2022-06-23-The Wonders of Friendship

Session

Opening

Dear Mother Spirit, and Michael, it is so good to be with the two of you. It gives us a wonderful opportunity to very consciously open our minds and feel our hearts respond to what you have for us. Along these lines, Mother Spirit, and Michael, I want to thank the two of you for being so deliberately informal. You have asked us to enter into the wonderful relationship with you called being a friend. One of the most wonderful things in our whole life is to have a friend, and to be a friend, with everything that includes.

The sharing of our lives with another is bound up in friendship, so we are delighted to think of you as our dear friends. We appreciate that you come to us and talk to us this way--not in any kind of stilted, cloying, over-religious manner, but just with our own language, one friend to another. You invite us to talk to you within, in the same way, any time we feel so inclined. You ask us to think, “Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! I’m thinking of you today. Here is what I want you to know about my life—as I see it. How do you see it?”

So thank you, dear spiritual parents, dear Creator Daughter and Creator Son of God--heads of our Local Universe out here in the starry realms. You both are our dearest and closest friends. Hail to thee--blithe spirits!

Lesson

Nebadonia: Good evening. This is Nebadonia, your Mother Spirit, and I accept--wonderfully accept being your dear friend. I certainly consider you to be one of mine.

They say friendship is a relationship of equals, of someone similarly enough to you, and we are all sons and daughters of God. From him we receive our existence and our lives, even with the promise of life eternal.

(The wonders of friendship)

It’s glorious to know this equality with another living being, especially in your case with the dear friends you’ve found after the family you received at birth, and the neighborhood in which you were raised. Friends are these others you chanced to meet out in the world, and formed a connection and sharing that might last the rest of your lives. How wonderful. How this fills your soul, and theirs.

These are the precious, really unique moments, one by one, that you both hold so tenderly. You part, but then you meet again. “Parting is such sweet sorrow”--trusting you will have a chance to meet again.

Then one of the greatest losses of your spiritual life is to lose a friend. Yet after a time of sometimes intense grief, you can be reassured by God’s presence right within you letting you know your dear friend is still very much a part of your soul. There’s also his promise you’ll meet again in some totally transformed realm.

Michael and I have spent many lessons teasing you with the notion there’s something new in each moment--in this Eternal Now that you live in. Right Now will always be here. You look around to see everything is in motion, from a sub-atomic particle up to the galaxies waltzing around in the cosmos. And your heart is beating. So everything is constantly new in a total way.

(Your own creativity helps you be adequate to the moment))

There is a great aspect of God’s reality that is not repeating itself. Each moment is something new that has never happened exactly like this before. To tune into this, use my augmentation of your perception and your understanding. Realize this enormous possibility that is constantly opening, and use your own creative spirit to add to it. Add to your ongoing life something that has never happened before to you, or anyone else. This is your new contribution coming right out of your own creativity, somewhat unique and independent of all you have done before. It may be wonderfully adequate to this new Now, this new moment you find yourself in, with all the challenges, or even threats, it offers at times.

Be able to meet the next day, sometimes right down to the next moment. Have these temporal triumphs. Have these wonderful experiences of meeting something anew, and having your part in them. Michael and I have taught so much on this newness. Yet it is not a discontinuity because--with a little play on words--this ever-present newness is what is continuing! You can count on it. Tomorrow will be a new day.

(Your personal continuity)

Still, tonight I would like to emphasize another side of your continuous reality. Here let me mention not only, and obviously, God’s Natural Law obtaining all the way up from that sub-atomic particle you mentioned, on through the galaxies, even on to Paradise. There’s not only his absolutely uniform Natural Law, but I’m talking tonight about Personality Continuity. I already mentioned a great continuing aspect in your life are the people with whom you share your life. They were there for you in the past, and they are with you here today. Depending on both your choices you can look forward to a long life together. It does happen.

Think of the people you meet every day on an informal level with all the work you have--the people you come in contact with. You share your lives in that kind of a relationship, whether it is building something together, or in some rather strict hierarchy in a company where you have those superior to yourself to whom you are responsible, and then your subordinates who are responsible to you. Think about how, within that formal structure, you can accomplish so much. In addition, if you’ve developed your own personality strong enough to where you can welcome theirs--even within a very strict hierarchy--you can have some really close personal friendships of mutual love and respect.

