2005-03-28-Uncertainty With Security
Marin #41
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Uncertainty with Security
2Group: Marin TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Nebadonia
2TR: JL
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
3Dialogue
4Closing
Topic: Uncertainty with Security
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Nebadonia
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, We want to thank You for these insights You have been giving us into what seems to be unfathomable parts of our own nature. This is especially helpful when we find ourselves getting stuck in inertia. One of our poets expressed this as, “Between the intention and the action falls the shadow.” You have helped us realize how much we may be living in that shadow – essentially free, yet unwilling to take the next step. So we thank You for Your inspiration, Your encouragement, Your gentle little nudges. Amen.
Nebadonia. Good evening, My children, this is your Mother, Nebadonia. I’m always so happy to be here with you. I just bask in the glow of your love. For I too have a heart that feels, and the love of My children is a glow that illuminates this whole corner of the galaxy. If you could only see, it puts the stars to shame. This is truly who and what we are. You are little nodules of God set free out here in time and space, living the adventures He has set out for you. Even more marvelous, He is right here with us, sharing the adventure with mutually unfathomable anticipation. Not even He, Our Universal Father, chooses to know what we will experience next – until we do.
Lesson
Uncertainly with security – this is the hallmark of spiritual living. This is taking our steps into the unknown trusting that God himself, manifesting as a universe, will be under our foot when it sets down, essentially on His ground. Never forget this whole, gigantic universe of impersonal matter and energy is His creation. All that you understand so far as natural law, as enormous and profound as it is, is still for you only a beginning, only the first chapter of an endless book.
Appreciate that though, for We celestial beings, there is somewhat of a finiteness to this material universe of millions of galaxies, for you in your day to day life it is truly infinite in both directions, the infinitesimal right down into the living cells of your body, and the enormity and complexity of the physical world that surrounds you. This is a living world, a world full of all kinds of living beings. You have libraries of tens of thousands of books on biological life which are still only scratching the surface – as you merrily munch away on an apple or two and trust God’s design for them to sustain your life.
To see with the eyes of spirit does not require you to diminish any other realm, either physical or mental. You do not have to squint your eyes and see through a haze of sentimentality to realize a mystery in it all. There is no fundamental disagreement whatsoever between a true scientific method and religion – your relationship with Us and with God. Rather, just as your two eyes give you a sense of depth, so too spirit welcomes the fullest vision of your intellect and your imagination – your own personal creativity, to help you realize so much of your life is an experiment. I should say, It can be, if you have the nerve for it. But now I’m teasing you a bit. I’m encouraging you to stretch yourselves, My children.
Use your imaginations. This is the true scientific method. When you’re confronted with a situation, use your creativity to imagine what does not yet exist. Then be honest with yourselves and realize further there’s so much you cannot know until you try. Your own imagination can only penetrate so far. Because you are this creature suspended between the infinitesimal and the infinite, because there are so many personal beings with their own creativity involved in this living soup you are swimming around in, and because your present knowledge and wisdom are still a small part of what is happening, there is truly, from a human standpoint, a random factor. We call this the Unqualified Absolute – an absolute reality that impacts you as chance, as a certain unpredictable-ness which is part of everything you encounter and create.
I am describing the kind of reality you actually inhabit. This complexity impinges upon you in very deep and instinctual ways, ways that you intuit through all the millions of years of animal evolution on this planet right there in your cells, in the structure of your bodies and brains. So treasure these perceptions, these instincts, these impulses, and let them inform you. For most of you have had experiences where little twinges of fear or caution, seemingly out of nowhere, have saved your lives. But as you note this part of yourselves, realize too that you have to maintain a human-being. Above and beyond, yet threading its way all through your physical and mental being, is the spiritual dimension of your unique personality.
Here comes then that wise love that We suggested you employ with each other. Don’t forget to employ this with yourself. With all the power of your spirit, love yourselves wisely. Spend some of the precious moments of your life in stillness, to let all your soul experience impinge upon your present consciousness. Let all the wisdom that you have so, sometimes painfully, earned, reassure you of your completeness. For from the standpoint of the present moment, your own past may be foreign territory.
