© 1997 Geri Johnson
© 1997 The Fellowship for readers of The Urantia Book
By Geri Johnson
An Arabic blessing: Bismillah Al Rahman Al Raheem … In the name of God, the merciful, the mercy giver, may His love be upon you.
We are at this conference because we are journeyers upon “the service trails and the happiness highways.” (UB 130:6.2) At this Flagstaff filling station we share the delights of the road, point out a few sights to each other or bumps in the path. I hope my recent journey with the Father will resonate to something in you.
And while I may be the one up here doing the speaking, you have an active part in this talk. I want you to focus on one aspect of your family life that you would like to be better. It may be something as seemingly trivial as whose turn it was to do the dishes and a feeling of annoyance because he or she didn’t do it. Maybe it is a vague sense of unhappiness and lack of satisfaction in the relationship. Or something of a different magnitude, with stronger feelings of fear, sadness, resentment, anger.
Find a specific incident. Think of one family member. Isolate a particular moment with that person. Where were you? What were you saying to each other? How were you feeling? As I talk this morning, use this relationship and specific moment as a reference point. Later I will ask you to bring this thought into focus again. Now let it go.
Three years ago, my family and I returned to the Middle East to live and work. I was hired by a family to teach their autistic son. Little did I know, when I sat on that airplane headed for the other side of the world, that the real journey was into the realms of unconditional love and acceptance. From a mute, autistic, Moslem child I would learn to love in a deeper and fuller way, to root out “preconceived opinions, settled ideas and long-standing prejudices” (UB 109:5.3), to give up judgments and self-doubts, to learn to stay open and loving in any circumstances. And this love would not begin and end with this child, but would come home to the very people that are most important to me, and then amplify to my spiritual family.
Just so we are talking about the same thing… I said ‘autistic,’ not ‘artistic.’ Did you see the movie “Rain Man” in which Dustin Hoffman played the role of an autistic adult? Autism is a developmental disability whereby the brain does not organize, process or integrate information received from the senses as it does for most people. It results in a wide range of behaviors with a common thread that autistic individuals have impaired communication skills and social relationships, are often withdrawn into their own world and have an inability to relate to personality, at least in ways typical to most of us.
After my first observations of Aziz, I left wondering how was I going to reach this child. I was convinced he was intelligent, that he had a personality waiting to emerge and was simply locked in his own reality. By all outward appearances Aziz barely knew I existed. He would use my hand as a tool, directing it toward food or drink. He did not look in my eyes or show expression. Never did he relate to me.
It struck me how analogous this situation was to our Thought Adjusters. Here we are existing in our own reality, largely oblivious to the spiritual realities of the universe, largely oblivious to the efforts of our Thought Adjuster. Certain experiences might impinge upon our consciousness to let us know some other reality exists but usually we are wholly unable to relate. By the experiences of living faith we are able to expand beyond our limitations. How was Aziz going to? To stretch the analogy, how could I be like a Thought Adjuster to him?
As this thought grew, I began reading The Urantia Book with a new purpose. It literally became one of my autism textbooks as I tried to extrapolate the pattern and the inspiration from our relationship with our Father and Thought Adjuster. Well-known passages took on new meaning. Others stood out as never before.
And through the years we have been aided in our methods by various other programs, most notably the Options Institute in Massachusetts. Many of their ideas are sprinkled throughout this talk and I will gladly share later with anyone who would like specific information.
If our Father can “rule a universe of universes by the compelling power of his love” (UB 143:1.4), we, Aziz’s mother and I, could run a program for one little boy based on love. Our love would be the bridge from his autistic world into ours. It would be the climate and the soil from which we hoped he would grow.
If any moment with Aziz was characterized by a feeling less than loving, less than understanding, less than comfortable, then we needed to find out why. And the answer was never within Aziz, with “fixing him,” it was always within us. We have the free will power to choose our reaction to any situation, any behavior. There is never a moment when we need withdraw our loving attitude.
Like the Thought Adjusters, we chose not to force or pressure Aziz in any way, physically or emotionally. We would not fracture his will by imposing ours. We would find the attitudinal boundaries between encouraging and pushing, stimulating and frustrating, persisting and pressuring. We ventured to turn our ideals into practical actions.
Is this not the question with which we grow daily: How to turn our ideals into practical action? How to make tangible our caring, our love? How to bring the highest good to any relationship? How to keep our love flowing to a grandparent with Alzheimer’s, to a rebellious or drug-dependent child, to an alcoholic mother, to an indifferent or unfaithful spouse, to a resentful stepchild, to a depressed sister, to a hostile brother, to a negative and fearridden aunt, to a discouraged father? How do we connect with someone living in their own reality, seemingly nonrelating and unaffected by our presence?
