Dear Folks, Happy New Year! Here's Mother Spirit's message of hope and
assurance. I want to thank the loyal and steadfast members of the Marin TM
Group for helping bring these transmissions to all of us each week. Such is
the meaning and nature of a true spiritual family: we share these times
together and make things possible. All my love and good wishes, Jerry.

Nebadonia January 2, 2006

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

NEBADONIA—T/R-JL

(Spiritual security in seeking God’s will)
(Your home base in spirit)
(How to be open)
(Your openness is also your greatest gift)
(The importance of consciousness in reflection and planning)
(Assessing spiritual growth)
(Attention and decisiveness)
(Contemplation and action)
(Time as God’s wisdom)

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, Greetings and salutations on this our
second day of the New Year. We find we’re really looking forward to this
ongoing friendship, this real deep relationship with the two of You, and
through You and our own Father Fragment, an ever deeper appreciation of our
Father’s creativity and support. What a joy it is extend our understanding
of this fantastic universe. The more we know, it just seems like the more
there is to know. The creation just keeps getting larger and larger, and it
is both thrilling and humbling to realize our own part in this. So we thank
You for these owners’ manuals on being human you have been offering us.
Amen.

Greetings, My sons, this is your mother, Nebadonia. We too are looking
forward--to some enormous changes coming about on Urantia, largely due to
more and more folks just like yourselves becoming aware of a spiritual
dimension in their lives; learning how to tune into this, and getting the
curiosity and the courage to follow where it suggests. So you yourselves
are learning the truth that spirit never compels. It only suggests and
coaxes you into taking that next step to extend your faith out in front of
you--like feeling your way in the dark, always on the edge of the unknown,
yet finding a supreme security in realizing this is your God-intended home.

(Spiritual security in seeking God’s will)

We’ve talked a lot about this security you can feel within yourself just by
relaxing and being open, and trusting there is more to you than what you can
be aware of. This is why it takes faith. This is why it takes courage.
Faith has been wonderfully defined as the courage to act on that which is
unseen: action, doing something based on what is not grossly perceptible.
Then as you act upon and realize these realms of your human reality that
faith has led you to, so this success, this dealing with reality, fulfills
that step of faith. Now spiritual growth requires that you once again extend
your faith. Reach out, feel for--however blindly, however
unknowingly--where is the next step that fulfills God’s will?

We know that some of you balk at the whole notion of God’s will. It seems
to chaff at your notions of freedom, your own free will, your need to stand
on your own two feet and make your decisions for yourself. But there is
really no contradiction here, My children. Feeling for God’s will is that
extension of faith, on whatever fiber of your being, that tells you this is
so much greater than yourself: That He exists, that His knowledge and
understanding is gigantic beyond any measuring, and the essence of His will
is love, is wanting what is best for you from His perspective. And so, in
reaching for His will, you are simply reaching for what is absolutely ideal
for yourselves. This is the way to go. These are the things to try,
however impossible-seeming or difficult, initially.

This is what your faith feeds your intuition, and gives you those inklings
that you may not yet be able fully perceive, but they just feel right.
However divided you may feel against yourself inside, however much or little
you are able to do these things, We invite you to feel and accept what your
spirit, what your soul, what your heart tells you is this greater way. For
this is God’s way. The whole universe of time and space that He experiences
as the Supreme Being is absolutely evolving, constantly building on all that
has gone before and coming up with something new to add to the Universal
Soul of all experience.

You can have absolute faith and trust in this general trend of God’s created
universe, for this extends right down to the Local Universes, the
Constellations, the Systems, the individual planets. For even on Urantia,
having suffered the misfortunes of betrayed trust and mismanagement that it
has in the past, plus the rather catastrophic failure of your Material Son
and Daughter to fully biologically up-step the human races; in spite of
these catastrophes, the planet is evolving. The planetary culture of all the
different cultures and races is growing.

There has always been a World Soul, a summation of mankind’s experiences,
but the human perception of this, individual by individual, is only slowly
growing. Now you are in a technological age which allows for a physical
parallel of electronic machinery to assist the spiritual family and soul
that has always been here. Merging these two are just general, universal
phases of planetary development that every evolving world goes through. It
enables the whole world to tune into those terrible incidents of enormous
genocide that still happen occasionally. More and more the world is giving
up its blind eye and turning its curiosity and its compassion to those who
need it so desperately.