You may have to explore it to get to know it, to truly make it your own so it can inform you. In this exploration, We have offered you the tool of, as much as possible, being open to reliving moments of your past, however painful or embarrassing. Relive them as they originally occurred to you in all the pristine freshness of that present moment. Then see all your judgments against yourself for what they are. They too are real. These judgments on yourself are also part of your past, but they are not the original experience. Your souls are so enormous, My children, so enormous. No one will dissemble their surprise when they awaken on the Mansion Worlds and suddenly find they are one with themselves.
But to experience this now you have to let go habitual ways of thinking who you are, to discover who you really are. You have Our help in this: My encouragement to let yourselves perceive the world and your fellows anew, however strange they may appear at first. You have Michael’s love in your heart, so experience His love encouraging you to feel, however painful or embarrassing or downright odd this may make you seem to yourself.
You have an enormous reality within you that balances the whole world outside. Use Michael’s Spirit of Truth to sort it out without pre-judging it. For as you know yourselves better and better and are more open and complete to yourself, so you will feel all your little spiritual antennae which can receive information from those around you – both the spiritual dimensions of other people and your whole celestial family. What a treasure! What an enormously sensitive and delicate perception you can have if you will but welcome it.
Think of all the long historical evolution of your religions and philosophies, how long it has been that the human race did not consciously realize it was such a puzzle to itself. I think you can see how this explains so much of your history. Yet as Michael assured you last week, God created you so much like Him not to plague or harass you, My children, but to offer you the opportunity to actually rest – deeply, profoundly – in wonder! There are times when your most sincere expression is something like, “Wow!” Michael and I share this nature with you. In this spiritual sense, you and I are most one.
If you have any questions or comments this evening, let Me wonder what they might be.
Dialogue
Student. Mother, You’ve answered one of the big questions I had this week, how to free myself from the burden of my past – past actions, past decisions, past ways of looking at myself, and the habits that add up to be me. With the burden I carry it’s still difficult to look at those things. So quite directly I ask for Your help, because I’m not willing to look at them on my own. And yet I feel that looking at them is where the freedom is; re-experiencing them is where the freedom is. So once again, thank You very much.
Nebadonia. Yes, C, might I suggest that the freedom to explore the past is still only half of what you are capable of. True, in one way freedom is freedom – freedom to look at anything leads to growing. But at the same time you cannot drive down the road of life looking in the rearview mirror of the past. This would have you backing up through life. Then too, until you are free of the past and well established in the present – and this includes not using the past illegitimately to prop yourself up or excuse what you’re doing – the view from that rearview mirror will always be somewhat distorted.
The other half of your freedom in the present is in the other direction, time-wise. I’m talking about the future. It does not yet exist, but it will become here-and-now. Though We have given you so many lessons on the unknowable-ness of what exactly will happen tomorrow, there will definitely be a tomorrow.
How do you get free in the present? How do you break out of a strict cause and effect that would say, if you were such and such a person yesterday, you have to be that same person today? How do you break out of this kind of physical/mental causality? Do you remember, My son?
Student. I would have to say no, other than experiencing the past more fully – to free myself from the past. Other than that I don’t know.
Nebadonia. Not to be unkind, but do you see where you are still oriented? The answer I was looking for was – creativity. Do you remember our talk about Mozart and mathematicians, how you have the same ability as those you think of as geniuses, to create something new? You have the ability to create a new life that is somewhat independent of the past. You can imagine, and then go out and do something tomorrow you have never done before. You may need to do this, however wild and impractical it may be, just to convince yourself you need not be bound by the past. You can just let the past be. A fragment of God is creating your soul.
