1. Contact with Our Spiritual Parents Changes Our Inner Definitions
2. Your Relationship with the Supreme Being: Effort
3. Growing the Ability of Pure Effort
4. Apocalyptic Catastrophe
5. Warfare and Crime
6. Effort and Faith
7. The Trial by Living

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, Come visit us again. Now although we know You are always here, still, feeling Your presence this way helps us more fully realize our human nature. For many years we have lived--and we know so many of our brothers and sisters still live--without this direct perception of your existence. We have experienced how this contact with You changes our own inner definition of the kind of beings we are. So we thank You for the Teaching Mission that You’ve inaugurated, that helps us at least approach the full spiritual estate of being human. Amen.

NEBADONIA: My dear children, what joy it gives Me to see that I have this effect upon you and your lives. This is your mother, Nebadonia, Daughter of the Infinite Spirit, Spiritual Mother to a whole family of Local Universe personal beings. Yes, it is true: I am right within your minds augmenting your own ability to contact both impersonal reality--the physical/material world about you, and also I help you recognize and realize within yourselves the other personalities you encounter.

[T#1: Contact with our spiritual Parents changes our inner definitions]

Now you are experiencing how your own conscious prayers and requests for Our help, relaxing and practicing your stillness to feel Our presence, does indeed change your definition of what a human being is. These genuine religious experiences, your contact with spirit, do add meaning and value to the statement that God is your Father, the Universal Father of all beings, and this makes all personal beings, especially your fellow human beings, truly your brothers and sisters.

Your own inner spiritual contact gives meaning to these words. It makes them real. It helps you perceive each other as what We’ve called little walking infinities. You can actually perceive in your fellows this bottomless-ness: you can have some intimation of another person’s soul. So think about those individuals you’ve known that seem to have a lot of soul. What is it about them?

Your Urantia book helps you realize this by making a distinction between God the Father, the Paradise Father, the single Source of all creation, and that aspect of His that He presents to the universes of time and space. This is the Supreme Being, the growing, evolving facet of Deity, of God. It is a kind of summation of all the experience personal beings have out here in time and space. We’ve even likened it to a Soul of the time/space creation.

It is the way in which an infinite, absolute Being, such as God is, complete at every instant, is still capable of growing. And of course, you yourselves are a part of the Deity Absolute, the summation of all personal being. Your own life’s experiences contribute to the Supreme Being.

[T#2: Your relationship with the Supreme Being: effort]

But whereas your relationship to God the Father is inherent in your existence as His child--a relationship of Father to son, Father to daughter, one you have automatically, your relationship to the Supreme Being is somewhat different. It is akin to your conscious relationship to your own soul. So while the essence of your relationship to God the Father is simply one of being, your relationship to the Supreme Being is one of doing. Let that soak in a minute. (pause)

Student: Could You repeat it, please?

NEBADONIA: Yes. Your relationship to the Supreme Being--the growing, evolving Soul of time and space--is one of doing. How you grow your own soul is what you do with the life God has given you. Every achievement of yours, My children, adds to the Supreme Being, the Universal Soul of creation. So let’s go back to those individuals you thought of who had a lot of soul. Do you know a single one of them, man or woman, who didn’t earn it?

Indeed, this is why those individuals who have gone through great tribulation and have not been crushed or annihilated by it, but have learned from it, seem to have this inner wealth, this genuine possession that, as We have said, is your only eternal possession--your souls. Essentially this is all that you have, because it is all you need. As Michael mentioned last lesson: this is your true possession, your only safe and secure possession, because it is co-authored by a fragment of God himself.

We have told you how the universe of time and space is growing, and this is also two-fold, both personal and impersonal. The impersonal universe of matter and energy is growing. Out there in the four levels of outer space are literally millions of galaxies being created in a way that does not even make sense to your current scientific knowledge. Spiritual beings, Paradise Origin Primary Force Organizers are creating vast spiral nebula in open space which will, in turn and in time, give birth to millions of suns and planetary systems. This is going on right now as I speak.

When we look at the personal realm, we see not only the constant creation of new personal beings at every level of existence--all the hundreds of different orders, from human-type beings on up--we see also an accumulation of living experience within each personality. All personal beings, even those existential ones within the central universe of Havona and on Paradise; all personal beings are growing in their experience. And this experience has the potential, even for human beings, of being a series of rather singular events, predicated on that part of universal reality that is not repeating itself, but is new and unique in every moment of time.

