[tmtranscripts] Nebadonia 11.20.06

[JERRY LANE]

Dear Folks,    Let me extend special thanks to Vincent Meyers for his help 
in transcribing last Monday's session.  He has moved back East but was able 
to attend and help during a short visit.  We wish him well and hope he can 
attend more often.  Once again we invite anyone who can to come to our 
Monday night sessions here in Mill Valley.  You can always email me for 
directions.  Jerry.

Nebadonia--November 20, 2006

Marin TM  Group—Mill Valley, California--U.S.A.

NEBADONIA—T/R-JL

(The pearl of spiritual assurance)
(How do you evaluate your life?)
(Fruits of the spirit)
(Using love as a compass)
(Hanging out with spirit)
(Personality’s function)
(There is always something genuine to do)

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael:  Around this time of year we celebrate a 
national holiday of Thanksgiving, and we feel very blessed we get to give 
thanks each week for your being here with us.  We are especially thankful 
for lessons instructing us and reminding us of the kinds of beings we are, 
even defining what spirit is for us.  It helps us realize this dimension in 
our lives, and how it pervades everything we know and do.  So for this we 
are very thankful.  Amen.

Good evening, my children, this is your mother, Nebadonia.  My, it is so 
wonderful to feel your presence here, to feel your minds and your souls 
smiling back at me in a kind of joyful anticipation.  This too is the 
essence of spirit, the deep intrinsic strength of spirit that can forgo 
exact expectations and rest assured in a genuine enthusiasm for life itself.

Last week Michael spoke of how a comprehensive spiritual viewpoint of your 
past gives you the strength to accept, even to welcome all that has happened 
to you.  This is that profound and all inclusive understanding that does 
stretch to grasp the meaning of life itself, for this is just another 
definition of spiritual value, the dimension that makes life 
worthwhile--including all the pain and anxiety and uncertainty that it does 
contain.

(The pearl of spiritual assurance)

But since this is a pearl of great price, since spiritual assurance is at 
the very heart of living a full life by opening your arms to experience, and 
seeking to discover, then transcend, anything within you that would rather 
limit experience, would rather sleepwalk through life and not take any risk 
whatsoever; since this assurance is so valuable, it does have a price.  If 
you will forgive the slight play on words, you have to pay attention.  You 
have to establish a spiritual awareness almost distinct from your 
consciousness itself.  For it is from this detachment or remove that you are 
able to notice the fluctuations in your consciousness, and what causes them.

We have often mentioned before the principle of feedback, of how, if you are 
paying attention and open to whatever reality is telling you, you can see 
yourself as others see you.  You can have an evaluation of your present 
consciousness.  There is a kind of super-consciousness by which you can get 
some feedback, and evaluate what things mean to you.  Think about this a 
moment, of how necessary this is in your day-to-day life.  For even a good 
and wonderful spiritual ambition, a desire to grow in truth and 
understanding, does call upon you to evaluate your life and what you are 
doing.  Are you growing or are regressing?  Are you becoming more aware or 
sinking into deeper habits?  How can you tell?  How can you measure this?  
I’m sure now, as you feel for this, you can understand the anxiety that this 
occasions.  Even Michael’s Spirit of Truth within you does encourage you to 
have this desire for ever greater truth, to keep up with the universe 
reality of God’s will, the Supreme Being, who is growing.

(How do you evaluate your life?)

Think of some of the ways people feel compelled to measure themselves along 
material lines.  I’m referring not to your physical/bodily health, but to 
more abstract measurements of wealth.  In corporations you call this the 
bottom line, the desire to feel the company growing by so many percentage 
points a year in pure profit.  In individual lives this might mean a nicer 
car, a larger home, a bigger bank account.  These are all ways in which 
people seek assurance that they are growing, that they are doing the right 
thing.  Of course this often leads to massive contradictions.  Most of you 
know of folks who totally ruin their physical/bodily health driving 
themselves to succeed in more abstract ways, sometimes far and away beyond 
what they can ever utilize.  When you get into the purely mental realm, the 
realm of your awareness of yourself--your ego, the totality of who you 
perceive and remember yourself to be--it’s like going over a cliff and 
entering free-fall.  Here there are truly no limits whatsoever.  You all 
know from your popular media individuals who expend enormous wealth on 
image, millions and millions of dollars in pure ostentatious spending on 
objects designed solely to impress others.

