Talk:2016-08-18-Start With the Feeling
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
(Start with the feeling—the evaluation)
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.
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.”
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.
(The spiritual effort to really care)
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.
(Inner spiritual company)
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
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.
(Terribly enervating fatalism)
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 moment. This too takes enormous
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.
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 loosing yourself into your
situation or your old habits.
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.
(Meditation—reflection—throughout history)
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.
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.
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
do.
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.
(Tough, continuous consciousness & determination)
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 just bouncing,
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 relating to others and to yourself.
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.
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.
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?
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.
(It is up to you)
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.
Now if you have any questions or comments, we can get into those too.
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?
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.
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.
(Creative breaks from routine)
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 see what can and
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.
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.
(Time alone to reflect)
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.
(Long pause) Were there any other questions or comments this evening?
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.
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.
(Help with addictions)
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.
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.
(Inescapable adventure in experimenting)
This is the adventure of the experiment that Michael and I are very honest with you
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.
So let me say, “All power to you!” Give yourself this possibility. And be in my love.
Good evening.