2021-11-26-Being Open Minded

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Topic: Being Open Minded

Group: Marin TeaM

Facilitators

Teacher: Nebadonia

TR: JL

Session

Opening

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael; thank you--especially for your last two lessons on the subject of attitude. As our wonderful Urantia Book says, from the standpoint of our personality it is our relationship to everything else. This includes our own selves, our mind, body, spirit, and soul.

(Being Open-Minded)

You mentioned one great attitude of being Open-Minded. It’s the ability and the courage to entertain whatever comes our way from within or without, and just go along with it for a while. We trust our own selves, even if it is something totally antithetical to what we believe or feel to be true. We entertain and welcome this other point of view. We trust our souls to sort it out in time and let it find its proper place. This most wonderful and necessary attitude leads to our becoming more spiritually and soulfully wealthy.

With an open mind we welcome God’s great gift of curiosity leading us on to our next adventure of discovery. This is how we add to our souls. This is how we have a full life. We’re strong and humble enough to wonder about all that out there, and all this within us here.

(A Rebirth of Wonder)

Wonder is a close cousin to curiosity--to wonder what is coming next, and our part in it. Later, the new discovery has the reward of being lost in wonder. Several years ago there was a wonderful so-called beat poet named Lawrence Ferlinghetti who had a great poem titled--and calling for--A Rebirth of Wonder. We cast off our old stifling blanket of mental laziness and cynical ego, and enjoy an innocent rebirth of wonder.

Discovery can be both inner and outer. We can be lost in some new piece of music, some new picture or sculpture. We can marvel this other person exists; or something that comes out of our own imagination. We can explore either. What is this? How did it come about? What am I going to do with it? What is going to be my attitude towards it?

With this focus on our attitude, let me turn things over to Mother Spirit and see what she has to offer us about it. Amen.

Lesson

Nebadonia: Good evening, this is your Mother Spirit. I feel honored to be with you, now in the afterglow of that very precious giving-thanks day of yours. Hopefully you were fortunate or lucky enough to get with friends and family, and very openly and consciously give thanks you were all still here In this busy physical world of yours. Some of you older folks can fondly remember friends and family who are with you no longer; but you’re still thankful for all you shared with them. All those wonderful experiences are now in your soul to carry on into the Mansion Worlds, along with theirs.

(God’s great aspect of sharing)

We give thanks for that great aspect of God that he shares with all of us—the ability of sharing itself-- sharing our lives with others as he shares himself with us. It’s the most wonderful aspect of being alive that we can be thankful for. Michael and I say this is where one and one make three. There is who you are and what you have known; who I am and what I have known; and then there is what we have together through our sharing It’s because our open minds are seeking out and welcoming another unique living beings. Some day you will be off experiencing extra-human purely spiritual beings.

(A special day of giving thanks carried on)

As you devoted a whole day to re-invigorate and remind yourselves of so much to be thankful for, perhaps you can get the idea and are tickled with the notion of making thanks-giving a regular event on a daily basis. It can be a wonderful part of your meditations, so take time out of your busy life to be thankfully still. Practice stillness and think, “OK--dear Father; dear Michael and Mother Spirit: what do you have for me--this time?”

Let the last few days come up to be reviewed. Enjoy that wonderful two-hundred-percent-ness of life of each event, and then its reflection. Give it time. Allow reflection to occur. It can be as natural as your breathing in and out, and your heart beating--this spiritual review. This is especially true now you are later on in life, further along in the stream of time with a deeper knowledge, understanding, and soul--partly God’s take on your experiences.

Reflection is an amazing inner mirror to see things anew with a deeper understanding. It’s part of being thankful that things and folks are as they are.

Then too are those mysteries that are still unsolved. Don’t be afraid of them, but let them come up, as in your introduction, to be wondered at. Why did you do what you did on occasion? Why did someone else do what they did? What about some world events?