Tonight I would like you to accept this basic human necessity to evaluate 
your lives so it becomes simply more a matter of how you do this.  How can 
you tell if you are growing or regressing, and this over a period of time?  
This is where your spiritual awareness--the super-consciousness of the 
fluctuations in your self-consciousness, in your awareness of yourself and 
your surroundings--becomes so important.  It’s ironic that from a purely 
physical/psychological point of view, spirit—the origin of both, can neither 
be proven nor demonstrated empirically.  Yet as in your prayer this evening, 
you do realize how the definition of what is spiritual plays such an 
important part of your recognition of it.  Beyond this your inner security, 
your own inner proof, if you will, of the reality of spirit, is in its use.  
You know it exists because it works, because you are using it.

I am suggesting one of the most profound and important uses of spirit is in 
measuring both the physical and psychological dimensions of your life by 
giving you some detachment from them, some other place to stand.  All 
perception requires this contrast.  If you’ll accept my putting in another 
“plug”—as you call it, for practicing stillness, let me suggest this is just 
one more transcendent use of meditation.  This is one more function of 
having a secure home base in spirit. However paradoxical it may seem at 
first glance, you can have a secure home base in something whose essence is 
living spontaneity and creativity.  Even those of you who are only beginning 
to function from this inner security, and have experienced how it has 
transformed your life already, know of what I am speaking.  Just the 
exercise, the determination to suspend for even a few minutes a day as much 
as you can the physical and mental activities of your life, and allow this 
inner sense of spirit to swell forth and become a genuine experience; just 
this alone begins to address the balance between these three aspects of your 
conscious human lives.  Whatever your physical/material needs or 
considerations, whatever your present psychology--whether secure or anxious, 
just exercising the determination to let these subside for a while is itself 
an act of spirit.  Bringing the spiritual aspect of your human being into 
more conscious awareness is an inner proof that there is another way of 
feeling and evaluating your day to day lives.

This is literally how, all through history, men and women who chose what was 
considered to be an overtly religious life were able to live long and 
healthy and very fulfilling lives right in the midst of a self-imposed 
poverty; and not by any means living a life of self-deception.  Think about 
it.  A truly religious life is one that seeks and enables experience, one 
that seeks to perceive that aspect of God’s creation that is ever new, that 
is his continuous creativity.   Indeed, it seeks to become one with him in 
this creativity.  This is your personal spirit.  This is, for you, how you 
real-alize--make real--your physical and mental dimensions.  This is why the 
Father of all personality is himself super-ordinate to the Eternal Son of 
Spirit and the Infinite Spirit of Cosmic Mind.  And this pattern pervades, 
this pattern is your very being--personality and spirit and mind.  Your 
choice of enabling spirit, determining spirit, drawing more spiritual 
awareness into your life is a decision of personality.  It is a way in which 
the personality that you are can strive your best to become aware of your 
most profound reality, the actual origin and nucleus of experiencing your 
mind and body, and through them, the universe.

Strange as it may seem, my children, this inner assurance of spirit, this 
identification with spirit, this ability to relax even for awhile the very 
real physical and psychological demands you must live with, this is the 
evaluation—the e-valuing--of life itself.  This is how you can most truly 
measure where you are and where you’re headed.  Even the continuity, the 
steadfastness of your meditation over time, gives you some measure of the 
ups and downs of your momentary self-awareness.  So persevere.  Exercise 
your spirit.  Reach out to embrace experience.  Grow strong in our love and 
peace.

If you have any questions or comments this evening, Michael and I always 
delight when you exercise yourselves this way.

Student:  Dear Nebadonia, maybe you could help with me some new insights 
into different fruits of the spirit.  I’ve always liked many of them that 
are mentioned in the Urantia book, like altruistic benevolence, confiding 
trust, different than the Bible, but nonetheless easily understood.  These 
insights would help me as a guide to know that I am growing, that I am more 
easily yielding up some of these fruits like enlightened honesty, undying 
hope.  I know there must be thousands of them, even more!  But any help in 
that department would be great.

(Fruits of the spirit)

NEBADONIA:  Yes my son.  Well, those you mentioned are not too bad.  
(laughter)  Just keep in mind the fundamental principle here, that you know 
a tree, or in this case, your life, by the fruit it bears.  This is what my 
lesson this evening was all about.  It’s how your deepest meditation can 
give you the surest measure of the fruits you bear day to day.  This is a 
kind of extreme self-honesty, and the method for achieving it.  Perhaps the 
greatest hurtle to cross in this endeavor is one of impatience, especially 
for those of you who are just generally so busy.  When you first start to 
meditate, it’s very hard to be still.  We’ve even suggested you set out a 
certain amount of time for this, shall we say twenty minutes or so in the 
morning or evening, rather than trying to meditate for a certain 
psychological result, for this can lead to your hurrying yourself along to 
being still.