Nothing you experience will be lost. Even those persons who suffer Alzheimer’s disease or senility, when they awaken on the Mansion Worlds will find themselves just as complete with their whole life’s experiences as anyone else. You do not have to personally maintain your past. Be free to explore it all you want, but your future is somewhat plastic. Certainly you have to operate within natural law – you can’t sprout wings and go flying, but there were men who imagined machines which could take them flying, and not so long ago a few of your fellows were standing on the moon. Trust yourself, My son, to release yourself. What do you want to do? Create your way forward. This is a spiritual power you may not have used enough.
Student. Yes, I agree with that!
Nebadonia. This is why Michael spent so much time last week talking about a mysterious aspect of freedom – so mysterious you cannot realize how free you are until you are doing it. Be truly scientific, experiment, try things. We do not tell you what these might be because We want you to exercise that power. No one knows your life so well as you, except God. Use your imagination. If you can, start tomorrow. Get up, bestir yourself awhile, then sit down and imagine something to do which you have not done before. Then step out of your bubble of familiarity and do it. Will you sincerely try this, My son?
Student. Yes, Mother, I will.
Nebadonia. Write done whatever comes into your mind. I’ll be with you. Let’s see what we can come up with.
Student. Sounds wonderful to me, Mother. Thank you very much.
Nebadonia. You’re welcome, My son. Remember when I teased you that the adventure is just one inch in front of your nose? Well, lean forward a bit and stick your nose in it.
Student. (Laughing) I will!
Nebadonia. And stay in My love.
Student. I was reading the transcripts from last week about freedom, and how we treat it as an abstraction, and I think we do…do this. The idea gets thrown around so loosely. But the real freedom to create the life I want to live – I wonder about that. Sometimes I have a lot of apprehension about that. I’m so used to the one I have. I know I have dreams, and ideals; and I know the kind of life I don’t want to live. For the past few years I’ve desired to create…to love as clearly and sincerely as possible. I guess I just get confused about how I could live. Like, I’d like to travel with my family, but I can’t see how that could happen. So…I guess I need general insights as to how to create my life, and possible…guidance – into this idea of freedom.
Nebadonia. Yes, My son, this is why Michael and I have decided to approach this puzzle head-on. We hope Our insights do not themselves become something abstract, but rather something you can internalize, and try. From the standpoint of spirit one of the most colossal errors that human beings are making continuously is what We have used your common term of Monday Morning Quarterbacking to describe. That is, as soon as the football game – or any past event – is over, everybody immediately thinks they know why it went the way it did, and what they could have done differently to change the outcome. This habitual way of thinking is a fantastic over-simplification of reality – with which you may be regarding most of history.
True, to a degree this is unavoidable on an unconscious level because your very survival depends on your ability to take in what is happening and accept it completely, because at each moment, out of all the vast possibility of things which might happen, there is this one, singular “happening.” You need the ability to incorporate this instantaneously – especially in your highly mechanical society where you are gliding around in vehicles weighing many tons, with hundreds of horsepower moving them. The opposite reaction to this acceptance, usually when something painful happens to you, you call “denial” – i.e. “I can’t believe this is happening!”
The error comes in when you don’t realize how overly-simple are your notions of the past, and achieve a real, complex “presence” in order to face the future, but still try to use the same mental mechanism, the same habit of thinking everything’s fixed and you can move this piece or that without everything else changing. You find yourself stuck because things haven’t already happened yet in your eternal now. People feel that somehow they should be able to know completely what is going to happen, as if the future were transparent. They forget that, at each moment of that football game, complex things are happening in an unknowable way even a split-second beforehand – which is why you play the game, and why it’s so exciting. But when it comes to your own life, you are so conditioned to avoid feeling this queasy, organic reality of being a living creature in an open present moment, your attention becomes fixated on the past because it seems so solid, yet amenable to tinkering.
Much of the uncertainty of being a living being you assuage by trying to apply the past to the next moment, right through “now.” This is your bubble of familiarity. This is why you have to give yourselves the courage to really feel the present moment tipping this way and that, and knowingly, consciously experiment with your lives. So many people feel deeply embarrassed within themselves because they don’t know what is going to happen; yet so much of human anxiety and apprehension comes from your very nature – that God intended to be a source of wonder and humility. So allow yourself to wonder, even be awed at the unfathomable complexity involved in the organic present moment, the as yet unformed future.
