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Indeed Bonita….a most interesting topic. I wonder if we can further define “feelings”? There are nearly 50 quotes to be found by a key word search for “feelings”.
If feelings and emotions are the same or closely related, I find an interesting correlation to both the mind poisons and the fruits of the spirit to “feelings”. The mind poisons are obstacles to spirit while the fruits are the result of spirit growth. Interesting.
Feelings do seem to have more power in mind/heart than “thinking” does. We are moved by feelings, both the good ones and the bad ones. Or are feelings an expression or realization or confirmation of something in-mind? Thanks for the Adjutant connection Bonita.
“…the mental poisons of fear, anger, envy, jealousy, suspicion, and intolerance likewise tremendously interfere with the spiritual progress of the evolving soul.”
“…for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.”
101:1.3 (1104.6) The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God, hears the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind. “Without holiness no man may see the Lord.” All such inner and spiritual communion is termed spiritual insight. Such religious experiences result from the impress made upon the mind of man by the combined operations of the Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth as they function amid and upon the ideas, ideals, insights, and spirit strivings of the evolving sons of God.
101:1.4 (1105.1) Religion lives and prospers, then, not by sight and feeling, but rather by faith and insight. It consists not in the discovery of new facts or in the finding of a unique experience, but rather in the discovery of new and spiritual meanings in facts already well known to mankind. The highest religious experience is not dependent on prior acts of belief, tradition, and authority; neither is religion the offspring of sublime feelings and purely mystical emotions. It is, rather, a profoundly deep and actual experience of spiritual communion with the spirit influences resident within the human mind, and as far as such an experience is definable in terms of psychology, it is simply the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God as the reality of such a purely personal experience.
Very much enjoying the depth, breadth and warmth of the exchanges.Zuimon wrote in part: I like Rick’s initial questions and have often wondered about such things – does anyone feel these presences specifically at work within them? Rick – what about you having posted such questions?“Have you wondered if you can sometimes discern the Spirit of Truth at work, distinct from the Indweller, and the Holy Spirit? No doubt they all work as one and are difficult to distinguish, but is there some subtle difference in feeling or outworking that you have noted?”
Zuimon, for me there is just a sense of rightness, or not rightness, often quite noticeable, but no distinguishing the source at all. One has to wonder, after reading what’s disclosed in the UB, did the angels prompt that truthsome thought, or was it the Indweller, maybe the soul, could it have been the Spirit of Truth, what about an Adjutant?? Rich heritage, eh?
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Richard E Warren
Bradly wrote: I wonder if we can further define “feelings”?Years and years ago on the forum I tried to make a distinction between emotions and feelings but to no avail. Nobody bought my definitions. But I think we have to define them in some way in order to have a discussion. Personally, I think feelings have to do with sensations and perceptions. Although our sensations are mostly physical, I do believe there are such things as spiritual feelings, such as the ability to feel the presence of God. Emotions, on the other hand, I think are attitudes of the mind which have to do with the expression of feelings and perceptions. That’s a loose definition for sure.
But I do think that to base one’s life entirely on sensations a is not living a whole life because it excludes all the other parts of the self. One might as well be an amoeba. Feeling and emotion without mind is not really human, it’s something else, I’m not sure what. If you check out TUB’s definition of mind it includes both thinking and perceiving. Feeling without thinking is just creepy . . . like protozoan even.
0:5.8 2. Mind. The thinking, perceiving, and feeling mechanism of the human organism. The total conscious and unconscious experience. The intelligence associated with the emotional life reaching upward through worship and wisdom to the spirit level.
0:5.8 2. Mind. The thinking, perceiving, and feeling mechanism of the human organism. The total conscious and unconscious experience. The intelligence associated with the emotional life reaching upward through worship and wisdom to the spirit level.
Thanks Bonita!! That last quote is a confirmation to me of my understanding that feelings and emotions are functions of and reside in mind. I want to make sure I do not either confirm nor contradict the meaning of Zuimon’s proposition that truth is discovered by/in feelings and not in mind….when I believe that feelings and emotions are mindal in their source and result and expression.
It seems to me that my “low” feelings are the mind poisons and bring a knot in the stomach and the need to seek resolution – immediately these days….much less time for brooding, gripping, and expressing these feelings than once upon a time…..by going straight within in prayer to lay those down and leave them until calmness returns and the feeling can be reflected upon as to source and value for learning.