The good fruits you mentioned are wonderful, but even beyond this, there is 
no need to define or articulate them precisely.  Rather, I’m suggesting 
there is an overall summation, a general feeling of how you’re doing that 
can come to you, first of all if you will let it, and then if you will 
continue to be still.  Your own mind’s creativity, your own spirit’s 
spontaneity, aided by Michael’s and my spirits, and your Father Fragment, 
all these separately or in concert can suggest what you are doing right--or 
not.  So first let this general spiritual evaluation come over you, and fear 
it not if it suggests you are regressing, you are becoming slothful or lazy, 
you are becoming arrogant or unhealthy.  This is the courage required to be 
extremely self-honest, and I think you can intuit how there is nothing more 
valuable than this kind of feedback from your own soul--the spiritual story 
of your life authored by the presence of the God in your mind.

Apart from the individual fruits hanging out there on the branches… 
(laughter)… this tells you how the whole tree of your life--including its 
roots deep in your soul—how the health of the whole living thing that you 
are, is.  Does this answer your question?

Student:  That’s a wonderful answer.  I will be very glad to see it again in 
writing, and share it with others.  Thank you.

NEBADONIA: You are very welcome, my son.  Be in my love.

Student:  On the same subject, I think I’ve noticed in some of the Teaching 
Mission transcripts I’ve been reading, someone used the word love as in, 
using love as your compass, and I realized that my ego’s led me most of the 
way through my life by fear, and fear, and more fear.  Now I look at myself 
and I’m really starting to understand this--the value and meaning of using 
love as my compass.  I can feel…if I’m trying to evaluate my actions toward 
someone, and I just hear the old me starting to come out and go negative, I 
can realize: well, that’s the old me.  The new me is starting to use love as 
a compass.  It’s when I’m in spirit, rather than my ego which was always 
afraid, and always felt attacked.  So I really value the words you’re giving 
us tonight because I have been evaluating myself.  And I do see some growth. 
  Thank you for your words.  I’m very excited to be here!

(Using love as a compass)

NEBADONIA:  Yes, my daughter.  Thank you for that wonderful notion, because 
I think when most folks think about a compass, they think of some device 
exterior to them.  We’ve often suggested in the past that your Father 
Fragment, the Mystery Monitor in your mind, is your most true compass as to 
where you are going.  But I really enjoy your notion of this other compass 
being part of you, and signaling whether the emotions going out from you are 
life-affirming--a kind of beamed beneficence to someone else, or whether the 
needle swings radically the other way and shows a kind of self-collapsing, 
withdrawing, fearful avoidance of contact, or being judgmental.  That’s a 
very valuable thing to have and to be aware of, and to accept!

Some time ago we introduced the notion of beaming love at everyone you meet, 
mostly to get over your prejudices and stereotypes so that individuals can 
begin to emerge from the general mass you perceived before.  Now if you had 
a kind of voltmeter on your compass, this could even help you determine the 
strength with which you are projecting your love.

Student:  This sounds very good!  I will encompass that!  (much laughter).

NEBADONIA:  Amen to that!  I think this is a very much in line with what I 
was talking about this evening, of having the spiritual tools within you to 
help you perceive what you are doing.  So carry on!  I congratulate you on 
making this compass of love part of your life.  I can see you are deriving a 
great benefit from it, as I’m sure, so are all your company.  (People are 
noticing a change.)  Well, that’s the wonderful thing about beaming love at 
folks.  They can only bounce it off so long.  Sooner or later there is their 
own inner recognition that you mean them well.

Student:  And I’ll be ready with an answer if they ask me why I’m so happy.  
But I’m learning too not to give my opinion until it’s asked for; that’s 
another big one for me.  So thank you again.

NEBADONIA:  You’re very welcome my daughter.  Continue to be in my love.

Student:  Greetings Nebadonia!  It seems the key that you are continually 
giving us--the key to self-evaluation, self-understanding, soul-growth, the 
key to joy, the key to strength--is and always will be, simply hanging with 
spirit, taking the time to spend with spirit.  I would like to talk about 
that tonight, because in my efforts to do this, to take the time to sit in 
stillness, I find that my mind just wants to go into a semi-sleep state, and 
I get very discouraged by this.  So I’ve changed my approach to it, because 
I do want to use this key, and I am aware of it because it has been, as you 
say, brought up many times.

