© 2022 André Desjardins
© 2022 Urantia Association of Quebec
André Desjardins
St-Alexis-des-Monts
Our birth is not perfect from a spiritual point of view, we are born into a world considered experiential and imperfect in certain respects but we have the capacity and the privilege to develop our mental abilities and our physical capacities whether material or spiritual. Each human can learn to develop his talents or his aptitudes in order to reach a level of experience of material or spiritual perfection according to his intended goals. By his nature man has always sought to perfect himself by evolution, by need or by finding technical means to improve the human condition using the least physical effort possible. “These interminable efforts of all living things evidence the existence within them of an innate striving for perfection.” UB 65:6.2
Today it would be almost inconceivable to go back to the last 100 years and even to the last 20 taking into consideration today’s technological advances. Man possesses within himself this innate germ of perfection, he is thus capable of participating in the advancement for the well-being of humanity but he can also participate in his own destruction by producing sophisticated weapons that are increasingly lethal. It always depends on the reasons and projects sought to achieve goals of improvement.
Athletes always seek to improve themselves in their personal performances or through various Olympic competitions. These performances are most often ephemeral because they can be supplanted by a superior performance of another athlete. This underlines that man always seeks to improve himself through the progression of material perfection always likely to be surpassed.
Man can also attain higher goals in spiritual perfection through his personal relationship with God. If God had created man existentially perfect like Himself, we would not necessarily have the leisure to choose our own path by our choices, our free will and our voluntary gift to access the goal of the perfection of divinity by the will of our personality. The Universal Father thus gives us the choice by our free will to enter or not into a personal relationship with Him by living the experience of divine perfection. It is up to each of us to consent or reject to live the experience of spiritual perfection in a personal relationship with the Father by a voluntary consent of the choice without restriction of the will of our personality. No human personality is forced to submit to it, God Himself cannot go beyond the human will. “The Creator refuses to coerce or compel the submission of the spiritual free wills of his material creatures.” UB 1:1.2 Through this personal choice and our will, it is thus possible for us to attain a certain degree of spiritual perfection through experience.
God places great importance on humans like us on our planet so that we can access a certain level of perfection of divinity. Through his Divine Plan, the Universal Father has granted himself the privilege of having a personal relationship with each personality endowed with will. Through his infinite Love, the Universal Father with the complicity of the Eternal Son proposed to make man in their own image. UB 6:5.7
No doubt this was one of the primary purposes of his relationship with the Eternal Son. Through this combined divine association we receive the genetic profile of the Father’s spirit through the Thought Adjuster and the manifestation of the divine Word of the Eternal Son through the bestowal of our Creator Son Michael of Nebadon on our planet Urantia and incarnated in the flesh of Joshua ben Joseph. This privilege of experiential perfection of divinity is given to us just as a child receives the combined genetic profile of its biological parents. It is therefore incumbent upon the children of time such as ourselves to utilize this divine genetics and to profit by this gift received from our Divine Parents to acquire the experience of divinity with God.
This proposal of association of our Divine Parents towards humans such as us on Urantia, thus gives us the potential for perfection of divinity by living perfection through experience. This personal gift of voluntary consent of our personality allows us to live the experience of doing the Will of the Father in our search for experiential perfection. Our will is the only real gift that we can make to God as described in The Urantia Book: “In fact, such a consecration of creature will constitutes man’s only possible gift of true value to the Paradise Father. In God, man lives, moves, and has his being; there is nothing which man can give to God except this choosing to abide by the Father’s will” UB 1:1.2
From the very first issue, The Urantia Book mentions that it is possible to reach a level of experience of perfection of divinity. “This magnificent and universal injunction to strive for the attainment of the perfection of divinity is the first duty, and should be the highest ambition, of all the struggling creature creation of the God of perfection. This possibility of the attainment of divine perfection is the final and certain destiny of all man’s eternal spiritual progress.” UB 1:0.4
This injunction is the “first duty” for people wishing to achieve this spiritual progression and the “should” is conditional on the personal involvement of the will of the personality. The Urantia Book gives us several clues but it is always by the free choice of our personality to respond to this first duty of seeking to achieve this objective of perfection of divinity. This first duty is our personal gift given to God in order to conform to his will; it is the beginning of our commitment in response to this supreme injunction of perfection of divinity. Our fidelity to achieve this supreme objective is our “first duty” of perfection according to our good will. The best way to achieve this main goal of living this ideal of life of spiritual progress in our search for perfection consists in rectifying our character defects and learning to control our instincts of animal origin. The Urantia Book mentions: “The doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God. UB 111:5.1
Thus our “good will” is as if the Father were simply asking us to share his existential Life with our original experiential life. The Universal Father cannot free himself from his existential status, He has found a way to approach us through his prepersonal Fragments and has implemented his personality circuit in order to have personal contact with us according to our good will. The Father uses this way of contacting us personally in order to get closer to his creatures such as us on our planet Urantia in order to know our way of living the experience of perfection.
