Nordan Symposia

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2016-09-15-To Turn Things Around (view source)

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==Session==
 
==Session==
 
===Opening===
 
===Opening===
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Invocation: Dear Mother Spirit and Michael: Welcome, please join us. We do appreciate your company, both within us and all about us. It’s so wonderful to know we are sharing our life with the two of you, and with our mutual Grandpa--God. You have told us so many times that he has a presence within us, right along with the two of you—Michael, with your Spirit of Truth, and Mother, with your spirit and all the ways you help our own minds and spirits. 
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Invocation: (Transmitter)Dear Michael and Mother Spirit: Michael, I have a special request for you this evening and that is, could you continue what Mother Spirit started last month on a Lightline  when I asked her if she could address the question of how do we turn things around? She mentioned it is a great spiritual triumph when we can, first of all, recognize that things are going in the wrong direction and we are either stuck in bad habits and  getting unhealthy, or our relationships with all our dear friends around us are deteriorating.  We are getting stuck on ourselves, or other things, and need to be turned around. Yet  how do we do this? If you could answer that same request we would appreciate it so much. Thank you. Amen.
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Toward that end I do have a request this evening, and that is--let me phrase it as: Turning Things Around. So often in our life we catch ourselves going in the wrong direction and getting unhealthy. Something is happening to us, but how do we turn it around? How do we turn our lives around when we do recognize that something bad is happening? We’re getting unhealthy and weaker. Maybe our relationships with other folks are going downhill.   
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What all is involved? How do we turn our lives around? That, to me, would be a precious gift indeed--to know that one. So thank you so much. Amen.
   
===Lesson===
 
===Lesson===
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Mother Spirit aka Nebadonia: Nebadonia: Good evening, my dear, dear children. This is your Mother Spirit,  Nebadonia. Michael and I are indeed tickled to be with you this way and honor your  request this evening. This is so much a part of our presence and concern for our children, especially with those we see going into unhealthy and destructive ways.  They sometimes have
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Michael: Good evening. This is Michael and I would be delighted as always to fulfill any  requests you have for me--equally with Mother Spirit. It is our privilege to help our children in any way at all. It fills our hearts when you make requests of us for it is an acknowledgement on your part that we are in your lives, and we can help you--just as you are with your own children. It is such a reward when they come to you and ask for your help, and you are able to help them. It forms a bond of sharing between you and  them, as between you and Mother Spirit, and me. We have talked so often about this quality of sharing our lives together that is God’s  greatest gift to all of us. It is part of the reason we are all out here in time and space—  so he can share himself with all of his children. 
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such a feeling of helplessness, of being only a pawn in someone  else’s game. As Shakespeare might have put it: they are only the toys in the hands of  indifferent Gods, and cannot affect their own lives. So we thank you for the question of how do you turn your lives around.
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*To turn things around
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*Start with the feeling—the evaluation
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I’d like to start just by re-emphasizing some of the points Mother Spirit brought out last  month. Once you recognize and fully accept within yourself that things in your life need  to be turned around, need to be headed off in a more positive, fulfilling and creative  direction, one of the main things is to get a base of operations to act from; and this is a  continuity of your own self. This is especially critical with what you call bad, unhealthy  habits that are partly physical and simply re-occur on their own--the addictions that  constantly come up over and over again, sometimes every few minutes. They can  more or less take you away if you haven’t the determination, the gumption, the  where-with-all to stand up against them. So the first thing is to get a continuity of your own self. You literally create a stronger  self--for yourself!--that can continue this determination.
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With these feelings of helplessness, it is difficult to know what the base is from which you can start, but let us say the inner evaluation that you are unhealthy and getting weak; or that the situation around you is deteriorating terribly. This evaluation is in itself a triumph of your spirit! You may have been fighting this recognition, or stalling with something like denial. You can be so settled into a bad situation that you put it out of your mind and refuse to let it come into your consciousness.
