© 2002 Georges Michelson-Dupont
© 2002 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 24 — Winter 2002 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 24 — Winter 2002 | If... |
Contribution to a cosmic approach to the role of personality
¶ Know yourself
God who brings us together today loves us individually. He has prepared for each of us and for all of us a perfect plan of life, full of love, happiness and respect and it is buried in the spiritual depths of our Thought Adjuster. When we struggle in the vicissitudes of material life it is comforting to know that we can discover it if we want to! It is the whole challenge of our life.
Today’s presentation aims to help us in this discovery.
We have a body and a consciousness that allow us to situate ourselves in relation to all that exists, the material, the intellectual and the spiritual and to make contact with these realities. Consciousness is this lamp that illuminates matter, ideas and ideals. Thus equipped, man can navigate in the two extreme domains of matter and spirit.
But he could not do much without another reality of his own: the Personality. This reality is the director of our consciousness. It is she who decides.
By observing its functioning within ourselves we will discover that it is endowed with certain “powers” which characterize the behavior of our “I” and which allow us to assert our will.
- I have the power of emergence. To bring out new ideas that did not exist in my brain before. I see this every day in the facts of my life. This is the power of emergence or “belief”.
- I have the power of judgment. Judging, evaluating ideas, situations, behaviors. It is still necessary that the judgment be clear and in accordance with the truth. The word judgment covers two notions: that of justice and that of fairness. A bad judgment always brings with it a procession of negative consequences.
- I have the power of choice. After having brought out the idea, after having evaluated and judged it, I must choose among the possibilities. When I choose, I determine myself in relation to a situation and I must do it well because it is my whole being that I engage!
- I have the power of decision. I place my choice in time and space. It is an act of will. The decision disciplines me because it commits me to keeping it firm.
- I have the power of execution. I put the decision into action and I act. Action implies method, organization, control. Energy, thought and spirit mix in action. The power of execution gives experience.
- I have the power to love. In fact, this power can become a director and strongly influence other powers. When love becomes the driving force behind human actions, the personality becomes attractive!
- I have the power of evaluation. Is the result of my action in line with what I expected? By evaluating I give myself the ability to progress. Without an honest evaluation there is stagnation.
By giving us personality, God has endowed us with unlimited and indestructible powers. He has given us all the tools to become perfect. The choice is ours and it is in the use of these tools that we can draw closer to Him or lose ourselves.
¶ Truly God is worthy of our love.
But ultimately, why does God do all this?
On page 2 of the introduction to the Urantia Book the authors tell us that the Deity functions on 7 levels, three of which are of direct interest to us:
- The creative phase — Self-distributive and divinely revealed Deity.
- The evolutionary phase — Deity expansive in itself and identified with the creature.
- The Supreme Phase ñ- Deity experiential of itself and unifying the creature with the Creator.
Among all the divine “talents” that God manifests, that of Creator is the one that best reveals his divine Personality to us. Indeed, only personality is creative.
Thus, to fully satisfy his nature as a perfect creator and the powers that characterize him, God creates physical universes and creatures to inhabit them. He does it so that his divine love can find fulfillment, he does it so that his creatures become his associates in eternity, he does it because his divine love pushes him to want to share everything.
After having already shared everything through love in eternity and absoluteness with his divine associates, he shares everything in absonity and transcendence with his absonite creatures then in finitude and growth in time and space with his finite creatures.
Now, only one personality can love another personality. That is why God bestows personality and all the powers attached to it on all his creatures. God the Son is the absolute Personality, Transcendentals have an absonite type personality and the creatures of time are given a finite type personality.
At the same time, the notion of creation implies an origin in time and a location in space. The finite level is the domain of creature experience. They are therefore born mortal and “naked” in the universes of time. They have everything to learn. Being of the humblest origin makes the creature the object of all the attentions on the part of God and his associates and subordinates. Despite appearances which can sometimes suggest that man is struggling in the throes of material life, he is under good guard.
This reality involves additional help from God.
The creative phase suggests to us that God “distributes” himself and seeks to “divinely reveal” himself by creating creatures. This distribution of himself is effected by the gift of personality to his creatures. Thus God divinely reveals himself to and through these creatures on the finite and absonite levels.
The evolutionary phase that takes place on the finite level is made possible by the gift of the Thought Adjusters; those fragments of God who come in great numbers to indwell the evolutionary creatures. They are our perfect divine guides, our passports to eternity. They are constantly seeking to reveal God to the creatures they inhabit. It is through the Thought Adjusters that God identifies himself with them and with them. In identifying himself with them, he shares some of his divine attributes.