So be open, My children. Be not afraid to look at anything happening. Take
it in and feel it with your heart. At the same time, cherish a sense of
proportion based on your own individual life, those friends and family and
others close about you. Your mass media is rather sensationalistic and as
yet has found no way to adequately portray the enormous amount of goodness
in peoples’ lives, the amount of love and sacrifice and support that people
give each other day to day. This is the actual glue that holds human
society together.

This is what your spiritual exercises are for, My children. This is the
home base you return to so you can tap into and feel directly the goodness
within the spiritual realm. Feel Michael’s and My love for you and know
this is extended to and supporting every other human being who exists,
whether they are aware of it or not. Feel too this enormous planetary
evolution taking place and realize, as Michael mentioned last time, how
every single human being, starting out from zero experience as a newborn
baby, has to participate in this evolution. And so from Our standpoint,
Urantia is still very young, and to say that the world as a whole is still
in its adolescent stage, is not a putdown but actually pointing at a period
of enormous growth. However awkward and gangly, Urantia is growing.

The world culture is maturing. More and more people are being able to let
go of prejudices, some of which go back hundreds and hundreds of years. So
always take this into account, for this is not any kind of willfully-blind
faith. This is that inner strength to reach out and feel your way along,
the determination to keep growing, keep encompassing larger and larger
realms of experience. So Michael and I share with you your joyful
anticipation of things to come. You are all family, and We love to share in
both the work--the effort, and the reward.

(Your home base in spirit)

Rest deep in your home base of spirit. Every morning, if you can, remind
yourself, by spending a little time in stillness, of this great dimension in
your lives. All through the day, stay close to Us, and close to your own
deeper self. Constantly relax and open, cherishing this transcendental peace
you can feel right in the midst of your most hectic activities, your most
scary challenges. And in the evenings as you rest your weary bodies, and so
often tired minds, take comfort and joy in the soulful rewards of the day.
Then bid Michael and I and our Father a fond good night, and let it all go,
confident in another bright morning.

If you have and comments or questions this evening, We also look forward to
these.

Student: Mother Nebadonia, I’d like to thank You--I do thank You for all
the support and love and guidance that You and Father Michael have given me
this last year, both here in these meetings, and personally. I look forward
to another year of association with You and Father Michael, and all the rest
of the people involved in my life: my teacher Jessie, and Welmek--who
teaches us all, and the Guardian Angels, and a lot of beings that I’m pretty
sure are there, but I don’t know who they are.

I have so many questions that keep coming up that I don’t know which one to
start with, really. The one that seems to be more in the forefront is: how
to be open. I kind-of think I am, but I’m not sure that I am, and sometimes
I get what I know is guidance, but I resist it, and I don’t want to do that;
but it’s like almost, it’s almost automatic, sometimes. Not as bad as it
was, but if You can comment on any of that, I’d appreciate it.

(How to be open)

NEBADONIA: Well, My son, I must congratulate you. You are growing your
desire. You are stoking the fires of curiosity as to what may be out there,
that you cannot even tell yet. But here your faith is hinting that there is
more, more to be open towards. Keep going, because this is the
essence--this heartfelt desire to experience more. And so you are beginning
to perceive. You are getting inklings of what this more is, even if you
cannot always accept it. Yet this means you are also getting more sensitive
to the times when you are closed down, for this perception exists by
contrast. You fear you are closed at times by comparison to other times
when you are more open. If you welcome this too, welcome all this feedback
from your higher spiritual self, you become aware of these fluctuations in
your openness, your ability to take in more.

The next step is to be fearless in wondering more specifically, why is this
happening? Are you closing yourself to a particular person, or a particular
group of people, or to certain situations? Is your higher self trying to
communicate with you and tell you why? So don’t see these moments of
feeling closed down, or lost, necessarily as being divided within yourself,
but more like different levels of this one being that you are, trying to
communicate with each other. Keep wondering, My son. Keep being curious.
Keep growing your desire to see ever deeper. Notice how people relate with
each other. I mean this as specific individuals, not just generally.

This is that strong inner desire, and as you become to trust this more and
more, it becomes a kind of spiritual momentum within you that, ironically
enough, lets you relax. You put your finger on it yourself during our last
meeting when you realized it’s a trusting that you are there, even when you
are not perceiving yourself. You are letting your frantic ego awareness
relax and being more interested in the person in front of you than in your
own inner thoughts. This is how you do it. And there is a price, My son.
There is a price you have to pay for this pure gold for your soul. You have
to pay attention.

