[tmtranscripts] Nebadonia 9.24.07

[JERRY LANE]

Nebadonia-September 24, 2007

 

Marin T/M Group-Mill Valley, California-U.S.A.

 

NEBADONIA-T/R-JL

 

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael,    Thank you for your wonderful lesson on forgiveness.  Now, in retrospect, I can understand how, by holding a grudge against a person, I was seeing them more as a caricature than who they really were.  And true, it was only by forgiving them that I could restore them to something fully human with, like myself, both strengths and weaknesses. 

 

It brings to mind a previous lesson of yours on appreciation, and how it is passive in the sense of an unconscious projection: we literally see spiritual value "out there" in a person.  Yet it is also active.  We can willfully seek to discover the spiritual value of another.  It is this active participation in our own spiritual assessment of ourselves and others that can change both them and us.  So thank you for these insights into appreciation and forgiveness that change our inner and outer worlds.  Amen.

 

NEBADONIA:  Good evening, my dear sons, this is your Spirit Mother, Nebadonia, and as always, I say you are very welcome.  It is my joy as well to be able to express these things that help you in your self-understanding.  I want to echo and second Michael's statement last time about the correlation between forgiveness and understanding.  So much of a lack of forgiveness is a kind of superficial, judgmental quality you lay on someone else, and it is only by understanding them and seeing everything in its proper perspective of causes and effects--all that goes into an incident-that you can truly forgive.  This also creates a special goodness in your soul of both the willingness to forgive and the humility of not being judgmental.  Every time you forgive you learn something about yourself as well as someone else.  And by accepting your own limitations, you are welcoming, as Michael said, the fact you do not have a grasp on Total Reality itself. 

 

Another part of forgiveness, my children, is harder to deal with because it comes from a sense of justice.  Sometimes you refuse to forgive someone for you think it is your moral duty to uphold a judgment in order to achieve justice.  In other words, you don't feel it's right to forgive this person or yourself for something that happened.  You feel a duty to remember it, to keep it fresh in your mind to insure it doesn't happen again.  This certainly seems logical enough.  You feel you certainly have to let them know you are not going to forget this, so they don't do it again. 

 

But here I appeal to your sense of fairness and, as strange as it may seem, efficiency, as to whether this is the best way to go about insuring this bad behavior does not happen again.  Rather, the situation is best handled with a kind of a non-confrontational discussion of the incident with this person or, in the case of yourself, sitting down in your stillness and, as thoroughly and with as much equanimity as you can muster, honestly relive the situation.  With another person this takes enormous strength and balance to discuss some injury done to you in a very wholesome and spiritual way, a way of actually creating some means of reconciliation.  As you know, it's hard not to let all kinds of sarcasm, innuendo, double meanings, or snide remarks creep into your voice to inflict some punishment on this person for what they've done to you. 

 

You may feel you have to let them know you're not being some kind of patsy, some easy mark, some chump who's going to allow yourself to be walked over.  This is why the reconciliation has to rise above the initial behavior to genuinely offer this person a way of apology.  This also means you have to be ready to accept their apology if it is genuine. You cannot back them into a corner in order to wreck your vengeance upon them and let them know what a lying, loathsome, evil creature they are.  Rather, keep in mind what Michael said: you want to restore them to their full humanity, especially in your own eyes.

 

So this is what you offer.  You let them know you are willing to forgive them, willing to see the whole incident in a new light, see them in a new light.  Remember this is a spiritual gift you come bearing, even while you are hurting inside, even while your notions of justice may be screaming for vengeance. You want to achieve closure.  You want to be able to leave this event in the past and heal your wounded feelings by restoring your inner completeness--independent of any particular incident whatsoever.  Regaining your own spiritual completeness, my children, is the best way to see this bad behavior-your own or theirs--does not happen again.  You have to be the example.

 

Let us think for a minute or two if this is what your tired old world needs so desperately.  All around the world you have cultures coming into contact as never before, and so often that contact only renews old disputes that have been going on, in some cases, for centuries.  Ask yourself: How do you put an end to this?  How can you keep from butting heads together on the same plane of revenge for wounded feelings, along with notions of forcing each other to behave?  We of your spiritual family realize this is not easy when so many camps are armed to the teeth with the feeling they must maintain a defensive attitude and capability to prevent things from getting even worse.  