Those feelings of being connected/attached to someone or to others or something even grander like sonship and community, the state of wonder at the smallest thing or grandeur itself, the sense of realization and then confirmation when some prior mystery becomes revealed in meaning or value or purpose or in its connection to the all, when a door/path opens into a solution to a problem when there appeared no way forward prior, when love and/or loyalty is returned to me, or I see the fruit of faithful service and love given then bloom in another’s life, when contentment is not just felt but seems to ooze and radiate from every pore – these are the times my feelings make me “feel” more complete and more alive and more integrated and more capable and poised and confident and validated somehow – hard to explain really.
Zuimon posts above: “Bonita, you said that we do find truth through our minds, and I’ve been dying to ask someone who is obviously adamant about this for an example. So can you please share a personal example of how this has happened for you. Can anyone – Bradly, andre?”
Me here: I think the question here precludes the functional reality that feelings and thinkings both arise from and reside in the mind. I think the question is more like how is truth discovered, realized, actualized, and expressed by mortal mind? Truth is not something actually accumulated like a sack of fruit picked on trees during life so much as it is fruit that is eaten as nourishment along the trail of life; I mean to say it is not stored but it is consumed and gives its expression in the one who eats it as energy and sustenance in the living out of today’s choices and challenges. In this way too, truth may be utilized by the one and expressed by the one who eats its fruit but my truth cannot feed another or given by me to any other….except in its expression and the fruits of the spirit demonstrated in my life – I may share the results of truth but each of us is required to gain nourishment from the truths personally harvested, utilized, and expressed. I have found many a truth in mind that was not discovered previously – how so and why not? Truth seems to expand proportionately to growth in the spirit and the wisdom of experience…little truths get bigger and increase in dimensionality and complexity based on experience.
It’s like when we are told that we will be trusted with greater and greater things when we demonstrate our capabilities with lesser or smaller things….truth is an experiential progression which sometimes comes suddenly and sometimes at glacial speeds.
Anyway, some of my thinking (or pondering and muddling) on the question. I think it important that we not disagree on this and that until we’re sure we’re discussing the same this and that. I also like the text posted in separating “thinking” and “perceiving” as well as “feeling” – I would think or feel that truth is discovered in all three “phases” of mind – thinking; perceiving; and feeling and not by only one of those three….indeed, what if all three become synchronized and integrated in truth discovery, discernment, and actualization? It would seem to me that the unified mind of experience is the greatest expression of potential wisdom – where intuition, perception, discernment/understanding, feelings, and thinking/reflection combine into something more powerful and effective than any one of those might deliver.
I find no place for emotions or feelings other than mind. Is our heart our soul? For feelings are often associated with the “heart” but I’m pretty sure that’s just a muscle pumping blood while the mind is so complex and mysterious in its function….as well as its effect and potential in the pilgrim’s journey with the Spirit.
Zuimon wrote: Can you go directly to the Source of Mind – the Infinite Spirit and gain truth from Her? Because this is essentially as I understand what you are all saying and what the book even seems to say itself.You can only go directly to the Infinite Spirit when you arrive on Paradise as a graduate spirit. TUB clearly states that humans cannot contact the infinite mind of the Infinite Spirit, as explained in this quote:
42:11.8 The higher the universe mind associated with any universe phenomenon, the more difficult it is for the lower types of mind to discover it. And since the mind of the universe mechanism is creative spirit-mind (even the mindedness of the Infinite), it can never be discovered or discerned by the lower-level minds of the universe, much less by the lowest mind of all, the human. The evolving animal mind, while naturally God-seeking, is not alone and of itself inherently God-knowing.
Zuimon wrote: (And by the way, I see – relate to – the Infinite Spirit as a ‘Her’, I don’t understand why the book refers to all of the mind lineage being feminine when the wellspring of all Mind is masculine??? – do you have any thoughts on this?The Infinite Spirit is neither male or female, masculine or feminine. All members of the Trinity are referred to as masculine by convention. The revelators use gender language for the offspring of the Trinity because we are sex creatures.
38:2.2 Nevertheless, in dealing with sex creatures it is our custom to speak of those beings of more direct descent from the Father and the Son as the sons of God, while referring to the children of the Spirit as the daughters of God. Angels are, therefore, commonly designated by feminine pronouns on the sex planets.
