phase of acting: then be open to what’s happening. This is what’s so lacking in your ideologues. They can only go on and on and on from their own self, almost as a way of keeping the other out because it might confuse them. In this circumstance, it takes courage to accept some confusion because you’re accepting the other. My son, if you wish to really share yourself, share your life with others, you have to act, you have to be there for yourself and for them.
Your own instincts are right in telling you that if you’re just taking up space, in one way you’re letting both yourself and them down. But here’s where your open-mindedness comes in, your courage to look at all sides of everything, even that darkness which is definitely hanging over your society like a sword of Damocles. There’s so much of your culture that is not sustainable. And there’s enormous, enormous suffering. But you yourself must discover, and then encourage within yourself, and then act upon your own light. You yourself must be that light that dispels the darkness, by coming up with a real practical alternative to despair, or hopelessness or, on the other hand, just viciousness. It’s a big task, my son, but I invite you to bring it into your consciousness, bring it into your meditations. Act, and then be open to what comes next. Sometimes that’s the hard part. Again, just keep carrying on. Don’t deny anything within yourself, even all that darkness that your own deepest intuition tells you is real. You see how it all comes back to you? This is where we all are, even Michael and I. This is God’s greatest gift: to give you this ability to be involved.
Student: Okay.
MOTHER SPIRIT: We’ve given many lessons on how our greatest gift–we who do have truly illimitable power from a human standpoint–is to let you be, to let you know deep in your soul the consequences of your actions. Be in my love.
Student: Good evening, Mother. I don’t really have a question. I just want to thank you for being especially exuberant and expansive tonight. Thank you for the opening lesson that almost seemed to be addressed to me because I’ve been under attack by the conservatives–so to speak. It was just everything I needed to hear; so that’s all. I just want to thank you. I don’t know if you might have any additional, supplementary thing to say to me because, literally, for six days I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what to say back to one of these attackers. I walked in here with this on my mind, so you must have noticed it. If there’s anything else you want to add or emphasize on that subject, I’d definitely take it to heart.
Immediate anger VS. cultivated hatred
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son. I think in your first reactions when you are being attacked, Michael and I have taught that anger is a very natural response, not to be despised. Yet we talked about the terrible, terrible killing of youngsters recently, of how it was even possible in such a mind and such a soul empty of other human contact; this was not immediate anger but a cultivated thing called hatred.
It’s good to, as you say, count to ten. Or if you’re tempted to put out some kind of poison-pen counter, even an insulting kind of response, sleep on it before you put it out into the Internet. Sleep on it, and then read it the next morning as much as you can as if you were first encountering it. Ask yourself, is this welcoming? Is this acknowledging another point of view? Is this showing them the way?–that you of the Teaching Mission have learned something about all-inclusiveness, about true spirit.
There’s a supreme irony insofar as Jesus lost so many followers who, as your Urantia Book goes to some lengths to point out, felt he failed their preconceived notions of what the Messiah would be–someone to wipe out the Roman occupation and establish the Jewish state as the leader of the world. The supreme irony of all time was that he actually had the power to do so, and yet he did not.
Read those parts of the Urantia Book about when he realized not only who but what he was. It’s about how he himself went off for a number of days–even with his great intellect, with his whole human experience, with his getting to become one with his own presence of God within him: still!–he had to go off and think a while and make some decisions about: what do I do now with all this power? Maybe read again what he chose to do and how even he, as a Creator Son of God, sought out God’s counsel before he acted.
So don’t create enemies out of potential brothers and sisters. Don’t return spite and condescension and disrespect in kind. Set the example. Show what’s possible even though you be reviled and, in a way, spit upon. Here again is where it takes courage to be that gentle soul who shows what is possible.
Student: Yeah…
Showing what you can be
NEBADONIA: I commend you on thinking about this so deeply, and even requesting of your brothers and sisters in the Mission how they would handle the situation. And keep going into the lion’s den. We thank you for that, for going into the lion’s den and showing what you can be when you are so vastly outnumbered. Here’s a chance to really glory in your opportunity to show your soul. So thank you, my son.
