2006-09-11-Spirit Of The Times

Session

Opening

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, My goodness, You fill us with such peace we hesitate to step off and get going here. But come join us. Come share our lives with us. Help us feel Your presence within us, augmenting our own spiritual powers. Help us see each other; help us hear each other; help us in our abilities to respond. These are our prayers this evening, dear Parents, and we delight that they are coming true. Amen.

NEBADONIA: Good evening, My dear children, this is Nebadonia. Just relax and suspend all your tender anticipations, and let Our peace overwhelm you. (pause) Never fear to let go this way, for, abiding ever deeper in Michael’s peace and My love, you become ever more resilient, flexible, lively, and spontaneous. When you leave this place of peace, be not anxious, but recognize the up-welling energies within you that naturally and even cheerfully rise to meet the next occasion.

Lesson

(When you feel things changing inside)

Sometimes you do get a little anxious when you feel your mind/body changing, shifting gears, but just relax and continue to feel, feel what your body and your mind are doing. You can marvel at the deep recognition within you mobilizing your energy to face another day at work, a problem, some fear. It’s marvelous when you can recognize this and let it happen, welcome this upsurge of energy changing everything, getting you ready.

This is when you can feel, not estranged, but at one with the partly animal nature in you that wants you to be strong, wants you to survive. Just ride with it and carry it to the spiritual level where you are not only surviving, you are thriving, you are growing. You are appreciating all this energy welling up in you, getting you ready.

I would like to say in passing that We of the spiritual community of Urantia do take note of the anniversary this day represents, not only for those in your own country, but for so many around the world, from so many different viewpoints, on those singular events that happened on September 11, 2001; so much so I need not even specify them. We share with you your grief for those who were lost or terribly wounded, and We salute with you the courage of those who rushed to help their fellows, disregarding their own safety and well-being.

• Responsibility (Social and political decisions are yours to make)

I would also like to add that this spiritual sharing with you of your experiences is something We limit Ourselves to doing. As you have no doubt noticed, We do not tell you what to do. In fact, We refuse to do so when directly requested through this means of communication. Our help this way—Our suggestions are most directly found deep within you in your stillness. It’s within your spiritual home base where We work in partnership with your own creative nature.

As your Urantia book states, there are those who would be very disappointed, if not angry, at Michael if He were to be among you now as Jesus, for not making political or social statements, advising you what to do in these realms of human association. In fact, there were many in His day, when they began to realize the power He had, who were totally disillusioned that He didn’t use His power as was expected of the Jewish Messiah, to single-handedly throw out the Roman occupation.

But these are your decisions to make, My children, and We can only encourage you to make them from as broad a base of opinions as you can gather into yourselves. This has been the focus of Our lessons for some weeks now, of how you can see your fellows from an ever broader, deeper spiritual point of view. As I said once, Our view of human individuality goes right off your scale of reckoning. So let’s take a little excursion, shall we?

Think about people. Think about what makes them distinctive. Right on the physical/visual plane of contact you have many somewhat equal distinctions. Consider sex as your Urantia book puts it, the splitting of the human race into two slightly dissimilar species, who however do refuse to live without each other, and are more or less forced to figure out the ways to enhance all the aspects of individual life: self-perpetuation, or children; self-maintenance, or health; and self-gratification, or pleasure.

About equally obvious you have race and the thirty or forty fairly recognizable ethnic sub-groups evolving out of the nine original races as they have mingled down through these last several hundred thousands of years. You have culture, recognizable in clothing and other overt behavior. All these visual clues together can pretty accurately distinguish an individual—generally. I would like you to note that even as they separate mankind as a whole--the two sexes, the different races and ethnic types, the different cultures--at the same time they unite people. These distinctions are also shared among you. They form bonds that go back, in some cases, hundreds of generations; in terms of male and female, all the way back to the beginning.

• Differences (Human distinctions—separating and uniting)

Neither Michael nor I are suggesting that these in any way be downplayed or ignored, but rather that they be cherished--just so that they do not impede your ability to recognize the single individuals, unique in all the world, standing before your consideration. For if you would try to see from Our perspective ever more, this is how We see you.