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*The need for meditation, open-minded reflection
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The best way--sometimes the only way--of doing this is through meditation. Really  take time out of your other activities just to be still and give yourself over to yourself. Just be still with yourself and then, if you can, remind yourself that you are not alone. You have Mother Spirit and me within you, and all around you. Way, way beyond us, deeper and more profoundly within you, you have our mutual Father: you have God’s  presence within you. And very definitely--if you can realize this too--he has already  helped you acknowledge the need to turn things around and confront an unhealthy  habit, or perhaps open yourself to ways of relating to your dear ones more openly and  creatively. So the main message that Mother Spirit gave you was about meditating and doing so  on a regular basis, so you tune in to yourself. You tune into your needs. You can  formulate your deepest prayers to God, to our Father, and ask, “Dear Father, what do I  do next?—and I mean today, as soon as I get up from my meditations. How do I  address this problem I’m having? How do I turn things around?” 
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Here we have a caution! When so many start meditating--hopefully nice and early in the morning when they’ve just gotten up and sat down to open themselves to whatever might come up--for so many folks who have been in denial about some critical part of their life—their health or maybe their relationships with another--that can be the very first thing that pops up to dog their waking hours. When the first effect of their meditating is to be made aware of this terrible situation, one of the easiest things is to stop meditating. They think, “Well, I tried meditating once, but it just didn’t work. It only made me feel terrible, so I gave it up.”
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*Record your meditations
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Then, to continue this daily continuity, don’t hesitate to use some physical means to  help. I’m talking about actually taking notes and writing  down your questions--your  problems--and whatever answers you get. Or, with your modern electronics, you can  have a little recording device, or take notes in your computer. This is another continuity  very much like a writer of short stories or a novel, a day to day history where you can  re-read these messages to yourself.  Again: this is creating a continuous, day-to-day self when you feel lost or helpless in the  face of a terrible addiction. You get in touch with your new, determined self again as  you read your notes. They become a very precious diary, writing to yourself in the  future when you may very well desperately need to tune in again to your effort, your determination. This is the easiest and the most direct way of creating your stronger  self with a greater determination to get healthy, or appreciate the situation of all the folks around you who might be slipping away.
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Yet once you have this feeling and you give credit to it, you’ve trusted yourself enough to really admit you are becoming unhealthy, or your relationships are deteriorating. This is such a triumph of the spirit because you’ve determined within yourself that you care enough to do something about it.
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*It is up to you to initiate change
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*The spiritual effort to really care
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You can break out of a re-actionary, knee-jerk kind of relationship with others for, as  Mother Spirit cautioned you, it is up to you, my dear ones, to initiate this change,  especially with those you have lived with for years--a husband, a wife, your own  children or your own parents.  Do this rather than falling back into a kind of blaming habit like, “Why don’t they pay  more attention? Why don’t they do this or that?” Drop all of that and take it upon  yourself to initiate what you want to see grow. Exercise your own creativity. Try things-  -experiment. Be honest with yourself about what works and what doesn’t. All these parts of Mother Spirit’s lesson are so valuable. They are the place to start. Now, tonight, I’d like to expand this question out into society, out into the city or the  countryside where you might be living--the counties, the states, and clear up to your  nations and countries. How do these larger political units get turned around?—  especially if you feel they are heading off into very destructive ways, or just getting  stuck in a growing corruption over the years.
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This can be an enormous, enormous spiritual effort--just to care!--especially in situations involving other folks like a husband or a wife, a mother or father with their children; with work or with society, the larger family all around them. It takes enormous courage to admit into oneself that something is not right here. Something is going terribly wrong, even if it has been this way for a long, long time now, right in the family with one’s husband or wife.
