2020-11-27-Thanksgiving, Old and New

Session

Opening

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael: Happy Thanksgiving! We get together here in the afterglow of one of our most special and precious days of the year. We are reminded--and remind each other--of all we have to be thankful for, all our blessings. And so it kind-of peaks our curiosity to wonder about their origins, which brings up that old hymn of, “Praise God, From Whom all Blessings Flow”--the doxology of some church services.

It reminds me that we have this very singular creative Personal Being to be thankful for all of creation--including us--and then who actually forms a part of us. This singular creative being has the ability to individualize himself and his presence to be part of us, a very creative, helpful, suggestive part of us. This helps us continue to be appreciative of his creation surrounding us, especially the bright spots, the most wonderful constellations within our own lives. These are the stars of all our dear friends and the other unique personal beings we know and associate with. So, Mother Spirit, and Michael, and our dear Grandpa God: thank you. We thank your wonderful trinity so closely associated and part of us. Amen.

Lesson

Nebadonia: Good evening. Good evening, my dear children. This is your Mother Spirit, Nebadonia--Mother Spirit to this Local Universe of Nebadon, itself a part of the galaxy out here in space; floating around--actually zooming around at unbelievable speeds, yet with an awful lot of space all around us, and plenty room to roam. And of course your world is special for being the one evolutionary planet out of millions on which Michael chose to have his human life. We consider you extremely blessed, and Michael himself feels blessed to have had such a life on such a world. So we “most heartedly concur” with your introduction.

(Thanksgiving—old & new)

In this marriage of true minds we have among us tonight, let me suggest “something old and something new.” You mentioned the word “origin,” so for something old we will repeat a bit of our previous lessons on the origin of everything. It starts, not with an inexplicable, impersonable Big Bang a dozen billion years ago, but actually with the singularity of a Personal Being creating/extending this attribute so all his subsequently created personal beings are equally singular. In fact being unique is the hallmark of personality that even Michael and I, and you, share with our Father.

This singular being also had the kind of character, or desire, or motivation to create another as much as possible like himself. So we have the first derived personality, a being almost identical--except for origin--we call it the Eternal Son, another Personal Being with whom he could share being alive.

(Personal & impersonal reality)

Simultaneously, as a kind of counterpart in perfect balance with the personality of the Eternal Son, God created impersonal reality, reality that is not unique in its individual existence, but is the opposite--characterized by uniformity. This was, and still is, what we call Paradise, the pattern of “stuff”—the very energetic stuff you call matter and energy which uniformly obeys the laws of chemistry and physics and, in time, biochemistry. This includes living creatures who are somewhat unique in their situation but do not have true personalities such as yourselves. Think of all the living animals on your world, and on others.

The dynamic relationship between this first derived personality and impersonal reality immediately eventuated a third Personal Being and presence we call the Infinite Spirit, the origin of cosmic mind which would forthwith forever mediate between personality and the material, even as your mind does with your human personality and body. God’s creativity, shared with this essential Trinity in their singular and associative activities led to a further seven creative spiritual beings—the Master Spirits of Paradise--forming a nucleus from which the inner and outer universes flowed. This is such a blessing--this company, this shared reality, this dynamic living, changing, creative personal association—the potential of the universe is infinite in the creativity of spontaneity.

God’s sharing his creativity went beyond even this Paradise nucleus to conceive of the idea of the space units that we live in, with spiritual beings like the Ancient of Days as the heads of Super Universes which contain millions of galaxies, each one with billions of stars, right on down to our present universe age of over a trillion years old.

(Universal Respiration)

This age seems so strange to your scientists because of Universal Respiration. The physical universe is expanding as you see it now, but only as a phase before a contraction that happens just by the will of God, not by gravity or any other physical force. This universal space respiration takes place over billions of years, which is why you can’t simply run the clock backwards on your present phase to some kind of Big Bang that started it all.

So too, my children, you are blessed with a very profound textbook on reality, your wonderful Urantia Book that was given to you not too long ago. What a blessing it is for it to articulate what I am getting into tonight, in the most amazing detail over thousands of pages.

(Your prime blessing—unique personality)

But your primal blessing, my dear ones, is personality, the fact that you share with all other personal beings a uniqueness of being. In all this enormous universe I just talked about there is only one of you. Now with this revelation you can know deep in your heart and soul this is what your friends and acquaintances, even those thousands of personalities you see on your television and internet: this is something you all share.

While for some the fact they are unique is the epitome of loneliness--there is so much they feel but cannot fully articulate and share with anyone else--for the more enlightened it is the exact opposite. It is the one fact that binds you all together. It is the one thing you do share, this uniqueness of being.

