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Thanks to Julian and Nigel!! I am glad others enjoy such topical studies too! My reading and research in this Epochal Revelation of universe reality perspective thrills and satisfies me still. I am grateful for this place and those servants of truth who provide this forum for such contemplations, reflections, and expressions of understanding (or at least the attempt to understand new meanings and discover values).
I love conundrum and paradox. They are like puzzles or mysteries, challenging our perception, discernment, reasoning, and understanding, concealing a logical and symmetrical solution.
The catch-22, the riddle, dilemma, the zen koan, yin and yang, duality of being, science and religion. When the mind pierces paradox and grasps the solution (or truth) of paradox and that understanding of new meanings is achieved, then is our reality perspective adjusted and expanded.
Jesus taught by parable and by paradox. Personal progress and spiritization require reality integration and harmonization of the material world and spirit realm. Faith delivers soul and passage to the heavenly abode…but personal progress and reality integration delivers eternity.
Spiritual progress requires that we struggle. We are forged by our struggles and suffering, tempered by conflict and by its resolution, by the discovery of meanings and values.
“Struggle”:
https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/se … &op=Search
“Struggles”:
https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/search?keys=Struggles&op=Search
100:4.1 (1097.5) Religious living is devoted living, and devoted living is creative living, original and spontaneous. New religious insights arise out of conflicts which initiate the choosing of new and better reaction habits in the place of older and inferior reaction patterns. New meanings only emerge amid conflict; and conflict persists only in the face of refusal to espouse the higher values connoted in superior meanings.
100:4.2 (1097.6) Religious perplexities are inevitable; there can be no growth without psychic conflict and spiritual agitation. The organization of a philosophic standard of living entails considerable commotion in the philosophic realms of the mind. Loyalties are not exercised in behalf of the great, the good, the true, and the noble without a struggle. Effort is attendant upon clarification of spiritual vision and enhancement of cosmic insight. And the human intellect protests against being weaned from subsisting upon the nonspiritual energies of temporal existence. The slothful animal mind rebels at the effort required to wrestle with cosmic problem solving.
100:4.3 (1097.7) 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.
6. The Human Paradox
111:6.1 (1221.
Many of the temporal troubles of mortal man grow out of his twofold relation to the cosmos. Man is a part of nature—he exists in nature—and yet he is able to transcend nature. Man is finite, but he is indwelt by a spark of infinity. Such a dual situation not only provides the potential for evil but also engenders many social and moral situations fraught with much uncertainty and not a little anxiety.111:6.2 (1222.1) The courage required to effect the conquest of nature and to transcend one’s self is a courage that might succumb to the temptations of self-pride. The mortal who can transcend self might yield to the temptation to deify his own self-consciousness. The mortal dilemma consists in the double fact that man is in bondage to nature while at the same time he possesses a unique liberty—freedom of spiritual choice and action. On material levels man finds himself subservient to nature, while on spiritual levels he is triumphant over nature and over all things temporal and finite. Such a paradox is inseparable from temptation, potential evil, decisional errors, and when self becomes proud and arrogant, sin may evolve.
111:6.3 (1222.2) The problem of sin is not self-existent in the finite world. The fact of finiteness is not evil or sinful. The finite world was made by an infinite Creator—it is the handiwork of his divine Sons—and therefore it must be good. It is the misuse, distortion, and perversion of the finite that gives origin to evil and sin.
111:6.4 (1222.3) The spirit can dominate mind; so mind can control energy. But mind can control energy only through its own intelligent manipulation of the metamorphic potentials inherent in the mathematical level of the causes and effects of the physical domains. Creature mind does not inherently control energy; that is a Deity prerogative. But creature mind can and does manipulate energy just in so far as it has become master of the energy secrets of the physical universe.
111:6.5 (1222.4) When man wishes to modify physical reality, be it himself or his environment, he succeeds to the extent that he has discovered the ways and means of controlling matter and directing energy. Unaided mind is impotent to influence anything material save its own physical mechanism, with which it is inescapably linked. But through the intelligent use of the body mechanism, mind can create other mechanisms, even energy relationships and living relationships, by the utilization of which this mind can increasingly control and even dominate its physical level in the universe.
One example of such dilemma and conundrum is the Master’s teaching about “thou shall not”, or negative and exclusionary behavior modification (that itself is truly fear based), compared to the far more effective and fruitful positive admonition to do the right thing for the right reason…being righteous for righteousness sake rather than the simple avoidance of suffering spirit poisons and the karmic repercussions of inferior choices.
