Dear Mother Spirit and [Christ] Michael, once again we gather together to share in welcoming Your presence and Your precious words for us.  Tonight our prayer is for those who cannot feel Your presence and know Your company as we have come to.  We ask You to help them sensitize their hearts and open their minds so that they can feel and know You, and realize just how much a part of their lives You have always been--however they conceive of You and our Universal Father.  Amen.

NEBADONIA:  Good evening, My sons, this is your mother, Nebadonia.  I long to say that I too am your sister, much as Michael is your brother, even though I have not had a real, physical human life.  But I have been so intimate with the lives of all My children for so long now, I feel very much your sister, and I would certainly like it if you would consider Me so.

(Being Mother Spirit)

This ability of Mine to share our lives is My mother’s greatest glory.  Just as My Adjutants of Mind/Spirit help augment your own spiritual abilities to know a progressing life, so too your lives augment Mine.  You give Me purpose, and I would like to share with you something of what it is to be such a mother.

I experience with you not only your human lives, but then we both enjoy your growing ability to contact and experience Me as you progress through all the Morontia phases of your next life to come.  This is one of the great surprises and joys you experience upon awaking with a Morontia form.  And this ability does continue to grow as your experience of Morontia life becomes evermore subtle, evermore vast across all the enlarging dimensions of matter/energy, and mind, and spirit.

Then you graduate from Salvington, and off you go into the galaxy.  But still We continue to keep in touch with each other.  I am constantly receiving what is analogous to postcards from My children who go forth to ever greater, more expansive adventures.   Even after graduating from Uversa and leaving the headquarters of our Superuniverse, bound beyond time and space for Havona, still we keep track of each other, still these greater experiences of more and more dimensions of reality you encounter are Mine too to enjoy.

Can you imagine, My children, what a joyous reunion it is when you return to Michael and I to pay Us a visit as a complete, full-fledged spirit being, a fully existential being, a member of the Corps of the Finality?  What a homecoming when you thread your way back out from the Center of all things, back to your humble, little Local Universe out here on the fringes of our Superuniverse, and once again we stand face to face.  This is your destiny and yet, you will still be, as Michael and I are, just beginning.  There is enough in the contemplation of eternity to satisfy the even the most anxious, impatient soul.

(Personal and impersonal reality)

But now we are here back in this earthy room where I can enjoy with you this complex life you know for indeed, it is part of My purpose, part of My ability to help you connect the seemingly disparate elements of your human life.  What a great polarization it seems the division of reality between impersonal matter and energy, and spirit-endowed personalities.  Yet they both have the same Author, do they not, and immediately upon —I should preface this by saying, in the beginningless eternity-event, as a concession to your language— immediately upon the division of reality into personal and impersonal aspects —the Eternal Son, the first derived personality, and Paradise, the impersonal pattern for all coming existence--the relationship between Them was also instantaneously personified as the Infinite Spirit, providing the same analogous connection I help provide for you.  Spirit/Mind is many hundreds of dimensions, My children, that you will spend some time, both here in time-and-space, and then later in the Havona Central Universe, encountering and making your own.  But right now your own personal mind’s main function is to connect you with these marvelous physical bodies you have.

I made a statement several weeks ago, and I’ve since come to feel and realize there is some question as to My meaning.  I said you do not always appreciate the marvel of these bodies you have until you no longer have them, albeit they are replaced by something even finer, something that extends all your senses in contacting reality.  What I meant by this was mainly in terms of your physical health, because this is a natural endowment that you often unintentionally or mistakenly abuse, and do not realize the full value of until it is either threatened or gone.

I re-empathize this because in your present human situation, your mind and your body are inextricably tied together.  True enough, your spirit does have its own senses and knowing, somewhat independent of your mind/body, and can know other spirit directly.  But for all practical purposes these moments of spiritual contact and realization are greatly facilitated by your ability to relax your mind of other distractions, which is in turn dependent on a strong and healthy physical body to achieve a kind of biochemical peace, free of pain and anxiety.

Here’s where Michael and I ask you to —from the position of your spiritual personality— love and respect your somewhat fragile life-vehicle that does, in your present situation, put you in contact with the physical universe and your fellow human beings.  You rely upon your bodies for consciousness itself, which you have to suspend on a daily basis for rest and regeneration.  And even though your physical bodies are surrounded by space and finite in that sense, always remember that they are infinite into the infinitesimal in their inner workings —to you.  You have a rather cynical saying that nothing is free, and indeed, Michael and I have reassured you that the price you pay for your experiences is a blessing, for it makes your soul truly something you have earned, and all your own for eternity.