(The rewards of reflection)

You have a most amazing mental/spiritual tool to pry things and events open. Have another look and reflect, just to deepen your soul. One of the great rewards of being alive is having these deeper experiences. Curiosity and wonder lead you forth—or sometimes even drive you forth--to another adventure, truly not knowing what is coming next. Be thankful for the opportunity, rather than being afraid of it.

Allow your whole being to mature in the sense of gaining a wealth of broad experience. All this is coming to you by way of your curiosity and wonder. Recognize the wonderfulness of another person, another event, some newly discovered art, a sculpture or painting your internet brings you from five thousand years ago and what people were doing with stone and paint way back then.

All you encounter is the reward for being open-minded and thankful. They’re the attitudes that lead you to more life. Keep growing and feeding your soul. Reward the presence of God within you who is helping you along with discreet ideas to wonder about. Where did that come from? Can you recognize and understand that some amazing insight you’ve received has God’s signature on it? You realize your whole thinking has been adjusted--to more! You have been given another--as you say—another new lease on life.

(Close cousins: wonder and curiosity—thankfulness and appreciation)

As wonder and curiosity are such close cousins, so it is with thankfulness and appreciation—a kind of instantaneous thankfulness. You recognize in some work of art the difficulty of its execution, and appreciate the marvel that it exists. Imagine your famous sculpturer looking at a big block of marble and visualizing the sculpture in there. He had to take away all the extraneous bits of stone to reveal it.

Appreciation, in a conscious phase, is choosing to value something because you feel it deserves it. Sub-consciously it may not hit you immediately in itself, but you can become aware one aspect of appreciation is unconscious projection. It is something you are doing with your whole being, yet the value appears intrinsic in the thing itself. These two facets form a single clarity in the unifying creativity of your personality--your unique God-created being.

Let me close with a final kind of mystery. Michael and I have talked about the parts of your human being--your personality, your creative spirit, your mind, your body, and your soul. All these come along with the fact you are living. Yet what is this reality--this cosmic reality, because it is spread throughout the cosmos? What is life itself?

(The sweet mystery of life)

Even your dictionaries start off with--rather astutely—life is not a thing, but a condition--with some features. First of all, it is a condition of a singular something, whether plant or animal or spirit. Living on your world includes every individual from the smallest little one-celled plant or animal, to beings like yourself of billions of living cells. It is essentially an activity. Some unified collection of elements is happening. Something is continuing to happen in this singular being from a previous similar one, granted changes due to dual sexuality or evolution.

To be alive remains an unsolvable mystery because it’s an unfolding in a humanly indeterminate Eternal Now, and future. Yet there is this understandable continuity between birth and death captured—in your case—in an eternal soul. So again we salute our Father--himself a singular living being--for wanting share this essence of his with all of us. Personal beings number in the trillions of trillions throughout a vast cosmos, and the inner universe of Havona. Beyond all the persons, and the plants, and the animals on your wonderful earth, your Urantia Book teases you with what you will encounter on the mansion worlds to come--wholly different orders of living beings, in a more soulful reality.

(There is also something unchanging: personality—yours)

And so, enough!--my dear ones. Just be thankful to be alive. Enjoy this mystery that is ever changing moment-by-moment. This activity of change is the essence of it, yet there is also something unchanging in an Eternal Now—you.

Thank you, dear Father. Thank you for your creativity--that we are!

Now if you have any comments or questions this evening about anything, Michael and I are always thankful for your curiosity, so go ahead.

(Long pause)

Closing

Student: Everyone is quiet tonight. I just wanted to say thank you, Mother Spirit, for checking in with us. And Jerry, I want to thank you for the service you do for the Correcting Time.

(To love and be loved)

Nebadonia: This is Mother Spirit wishing you a wonderful day-after-Thanksgiving. Let it continue in your life and your meditations. Michael and I are always nearby, right along with our Father. We too appreciate you, as we feel your appreciation and love for us. It is wonderful to love and be loved. Good-night, my dear ones. Michael wishes you to be in his peace; and definitely: Feel my love. Good night.