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Yes, us.
“Today, the unbelievers may taunt you with preaching a gospel of nonresistance and with living lives of nonviolence, but you are the first volunteers of a long line of sincere believers in the gospel of this kingdom who will astonish all mankind by their heroic devotion to these teachings. No armies of the world have ever displayed more courage and bravery than will be portrayed by you and your loyal successors who shall go forth to all the world proclaiming the good news — the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. The courage of the flesh is the lowest form of bravery. Mind bravery is a higher type of human courage, but the highest and supreme is uncompromising loyalty to the enlightened convictions of profound spiritual realities. And such courage constitutes the heroism of the God-knowing man. And you are all God-knowing men; you are in very truth the personal associates of the Son of Man.”
My short answer is: self improvement, real self improvement based on the attempt to do gods will.
always an inner battle, for me anyway.
Like anything of value, if we dont do it ourselves we will hardly be able to influence others.
Take forgiveness – I like this one and dont mean to get off track but somewhere in the book I recall being told that in order to receive it we must first learn how to give it.
Actually, my question was meant to get the discussion back on track. I think what you’re talking about, Gene is more in line with “loyalty to the enlightened convictions of profound spiritual realities,” spiritual realities being the will of God.
I was leaning more toward courageous thinking, daring to engage the higher adjutants in the pursuit of wisdom. They tell us how sad it is that there are so few courageous thinkers on this planet. It wouldn’t be so courageous if we had the Prince’s and Material Son’s schools of thought as our foundation for thinking. It would be more or less a matter of course. But because we have no one to set guidelines for wisdom, it takes a lot of courage to seek it. Wisdom is what pulls science out of a fact-based existence into the next dimension. Wisdom and philosophy go hand in hand as part of mind bravery. I think it’s about heeding those reality reflexes of mind which all of us have free access to.
I wasn’t going to say anything about whether or not it’s “you” or “us” who do the uplifting because it has nothing at all to do with the topic, but I changed my mind because I can’t abide poppycock If you read the quote provided by Van/nod carefully, the last sentence explains the uplifting process, and it’s neither “you” or “us” who do the uplifting.
143:1.7 And you are all God-knowing men; you are in very truth the personal associates of the Son of Man.
We humans are not the uplifters. We are associates of the Uplifter, but if and only if we allow the Son to do his own uplifting. We must allow the Spirit of Truth to do his own work as explained in 178:1.16. (How we do that might be a discussion for another thread.) Jesus told us over and over again that he is the one lifted up, or uplifted. He is the Uplifter because uplifting requires spiritual drawing power, i.e. spiritual gravity. We humans don’t have that, which is why we are supposed to allow him to do his own spiritual gravity work of uplifting. Our work is to allow him to do his work of uplifting within our lives. We are merely associates, co-workers, co-creators. Always will there be a “co-” attached to anything we do that can be considered righteous.
108:4.1 Said your Paradise bestowal Son when yet on Urantia, “I, if I am lifted up, will draw all men.”
157:6.10 “No man in this world now sees the Father except the Son who came forth from the Father. But if the Son be lifted up, he will draw all men to himself, and whosoever believes this truth of the combined nature of the Son shall be endowed with life that is more than age-abiding.”
174:5.13 “And now I declare to you that I, if I be lifted up on earth and in your lives, will draw all men to myself and into the fellowship of my Father.
162:5.4 “When the Son of Man is lifted up, then shall you all know that I am he, and that I have done nothing of myself but only as the Father has taught me. I speak these words to you and to your children. And he who sent me is even now with me; he has not left me alone, for I do always that which is pleasing in his sight.”
195:10.1 And when Jesus becomes thus lifted up, he will draw all men to himself. Jesus’ disciples should be more than conquerors, even overflowing sources of inspiration and enhanced living to all men. Religion is only an exalted humanism until it is made divine by the discovery of the reality of the presence of God in personal experience.
Our work is to allow him to do his work of uplifting within our lives.