Doing the will of God is to perfect oneself in the experience of divinity and means growing in wisdom and worship by improving our mental attitude, looking at our character defects and our personal behavior. The way we interact in our social interactions is the way to perfect our relationship with God. Seeking divine perfection is like a gold prospector looking for a nugget and, upon finding it, continues his search in order to find another to build up a treasure. The man who seeks God is like this gold prospector; he cannot be satisfied with finding a single nugget to increase his treasure of nuggets of divinity. For the gold prospector the nuggets found belong to him; for the man seeking God the nuggets of perfection of divinity are his by right in a life of perpetual search for experiential perfection.
Through the practice of transforming our mental attitudes and our behavior in our relationships and interactions with others, we learn to develop our personality and our spiritual abilities in this practice. The more or less unpleasant events occurring in our daily life, our material constraints, are the lessons allowing us to learn in wisdom and in worship, to develop our qualities of experience of perfection of divinity. By refining our human relationships, we thus learn to listen better, to communicate better and thus to understand them better. The Urantia Book mentions: “The better a man understands his neighbor, the easier it is for him to forgive him and even to love him.” UB 2:4.2
The best pilot allowing us to pursue our ideal of spiritual perfection is without a doubt Jesus himself by his attitude and behavior during his human life on our planet Urantia. The incarnation of our Creator Son in the person of Jesus is the perfect archetype of divine attitude and behavior. Humans such as we on our planet have the capacity and the latitude to acquire these experiential qualities of divinity during our earthly life. Our willingness to seek the experience of spiritual perfection despite the uncertainties of everyday life and the obstacles encountered by our material and physical existence leads us towards spiritual progress in this process of seeking perfection. A positive mental attitude trains us and leads us to live an ideal of true spiritual life towards the supreme goal sought in response to the supreme injunction of the Father to attain the perfection of divinity by experience “Be perfect as I myself am perfect.” UB 1:0.3
This supreme request of the Father addressed to humans such as us on our planet Urantia indicates the possibility of aiming for divine perfection. The “be perfect” is like a challenge required of personalities of good will wishing to submit voluntarily in response to this supreme precept of God. All human personalities are logically involved in this supreme injunction, but no one is forced to follow it, the Universal Father cannot impose His Will against the will and free will of our personality; the sovereignty of our personality is absolute and no one nor God Himself can interpose themselves in the personal choices of each personality.
As we continue our perseverance toward divine perfection, we learn to develop our mental abilities by perfecting our capacities for tolerance, patience, altruism, understanding, long-suffering, and fairness as Jesus lived it during his human bestowal on Urantia. Although we cannot live perfection as Jesus lived it on our planet, it is perfectly possible for us humans to live an ideal of perfection through the sincere choice to do the will of God as mentioned in The Urantia Book: “Although the average mortal of Urantia cannot hope to attain the high perfection of character which Jesus of Nazareth acquired while sojourning in the flesh, it is altogether possible for every mortal believer to develop a strong and unified personality along the perfected lines of the Jesus personality.” UB 100:7.1
Our will and deep motivation is the main key to reaching the higher levels of perfection, it is not about living the life of Jesus as he lived it but to live ours as we live it today on our planet by our deep desire to live the supreme experience of perfection of divinity. Our approach towards this supreme goal by our mental transformations, our power of will, our firmness in our decisions and our perseverance in overcoming all obstacles is the path indicated by the motivation to become more and more like God, right here on our planet Urantia. “The essential thing is to know him and to aspire to be like him.” UB 1:1.6
Self-mastery is the best technique of aspiration toward our ideal of conformity to the will of God. This technique of learning helps to master our innate impulses of our nature and our primitive instincts of animal origin. By mastering our animal nature and our associated primitive instincts, we acquire progressive qualities of divinity perfection through experience, narrowing the gap separating us from the absolute perfection of God. The daily circumstances and situations of our lives provide ample opportunities to learn to perfect our mental abilities and rectify our defects of character in order to improve the quality of our human relationships and our personal contact with the Universal Father. The Urantia Book states: “Universe difficulties must be met and planetary obstacles must be encountered as a part of the experience training provided for the growth and development, the progressive perfection, of the evolving souls of mortal creatures.” UB 154:2.5