Am I blowing your minds? I know this must seem like a balloon that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. But this is reality, My children. This is what is happening. This is why your relationship to the Supreme Being, the time and space soul of God, is one of doing. One of your ancient religious texts expresses this truth by having even the Supreme Being speaking and saying: "Without My effort these worlds would perish."

So tonight I ask if you would consider striving for perfection? If you would try your best to be like God in your own human way, you need to welcome this essence. Welcome feeling the need for effort. This is the nitty gritty, is it not? This is that—doing--that seems for most of you, and most of the time, so limited. It’s like pure usable energy itself: you can never have enough of it. For, like your soul, it is another thing you cannot buy.

True enough, really superb nutrition containing large stores of energy, for a large number of the human race is not only expensive but unobtainable. There are still millions upon millions living impoverished lives due to malnutrition. But when you think deeply about effort, you realize what a great psychological and spiritual component is involved too.

This points to a true spiritual blessing I can only hope that most of you have discovered already: the degree to which the psychological and spiritual component of effort builds upon itself. Success can build upon success and, as Michael taught in His last lesson, try not to forget this. As you look forward to the future and the need to stretch yourself to get a hold on ever larger expanses of reality, don’t discount what success can do, how the exercising of effort can build upon itself.

Most lazy souls never realize this in their first lifetime. They see it as some kind of hideous joke life is playing upon them, that the more you are capable of doing, the more it is handed you to do—without end: why even start? Yet this is the triumph right within life. The more you exercise your pure effort, the more you can do; the more you grow. Here We touch upon that other great possession of your personality: ability.

[T#3: Growing the Ability of Pure Effort]

For this is simply what it means. This is that other kind of growth incorporating all three dimensions of the physical and mental and spiritual. For there is almost nothing you do, My children, that is strictly just one of the three alone. The closest you come to singularity of function is when you do your best to relax your physical and mental activities and experience your home base in spirit as purely as possible. And ironically, even this physical and mental relaxation with an increased spiritual awareness--We call stillness--is also an ability, a funny kind of back-handed not-doing that you have to learn how to do.

Here, My children, I’m trying to impart to you as best I can the way in which My wisdom most thoroughly co-mingles with your own human wisdom built up from your experience of life. Most of you who hear My words, and who have known some success in life, will have immediately recognized and understood what I’m saying about effort. You will know what I mean when I say you earn your souls. It takes effort to open yourselves as We have been enticing you to do, in order to genuinely have more life.

As an aside let Me mention what has, throughout the history of the human races, and not only on your own planet, My children, been universal; the appeal of psychotropic substances--drugs, those that affect this relationship of you and effort. This is especially true of the stimulants. They offer the illusion of getting effort for free, or just not so soulfully expensive.

But here the hidden cost, still far shy of any kind of genuine addiction, is one of spiritual value. Every time you use a pure chemical substance to enable you to do something, to that very degree you are not exercising your own pure effort. So in addition to all the rather undesirable side effects on the purely physical and mental level, you have this loss of the spiritual value with which you might have accomplished what you did "on the natch"—as your slang puts it: just with natural, complex nutrition--and gumption.

I invite you to think about this relationship between soul and effort, and your relationship to the Supreme Being. Your human life adds to the Soul of time and space. This is where our wisdom together, My children, can point the way to understanding the need for effort, for this is simply the way God has set things up.

Yet within this cost, this demand for effort to achieve all that is possible, you do find the possibility of triumph, of success, of a full life of unique events the lazy or the fainthearted will never know. We are looking at the meaning of meaning itself--the spiritual nature of value, and what is involved in your prayer this evening: how do you approach the full estate of being human?

So rest in My loving arms, My children. Let the sheer weight of these heavy considerations sink you deep into Me. Feel My Mind/Spirit Adjuncts augmenting your own abilities, and thank our Father who set it all up this way.

Now I think it’s time for Me to say: if you have any questions or comments this evening, it seems to be the appropriate moment for them.

Student: Mother, I recently read a transcript from the North Colorado

Q#1: Group. Monjoronson (Monjoronson, N. Colo. TeaM 7.09.06) was saying that a coming… no time factor, but there’s coming a decimation of the human species. Human beings, from one-third to two-thirds, will be gone. Could You clear that up a little bit, please?