You as a personal creature have mind and will. The Adjuster as a prepersonal creature has premind and prewill. If you so fully conform to the Adjuster’s mind that you see eye to eye, then your minds become one, and you receive the reinforcement of the Adjuster’s mind. Subsequently, if your will orders and enforces the execution of the decisions of this new or combined mind, the Adjuster’s prepersonal will attains to personality expression through your decision, and as far as that particular project is concerned, you and the Adjuster are one. Your mind has attained to divinity attunement, and the Adjuster’s will has achieved personality expression.The uplift is you (us).VanAmadon wrote: The uplift is you (us).Don’t include me in your upside down thinking Van/nod. Speak for yourself. I am not the Spirit of Truth. I think you mean to say that we are co-uplifters, associates, and that the Spirit of Truth is the Uplifter. Uplifting requires spirit gravity. The Adjuster is about personality gravity. Both are necessary.
One of the things you are missing in quote 110:2.5 is the part about the “combined mind”. That’s another “co-” word. There is an excellent quote in TUB which describes in detail how the process of Adjuster reinforcement described in 110:2.5 works. There are definite steps to the process and one of those steps involves the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit of Truth is the Uplifter, the one who is responsible for creating that “combined mind” by connecting the human with the divine. He is the living vine which connects the two.
p1112:3 101:6.7 Revelation teaches mortal man that, to start such a magnificent and intriguing adventure through space by means of the progression of time, he should begin by the organization of knowledge into idea-decisions; next, mandate wisdom to labor unremittingly at its noble task of transforming self-possessed ideas into increasingly practical but nonetheless supernal ideals, even those concepts which are so reasonable as ideas and so logical as ideals that the Adjuster dares so to combine and spiritize them as to render them available for such association in the finite mind as will constitute them the actual human complement thus made ready for the action of the Truth Spirit of the Sons, the time-space manifestations of Paradise truth—universal truth. The co-ordination of idea-decisions, logical ideals, and divine truth constitutes the possession of a righteous character, the prerequisite for mortal admission to the ever-expanding and increasingly spiritual realities of the morontia worlds.
The Adjuster combines and spiritizes those idea-decisions which have made it to the soul via the spirit of wisdom. Then, the Spirit of Truth gets those spiritized ideas ready for action. Without the Spirit of Truth, there is no spirit uplifting. Remember that he is the vine, without being connected to that vine, there is no uplifting, there is no spirit drawing power. Here is another excellent quote describing the uplifting process:
108:5.8 In executing those decisions which deliver you from the fetters of fear, you literally supply the psychic fulcrum on which the Adjuster may subsequently apply a spiritual lever of uplifting and advancing illumination.
It is clear in this quote that we are not doing the uplifting. The Adjuster applies the uplifting lever and then the Spirit of Truth actually uplifts into an actionable potential. All we do is present the psychic, or mental ideas we’ve discovered, recognized and interpreted. That’s all we can do. We, you and the rest of us, do not do the actual uplifting.
196:3.10 Concerning insight, the recognition of moral values and the discernment of spiritual meanings, all that the human mind can do is to discover, recognize, interpret, and choose.
Great discussion!!
I think mind-bravery has several elements and all of them relate to our personal position related to reality – which includes our time unit perspective, our faith in God’s paternal nature and love, and our experiential wisdom…in some combination. Courage is best when it arises from confidence in ultimate outcomes and their eventuations by God’s process and it is most noble when our convictions and courage require us to face choices which may not be in our own best material and/or short term interests – this requires significant progress in transferring the seat of our identity IMO. The ideal carries the day and not the personally “practical”. Commitment to reality recognition/response and to ideals rather than that which serves self. It is the courage to align our will with God’s regardless of the momentary, temporal, or material results.
This also goes to becoming comfortable, even eager, in the midst of confusions and uncertainties, and in the face of disappointment and failure. Mind bravery comes down to that faith which determines responses rather than any confidence in our decisions and the results of our decisions and our ability to determine outcomes of our decisions I think. We must be brave to trust….even God. Experience by such faith should only reinforce and ennoble the mind to choose and respond according to this standard of trust…absolute trust in our source and our destiny should give us those enlightened convictions which overcome all doubts and fears and uncertainties. Wisdom, of course, is more a function of experience with our mistakes of attitude, expectation, strategy, tactic, priority, etc. One may be brave and still be mistaken in our choices and decisions after all. The more experiential wisdom applied to our courage, the better the result!
