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Bonita, I am so grateful for your help understanding the complexity in the UB. I find myself re-reading many of your posts (including the old site on “The Soul”) and soon I think a more holistic understanding will be reached as I slowly but more accurately piece it all together. You make this task so much easier with your talent for explaining things and your colourful examples! I see now how spirit energy changes “unity of function, or balance and symmetry of selfhood”.
There is truly only one reality…but there are trillions of personalized, partial, and incomplete perspectives of that reality.
This is so obvious after it is pointed out. I needed a large neon arrow. Sorry for my allusive comment on “inheritance”, Bradly. It relates to your comment quoted here. I think our “inheritance” is clear to those on this forum — The inheritance (Thought Adjuster) you receive from a relative (God the Father) the intimate relationship with whom, many never knew they had. A year ago the presence and constant readiness of my Thought Adjuster to assist my progress was news to me. Those unaware will come to realise the gift of their Thought Adjuster and the significance this holds for them in every moment of every day. That is a truly beautiful thought.
I am blown away to be reminded that it is possible to achieve survival in one lifetime!
The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality — actuality — of that man. 117:4.14 (1285.3)
Bradly wrote: I find it interesting that there are 7 stages of planetary L&L as well as 7 psychic circles.Yes, and there are seven mansion worlds, seven superuniverses, seven Master Spirits and seven Absolutes. It doesn’t mean that they’re all directly comparable to one another. The mansion worlds are where we go to finish the psychic circles. The fifth and sixth mansion worlds are similar to the early stages of planetary light and life, and this is where most personalities fuse and begin living in light and life.
47:7.1 Transport to the fifth mansion world represents a tremendous forward step in the life of a morontia progressor. The experience on this world is a real foretaste of Jerusem life. Here you begin to realize the high destiny of the loyal evolutionary worlds since they may normally progress to this stage during their natural planetary development. The culture of this mansion world corresponds in general to that of the early era of light and life on the planets of normal evolutionary progress. And from this you can understand why it is so arranged that the highly cultured and progressive types of beings who sometimes inhabit these advanced evolutionary worlds are exempt from passing through one or more, or even all, of the mansion spheres.
47:8.7 During the sojourn on world number six the mansion world students achieve a status which is comparable with the exalted development characterizing those evolutionary worlds which have normally progressed beyond the initial stage of light and life.
47:8.3 This is a brilliant age for ascending mortals and usually witnesses the perfect fusion of the human mind and the divine Adjuster. In potential, this fusion may have occurred previously, but the actual working identity many times is not achieved until the time of the sojourn on the fifth mansion world or even the sixth..
Bradly wrote: I would propose that a mortal who has begun to transfer the seat of identity and begins to experience the fruits of the spirit has entered into a personal L&L phase of living.If that is so, why don’t they describe Jesus’ early life as a phase of light and life? Why do they say that he achieved light and life at his baptism? If Jesus were only a mortal man, he would have fused at his baptism. (And incidentally, Jesus completed his first and final psychic circle in mid-August 25 AD and was ready for fusion on January 14 26 AD.)55:11.7 Jesus of Nazareth, as a man among men, personally achieved the status of light and life over nineteen hundred years ago on Urantia.134:8.4 Jesus spent the last three weeks of August and the first three weeks of September on Mount Hermon. During these weeks he finished the mortal task of achieving the circles of mind-understanding and personality-control. Throughout this period of communion with his heavenly Father the indwelling Adjuster also completed the assigned services. The mortal goal of this earth creature was there attained. Only the final phase of mind and Adjuster attunement remained to be consummated.136:2.3 Ordinarily, when a mortal of the realm attains such high levels of personality perfection, there occur those preliminary phenomena of spiritual elevation which terminate in eventual fusion of the matured soul of the mortal with its associated divine Adjuster. And such a change was apparently due to take place in the personality experience of Jesus of Nazareth on that very day when he went down into the Jordan with his two brothers to be baptized by John.Bradly wrote: Life is not perfect in the early phases of either planetary or personal L&L. Each phase actualizes more potential and demonstrates further progress but material/mortal evolution is not complete.Neither is life perfect after a person fuses. There’s an entire ascension career of perfecting ahead, a career of actualizing potentials forever.