Now put this picture in living motion, My children, and you have behavior--how you and your acquaintances are acting. Here you can begin to detect over a period of sometimes mere seconds who this particular individual is. Can you get some sense of their experience, perhaps even a touch of their soul?

Your experience of this other person, and the feedback of how they are experiencing you, can bring you more into the present moment, transcending all the pre-judgments, the prejudices made sometime before now. For this is also what you offer each other. Throw in each individual’s creativity in expressing a response and there can ensue a conversation, if you will, that even further transcends all general distinctions and identifications. This is a communication that is possible with a quality of recognition, with welcoming and taking this other person in, deeply.

• Temperament

Several weeks ago I promised I would get into one other realm of human distinction that, like the more obvious ones, both sets you apart from each other, and yet forms bonds between you. This is what happens on the mental level, the individualization, if you will, of mentalities. I was asked a question about how different lifestyles contribute to one’s soul, and I had to say that We see the soul so much more individual and complete and whole than that. Different lifestyles lead to different mentalities. In fact, most of you go through a number of these in the course of a day.

A mentality is just a learned way of thinking and behaving to handle a certain situation. Keep in mind that some of these have evolved over hundreds of generations and are passed on in infancy and childhood. Think of almost any activity, shall we say how you handle your particular job, whether it is in an office, on a farm, or in a schoolroom. In a factory, you can say there is an assembly line mentality. There is an office mentality. Then when you get home many of you step into a parenting mentality, an accumulation of the ways you’ve learned to relate with your children.

Michael and I talked once about an inside and an outside of human experience. Certain experiences that take a long study are somewhat closed to those who have never gone through the apprenticeship, whether it’s doing a particular job or picking up and playing a guitar. So you can see how these mentalities also serve to divide mankind while at the same time they form brotherhoods and sisterhoods between people, something shared.

These began back in the dawn of time with the very first specialization within the early tribes, when the abilities of one group of people, often passed on in families, focussed on doing a specific task, such as making arrows—arrow-smiths. They became so adept that soon everybody let them supply the whole tribe. The same with the hunters, the mentality it takes to stalk and bring down a living animal; the mentality of being a good mother, and all that’s involved.

You often speak with disrespect about each others’ mentalities without paying due acknowledgment to the inside and the outside of that experience. You often thoughtlessly assume you know what a certain mentality is like from the inside, though you’ve never been there. So, My children, this is just one more way We ask you to respect each other, to recognize each other. For within these mentalities are hard earned abilities that make up the basis of your extraordinarily complex civilization, without which this complexity of interaction, of relying upon each other, would fall to pieces.

Respecting another’s individuality, and realizing you don’t automatically know the inside of their particular way of life, can show you another way you need to extend yourself toward some very critical mentalities--such as parenting, if you are not one, or, especially in your modern day world, the military mentality. For this particular one has become highly adapted to a very special kind of human relationship--warfare. In your extraordinarily technical, highly advanced kind of warfare there is a great danger of a broadening separation between those on the inside and those on the outside, in understanding even the basic capabilities and intentions.

Here again, My children, strive to understand what is involved, what you are asking of your fellows. Open your hearts to your warriors, and try to understand their language being exchanged between nations, and now even smaller, more autonomous groups. Just consider for a few minutes how much of the world’s productivity goes into offensive and defensive warfare, psychologically as well as materially. Do your best to understand why. This is indeed a very special mentality, designed to handle a very specific, present and ancient situation involving those others you call "the enemy." (Mother took a very long pause…)

So I think you can feel, My children, can you not, how that very concept, that very consideration, even all by itself, tends to bring on a certain mentality. This makes all the clearer the gulf between peoples that only understanding can bridge, and only love can understand. Open your hearts with love. Open your minds with acknowledgment and respect. Open your spirits with hope and faith. Pause in your busy lives to wonder about these things, and let that wonder fill your soul.

You are coming out of an ancient past, My children, into a bright future, but you are always now, faced with these distinctions that both divide and unite. Welcome to the freedom to choose between them.

