2013-05-08-You Are a Creative Being
Marin #225
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: You Are a Creative Being
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
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: You Are a Creative Being
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, we do look forward to these meetings with you. We know that you both are part of us and that any time we desire, you are in attendance to us. You patiently listen to us and give us your full attention whenever we address you in our prayers or meditations. It is wonderful to actually feel you, to feel your presence as a kind of background of our consciousness, reassuring us that you are here. And it’s a treat to interact with you physically because it occurs to us that these sound waves that we’re putting out, and then the physical body we loan you for a while to speak to us; this is actually a physical medium. So we do look forward, and we do treasure these moments we have together. Amen.
Lesson
NEBADONIA: Good evening, my children. This is your Mother Spirit and I am delighted to call you my children. I hope you have the same delight in thinking about me for we will be together for many tens, even hundreds of thousands of years just in our Local Universe here. As you’ve been informed, your lives to come are in a gigantic finishing school where you will literally go through hundreds of changes in your very nature before we send you off into the galaxy. Then we’ll await your return from Paradise as fully finished spirits, millennia and millennia–millions of years beyond that. We do delight that our children return to us when they have some time out of their busy schedules, as they will then have the ability to go clear around, not only our own Superuniverse here, but to go off to have adventures in the others.
That’s the eternity that you will be involved in; that you are involved in right now. It’s what we call an Eternal Now, a kind of beginning-less beginning for your order of personal being. And then something beyond your imagination: in a delightful, wonderful way you will constantly be encountering things that you cannot imagine because they are the handiwork not only of Michael and myself, and of the Paradise Trinity–in other words, the whole physical creation–but also all of the personal beings, even all the orders of personal beings that you will encounter. Every one is a unique person, be they a Midwayer, an angel, a Melchizedek son, or even Michael or myself–Creator Son and Creator Daughter. And you yourself: you are a creative being.
You are a creative being
I would like to get into that a little bit tonight because it’s so much a part of you. Think of all the thousands–hundreds of thousands of years that primitive men and women had no notion whatsoever of air. It was just that they moved around in this transparent medium. Even when they were running fast or, even later, on a fast horse, they could feel it against their skin. Or when the wind kicked up and blew the trees around; still these were just happenings with no notion of some kind of medium.
It was many, many years before your scientists invented a vacuum pump where they could actually create a container, pump all the air out, and then demonstrate how two halves of this container, being attached in no way except by the air pressure on the outside, could hold together. They could begin to estimate that fourteen-pounds-and-something-per-square-inch of pressure you know of today.
Spirit is very much like this. It’s a transparent medium that you are involved in, that totally surrounds you and thoroughly penetrates you. We compared it once, in an analogy, to radio waves which, even though you’re in a house with all the doors and windows closed, still penetrates those: you can turn on your radio. Your physical brain is much like this. It’s much like a radio receiver insofar as it is physical and has its own little internal life, like the old-fashioned radio tubes, or the modern transistors and printed circuits. There’s something physical there that has its own electrical life. We’re still in the electromagnetic spectrum, the physical spectrum. Consider that part of your thinking obviously depends upon your being awake, and your brain and your nervous system supporting this activity. Yet as we’ve given so many lessons on before, this is not the limit of your total mentality. Your mind is part spirit.
Another way to get a hold on this, as we’ve suggested before: every time the word “spirit” occurs, think also of the word “creative.” You are endowed–it’s part of you; you are endowed with creative spirit. Just as you are essentially a unique personality, you have the ability–you’re endowed with the ability to originate, to create something right out of yourself.
True enough, every time you express a new creative impulse in language, the very words you use have precedence. When you invent something by putting things together in a new, unique way, those things had some precedence. There is always this continuity of reality, in what already exists, in these instances. A lot of previous reality does continue–what you call material, obeying Newton’s laws of creation and continuity.