Student: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Student: I want to ask another question, but would you like to ask one first?
Another student: No, you go ahead.
Student: Yes, okay. Mother, please, with regard to manifestation in the realm of abundance: this is seeming to be all the more pressing in my life, and especially in the lives of many beloveds around me. What could you say that I could do to improve vastly my capacity to manifest the abundance that I wish to be able to use in service here at this time?
Spiritual limitlessness VS. material/physical economics
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son. Here is where I have to draw a distinction between the spiritual and the material–or physical–because you are both, and you live in a society, in a culture, in a world in which both are always, always present. Yet, as you probably have experienced, you’ve run into individuals who opt for one and slight the other.
Consider your materialists, the so-called hard scientists who have no inner experience, and then no respect or even knowledge of spirit. To them it’s all just some kind of spiritualist table-thumping, hocus-pocus, con game. On the other hand you have those who have the arrogance to totally ignore the physical, who are ignorant of the basic law of economics, which is one of scarcity. Economics doesn’t apply to gathering saltwater on the shores of the ocean. Economics deals not with spirit, but with those realms of human life that are limited. So, my son, to be aware of this distinction is critical.
I must say there is very little I can do in this particular setting to address the economic aspects of your life. I can only invite you to maybe have a private session with Michael and me and get more into those kind of details of, like, what do I do tomorrow?–you know, to be more economically viable, and then generous.
But I can mention a thing we’ve called spiritual generosity. It’s what I just talked about with my other son here. In the face of overwhelming numbers; in the face of the darkness–that possibility of disaster hanging over your heads both spiritually and economically–spiritual notions that are not sustainable in a loving way–economic waste and fraud that are not sustainable and exact such a terrible, terrible toll: these are questions to ask yourself in your mediation, my son. I can’t give you specific economic guidelines expect to be aware, be open-minded and have the courage to question yourself, even to live in a state of question, and return to it, and wonder: how can I do this better? Is this truly in my best interests?”
As you have two eyes, my son, to give you binocular vision and such a wonderful experience of depth out here in this time-and-space world of yours; so too you have both spirit and economics–if you will, the spirit in economics, and then even where it might pinch a little, the economics of spirit, where best to use your unique creative abilities. This is who and what you are, my son. So as we say: as you act, be open to the re-action. Be open to what reality tells you, is the only advice I can give you. This is why your actions are truly yours, as are the consequences. Much of your life is in your lap because that is the greatest gift we can give you: to be a being of free will dignity is something you truly earn. So carry on. Keep growing. That’s always the one way out. This is not the time for exactly going deeper into your economic situation, but that is open to you, if you wish to do that some time in a private session.
Student: Thank you.
Student: Yes, Mother. Let me see if I can read this. Something you just said really struck a chord with me, but I’m going to read something that I wrote.
A student’s vision
“We aught to be amazed at who we are and where we are. We are living, breathing, loving, creative human beings, dwelling upon this planet that is circulating around this star, our sun–that is situated within this universe, that is within this galaxy, that is within this cosmos, or unified field of singularity. There’s got to be so much more to who we are and how we portray and define ourselves. It’s remarkable that amidst all this enormity, this pulsating, proliferating infinity, this magnificent grandeur, that we continue to see ourselves as mere trivialities. We have hardly scratched the surface of our potential, our creativity, our imagination, our expression of love. We are a vital part, a vibrant piece of the grand cosmic matrix.” You said something about reality, about allowing or opening to our reality or…
NEBADONIA: …to what reality has to tell you.
Student: Yes, that’s it. Many people have different ideas about what reality is. I think what you’ve been saying tonight, over and over again, is to, in a sense, discover or uncover what reality truly is, what we truly are as human beings and how we fit amidst all of this. We get caught up; and I’ve been thinking about this the past couple days. We get caught up in beliefs systems that no longer work for us on all different levels–economic, material, spiritual, health–all of that. I think we can see what’s going on in the world around us, that our belief systems, our society mores, our cultures, our religions, our spiritual ideologies are being exposed for the the frauds or the fallacies or the misperceptions they are.