My new approach is to meditate during a physical activity such as stretching 
or swimming--to connect with spirit.  By doing it this way I keep my mind 
more alert, so I may be able to have the opportunity to see if I am growing 
or regressing.  But it isn’t quite what is described as stillness, because 
I’m not actually being still.  I’m in the act of doing an activity.  But it 
is working for me.  So I want to talk to you about that, and any suggestions 
you may have in the approach I’m taking?

(Hanging out with spirit)

NEBADONIA:   Yes, my son: congratulations!  Congratulations are very much in 
order for you’ve gone beyond a kind of stereotypical approach to a complex 
thing.  If you will again excuse a play on words, you’ve gone right to the 
very sprit of the stillness exercise.  For you are discovering spirit in 
activity.  You are using spirit to evaluate activity.  And this is the 
exact, same detachment I talked about this evening.  For if you are truly 
paying attention, as when you are stretching; as you approach your bodily 
limits that are signaled by pain, you know you must go ever so carefully 
into that pain, not in a masochistic way, but in the most careful kind of 
way--to open up those joints and stretch those ligaments and muscles.  This 
requires enormous detachment and evaluation, moment to moment, just to avoid 
hurting yourself.  This is the function of spirit.  This is spirit 
evaluating a physical/psychological activity.

I might suggest that many folks get into an only half-conscious 
meditation--as strange as that may seem, in the act of walking.  This is one 
of the humankind’s oldest forms of meditation.  Since they needed to go 
somewhere anyway, they would often fall into a meditative state as they 
walked along.  And since most of mankind’s history for hundreds of thousands 
of years until very recent times has been a matter of walking about the 
world, this was generally when they did their thinking: where were they 
going; what they were going to do when they got there--especially during 
those long phases of mankind’s growing civilization when the tribes were on 
the move by the seasons.

I’ll just note in passing, it was near this stage of civilization in which 
Michael choose to live his human life.  Out of millions of worlds at every 
stage of technological development, he could have appeared on a world at 
your present stage and gone on television.  Instead, if you’ll read your 
Urantia book or even your Bible well, you’ll notice he did a lot of walking 
and talking.  So again, my son, I congratulate you on finding what works 
spiritually.  I could only add, more power to you.

Student:  Thank you, Nebadonia, you’ve just given new meaning to the saying: 
go take a hike.  (much laughter…)  Also what comes to mind is a book I read 
so many years ago, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  (and still 
more…)  So yes--thank you!  I love being creative, and hanging with spirit.

NEBADONIA:  This is what Michael and I have endeavored to do, to show how 
spirit does permeate all your physical and mental reality and activities.  
Because it is really great to feel it, and derive the evaluation it 
provides.  So be in my love, and carry on!

Student:  Yes Mother, what I have come to understand in my own life is that 
when I’m connected consciously with spirit it seems my life is more 
effortless and there is this ease of being in whatever I do.  I notice when 
I’m not in that place of ease there’s something else, like a point of view 
or something I’m holding onto, that’s not congruent with spirit.  What I’ve 
come to discern more and more in those instances is that, if instead of 
trying to figure out what’s going on I simply allow myself to reconnect with 
spirit, with my better intentions, with no preconceived notions of how 
things ought to be but just looking at my own inner self, I notice if I just 
kind-of rest and be still then gradually, sometimes it’s just an instant, 
sometimes it takes longer--five, ten, fifteen minutes--then gradually 
whatever was disrupting my stillness and my ease of being dissipates. I’m 
able to move on.  There seems to be a greater influx of love.  So I do 
notice that--a greater discernment within me, and the ability to make 
adjustments, in a sense, on the move.  It’s becoming increasingly more 
common in my life.

The other thing I’ve noticed too--I think we alluded to it last week, 
although for the life of me I have no idea what we talked about last week…  
But I do have things percolate in my soul as I work during the week.  And I 
do feel so blessed in the work that I do; I’ve come to grips with that--with 
the gardening.  God!--I feel so blessed that I’m able to work in the garden 
and also think about these things, and communicate with spirit--with Jesus, 
and so on…

I’ve come to feel within myself that I trust more.  I trust in spirit, in 
the direction my spirit is leading me--whatever that is in the moment.  I’m 
not seeking so much anymore.  I’m not seeking to change my life outside of 
myself, but trusting in the life that is unfolding within me, and around me.