But just like the air you move around in and may be very rarely conscious of, so too you are moving around in a sphere, a surrounding of your own creativity. Your Urantia Book says you are a co-creative kind of being; your personality is co-creative because it is endowed with creative spirit. That means that in all of your experience, my children, there’s no way you can remove yourself from this. There’s no way you can achieve any pure objectivity because you yourselves are not an object. Hopefully you’re especially not an object to yourself. That’s a kind of mental aberration when people feel themselves to be just some physical object, unaware that they themselves are creating that very take on themselves.
So there’s no escaping this. You yourself are a part of everything you experience. First of all, in terms of space, there’s no one right where you are. Your friend can be standing alongside of you and be very close to you in space, have that same spatial perspective, but they are another unique personality with their own unique creativity. What they’re seeing, what they’re feeling, what they’re experiencing is not exactly the same as yours because they too are co-creating their reality.
Because it is true
Why do Michael and I go to such lengths to express this—to find different ways of expressing this? Mainly because it’s true. It’s real. It is part of the nature of a human being. You are endowed with this creative spirit by the Eternal Son of Paradise, much as God creates your personality, and much as the Infinite Spirit is the parent of the Cosmic Mind–which I funnel down to you and augment within you–all the spiritual dimensions of mind. So too the Eternal Son–God the Eternal Son–endows you with his creative spirit. And as God has you within his personality circuit, and experiences everything you do, and actually lives right within you: so too the Eternal Son is connected in and by his spirit to all of his children, to all of his personal beings of which you are one.
This is the origin of the creativity you have, and this is by purpose. On this personal level of reality, there are no pure accidents. There is no pure happenstance because personality itself—God–being the origin of everything, everything has his purpose, though you will spend an eternity, as will Michael and I, fully understanding—by coming in contact with–God’s purpose.
We go through all of this in order to give you some feeling of being a creative kind of being, that you are not just some helpless pawn. You are not only some material thing that is bound by all the laws of causality, all the physics and chemistry you know so well, even the biology you know so well–the living material, if you will.
But you can feel yourself. You can realize yourself as a spiritual, creative being. This is what truly fills your soul: your activities in which you have this fully conscious part. You’re not just re-acting. You’re not just some helpless pawn being moved about. You yourself are an active part of your own life. This is what is necessary to grow: that you come out of yourself with something, something right out of yourself that you then have a chance to try, out in the world, even with your own physical body.
This stands you above all of the animal kingdom: that you can conceive of something, you can invent something, you can create something in your mind alone, and think of a dozen ways of implementing it, before you move so much as your little finger. Yet there is creativity even in moving your little finger because your impulse, your desire, your intention to do so–all these dimensions of being human are creative dimensions.
You have that wonderful expression: You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free; and we must admit: this is also something that you are endowed with–even to the degree that some people feel they are cursed with this–your hunger to be creative, your hunger to be free.
As Michael taught last time, this is that impulse, that great impulse towards a social order of democracy where, as much as possible, all the social and political workings are very transparent to everyone. Everyone can have a sense of freedom then that they are being acknowledged, their voice is being heard, their point of view is being expressed in their representatives.
Your hunger for freedom
This notion of freedom is part of you. It’s the hunger you have to be unfettered, to be able to realize your creativity. All you have to do is look around–unless you’re a monk living way out in the middle of nowhere–some hermit-type person; yet even then, probably the clothes you are wearing and the tools you are using to make your little cabin were not your own: as you look around you, you are sitting in the middle of the result of thousand and thousands and thousands of years of human creativity, to evolve the very civilizations and science that you have. Think of all this creativity that you are the benefactors of.
So, my dears, this is all I wish to say tonight. It’s just to put you right down in the middle of this sphere of your own creativity, surrounded by all of mankind’s creativity. It’s looking forward to dimensions and dimensions of reality beyond your imagination, that you will encounter; and still have your own personal, individual creativity to meet, and to enjoy, to make part of yourself, part of your soul. So enjoy this feeling; and even, if I might suggest, begin to take some responsibility, some ability-to-respond then to what you yourselves are creating. It’s the doorway to your freedom. And it’s an ability you can continue to grow. Now, if you have any questions or comments this evening, that’s another aspect of your creativity, is it not?
Dialogue
Student: Mother Spirit, does God have a plan for the universe, or is it something like a GPS–it just keeps changing because of the way we humans are?
