© 2000 Georges Michelson-Dupont
© 2000 Urantia Association International (IUA)
| Living the Will of Our Father, Part 1, The Spiritual Experiences | Journal — September 2000 — Index | Living the Will of the Father: Walking the Talk |
Georges MichelSon-Dupont, France
What I am about to tell you this morning should not be considered an attempt to convince those who don’t believe in God, or even an example for someone else to consider; it should rather be viewed as an honest sharing with you of my modest spiritual life with my Father, my understanding of what he wants of me, a sincere explanation of my personal struggle between my animal tendencies and my longings for truth, beauty, and goodness.
The answers I found for myself and which I am about to share with you are strictly personal and would not be applicable in your personal case; nevertheless, I invite those of you who are interested in this subject to make a similar spiritual exercise, in which honesty and humbleness are instrumental.
I take the opportunity to thank the team of dedicated people from the New York Association and the staff of Urantia Foundation who have set up this conference and chosen this theme. Indeed, revisiting the topic, meditating on my personal experience, and putting in writing my findings helped me to clarify in my mind some aspects and served my desire to do his will. I hope the conference will be equally helpful to you.
¶ All human spiritual progress is built upon an honest and sincere evaluation of past experiences.
My life divides itself into two periods: before 1980 and after. That year was a crucial one and it constituted a turning point. I lost my mother, I experienced a hard time in my family life, and my businesses collapsed. I was depressed, bitter and irritable and was a hard-to-live-with kind of husband-father. The world had rejected me, so I would reject the world. Suicidal thoughts kept knocking on the door of my mind, and I started to drink. The situation was slowly turning into a drama, when suddenly one day, and counter to my way of thinking, I realized that, yes, I myself was responsible, heavily responsible for the disastrous situation. I engaged myself in an honest and sincere self-examination. I made an effort to find out the purpose of my life. I became conscious that money, position, and power would not bring me happiness; I realized that discrimination between good and bad, patience and impatience, selfishness and altruism would be instrumental in the improvement. I sincerely wanted to become a better man, and I made the decision to change my attitude and the gamut of my values.
Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. [UB 196:3.20]
As a result of this decision I immediately felt peace and relief in my heart, which encouraged me to go on. This feeling was very special, the kind of feeling you have when, having struggled for a long time, you experience the sudden assurance that you have found a solution to all of your anxieties. It was not that my difficulties had suddenly disappeared; rather that I had a new vision, a different approach: I sincerely accepted the fact that I was harvesting what I had sown. I began to see the sorrows my family had been exposed to because of me.
The keys of the kingdom of heaven are: sincerity, more sincerity, and more sincerity. All men have these keys. Men use them—advance in spirit status—by decisions, by more decisions, and by more decisions. [UB 39:4.14]
Along with those decisions came the sincere desire to think about God and to find an answer to my existential questions: What is the purpose of all this suffering and why am I here? Then something strange happened. The URANTLA Book, given to me by my father some 15 years earlier, was standing on a shelf in front of me. It really invited me, and after my having read the tables of content I felt that I was able to find answers to my questions. I made the decision to read 15 minutes every day for 15 days. After a few days I found myself spending not minutes but rather hours in exploring the first papers.
¶ Reading the URANTIA Book was the second turning point of my life and a great support to my spiritual quest.
The more I was reading the papers, the more my understanding of my relationship with God and to the universe expanded and occupied my interest. At the same time, my soul was invaded by the refreshing sentiment of peace and happiness; it happened especially in my reading Paper 5, “God’s Relation to the Individual.” It helped me to discover and to accept the overall, wise, and loving plan set up by the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit. Origin, history, and destiny were fully disclosed to my mind; and the wisdom in difficulties, sorrows, and afflictions was clearly explained and fully accepted by me. I translated those “afflictions” into “inevitabilities,” and again those “inevitabilities” into “benedictions.” I became convinced that our entire life was a gigantic school and Urantia, the playground, whereon all opportunities for spiritual growth, character mastering, wisdom exercises, and loving relationships were made available.
The greatest affiction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted. Mortals only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation. [UB 48:7.14]
This has for a long time been one of my favourite quotes.
After some weeks, I wondered what the authors mean when they speak about “doing the Father’s will” and what were the reasons for “doing his will”—after all, he had bestowed upon me a personality with its own free will. My logic was somewhat confronted with an apparent contradiction, a “conflict of interest” kind of situation. On one hand he endows me with a personality that comes with “free will,” which is so sacred that even a Thought Adjuster cannot intervene in it—and on the other hand, he invites me “to do his will”!
Soon the solution came to me as I was contemplating the causes of the painful crisis that had forever changed the course of my life and had occasioned the ensuing decision to change my scale of values, with the ensuing psychological improvement, and the educative value of the Father’s plan for my personal spiritual progress. After some considerations, I made the connection and realized that what led me to the 1980 crisis was the fact that I wanted my, not his, will to be done, and since I had already experienced so much pain, it then became easy for me to accept the search for his will.
The intellectual recognition that I found myself in pain and trouble when I distanced from him, became a living reality when, grateful that my Maker loves and cares so much for me, I realized that knowing intimately everything of my character and my longings, he had a plan for me. The feeling of gratitude for his nature turned immediately into love for his person. To seek for “doing his will” would not only assist me in the discovery of his plan but also help me to love him more and more and to please him in return.
