Abiram and Segub

[Bradly]

Welcome Paul….I look forward to your contributions here.

I pointed out early on this thread that anytime quotations marks occur in text, those words are not those of the author(s) of the Paper and as you point out, not only are over 1000 of humanity’s highest evolutionary concepts presented in the text but (as I recall) over 2000 unattributed quotes by human authors are included….such as the one under discussion here.  Just because words are included in the text does not indicate any form of specificity related to their purpose without adequate consideration for their context.  Lucifer’s Manifesto is described which does not mean it is held up as a teaching.  The evolutionary value of slavery and war and witchcraft and priests and ghost fear are described but certainly none are recommended.

Glad you are here…feel free to start a topic that interests you and again, welcome to our little band of truth seekers and Paradise Pilgrims!

Bradly

[growthingrace]

Something has stood out to me amongst all of the posts as I have been reading this discussion.  Chuck, you stated, “Thus I read completely the Bible for the first time. By the time I finished with it though, if it wasn’t for my reading of the ub, I would have rejected God.”  I believe you also spoke positively of your experience with TUB.  I wonder if in trying to find the truth in the details, if you missed the truth as it stared you in the face.  (oh there is a good TUB quote on this, something about our tendency to search for God, not realizing he is with us.)

I think it is important to remember that our growth is bigger than just our knowledge of things, though this is an important part of our growth.  I believe we recognize truth, beauty and goodness when we see it; and the more we see it, the more we recognize it in our lives.  Perhaps here you should pay attention to your spirit as well as your mind – both must be attended to.

Because I was raised LDS, I always hang on to a healthy skepticism of things.  I had just let go of the Book of Mormon when The Urantia Book was introduced to me by my now husband.  At the time I thought, “oh great!”  But I explored it, mostly to see if there were red flags about this guy I just started dating.  The more I explored though, the more my mind and spirit expanded.  I still at times purposely look into possible falsehoods in the book, I just don’t want to be duped again.  But it occurred to me about a year ago that even if I found this book to be completely false, I would struggle in letting go of it because of how deeply it has changed my life – for the better in my opinion.  If it isn’t true, I want it to be true because I much prefer living in a universe with a god that is loving and merciful (logical, consistent, kind, wise…)than one with a vengeful god or no god at all.  It shapes my thinking in ways that are continually seeking more understanding, more meaning and more love in my life.  I am a better human being because of my experience with the book and how it contributes to the deepening of my relationship with my heavenly Father.  That is all the proof I really need.  If this were not the case, I think that would also say something.

That fear of being duped can be both a positive and a negative in our lives.  It can help us weed out the superstitions and falsehoods that we, by our human nature, can so easily fall victim of, and which our current society is fearful of because of our deeper knowledge of the universe scientifically.  There are many people who swallow whatever is presented to them whole, and even claim spiritual forces are involved, for things that seem utterly stupid to me, and I wish they would question things a little more.  But this fear can also prevent us from diving into life and exploring, as well as being open to those things beyond our five senses.  As much as I felt duped by my previous religion, I was still able to experience truth as I tried to find understanding through that religion.  Truth is dynamic, and those moments of truth I experienced as an 18 year old girl don’t bring me the same feeling of enlightenment now when I read through my old journals – yet I still believe they were a part of my spiritual development.  This has led to my fear of being duped being lessened, because I know that whatever new information comes my way, I will continue to grow from the experience of finding meaning from it.  I don’t have to hang on to my beliefs as being right, in fact, I shouldn’t.  That leads to fossilization, not the dynamic growth of truth.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we should use critical thinking, even with TUB.  In fact, I think reading TUB helps our critical thinking skills develop.  At the same time, we should be mindful of what is motivating our critical thinking.  Are we using it from a place where we are motivated by fear and judgment and will ultimately block our ability to understand and develop deeper meaning?  Or are we truly curious and seeking greater understanding of life, the universe, or God?   I believe the latter will never lead us astray.

 

[Bonita]

growthingrace wrote:I wonder if in trying to find the truth in the details, if you missed the truth as it stared you in the face.  (oh there is a good TUB quote on this, something about our tendency to search for God, not realizing he is with us.)

I think the quote about focusing on the details and missing the truth is this one: One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth. (48:6.3)

Also, this one:

195:5.2 Truth often becomes confusing and even misleading when it is dismembered, segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed. Living truth teaches the truth seeker aright only when it is embraced in wholeness and as a living spiritual reality, not as a fact of material science or an inspiration of intervening art.

The quotes about searching the world over for God when he’s right there in your head the whole time are these:

3:1.4 “The spirit of the everlasting Father is concealed in the mind of every mortal child.” “Man goes forth searching for a friend while that very friend lives within his own heart.” “The true God is not afar off; he is a part of us; his spirit speaks from within us.”

159:3.8 The world is filled with hungry souls who famish in the very presence of the bread of life; men die searching for the very God who lives within them. Men seek for the treasures of the kingdom with yearning hearts and weary feet when they are all within the immediate grasp of living faith.

195:6.16 And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the conclusive proof that God has already found you.

131:10.4 When men begin to feel after God, that is evidence that God has found them, and that they are in quest of knowledge about him. We live in God and God dwells in us.