So much flows from that. You are also spiritual beings, endowed with creative spirit. You inhabit personal realities that are somewhat as unique as you are. Even identical twins--two brothers or sisters who are fundamentally biologically identical--go on to have that other enormous blessing: unique personal experiences. Here I am pointing at something so fundamental that perhaps you have never thanked our Father for this attribute, this purpose for your life: to experience.

(Creative spirit = something ever new)

What an enormous concept of his this was--something called time, a sequence of events that in themselves are somewhat unique. Because in a constantly creative, spiritual way, God, and all personal beings, are not repeating themselves. True, something old--impersonal reality, all this energetic stuff, all this uniform chemistry and physics—is repeating itself absolutely uniformly from the very beginning a thousand billions of years ago. But within this something old and unchanging in its laws is something new—personal spiritual beings co-creating their own experiences anew each moment.

And so my dears, as your wonderful Urantia Book puts it, you are not “bound by the fetters of antecedent causality.” While you live with, and use, and glory in strict physical cause-and-effect whose exploration fills your libraries and computers, you are also, moment by moment, co-creating your own reality somewhat as unique as you are.

Again: this can and does lead to some of the most terrible loneliness. Yet in others it provides the most amazing gift to give and share with one another--the way each sees things, and the reasons why things occur differently to different people. And so again, this is that most fundamental thing that it may never have occurred to you to be thankful for: your full experience of life.

(Your God-co-authored soul)

Now, to have these experiences forever?--not in your somewhat perishable, changeable memories that often alter with what you learn anew—even the wonderful way you can see past events in a new light? But to have events the way they occurred to you at the time--immutable forever because the co-author of your soul is God himself, individualizing himself to be part of you and keep your original experiences sacrosanct for the both of you.

These are partly experiences of the material reality all around you, including this living body of yours. But then there are these other individuals you know, these other what we call “little walking infinities” because of your unique experiences, you are somewhat infinite to each other, and even infinite to yourselves. For only in your deepest meditation can you relive even for a few precious moments what it was really like to be some previous being, five or ten years old.

Being a personal being experiencing life, my dear ones, is the most fundamental thing for which you have to be so thankful to our Father who is the origin of it all, and from whom all these blessings flow. A good word for thanksgiving is worship, for this is what worship is—worth-shipping--the realization and thankfulness for the spiritual dimension of worth, of value, that you have intrinsically and, hopefully, in all humility, in all glorious, glorious humility, you can be thankful for.

And so we praise our Father, we who are so thankful for each other above all. Now if you have any questions or comments, I am sure they will flow right from your own personality and your own living experience.

Dialogue

Student #1: Just a comment: that was beautiful.

Nebadonia: Thank you, my son. I was feeling particularly beautiful tonight, in the afterglow of your group’s thanksgivings.

Student #2: Hello. I was wondering if, like on Nebadon, do you have celebrations that are similar to our Thanksgiving?

(Constant astonished)

Nebadonia: Yes my dear, but for us giving thanks is rather a continuous kind of experience. Michael and I inhabit so many hundreds of dimensions, and we are so connected with the hundreds of thousands of our own order of being--both directly and through the Trinity, living for us is what you could almost call a constant astonishment.

For as creative and powerful as we are, it is our greatest blessing to be astonished, and not so much by those spiritual beings above us in the different levels of the Super Universes with their Major and Minor Sectors, but by you, our children. For you do have a true free will which, for each one of you individually, is so expansible. Your creativity need know no bounds by way of your own spontaneity and in your deepest worship and thanksgiving and astonishment everything simply—exists! One of your greatest thanks-givings is to be continually astonished. It is a kind of curse for some human beings to be what you call jaded, cynical, and nonchalant about it all.

Student #2: Bored, yeah.

Nebadonia: Like Michael has said, “Keep your beginner’s mind.” Remain children in a way. Appreciate the fact you are children, starting out on your first life out here in the universe, with all eternity to come.

Student #2: I have a couple people who are concerned with really, really! wanting to know what their purpose in life is. And so when you talk about our purpose is to experience wonderment, or like… How would I complete that sentence to get them to be lured back into the child-mind?

(Escaping your “bubble of familiarity”)

Nebadonia: Ironically, that can be difficult because their very human creativity can hide itself. Think of someone who is very blasé, very nonchalant about it all. We gave a number of lessons one time about people living in a “bubble of familiarity” and actually bored with life, not realizing that this is their own doing. It is their own creativity to create this bubble in which nothing is new, just the “same old-same old,” while reality is itself dynamically changing around them.

Because you can’t literally drive or force them out of it, the only thing you can do is tease them out of it. Tease them with this fact that they themselves are creating this bubble of familiarity which so limits the very experiences that fulfill purpose. Point out some new things that they could do, new experiences they could have. Be like Michael and me, for we too have to tease you. Spirit does not force; it just enlightens and teases.

Student #2: The Urantia Book talks about luring, like the fishers of men, luring them towards God and the awareness of spirit, somehow.