If you have any questions this evening, let’s get together around them.

Dialogue

Student: I don’t have any questions, Mother, but just thank You for Your support and love, for Your understanding and lessons. It’s a fascinating time to be living—with the Teaching Mission, and the Urantia book, and the Magisterial Mission coming up. And You being around. And here we are being involved. I appreciate it—Your support in my life personally, and Your Daughter’s support—my Destiny Guardian. Thank You very much.

• Current Milieu (The spirit of the times)

NEBADONIA: You’re very welcome, My son. It seems you’ve caught the true spirit. It is a marvelous age, and you are all faced with the challenge of how to, in a sense, treasure and hold all of the past—everybody’s past--in a deep reverence and appreciation, while you are more or less—even haphazardly, willy-nilly, being pushed tighter together by your modern media. But that’s the spirit, My son—to welcome these challenges, to deepen your respect and appreciation of each other. I thank you for your love, and wrap you in Mine.

Student: One question has occurred to me—if I might ask it? (Bring it on) In the next life, the Morontia life, will we be able to talk to You like this—personally? You and Michael?

NEBADONIA: Oh yes, My son, so much more freely you will feel Our presence--immediately. For the prompting of spirit will not have to thread its way through so many byways and channels of the electrochemical mind/bodies such as you have now. Your Morontia body is more subtle and spiritually sensitive. You will not only pick up Michael’s and My spirit, but each other’s. (Wow) Everything I said tonight about what both separates and defines, yet also offers a basis of sharing between people, will be more obvious and perceptible. Your physical senses will have expanded and you will begin to perceive the lower forms of angelic life, who are delighted to take you in hand and be your companions. Even the Seraphim--though you will not immediately visualize them, you can have a slight sense of Their presence. And you can look forward to nearly five hundred expansive modulations of your Morontia being before We bid you adieu off into the galaxy.

I can’t help being a little tickled, because no matter how much I could tell you for the next ten hours, you will still not dissemble your surprise when it happens.

Student: I look forward to it, Mother.

NEBADONIA: Amen to that, My son

Student: Mother Nebadonia, I have a question concerning a recent re-posting of a transcript from Machiventa Melchizedek, from about a year ago, I believe. He talked about one of the results of the Lucifer Rebellion has been a lack of connection between our human minds and Your Mind/Spirits. I would like to hear the answer once again: when Michael was here as Jesus, did He have to deal with the same deficiencies, this lack of communication, in His human life, as we all go through from being born on this planet?

• Adjutant Mind Spirits(Mother Spirit’s Mind/Spirit Adjutant connection)

NEBADONIA : My son, a very short answer would be: yes. But this quality does vary enormously between individuals; if you will: one more distinction. It even has something to do with the degree to which a Thought-Adjuster’s own experience is used in determining the assignment of One to a particular human being, based upon a spiritual assessment of that individual’s potential. For much of this potential is dependant upon your ability to receive the assistance of My Mind/ Spirit Adjutants.

Jesus was blessed with a good heritage along these lines. Still, as your Urantia book informs you, He was a normal—not super-extraordinary--individual of His day and age.

Many times I have assured you that much of what you think of as only your own mind, is Me, is My augmenting, and has been there since your earliest months of life. For as you will recall, My Adjutants start to find connection with your evolving infant mind as soon as you begin to learn. At the moment a tiny baby begins to learn from his or her experience of life, My first Mind Adjutant finds response in that mind and is able to help augment it from that moment forward. When the older child is capable of receiving the augmentation of My final Adjutants of Worship and Wisdom, it becomes eligible for a Thought Adjuster to make contact and begin their joint soul. Though the Adjuster has been present--shall we say, in the vicinity--since conception.

By returning to your home base in your stillness, by resting in My love and Michael’s peace, every time you do this you prepare your mind for further augmentation of My Adjutants because you’re calling upon them to help you in your spiritual growth. This is especially true with those of worship and wisdom: if you will, thankfulness—the deep appreciation of God’s creativity and gift of life, and then wisdom--serving to combine and utilize, and make more efficient, the previous six. This is what wisdom does for you—make all your past experience available for use now. Hopefully we all grow in wisdom.