143:1:7
“Today, the unbelievers may taunt you with preaching a gospel of nonresistance and with living lives of nonviolence, but you are the first volunteers of a long line of sincere believers in the gospel of this kingdom who will astonish all mankind by their heroic devotion to these teachings. No armies of the world have ever displayed more courage and bravery than will be portrayed by you and your loyal successors who shall go forth to all the world proclaiming the good news — the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. The courage of the flesh is the lowest form of bravery. Mind bravery is a higher type of human courage, but the highest and supreme is uncompromising loyalty to the enlightened convictions of profound spiritual realities. And such courage constitutes the heroism of the God-knowing man. And you are all God-knowing men; you are in very truth the personal associates of the Son of Man.”One may be brave and still be mistaken in our choices and decisions after all.
Truly awesome observation Bradly! Yes, of course mind ministry gives us great leniency for thought error. We are supposed to make mistakes. After all, we are the ones responsible for experience, experience in all its myriad colors. We’re not expected to hit perfection with our first arrow. Holy Cow! and thank God for the latitude given us in making decisions. Of course not all of them will hit the mark. That is the way it’s supposed to be. And how wonderful it is knowing that. This is the reason why original sin cannot be true. Original error is true, but hurray for that! We start out on the fringe of reality and work our way toward perfection with every bead of sweat born of confusion over what decision to make, what moral choice is best, what is it the true will of God. Thank you for the struggle God, thank you for the opportunity to make mistakes and learn, thank you for being the wonderful parent you are. Thank you for giving us an Uplifter, one who directs the loving contact between all persons and things such that they resonate within the spiritual gravity circuit which ever draws us home.
We, you and the rest of us, do not do the actual uplifting.So what you are saying is what I see some others say a lot on these forums, that we, you and the rest of us don’t really need to do much. We just need to be what we are and everything else is taken care of. It’s God’s world and he will do the lifting. It really doesn’t matter if, where or when we do anything, because we’ll all get there some day. That’s fine.
The uplift I’m referring to however, has to do with what will happen when more instead of less actually achieve the attainable, being eye to eye with God. That way, what is seen will be what God sees with his eyes and enable us to participate in the gravity of what will empower us; his will.
And that’s happening right now with more and more of us everyday. In fact, it might not be long before somebody actually reaches the switch, and turns on the Light.
“Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.”
As a disabled vet, the low level guttural bravery thing still haunts me – also I’m a zealot at heart, nationalist these days.
cant seem to get past it even though I read and reread how Jesus responded to Simon.
cant really find a meaningful response to the mind bravery question other than going back to the self mastery idea. a move away from the lowest level is a good goal for me and I know if it happened it would have an uplifting effect on some folks I know.
if it happened it would have an uplifting effect on some folks I know.
And also on some folks you don’t know.
Sorry
here is not place for personal baggage
VanAmadon wrote: So what you are saying is what I see some others say a lot on these forums, that we, you and the rest of us don’t really need to do much. We just need to be what we are and everything else is taken care of. It’s God’s world and he will do the lifting. It really doesn’t matter if, where or when we do anything, because we’ll all get there some day. That’s fine.I think perhaps you’ve missed a few posts if that’s what you think. What part of discover, recognize, interpret and choose requires sitting back on our duffs and letting Big Daddy do all the work with no effort on our part at all? Even so, let’s say, just for giggles, that discovery, recognition, interpretation and choosing are really easy things to do, which they would be if you follow Jesus, because his yoke is easy and his burden light. But, let’s just say you sit comfortably in one of the “isms” and never challenge your moral conscience, just coast along and do no extra credit work at all. That would also work because faith alone is all God requires of us in our current life. He knows that his will does not uniformly prevail in the human heart in one short lifetime. Don’t forget the covenant made between Melchizedek and Abraham which was: God agrees to do everything; man merely agrees to believe and follow his instructions.
93:6.4 This covenant of Melchizedek with Abraham represents the great Urantian agreement between divinity and humanity whereby God agrees to do everything; man only agrees to believe God’s promises and follow his instructions. Heretofore it had been believed that salvation could be secured only by works — sacrifices and offerings; now, Melchizedek again brought to Urantia the good news that salvation, favor with God, is to be had by faith. But this gospel of simple faith in God was too advanced; the Semitic tribesmen subsequently preferred to go back to the older sacrifices and atonement for sin by the shedding of blood.
