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All love is from God. It flows throughout the universe of universes through the personalities bestowed and originated by God. Love begins with God and moves with power and delivers its fruits as it is then bestowed by one person to another and to all others and by all persons to the each.
It is the flow of love that is transformative to the each and to the all, perfecting the children of time personally and collectively as they share this love one with another. Love is the will of God and the Way of God’s friendly universe. Sharing love with others and the inner life with God Within is to perfect our heart and align our will and dedicate our freewill to God’s Will and Way.
2:6.9 (42.1) Facing the world of personality, God is discovered to be a loving person; facing the spiritual world, he is a personal love; in religious experience he is both. Love identifies the volitional will of God. The goodness of God rests at the bottom of the divine free-willness—the universal tendency to love, show mercy, manifest patience, and minister forgiveness.
Me here: We must be patient with others…and with ourselves too.
156:5.6 (1739.1) Long into the night the apostles and evangelists continued to ask questions, and from the many answers we would present the following thoughts, restated in modern phraseology:
156:5.7 (1739.2) Forceful ambition, intelligent judgment, and seasoned wisdom are the essentials of material success. Leadership is dependent on natural ability, discretion, will power, and determination. Spiritual destiny is dependent on faith, love, and devotion to truth—hunger and thirst for righteousness—the wholehearted desire to find God and to be like him.
156:5.8 (1739.3) Do not become discouraged by the discovery that you are human. Human nature may tend toward evil, but it is not inherently sinful. Be not downcast by your failure wholly to forget some of your regrettable experiences. The mistakes which you fail to forget in time will be forgotten in eternity. Lighten your burdens of soul by speedily acquiring a long-distance view of your destiny, a universe expansion of your career.
156:5.9 (1739.4) Make not the mistake of estimating the soul’s worth by the imperfections of the mind or by the appetites of the body. Judge not the soul nor evaluate its destiny by the standard of a single unfortunate human episode. Your spiritual destiny is conditioned only by your spiritual longings and purposes.
156:5.10 (1739.5) Religion is the exclusively spiritual experience of the evolving immortal soul of the God-knowing man, but moral power and spiritual energy are mighty forces which may be utilized in dealing with difficult social situations and in solving intricate economic problems. These moral and spiritual endowments make all levels of human living richer and more meaningful.
156:5.11 (1739.6) You are destined to live a narrow and mean life if you learn to love only those who love you. Human love may indeed be reciprocal, but divine love is outgoing in all its satisfaction-seeking. The less of love in any creature’s nature, the greater the love need, and the more does divine love seek to satisfy such need. Love is never self-seeking, and it cannot be self-bestowed. Divine love cannot be self-contained; it must be unselfishly bestowed.
156:5.12 (1739.7) Kingdom believers should possess an implicit faith, a whole-souled belief, in the certain triumph of righteousness. Kingdom builders must be undoubting of the truth of the gospel of eternal salvation. Believers must increasingly learn how to step aside from the rush of life—escape the harassments of material existence—while they refresh the soul, inspire the mind, and renew the spirit by worshipful communion.
156:5.13 (1739.8) God-knowing individuals are not discouraged by misfortune or downcast by disappointment. Believers are immune to the depression consequent upon purely material upheavals; spirit livers are not perturbed by the episodes of the material world. Candidates for eternal life are practitioners of an invigorating and constructive technique for meeting all of the vicissitudes and harassments of mortal living. Every day a true believer lives, he finds it easier to do the right thing.
156:5.14 (1740.1) Spiritual living mightily increases true self-respect. But self-respect is not self-admiration. Self-respect is always co-ordinate with the love and service of one’s fellows. It is not possible to respect yourself more than you love your neighbor; the one is the measure of the capacity for the other.
156:5.15 (1740.2) As the days pass, every true believer becomes more skillful in alluring his fellows into the love of eternal truth. Are you more resourceful in revealing goodness to humanity today than you were yesterday? Are you a better righteousness recommender this year than you were last year? Are you becoming increasingly artistic in your technique of leading hungry souls into the spiritual kingdom?
156:5.16 (1740.3) Are your ideals sufficiently high to insure your eternal salvation while your ideas are so practical as to render you a useful citizen to function on earth in association with your mortal fellows? In the spirit, your citizenship is in heaven; in the flesh, you are still citizens of the earth kingdoms. Render to the Caesars the things which are material and to God those which are spiritual.
156:5.17 (1740.4) The measure of the spiritual capacity of the evolving soul is your faith in truth and your love for man, but the measure of your human strength of character is your ability to resist the holding of grudges and your capacity to withstand brooding in the face of deep sorrow. Defeat is the true mirror in which you may honestly view your real self.
156:5.18 (1740.5) As you grow older in years and more experienced in the affairs of the kingdom, are you becoming more tactful in dealing with troublesome mortals and more tolerant in living with stubborn associates? Tact is the fulcrum of social leverage, and tolerance is the earmark of a great soul. If you possess these rare and charming gifts, as the days pass you will become more alert and expert in your worthy efforts to avoid all unnecessary social misunderstandings. Such wise souls are able to avoid much of the trouble which is certain to be the portion of all who suffer from lack of emotional adjustment, those who refuse to grow up, and those who refuse to grow old gracefully.
156:5.19 (1740.6) Avoid dishonesty and unfairness in all your efforts to preach truth and proclaim the gospel. Seek no unearned recognition and crave no undeserved sympathy. Love, freely receive from both divine and human sources regardless of your deserts, and love freely in return. But in all other things related to honor and adulation seek only that which honestly belongs to you.
156:5.20 (1740.7) The God-conscious mortal is certain of salvation; he is unafraid of life; he is honest and consistent. He knows how bravely to endure unavoidable suffering; he is uncomplaining when faced by inescapable hardship.