Our spiritual growth always depends on a stable and objective mental attitude towards the unpredictable events and changes in our lives. Self-mastery eliminates the mental interferences and short-circuits that prevent us from being mentally receptive to the will of God. This exercise of practicing this technique of achieving Godlikeness is a blending of human experiential divinity in association with the existential divinity of God within us. This human-divine association is considered the beginning of morontia life on our planet considering that the morontia soul is formed by the association of our mind with our Thought Adjuster. The Urantia Book explains it this way: “You should understand that the morontia life of an ascending mortal actually begins on the inhabited worlds at the conception of the soul, at the time when the mind of a creature of moral status is inhabited by the spiritual Adjuster.” UB 48:6.2
By learning to control oneself, to adjust and adapt in the more or less unexpected situations of our life, self-control thus becomes the best school of learning for the formation and stabilization of our character in order to unify and develop our personality through experience in the growth of our development of spiritual perfection. The purpose of our life on our planet is self-realization through self-control. The adjustments to the unpredictable situations of our life are the opportunities to live and evolve morally and spiritually through experience in order to become better citizens of the universe in wisdom and worship. Jesus mentions about self-control: “Self-control is the measure of a man’s moral nature and the index of his spiritual development.” UB 143:2.3
Our interactions in our contacts with the people we meet indicate the quality of our relationships in our way of acting and behaving towards our neighbor. Through true sincere inner introspection, we can see the real objective of the corrections to be made to our personality in order to live the experience of divine perfection in our contacts with the people we meet. In our faithfulness in seeking to do the will of God; an attitude of spiritual grace is developed to live the experience of progression towards the goal of being more and more in conformity with his Will. Being more and more in conformity with his Will is always manifested in our human relationships. The Urantia Book mentions: “It is less important to love all men today than to learn each day to love one more.” UB 100:4.6
Prayer may be the childlike plea for the impossible or the mature entreaty for moral growth and spiritual power. A petition may be for daily bread or may embody a wholehearted yearning to find God and to do his will. It may be a wholly selfish request or a true and magnificent gesture toward the realization of unselfish brotherhood. (UB 91:8.6)
This search for divine perfection facilitates the work of our Thought Adjuster in spiritualizing our minds, thus giving eternal value to our experiences of spiritual perfection. To know the Will of God is to know the will of the indwelling Adjuster. He shares with us his requests and difficulties encountered in contacting our minds of animal origin: “Much of my difficulty arose from the interminable conflict between the two natures of my subject: the urge of ambition thwarted by animal indolence” (see more). UB 111:7.5 And: “It is not only the innate nature of the human races that interferes with the work of the Adjusters, but your own preconceived opinions, fixed ideas and outdated prejudices also greatly retard their ministry.” UB 109:5.3
These complaints from our Adjuster indicate the direction to take in order to make a personal evaluation in a real introspection of ourselves. A true meditation allows us to look at and evaluate the handicaps obstructing the inner work of our Thought Adjuster. These unstable mental attitudes hinder the efforts of our Adjuster to raise our spiritual perception in the growth of spiritual perfection. Our spiritual progression allows us to improve our relationships with the people we meet, whether at work, in our leisure time, in the family environment or in public places. Our spiritual growth is always proportional to the level of our growth through our behavior in our personal relationships.
The habit of self-evaluation allows us to improve our progress in spiritual perfection by meditating on how to better do the will of God, through our aspiration, our constancy, and in our desire to want to be like Him, in conformity with His will. Doing the will of God produces the fruits of the spirit and these fruits are always manifested in our interactions with the human beings we encounter. By looking at our character defects it is possible to correct the interferences and internal conflicts as mentioned above according to our Thought Adjuster by ‘our own preconceived opinions, our fixed ideas and our outdated prejudices’. By a sincere and honest look at ourselves in our behavior, it is possible to produce more fruits of the spirit in our relationships such as “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance” UB 34:6.13
The fruits of the spirit are the antidote to our ego by diminishing the importance of self. Altruism in our human relationships fertilizes the fruits of the spirit by the fertilizer we spread of “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.” It would be fitting to add to this list of fruits of the spirit understanding and compassion. The manifestation of the fruits of the spirit is always realized in our social interactions by the way we behave toward the people we associate with. Our civic behavior toward those we associate with is always representative of our spiritual evolution. Jesus tells us: “Become interested in your fellows; learn how to love them and watch for the opportunity to do something for them which you are sure they want done,” and then he quoted the olden Jewish proverb—“A man who would have friends must show himself friendly.” ” UB 130:7.2
The experience gained through our actions and efforts in the search for divine perfection is reflected in the evolution of our morontia soul. “The evolving soul is not made divine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.” UB 48:7.24
The best way to experience perfection is perfectly quoted in The Urantia Book: “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.” UB 39:4.13