NEBADONIA: Well, yes, my dear, it’s because you are a co-creative being. That means you are not creating everything. You’re involved in an enormous, enormous universe. Probably in your own life you are surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of other people. You get out there on the highway, right, and trust that all those hundreds of folks coming your way on a two-lane highway are not going to crash into you, although that happens from time to time.
You’re involved in an enormous, enormous creation. And we’ve given–to answer your question even deeper–we’ve given many lessons on how at one time, in kind of glory of your scientific method, people conceived of a purely physical kind of universe, including the people in it. God was just some clock-maker and wound it all up, and gave it a little nudge to get it going. From then on, all of reality, all of human reality, was just following this kind of clockwork of cause-and-effect, because they were chasing this cause-and-effect right down into the split-second of time, right down into the molecules and then the atoms of existence, and finding it all so perfect.
But they overlooked the fact that they themselves, by their own creativity, were creating a purely mechanistic notion of the universe. So it’s been our delight to point out that, to answer your question, God is continually creating the creation. If you’re really sharp and you’re attuned to this notion, you notice that, although yes, there is this continuity, this physical continuity of matter and energy, the whole electromagnetic spectrum; each moment is also unique. There are things happening in such a way that have never happened before and will never happen again. Your existential philosophers call this “historicity,” the fact that reality is not repeating itself. This is directly attributable to God. This is the way he set it up. This is his continuous creation.
And then also, sometime in a beginning-less beginning, he decided to share this creativity of his, first with two other beings to form the Trinity, and then all of everyone. All of everyone out here in time and space followed from that–the Ancients of Days who head up a galaxy–Michael and I, hundreds of billions of years old, Creator Son and Daughter of the Gods–right down to you. This sharing is God’s essential nature: to share his creativity with an endless number of all kinds of beings.
A big soup of creativity
So: God’s doing it. We’re doing it. You’re doing it. This is all a big soup of creativity that you are involved in. Does that answer your question?
Student: Well, yes. But I’m still wondering if God has a plan for the universe. I mean: is there a plan? How can God have a plan for the universe when everything is constantly changing? It would have to be changing every second because of cause-and-effect. So I guess I just don’t understand how God can have a plan for the universe because nothing stays the same.
NEBADONIA: But that is his plan. In other words, you seem to have a dualism in your mind where God’s plan, in some way, has to be foreshadowed or unchangeable.
But suppose God’s plan is sharing himself. In other words, the very nature of Deity, of being Godlike–that you can enjoy yourself, is to share your life, your essence, with your children, with your friends. God’s plan is to share his creativity with all these other personal beings. He creates their personality and they are endowed then with creative spirit. This is his plan.
On the large scale, we say that God’s plan is in effect. In other words, God sets parameters of each kind of personal being. Right now you don’t have wings; you can’t fly like a bird. But you have a creative imagination that can come up with airplanes. And so there’s no contradiction, my dear, between God’s plan and then his sharing his plan by sharing his creativity with everyone else. I mean there are billions of folks on your one little planet here. And there are trillions of planets.
This is God’s plan. And in the whole like this, God is so absolute and infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient–all knowing that he sets the parameters of reality itself for each order of personal beings. In that sense, you do have limits you cannot yet escape. Yet you will be happy to let these limits go in your lives to come. The very essence of what you are is partly your own creativity.
You will be given an opportunity to create yourself forever. That is his plan. It’s just ironic that some folks use their creativity to highly, if totally unconsciously, create a feeling that they are mere pawns, and they have no creativity. It’s like your most materialistic scientist with his ideas of a purely mechanistic universe. That’s his own spiritual creativity creating that. There are ironies abounding in this view of things.
So can you see it might be God’s plan to share himself and his essence with all of the personal beings that he creates?
Student: Yes.
NEBADONIA: In one way, you will never be able to escape God’s parameters. But these parameters are highly elastic and depend upon you to, shall we say, fully realize the infinity they are. More paradoxes.