[T#4: Apocalyptic Catastrophe]

NEBADONIA: Yes, My son. All through your lives you will need to find a balance between immediacy and what appear to be long term considerations. This is much a part of what Michael taught in His last lesson about a moral dimension in human reality, and how you may sometimes find yourself living hour to hour, even moment to moment in a pure dark opacity of not knowing what is the right thing to do.

As your world’s scientists and political organizations get into more comprehensive communications with each other world-wide, you’re presented with what seem to be apocalyptic visions. The human race has as a whole gained such enormous power through science and industrialization that you can now begin to affect planetary-level balances of both weather and resources.

So you do your best to accept this into yourself, to consider things like global warming, or the fact that while large percentages of the human population are literally wallowing and drowning in obscene excesses to the destruction of their own health and spiritual well-being, many millions of others are dying or living tragically stunted lives for want of the barest necessities.

I ask you to recall what Michael said in one of these lessons several years ago. The human race does not need to be threatened with any apocalyptic catastrophe. It is already--right now--living in one. But then in the face of this realization, what do you do—yourself--immediately? Which is My initial point of how to get through your day and not be driven crazy by fear, or indifference.

You do need to find a balance between continuity and deciding what changes you might make in your own personal life to do your part in sharing the earth’s resources, and averting some seemingly unstoppable, looming catastrophe.

Not in any way to diminish these apocalyptic possibilities, let me remind you that the human race has for some three hundred thousand years now, since the Lucifer Rebellion catastrophe; the human race has lived in the face of this kind of threat, a threat that was, and still is for the most part, a facet of immature human nature.

[T#5: Warfare and Crime]

Your Urantia book very succinctly delineates the hundreds of thousands of years of incessant warfare that is still, in the twenty-first century, so much a part of your lives. Yet even further, can you begin to comprehend a world, not just without active warfare, but without the expenditures of resources and human effort involved in both offensive and defensive preparations?

Can you imagine a world without crime, without human predators preying upon their fellows, reaching all the way down to something so simple as not needing locks on doors? Consider: here you are, finite beings on a world of very finite resources, and yet every night your pour how many billions upon billions of kilowatts of energy into the night sky, illuminating your cities so they can even be seen from space; and for what reason? Your cars have headlights, as do your bicycles. You have your flashlights to walk along your paths. Did you ever consider, My children, why you light up your cities as you do?—what that energy could mean to the millions who are perishing? Can you understand that, from a spiritual standpoint, this is a measure of your fear of each other? So I’ll repeat Michael’s message: You do not need to look to any future catastrophic apocalypse: you are in the middle of one—equally along with the Renaissance that is also happening.

And so We ask you to open your minds, open your hearts, to do what you can, and still, find a balance for your sanity between your immediate needs for today and tomorrow, yet taking as full a cognizance as you can, of where you are all headed. The world can only be transformed one individual at a time. You can only do so much. You do need to rest. You do need to let all your concerns go, and feel Michael’s presence calling you to His peace the passes your understanding. Here you find your human creativity. You literally create your way forward. You have a whole Celestial Family here on Urantia doing all We can to help you. But We all respect the dignity of your free wills.

This is all I will say this evening, My son. I will acknowledge you have some truly frightening planetary developments, but I choose not to quantify or qualify them at this time. I want you to entertain all possibilities, and yet find your rest too, so that you continue to live—creatively, with the dignity of being sons and daughters of God. So be in My love.

Student: Thank You , Mother. At one and the same time I feel relieved—with quite a bit to think about. Thank You.

NEBADONIA: You are welcome, My son. It seems you’ve taken my lesson to heart. (Yes)

Student: Yes Mother. There were numerous things I wanted to discuss tonight, but it is getting late. One thing I thought about with respect to effort is, it goes hand in hand with faith, with my innate capacity to live and enjoy in peace. And that through my effort and the choices I make in my life, and how I react in my day to day… being, I have faith that my efforts will be rewarded. It may not be instantaneous, but the potential is there.

[T#6: Effort and Faith]

NEBADONIA: Yes, My son , I think you are touching upon the nature of faith as a kind of spiritual effort, simply because something is required of you—to exercise faith. This is especially, as you mention, along the dimension of time, your willingness to invest yourself in some spiritual project simply in the hope of some future affirmation you’ve been making the right decisions. Faith is a way of extending yourself out beyond what you yet know for sure. It is rewarded by success. You can extend yourself and then find you have made the right effort. Your spiritual project comes to fruition. Your hoped-for results happen. Your faith is rewarded by fact. So you know your moments of resting awhile in your success, before the sheer enormity of this universe you find yourself in suggests you may have to extend yourself again: there is still a little more out there—to have faith in.