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*The spiritual value of democracy
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*Inner spiritual company
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Let me emphasize the value of what you call a democracy, a political unit that  recognizes an equality between all of its adult citizens, men and women. You put it most succinctly as: one person, one vote, with an honesty and transparency of not only  who casts the votes, but also who counts the votes. To have honest and free elections, this is still and always the way to go. This is still the most spiritual manifestation in your politics. Yet you have only to look at your nightly news to see how, not exactly rare, but still how only a majority of the human race has this ability. You can still see many nation-  states where there is not the slightest bit of democracy even pretended. There’s just a  very ruthless dictatorship that rules with an iron fist of what we call the most obscene  kind of relationships between people--murdering folks in the most diabolical and painful  ways imaginable. Think of a person’s creativity gone into devising ever more hideous  ways of hurting others. This is still taking place on your world.  You have those most cynical regimes where every so many years they have a great  election and 99.9% of the folks vote for the current dictator. This would all be so  laughable and hideously funny if it were not for the terror that exists to hold their citizens in such a bond--and then even publish such a cynical result. You can see this where men and women are forced into the most rigid habits of  public clothing. Their appearance has to be so totally regimented and controlled, the  whole culture does not allow even the slightest deviation for individual taste and  delightful variety in their clothing, or attitudes, in their public behavior. The most  regimented law is forcibly instilled. So for those of you who will come to hear or read my words, who do live in a relatively  free democracy where you have a wide variety of opinion being expressed in your mass  media, your television, and the internet; or just in walking down an average city street  or small town: you can see of such a variety of self-expression with both men and women.
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To fully admit this into oneself and give it reality: this is the very first step. This is the need for meditation and self-awareness, spending some time alone with yourself and with us, and with the presence of God within you. Just that notion, just that concept of having your own inner, spiritual company, can help so much. It gives you someone to talk to, and to talk with--as you listen for an answer
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*The freedom of personal expression
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Think of all your songs, and novels and short stories in all your entertainment to be  such a wide expression of human creativity, such individuality blossoming forth. You  can know in your hearts that, given the freedom of expression, this is what the whole  world would delight in doing. So wherever you see this lack of individuality you know  in your hearts that it is only because of a rigidly enforced cultural determination. My dear ones, keep abiding in your faith in democracy and internalize this as much as  you can so you are free inside. The meditation of opening your mind in stillness every  day is where it all originates, right with you. And this is where, in those repressive  regimes all around the world, this too is where it has to start—in each and every  individual welcoming a greater variety all around them, so secure in themselves they do  not demand of other family members, or other members of their society, to adhere to  some strict code of behavior.  This is that blossoming of individuality that I taught even when I was among you two  thousand years ago. It’s an inner strength, an inner connection with your own creative  spirit that creates a strong, determined self of such self-reliance and self-sufficiency  that lets others be. You actually encourage them to come forth with their own unique  personality right from God. This is how you turn things around in your own life. This is how you recognize this in  others, and encourage them to be themselves. This is the basis in whatever society we  consider. It has to start with the people. It has to start with all the individuals, because  they are that unique variety right from God.  This is that little seed in every single person, the unique personality that can be  acknowledged and encouraged to blossom forth in all its unique expression. This is  how, just walking down the average small town or city street anywhere in the world,  you can so immediately get this feeling of individuality--or not. Recently in one of your cultural revolutions someone mentioned what a change it was    to see a little girl in a flowered dress of many colors out in the street--what a sight  that was!--what a transformation, what a blossoming forth. What a strange revolution  that was. 
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Meditation is one of the greatest things you can do to turn things around. It’s to be aware of your own, what the Urantia Book calls “the co-creativity of personality, of who and what you are, and of the part you are playing in everything happening to you.” Otherwise you get caught up in a kind of fatalism where your self, the situation, and the people in the situation around you are simply fixed. They are just what is being given to you moment by moment and you have nothing to do with it. Everything is just the way it is.
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*Have faith in God’s unique creations—other folks
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*Terribly enervating fatalism
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And so, my dear ones, have this faith in God’s creation. Delight in it, in all its  expressions. Imagine a world that is--as your Urantia Book mentions--surrounded in  Light and Life where any overriding suppression is totally absent. Imagine the kind of  trust in each individual that does not call for, or need, or in any way accept such a  centralization of power. But rather, as Mother Spirit and I have called for, imagine a  decentralization of power of a free people who don’t need someone else telling them  and forcing them what to do.  It’s where each individual is most directly and fundamentally tuned in to something  inside them--the presence of God and all his wonder, all his creative ability to create  each one of us unique.  Now if you have any questions or comments this evening, you can express your  uniqueness.