156:5.21 (1740.8) The true believer does not grow weary in well-doing just because he is thwarted. Difficulty whets the ardor of the truth lover, while obstacles only challenge the exertions of the undaunted kingdom builder.
156:5.22 (1740.9) And many other things Jesus taught them before they made ready to depart from Tyre.
Me here: The Master also teaches that we are forgiven as we forgive and can only receive mercy as we bestow it to others. Our capacity to receive love, mercy, and forgiveness is limited only by the love, mercy, and forgiveness we give to others.
The Universal Law of reciprocity. The capacity to receive is self determined by our freewill choices to share and give.
Karma. What goes around comes around. Reaping what we sow. A half pint cannot hold OR pour a quart but, concerning love, can become a gallon by giving all that it has! We can only perfect by perfecting.
We must first perfect our willingness to love and to serve. Our motivation and intentions reflect our freewillingness to care and to share. That’s the Tadpole Way which leads to God’s Will and Way. Such an alignment and dedication of personal freewill always delivers the fruits of the Spirit AND increased capacity.
Wisdom will take a little longer but it too only comes by our expression of our Divine Nature and Origin.
34:6.13 (381.7) The consciousness of the spirit domination of a human life is presently attended by an increasing exhibition of the characteristics of the Spirit in the life reactions of such a spirit-led mortal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.” Such spirit-guided and divinely illuminated mortals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in human faithfulness perform the duties of their earthly assignments, have already begun to discern the lights of eternal life as they glimmer on the faraway shores of another world; already have they begun to comprehend the reality of that inspiring and comforting truth, “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And throughout every trial and in the presence of every hardship, spirit-born souls are sustained by that hope which transcends all fear because the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the presence of the divine Spirit.
56:10.20 (648.3) To finite man truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality. As this love-comprehension of Deity finds spiritual expression in the lives of God-knowing mortals, there are yielded the fruits of divinity: intellectual peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom. The advanced mortals on a world in the seventh stage of light and life have learned that love is the greatest thing in the universe—and they know that God is love.
56:10.21 (648.4) Love is the desire to do good to others.“Fruits of the Spirit”:
5:2.1 (64.4) The physical presence of the Infinite is the reality of the material universe. The mind presence of Deity must be determined by the depth of individual intellectual experience and by the evolutionary personality level. The spiritual presence of Divinity must of necessity be differential in the universe. It is determined by the spiritual capacity of receptivity and by the degree of the consecration of the creature’s will to the doing of the divine will.
So….our capacity to do the will of God is measured and limited by our motivation, our experience, our wisdom, and our spiritization. Capacity is forever expanded by the realization of potential. The realization and actualization of potential always results in new and ever greater potential for ever more reality actualization.
Therefore is God’s will realized by experiential beings only by our progressive experiential expression of this dynamic relationship between the perfect and the perfecting. There is no such thing to evolutionary experiential beings in time as enlightenment but only enlightening! Not perfection but perfecting.
We are not created for the destination but for the journey. The journey of gaining personal experience and expressing that personal experience means no two tadpoles in or from time will choose the same thing for the same reasons at the same time!!
This is God’s will. Our freewill is God’s will. May we use it with a growing wisdom!!! Personal growth and capacity depends upon, even requires it.
Our capacity measures our realization of potential and that potential yet to be realized. Our freewill alignment with God’s will reflects our reality actualization or actualized potential but also our growing potential for further growth and greater freewill progress measured by our greater capacity and capabilities and the expression of wisdom.
115:3.16 (1263.3) The final dynamics of the cosmos have to do with the continual transfer of reality from potentiality to actuality. In theory, there may be an end to this metamorphosis, but in fact, such is impossible since the Potential and the Actual are both encircuited in the Original (the I AM), and this identification makes it forever impossible to place a limit on the developmental progression of the universe. Whatsoever is identified with the I AM can never find an end to progression since the actuality of the potentials of the I AM is absolute, and the potentiality of the actuals of the I AM is also absolute. Always will actuals be opening up new avenues of the realization of hitherto impossible potentials—every human decision not only actualizes a new reality in human experience but also opens up a new capacity for human growth. The man lives in every child, and the morontia progressor is resident in the mature God-knowing man.
117:6.9 (1289.2) Men all too often forget that God is the greatest experience in human existence. Other experiences are limited in their nature and content, but the experience of God has no limits save those of the creature’s comprehension capacity, and this very experience is in itself capacity enlarging. When men search for God, they are searching for everything. When they find God, they have found everything. The search for God is the unstinted bestowal of love attended by amazing discoveries of new and greater love to be bestowed.
117:6.10 (1289.3) All true love is from God, and man receives the divine affection as he himself bestows this love upon his fellows. Love is dynamic. It can never be captured; it is alive, free, thrilling, and always moving. Man can never take the love of the Father and imprison it within his heart. The Father’s love can become real to mortal man only by passing through that man’s personality as he in turn bestows this love upon his fellows. The great circuit of love is from the Father, through sons to brothers, and hence to the Supreme. The love of the Father appears in the mortal personality by the ministry of the indwelling Adjuster. Such a God-knowing son reveals this love to his universe brethren, and this fraternal affection is the essence of the love of the Supreme.
One of the greatest truths in the Papers is the connection between capacity and capabilities inherent to the human mind. We are born with both. There is no need to believe or know or understand or discover or change anything to be connected to Deity or to respond to The Divine Presence.
“Morality, virtue, is indigenous to human personality. Moral intuition, the realization of duty, is a component of human mind endowment and is associated with the other inalienables of human nature: scientific curiosity and spiritual insight.”
Our personal religious experience is simply responding to the indigenous connection of human mind and the Deity connections of mind to Source and Spirit. As humans, we are born connected to God. If not, the Papers teach, then are we born animals and not human at all.