Again, part of my lesson tonight is that you feel comfortable in having all of sudden all this creativity dumped on you. To realize that you’re responsible for so much that is happening to you, especially if you feel like some kind of helpless pawn with no creativity whatsoever. This is where your meditation and your deep thinking can bridge you over to the place where you actually experience yourself creating as you go along.
The only way to peace
And, as we’ve taught in so many lessons, so much of the truly horrible things that people do to each other, and to themselves, stem from this very lack of responsibility, of not being able to respond to what they themselves are creating because it’s like the air they walk through. They’re not aware of it. It’s blamed on someone else. Then they feel justified in doing the most terrible things to other folks for what they themselves are co-creating. Yet this awareness of each person of what they themselves are responsible for doing is the only way to peace. Is there anything else about this you’re curious?
Student: Not right now. Thank you.
NEBADONIA: Be in my love.
Student: Thank you.
NEBADONIA: My son, were there any questions or comments you wish to get into tonight?
Student: Well, I guess I feel overwhelmed by the creative opportunities, and confused by not being able to create the things I want because, I assume, God wants something else. The more I go down this path, the more unhappy I have become. When I used to work hard in the physical world, I would work hard and enjoy it, knowing that I would reap some benefit from this. Then I would take good vacations and I would play hard, so there was some balance between work and play. But in this latter part of my life, it seems that I only work and have no fun. I have gotten to the point where I just really hate life where . . . It scares me when you talk about doing this for thousands of more years because I don’t even want to do it for another ten years.
I feel very lonely. I don’t feel any love, and I’m talking about feeling. I believe that God loves me, and that you love me, but I don’t feel any love coming from the celestial world, you know; and spirit is felt. So I’m more and more focusing on feeling, and life doesn’t feel good. I would love to get out of this. I pray every night to be able to love God and to feel a love for God. As it stands, I’m not sure I even like God. I certainly don’t like life, and I would like to change this. I know that attitude and belief are very important. But I don’t know how to get out of this because it’s just . . . I’m just tired. I’m really tired of life.
It’s never been easy, but I haven’t felt this way for most of my life. I managed to accept life. But it seems to be getting worse, more unpleasant and more chaotic. While I see some growth, spiritual growth, I’m not getting any happier. I’m going the other way. What can I do to bring happiness, or to change this situation?
Happiness in un-self-consciousness
NEBADONIA:Yes, my son. First of all, I appreciate very deeply and I thank you for your honesty. Sometimes you have to be the hand that lets go because you’re simply holding onto yourself too tightly. There are a number of ways of doing this, so let’s run down a few, so you kind-of check them out. First of all, you said that you can remember times when you were happy. Can you think of those times and find any happiness in those same activities? And if not, why not?
Student: Because of financial limitations.
NEBADONIA: In other words, at one time you had the finances to do things that were making you happy. Is there any way you can do even a modification of those things with less money? Think of one of these things, my son, because let’s try to get away from abstractions here and get down to concrete things that can really help you and bring happiness into your life. What’s one of things you did that made you very happy once upon a time?
Student: Foreign travel.
NEBADONIA: Foreign travel. Okay. How about traveling within your present sphere?
Student: Well, I used to be able to tolerate being alone more. But it’s becoming more… I’m feeling more and more lonely being by myself. I don’t like to travel as much anymore by myself.
NEBADONIA: Okay, let’s think about that, let’s think about . . . The only way I can think of–right off the bat–of combating loneliness . . . Well, there are two ways. There’s–as you say–getting used to it in a kind of dull acceptance, which is not working for you. The other thing is to get out there and start associating with others. How does that feel to you?–just the idea of going out there. You’re surrounded by people and you can pick up any newspaper, or go on the Internet, and you’re literally confronted with hundreds of different kinds of organizations of people doing everything imaginable from sports, to civic activities, to whatever you can think of. How does that strike you, that there are hundreds of organizations of people getting together to do things, that you can be a part of?
Student: Well, when I go to these places I often find that there are lots of couples or they’re people who . . . Most people go with someone, and they tend to want to just focus on who they’re with. That’s one of things I find.
NEBADONIA: Aren’t there organizations literally designed for singles?