I think you can see immediately how this rests not only upon your inner
spiritual desire, but on a clear mind and a healthy body as well. Attention
takes all three energies: physical, mental and spiritual. You can never
have too much of any of these. So you pay attention to what feeds and
supports your attention: bursting energy within your body; a clear,
comprehending mind; and a spiritual desire to really know other folks. Does
this point the way, My son?

Student: It certainly does. I have a great incentive to be
healthy—physically, and spiritually, and intellectually. You’ve kind-of
delineated what I always wanted to do. I didn’t know how to get there. But
to be open to other people, and get them for who they actually are, instead
of my perception of them, or my projection of them, sounds like what You’re
pointing at as a goal to get to, whether physical, or mental, or
spiritual--growth and health. That’s what I want to do. Thanks, Mother.

(Your openness is also your greatest gift)

NEBADONIA: You are very welcome, My son. Keep in mind that this openness
you seek and cherish more and more is at heart the greatest gift you can
give another. This genuine attention, if you think about it, is what you
cherish most when another person can give it to you. Think of all those
wonderful, intimate times when you were able to share with others the real
truth you have found in life. What could be more precious to exchange than
this.

Student: Actually I can’t think of anything more exciting or more thrilling
or more valuable to exchange than ones attention with another.

NEBADONIA: Yes, My son, this is soul to soul. These are those dear friends
you call soul-mates. (Yes) Just as Michael mentioned, as Jesus: This is
the salt that flavors everything else, without which there is nothing. So
be in His peace and My love.

Student: Thank You, Mother. I appreciate it.

Student: Yes, Mother, one of the things that I tend to do is project myself
into the future and where I’m going to go, or what’s going to happen to
me--especially when other people bring up that I have very little money and
I can’t be doing gardening the rest of my life for physical reasons. And so
there’s anxiety attached to this projection, because I simply do not know
what I’m going to do even a year from now. But I do know that I will not,
in time, be continuing the work that I’m doing. But I was telling C today,
there is a stronger part of me that knows I will be guided towards something
else, something as, or more, fulfilling--more extensive, more growth, and it
begins now as I surrender the preoccupation with what I’m going to do
tomorrow. But I…what there is, is anxiety--as You mentioned in Your
comments tonight, regarding faith--because I don’t know what is going to
happen to me, I don’t know how I’m going to sustain myself. So that’s what
I’ve been feeling of late.

(The importance of consciousness in reflection and planning)

NEBADONIA: Yes, D, I would like to introduce a distinction that we’ve
touched on a few times before with regards to the past, the difference
between regressing and reflecting. Regressing is a way of being overwhelmed
by past events to the point where you have to relive them so thoroughly,
you’re actually losing ground in your maturity. You’re doing some
repetitive pattern over and over again only half-consciously. This is very
contra-distinct from reflecting upon your past, highly consciously, perhaps
in your stillness moments, and revisiting an event to deepen your
understanding of it. The same applies for the future. As you accept more
and more how enormous and unfathomable the future is, this takes courage,
but a side effect can be this anxiety you feel. Like regression, it is all
the more debilitating to the degree you are not aware of it, or refuse to
acknowledge it. So even acknowledging this very human apprehension about
the unknown is a great step forward, because it is acknowledging human
reality.

This acknowledgement is the first step in feeling more and more at home in
your human situation. Contra-distinct from this anxiety--which can be so
general and pervasive you forget you’re living in it--is what you call
conscious plans. This is the discipline of devoting part of your now to
probing the future as much as you can along physical, mental, and spiritual
lines. How can you keep your body healthy and strong into older age; how
can you keep your mind more and more alert, and not succumb to pure
nostalgia or sentimentality, but welcome a fresh and reinvigorating approach
to reality; and how can you find the spiritual security that ever whispers
in your ear: You are a potentially eternal being, My son: fear not, you’ve
only just begun. None of this obviates to any degree making provision,
setting aside part of now for yourself in the future, be it physical savings
and investments, keeping your mind lively and curious by giving time over to
those studies and exercises that refresh you, and establishing a spiritual
home base that you can feel growing day by day, giving you security and
insight. This is all part of that planning.

But for those specific plans of what to do a year from now, or five years
from now, here there is no substitute for the command: know thyself! What
do you want to do? I think you recognize this old friend We’ve introduced
before. What is your heart’s desire? What are your abilities? What can
you do, and how do you expand this?