If human, then we are spiritual by nature, and thereby naturally connected to Spirit. Our natural response to this connection and influence is the human faith experience. Faith is our morality reflex in action. Moral choices are the faith experience expressed by freewill choices. Every such choice delivers the Divine Invasion of assurance and confirmation and insight and nurtures the fruits of the Spirit.
Morality, duty, and loyalty are not truly religious and spiritual but they are the inherent result reality of the Spirit connection and the gateway to faith and spiritization. Faith is the awareness of and personality respinse to the”presence” within and the “source” of causes and effects.
196:3.20 (2095.4) Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes religion as the motive of inner response to outer conditions. But such a real religion is not a purely subjective experience. It signifies the whole of the subjectivity of the individual engaged in a meaningful and intelligent response to total objectivity—the universe and its Maker.
196:3.21 (2095.5) The exquisite and transcendent experience of loving and being loved is not just a psychic illusion because it is so purely subjective. The one truly divine and objective reality that is associated with mortal beings, the Thought Adjuster, functions to human observation apparently as an exclusively subjective phenomenon. Man’s contact with the highest objective reality, God, is only through the purely subjective experience of knowing him, of worshiping him, of realizing sonship with him.
196:3.22 (2095.6) True religious worship is not a futile monologue of self-deception. Worship is a personal communion with that which is divinely real, with that which is the very source of reality. Man aspires by worship to be better and thereby eventually attains the best.
196:3.23 (2095.7) The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience—spiritual reality. Psychology and idealism are not the equivalent of religious reality. The projections of the human intellect may indeed originate false gods—gods in man’s image—but the true God-consciousness does not have such an origin. The God-consciousness is resident in the indwelling spirit. Many of the religious systems of man come from the formulations of the human intellect, but the God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these grotesque systems of religious slavery.
196:3.24 (2095.
God is not the mere invention of man’s idealism; he is the very source of all such superanimal insights and values. God is not a hypothesis formulated to unify the human concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness; he is the personality of love from whom all of these universe manifestations are derived. The truth, beauty, and goodness of man’s world are unified by the increasing spirituality of the experience of mortals ascending toward Paradise realities. The unity of truth, beauty, and goodness can only be realized in the spiritual experience of the God-knowing personality.1:4.1 (26.3) The infinity of the perfection of God is such that it eternally constitutes him mystery. And the greatest of all the unfathomable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of the divine indwelling of mortal minds. The manner in which the Universal Father sojourns with the creatures of time is the most profound of all universe mysteries; the divine presence in the mind of man is the mystery of mysteries.
1:4.2 (26.4) The physical bodies of mortals are “the temples of God.” Notwithstanding that the Sovereign Creator Sons come near the creatures of their inhabited worlds and “draw all men to themselves”; though they “stand at the door” of consciousness “and knock” and delight to come in to all who will “open the doors of their hearts”; although there does exist this intimate personal communion between the Creator Sons and their mortal creatures, nevertheless, mortal men have something from God himself which actually dwells within them; their bodies are the temples thereof.
1:4.3 (26.5) When you are through down here, when your course has been run in temporary form on earth, when your trial trip in the flesh is finished, when the dust that composes the mortal tabernacle “returns to the earth whence it came”; then, it is revealed, the indwelling “Spirit shall return to God who gave it.” There sojourns within each moral being of this planet a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity. It is not yet yours by right of possession, but it is designedly intended to be one with you if you survive the mortal existence.
1:4.4 (26.6) We are constantly confronted with this mystery of God; we are nonplused by the increasing unfolding of the endless panorama of the truth of his infinite goodness, endless mercy, matchless wisdom, and superb character.
1:4.5 (26.7) The divine mystery consists in the inherent difference which exists between the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, the time-space creature and the Universal Creator, the material and the spiritual, the imperfection of man and the perfection of Paradise Deity. The God of universal love unfailingly manifests himself to every one of his creatures up to the fullness of that creature’s capacity to spiritually grasp the qualities of divine truth, beauty, and goodness.
1:4.6 (27.1) To every spirit being and to every mortal creature in every sphere and on every world of the universe of universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his gracious and divine self that can be discerned or comprehended by such spirit beings and by such mortal creatures. God is no respecter of persons, either spiritual or material. The divine presence which any child of the universe enjoys at any given moment is limited only by the capacity of such a creature to receive and to discern the spirit actualities of the supermaterial world.
1:4.7 (27.2) As a reality in human spiritual experience God is not a mystery. But when an attempt is made to make plain the realities of the spirit world to the physical minds of the material order, mystery appears: mysteries so subtle and so profound that only the faith-grasp of the God-knowing mortal can achieve the philosophic miracle of the recognition of the Infinite by the finite, the discernment of the eternal God by the evolving mortals of the material worlds of time and space.
Let’s consider the actualization of potentials which can only happen in experiential reality and by the expression of freewill choices by freewill creatures in time.
It is helpful to think of “capacity”, as presented above, as a form of “potential” I think. Capacity enlarges and expands as prior potential is realized and actualized, or as wisdom is progressively gained.
115:2.1 (1261.1) From the existential standpoint, nothing new can happen throughout the galaxies, for the completion of infinity inherent in the I AM is eternally present in the seven Absolutes, is functionally associated in the triunities, and is transmitively associated in the triodities. But the fact that infinity is thus existentially present in these absolute associations in no way makes it impossible to realize new cosmic experientials. From a finite creature’s viewpoint, infinity contains much that is potential, much that is on the order of a future possibility rather than a present actuality.
115:2.2 (1261.2) Value is a unique element in universe reality. We do not comprehend how the value of anything infinite and divine could possibly be increased. But we discover that meanings can be modified if not augmented even in the relations of infinite Deity. To the experiential universes even divine values are increased as actualities by enlarged comprehension of reality meanings.