The supreme phase allows the Absolute God to actualize himself in God the Supreme. “When man and God enter into association, no limit can be assigned to the future possibilities of this association. When man associates with God, God makes man more than he is. The reverse is also true in the sense that man by associating with his creator allows the emergence of the ”evolutionary“ phase of God. It is literally true that ”The fruits of the spirit are the substance of the Supreme". The creature also has a supreme responsibility towards his Creator, that of contributing to his actualization.
So that I, God•Adjuster, can give myself eternally to you my beloved creature, and so that in turn you can receive me without reserve, I equip you with a personality with limitless powers. Thus equipped, we will cross together the stages which separate us from our first Source Center. I will merge with you to become One with you and in you. We will then realize the eternal association of the creature with the Creator.
Between you and me there will be no barrier to my manifestation.
This personality that you give me, God, allows me to participate voluntarily in your plan and to escape my material and temporal limitations as a creature. I can become eternal and perfect, taste the joy of truth, beauty and goodness.
And this power that you have given me, I can make it work when I want, where I want and how I want. I have “free will”.
This is why It only functions in spiritual relationships and decisions that have to do with God. The other areas of free will are called “Choice” and have nothing to do with God.
Everyone has their own personality. It is unique. God, in his wisdom, created distinct individuals because each individual achieves different things.
By individualizing creatures, God proves to us his unlimited power as Creator and his infinite love for creatures. He thus escapes his absoluteness. He gives each creature a personality on which he bestows his love. God enjoys the outpouring of his love on his creatures. God could not remain in his tautology. By creating creatures and giving a distinct personality to each, he creates a fraternity of personalities between which moral relationships are established.
The personalities that I confer on you, my creatures, are contactable and it is I, God, who circulates between you. Our two personalities, that of God and that of man enter into communion and the soul is created. If this relationship gave nothing then what was the point? If I, God, came into you and brought nothing and if you, my creature, gave me nothing in return then what was the point of having relationships?
And this is how God comes out of his infinity and penetrates time and space. The personality of man is aware of that of God and allows God to manifest himself in time and space. And this personality comes from the Father, it is capable of manifesting itself in several ways and in several places.
To you my creature I have conferred a personality with infinite powers but for the moment and in your planetary condition it manifests itself in this way and at this level of space-time reality. For you, my creature, I have organized creation in an evolutionary way. I cannot give you my love all at once because you would not bear it. You will have me totally to yourself but you need patience. I will give you everything you can receive in your current condition. Before becoming a university student the child goes through preparatory classes. And you, my child, you cannot understand everything all at once. You need time. As you progress I will give it to you. Have confidence in me, as a good Father of a family I have organized everything from the earth where you are today, to me. Everything is ready to receive you, the local system, the constellation, the local universe, to Paradise. . . if only you want to follow me. Everywhere you are awaited by loving creatures who will help you but you must want to come to me.
When you have traveled inward to the center of all things, when you have experienced the finite and attained Supremacy, other things await you. You will participate in the adventure of the Ultimate. Then when you have exhausted the Ultimate I await you in the Absolute. These abilities to grow I call dimensions. Your personality will therefore have “dimensions” of functioning which will allow you to exist in time and space; in transcended time and space, and even in the absolute.
In all that I have created, you will be my companion. You will have status and you will be able to enjoy all that I have created. Everything that I have created is yours, my Son, you just have to take it.
The powers of the personality are immense. God keeps all His promises. He has equipped man with everything necessary and everything is ready to receive us. All is well in man. It is in the use of his powers that man becomes One with God or rejects Him.
“The mind is your ship, the Adjuster is your pilot, the human will is the captain. The master of the mortal vessel should have the wisdom to trust the divine pilot to conduct the ascending soul into the morontia havens of eternal survival. Only through selfishness, sloth, and sin can the will of man reject the guidance of so loving a pilot and ultimately wreck the mortal career on the dangerous shoals of the refusal of mercy and the reefs of the practice of sin. With your consent, this faithful pilot will safely navigate the obstacles of time and the handicaps of space to the very source of the divine mind and beyond to the Father of Adjusters on Paradise.” [The Urantia Book: 1217-4]
Georges Michelson-Dupont
International Conference of the I.U.A. in Dourdan (France)