Student: This is where I kind-of draw a blank. I don’t know what I can do.
You speak about being an eternal being, which in a sense says that I have
this infinite potential to do all sorts of things—to create and be a
financial success, and.. but I don’t feel I have the means, or the insight,
or the mental capacity to even take the first step towards that. I mean I
have all these great fantasies of what I would like to do: to travel, to
cease doing my gardening and travel with my children, and teach about truth
and love to others, maybe even be a minister… I just don’t know. I just
don’t know…what my direction is. The only thing I do know is what I
have…now—a Taoist saying: action-less action; sitting still, doing nothing.
I simply don’t know what to do, except be still. I do not want to live my
life full of anxiety and fear, without truth and surrender, and freedom. I
don’t even know if I can do this, on this planet.

(Assessing spiritual growth)

NEBADONIA: Let Me ask you a question, My son. Think back to some of our
earlier conversations several years ago, when you were at times brimming to
overflowing with confidence, and very self-assured of your view of the
world, and things. Does it seem like you are truly growing in spirit to
have this chasm of the unknown opening before you, or does it seem as if you
are somehow losing ground, and your onetime assurance was more correct?

Student: I believe and feel because of my past experiences that I am
growing spiritually, and that the chasm of the unknown is real, there,
unfolding before me. I have a sense of certain things coming to an end,
obviously not tomorrow, but in time. I just wonder what is to become of me.
Maybe no one can answer that, except when I take that step forward.

NEBADONIA: So you do feel that you are growing, most fundamentally, your
perception and your dealing with reality? (Yes, I do… Yes, I do) And you
are accepting deeper and deeper within yourself just how much your life is
in your own hands?

Student: Yes…(laughing) I do—and that’s what scares me! Because I feel it
is so tenuous at times, it could be gone tomorrow, that everything could
fall apart. Then what’s left?

NEBADONIA: But this is real reality, is it not? (Yes, it is) And We can
only assure you there is something growing here—a cosmic reality called your
soul, that you accept, to a large degree, on faith, from Us—that it is
there, and it is as enormous as it is, and it is growing. This is part of
being an experiential being, being this nodule of experience and realizing
that the purpose of human life at your stage of evolution is this very
experience, day to day, that even God does not choose to anticipate, but
rather chooses to share with you.

But getting down to the specifics of the nitty-gritty here: As you realize
more and more how much your life is in your own hands, it becomes more
necessary, D, to flesh out your fantasies and bring them down to earth,
figure out all the little steps, starting, as you mentioned tonight,
starting now, always now. You need some kind of conscious continuity here.
You may have the write these steps out, however tiresome this might seem at
first, so these plans for the future can start building day to day. It
probably occurs to you: these plans you do make in your mind—how much money
you have, how much it takes to do this or that--all these economic factors
are a part of being human.

Student: But that is where I lack so much understanding. That’s where I
lack…(laughs) I just lack! There is no other way of saying it! There’s
only so much I can do physically, work-wise. I simply don’t know what to do
in the areas of spirituality, or mentally--creatively. (Very heavy
sigh—long pause…) If the universe is abundant, and infinite, then there is
infinite abundance for myself, here, right here and now, for everyone! For
C, and J, and everyone! It‘s here, is it not?

(Attention and decisiveness)

NEBADONIA: Yes, but it’s bought, not only with--as I mentioned to C--with
paying attention, but with decisiveness. It is the decisions you make that
build up this base of what is possible for you. This is how you measure how
you’re doing, and what is possible. You have to try things. You have to
make a decision that forms a kind of solid ground in the realm of mind and
spirit—plans and evaluations of what is possible for you: this all has to be
based on decisions. You decide to try something, you remember you made this
decision, and then you evaluate the outcome. This is how you fill this
vacuum you feel. It puts you in a state of mind that ties you in with all
the decisions you’ve made in the past.

Because you are here now. Somehow you got here. This is that
self-knowledge that informs you of your abilities. These are the first
glimmerings of your existential being, being formed. It is based on your
free will, based on accepting the economic aspects of your temporal life
that, though you have eternity before you, it is always now. If you would
have something in your life, some ability, you always have to start now.
This is what brings you—your personality, forth as a real factor in time and
space. It is accepting that time is of the essence. Not only are you
involved in eternity, but you are involved in the necessity to fill it. And
that can be a little scary.

As We’ve said before, you free will only exists in the exercise of it. From
the viewpoint of pure contemplation, it is only potential. I’m not going to
the extreme and saying that any action is better than none, for that is the
extreme other viewpoint. But I am pointing at the necessity to choose, and
get involved in the irrevocable nature of reality that cannot be put off
indefinitely. I think you recognize, My son, this is the nitty-gritty, the
most gritty part that brings real substance into the mindful and spiritual
dimensions. It is one way in which your mind and spirit pay respect to the
fact you are involved in time and space. Time is passing. This is what
makes eternity real. Otherwise it would be just a mere illusion—as
envisioned in some of your metaphysics. You are an economic creature. You
have to deal with limitations. You have to overcome the anxiety of sensing
these limitations--by acting.