So My Mind/Spirit Adjutants continue to grow with you all through your life. Hopefully this will be the true crowning glory of a long and fruitful life—this growth, this deepening spiritual value of appreciation for all you’ve been and known. Does this help answer your question?

Student: Yes. It also puts a plug in for that wonderful act of stillness You’ve been teaching us for so many years—suggesting we do take time to go home in stillness. Because it seems this helps correct the deficiency, this does augment the connection between Your Mind/Spirits and ourselves—although they are, in a sense, one. Thank You for Your answer.

NEBADONIA: You’re very welcome, My son. As We look from Our viewpoint upon those evolutionary worlds whose cultures are hundreds of millennia older than yours, and developed in all phases beyond your wildest imagination, their growing connection with Me also helps account for the extraordinary longevity of these human beings. Human races continue to evolve—physically, mentally, and spiritually—all three, and especially all three combined. There is no upper limit to the amount human beings can share their lives with Me, and enable Me to share My life with them.

Those of you on Urantia who are a little more back near the beginning must, as C just asked, have to await the Morontia existence to get into that kind of contact with Me. But there is still no limit to be put upon what you yourself can do in this life, with Me. And so I say: welcome! Be in My love.

Student: Yes, Mother, I have no particular questions to ask of You, but I do remember how my life was back on this day in 2001. I was experiencing, in a sense, spiritual apathy; until an event happened, my own kind of 9/11 in November of that year, that kind-of kicked me in the rear—so to speak. And then I met Donna, (Donna D’Ingillo—the initial T/R of the Marin group) and the rest is history—to this point. I just have such sincere gratitude for what I have experienced from that point until now. I feel my soul growing and expanding, overcoming challenge upon challenge that I seem to come across, and create for myself at times. So I do feel so much appreciation, and love, for where I am now, because I could never have imagined what these last five years…that I would be in this place, and state of being—in mind and heart… (heavy sigh…)

I guess I just ask for continued guidance along my path, where there are even more challenges and changes awaiting me with the birth of my daughter’s child in October, and the completion of the workshop that I’ve been participating in, that brings a whole new level to my existence, and who I am. So I am excited about the prospects that await me; still a little impatient, but I feel so much more hopeful, and alive, and aware, with each step I take. I would still like to do more in my life, to change my vocation, but I also know I need to accept where I am now, and go from there. So any guidance or any wisdom You can share with me and the others, to take me through challenges, and welcome further opportunities to expand and to go beyond my own self-imposed limits, and awaken to more awareness in this life, I would gladly accept.

(Here come challenges—ready or not)

NEBADONIA: Well, My son, here they come—ready or not! (Yes {laughing}) So much of that readiness you are discovering is in this attitude of keeping a hard-earned sense of humor in your bag of tricks, to meet the new day. We’ve had some wonderful times together these evenings, the past few years, and we share together our cherishing of them. You’ve opened your heart to feeling, sometimes right in the face of the agony of the effort your work requires, and you’ve opened your mind to understanding, especially with the courage of going out on a limb and having the nerve to ask what you truly didn’t know at the time. For that is certainly the wisest use of this connection, and this opportunity. Michael and I have asked this of all of you, and you have responded and dared to be personal, dared to bare your hearts to Us, entertained what We’ve had to offer, and then given Our suggestions a try.

Closing

What fun this has been for Us, these several years, being able to address you this way. And what a glory We’ve found in your courage. So Michael and I thank you all very much, My sons. What memorable events we’ve created here between us, what shining points of light in our souls—yours and Ours.

So though we are different kinds of beings, very distinguishable indeed, we are all children of God. We are both living and learning, day by day, learning to trust that His surprises are both for His glory and our own. What a wonderful, living faith to feel, to experience. This is how you get ready. Because it is a big universe out there, and in here. And here it comes. Let's go to meet it together, Me in your love, and you in Mine. Good evening.