Zuimon wrote: Why is She not the Infinite Daughter? And why confuse things by calling Her the Spirit when the Spirit gravity circuits (truth circuits) all come from the Eternal Son?)The Infinite Spirit is the Third Source and Center of the Trinity. He is referred to by many different names.
8:2.2 The Third Source and Center is known by numerous titles: the Universal Spirit, the Supreme Guide, the Conjoint Creator, the Divine Executive, the Infinite Mind, the Spirit of Spirits, the Paradise Mother Spirit, the Conjoint Actor, the Final Co-ordinator, the Omnipresent Spirit, the Absolute Intelligence, the Divine Action; and on Urantia he is sometimes confused with the cosmic mind.
There’s no such thing as a truth circuit. But truth, being a spiritual reality, does respond to spirit gravity. The Spirit of Truth, the spirit of both a Master Michael and the Universal Father (First Source and Center), is a spirit presence not a circuit. The Trinity, as we humans understand it, is the Father, Son and Spirit. But as you see, the Infinite Spirit has tons of other names including Paradise Mother Spirit.
Zuimon wrote:For me this doesn’t compute – perhaps I’m missing something, but I see the Eternal Son as the well-spring of all feelings, and so it’s to Him that I am to look for the Truth.The Eternal Son is the well spring of mercy ministry and compassion; he is not the source of your personal feelings. And like the Infinite Spirit, there’s no way you can get the truth from him. Being a human, you can only access the Son of the Son, the Creator Son who has given you his Spirit of Truth to look to.Zuimon wrote: I am to use my mind in support of this: using my mind to help me focus on my feelings; using my mind to help me express ALL my feelings, good and bad, higher and lower; using my mind to help me long for the truth of my feelings,That’s what they do on the psych ward, express all their feelings, uninhibited, unfiltered and absolutely crazy. You might want to rethink that statement. The truth behind your feelings is what they search for in psychotherapy.
Zuimon wrote: So Feelings are closer to the Father, the deepest Source of those feelings – Soul.Wait a minute. Didn’t you just say that the Eternal Son is the source of all your feelings?
Zuimon wrote: And I don’t care what it says in any book, for me this is real, it’s my spiritual growth, it’s what growing in truth is all about – helping me to understand the truth of myself. And then my mind came in putting this new insight – revelation – into perspective, integrating it with all that I already understand about myself.But truth is not about you. Have you noticed that all of your feelings are about you, and your search for truth is all about your feelings and what they mean to you. If you are always thinking about yourself and how you feel, all you’ll get is more of yourself, and that can’t be truth. Can’t you see that this is one great circle around just one person? Truth is not about helping you understand the truth about yourself. Truth is a relationship, there has to be someone or something else in the formula. Ideally, that other person is the Adjuster, a prepersonality. Humans have trouble relating to pre-persons, so we have the gift of the Spirit of Truth, who is a person, and functions as a revelation of the personality of God to our souls. Living truth is not about you. It’s about your usefulness to others, selflessness.
When Jesus walked this earth he taught the truth. I don’t recall him ever holding group therapy sessions or taking people aside helping them get in touch with their feelings. Jesus the psychoanalyst, holy cow. I guess if it makes you feel better, heals your psychic wounds, it’s okay. But the goal is to forget about yourself. How can you forget about yourself if the entire focus of your life is about reacting to your personal feelings and analyzing them? Sounds very Woody Allen to me.Bonita’s post reminds me of a momentous truth learned long ago – when it comes to mind and spirit and soul, we cannot possibly be “victims” of anyone else’s choices, behaviors, or results….unless we choose to be or remain so. We cannot blame the devil or any other being for our own choices, priorities, intentions, and motives and neither can we be “freed” from victimization by any other. We are victims only so long as we choose to be victim. We choose. We sow. We reap. Do over again….and again….and every intersection of choice in circumstance, situation, and relationship offers truths for our embrace….until we embrace them more readily and easily and the gravity circuits seize such progress and the fruits of the spirit are brought forth. Or so I see it.
Bradly wrote: Is our heart our soul? For feelings are often associated with the “heart”I’ve always thought that the heart was the moral part of the material mind, probably the part working with the spirits of worship and wisdom. They do say “heart and soul” as though the two are individually identifiable things. I like to think of the heart as the gateway to the soul, but that’s just me.