(The great connection of regular meditation)

Along with all these wonderful folks you know--continuing, let me introduce still one more. This is, or could be, a deliberately created ongoing relationship with yourself. Michael teased you in his last lesson about this wonderful body of yours that is continuing what you call Being Alive! You are alive because this body you have participates in God’s continuity of Natural Law--all the marvelous miracles of biology of a living, breathing creature.

Then there are your wonderful memories you can recall, and beyond them the enormous compassing of your whole being captured in your soul. This is the true living aspect of you that is co-authored by a bestowed presence of God within you. As Michael taught with respect to meditation, you can have an ongoing relationship with his presence within you by giving him an opportunity to speak directly to you. Our Father’s presence is right within you, my dears. You can ask him questions. Then be super-alert!--because the very next thought can be his answer.

(Giving God an opportunity to speak to you)

Remember the times when you were really stuck for an answer and you got a thought so comprehensive and inclusive of your whole situation--and how to handle it--you could say, “Thank you, God! Thank you for that one.” It’s the kind of realization and reflection that offers something back to your soul. You have not only your memories, but your deepest soul to bring up moments of your past. For a few precious moments you can re-live and get the full feeling of what once was, and know this soul of yours is really there.

What I am pointing at tonight is a kind of consciously chosen continuity that you are deliberately creating for yourself. Your ongoing daily meditation has its own unique continuity. Over and above your memories and your own ego awareness of yourself--moment-to-moment--this is another extra-something--this gift of you to yourself.

As you settle into your meditation each day, this is not some haphazard, random thing, but rather a continuing “you” in the face of all that out there that is ever-changing. This is why it is the essential activity of all religious and faith-orders throughout history, generally the primary focus of men and women going off to live closely together in a monastery. Their regular meditation as a group helps hold them together, yet it also gives each individual that extra continuity that is theirs by choice. Daily meditation is not family, or even friends and acquaintances. It is something you are giving to yourself, day by day.

(Coming home)

If you will, look at it as “coming home”--coming home from your adventures out in the world. You’re coming home to yourself by saying, “Here I am, meditating again, opening myself to whatever wants to come forth. I’m trusting I will have the courage to let it happen, and look at it--even if it seems some impossible ideal I should be doing, right from God’s presence within me. It might be from his viewpoint on how I can be healthier and happier. Even if I can’t do it yet, I will entertain it. I will think about it, and feel it in my life.”

And so, my dears, this is my main lesson for tonight. I confess I’m kind-of teasing you again. If you are not into being still and open-minded already, choose to do this very special activity. It’s not only for the benefit each time can give you. It’s another deliberate continuity you are bringing into your life.

It’s a further thing you can trust yourself to do. Know for certain that: Yes-- tomorrow--no matter what happens, good or bad, wonderful or terrible--this is something I can do to keep in touch with myself. I can keep up-to-date in my ongoing life.

(The prime activity for a spiritual life)

So, my dears, if you aren’t already engaged, think about it seriously. It is one of those special things you can only know by doing. It can be a real accomplishment over a period of time. This is one reason why the great spiritual traditions of your whole world of people who are seeking earnestly to live a spiritual life, get together with others and engage in this prime activity.

But enough teasing. Give it a try. Now if you have any questions or comments, let’s do them. If it is about meditation--or anything else--go ahead.

Dialogue

Student #1: Each activity that we engage in can become an extension of our meditation.

(Stillness becomes an attitude and approach)

Nebadonia: Yes!--I agree! Stillness becomes an attitude, an approach to life, that you soon learn. It gives you a way of approaching things, my dears, in an open-minded way. Opening your mind to things that warm your heart gives you a good way of measuring them. You learn what to seek for in life, and how to stay in touch with it.

Student #2: Right.

(Open to God’s suggestions throughout the day)

Nebadonia: Yes, meditation becomes another continuity extending into the rest of your life. Hopefully your life becomes open to God’s suggestions throughout the day; and the reflective part is a way of keeping up with yourself. You’re open to all your past and what you have learned. It’s where I give you help with your understanding of what is happening.

So, my dears, I will bid you a fond good evening.

Student #2: Thank you.

Nebadonia: Thank you so much for your love. This is your Mother Spirit definitely saying, Be in my love. Michael bids you Be in his peace.