Yet on the other hand, My children, consider that your whole life is —in total— a pure gift.  You did not have any kind of previous existence wherein you requested the life you are living.  So in this sense, it’s all free.  It’s put in your hands to do with what you want, with the stipulation, of course, that any final results will always include God’s will, God’s physical and mental and spiritual laws without which there would be no reality to sustain us.  So love and treasure these priceless bodies you have, My children, even though you can be assured that you will exchange them for something even finer someday.

For it is ever true that you can only love and respect these others about you, your fellow human beings, to the degree you can initiate this devotion, this respect within yourself.  What a marvel you are.  It’s somewhat ironic that you can even doubt yourself, your own existence, free to do this to the point of despair.  But nevertheless, there is God’s confidence in your freedom, and in His own handiwork in creating you this way.  As Michael said last week, when you consider your independence from Him, even to the point of taking yourself out of continuing existence, you are face to face with your own freedom and your own responsibility to yourself.

(Eternal life)

The simple, transcendent fact is: eternal life is forced on no one.  It is something you have to choose, and the nature of that choice is always now.  You have to choose to be strong and healthy.  You have to choose to grow.  You have to choose the adventure laid before you.

You can always call upon Michael and I, in your deep stillness wherein we embrace and hold each other, to help you realize and make these choices.  This is the commitment Michael spoke of that needs to be made again and again, and yet, gloriously, can be made again and again.  And so we thank you, Father, for these means by which we grow our eternal souls.  And we do humbly confess, we can’t think of any finer, better, other way.  We thank You for Your gift of life.

If you have any comments or questions this evening, are they not coming from your own living curiosity?

Student:  Mother, is the question about… What is the spirit You’re talking about —our spirit— the indwelling Father Fragment, or another spirit, or another form of spirit?

(Human personality is endowed with spirit)

NEBADONIA:  Yes, My son.  This evening I was talking about your own personal spirit, the fact that your personality is endowed with spirit .  You have your own spirit nature, power, and abilities.  We say this is your creative spirit for this is that part of you that is somewhat outside of time and space, and not bound by pure cause and effect, such as is the physical body you have.

Your physical body is in time and space and obeys its absolute, God-created physical laws.  Your mind, aided by My Adjutants since you were a tiny baby, is what serves to connect your personality, your fundamental reality, with your physical body.  In your present situation, your mind, by way of your physical senses, enables you to experience both the impersonal stuff all around you, as well as the outward manifestation of your fellows.

Your personality is what perceives and makes real —realizes— what gives value to your life.  Being spirit-endowed, you are capable of contacting Michael and I, and your Thought Adjuster, your Father Fragment, directly. This is that part of you that will merge, literally fuse and become one with your Father Fragment, either in this first physical life, thereby terminating it, or more commonly on the Mansion Worlds to come.

So you are a man of many parts… (group laughs) and your spirit-endowed personality unites them.  This is, if you will, the function of personality.  Does that answer your question?

Student:  Yes, and it brings up a host of other questions too.  If we had a lot of time I could ask them all.  This spirit is not the soul, it’s not the mind.  It’s something entirely different —not necessarily separate from, but different from.

NEBADONIA:  Yes.  It’s an intrinsic part of your personality.  It’s why you are considered to be a member of the Deity Absolute, with all other personal beings.  There is no spirit apart from person-hood; there is no impersonal spirit.  For here we are looking at the fundamental division of reality itself into personal and impersonal manifestation.  Personality comes directly from God and is endowed with creative spirit, whereas physical reality obeys very strict laws of antecedent causality —every effect has a previous cause.

This spiritual power of your personality can create something new, without total antecedents.  You, My son, are a spiritual being, and you can most readily distinguish this part of your life as value.  Value recognition/creation is a function of your spirit, the same as meaning or relationship is largely a function of your mind, and your physical perceptions are largely a function of your physical body.  Your spirit is very distinct from the Father Fragment that indwells your mind as a kind of closely allied Presence.

So your Father Fragment is quite distinct from your personality.  Since it is only the co-author of your soul, being a detached, pre-personal fragment of God, it depends upon your personality —you— to achieve person-hood.  We consider this quite a wonderful trade, exchange, mutual gift, each to the other.  You give it personality, and it gives you eternal life —an immortal soul.  Does this clarify these many pieces?