Hi Zuimon,
I am also a new arrival to this forum — a few weeks ago. Understanding the Urantia Book is like learning a new language. You really have to immerse yourself in the local community, where they speak the language to grasp its complexity. It takes a lot of courage to abandon misguided or skewed beliefs and adopt the local jargon. If past experiences have led you on an inward search — finally ending up here, then those past experiences have served their purpose well.
23:2.12 The confusion and turmoil of Urantia do not signify that the Paradise Rulers lack either interest or ability to manage affairs differently. The Creators are possessed of full power to make Urantia a veritable paradise, but such an Eden would not contribute to the development of those strong, noble, and experienced characters which the Gods are so surely forging out on your world between the anvils of necessity and the hammers of anguish. Your anxieties and sorrows, your trials and disappointments, are just as much a part of the divine plan on your sphere as are the exquisite perfection and infinite adaptation of all things to their supreme purpose on the worlds of the central and perfect universe.
The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality — actuality — of that man. 117:4.14 (1285.3)
Hi Zuimon, I am also a new arrival to this forum — a few weeks ago. Understanding the Urantia Book is like learning a new language. You really have to immerse yourself in the local community, where they speak the language to grasp its complexity. It takes a lot of courage to abandon misguided or skewed beliefs and adopt the local jargon. If past experiences have led you on an inward search — finally ending up here, then those past experiences have served their purpose well.
Excellent points and well said, Angela. Very glad you and Zuimon found your way here to discuss our new, astonishing and inspiring revelation. Thanks much for your questions and comments, which prompt even more of Bonita’s comprehensive, insightful, and clarion replies.
But I would question the validity of Bertrand’s quote, Angela. Isn’t genuine and effective cooperation a consequence of the realization and integration of the truth of God? Cooperation by itself cannot redeem or reveal truth unless it has a solid foundation in truth. A group of material minded scientists might cooperate yet never advance beyond an unsatisfying and partial understanding of the ‘logical’ interaction of matter and gravity.
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Richard E Warren
But I would question the validity of Bertrand’s quote, Angela. Isn’t genuine and effective cooperation a consequence of the realization and integration of the truth of God?
Conceded. Bertrand is replaced.
The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality — actuality — of that man. 117:4.14 (1285.3)
Thank you all so much for your replies, I appreciate the effort you put into them… and Bonita, how do you do it!?
My reason for joining the forum is to eventually air the odd bits and pieces I feel about the Book as I want to read your feedback. I read the book a couple of times years ago and have dipped into it on and off, but it’s not the only source I draw from in my spiritual life. And the relevant quotes you give are fantastic as I doubt I’d find them myself and probably miss focusing on them and connecting all the dots as you have all obviously spent a lot of time doing.
From all you said concerning my focus on feelings, this morning things slotted into place and for the time being I’m happy with my latest understanding, which I will try to convey.
I understand that all our experiencing systems within our aura are of the mind, so our feelings are of the mind too. So it’s not about focusing on only feelings to the exclusion of the thought part of the mind. My parents severely retarded me in my self-expression as I was growing up. As a result I learnt how to repress many of my feelings, and so much so even to convince myself that I didn’t feel such things. I managed at great cost to myself to deny so many of my feelings all of which I still had but refused to fully acknowledge. I too like most people grew up being made to believe that bad feelings in particular were bad things, and that we should all do all we can to get rid of them, such as focusing on: higher things, feeling-good things, God, Divine Love, understanding all the UB says; whatever it is, all which will help us succeed, be happy, and even spiritually progress in life; all so long as you don’t let those bad feelings dominate and overwhelm you. So don’t dwell on them, don’t try to psychoanalyse them, don’t go anywhere near them, because after all, why do you want to feel bad anyway – as if we have choice in it.
However as hard as I tried I couldn’t apply my thinking mind to cancel out all my bad feelings, even though that was how I was trained. Life didn’t work for me by simply applying my mind, and I couldn’t make myself feel better by using my thoughts. And now I understand that my feeling repression and resulting self-expression retardation was like having a foot that is deformed retarding my full physical expression. Imagining I couldn’t walk on it easily, I’d compensate for that by doing all sorts of strengthening exercises building up my good leg. And so it has been with my thinking mind, I’ve gone off into it building it up mostly through fantasy and self-delusion, adding all the information to it I thought would help, all so as to compensate for the lack of my personality expression in the feelings department.