 

You all know well the ironic acronym of MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction that served as a balance of power throughout the Cold War.  The threat of the sheer power of violence must be taken into consideration.  It's not an illusion.  It's very real, and it will take some time for the various nation/states of the world to each back down from its felt necessity of overwhelming armaments.  But meanwhile you have on the international stage the same individual need for a spiritually creative context and this is best accomplished, my children, again as strange as it may seem, with genuine curiosity.  Let your curiosity blossom, each culture for the other.  Open your minds to the true wonder that is there for you to discover in these centuries of isolation and estrangement.  Ironically enough, it is this estrangement that now promises you the wonder of discovery.  Insofar as your different cultures have evolved along different paths, you now have so much to offer each other of this very specialization.

 

Indeed, it was the enormous conflict between the Judeo-Christian culture of Europe with that of Islam, during the Crusades, that helped give rise to the European Renaissance.  The European development of mathematics and medicine--so many different kinds of science, were given a great shot in the arm by this contact.  Yet at the same time the contact also created the reaction of isolation between the cultures that is now coming to a head. 

 

My children, this is another case where the microcosm of your own relationship to someone you feel offended you is perfectly reflected in the macrocosm of international world affairs.  Just as you have so much to gain by the rediscovered humanity of yourself and this other person who has offended you, so too the nations of the world have so much to gain by doing their utmost best to contact and dialog with each other.  This is the only way to create a genuine world culture that is absolutely inclusive of all the peoples of the planet. 

 

This can only come about one person at a time because forgiveness has to be real for each individual person, as part of their experience, before it can be believed in and pursued as an international goal.  This is just one more instance of how you in your day to day life, in your relationships with those you encounter, determine your own ideas of what is possible on your state, national, and international stage of human affairs.  So let this realization motivate you, my children.  Let your curiosity and your wonder blossom and embrace everybody you meet, even those you pass by for only a moment on a busy sidewalk.

 

Beam your love out to everyone.  Do your best to perceive and accept the full humanity the every person you meet, and then every person throughout the world you become aware of, no matter what their culture, what their beliefs--however strange to you.  This is your true wealth, all these other individual souls with whom you share this great world.  Forgiveness and, as you noted in your opening prayer, appreciation, both have an unconscious component that you do well to recognize.  Recognize the value, the spirit you see in others is partly your own projection on them.  Be responsible for it.  Realize the judgments that seem so objectively "out there" are partly your own.  For in doing so you will have stepped out of the realm of pure reaction, the kind of head-butting on an equal plane of action and reaction.  You will have stepped into a spiritual, creative realm, to be truly active from a greater totality of your soul.  As God himself, as our spiritual community, you'll be seeking out, reaching out to others. 

 

It's not for nothing that the Urantia book points out that Jesus of Nazareth was a very aggressive person--a word so seldom found in Christianity.  Like your great reformers all through the ages, these men and women did not change the course of human history by being passive.  Let your love and your recognition of a common humanity be an active and vibrant, ongoing force in your life.  You have all of humanity--in the sense of individuals; you have all these wonderful people to discover and enjoy.  This is your true wealth.

 

If you have any questions or comments this evening, my children, this is my mother's wealth in you.  

 

Student:  Mother Nebadonia, I was wondering what it means in the statement, to be grounded, especially to be grounded to Mother Earth, as opposed to, like, being grounded in a discipline of some sort like physics, or chemistry, or sociology?  I always wanted to be grounded, but maybe I'm missing something.

 

NEBADONIA:  Yes, my son, the word grounded stands in contrast to words like flightily, or baseless, or one you use now--spaced, as in--out in space.  So it points at completeness, in being aware of the totality of your being as contra-distinct from being flightily or spaced-out or, as Michael used last time, of living in an intellectual ivory tower of purely abstract considerations. 