115:2.3 (1261.3) The entire scheme of universal creation and evolution on all experiencing levels is apparently a matter of the conversion of potentialities into actualities; and this transmutation has to do equally with the realms of space potency, mind potency, and spirit potency.
115:3.11 (1262.8) From the time viewpoint, the Actual is that which was and is; the Potential is that which is becoming and will be; the Original is that which is. From the eternity viewpoint, the differences between the Original, the Actual, and the Potential are not thus apparent. These triune qualities are not so distinguished on Paradise-eternity levels. In eternity all is—only has all not yet been revealed in time and space.
115:3.12 (1262.9) From a creature’s viewpoint, actuality is substance, potentiality is capacity. Actuality exists centermost and expands therefrom into peripheral infinity; potentiality comes inward from the infinity periphery and converges at the center of all things. Originality is that which first causes and then balances the dual motions of the cycle of reality metamorphosis from potentials to actuals and the potentializing of existing actuals.
So…the alignment of the will of each experiential freewill personality with God’s will results in the realization and actualization of potential and results in new and ever greater potential…the “reality metamorphosis”.
Now remember that “alignment” with God’s will is not a particular or specific ‘what’ but is rather a ‘why’ of motive based on love and an expression of loyalty and duty and trustworthiness and service to others and for the benefit of others.
God’s will is not a specific act or choice by all beings at every intersection of situational circumstance and decision. God’s will is that unique experience and personalized expression of spiritualized perspective by each evolutionary and experiential personality in the universe of universes.
All such expressions by each and by all such personalities have 3 (at least) distinct effects. First, every such decision causes an immediate “invasion” of the Spirit into the mind/soul of that individual person and thereby is wisdom gained and spiritization progresses.
Second, there is a rippling and pervading effect in our nearby arena of proximity-influence that contributes to the social evolutionary progress of our community. Third, every such choice is manifested in the the totality of universe “reality metamorphosis” by The Supreme Being.
Please consider reading Papers 115-118 to learn about the unification and synthesis and metamorphosis of expanding reality converting potentials into new realities which thereby creats endless new potentials.
115:3.16 (1263.3) The final dynamics of the cosmos have to do with the continual transfer of reality from potentiality to actuality. In theory, there may be an end to this metamorphosis, but in fact, such is impossible since the Potential and the Actual are both encircuited in the Original (the I AM), and this identification makes it forever impossible to place a limit on the developmental progression of the universe. Whatsoever is identified with the I AM can never find an end to progression since the actuality of the potentials of the I AM is absolute, and the potentiality of the actuals of the I AM is also absolute. Always will actuals be opening up new avenues of the realization of hitherto impossible potentials—every human decision not only actualizes a new reality in human experience but also opens up a new capacity for human growth. The man lives in every child, and the morontia progressor is resident in the mature God-knowing man.
115:3.17 (1263.4) Statics in growth can never appear in the total cosmos since the basis for growth—the absolute actuals—is unqualified, and since the possibilities for growth—the absolute potentials—are unlimited. From a practical viewpoint the philosophers of the universe have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an end.
115:3.18 (1263.5) From a circumscribed view there are, indeed, many ends, many terminations of activities, but from a larger viewpoint on a higher universe level, there are no endings, merely transitions from one phase of development to another. The major chronicity of the master universe is concerned with the several universe ages, the Havona, the superuniverse, and the outer universe ages. But even these basic divisions of sequence relationships cannot be more than relative landmarks on the unending highway of eternity.
Me here: The journey is the adventure, and the point of experience and freewill…not the destination!
115:7.1 (1266.2) In the Deity of the Supreme the Father-I AM has achieved relatively complete liberation from the limitations inherent in infinity of status, eternity of being, and absoluteness of nature. But God the Supreme has been freed from all existential limitations only by having become subject to experiential qualifications of universal function. In attaining capacity for experience, the finite God also becomes subject to the necessity therefor; in achieving liberation from eternity, the Almighty encounters the barriers of time; and the Supreme could only know growth and development as a consequence of partiality of existence and incompleteness of nature, nonabsoluteness of being.
115:7.2 (1266.3) All this must be according to the Father’s plan, which has predicated finite progress upon effort, creature achievement upon perseverance, and personality development upon faith. By thus ordaining the experience-evolution of the Supreme, the Father has made it possible for finite creatures to exist in the universes and, by experiential progression, sometime to attain the divinity of Supremacy.
116:0.3 (1268.3) Experiential growth implies creature-Creator partnership—God and man in association. Growth is the earmark of experiential Deity: Havona did not grow; Havona is and always has been; it is existential like the everlasting Gods who are its source. But growth characterizes the grand universe.
116:0.4 (1268.4) The Almighty Supreme is a living and evolving Deity of power and personality. His present domain, the grand universe, is also a growing realm of power and personality. His destiny is perfection, but his present experience encompasses the elements of growth and incomplete status.
117:0.1 (1278.1) TO THE extent that we do the will of God in whatever universe station we may have our existence, in that measure the almighty potential of the Supreme becomes one step more actual. The will of God is the purpose of the First Source and Center as it is potentialized in the three Absolutes, personalized in the Eternal Son, conjoined for universe action in the Infinite Spirit, and eternalized in the everlasting patterns of Paradise. And God the Supreme is becoming the highest finite manifestation of the total will of God.
117:1.2 (1278.6) In the persons of the Supreme Creators the Gods have descended from Paradise to the domains of time and space, there to create and to evolve creatures with Paradise-attainment capacity who can ascend thereto in quest of the Father. This universe procession of descending God-revealing Creators and ascending God-seeking creatures is revelatory of the Deity evolution of the Supreme, in whom both descenders and ascenders achieve mutuality of understanding, the discovery of eternal and universal brotherhood. The Supreme Being thus becomes the finite synthesis of the experience of the perfect-Creator cause and the perfecting-creature response.