And ideally I’d have liked to have chopped off my bad leg altogether, just be rid of it, and if I could have, got a new proper functioning leg, which in a way I’ve hoped the various spiritual belief systems I’ve indulged in would do for me. But since meeting my wife and her helping me understand that really I should go the other way, instead of trying to deny my bad foot, feeling humiliated and ashamed and then angry with it, I should feel sorry for it, and look to help myself favouring it. It is the weakest part of myself, the part I hate and least want, so instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, I should focus on it, look to love it, look to be nice to it and support its self-expression, because after all it is still part of me.
So this is what I’m learning to do with my feelings. They are the weakest part of me – my expression of them. I try to dismiss and deny them, the bad ones I don’t want as if they were a deformed leg. So now as I do what I call my ‘Healing’, I go the other way, trying to focus on them, fully accepting and acknowledging that I am feeling them. I am trying to bring them out of hiding; all the ones I’ve repressed since my earliest days I want to come up and out and be fully expressed. But it’s hard work having to reverse the process of denying their existence when it’s all I’ve known how to be.
The Urantia Book I feel has been written mostly for people who are true and normal and not living on a Rebellious world. The revelators acknowledge some of our difficulties, however in the case of how they portray the mind and how it functions and how it deals with feelings, it makes me think it’s speaking to people who aren’t severely repressing many of their feelings, to people who’ve not grown up their whole life being made to be afraid of their own bad feelings. So they portray the feeling and thought parts of the mind in balance, with both parts fully honoured, and then, yes, I can see because of the presence of the adjuster so it is the higher mind that leads us in our quest for Light and Life with the feelings being important yet not the central focus.
But as I said, because of my heavy dysfunction, which TUB doesn’t really say anything about how to heal, so far as I’m concerned, I have to look more to those aspects of myself that I am aware of that aren’t functioning properly, hence my perhaps over-focus on my feeling-expression and my allowing my feelings to fully have their say, so as to unblock all those blockages that are stopping me from naturally growing in truth as the book points out.
Anyway, I feel happier about understand that for myself, and again thank you for your help. So I feel I understand more about why focusing so much on my feelings and doing all I can to express them whilst longing for the truth they will help me see and feel, has helped me so much, compared to when I was trying to work it all out through my mind, all at the expense of my feelings.
Sorry for the length of the post, but instead of posting this separately, I will continue.
This is another quandary I’ve had which I’d like to ask you all about.
If I’m correct the notion of soulmates is not broached in TUB – at least I don’t remember reading anything about it. So is that because they don’t exist; or was it simply not included as part of the mandate for revelation because of some undisclosed reason. However as you are all no doubt aware, the notion of soulmates other than being just a fanciful romantic fantasy is taken seriously in other systems of belief. And I subscribe to it too.
So I’d like to hear your thoughts on this line of thought:
If one accepts we are created in the image of God, which I take to mean on the soul and personality level; and if we start off our lives needing two people to bring us into Creation on the physical; and those two people being our parents become the initial pattern of relating to God with them being for all intents and purposes ‘mini-gods’; and with our starting off life with parents of the opposite sex, looking to meet up with (in theory) our soulmate so as to become parents ourselves, surely all of that ‘image’ suggests that God as we know as our Heavenly Father is but one personality expression of a Soulmate pair, with our Heavenly Mother being the – as yet, so far as TUB is concerned – unrevealed ‘other half’.
So what do you think and feel about this idea: that God is one Soul, and that Soul is actually expressing two Personalities, and we can get to know Them both?
And then, wouldn’t it make more sense that the Mother and Father give rise to the Eternal Son and Infinite (Daughter) Spirit – their Deity ‘children’?
And, is TUB a revelation that keeps within the boundaries as defined by our rebellion; meaning, that because mankind so heavily denies the feminine and women in general being considered as second class, all stemming from the relationship breakdown between Adam and Eve, so it toes the line by sticking to the masculine side of things and keeping certain feminine personalities from us? That TUB is forbidden within its mandate to actually interfere with the Rebellion as it’s manifesting on Earth, all of which is now of our own making since Lucifer, Satan and the other Evil Ones have effectively been dealt with by Jesus, so leaving certain things out of the revelation which if included would greatly interfere with us and how we view ourselves, Creation, and most importantly – God.