Within yourself grounded means perceiving and joyfully accepting those only seemingly limiting aspects of you, the physical and mental abilities you have so far.  Whereas not being grounded means to identify exclusively with your more indirect qualities like material possessions, or your social, political, or academic position, etc; or spiritually, your ego-inflating notions of great accomplishments.  This is what Michael meant when he talked about the transformation that occurs within you when you fully accept all that you are, especially those nitty-gritty duties and obligations and commitments you've made.  In a very literal sense these give you some weight. They stick you to the earth. They also help you keep aware you have a physical body and a physical health, as well as a mental and a spiritual health, to maintain. 

In terms of forgiveness, we talked about going off in your mind with a kind of knee-jerk re-action, getting all worked up over some real or imaginary wrong done you, and how it is only by forgiveness do you regain your intrinsic completeness which includes all aspects of yourself-physical, mental, and spiritual.  So being grounded in reality means to feel, to experience this completeness you have in reality.  True enough, only God can see fully, but it is your job, and your joy, to see as much as you can of both yourself and others as He does.  This is what we mean by being grounded, realizing and enjoying your essential completeness as a creation of God.  Does that seem to fit the bill?

Student (laughing): Yes, Mother, it's very understandable.  I was wondering also, do we have any actual connection with Mother Earth--like a spiritual one?-other than walking around, and being born here on this planet? 

NEBADONIA:  Very much so, because Mother Earth, as you designate her, also exists in all the dimensions that you do.  Obviously there is a physical planet here covered with both plant life and animal physical/mental life, all the way up to including the human.  There is a kind of world soul you can tap into, the true history of all the life and people, but one you will not be able to know fully, my son, until you actually reawaken on the Morontia spheres and can access the complete records of Urantia's past. But it is here nevertheless, and you can tune into her-this world soul. 

Think too of the Midwayers who have been here for their tens of thousands of years as the more permanent inhabitants of the realm.  Think of the vast spiritual community that is also stationed here, and all the hundreds of thousands of student visitors that come, drawn in large part because this is the world of Michael's final incarnation and bestowal.  So there is this spiritual community abiding here that you can have some cognizance of, and that the Teaching Mission has so greatly facilitated this-if you will-inter-species contact. 

Right within your own physical body, my son, the spiritual dimensions of this world infuse your mental and physical reality.  All the tens of millions of extraordinarily strange creatures living here from the bottom of the ocean depths to the tops of the mountain peaks, all that fantastic life your marvelous media is bringing to your attention, strange creatures not matched in your wildest fiction; all that is part of this world.  And so it is indeed a physical/mental/spiritual marvel that encompasses you day by day.  We welcome your curiosity and wonder to explore this as well.  It's been here waiting for you. 

Student: The exploration of life on this planet sounds like a pretty good idea, more so than just the spiritual aspect alone.

NEBADONIA:  It's the way the spiritual aspect of value permeates the mental and the physical.  Your natural-science and historical channels on television with their presentation of world-wide native peoples, animals and plant life, is a long, progressive way from, say, the 1920's copies of National Geographic. (Yes) You're living in an enormous explosion of knowledge and its distribution.  Your technology enables you to capture wildlife as it streaks through the undergrowth, or across the sky over mountain ranges, and down into the ocean depths.  It helps you appreciate the intelligence and the design of all this life-plant and animal.  And you've still only scratched the surface of the fuller comprehension you will have some day of this planet's life. 

Student:  Thank you, Mother. It's very exciting.

NEBADONIA:  We congratulate you as a people and a world community on your curiosity and wonder.  The human mind just naturally reaches out to invent tools to use in its further exploration out into the cosmos, and down into the microscopic.  Enjoy your discoveries well, and be in my love. 

Student:  Yes, Mother, I'm feeling quite grounded right now.  I really don't have any burning questions this evening about forgiveness, although I have been guilty of holding back forgiveness, and being sarcastic and saying snide remarks.  But more and more I'm becoming aware of when those moments occur, and I allow myself to go into stillness to rest, knowing they serve no purpose whatsoever.

I've been enjoying a book called Spiritual Peacemaking, and it's been inspiring, going through the daily lessons and attempting to live them.  I really want to go beyond only reading about truth, and actually live it.  Sometimes I get a little.irritated, I guess is the word, when I feel I'm not living to the best of my understanding.  I really do know that only love and truth are what matters.  So that's kind-of where I'm at.  If you have anything I need to look at, feel free. 