It is better therefore to eliminate spirit poisons by reliance on our faith, hope, ideals, loyalties, spirit connection response, and the positive result of positive belief, thought, motivation, best intentions, and good decisions, rather than mere avoidance of the negative.
So…hmmm….displacement of negativity is best achieved by hope and faith taking its place rather than by merely contending with or denying and avoiding (somehow) the negativism of emotional impulses based on fear.
The mind and human will are amazing and able to achieve much. Buddhism teaches a method and discipline of “empty mind”, which similarly seeks to avoid and eliminate spirit poisons in the pursuit of enlightenment. One, it is taught, cannot grasp truth or receive insight or “see” reality with the mind polluted by emotional poisons and negative chatter in our mind.
The “empty mind” is not the result or the enlightened mind desired, but it prepares and presents a cleansed and open mind to discover and discern reality by illumination within…enlightenment cannot come to a cluttered and busy or poisoned mind.
The Urantia Papers teach that likewise is prayer a device or method and discipline to receive insight and comfort and solutions and wisdom and prepare/present the mind for worship.
140:4.7 (1572.7) “By their fruits you shall know them.” Personality is basically changeless; that which changes—grows—is the moral character. The major error of modern religions is negativism. The tree which bears no fruit is “hewn down and cast into the fire.” Moral worth cannot be derived from mere repression—obeying the injunction “Thou shalt not.” Fear and shame are unworthy motivations for religious living. Religion is valid only when it reveals the fatherhood of God and enhances the brotherhood of men.
140:4.8 (1572.8) An effective philosophy of living is formed by a combination of cosmic insight and the total of one’s emotional reactions to the social and economic environment. Remember: While inherited urges cannot be fundamentally modified, emotional responses to such urges can be changed; therefore the moral nature can be modified, character can be improved. In the strong character emotional responses are integrated and co-ordinated, and thus is produced a unified personality. Deficient unification weakens the moral nature and engenders unhappiness.
140:4.9 (1572.9) Without a worthy goal, life becomes aimless and unprofitable, and much unhappiness results. Jesus’ discourse at the ordination of the twelve constitutes a master philosophy of life. Jesus exhorted his followers to exercise experiential faith. He admonished them not to depend on mere intellectual assent, credulity, and established authority.
140:4.10 (1573.1) Education should be a technique of learning (discovering) the better methods of gratifying our natural and inherited urges, and happiness is the resulting total of these enhanced techniques of emotional satisfactions. Happiness is little dependent on environment, though pleasing surroundings may greatly contribute thereto.
140:4.11 (1573.2) Every mortal really craves to be a complete person, to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect, and such attainment is possible because in the last analysis the “universe is truly fatherly.”
16:7.7 (193.6) Man’s choosing between good and evil is influenced, not only by the keenness of his moral nature, but also by such influences as ignorance, immaturity, and delusion. A sense of proportion is also concerned in the exercise of virtue because evil may be perpetrated when the lesser is chosen in the place of the greater as a result of distortion or deception. The art of relative estimation or comparative measurement enters into the practice of the virtues of the moral realm.
Lots to consider here.
Remember that the Urantia Papers define “evil” as error. Deliberate and intentional choices we know to be wrong, for self gain or self advantage (especially at the expense or loss or suffering of another) is not evil/error but is considered sin and sinful.
Sin is not the topic of the quoted text..but error is the topic.
Inexperience and inadequate wisdom or immaturity and reality perspective distortion results in less than perfect, or even desirable, outcomes. The goodness and righteousness and effectiveness of every choice is relative according to our experience and wisdom and reality perspective, no matter how pure our heart or noble our intentions.
“….when the lesser is chosen in place of the greater...”
Me here: Proper, spirit and morality led choices between right and wrong do not require so much experiential wisdom as does choosing between what’s right and what’s best in a situation. Experiential wisdom leads us to the better choice…and then to the even better choice.
So…there’s what’s ‘right’…and there’s what’s better within or also right. There’s a spectrum and scale related to wisdom and choice that affects outcomes spectacularly!! The universe of universes is experientially evolving toward perfection by greater and greater wisdom achieved only by acquired experience.
Mind and spirit poisons offer no assistance or advantage in such pursuit. But they diminish and distort all potentials of wisdom at the intersections of choice for each and all.
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