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Some folks even have the feeling the situation is what they were born into because of some previous existence, some former life. Things are going terribly because they did something terrible before, and now they are paying for it. This kind of fatalism has such a terrible draining effect on all their vital energies--such a feeling of helplessness! Realize that you yourself are co-creating everything happening to you, if only in how you interpret all of this for yourself moment to courage, to entertain that notion. But this is the way out. This is the way to start turning things around: you turn yourself around! You change how you interpret even what seems so objective and simply just there.
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===Dialogue===
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Student: Hello. Thank you so much. This has been resonating with me. I got to spend a  month without computers. I was literally camping in Canada, outside in the forest under  the stars with no TV, no drama, and only organic food.  I’ve come back to a heaviness. I came back to the Western fires, the ambulances and  all of that. I am trying--trying to stay healthy and sane from where I’m at.  I’m also quitting tobacco, so I’m loving these lessons, just re-listening to last week’s  and the one before, the last one Mother Spirit did on August 18th. That is what I listen  to in the mornings, lately. That is what reinforces me.  So thank you--thank you so much for always knowing our hearts, and our intent, and  having our backs.  (Confronting physical addictions) 
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This again is where meditation on a regular basis is so critical. The situation is not so much a failure of personality being too great, or too ego-centered. It is almost the exact opposite. It is more like not having enough continuity of personality, of not being continuously aware of who and what you are. You get caught up in a short-sided kind of existence where every few minutes you are actually losing yourself  into your situation or your old habits.
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There is no freshness. There is no conscious creativity happening in your life. Everything is just happening to you, and this “you” is constantly just re-acting to everything. You’ve lost the initiative. You’ve lost the creative spark to create something new, something different, some better way of handling yourself in the situation. So the first thing you need is this continuity. You need to be more self-aware continuously.
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*Meditation—reflection—throughout history
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Let me give you the idea that regular meditation has been the common theme in all religious communities throughout  history, in all the major religions of the world. Through all the wars, the political upsets, the famines, and the natural disasters, these have been the most successful continuous communities in the world, and they are all based pretty much on this one thing.
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It is the way they start every day. The community gets together and has a common, shared practice of being mindful--mindfully aware. This is where all the bells, and the chants--all these various practices--give continuity day to day and even throughout the day. They stop everything else, shall we say at noon, then the middle of the afternoon, then in the evening before they go to bed. All these meditations are taking a break and pausing from whatever they are doing  just to be mindful and remind themselves to come back to themselves, and to have a self then.
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For people who are so scattered their life is falling apart--this is what they don’t have. They don’t have a continuous sense of who and what they are and what they want to be.
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This is why, my children, it is so critical to start meditating, to take part of your day for yourself. It is not a selfish thing. In fact it can give you yourself, a self to start having some control over your situation by using your own creative spirit. As we have offered before so many times: in your meditation, take notes. This can be a little recording as you get up from your meditation, or,  with your computers everywhere now, just open a file. Monday: this is what I was thinking. This is what I need to change.
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*Tough, continuous consciousness & determination
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This is how you turn things around. You first become conscious of them, and then continuously conscious of yourself and your situation. Otherwise you are reacting to whatever is happening outside you, or the bad habits within yourself. You have got to get this determination to understand what is happening, and seek out different ways of doing things, and rel
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This is how you get that determination. You take the time out to sit down, be quiet and still, and let whatever wants to come up. Let anything suggest itself. Have the courage to look at whatever it is and make a note about it. Think about it. Wonder about it. Wonder what to do about it. This is literally creating a more continuous, stronger, determined person who can turn things around.
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Only then can you begin to recognize, and celebrate, and joyfully accept that things are changing. You are getting healthier. You are getting stronger and, ironically, even some of the folks around you who seem so fixed in who and what they are, you might find that they are also changing to embrace this new you. Because in these situations, my dear ones, it is up to you to take the initiative. You might be the one who is clinging to the status quo.