Yiippppeeee! This is going to be fun! What a response!!! So much material to cover. There is nothing like a sincere student to lighten up the classroom of life. All good realizations and questions Zuimon. I must be brief for now but would offer:
First….as Angela stated…if we like where we are now or where we’re headed in this life spiritually, then there is no point in regretting the past that has delivered us to that place where the glory trail and pilgrim’s path will deliver eternity to us. This entire mortal experience is brief and its only true and great purpose is to find God within and become responsive to love and to give that love to others, especially so to come to love the source and destiny of love.
Next, yes there are teachings/quotes regarding “soul mates” – several. And “team mates” and “like minded” groups of servants – all of whom excel in service to others. (quotes to come)
We are also taught that Jesus taught his apostles, disciples, and followers that women are (at least) equal and vital in human partnerships, endeavors, and will remain such for eternity as a balancing and completing of all future ascension adventures…much like the pairing of the angels and Deity itself. The subjugation of women is not a pattern of progress….or even sanity….but is a primitive form of social retardation. Not good.
Love. Love heals all wounds and all maladies of the mind and heart. But it cannot be received and held unto ourselves….it must be given and without self interest for its effect to me. The more it is given, the more it is received. So, too much attention to self or to self interest retards personal and spiritual progress….the universe is a family that thrives by its love exchange mechanism to each other or from one to another in self forgetting service to the all and the each.
Time. Try a key word search for “time unit” regarding our daily perspective on this pilgrim’s journey. The problems of today must be put into a much greater and longer time perspective to “see” today properly.
Free will. We determine, by our motives and intentions and priorities and choices, our reality but when our choices are determined by THE realities of creation and its purpose, plan, and power – we are on the eternal WAY – and everything changes for us and within us too – and even more startling and amazing is that the very world in which we now live on this confused world also changes – the world of yesterday disappears and the world ruled by the Most Highs suddenly appears in its stead. So long as we choose self interest as more important than the interests of others, we will remain crippled and dysfunctional due to the very unreality so chosen. Material self interest is not real within reality and so bears no fruit of any value.
Finally, for now, the Revelation is for all who would benefit by less confusion and error in their perspective of reality and source and destiny and relationship of the all to the one and the one to the all and the each to one another. Someday, this text will be as common as The Cat in the Hat!!!
I am most gratified that you are able to learn and to share and to teach here with this group of students and student teachers. Bravo!!
Zuimon wrote: Bonita, how do you do it!?Do what? Find quotes? I have digital helpers on my computer and access to search engines on the internet. But in order to know what to look for, I think you have to study, study and study. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Eventually some of it starts to gel, but I admit some of it is still a lumpy ooze.
You said this on the previous page: ” . . . and suddenly up it came within me, the beautiful upwelling of truth, and I just knew that I had been created perfect, that my soul is true and perfect, and the ONLY reason I am imperfect and untrue is because of the result of not being truly and fully loved. And that had I been parented by truly and fully loving parents then I’d have naturally grown into the true and perfect personality expression of my soul that I am.”
I wasn’t going to drill down into this for fear of upsetting you, but I think you might be able to handle it. If you can’t, please know that my intention is only to clear up some things that are inconsistent with TUB. I don’t mean to imply that you have to change your mind on these issues, I’m just hoping you’ll at least consider what I write.
The truth is that you were not created perfect. None of us are created perfect. If we were perfect, we’d be sitting on Paradise now as existential beings and enjoying the actual personality of the Universe Father face to face. All of us are created imperfect. We are creatures. Only Creators are perfect in the existential sense. Also, your soul is not created perfect either. The soul is an entity in the process of becoming perfected. And to be clear, souls do not pre-exist in a perfected state. There is no giant bank of perfect souls on Paradise who descend to earth. That is the role of the Adjuster. (There are dozens of quotes for that. If you need them let me know.)
You cannot blame your earthly parents for your imperfection. They are imperfect creatures too, and what else can two imperfect creatures create except another imperfect creature? Give them a break. Give yourself a break. You have always been loved, loved by your true parent, God the Father. You just failed to recognize it until now. It doesn’t matter that your earth parents didn’t love you like you wanted to be loved when you were a kid. You’re all grown up now. It really doesn’t matter one hoot. I think it’s fine to acknowledge it for what it is, then promise yourself not to be like your parents and move on in faith and trust in your real Parent. The universe is rife with loving personalities chomping at the bit to be of service to you. Once you recognize that, you can forgive your earth father and move on.