So yes, My son, this is right in keeping with My lesson this evening. On the necessity for effort and faith that God as the Supreme Being has built right into human reality, this you encounter and accept one small step at a time as you approach the Godhead. Your life becomes a microcosm of His. Without your effort this world of yours and those who depend on you, would also perish.

Student: I do welcome the effort, but become cognizant at times I’m wondering: Can I live through this? Hmmmmm… Am I being true to myself? I’m being aware…of my own self-honesty…

NEBADONIA: Yes. Michael had a wonderful lesson last week—I don’t think you’ve read it yet—about the moral dimension in personality, an intrinsic ability to make these decisions, to have moral discrimination. You own self-honesty informs you that it itself is not unlimited. So you welcome feeling this living balance, and you gain faith through your successes in exercising it. Pure effort grows in you as an ability, and makes you strong physically and mentally and spiritually.

Student: I just had an image of digging for gold; and you come across little glimmers of it, and you revel in experiencing that success, then you keep digging and come across more and more and more… It’s beyond words…

NEBADONIA: I have to tell you, My son, the rocks in your way keep getting larger too. (much laughter) The lazy soul sees this as some kind a diabolical plot against him. But you can handle the rocks as they get bigger. As you head out into the universe, the scope of your responsibilities does continue to grow too.

Student: Then you realize you are not alone, as well—to get help with those rocks.

NEBADONIA: To that we say amen! (more laughter) Thank You, Father!

Student: Yes!--the larger the rock, the least effort it takes to move it.

NEBADONIA: No… (but said humorously… with a further response of laughter) It’s just that you build your capacity for effort. (Yes) There is still a very strict cause and effect operating here. The effort is always proportionate to the task at hand. You still can’t life ten pounds of rock with one pound of force.

Even when you take away the fear of pain or death; think of what Adam and Eve suffered--with the full knowledge they were immortal beings--on the spiritual plane, simply because of failing to fulfill their responsibilities. Without the possibility of default you could not have the virtue of loyalty. Without the possibility of failure you could not have the glory of triumph. Without the incessant clamoring of the smaller self or ego for gratification you could not have the possibility of dedicating yourself to greater life and a higher truth.

Student: This is what makes human beings unique?

[T#7: The trial by living]

NEBADONIA: No, this is shared, My son, by all personal beings, I should say all experiential beings. The purely existential beings of Paradise and the Central Universe of Havona are truly a different order of persons. They have experiences, but they were created in perfection. So they are just naturally brave; they don’t know the human triumph of courage. They are naturally loyal; they know nothing of disloyalty or default. So to answer your question, the trial by living is shared by all experiential beings out here in time and space.

As I said last time, we are all still shy of the Father’s perfection. We are all striving for perfection. Though we are all complete, each of us, moment by moment, we are not yet perfect. We simply have the potential for it; which is another way of saying we are capable of growing--even as you are, even as He is.

True enough, once you get above a certain level, outright rebellion--or deliberately going against Michael’s and My plans, is unknown. But there are still mistakes. There is still a need to adjudicate decisions and behavior. There are still discordant happenings between even high beings due to the mere size of the creation. But these are hardly what I meant by the fact that the Supreme Being is growing—physically as the material universe, plus the number of personalities coming into existence, and then the accumulating experience of each individual. Can you rest in My peace and love?

Student: Yes, I can. I just feel comforted in the enormity of this universe, this creation. I don’t know why—I just do. At the same time I’m not inconsequential. My life has meaning.

NEBADONIA: It seems you have found a touch, at least, of Michael’s peace, and I know you do feel My love. (Yes)

Well, it’s been a full evening. Again. How I do treasure being with you, My children. I treasure feeling how you yourselves value this meeting with Me.

Student: We treasure it too, Mother--Your presence, and Your lessons, and Your love.

NEBADONIA: Let’s go forward sharing these lives of ours together. I can feel you are stretching your understanding, trying to open your hearts to entertain the realization of what suffering there is in the world, opening your minds to what has been its causes and what might be its possible solutions. You are even trying to look what might be a universal catastrophe square in the eye, and wonder what you can do about it. You are reaching toward being all that is possible. So carry on and persevere with My love. I’m always here, with but a little thought and reflection, and prayer, within conscious contact. Good evening.

END

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