Student: Well, yes. But, if you remember my life, one time I tried all my life to get married, to have a relationship, and strange things happened. One time, somebody tried to kill me because of a relationship. Another time, I was involved with a woman who made me feel like I would rather be dead, I would rather die. I mean, it was such a painful experience that lasted many years. And then there’s the messages I got the last time I put an ad in the paper to try to meet someone. I had messages from the Course in Miracles and Conversations with God that warned me against relationships. I’ve tried all my life to get involved, and strange things happen. I finally came to the conclusion that I must have chosen this–prior to coming here–and that I’m not supposed to have relationship. I’ve given up.
Organizations
NEBADONIA: My son, it’s hard for me to imagine any kind of ostensibly spiritual kind of organization or promulgation of any kind of a truth that would be against relationships. As you know, from being with Michael and myself, how much we say that what really fills your soul are all the other people you’ve known. Now you’ve had some bad experiences, but can you perceive what we’ve taught so much on: that every individual you encounter is kind-of unique, that they’re beyond any kind of stereotyping or categorizing? That if you can see this, if you can see individuals as such, as unique, then perhaps your bad experiences that were very real, and still are to you, they were only with that particular person, with that particular group. You’re surrounded by a thousand other kinds of associations and relationships.
There are all kinds that do good work if you’re physically and mentally basically there. There are hundreds of organizations in which you can do good work for others. You can get out of yourself. You can do things which are undeniable good work–all kinds of volunteer work that get you out of yourself and, at the end of a period of time working with other people, there has been genuine accomplishment. There will be no denying that you have spent this day helping other people with their lives. You’ll be releasing the hand that you’re trying to hang on to yourself so tightly with, that it’s gotten into a cramp. It’s how to let this go, how to let go all this past and be in a lively association with other people. There are many volunteer organizations to help other people. This gets you out of yourself. This gives you purpose. This gives you some undeniable, actual accomplishment.
Student: But I have that with my work. That’s what it’s for—to help people.
NEBADONIA: Well, how’s that going?
Student: Critically–extraordinarily well; but commercially, it’s abject failure.
NEBADONIA: In this endeavor, how many folks are you engaged with?
Student: I don’t understand the question.
NEBADONIA: In other words, you mentioned you do have this activity, right? And how many people are you associated with in this activity?
Student: Well, I… There’s different types of relationship. I have no way of knowing in one respect. And in another respect . . .
NEBADONIA: Again, excuse me for getting too abstract here. In your day-to-day activity with this, how many people are you associating with?
Student: Well, one.
NEBADONIA: See, I’m talking about going out and joining some volunteer organization where you’re working with maybe a dozen people or so on whatever it could be. It could be working with the local Boy Scouts, could be a kind of Habitat for Humanity type of thing. There’s so many volunteer organizations that are desperate for good, healthy, you know, strong-minded people to lend a hand.
Student: The answer to that is, I work. I’m trying to make some money to be able to pay my bills.
NEBADONIA: Okay. And how many people are involved in that activity?
Student: Well, just me, I guess.
NEBADONIA: Can you see what I’m pointing at? You are surrounded by a whole civilization here with literally dozens and dozens of opportunities to go out and work with other people, and where, all of sudden, the purpose is supplied. It’s whatever appeals to you. In other words, you go and join a bunch of other people, all engaged in a purpose of helping others. I can’t think of a greater cure for loneliness than to be engaged like this in some kind of project, because it gives you focus. It gives you organization, a pre-existing organization that you can join. It doesn’t have to be your own–coming up out of your own self with something to do. But mainly it gets you out of yourself. It gives you a way of letting go of yourself and all your worry and your terrible, terrible feeling that life is not even worth living. How much are you giving of yourself?
Student: Well, I’ve given the last twenty years working full time.
NEBADONIA: And was that a lonely affair?
Student: Yes.
NEBADONIA: How could it be lonely if you were engaged with all these other people?
Student: Writing is not being engaged until they receive the gift of what I’ve written.
NEBADONIA: Okay. So: the last twenty years–why weren’t you out there engaging with other people?