We who walk this path of love and service know you can only reach out to someone just so far as you can reach within and find truth, goodness, acceptance, understanding, compassion, forgiveness, beauty, joy and the supreme desire to live the love of our Father. And the more you love another, the more of love you become. It’s an incredible arrangement. Do you remember the first time you fell in love, or you parents, holding your child for the first time and the flood of love you experienced? You may not still feel the same intensity but that moment enlarged your capacity to love every other person in this universe. And you can tap into that feeling, into that reality, at any moment.
Just as “the Divine Spirit descends, by a long series of steps, to meet you as you are and where you are and then, in partnership of faith, lovingly to embrace the soul” (UB 34:6.3), so we tried to embrace Aziz. We began with that understanding of motives and sentiments and the discovery of “his values.” We disposed of all assumptions that what he was doing was sad, bad, bizarre or negative in any way. We rocked, hummed, flapped and squealed with him to understand what he was experiencing and to create a bond with him in his world.
We came to appreciate how this little boy with sensory overload had learned to take care of himself, found value in what he was doing and discovered ways to help him. Each discovery was a treasure. Learning to unravel his mysteries became exciting and fun.
We need our conceptual frames in which to organize our thoughts. We also need to know how to question and when to discard them. Here is a story about another autistic boy that illustrates this point. I did not work with this child but know of him.
Suddenly and for no apparent reason, he would get out of his seat, run across the room and throw himself against a wall. Then those around him would conjecture, “He is so unhappy, he is so frustrated, he is angry, he is being bad, he just doesn’t want to do his work, etc.” A few years later, when this boy acquired some expressive language skills and was asked, “why do you do this?” he responded with “happy.” So the teacher probed, asking, “Happy? Happy like what?” And the boy answered, “Happy like birthday party.” All those years when others perceived him as angry, frustrated, violent, or just plain aberrant, and treated him as such, restrained him, yelled at him, punished him, he was simply expressing his happiness. He had no other way to show those feelings and no one ever entertained the idea that this action could be positive and joyful.
“It is what one believes rather than knows that determines conduct and dominates personal performance.” (UB 99:4.5) The impact of our beliefs is profound upon our actions. Sometimes our leaps to understand are so colored by our preconceived ideas and misperceptions that we miss the opportunity to really see or to be open to another reality. Not only do we misinterpret and act upon our misperceptions, we often create a whole set of expectations, then experience disappointment when the outcome is different than anticipated.
The Pharisees and Sadducees continually missed Jesus’ teaching because of their long-standing prejudices. They could not, would not, hear truth and you know the rest of that story. The apostles suffered disappointment after disappointment because they filtered new teachings through old beliefs.
Our families on Urantia are experiencing high rates of divorce, alcohol and drug abuse, school drop out, runaways, suicide, teen pregnancy, violence, a lack of functioning and a generalized unhappiness often because we have not learned to understand one another. We have not learned to accept one another. We do not look past actions to discover one’s motives or intentions. Our misperceptions and disappointments crowd out love. Even something as seemingly trivial as that tinge of annoyance over doing the dishes, if unchecked, if allowed to grow, can erode love.
Go back to that moment I asked you earlier to visualize. Bring it into focus. What was the issue? What were you saying to each other? What were you feeling? Why? What did you believe about that person at that moment? Why did you believe that? Was that moment based on a clear understanding of that person’s feelings and intentions? Might you have filtered a little of your own opinions and beliefs into the moment? Were you staying present with that person, with their feelings and thoughts in that moment? Or might you have jumped to an experience in the past, expected a similar outcome and projected it to the future? If you had that moment back, what could you ask to understand that person more clearly?
With Aziz we continually strove to give up all beliefs that interfered with loving him. We looked for the best in him, identified with it and built upon it. These were not new concepts. It was the clarity of our goal and the intensity of our persistence, the dayby-day and moment-to-moment commitments, that added a deeper meaning. It was the personal willingness to go wherever the spirit led, which for me was to peel off layers of negative beliefs, judgments and self-doubts until 1 looked into my core and found only goodness.
Learning to love unreservedly is simply striving to find the goodness that underlies the actions of others. Then we can look upon each other with understanding and kindness, we can hear each other with openness and acceptance, and we can touch each other with fairness and love.
You know the sentence about Jesus: “When he smiled on a man, that mortal experienced increased capacity for solving his manifold problems.” (UB 171:7.6) Can you imagine a look so loving that it would alter your beliefs about yourself and inspire you to positive action? Try. Close your eyes. Recall a time when you felt totally and profoundly loved. May you be so wealthy as to have many of those moments in your memory.
Bring one into focus. Think of that person. See their eyes. Think of the love in them, the warmth, the joy in seeing you, the caring for only you, the understanding of all your efforts and strivings, the delight in everything you try, the faith in your being, and the acceptance of your imperfections. Now imagine Jesus looking into your eyes, into your soul, loving everything about YOU, seeing only goodness in you, trusting the truth in you, beholding your beauty — the perfected you — the one who is one no further away than your faith.
Take this love home to those that are most precious to you. As the aging Apostle John was given to saying, “My little children, love one another.” (UB 139:4.6)