Student:  It does give me a clearer view, and indeed it is a wonderful gift —being one with the Father Fragment at some time in the future.  It’s almost unbelievable that something like that would be possible.  Thank You, Mother.

NEBADONIA:  This is why Michael refers to your soul as being a steel cable tying together all your earthly experiences, for it is a spiritual creation outside time and space as you know them now.  So rest in My love.  (Student:  Thanks again, Mother.)

Student:  Greetings, Mother —my sister. I hadn’t thought of You that way before, although I have considered the possibility because we all are brothers and sisters of the one Father.

Tonight I would like to talk to You about unrevealed orders of beings that we are now coming to know.  Why weren’t some of these orders mentioned in the Urantia book?  The first one I want to talk to You about, that has come to my attention, is this Order of Seraphic Assistants that I have been given to help heal my physical health.  Is it true that this order of being was not revealed in the Urantia book because, as I’ve been told, possibly too many would look to their physical healing before they would look to their spiritual healing?

I also want to ask You about the order of beings known as Planetary Supremes who have not been mentioned in the Urantia book either.  It seems such an important link in our understanding of the universe.  The Planetary Supreme—Urantia by name— why wasn’t She mentioned in the Urantia book?  Those are my questions this evening.

(What is included —or not— in the Urantia book)

NEBADONIA:  My son, I treasure your questions and do consider them with great respect, but you must understand how ironically humorous it is to Michael and I to hear someone ask why the Urantia book is not even more complex and comprehensive than it is.  (Group chuckles.)  I’m sure you are aware that it represents for most of those who come across it a kind of supreme intellectual Everest to climb, especially the first time through.  Those who have gone on to read it many times keep enjoying the surprise of encountering things they could swear they had never read before, it is that experientially enormous.  So this is the most direct answer to your question.

The Urantia book, for as complex and comprehensive as it is to most everyone who endeavors to understand it, is to even one of the lowest, most novice Seraphim, somewhat like asking you to put all your knowledge on a single page of paper, to present to some order of being desperately in need of your offering.  Decisions had to be made as to what to include, and the very complexity and comprehensiveness of the book was designed so it would be its own proof, so anyone who began to understand what was contained within those blue covers could rest assured it was beyond the ability of mankind itself to write.  It is only those who have given it the most superficial glance who consider it some kind of practical, man-made hoax, put together by a few bored but clever college professors one summer.

The individualization of the Supreme Being into Planetary Supremes —if you will, the Soul of Urantia— was not considered necessary to include.  It is implicit in everything you learn about the Supreme Being.  Keep in mind the Supreme is simply the growing, developing time/space person-hood of God the Father.  In a way the Supreme is the growing memory, the perfect memory of God, of His creation —personified, evolving as a personal Being.

As for the help you are receiving from the spiritual community, with respect to your health, this fits right in with My message this evening.  There is never so great a need for you to open your heart and summon the courage to dare to feel the full uncertainty of your human condition, for it is the purpose of your bad/unhealthy habits to hide or mask this intrinsic uncertainty of being a living creature.  It takes great nerve to turn about and welcome a moment to moment sensitivity to your body and what it needs.  When I say, let Me help you heal yourself, it is with your creativity of spirit —I talked about with C— wherein I can be the most use.  I can work with you to help you understand what is happening to you.  I can help you develop a kind of tough resiliency that lets you admit to yourself what you need to do.  I can help you face the uncertainty that is involved in experimenting, to paraphrase one of your TV space-dramas— to boldly go where you have not been before.

Consider suspending certain habits for you cannot know what that is until you actually do it.  So keep your spirit of adventure here.  Accept My lesson of this evening that so much is in your hands to decide.  Be reassured, My son, that in realms of hearth, you can rely upon God’s physical laws.  For the reason your body is a living, biochemical organism that obeys physical laws, it is responsive: it will respond.  Does this help you understand what you need to do?

Student:  Yes, Mother, you have once again gone to the heart of the matter.  I would simply ask—I do now—help me step by step find the courage to make those choices, to free myself from the unhealthy habits —what I consider addictions— pet evils I still cling to.  Help me find the courage to be creative and go where I haven’t gone before.  I truly believe this is what my heart desires.