117:1.4 (1279.2) The will of the Creator and the will of the creature are qualitatively different, but they are also experientially akin, for creature and Creator can collaborate in the achievement of universe perfection. Man can work in liaison with God and thereby cocreate an eternal finaliter. God can work even as humanity in the incarnations of his Sons, who thereby achieve the supremacy of creature experience.
117:1.5 (1279.3) In the Supreme Being, Creator and creature are united in one Deity whose will is expressive of one divine personality. And this will of the Supreme is something more than the will of either creature or Creator, even as the sovereign will of the Master Son of Nebadon is now something more than a combination of the will of divinity and humanity. The union of Paradise perfection and time-space experience yields a new meaning value on deity levels of reality.
117:1.6 (1279.4) The evolving divine nature of the Supreme is becoming a faithful portrayal of the matchless experience of all creatures and of all Creators in the grand universe. In the Supreme, creatorship and creaturehood are at one; they are forever united by that experience which was born of the vicissitudes attendant upon the solution of the manifold problems which beset all finite creation as it pursues the eternal path in quest of perfection and liberation from the fetters of incompleteness.
Again…the what is “not so” important as the why and the how. The motive and intent determines our “will”. Wisdom will come from experience and maturity over time.
39:4.13 (435.6) To the inhabited worlds the quickeners of morality portray mortal life as an unbroken chain of many links. Your short sojourn on Urantia, on this sphere of mortal infancy, is only a single link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across universes and through the eternal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the experience of living this life that is important. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so important as the way in which you do this work. There is no material reward for righteous living, but there is profound satisfaction—consciousness of achievement—and this transcends any conceivable material reward.
12:7.7 (138.2) 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.
Me here: I think it is a sublimely ridiculous exercise for us to presume we might possibly determine “what” God would do at any intersection of freewill choice, with the infinite wisdom and existential perspective only God enjoys. But we know God’s love and mercy and patience and generosity. Perhaps whatever we do we might demonstrate such compassion in our caring and sharing?
Remember that we are all God’s children and all hope, ideals, trust, morality, generosity, kindness, forgiveness, duty, loyalty, and love are the result of being “spirit-led”!!
3:5.15 (52.1) Throughout the universe, every unit is regarded as a part of the whole. Survival of the part is dependent on co-operation with the plan and purpose of the whole, the wholehearted desire and perfect willingness to do the Father’s divine will. The only evolutionary world without error (the possibility of unwise judgment) would be a world without free intelligence. In the Havona universe there are a billion perfect worlds with their perfect inhabitants, but evolving man must be fallible if he is to be free. Free and inexperienced intelligence cannot possibly at first be uniformly wise. The possibility of mistaken judgment (evil) becomes sin only when the human will consciously endorses and knowingly embraces a deliberate immoral judgment.
3:5.16 (52.2) The full appreciation of truth, beauty, and goodness is inherent in the perfection of the divine universe. The inhabitants of the Havona worlds do not require the potential of relative value levels as a choice stimulus; such perfect beings are able to identify and choose the good in the absence of all contrastive and thought-compelling moral situations. But all such perfect beings are, in moral nature and spiritual status, what they are by virtue of the fact of existence. They have experientially earned advancement only within their inherent status. Mortal man earns even his status as an ascension candidate by his own faith and hope. Everything divine which the human mind grasps and the human soul acquires is an experiential attainment; it is a reality of personal experience and is therefore a unique possession in contrast to the inherent goodness and righteousness of the inerrant personalities of Havona.
3:5.17 (52.3) The creatures of Havona are naturally brave, but they are not courageous in the human sense. They are innately kind and considerate, but hardly altruistic in the human way. They are expectant of a pleasant future, but not hopeful in the exquisite manner of the trusting mortal of the uncertain evolutionary spheres. They have faith in the stability of the universe, but they are utter strangers to that saving faith whereby mortal man climbs from the status of an animal up to the portals of Paradise. They love the truth, but they know nothing of its soul-saving qualities. They are idealists, but they were born that way; they are wholly ignorant of the ecstasy of becoming such by exhilarating choice. They are loyal, but they have never experienced the thrill of wholehearted and intelligent devotion to duty in the face of temptation to default. They are unselfish, but they never gained such levels of experience by the magnificent conquest of a belligerent self. They enjoy pleasure, but they do not comprehend the sweetness of the pleasure escape from the pain potential.
So…everything that’s wrong in life and all human suffering is caused by freewill, or more accurately and correctly, by false liberty. There are only two possible solutions available: no freewill or true liberty. But true liberty must be chosen by freewill creatures for it to end suffering and deliver the potentials of truth, beauty, and goodness.
Those who propose that God deliver us from evil by Armageddon or Divine Intervention really seek the termination of freewill rather than embrace God’s will…which IS freewill and True Liberty.
1. True and False Liberty
54:1.1 (613.3) Of all the perplexing problems growing out of the Lucifer rebellion, none has occasioned more difficulty than the failure of immature evolutionary mortals to distinguish between true and false liberty.
54:1.2 (613.4) True liberty is the quest of the ages and the reward of evolutionary progress. False liberty is the subtle deception of the error of time and the evil of space. Enduring liberty is predicated on the reality of justice—intelligence, maturity, fraternity, and equity.
54:1.3 (613.5) Liberty is a self-destroying technique of cosmic existence when its motivation is unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled. True liberty is progressively related to reality and is ever regardful of social equity, cosmic fairness, universe fraternity, and divine obligations.