NEBADONIA:  Well, now you've asked for it. (laughter) 

Student:  I mean I really do want to live my life in truth and.

NEBADONIA:  No-I'm just teasing you, my son. (Yeah.{and more laughter})  Michael and I do have a sense of humor, and if it weren't for God's sense of humor, we'd all be in trouble.  Even the highest beings have the greatest need not to take themselves too seriously.  So I'll pour heaps of humor upon you and encourage you to do the same for yourself. 

But you do have this task before you of approaching what you mean by truth, and that is being at one and the same time open-minded and welcoming all these various disciplines, and viewpoints, and notions of what reality is, and yet finding your own voice by weighing one thing against another to see what is consistent within each, and where they agree and do not agree.  As Michael once said, this is a Herculean task.  No one is spared this effort to find their own voice, listening within and constantly broadening their understanding of why things agree or not. 

This is a further extension of the need of the major cultures of the world coming into contact with each other, to ultimately evolve a common language to communicate different viewpoints of reality that do not always coincide.  When some of these first contacts were made a few centuries ago, the early translations were often wildly wide of the mark, for example equating the Christian word God to some Oriental concepts that were not similar at all.  It's taken these few hundred years, and libraries full of books, and thousands of persons' lives, devoted to understanding the nuances of how these viewpoints do differ.  As I mentioned this evening, there is so much to welcome and gain from the understanding of that very difference.  This we would ask you to keep in mind as an orientation, how the differences between concepts of reality are what they have to offer each other.

Part of the task before you particularly, my son, is, as Michael mentioned, understanding the different levels of personality manifestation from the human, up through the divine family, all the way to God himself, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit.  This gives you a proper perspective and a sense of proportion so you do not make the mistake of thinking you can literally be God, or nonchalantly assume what any of the Trinity is thinking, or requires of you.  For you are literally swimming in a sea of endless centuries of so-called religious teachers telling people what God wanted them to do, what God expected of them--so much so we've referred to these individuals as politicians, more interested in very temporal and material power rather than in the true spiritual growth of themselves, and their students and subjects.  So you have all this to wade through, just as you have every kind of deliberately obscene, disgusting, and/or violent notion available in your mass media, or online on the internet, to deal with.

We encourage you to be open-minded in spite of it all, to earn your own tough inner equanimity that can confront anything and still forgive, still maintain and develop your grounded-ness, your sense of being complete.  So I would offer you the watchword and the tool of--consistency.  Think of all these notions you entertain: what is consistent within each, and between each?  And that's a handful enough.

Student:  Yes.  I seem to be drawn to things that have a common thread of consistency.  They may say things differently but there is a common thread I seem to latch onto.  When I find something that is too out there, for me, my mind goes numb-so to speak.  My burning question is: what is reality?  What is unadulterated reality?  Who am I; who are we all beneath all these projections and beliefs we've been inundated with, for centuries-as you just said?  Even the concept of God is so misunderstood and misused: the ideas of love and forgiveness as well.  Sometimes when I walk into the metaphysical bookstore I just want to turn around and walk out again.  It's too much.  I have to come from my own sense of what's real. 

NEBADONIA:  In this, my son, Michael and I are both happy to offer you these evenings to explore that very thing.  You do us a great honor in realizing how, within this context of our presence, we can help you discover this.  We encourage you to seek us and find us in your stillness as well. 

Student:  Yes.  Thank you.

NEBADONIA:  You're very welcome.  This is such an exploration for us too, my children, for you have to understand how Michael and I do not anticipate your lives.  True, we have our wisdom, and our oversight, and our insight, and our millions of worlds, and our trillions of personal beings-human and above; yet for us also each human life only unfolds moment by moment.  In this we share this reality with our Universal Father: we are riding right along with you.  Of course we have a much deeper and more profound assurance of your ultimate triumph than you can yet begin to imagine, because you are more to us, and infinitely more to our Father, than you can yet realize of yourselves.  You have to take our word for this, truly, on faith.  We are riding right along with you.  And so we thank you, my dear children, for the courage you show us in living--not knowing, moment to moment, what is coming next.  We salute you with all our love.  Good evening. 
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