Student: Because I was working on the project. Because it’s such a difficult project that it took my full time, and still does.
NEBADONIA: So, in a sense, you have painted yourself into a corner.
Student: I’ve been doing what I’ve believed I was here to do.
NEBADONIA: Still; I can’t see how you can spend eight hours a day on this, yet there are people working regular jobs, shall we say eight hours a day, who have time to go out and socialize. If they’re wrapped up in some kind of intense activity like you’re doing, like writing, and they’re lonely, when they’re through writing they go out and spend part of their evenings with other people. In other words: to me again it’s this whole thing I taught on tonight. You’ve created this situation for yourself in which there’s no way out because you see yourself working so much on a private, personal activity like writing that leaves you no time whatsoever for any kind of social life? I don’t understand that.
Student: Well, I didn’t say it didn’t leave me any time.
NEBADONIA: No, you said it took all the time you’ve had the last twenty years.
Student: Well, all my working time.
NEBADONIA: Then in your non-working time, why haven’t you been out associating with people?
Student: I guess because of the cost, and because I’ve felt that this is what I’m supposed to do, what God wants me to do. This is what I think God wants me to do.
NEBADONIA: God wants you to be lonely?
Student: Evidently. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know.
NEBADONIA: Well, the whole essence of God is this thing of sharing, sharing your life with others.
Student: But I do that through my writing, but I don’t get back.
NEBADONIA: Then why are you lonely? You say you’re so lonely and yet you’re sharing your life. That’s a contradiction.
Student: Well, partly I’m lonely because I have this inability to connect. I didn’t bring it in, but I have this problem with connecting with people, of speaking, of my inner voice coming out and connecting. I’ve had many occasions when I’ve been face-to-face with someone and wanting to communicate, desperately wanting to communicate with them, but nothing comes out. I have nothing to say. They walk away because they’re bored by me. I have dealt with that all my life, and I don’t have any idea how to change that.
NEBADONIA: Right. And yet, for the longest time now, I keep suggesting over and over again… I’m not impatient with you at all, my son. I’m trying to help you to see that we’ve been talking for quite a while, and over and over again I’ve suggested any number of ways you can go out. The association doesn’t have to be all that verbal. You can go out and there are people desperately needing your help, your being there, working on some project with them. It doesn’t have to be all that verbal.
Student: I think we’re talking about two different things. Because you’re talking about going out and working with people and I’m talking about having a relationship with a woman, having a companion.
NEBADONIA: Yes, but I’m talking about–you have to walk before you can run. You have to have some way of relating to people before you can start relating to this special person. Or else–in other words what I’m saying, my son, is this way of looking at things is not working for you. I’m suggesting a different way of going about it, and I’m meeting all this resistance, right? But this resistance just keeps you stuck.
Student: Well of course when we talk to celestials, you’ll never take into consideration the cost of living, of paying your bills. I know from not only my own experience, but from many of my friends, they are in similar situations. You talk about going out and helping other people, but that doesn’t bring me any income.
NEBADONIA: We’re not talking about income. We’re talking about loneliness.
Student: You never want to.
Loneliness and feeling life is not worth living
NEBADONIA: But I thought we were talking about loneliness, talking about the feeling that life is not worth living. You talk about being so alone and wrapped up in your work that you don’t have time for other beings, or the couple of times you tried to have friends, it never worked out. I thought that what we’re addressing here is a way out of this situation to where life all of sudden feels worth living. You can have other people in your life that you can relate with, and appreciate, and have some relationship with. Because apart from what you mentioned, this other advice you’ve been given, we over and over again emphasize the thing of relationship and having other people. So much of our teaching is designed to aim you at other people, to see them as unique beings and to enjoy that uniqueness.
My son, you’ve painted yourself into a corner and I’m just trying to give you different ways. But it has to be something new. You have to accept that it has to be something new because what you’re doing is not working. What we started out with is you don’t think life is worth living. As long as you keep clinging to the same way you’ve always done things, then you keep getting the same result. I’m suggestion something really, maybe to you, radically new of going out there and giving of yourself without any sense of reward, or having it work right away, or to lead you to one special relationship, or anything. Just go out and give of yourself. Give of yourself and find out then what you have to give.