Student: Are You suggesting that I ought to--since my life is in my
hands--that I’m the one choosing to live the life I’m choosing to live, that
I need to find some way to bring, to accept my potential, and bring it out
into the world in one form or another?

NEBADONIA: Exactly! You have to try some of these fantasies to bring them
down to earth. Reach into them and separate what is possible and what is
not.

Student: Why is it that some people are able to know what they want to do?
I mean, some are obvious, like artists and musicians, but then people like
ministers who have a calling, or writers who are moved to write… But I have
this nebulousness, this scattered-ness about it, this non-focussed-ness—for
lack of a better way of saying it.

NEBADONIA: But a writer has to sit down at his typewriter and hit a key. A
musician has to pick up that guitar, perhaps in front of a whole audience,
and hit a string. And who knows, who else except them and their Father can
say what that is costing them? Who knows how much fear they feel right up
to that moment—the enormous stage-fright that some of the greatest actors
and actresses have confessed they feel even on the hundredth performance?
So you may not be so different from them after all.

Student: Do I have a calling?

NEBADONIA: Yes!

Student: And that is what I need to discover.

(Contemplation and action)

NEBADONIA: Yes! (much laughter) You discover it by trying things. You
have to make it real. Just like you have to make Us real; make the other
people in your life real. These are all actions. It would be too much, My
son, to say you are drowning in contemplation, because this contemplation is
your way of reaching out and feeling around for some substance. But the
very power of your mind and your spirit is such that it is possible to get
lost in them. What I am pointing out as action is that economic aspect of
human reality that is irrevocable. This is almost the definition of the
physical realm, and the happenings in it. When one of your beloved flowers
dies, or even your day to day work, working in the physical world; these are
substantial happenings because they have substance in them, material
substance. Similarly, to bring your mental desires and your spiritual
longings to earth, you have to manifest them, you have to try them in order
to get the experience of what you can do and what you cannot do. Before a
minister steps up in front of his congregation, or a musician sits down in
front of his audience, think of the hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours
of practice that came before. The successful comedians who can stand there
with just a microphone and entertain millions, generally started out as the
wise kid in grade school, thrilling to entertain his classmates. This
realization always puts pressure on you to start now; start trying
things—now. Think about what you want to do, and how to get there, as
concretely as you can.

Student: I will do so. (heavy sigh) And thank You—for being frank.
NEBADONIA: You are very welcome , My son. Michael and I both salute your
courage to look at this nebulousness square in the eye.
Student: You can catch the underlying emotion beneath the surface of my
questions.
NEBADONIA: Oh yes. Of course. We appreciate your trust. You are in a
very self-generated situation, but that is not to belittle it, or to demean
it, or to diminish it in any sense, for this is part of your power, and part
of your responsibility—your ability to respond, that makes you one of God’s
children. You are forever in My love. Trust this awareness of yours that
lets you know you are getting ever more real. As some of your beloved
teachings put it: right before enlightenment there is a profound darkness,
because this is your personality struggling to find form in the unknown, and
learning the only way you can learn, by experience, how much of it you
create. Be in My love.
(Time as God’s wisdom)
And so, My sons, we launch out into another year. It is interesting: this
is both a somewhat real demarcation you share amongst yourselves—remembering
to write a different number at the end of the date on your correspondence;
and of course, it is also an artificial construct. For time knows no
separations, no demarcations. You can think of it either as a fantastically
complex dimension, or many dimensions crisscrossing through a living now.
Your very numbering pays great respect to the birth of a Creator Son on your
planet. It is a further mark of spiritual respect you have your New Year
and Christmas so close together.
But you are involved in time, you are encompassed and determined by it. In
one sense it is limitless, but its potential for seeming empty or all the
same is definition enough of hell. Once again, you must trust in God’s
wisdom that He created time such that each existential moment can be, for
you, unique and distinct in all eternity. For when you think of it, this is
the meaning of soul, this is the meaning of singular experiences by unique
beings—singular in all eternity. It comes about for you by being ever more
God-like, exercising your free will, reaching towards that greater will that
is His, which He yearns to share with you. And so, Father, we thank You
most humbly for making time what it is, and reminding us, from time to time,
this moment will never come again. Good evening, My children. Be in My
love.