54:1.4 (613.6) Liberty is suicidal when divorced from material justice, intellectual fairness, social forbearance, moral duty, and spiritual values. Liberty is nonexistent apart from cosmic reality, and all personality reality is proportional to its divinity relationships.
54:1.5 (613.7) Unbridled self-will and unregulated self-expression equal unmitigated selfishness, the acme of ungodliness. Liberty without the associated and ever-increasing conquest of self is a figment of egoistic mortal imagination. Self-motivated liberty is a conceptual illusion, a cruel deception. License masquerading in the garments of liberty is the forerunner of abject bondage.
54:1.6 (614.1) True liberty is the associate of genuine self-respect; false liberty is the consort of self-admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self-control; false liberty, the assumption of self-assertion. Self-control leads to altruistic service; self-admiration tends towards the exploitation of others for the selfish aggrandizement of such a mistaken individual as is willing to sacrifice righteous attainment for the sake of possessing unjust power over his fellow beings.
54:1.7 (614.2) Even wisdom is divine and safe only when it is cosmic in scope and spiritual in motivation.
54:1.8 (614.3) There is no error greater than that species of self-deception which leads intelligent beings to crave the exercise of power over other beings for the purpose of depriving these persons of their natural liberties. The golden rule of human fairness cries out against all such fraud, unfairness, selfishness, and unrighteousness. Only true and genuine liberty is compatible with the reign of love and the ministry of mercy.
54:1.9 (614.4) How dare the self-willed creature encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates, and subjects.
54:1.10 (614.5) Evolutionary man may have to contend for his material liberties with tyrants and oppressors on a world of sin and iniquity or during the early times of a primitive evolving sphere, but not so on the morontia worlds or on the spirit spheres. War is the heritage of early evolutionary man, but on worlds of normal advancing civilization physical combat as a technique of adjusting racial misunderstandings has long since fallen into disrepute.
So…the reaping of what is sown. The tares in the wheat. Personal progress by spiritization and its effects on evolutionary social progress. Personal suffering and second hand karma and the social consequences of false liberty and selfishness.
“Relationships of association” and “fraternal consequences of misbehavior”. These concepts are shared by all religions. Primitive peoples even blame weather or crop failure or bad hunting or a broken leg on their own or someone else’s spirit possession or violation of taboos.
Anita Bryant once falsely blamed the “sins” of gays and gay rights for drought and wildfires. Primitive indeed.
It is fascinating to consider the connection and relationship of personal causes and consequences and social repercussions.
54:6.3 (618.6) If an affectionate father of a large family chooses to show mercy to one of his children guilty of grievous wrongdoing, it may well be that the extension of mercy to this misbehaving child will work a temporary hardship upon all the other and well-behaved children. Such eventualities are inevitable; such a risk is inseparable from the reality situation of having a loving parent and of being a member of a family group. Each member of a family profits by the righteous conduct of every other member; likewise must each member suffer the immediate time-consequences of the misconduct of every other member. Families, groups, nations, races, worlds, systems, constellations, and universes are relationships of association which possess individuality; and therefore does every member of any such group, large or small, reap the benefits and suffer the consequences of the rightdoing and the wrongdoing of all other members of the group concerned.
54:6.4 (619.1) But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suffer the evil consequences of the sin of some member of your family, some fellow citizen or fellow mortal, even rebellion in the system or elsewhere—no matter what you may have to endure because of the wrongdoing of your associates, fellows, or superiors—you may rest secure in the eternal assurance that such tribulations are transient afflictions. None of these fraternal consequences of misbehavior in the group can ever jeopardize your eternal prospects or in the least degree deprive you of your divine right of Paradise ascension and God attainment.
Me here:
So…we can use our freewill to choose our personal responses to our social circumstances and situations related to those “relationships of association” and “fraternal consequences of misbehavior” even though we may have little or no control over those circumstances and consequences which cause us to suffer.
Suffering is a condition of situational proximity to its source, but also a reality of our personal response to all such repercussions of consequences. Our reality perspective and our motivation determines our response to everything that is and everything that happens, both good and bad. We cannot choose or determine what happens (perhaps), but we always and forever choose our response to whatever happens whenever it happens and no matter the repercussions or consequences or that which caused what happens.
We determine our response. Every time. No matter what happens. No matter how suddenly or unexpectedly or predictably or inexplicably, we choose our response.
We also choose our reality perspective. We choose our philosophy for living. We choose our response at every intersection of choice and decision based on our reality perspective and philosophy of living. These choices can b and do have a profound and direct impact on our situational circumstances. Today’s decisions create tomorrow’s personal outcomes.
There is much we do not and cannot choose or determine or manage or manipulate or change. But all that is true, beautiful, and good is the very foundation and elements and nature of eternal realities in God’s friendly universe. What is not those is of a material nature, and temporal and transitory and imperfect and incomplete and immature and unwise and inexperienced and self centered.
5: 5.1 (68.4) Morality has its origin in the reason of self-consciousness; it is superanimal but wholly evolutionary. Human evolution embraces in its unfolding all endowments antecedent to the bestowal of the Adjusters and to the pouring out of the Spirit of Truth. But the attainment of levels of morality does not deliver man from the real struggles of mortal living. Man’s physical environment entails the battle for existence; the social surroundings necessitate ethical adjustments; the moral situations require the making of choices in the highest realms of reason; the spiritual experience (having realized God) demands that man find him and sincerely strive to be like him.
“Relationships of association” and “fraternal consequences of misbehavior”.
So…the UB confirms my prior belief that karma takes 3 forms: personal, second hand, and social.
First…karma is not expressed by our situation or circumstances of birth. Or at least, personal karma is not. Being born poor or sick or in a war zone or in a good family or bad is not personal karma. No one is punished by their birth or personally deprived as any form of personal punishment or karma for someone else or anyone else’s sins or errors.