Bradly wrote: When someone demonstrates and experiences the fruits of the spirit, I believe they have entered the kingdom, the brotherhood, and the early stages of L&L….no matter their personal circle progress.So you claim that being born of the spirit is the same as personal light and life in its early stages and that it doesn’t matter if you’re a seventh circler or a first circler. If that is true, then how are the psychic circles related to planetary light and life again? If they are comparable, then a seventh circler, potentially a six year old, would be living early stages of light and life. And you say that light and life can start anywhere in the psychic circles, so what happens when a person doesn’t experience light and life until the fourth circle? How are the seventh, sixth and fifth circle related to the seven stages of planetary light and life in that case? Would there be no light and life in those circles then? It’s not adding up. Don’t you think it odd that the planetary stages of light and life go from one to seven, whereas the psychic circles go from seven to one. I would say that the first psychic circle is more like the first stage of light and life. That makes more sense to me.
Bradly wrote: I wonder if “settled” in L&L is like being settled in mind to achieve finality/eternity. I recall such a personal commitment comes prior to fusion. “Settled” does not denote “completed”.No, settled means stable. Only reality is stable and a personality doesn’t become “real” and stable until it has mastered all seven psychic circles and fused with the source of reality, the Adjuster. Being settled in personal light and life means that the conflicts of duality (conflict between good and evil) no longer exist because the personality has become united with a spiritual focal point which forever makes it a stable identity in the universe, its divinity is fixed, meaning its choice for goodness over evil is forever fixed. But fixation of divinity quality does not mean that there is no further growth in divinity. It means that there is no going back. There can be no regression back to evil, only progression to further goodness. The universe is about progression toward the Supreme, a movement toward making potentials actual in reality. It is a time when everything and everybody is settled, stabilized, divinely “fixed,” and spiritualized. All the potentials for this era will have become actualized and permanently stable under spirit dominance of the Supreme.112.7.1 Thought Adjuster fusion imparts eternal actualities to personality which were previously only potential. Among these new endowments may be mentioned: fixation of divinity quality, past-eternity experience and memory, immortality, and a phase of qualified potential absoluteness.
21:5.4 The elevation of a sevenfold bestowal Son to the unquestioned sovereignty of his universe means the beginning of the end of agelong uncertainty and relative confusion. Subsequent to this event, that which cannot be sometime spiritualized will eventually be disorganized; that which cannot be sometime co-ordinated with cosmic reality will eventually be destroyed.
Bradly, you say that as soon as a person exhibits fruits of the spirit they have entered the kingdom and are beginning to live in light and life. I think that entering the kingdom means being born of the spirit. I don’t disagree with the idea that being born of the spirit brings some stability to life along with the light of life in the soul. But, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s anything like the stability and divinity attunement experienced when arriving at personal light and life. That is something which happens sometime after completing the first circle, just like Jesus did. I think there is a difference between light of life and actual light and life. If being born of the spirit means recognition of the divine light within, then being born of the spirit means coming out of darkness into the light of life on the way to the union of light and life.162:5.2 I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.
Angela wrote: You make this task so much easier with your talent for explaining things and your colourful examples! I see now how spirit energy changes “unity of function, or balance and symmetry of selfhood”.Thanks Angela. Your words make a difference. They really do. So many times I ask myself, “what the heck are you doing with all this writing?” To be honest, I never know the right answer to that question. Sometimes it really seems silly to me to bother at all, that there are other more worthwhile things to do with my time. But I’m drawn to it for some reason. I’ve been at it now for a decade. For the most part, folks have told me I’m on an ego trip, hell bent on deceiving people and destroying the revelation, a veritable antichrist. So, when someone says the opposite, I’m amazed! All lit up like it’s Christmas! Thanks a zillion.
Thanks Bonita….as usual, your logic and scholarship are impeccable. It’s been my privilege and delight to learn by your patient and persistent sharing for over four years now. Your generosity and willingness to discover and teach together has been a true blessing in my life and perspective of my life today and to come. The Revelation says what it says…and don’t say what it don’t. Scholarship in fact and truth is no vice, but rather, is a duty and honor and a teaching in the UB, itself a divine gift of fact and truth to bring light to the truth seeker and Paradise Pilgrims of our world. Stay strong Sister….that which you know and share is sorely needed by those of us who study together and learn of universe realities to help us be true to our spirit nature.