We’re learning. We’re uncovering who we truly are and how we fit amidst all this grandeur, this splendor. It’s not denying darkness, not denying suffering. But it’s seeing the reality of what there truly is; what they truly are. When you say, just experience it; when you experience that fear instead of running away from it; when you experience the fear of that darkness, of being vulnerable, of opening up: you open up to more of who you are. The fear kind-of drops away and you see the reality of what truly is.
What I’ve come to see more and more for myself, and every morning I kind-of affirm is, my whole desire in life is to live in truth and be discerning of what no longer works for me. It’s being open to new ideas of what I can be in this moment here and now, and let the future take care of itself. And so that’s kind-of where I’m at. I’m asking these questions to myself, and to the beings that are around, to see what comes forth, and allowing myself to hear and to act–if I am to act.
Is this the state of human being?
I have a very strong, affirmative feeling and experience of what it means to be a human being–that we are natural love. We are natural intelligence, perfect intelligence, naturally perfect. It is here. It’s in our DNA. We are naturally affluent. Every single human being has access to the resources that are all around us. With every single human being there’s natural equanimity, natural joy, natural well-being, natural wholeness. This is where we need to experience who we truly are. But it takes time. The seeds are here. So . . .
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, you put your finger right on it there at the end, that this is a function of time. In time, if not in this world then in those to come, there will be this fulfillment. Yet as your Urantia Book cautions you, these too are just little resting points.
One of our most profound lessons has been to give you the assurance that your human situation truly can be likened to having one foot on the dock, solid ground, and the other out in an untethered boat bobbing around. You can feel the stretch. Sometimes it’s pain; sometimes it’s fear. Possibly it’s as expressed tonight, just the darkness that so many folks do live in.
Natural VS. real
You say that everybody has these “natural” abilities. Yet one time when somebody brought up the question of whether or not there is a Decimation going on, or a Decimation to come, Michael and I said: look around! You’re in the middle of it. There’s a great portion of the human race that is starving, who are living stunted, totally stunted lives beyond their control. Children are dying in their infancy. Disease is wiping out people with no hope whatsoever of getting well. These are the accidents of time and space that even Jesus cautioned his closest followers not to expect to avoid. This is also “natural.”
This is what God has plopped you right down in the middle of–an adventure; and a lot of people don’t like adventure. An adventure is not knowing what’s going to happen next. We’ve talked about a “bubble of familiarity” that people use all their creativity to build around themselves. It’s only an illusion because that bubble can burst, just as some of your recent economic bubbles have burst and people have lost a whole lifetime of savings and a seeming security. You are economic beings of limitations, as well as spiritual beings–as you pointed out tonight–of unlimited potential. That’s the dimension of time. You have this potential but it is not yet.
For so many simply born into the circumstances, they haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. They’re born into, they will live, and they will die terribly stunted lives in almost constant pain, sometimes not the pain in themselves, but what they experience by way of those they love and are helpless to do anything about.
Even the warriors, all fired up for their cause, see their friends literally torn apart. This is the reality. Consider: why didn’t God step in in the middle of the Bubonic Plague? Why didn’t Jesus, when he became aware he was Michael, why didn’t he wave his hand, more or less, and end the Roman occupation, and be the longed-for Messiah? Why did he submit to being tortured to death in the well-known ways of that time?
This is why it’s always back in your lap, my children. This is the greatest gift that God can give you, that you have such a lap to hold what you are aware of; and challenge yourselves to grow, to be open to what you are doing to and with others. This is the spiritual quality of humility, and why it is a kind of ultimate blessing.
Spiritual triumph
There it all is before you. And there it will always be before you. So enormous. So seemingly incomprehensible in its very enormity. Yet to be thankful for this is the supreme spiritual triumph that you are capable of.
Closing
Michael wishes you to be in his peace. I send you all my love. Let us honor our Father for creating us the very kinds of beings that we are. Amen. Good evening.