As I alluded to at other times, I have no idea what is going to happen to 
me.  I have no idea where my life is going.  All I have is what’s in front 
of me and what’s within me; and that’s all I have to deal with.  I have no 
idea what’s going to happen to me next week, or a year from now, or five 
years from now, ten years from now.  But I do know that spirit is always 
compelling me to extend beyond my limitations and expand towards a greater 
sense of who I am, and the enormous possibilities that exist for me here and 
now, and into the future.

So things have changed quite a bit in my basic philosophy from the moment I 
started attending these meetings, to the present time.

NEBADONIA:  My son, very well spoken!  I am very impressed, my children, how 
you have tuned into the real essence of what I had to offer this evening, 
and have responded with your own success stories of how you’ve discovered 
spirit and are experiencing its reality.  You’ve discovered how experiencing 
that reality within you changes all that universe out there surrounding you.

(Personality’s function)

Yes, my son, in Urantia book terminology I would say that this recognition 
of how things seem so effortless when you’re all-of-a-piece, this is your 
personality discovering its prime function.  It absolutely is, but what it 
does to a greater or lesser degree of success is to unify the disparate 
elements of body and mind and spirit, by both discovering and creating a 
harmony between these elements.  This success is perceived as a kind of 
effortlessness because everything is flowing together.  Once you establish 
even some small background of this success and its recognition, then the 
disharmonies of one element working against another become all that more 
perceptible by contrast, and can be addressed.

You’ve also found, as I recommended to (Name) this evening, how if you just 
relax and let that larger field of spirit and its evaluation emerge first, 
then the solution to the current problem can follow.  Sometimes just 
regaining your spiritual home base evaporates, like a mist in the morning 
sun, those little flitters of anxiety, or fear, or uncertainty.  You find 
yourself on the edge of the Unknown, yawning like the Grand Canyon in front 
of you--the sheer un-know-ability of the future because it is changing, 
because it is not repeating itself, because you have a gigantic universe out 
there, because God is not only the Father of all  personality, he is also 
the origin of all energy and material and pattern itself.  This too will 
occupy you for eternity.  This is that wonderful oxymoron in your Urantia 
book of sublime uncertainty…  (laughter)  and yet finding security in it by 
realizing all this sublime uncertainty is for your soul’s growth.  On the 
deepest level it expresses our Father’s confidence in his creation--you.  So 
congratulations are in order here too, for finding this reality of spirit 
and how it pervades both you and all that out there.

Student:  In a way I’m just allowing--if it’s already a reality--my 
essential being, or the essential being-ness of each and every one of us 
already in existence, to do what we need to do to just allow--to be still 
and allow, have faith that things are unfolding and expanding at ones own 
pace.  When you mention about the sublime uncertainty, I feel comfort in the 
impermanence of what’s around me, knowing that form does change, but life is 
always expanding.  Life is always changing forms, living through different 
forms, and it’s only when we hold onto the forms that we get into trouble, 
we cease to allow life to expand through us and around us.

So these are the things I’ve been thinking, pondering about over the past 
few weeks.  I’m looking at what motivates me towards certain actions.  Are 
they coming from a place of effortlessness, and ease of being, and love, or 
some old pattern that has come upon me, I need to allow evaporate.  So thank 
you!

Oh!--I do have to beg your pardon.  I kind-of didn’t hear much of your 
message tonight--I kind-of zoned out again. (laughs)  But it was good!  It 
felt really good, just being here and experiencing so much energy being 
transmitted.

NEBADONIA:  You are very welcome, my son.

(There is always something genuine to do)

Last week Michael mentioned in brief the sequence in which you encounter 
these different elements of yourself does require you to exercise effort and 
courage to discover spirit, to get the confidence and trust of faith.  But 
because of this requirement you truly earn your souls.  There is always 
something genuine for you to do in this your first phase of eternity.  Let 
it come to you.

When we see your soul and your personality--to correct an impression of 
yours one time, my son--this is not all light.  We see all the dark, 
terrifyingly fearful mistakes you’ve made--in terms of your own 
self-evaluation, especially at a younger stage of development.  The final 
achievement of a truly spiritual viewpoint includes all of this, and even 
sees the necessity for it.  Someday, in spite of all the pain you have 
known, you will forgive God for creating you and the universe this way, in 
an all-encompassing embrace.

So rest in my love, my children.  I thank you this evening for so readily 
and warmly grasping the meaning of my message.  Be in my love.  Good 
evening.


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