From that time on, my daily meditation and worship became a silent dialogue with God, whom I now understood to be my Father, and in my meditations I was asking for his divine enlightenment and was seeking for his perfect will. All loving parents formulate plans for the education of their offspring; so does God, our loving Father, with the distinction that his plans for us are perfect because of his perfect nature and attributes. Faith in our Father leads us, his children, to trust his plan.
“It is my will that your will be done.” [UB 111:5.6 and UB 118:8.11]
But what does “to do the will of God” really mean? This question tormented my mind for months upon months. Was the will of God to be done in special occasions, in specific places, with singled-out people? I was wondering what kind of plan my heavenly Father might have for me; what could it be?
Jesus told his apostles: And fail not to remember that the will of God can be done in any earthly occupation. [UB 155:6.11]
Only a person motivated by love can realize and effectively seek to do the will of God.
This convinced me that seeking for the will of God was to extend into all areas of my life, and that I should not limit myself to the circle of my friends only. I decided that I would never let hate invade my heart because it was so incompatible with love. I would avoid judging my neighbour, and forgiveness would be my only response to them. I would serve my fellows with all my capacity in my private surroundings as well as in the social settings of the readers of The URANTIA Book. I understood that the will of God is here and now, not in the near future. I formulated for myself a definition that the will of God is the desire of God to the effect that I would, in any decision of spiritual content, choose what I thought is good, true, and fair, according to my persopal understanding of truth, goodness, and beauty; that all my relationships with my fellow human beings would be motivated by the desire to do good to them, would be animated with a fatherly love for them. The life of Jesus being a perfect example of a person’s living the will of our Father, I would endeavour to be inspired by him and seek also for the Spirit of Truth.
Well, with all those good decisions you may expect that I am putting forth the fruits of the Spirit in abundance; that I have become tolerant, merciful, loving, unselfish and the like-in short, that a new Saint Georges has been born!
“Marlène, do you agree with this description of your husband?”
Certainly not, and I must confess that without her incessant and sometimes not-too-well-received warnings, my ego would clamour for more recognition and honour.
Never forget there is only one adventure which is more satisfying and thrilling than the attempt to discover the will of the living God, and that is the supreme experience of bonestly trying to do that divine will. [UB 155:6.11]
I experienced many difficulties in my trying to do the will of my Father and to love my fellows with a Fatherly Love. Most of the time I found myself all too soon forgetful about it. My lazy mind was jibbing at it, and my ego found good excuses to escape. The feeling of guilt poisoned my life because the gap between my spiritual longings and my daily reality continued to widen.
At the same time, I found it most difficult to put my decisions into practice when working with people who are not necessarily motivated by spiritual longings. I felt most of the time that I was misunderstood and abused. Instead of happiness and certainty of doing good, I experienced frustration and irritation. It was a challenge even with regard to the people whom I love.
In every mortal there exists a dual nature: the inheritance of animal tendencies and the bigh urge of spirit endowment. During the short life you live on Urantia, these two diverse and opposing urges can seldom be fully reconciled; they can bardly be barmonized and unified; but tbroughout your lifetime the combined Spirit ever ministers to assist you in subjecting the flesh more and more to the leading of the Spirit. Even though you must live your material life through, even though you cannot escape the body and its necessities, nonetheless, in purpase and ideals you are empowered increasingly to subject the animal nature to the mastery of the Spirit. There truly exists within you a conspiracy of spiritual forces, a confederation of divine powers, whose exclusive purpose is to effect your final deliverance from material bondage and finite handicaps. [UB 34:6.9]
When I detected this concept in The URANTIA Book, many things became clearer, and I felt relieved. My feeling of guilt disappeared, and I realized that, with its origins on the animalistic level, it was inevitable that my ego would clamour for gratification, honour, and the like. It is not natural for a human being to love unselfishly, although the will of God is that we love unselfishly. The animal nature of man is naturally egoistic; man is a “taker.” The spiritual nature of the indwelling Adjuster is inherently altruistic; he is a “giver.”
I realized therefore that to do the will of God meant also this interminable struggle between those two natures, between egotism and altruism, between the material needs and the spiritual attraction exercised by my indwelling Adjuster. I realized that to do my Father’s will consisted also in this slow process of spiritual transformation of my ego from the lower level of animal reaction to the higher level of an enlightened and wise technique of spiritual reaction to the universe [UB 100:2.3].
Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. [UB 196:3.20]
To minister to someone requires a real and honest desire to forget about one’s own needs and focus on the other person’s true needs. It is not a natural trend, but love is instrumental in the process. I discovered by experience that after having worshiped God, I was invaded by love, and that love had to flow on to my fellows; I was more inclined to minister. It was a major discovery to me when I realized, truly experienced, that my desire to do his will and to minister to my fellows was depending on the maintenance of a spiritual contact with him.
Today, I continue to maintain this contact on a daily basis. I pray for and meditate about my Father’s will. My material fears have totally disappeared, and my confidence in God is indestructible. I feel I am a cosmic citizen, a member of the Family of God.
I would like to conclude with the following quote from The URANTIA Book, which represents the hope, the certainty for all mankind:
Man is spiritually indwelt by a surviving Thought Adjuster. If such a human mind is sincerely and spiritually motivated, if such a human soul desires to know God and become like him, honestly wants to do the Father’s will, there exists no negative influence of mortal deprivation nor positive power of possible interference which can prevent such a divinely motivated soul from securely ascending to the portals of Paradise. [UB 5:1.7]
Thank you, Father, for your presence in us. And thank you, my friends, for your patience.
| Living the Will of Our Father, Part 1, The Spiritual Experiences | Journal — September 2000 — Index | Living the Will of the Father: Walking the Talk |