I was abandoned by my parents and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Honest. When you look up the word b***h in the dictionary, my mother’s picture is there. She was the most selfish, ego-centric, vengeful, suspicious and prickly person you would ever want to meet. She raised me until I was 8, then Granny took over. Thank God for Granny. But most of my formative years were gone by then. Do I resent my mother’s lack of love? Not at all. She was happy with herself. I’m happy that she was happy, and I was even happier when she moved 3,000 miles away. Now she’s dead and I don’t miss her at all; it’s like she never existed. I pray for her though, always did and always will. I’ll see her again someday, I’m sure. But we will only have the worthwhile memories between us. I’m not sure how many there are, but I know there are a few. I hold on to nice memories for the future, how about you? We’re told to train our minds to hold onto all the worthwhile memories in our lives because we carry them into eternity. TUB says nothing about holding onto nasty memories. So do what you have to do to let them go. If you stop playing with them they’ll eventually get crowded out by good memories . . . honest! Don’t pick at old wounds, it makes them bleed and never heal. Apply the medicine and then leave them alone. You have more important things to do, you really, really do!!
160:4.12 Train your memory to hold in sacred trust the strength-giving and worth-while episodes of life, which you can recall at will for your pleasure and edification. Thus build up for yourself and in yourself reserve galleries of beauty, goodness, and artistic grandeur. But the noblest of all memories are the treasured recollections of the great moments of a superb friendship. And all of these memory treasures radiate their most precious and exalting influences under the releasing touch of spiritual worship.
48:4.20 As ascendant beings you are in possession of personal memories of all former and lower existences, and without such identity memories of the past there would be no basis for the humor of the present, either mortal laughter or morontia mirth.
Hi Zuimon, I am also a new arrival to this forum — a few weeks ago. Understanding the Urantia Book is like learning a new language. You really have to immerse yourself in the local community, where they speak the language to grasp its complexity. It takes a lot of courage to abandon misguided or skewed beliefs and adopt the local jargon. If past experiences have led you on an inward search — finally ending up here, then those past experiences have served their purpose well.
23:2.12 The confusion and turmoil of Urantia do not signify that the Paradise Rulers lack either interest or ability to manage affairs differently. The Creators are possessed of full power to make Urantia a veritable paradise, but such an Eden would not contribute to the development of those strong, noble, and experienced characters which the Gods are so surely forging out on your world between the anvils of necessity and the hammers of anguish. Your anxieties and sorrows, your trials and disappointments, are just as much a part of the divine plan on your sphere as are the exquisite perfection and infinite adaptation of all things to their supreme purpose on the worlds of the central and perfect universe.
Angela – thanks for this. None here are uncaring or indifferent – we just talk funny!! The text is a whole new language about a whole new paradigm of “reality”….it does take time to digest….the proverbial elephant of one bite at a time!
We are warned much in text about “prejudice”….a loyalty to one’s current beliefs and perspective….which can blind us and prevent progress in the discovery and embrace of truth not already known….a mind poison we are told. All of us have preconceptions and also misconceptions which may only be transcended by applying the whole mind and the spirit circuits to unify personal and epochal revelations from those who minister to us. No matter how much we may know, there will always be more to know. Truth is relative to many things – insight, intelligence, experience, growth, wisdom, and spiritual progress. To grip too tightly that which we know today only deprives us of what we might learn next….and then next….and so on….eternally. It is not that everything we “know” is wrong so much that it is incomplete at best. This is a challenge for us all.
100:1.1 (1094.3) While religion produces growth of meanings and enhancement of values, evil always results when purely personal evaluations are elevated to the levels of absolutes. A child evaluates experience in accordance with the content of pleasure; maturity is proportional to the substitution of higher meanings for personal pleasure, even loyalties to the highest concepts of diversified life situations and cosmic relations.
100:1.2 (1094.4) Some persons are too busy to grow and are therefore in grave danger of spiritual fixation. Provision must be made for growth of meanings at differing ages, in successive cultures, and in the passing stages of advancing civilization. The chief inhibitors of growth are prejudice and ignorance.