We may and are born into situations and circumstances that ARE the repercussions and result of other people’s choices and those may be personal, second hand, or social karmic outcomes by and of other people.
Karma results in the fruits of the Spirit OR the lack of those. Our motivation and intentions and priorities shape us, our very selfhood and character and being is determined and defined by those freewill choices. Hate and anger and fear and anxiety and self importance are mind poisons that warp character over time and deform the self and distort reality perspective and prevent spiritual progress and happiness.
Second hand karma is what my mother warned me about running with the wrong crowd, being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person/people who are going to get some repercussions for their bad choices!! Got to watch that proximity to other people’s reaping of consequences!
Mom was so right!!
So…what then is the relationship between God’s will and our personal freewill?? Does our will have to be aligned with God’s will? If so, why so? What is free about freewill if that freewill must be aligned with someone else’s will? What happens if our freewill is not aligned with God’s will? Are we punished?
Ahhhh….hmmmm…..this could take awhile!! Hahahaha!
Okay. God is the First Source and Center. God is reality. God is the source of all other reality. There is only one reality. Freewill that is not aligned with God’s will is not aligned with reality. God does not require us to sacrifice our will or forsake our will. But if our will and choices are not aligned with reality, then they are not real themselves. They are irrelevant to reality. They are unreal. Unreality cannot survive time or space. There are no eternal meanings or values associated with unreality.
There is only one universe reality but certainly there are as many personal reality perspectives as there are persons with reality perspective. Experiential beings are all given personality and freewill and time and space and Deity connections and Deity Gravity to LEARN about reality experientially. The more we learn about reality and respond to reality, the more real we become. We become spiritualized and spiritized by reality experiences which are delivered by our decisions, choices, intentions, ideals, hopes, priorities, and acts which are aligned with reality and the Spirit within – our Spirit Nature. All such experiences and expressions are ETERNAL in both source and effect. They have repercussions of an eternal nature. They change us permanently or forevermore. They are an effect and a cause. They are the realization or actualization of potential into reality itself!!
Everything we do or choose that is not of an eternal nature is temporal. Temporal is temporary. It fades. It does not last. It is not the actualization of potential. It is really irrelevant to eternal meanings or values or reality itself. It cannot survive.
We are free to choose irrelevancy. As tadpoles or newbies in this material life, it is really our faith – or Spirit response – that is most relevant and most reality aligned and most productive regarding our spiritual progress and spiritization. Our faith experience and expression does not depend upon or require any particular knowledge or belief…faith is a response to the inner presence of Spirit and it results in hope and ideals and morality and duty and loyalty and love. Those are each and all REAL and reality aligned. The fruits of the Spirit are produced simply by our connection to and response to the Spirit!!
In this material life we are judged, and our progress measured, ONLY by our heart and motivation and hope and response to God
– or the presence within. We are not judged or measured by our knowledge or understanding or beliefs or wisdom or experience. Our faith alone grows our soul and acutalizes potential into eternal reality and viability and relevance and adds to the totality of reality and the very being of God the Supreme – the Experiential Deity of time and space.So…God defines reality. God’s will is reality. To align our will with God’s will is simply to choose reality….and thereby, to choose eternity. We do so without knowing God’s will or understanding universe reality and can do so without any knowledge of reality except what we directly experience on this world of our birth and origin.
Our temporal or material origins and nature is real in its way but it is and can only be – temporary, temporal. Our soul is eternal. The freewill choices we make which have eternal meanings or value grow our soul and survive, not only death but also survive all of time and into eternity, never ending reality. That which is temporal or non-eternal cannot survive time or last and offers no real meaning or value in our eternal nature or potential.
So…God does not require that we align our will with God’s or with reality. But our relevancy and our eternal adventure depends upon our response to reality which does, all by itself, actualize our potential and deliver eternity to us. As we gain experience and knowledge and wisdom, we will also gain perspective of universe reality and become more and more real and more and more relevant and more and more effective in our being.
We will still be us…or me. I will always be me. You will always be you. We are self creating (more acurately – co-created by personality and by Deity) by the choices and the values and the motives and the perspective and the experience and the expression of that experience that is uniquely and personally us. We can never be God. God doesn’t want us to be God. There already is God. But there’s only one of you too!! God’s beloved child. A gift to universe reality born in time!
12:7.1 (137.4) There is operative throughout all time and space and with regard to all reality of whatever nature an inexorable and impersonal law which is equivalent to the function of a cosmic providence. Mercy characterizes God’s attitude of love for the individual; impartiality motivates God’s attitude toward the total. The will of God does not necessarily prevail in the part—the heart of any one personality—but his will does actually rule the whole, the universe of universes.
12:7.2 (137.5) In all his dealings with all his beings it is true that the laws of God are not inherently arbitrary. To you, with your limited vision and finite viewpoint, the acts of God must often appear to be dictatorial and arbitrary. The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of repeatedly doing things; and he ever does all things well. You observe that God does the same thing in the same way, repeatedly, simply because that is the best way to do that particular thing in a given circumstance; and the best way is the right way, and therefore does infinite wisdom always order it done in that precise and perfect manner. You should also remember that nature is not the exclusive act of Deity; other influences are present in those phenomena which man calls nature.
12:7.3 (137.6) It is repugnant to the divine nature to suffer any sort of deterioration or ever to permit the execution of any purely personal act in an inferior way. It should be made clear, however, that, if, in the divinity of any situation, in the extremity of any circumstance, in any case where the course of supreme wisdom might indicate the demand for different conduct—if the demands of perfection might for any reason dictate another method of reaction, a better one, then and there would the all-wise God function in that better and more suitable way. That would be the expression of a higher law, not the reversal of a lower law.