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Give some time by yourself to be open to the presence of God within you. It is why we call his presence a Thought Adjuster. He can actually suggest things--give you concrete ideas and actual thoughts to help you analyze and get a hold of the situation. You’ll be literally creating the groundwork from which to act. Day by day you’ll be keeping track of all your experiments in trying things. Are they working, or are they not? Why aren’t they? Why are they? What is this great, wonderful health, strength, and understanding that is growing inside you?
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This is how you turn things around and have the glory and the wonderful, wonderful realization that they are turning around. You are getting healthier and stronger. You are getting a deeper understanding of your life.
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*It is up to you
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So, my dear ones, it does come back to you. It is up to you. No one can do this for you. We can only tease you with the possibility that has helped so many, for this is how they’ve done it. This is how to get the determination and understanding that works. Please accept my blessing, and not just mere happenstance to let things happen. Let Michael’s Spirit of Truth guide you. Feel my own help with your understanding, your knowledge, and your courage. It all leads to wisdom, a conscious wisdom of what you are trying, and what works and what doesn’t. It’s called being alive and being human— the adventure of being human.
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Now if you have any questions or comments, we can get into those too.
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Student #1: I find that being engaged is great. I’m getting a lot of lessons and everything. But they are very taxing. I’m ready for a little vacation right now—to take a break from all that. What do you think?
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Michael: Oh!--my dear!--thank you so much. I truly appreciate your thanks for Mother  Spirit’s lesson. I’m glad her lesson last month had such a deep resonance within you.  You can go on your computer and look up “nicotine” and understand why it is one of  the most difficult addictions to get rid of. It is a central nervous stimulant and that is one important thing in your human life, so limited as you are from pure spiritual  standpoint like Mother Spirit’s and mine. I especially, because of my human life,  appreciate what it is to be so physical and, in a sense, never having a surplus of  energy.  But it is so good that you do get away and tune in to a self that exists without all of the  distractions and even the delightful entertainments that are yours just for the flipping of  a switch and spending a few cents of electricity for your computers, your television,  your modern movies and so forth. It is so valuable--as you found out--to get back to  just your skin, walking through the woods with the animals, and the way that the whole  presence of the natural world surrounds you. You get away from the bright cities and  look up at the night sky and see one arm of your galaxy stretched across it. That is  another kind of tuning in.  I am so glad you are finding in Mother Spirit’s lesson what I wanted to reemphasize  this evening--how to literally create a self that can tackle such a clinging bad habit, that  does so much for you physiologically it does have to be faced sometimes over and over  again, minute to minute, because it has such a physical component.
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*Appreciating other folks’ difficulties
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It can give you an appreciation then too for how different peoples can get beyond a  severe cultural determination that totally squashes such a wide area of their own  personal expression. You can appreciate what it is to live under a ruthless dictatorship  that will go to any means of torture in the most hideous, obscene kinds of murdering  people just to terrorize and control them. It can give you such an appreciation for the  day-to-day choices that are yours to make. So I solute you, my dear daughter, and bid you: Carry on! 
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Nebadonia: Oh, I’d say if that is what your feeling is: give it a try! See what happens. Life is doing things and then staying open to what happens next.
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Student: Thank you, thank you. And thank you, Jerry, for taking the time out of your life to TR, and be steadfast and be there where we can count on you.
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Student #1: Well I’m afraid too much stuff has been happening. I want to start slowing down. I want to relax a little bit.
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Michael: Thank you again, my dear. This is such a reward for Mother Spirit and me to find our well-meant words do resonate and get magnified in a human heart. We are so happy to be part of your soul then, part of your soul memories, part of who and what  you have been once upon a time.
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*Creative breaks from routine
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Nebadonia: Sometimes it takes a great creative ability to set some time aside like that and critique what can be done. Just let go for a while, and then se cannot not be sustained. Keep in touch with that old philosophy of: Simplify- Simplify your life! I think of some of your great moral philosophers always talked about that. It too is a major theme in so many religions--how to simplify your life down to what really counts.