(Eliminating addictions)

NEBADONIA:  Well, My son, it takes a lot of humility, a lot of setting aside ego —in the sense of your own notions of who and what you are.  It is really scary facing all those seemingly empty stretches of time to fill if you eliminate certain habits.  But take refuge in the fact you don’t know what that will be.  On the one hand, it can be scary but, on the other, trust it will be something different than what you envision and are afraid of.  For this is how good health works.  There will be another you, you cannot anticipate from here.  You have to give this —you— a chance.  Just feel your way along, and accept the humility you may have to do this, sometimes, moment by moment.

But no spiritual effort is truly lost.  Moments spent free of some habit become the solid ground upon which to build.  Every day spent free is a triumph.  So keep in mind this new person you wish to give birth to.  Check in with [Christ] Michael and Me as often as your heart desires, or needs.  Keep these ideals in mind, however much or little you can immediately accomplish them.  It would help your humility to write in a journal, or on a calendar —some simple little acknowledgement in objective reality of how things are going— feedback to keep your ego down to earth.  Sometimes a simple token like this proves almost impossible to do, but that itself is significant, and tells you much about your sincerity; and if you can do it, the physical act allows you to focus on these ideals.  You have My love, My son, and Michael’s peace to help sustain you.

Again I’ll repeat: you cannot know this person until you become him, but you can imagine how much he will sincerely thank you for every tiny little effort you can muster.  Have some pity, have some heart —for him.  And feel yourself wrapped in My love.  (Student:  Thank You, Mother.)

Student:  Yes, Mother.  You talk about uncertainty, and I’ve been feeling at this moment a subtle anxiety and confusion, trying to grasp onto something to make sense of things.  I’ve always been a believer in keeping things simple —how I live my life, my philosophy, and there are times, like with the Urantia book, there are concepts I can’t understand.  It’s not that I don’t believe them, or deny them; I just don’t understand.  I’m not some great intellectual person although I do question and attempt to understand.  I do look at things from all angles if possible.

One of the things I’m grappling with is where the essential teachings of all great religions… the essence of them is that we are all innately compassionate, and good, and desire to be of service and benefit to the world.  All points of view —positive, negative, and neutral— are derived from this place of awareness —but which is itself illusionary, a dream state.  And so as I look at this, it’s like I experience that, and then rest naturally, allow that there is nothing to do.  This state of awareness is here, is already here, and there is nothing for us to grasp onto, but just to rest naturally, and to notice points of view that motivate us, that get in the way of being in the moment.

And so it’s like I’m trying to bring all this together, of what You and Michael say, and what I’ve read.  I guess I’m seeking some perspective on all this.  Because when I read some of the material this workshop presented to me, I was in tears, it seemed so true; it resonated within me.  A lot of what was being presented was what I wanted to hear.  My soul just hungrily ate it all up.  So in a sense I have no idea where I’m going!  (laughs)  I have no goals.  I don’t know!  Obviously there are things in my life —I’m not running away from anything.  There’s work to do.  But I have no sense of my future.  All I have is now.  But it doesn’t bother me that I don’t have any goals.  I guess my goal is to live my life as God intended me to.  When I think of my goals, what I would like, I find it’s ultimately my relationship to myself, and to my spirit —the _expression of that— beyond all desire —ultimately.  I just don’t want to fool myself, or waste my time.  So there You have it.

(To feel yourself a living creature)

NEBADONIA:  Well, My son, this may come as a surprise… (OK…) but all I can say is: Amen to all of the above.  (Yes… {laughing anxiously})  This anxiety you feel is very analogous to the uncertainty I was talking about, that takes nerve to let yourself feel, because this is a desire to be self-honest, to be open within yourself, to be a democracy within.   There’s a lot of hurley-burley--coming and going, in a democracy.

To be an intellectual means, most fundamentally, to enjoy things of the mind.  We say your human type of mind is mostly concerned with relationships with meaning.  One example would be: you say something and your friend asks what you mean by that, and you try to put that same essence, that same truth in another way.  This is what meaning means —these relationships.  You are now reaping some of the benefits of your years of reading, and studying, and being interested in mental things, now to the point where your spirit is beginning to recognize, beyond meaning, identical values between different systems of thought.  In other words, when you go to your workshop and find certain spiritual laws presented in a whole new language, you are gaining an ability to recognize in these new word combinations previously encountered truths that words can only point at.