Nebadonia: Right. If you can, take them on as much of an adventure as you know how. It might be rather strange and new to them. See if you can’t get them on an adventure, off into something new. Challenge them to get out of their bubble of familiarity and be astonished.

Student #2: Yeah, because they are used to having the same experiences every day. They need new stuff. OK, thank you.

Nebadonia: Right. And if they won’t accept that, just kindly and gently point out, “What are you afraid of?”--because that very fear can be instructive. That is what they should explore--what it is that is keeping them bound up.

So, good luck, my dear. I appreciate the fact that you really care for them this way.

Student #2: Thank you. I have another dumb question. The Urantia Book says that Michael is creator son #116,121. I want to know how many more are there?

Nebadonia: There are approximately seven hundred thousand Local Universes with a Creator Son and Creator Daughter at the head of each of them. This is counting all those in the seven Super Universes of the present universe age.

Student #2: OK, so were all of them created at once, or were they consecutive?

(Our relatively young Local Universe)

Nebadonia: They were consecutive. As the Urantia Book states, our Local Universe is relatively young at about four hundred billion years old since Michael and I came out from Paradise. While we have a potential for about ten million evolutionary worlds like yours, we are not yet to four million. I teased you one time with the notion that Michael and I--we are not quite like teenagers, but we are young twenty-somethings, you might say. We aren’t yet to the halfway point of our own Local Universe’s development. In this sense we are a relatively young Local Universe in the seventh Super Universe, while there are others already settled in Light and Life hundreds of billions of years ago. The physical universe itself is well over a trillion years old.

Student #2: So, do you just stay with this one? I mean, you are expanding, correct? I remember many comments about a future frontier of newly creating worlds and planets out there. Are you going to be going out there too?

Nebadonia: Do you mean the outer space levels? They are for future universe ages in which, at the conclusion of our present universe age, everything kind-of changes in all its spiritual dynamics. This is why in God’s plan there is no end—ever! As the Urantia Book says, the enormity of the outer space levels is so great compared to all the presently inhabited Local Universes, we are like an apple in a city the size of Paris.

The known universe, including the outer space levels, is really enormous, and there is no limit to how much it is going to expand. You yourselves, when you become billions and billions of years old—with that kind of experience--you will almost be like Michael and I are now. I mean you will be continually growing creative beings with no upper limit to you. The outer space levels will give you room to demonstrate your creativity.

Student #2: Well, that got me excited!

Nebadonia: This is why Paradise beings almost envy you in one way. While there is no comparison between the eternal beings of the central universe and you time/space beings who are created out here, they do acknowledge you have a definite temporal beginning. But there is no limit for you in either personal soul growth or longevity. It is all up to you. Your ultimate power is put in your hands as to whether you want to continue or not.

Student #2: Right!--baby steps here--baby steps.

Nebadonia: Yes, baby steps in each and every decision with your free will, and having so much of your being in your own hands. This is why we say that certain notions of “fate” are the most erroneous concepts of the human imagination. Your only fate is to be limitless, but that is more of a potential.

Student #2: Well, yeah—it has always bothered me that people say everything happens for a reason.

(There is a personal-spiritual origin of everything)

Nebadonia: But that is different, and true--everything does happen for a reason. Because God is the ultimate creator, we all exist within his parameters, right? There is nothing that happens that does not have a genesis in a creative personal being, and the enormity of the universe’s potential resides in all the creative personal beings within it. The Urantia Book calls this totality the Deity Absolute—of all the spiritually creative beings on every level. On your world you are involved in the living social and political actions of all the day-to-day decisions being made by everybody.

Student #2: That is fascinating. I could talk to you for an hour but…

Nebadonia: Well, you can, my dear, right in your own mind. Michael and I are part of you, as well as our Father.

Student #2: Yes, I know. All right, thank you very much.

Nebadonia: You are so welcome. You are our delight because you are constantly coming forth from your free will, your individuality, and your uniqueness. You are our delight and amazement because we choose to not anticipate you. It is all we can do to keep up with our millions of inhabited evolutionary planets with their billions of folks, plus the higher spiritual beings within our Local Universe, plus the billions of paradise beings who are keeping us company—visitors, you might say. Thank you, my dear. Be in my love.

Closing

Let me wrap up this session with our own thankfulness--Michael’s and mine. You are our delight for you are spontaneous creatures right within your own right, and power, and delight. So this is what we encourage.

(Just be still-if you can)

Just be still--if you can. Be still and know that you yourselves are co-creating this experience of yours. It gives you the opportunity to appreciate all that is happening, for even in stillness your minds are still going and your bodies are still living. The world around you is still happening, and your very attention, thankfulness, appreciation and worship keeps you in touch.

Good night, dear ones. This is Mother Spirit, and I send you my love. Michael bids you be in his peace. Good night.