I would offer that we are “potential” even more than we are “actualized” when considering the question “who am I” as mortals upon our world of birth/origin. We are given a perfect and unique personality, a pattern and framework for the additional gifts of mind and free will to build an even more unique character by the experience of choosing and becoming – actualizing our being – by our cooperation with all the loving, kind, and gentle ministries of mind and spirit. We are not named in the universe until fusion – our potential. Once fused, all potential will eventually be realized. Then we continue ascension into finality…for us, as agondontors. And some day, we fly to the adventures which await in partnership with the Supreme to new levels of reality and potential.
Thanks to all who attend here and express their love, friendship, and perspective in this place for sharing and caring. Wonderful.
Dear Bonita – just to add to Angela’s and Bradly’s comments, I too appreciate all the hours upon hours of editing and adjusting your truly valuable writings.
Just remember — don’t be too hard on the one your Adjuster loves so deeply
Nigel
I thought I’d share a page from my mini-ebook on the Holy Spirit as it is pertinent to this topic about identity:
Human beings are permitted to chose their own identity. They can associate themselves with different aspects of reality according to their own liking. The ideas people usually associate themselves with are the ones they recognize and comprehend as having meaning in their lives. A progressing individual strives for greater meaning, and we are told that it is not so much what a person is, but what a person is striving to become, that really matters to the cosmos.
For evolving humans there are two basic types of identity to choose from, temporal and eternal. Temporal identity is focused on material and earthly things; eternal identity is focused on spiritual values. The goal of experience is to transfer one’s identity from an infatuation with the transient material aspects of life to the more enduring and potentially eternal realities discovered within the morontia soul.
What a person strives to become is what a person is attempting to identify with. To identify with something is to recognize its value and desire to make it personally meaningful. For this reason, the character of the personality reflects what it identifies with. The character of a personality striving to identify with the spirit within its soul will reflect spiritual fruit as a consequence.
Striving is a discovery process which leads the mortal mind to the morontia soul and the Spirit who indwells it. The mind aroused by the spirits of worship and wisdom is the gateway to the soul, and the path through that gateway is illuminated by the combined ministries of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Truth. Discovering that gateway and beginning on the path to higher meanings requires but a flicker of faith, a drop of desire. However, continuing on the path requires persistent dedication, and most of all, striving to love. Love is capable of identifying the will of God, and it is literally true that Deity must be loved in order to be known.
- 111:1.5 And it is not so much what mind comprehends as what mind desires to comprehend that insures survival; it is not so much what mind is like as what mind is striving to be like that constitutes spirit identification.
- 107:6.2 Your individual Adjusters work to spiritize you in the hope of eternalizing your temporal identity.
- 5:2.4 The proof of fraternity with the divine Adjuster consists wholly in the nature and extent of the fruits of the spirit which are yielded in the life experience of the individual believer. “By their fruits you shall know them.”
- 2:6.9 Love identifies the volitional will of God.
On potential and identity:
112:2.20 (1229.7) The material self, the ego-entity of human identity, is dependent during the physical life on the continuing function of the material life vehicle, on the continued existence of the unbalanced equilibrium of energies and intellect which, on Urantia, has been given the name life. But selfhood of survival value, selfhood that can transcend the experience of death, is only evolved by establishing a potential transfer of the seat of the identity of the evolving personality from the transient life vehicle — the material body — to the more enduring and immortal nature of the morontia soul and on beyond to those levels whereon the soul becomes infused with, and eventually attains the status of, spirit reality. This actual transfer from material association to morontia identification is effected by the sincerity, persistence, and steadfastness of the God-seeking decisions of the human creature.
110:7.5 (1212.6) When the evolving soul and the divine Adjuster are finally and eternally fused, each gains all of the experiencible qualities of the other. This co-ordinate personality possesses all of the experiential memory of survival once held by the ancestral mortal mind and then resident in the morontia soul, and in addition thereto this potential finaliter embraces all the experiential memory of the Adjuster throughout the mortal indwellings of all time. But it will require an eternity of the future for an Adjuster ever completely to endow the personality partnership with the meanings and values which the divine Monitor carries forward from the eternity of the past.