If you can share with others this wonder, and both the freedom and the need to experiment – you can enjoy some real spiritual teamwork. This is the further humility of realizing how much of human advancement was, and is achieved through cooperation. If you are thinking about travelling with others, put your heads together. Pool your imaginations. This is the scientific method. When you run into a new phenomena that is not explained by all your previous knowledge, you have to imagine the experiments to explore it. Only after the fact does it become obvious that this worked, or that didn’t. And this only tells you what might work when you come to the next unknown. You have to create your way forward. This is the mysterious knack of freedom that you only know by doing it. But! – this is also the unmistakable delight you feel when it is happening, when you are – being – free. Living well is an creative art.
Student. Yes, Mother, I hear you very succinctly. It’s interesting watching my reactions to that within myself – the idea of living and being absorbed in the moment, and creating my future in the moment. But I also feel my own restraints of taking that adventure – the familiarity I’m used to – the money I need, the people relying on me – there’s always something that keeps me from fully embracing what I truly desire. Then that’s OK because my contemplation and prayer life have been fulfilling.
But my soul yearns for adventure, for newness. I no longer want some abstraction “out there”- some carrot dangling in front of me. I want to eat that carrot, and the next one. I know there is safety and security in my present circumstances, but I also know I still need release. I have taken adventures these last three years – having (Persons) in my life, being here talking with You and Michael. I want to spread my wings, but I know it is all in God’s own time, when I’m ready and fit to fly. There is a time and a place for everything…
Nebadonia. Yes, all of the above. You are sitting right in the middle of this mystery because you are able to take a comprehensive tour of your present life. This requires a kind of balance. So think about these last few minutes of your summation and see how well balanced it all was.
Student. There seems to be a knowing within me that change is inevitable, and that life gives us clues about which direction will be beneficial for…everyone. So I know there is a delicate balance in pushing myself and…when to hold back. As You or Michael said once, Who is doing the pushing? Who is doing the desiring?
Nebadonia. Let Me offer the observation that your particular freedom comes out as a dialogue with yourself in which you alternate between being problematic – as if there were a problem here – and then answering yourself. This is one way you can know what you want to do – you flesh out your desires, you articulate the future. The next moment you can realize how fortunate you are compared to those who are somewhat dying of boredom for lack of these very desires. This is a very natural course of thinking, of problem-and-answer, and there is nothing wrong with this conversation with yourself. You’ve seen the wisdom of writing this down so you can have some objective reflection on your own subjective thought processes.
It helps to feel for Michael’s peace right within all of this. Feel Our love and peace reassuring you that this ongoing conversation is a good thing. In your own way, these are your inner mental experiments. You think of something to see how you will react to it. Remember Einstein’s thought-experiments in which he pretty much imagined his way to great understandings about the nature of time and space? So you don’t genuinely worry overmuch in the problem-phase, and get stuck, try to realize a peace and love down at bedrock. Try to feel for this home base of spirit that just sits there glowing, and feeding everything else. Let It All come to a stop, if only momentarily. Know too that right within your own mind you can talk with Us, if you want to take a break from the ongoing self-dialogue. Feel blessed too that this dialogue is there – you are keeping yourself good company.
Closing
Well, My children, I feel we have definitely kept each other good company tonight. I know you have felt some reservation because there is a kind of erroneous mystery-mongering among human beings We’ve likened to a small child with a new flashlight, at noon, running around looking for dark places to use it. There are illegitimate ways of making a mystery out of everything, for self-glorification, or self-excuse for not doing anything.
But then there are genuine mysteries right within your nature because you share part of this nature with Us and with God. An awareness of this mystery can instill in you a really genuine, heartfelt and saving grace of affection for yourselves and each other. And this affection can grow to an infinity which will never be exhausted, even in eternity. This living potential is also who and what we both are. Welcome to the family.
Students. Thank You, Mother.
Nebadonia. Stay at peace in My love. Good evening.