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Student #1: Well, simplifying your life, and really kind-of making it simpler actually does help in working with people because you have a lot of people working on the same thing. It does make it simpler and easier; but it certainly has to work in relationships with everyone at the same time.
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*Time alone to reflect
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Nebadonia: In some situations--yes. In other ones, folks need to be alone a bit. They can feel themselves being too scattered with all their relationships, maybe even with their own intimate family. The mother, the father, even one or two of the children just need some time by themselves. But I will agree too that with certain tasks, many hands make the work light.
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(Long pause) Were there any other questions or comments this evening?
   
===Closing===
 
===Closing===
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Well if not, let me wrap up this session. I thank you for your question of how to turn things around because it acknowledges that you are capable of sensing that things are going in the wrong direction and you are getting unhealthy and weaker. Maybe things are--as you say--falling apart. Maybe you’ve lost some dear friend and can’t seem to get out of the depression that’s settled over you.
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*The magic of sharing one’s life with others
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And so on that positive note let me wrap up this evening’s lesson. Once again I will  mention that magic word of sharing where we have taught that one and one makes  three--with what you and another--let alone a group—what you and another hold  together. This is true whether it is with another person, or with me and Mother  Spirit in your meditation, or with our Father in your prayers when you are very sincere  and earnest in asking for help, if only what to do next.  All of this becomes part of your soul. It’s what you are internalizing and setting  aside for eternity, with God as the co-author holding this sacrosanct no matter what  happens to you physically, mentally, or spiritually on into the future. These are your  eternal triumphs, your eternal values you are establishing and enjoying day to day. You  share them with us, for Mother Spirit and I are part of you.
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Yet there is also wonderful, hopeful awareness in that phrase of turning things around. So many folks have done just this all through their lives. They’ve had things go wrong and summoned the determination, the ability, and the understanding of what was happening in such a way that things got better. They might have lost a dear friend and yet, after a period of grieving, could rouse themselves out of their depression and make new friends. They had the courage to accept that some terrible, unhealthy habit had gotten hold of them, and given it up.
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*Expanding to embrace your God co-authored soul
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*Help with addictions
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We will meet face to face some day when you have become one with your soul,  when your consciousness, your very being, will have expanded to approximate the enormity of the soul of your whole life. This is what you have to look forward to, my dear ones. This is the expansion of your very self that we have offered a way to get it  started--this consciousness of yourself, day to day; this determination to turn things  around that you know, in your heart of hearts, is a way to keep growing on to a greater  health and a greater sharing your life with those around you. And so, my dear ones, I bid you to be in my peace. Let it settle over you, and be still  within it. Be free and thankful within this peace that goes beyond understanding, yet  so need-fully informs your understanding.  Mother Spirit sends you her love, and we both wish you a wonderful Good Evening
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In this example, it is not always in being alone for there are wonderful organizations— groups of people who have fought the same kind of addiction--you can get with. Sometimes this group can help you by giving you some feedback, some objectivity on what this addiction involves, and a way of getting healthy again. It’s not always alone. In fact it’s good in your life to have a broad spectrum of being able to relate with a large group of people and enjoy their company, and yet also enjoy being alone—have both these “dimensions” of company.  
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My dear ones, know that this turning around is possible—to decide on a course of action, and then be open to whether it is working or not. Is it time to try something else? This is what your own creative spirit is all about—to create for yourself this other way to try.
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*Inescapable Adventure in Experimenting
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This is the adventure of the experiment that Michael and I are very honest with you
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about. This is what being human is all about. This is also what eternity is all about— being in ever and ever greater realities, and learning how to deal with them, and even welcome them.
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So let me say, “All power to you!” Give yourself this possibility. And be in my love.
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Good evening.
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[[Category: The Teaching Mission: Dialogues]]
 
[[Category: The Teaching Mission: Dialogues]]
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