As I recall, there is text which says that potential which becomes realized/actualized creates ever more potential for even more realization still to come. Our own potential expands by its own realization over time by increased experience and wisdom. An endless cause and effect loop magnifying unknown potentials that are, as of yet, not even recognized as potential. In each life and in the collective universes, every embrace and expression of truth, beauty, and goodness (love) is another seed planted with more potential for the each and the all, which “will require an eternity” to be fully expressed.
I thought I’d share a page from my mini-ebook on the Holy Spirit as it is pertinent to this topic about identity:
Thanks Bonita!! I think one of the most important opportunities on this Forum is for each student to learn to articulate the contents of the Revelation by writing about our growing understanding of the text. For new readers, simply learning what the UB says on multiple topics is very important, but for the student who is to also learn to teach others (a mandate given in the Papers – you have not learned what you cannot teach), such personal expressions of knowledge and understanding is a challenge. The next challenge is to learn how to give such expression in different settings to different religionists in a way that is a finding of common beliefs in ways which allow the introduction of knowledge in a non-threatening or self righteous manner.
The willingness to so share must be combined with wisdom and graciousness and where better to learn than this place and others like it where sincere students may freely share concepts and perspective in a nurturing environment for such sharing….and caring.
Bradly wrote: As I recall, there is text which says that potential which becomes realized/actualized creates ever more potential for even more realization still to come. Our own potential expands by its own realization over time by increased experience and wisdom. An endless cause and effect loop magnifying unknown potentials that are, as of yet, not even recognized as potential.The quote I think you are referring to is 115:3.6 which states that the final dynamics of the universe concerns transferring potentials to actuals. There can never be an end to potentials since the source is the I AM. We also know that gravity response reacts only to actuals, which functions to return them to their source as well as maintain cohesiveness and stability. Actuals open a revelation of more potentials for recognition and growth, a process which will never end because the source of potentials never ends.
p1263:3 115:3.16 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.
For us humans we actuate by choice, and if we choose a higher truth, it will actualize. Untruths will not actualize, they cannot be acted out because they are unreal. The reason why living truth, the process of actuating potentials, increases the possibility for further growth has to do with human free will. Free will can only function within actualized reality. But because human mind has a spirit nucleus, it can strive to discover, recognize and interpret unactualized (potential) reality, then exercise volition to actualize it as a finite reality. This widens the scope of free-will choice. Unactualized reality (potential) and creative imagination are cousins. And that is why the Adjuster can do some really fine work of revealing cosmic potentials within the “controlled channels of creative imagination.” And that is also why the Spirit of Truth is so valuable in translating and revealing ways to actualize, or live those potentials.
p1300:3 118:6.7 Volition, the act of choosing, must function within the universe frame which has actualized in response to higher and prior choosing. The entire range of human will is strictly finite-limited except in one particular: When man chooses to find God and to be like him, such a choice is superfinite; only eternity can disclose whether this choice is also superabsonite.
109:5.1 Supreme and self-acting Adjusters are often able to contribute factors of spiritual import to the human mind when it flows freely in the liberated but controlled channels of creative imagination. At such times, and sometimes during sleep, the Adjuster is able to arrest the mental currents, to stay the flow, and then to divert the idea procession; and all this is done in order to effect deep spiritual transformations in the higher recesses of the superconsciousness. Thus are the forces and energies of mind more fully adjusted to the key of the contactual tones of the spiritual level of the present and the future.
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.
[Incidentally, in the last quote the author explains how the gateway works. First, organize knowledge and ideas of the material mind. Second, appeal to the spirit of wisdom to transform them into worshipful ideals. This shoots the thoughts straight up the gateway to the Holy Spirit of the soul where the Adjuster can spiritize them and the Spirit of Truth can translate them and send them back through the gateway to the material mind for action. We then, by our own free will, choose to take action and a new reality has become actualized as living truth, the living God. Not to mention that this free-will action based upon the partnership between the Adjuster and material mind causes a new invasion of divinity within the soul, which causes it to grow, and thus provides more capacity for illumination of further potentials.]
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