12:7.4 (137.7) God is not a habit-bound slave to the chronicity of the repetition of his own voluntary acts. There is no conflict among the laws of the Infinite; they are all perfections of the infallible nature; they are all the unquestioned acts expressive of faultless decisions. Law is the unchanging reaction of an infinite, perfect, and divine mind. The acts of God are all volitional notwithstanding this apparent sameness. In God there “is no variableness neither shadow of changing.” But all this which can be truly said of the Universal Father cannot be said with equal certainty of all his subordinate intelligences or of his evolutionary creatures.
12:7.5 (137. Because God is changeless, therefore can you depend, in all ordinary circumstances, on his doing the same thing in the same identical and ordinary way. God is the assurance of stability for all created things and beings. He is God; therefore he changes not.
12:7.6 (138.1) And all this steadfastness of conduct and uniformity of action is personal, conscious, and highly volitional, for the great God is not a helpless slave to his own perfection and infinity. God is not a self-acting automatic force; he is not a slavish law-bound power. God is neither a mathematical equation nor a chemical formula. He is a freewill and primal personality. He is the Universal Father, a being surcharged with personality and the universal fount of all creature personality.
12:7.7 (138.2) 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.
Punishment. What a concept. Primitives (ancient and modern/contemporary) believe good luck and bad luck are personally and intentionally imposed upon us by good and bad spirits. Or that the gods are arbitrary pranksters who take pleasure in causing suffering and only certain ceremonies or incantations can protect potential victims. Others believe in pure chance or fate to explain life’s circumstances and outcomes.
And some primitives claim that God is singular but angry and that all suffering is punishment, personal and collective, for displeasing and disappointing the demands and requirements for atonement and redemption.
The UB teaches all such beliefs are false and originate in fear but also from our acute awareness of the Divine Connection with and Divine Presence within mortal mind. Our Spirit nature feels that connction and Presence and mind seeks to explain and understand that part of mind and being that is so much more than material or animal in our selfhood experience.
The simplistic and primitive explanation for suffering is punishment of the one and/or the many by one god or the few gods or their evil spirit agents or dead peoples’ spirits who haunt the guilty and/or bless the compliant.
The Papers teach a much more practical and reasonable cause AND cure for human suffering. How is it that some evil people materially prosper and profit by their sins while good people are victimized and suffer -quite often at the hands of the wicked?
Some say our suffering is proof there is no God. Others claim our suffering is evidence that God is angry and demanding. Some believe life itself is cruel and only the strong and vicious enjoy the spoils of domination (the law of the jungle).
The UB has much to say about suffering and its causes and cures. And about karma and reciprocity and repercussions and consequences related to life and freewill choices.
Human suffering is a critical component of evolutionary progress and experiential wisdom. Human suffering causes thinking and problem solving to overcome or prevent our suffering. Suffering is not imposed. Rather it is a result or an outcome or an effect with a cause, which is itself a motive or cause for a response in choice and act to change that result.
Animals suffer too of course. They too adapt and learn by suffering. But only human mind gains wisdom and becomes reflective regarding causes and effects and can predict outcomes by forethought and calculation.
Suffering is the inevitable result of non-alignment with and ignorance of reality. Ignoring or defying reality causes suffering whether the reality in question is material or spiritual. There are natural laws and spiritual realities which form universe realities. The violation of those laws and realities delivers consequences and repercussions, while personal alignment and conformity with universe realities delivers progress and benefits and blessings to the each and the all.
Remember…there are two levels of reality – material and spiritual. Materially, it is possible for the wicked to prosper and the good to suffer.
Not so spiritually. The good spiritually progress and prosper no matter their material outcomes or material suffering. The law of the jungle delivers one set of material outcomes while the Golden Rule delivers quite another. So…material suffering can be and is affected by our spiritualized motives and freewill choices. Material suffering is caused by false liberty and the domination of the few over the many – the law of the jungle – me first and right now! Material suffering is eased, and eventually cured and prevented, by the caring and sharing motives and results of the Golden Rule.
But truly, karma is more about our mental and emotional suffering by our motives, intentions, priorities, choices, and acts. And by our alignment with the Golden Rule and Brotherhood or Family of Creation realities. All material realities are temporal in form and function and nature. Spirit realities are enduring, even eternal. So…we should be far more concerned with and engaged with Spirit realities. The UB teaches that all material realities will respond positively to
true motives and intentions. Experiential wisdom will also and certainly improve material outcomes and reduce suffering, but true experiential wisdom is also the child of our personal and collective spiritualization.So again….there are advantages and benefits to reality alignments and there are consequences and repercussions to dis-alignment or un-alignment or ignorance of or the disregard for universe realities.
Personal and epochal revelation are the lever and the fulcrum for progressive attainment of reality alignment. Suffering comes from not being aligned. Relief from suffering comes by alignment. God’s way and will are reality. Is our way and will aligned with reality??? Then why are you/we suffering?
Think about it.
God’s will is happiness for the children of time. Happiness is not the fruit of materialism or ego. But is only the result of spiritization and the flow of love (truth, beauty, and goodness) through our Being.
(1097.7) 100:4.3 But the great problem of religious living consists in the task of unifying the soul powers of the personality by the dominance of LOVE. Health, mental efficiency, and happiness arise from the unification of physical systems, mind systems, and spirit systems. Of health and sanity man understands much, but of happiness he has truly realized very little. The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding.
(1220.6) 111:4.7 Happiness and joy take origin in the inner life. You cannot experience real joy all by yourself. A solitary life is fatal to happiness. Even families and nations will enjoy life more if they share it with others.
(1581.4) 140:8.17 Jesus frequently warned his listeners against covetousness, declaring that “a man’s happiness consists not in the abundance of his material possessions.” He constantly reiterated, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?….
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