I know you’re trying to do this through writing your book and that sort of thing. But it has to be something new. That’s not working for you. So think about this, my son. Think about something new, doing something else rather than repeating the same thing.
Student: I’ve thought about all those options you’ve mentioned.
NEBADONIA: Have you tried them?
Student: At times, yes.
NEBADONIA: So you don’t see any way out? [pause] Are you willing to try again? Or are you deciding for yourself there is nothing new?–there’s no possibility. Because this gets back to my point: this is what you’re creating. You’re creating your own cage and I’m talking about the nerve it takes to try something new.
Student: Well, I’m exhausted from trying new things.
NEBADONIA: And you find no rest? [pause] Beyond this, my son, I can only tell you what may not fit into your understanding. But you do have value, and there is that within you which you can give. This giving takes courage and it takes nerve because you have to give and give and give of yourself sometimes before you get any return. You can’t try something for a short period of time and say, “Well, I’m not getting anything back yet.” The only way out then is just to give of yourself, and give of yourself in association with other people.
This takes nerve. It takes courage to do this. It takes courage to let all of that, that you consider failure, to let all of that go and try again. There’s no other way out. What you’re doing–you’re telling me over and over again–does not work. You’re dying of loneliness and life is no longer worth living. Yet what I’m saying is that life is so far, far beyond this notion you have of it. You’ve got to let go of yourself and start giving to others of yourself in a way that they approve of, to bring a smile onto someone else’s face, to have someone say, “Thank you for what you’ve done for me;” to have that in your life. That’s really the cure for loneliness, is to do things for other people that they are delighted to give you a big hug and laughter and say, “Thank you.”
Student: But I’ve had that through my writing. That’s my choice. That’s the way I want to do it. That’s the way I believe . . .
NEBADONIA: But it’s not enough! It’s not enough. Over and over again you keep saying that is not enough. Life is not even worth living. Let’s think about these things for a while, my son. We’re going in circles now. Just, if you will, please consider what I’ve offered tonight.
Self-built cages
And be in my love. I acknowledge with all my heart your suffering. But you’ve got to quit clinging to your suffering and get out there and help other people. This is the only way out of this cage you’ve built around yourself. You’ve got to stop thinking of yourself and give to others. That is the reward and this is the courage it takes to do that, irrespective of what you get back.
This is the secret that so many people simply do, and have a very full life. Their souls are full of so many people, and every single one is different. This is what Michael and I wish for everyone, to have such fullness in their souls of all that they’ve shared with other people. But it has to be unselfish. It has to be un-self-centered, and that’s why it takes courage. That’s why it takes faith–to stick yourself out there, to put yourself out there for another person; to be there for another person.
Like I said, in today’s societies you can go online or go in the newspaper and see dozens and dozens of organizations which are very selflessly helping others. You go in there and you do what you can. Then you have that experience in your soul. You have all their hugs and the laughter and the things you shared with them just as you are. You follow your feelings of what you had to contribute, more than–shall I say–what you’ve already done.
One time we gave advice to someone to get out of the house every evening, take a long walk, and notice how each evening is somewhat different than the one before it. Tune into God’s creativity. The fact is you might feel you’re on some kind of treadmill that’s going round and round, and it’s always the same, and it’s boring, and it’s killing you. And yet you’re surrounded by a creation that’s not repeating itself, if you could only notice.
Being a free-will being
This is the nitty-gritty of being a free-will being, of co-creating your own reality and realizing what is happening to you is because you are co-creating it. If you want it to be different, that’s part of your creation.
Closing
My dears, tonight Michael bids you to be in his peace to get that long-hoped-for rest. I hope you can feel my love, this connective force, for when you love other people unselfishly, unselfconsciously–you’re just there for them: that’s what fills your soul. That’s what enables you to escape the prison of self and have all these others in your life. And that opens a doorway to eternity. Wait until you meet extra-human beings.
So be in my love. Good night.