(Character)

This is also the essence of that other possession of personality, a quasi-Morontia reality very similar to soul--what you call character, a recognizable and highly desirable quality that, like your soul, you earn through experience.  Very much like your spirit, character gives you a detachment or remove from immediate reality, an equanimity in the face of present challenges or fears.  As you put it, you are not blown about so much by present circumstances.  There is something persisting, and enduring, and growing.  In this sense there is no such thing as bad character, there is just a regrettable lack of it: someone has learned so little enduring truth from their experience.

Right now you are kind-of sloshing about a bit in some new-found freedom.  (student chuckles agreement)  You’ve found ways of freeing yourself from past conditioning by being open-minded, and reading, and looking about.  And you are even accepting the nature of this uncertainty as something positive.  It is just your way of being open-minded, acknowledging there is so much you have yet to learn and understand.  And that’s a good place to be in, to be aware of this enormity.  You will recall, that’s Our definition of humility.  It helps keep you from being humiliated by pig-heatedly, head-strong running smack into solid objects, or ignored considerations.

I commend your realization that most worth-while goals are of a spiritual nature.  Indeed, even those physical and mental goals you may have derive their value from your spirit, and can be extraordinarily hollow and disillusioning when sought for themselves alone.  You can stand there with a lot of good stuff, and great ideas, and still feel hollow in spite of them.

So keep going.  Keep accepting this uncertainty as being in touch with your living reality.  So many folks are estranged from, and afraid of this feeling of being a living creature, they identify so thoroughly with fixed dogmas and lifeless formulas, rigid institutions, they even experience a bit of nausea when they are forced willy-nilly to feel themselves living.  They are so terrified of the whole half of reality that is constantly new, and cling so tenaciously to what they have already known, We’ve likened this to trying to drive backwards down the road looking in the rear-view mirror.  This is what it means to be reactionary, to live your life only reacting, never quite coming up into the present moment where you can genuinely act and create.

So continue to clarify your understandings.  Keep reaching.  Keep feeling.

Student:  Yes.  One of the things that has come up in this workshop, was my idea —because she doesn’t talk about God, partly, mainly because it gets so misunderstood, the idea of God— but also how we turn these great leaders like Buddha, and Jesus, into mythical characters, and so we loose the true meaning of their lives —there was a part of me that was still holding on.  I wondered if I was letting go of Jesus, and my relationship with Him; and to You.  I felt really conflicted with that, like I was letting You down.  But then I thought to myself, because of a passage in The Course of Miracles, that nothing real can be truly threatened.  There is nothing to defend, if it’s really truth.  So that’s part of my conflict, but the thought helped a bit —that if there is some ideology, or point of view in me, if I have to hold onto it, have to defend it, then why am I doing that?  Why do I feel threatened?  So… Hmmm…

NEBADONIA:  You can understand that the myth-making of great leaders is just to get some distance from them, so you don’t feel the necessity to put their life into your own.  The Urantia book speaks about the followers of Jesus immediately creating a religion about Him, rather than seeking to teach His religion.  This is why Michael has mentioned how He had to suspend Himself as a Creator Son in order to have a real human life up to the time of His baptism and, in a sense, partly regaining Himself.  So this is a real challenge for everyone, to see Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha fully as human and get all the closer to their teachings.  (Student:  Thank You very much.)

NEBADONIA:  You’re welcome.  You are gaining an ability to recognize the spiritual essence of concepts across a broad spectrum of how each person, or each philosophical or theological system expresses them in its own, somewhat, unique language.  This recognition is both spiritual and mental, a matter of heart, and mind, and soul-experience.  So carry on.  Enjoy your freedom.  Be mindful of what it has cost you to gain and maintain.  This is the function —if you will— of feeling that wise uncertainty in being a living creature.  And keep feeling for My love.

(Your experience of life is your fundamental purpose)

Well, My children, we have looked at some things, and some of you are facing a very full plate indeed —to ingest, and then, as Michael suggested, talk about with others to help you digest and make your own.  You are experiential beings.  Your experience of life is your fundamental purpose now.  And so, be aware of anything that compromises this intrinsic need of your personality.  This is the essence, the badness of bad habits.  They short-circuit what is potentially new for you each moment.  Rest assured that when you give up the habit, the repetitious behavior, there will be something there to take its place.  It will more than take its place for you will be living a fuller experience of your unique life.  Take heart in this assurance and be in My love.  Good evening.