12:7.7 The will of God does not uniformly prevail in the heart of the God-seeking material mortal, but if the time frame is enlarged beyond the moment to embrace the whole of the first life, then does God’s will become increasingly discernible in the spirit fruits which are borne in the lives of the spirit-led children of God. And then, if human life is further enlarged to include the morontia experience, the divine will is observed to shine brighter and brighter in the spiritualizing acts of those creatures of time who have begun to taste the divine delights of experiencing the relationship of the personality of man with the personality of the Universal Father.
So yeah, God is really the Doer, and we agree to follow. We are associates, co-doers. But wait! You must think that’s crazy too. God does everything and we’re simply associates, just tag-along-yes-men? People who believe in original sin think this is crazy stuff. Are you one of them? Is it too advanced for you to think that God doesn’t expect you to carry out his will in one short life? Why would a loving Father expect perfection overnight? Why wouldn’t he hold your hand and take you along and show you the way while you’re learning? All you have to do is hold onto his hand, walk, look, think, ask questions and stay focused. It’s a relationship. And, that’s about all the meager human mind is capable of, to be honest: discover, recognize, interpret and choose, all in a loving, faith-driven, personal relationship with God. God does all the rest. And thank you for that God. Thank you, ’cause I would mess it up otherwise.
The uplift I’m referring to however, has to do with what will happen when more instead of less actually achieve the attainable, being eye to eye with God.
Worry about yourself Van/nod, and stop worrying about the rest of us being eye to eye with God. Are you there yet? Are you seeing eye to eye with God today and everyday? If not, then focus on that.
VanAmadon wrote:That way, what is seen will be what God sees with his eyes and enable us to participate in the gravity of what will empower us; his will.
I’m sorry, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. God has a different and unique plan for each personality. Even in a perfect world, not everyone will see reality the same way. Here’s the other thing, spiritual gravity does not empower us. It pulls us; it draws us. But first you have to have something worth being pulled. First you discover spiritual value, recognize it for what it is, interpret it according to your personality and life, use it by choosing it which makes a potential value an actual reality, then bingo! It gets swooped up in the spirit gravity circuit and pulls you closer to Paradise. Gravity does not empower. Where did you get that idea? Our goal is to become more responsive to spiritual gravity, which means you have to find (discover) things that it will attract and recognize that attraction, figure out how to utilize it and do it. (BTW, that takes work, effort, focus, concentration, faith . . . no coach potato stuff there.)
It’s the indwelling Spirit who empowers by spiritizing idea-decisions which have been discovered by the human mind and recognized for their potential value by utilizing the ministry of the spirits of worship and wisdom (gateway to the soul). This allows those idea-decisions to be sent to the soul where they are spiritized (empowered) by the Adjuster, interpreted or us individually by the Spirit of Truth and made available for action, choosing by the personality. The personality is where the power is, and when the personality chooses to act on those true, beautiful and good gems glistening with spiritual power in the soul (soul power), it gives birth to God’s fruit, fruit of spiritually magnetic value which resonates in the Supreme. That’s power-personality synthesis. Are we empowered by that? No, not really. The action is ours, but the consequences are God’s. The real work was his, we are merely associates in the process. We agree to follow his instructions, to use the glistening gems in the soul made ready for co-creation. And it is the loving relationship of partnership that fills us with joy and fulfillment, the deep down happiness that comes from being a partner with God.
So, it’s really about doing your own psychic circle work, organizing your own idea-decisions, expending your own energy on discovery, recognition, interpretation and choice. Don’t worry about what other people are doing or how to save the planet with team work. Just work on your own relationship with God and the Spirit of Truth, your own spiritual team, produce his fruit and be a shining example of how its done. It will catch on like the divine virus of love that it is. But even if the entire population of the planet should wake up tomorrow as first circlers, everyone in close contact with their Adjusters, this place would still not be perfect. Civilization must evolve like everything else and evolution is slow. There still would be squabbles and frictions to be worked out. Paradise is still a long way off.
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