194:3.13  Up to Pentecost, religion had revealed only man seeking for God; since Pentecost, man is still searching for God, but there shines out over the world the spectacle of God also seeking for man and sending his spirit to dwell within him when he has found him.

 

[Bonita]

growthingrace wrote: I believe we recognize truth, beauty and goodness when we see it; and the more we see it, the more we recognize it in our lives.

I think that the recognition of truth, beauty and goodness occurs when the mind is looking for it.  A non-truth seeker will not see truth even when it’s screaming out and banging on doors inside their heads.

growthingrace wrote: Perhaps here you should pay attention to your spirit as well as your mind – both must be attended to.

The spirit lives in the mind, the higher mind.  The only way to get to the higher mind is to utilize the two higher adjutant mind ministries, worship and wisdom.  They are the gateway to the soul and the only way I know to activate them is through reflective thought, meditation and prayer.

101:6.4 Truth is made accessible to the wisdom-endowed individual by the bestowal on such a mind of the spirits of the Father and the Sons, the Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth.

132:3.2  Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living. Truth is always more than knowledge. Knowledge pertains to things observed, but truth transcends such purely material levels in that it consorts with wisdom and embraces such imponderables as human experience, even spiritual and living realities. Knowledge originates in science; wisdom, in true philosophy; truth, in the religious experience of spiritual living. Knowledge deals with facts; wisdom, with relationships; truth, with reality values.

Don’t forget that mind is the arena of choice.  In order to make choices for truth, beauty and goodness, one must first discover, and recognize them within the soul, then interpret and act upon them. But action during this life is according to decisions made by the conscious material mind which has awakened to these events within the soul.

180:5.2  Divine truth is a spirit-discerned and living reality. Truth exists only on high spiritual levels of the realization of divinity and the consciousness of communion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can experience the growth of truth in the soul and enjoy the liberty of its enlightenment in the mind, but you cannot imprison truth in formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct.

The two levels of mind must synchronize and harmonize an approach to reality which is “spiritward,” meaning growing towards spirit reality after discovering it within. Two minds are required for this, the human material mind and the superhuman morontia mind of the soul.  We are dual beings with dual minds, both of which must function in coordinated balance, discovering spiritual reality within then actively producing living fruit of truth, beauty and goodness.  Truth, beauty and goodness are experienced in the soul which then enlightens the material mind, but only if the material mind is exercising its spiritual reflexes.

p1435:2 130:4.10 Knowledge is the sphere of the material or fact-discerning mind. Truth is the domain of the spiritually endowed intellect that is conscious of knowing God. Knowledge is demonstrable; truth is experienced. Knowledge is a possession of the mind; truth an experience of the soul, the progressing self. Knowledge is a function of the nonspiritual level; truth is a phase of the mind-spirit level of the universes. The eye of the material mind perceives a world of factual knowledge; the eye of the spiritualized intellect discerns a world of true values. These two views, synchronized and harmonized, reveal the world of reality, wherein wisdom interprets the phenomena of the universe in terms of progressive personal experience.

180:5.3 Intelligence grows out of a material existence which is illuminated by the presence of the cosmic mind. Wisdom comprises the consciousness of knowledge elevated to new levels of meaning and activated by the presence of the universe endowment of the adjutant of wisdom.Truth is a spiritual reality value experienced only by spirit-endowed beings who function upon supermaterial levels of universe consciousness, and who, after the realization of truth, permit its spirit of activation to live and reign within their souls.

There are different levels of intelligence within the mind: material intelligence and soul intelligence.  Soul intelligence is a gift of the Creative Spirit known as the Holy Spirit or supermind.  Material intelligence is also a gift of the Creative Spirit known as adjutant mind ministry.  Two different levels of intelligence from two different levels of mind, both of which must learn to work together. But, truth, beauty and goodness are only perceived (discovered and recognized) with soul intelligence and then acted upon by material intelligence.

101.3.2  Faith-insight, or spiritual intuition, is the endowment of the cosmic mind in association with the Thought Adjuster, which is the Father’s gift to man. Spiritual reason, soul intelligence, is the endowment of the Holy Spirit, the Creative Spirit’s gift to man. Spiritual philosophy, the wisdom of spirit realities, is the endowment of the Spirit of Truth, the combined gift of the bestowal Sons to the children of men. And the co-ordination and interassociation of these spirit endowments constitute man a spirit personality in potential destiny.

111:4.2 Meanings are derived from a combination of recognition and understanding. Meanings are nonexistent in a wholly sensory or material world. Meanings and values are only perceived in the inner or supermaterial spheres of human experience.

1:4.5 The God of universal love unfailingly manifests himself to everyone of his creatures up to the fullness of that creature’s capacity to spiritually grasp the qualities of divine truth, beauty and goodness.  27:00

111:3.7 In so far as man’s evolving morontia soul becomes permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness as the value-realization of God-consciousness, such a resultant being becomes indestructible.

 

[chucksmith1982]

Growthingrace, thanks for the question about loosing the truth in the details.

I was trained as a history major in college, so looking for details was part of my training. I am currently going through the bible not only because most of the people I deal with are Christian, but because I came to the same conclusion that you stated, that I might be missing some truth. I am using a fairly conservative bible program to do it though. Pastors in foreign countries have used this program as a source of training, so I figure that sense I am in a conservative area it will help me to see how the people around me think at the least.

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