132:3.4 (1459.4) Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme delight of the human soul; it is the joint creation of the material mind and the indwelling spirit. The eternal salvation of this truth-discerning and beauty-loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads this mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father’s will, to find God and to become like him. There is never conflict between true knowledge and truth. There may be conflict between knowledge and human beliefs, beliefs colored with prejudice, distorted by fear, and dominated by the dread of facing new facts of material discovery or spiritual progress.
111:4.7 (1220.6) 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.
111:4.8 (1220.7) You cannot completely control the external world — environment. It is the creativity of the inner world that is most subject to your direction because there your personality is so largely liberated from the fetters of the laws of antecedent causation. There is associated with personality a limited sovereignty of will.
111:4.9 (1220.8) Since this inner life of man is truly creative, there rests upon each person the responsibility of choosing as to whether this creativity shall be spontaneous and wholly haphazard or controlled, directed, and constructive. How can a creative imagination produce worthy children when the stage whereon it functions is already preoccupied by prejudice, hate, fears, resentments, revenge, and bigotries?
160:1.13 (1774.5) Prejudice blinds the soul to the recognition of truth, and prejudice can be removed only by the sincere devotion of the soul to the adoration of a cause that is all-embracing and all-inclusive of one’s fellow men. Prejudice is inseparably linked to selfishness. Prejudice can be eliminated only by the abandonment of self-seeking and by substituting therefor the quest of the satisfaction of the service of a cause that is not only greater than self, but one that is even greater than all humanity — the search for God, the attainment of divinity. The evidence of maturity of personality consists in the transformation of human desire so that it constantly seeks for the realization of those values which are highest and most divinely real.
Zuimon wrote: However as hard as I tried I couldn’t apply my thinking mind to cancel out all my bad feelings, even though that was how I was trained. Life didn’t work for me by simply applying my mind, and I couldn’t make myself feel better by using my thoughts. . . . It is the weakest part of myself, the part I hate and least want, so instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, I should focus on it, look to love it, look to be nice to it and support its self-expression, because after all it is still part of me.I understand what you’re doing here, and I’m not one to minimize the value of psychotherapy for those who need it, but perhaps some words from Jesus could clarify a few things for you in regards to what to do with unwanted thoughts:
156:5.5 But let me warn you against the folly of undertaking to surmount temptation by the effort of supplanting one desire by another and supposedly superior desire through the mere force of the human will. If you would be truly triumphant over the temptations of the lesser and lower nature, you must come to that place of spiritual advantage where you have really and truly developed an actual interest in, and love for, those higher and more idealistic forms of conduct which your mind is desirous of substituting for these lower and less idealistic habits of behavior that you recognize as temptation. You will in this way be delivered through spiritual transformation rather than be increasingly overburdened with the deceptive suppression of mortal desires. The old and the inferior will be forgotten in the love for the new and the superior. Beauty is always triumphant over ugliness in the hearts of all who are illuminated by the love of truth. There is mighty power in the expulsive energy of a new and sincere spiritual affection. And again I say to you, be not overcome by evil but rather overcome evil with good.
As you can see, it’s not about falling in love with your evil, imperfect, deformed leg; it’s about falling in love with the truth, beauty and goodness of reality. Your effort of trying to push away evil thoughts by the sheer power of will failed, which is exactly what Jesus said would happen. But he’s also telling you that you have to fall in love with your higher thoughts, I mean really fall in love with them with all the passion you can muster. It is literally true that divine things have to be loved in order to be known. If you are sincere, truly sincere in falling in love with higher ideals, then you will get to know them as an experiential reality and they will expel all that is not good within you. (Recall the parable about the wheat and the tares.) Do everything you can to nurture the wheat; it will grow and crowd out the weeds. That’s the only way you can be reborn in to the real world of spiritual experience and growth. First embrace the higher reality with your whole and sincere heart. ( There are other quotes that apply, which I will happily supply if you desire.)
And incidentally, the process of falling in love with divine things and persons takes the focus off of your self and puts it on something or someone with much more value. (This is hard for people who think they are the most valuable thing in the universe, so don’t think that way.) Seek what is truly valuable and don’t worry about the weeds, they’re gonna get choked due to lack of oxygen; all your oxygen will be going toward God, and then the great circuit of love begins.
117:6.10 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.
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