© 2016 Ginés Avilés and José Manuel Duarte
© 2016 Urantia Association of Spain
| The ascension race from a bird's eye view | Luz y Vida — No. 44 — June 2016 — Index | The survival of the personality |
¶ Internal Aid
by Ginés Avilés
I define internal helps as the forms of contact with the Spirit in the mind, and as such I frame them in the ascension career. Getting to the Father requires wanting to be like the Father or, what is the same, fulfilling His will. And to be like Him and carry out that will on Earth, I consider that both internal help and service to others in a broad sense are complementary and essential. As The Urantia Book rightly says, it is a combination of spiritual exercise with internal help and spiritual nourishment with service.
Especially, they are decisive for the fulfillment of our mission, not in eternity but on this planet of Urantia. Here, having God consciousness in mind and achieving Adjuster fusion are the achievable goals within our Paradise career. It is about helping us from them to increase our consciousness until we touch the superconsciousness where the Adjuster resides and discover it.
As the reader may have already imagined, by internal help we understand here prayer, meditation and adoration, and we are not talking about other forms of contact that, passing through the same tradition in the tradition, are not. As an example we can cite the mystical meditation or the wild dances still practiced today in various cultures, which lead us rather to descend from the conscious to the subconscious, instead of rising towards the Adjuster that dwells in the superconscious.
I have classified these forms of contact according to their quality, clearly attending to quotes from The Urantia Book. In this “ranking” towards the consciousness of God, adoration reappears as the highest quality form of spiritual contact and therefore, those forms of prayer and meditation that include the characteristics of adoration are better or more ideal as the book itself. refers to them.
Adoration is understood as a kind of exalted admiration and can be referred to both God himself and his divine values or characteristics. Our distance from the Father is so great that adoration is just as valid if it is directed to our beloved Jesus. I also believe that recognizing and admiring those same divine values in our brothers also surely produces the same consequences. And that is the important thing, not so much what it means to worship, but rather what effect it produces on the person who worships. The worshiper through this technique becomes more and more the person he worships or acquires for himself the divine quality that he worships by transforming his being.
Worship
DEFINITIONS:
- To adore = Admire, place in high esteem or degree some divine value/-is of God or Jesus UB 143:7.3 UB 143:7.7 UB 143:7.8
- Natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father’s personality and his nature of love and his attributes worthy of veneration. UB 5:3.3
- Pursue divine values and love the Giver of those Values UB 16:8.14
- Contemplation of the spiritual UB 143:7.3
This technique makes possible the religion of the spirit that Jesus teaches us, where the important thing is to be as opposed to the traditional religion or of the mind where, regardless of how one is, the important thing is to do. Intellectual dynamism in the face of intellectual settlement, the chains to which Jesus referred.
Worship:
what happens when we adore?
- When we adore we value one or several divine characteristics and this naturally induces us, consciously or unconsciously, to transform ourselves as people closer to that ideal, to identify ourselves with it. UB 143:7.5; UB 143:7.6; UB 92:0.4; UB 5:4.5 UB 36:5.17 UB 160:5.3; UB 91:5.1; UB 196:3.22; UB 102:4.5; UB 146:2.17 Jesus taught that worship makes the worshiper more and more similar to the being who worships (FAITH??)
- Distinctive capacity regarding animals, of being a runner of the
- Avoid evil prevent sin + Saving action from the dangers of materialism
Worship
Other notes
- Free will: nothing prevents us from worshiping and fulfilling divine ideals in some way
- Starting point before worship: relaxation + any other contact with spirit UB 103:4.1; UB 160:3.1
- Iniquity cuts off this and other forms of spirit contact UB 146:2.2
- The more and better we know Him, the more quality worship has UB 27:7.1; UB 144:3.23
-Broad View: We worship God when we do His Will [UB 131:5.3] (/en/The_Urantia_Book/131#p5_3); UB 131:10.5
There are other forms of contact with the spirit in the mind related to worship. First, the prayer of thanksgiving is presented as the ideal prayer or another form of worship, equating it with it. And finally, we have the adoring reflective meditation.
Rodán de Alejandría makes a reflection on the best techniques to solve the problems of living in paper 160. By his own reasoning, he exposes his technique of resolution but then derives another, complementary to the first, from the observation of the performance of Master Jesus: adoring reflective meditation.
With a normal body and reasonably good health and with the help of a little rest or relaxation (to increase our receptivity to the spiritual) we can begin to conduct a solitary survey of the problems of living. Once the analysis of the problem has been obtained, we are ready to find a solution, and that solution is more ideal the more of the divine ideals we apply to it. That is, we seek to solve the problem as it is the will of God.
Following a quote from The Urantia Book, these techniques (worship, prayer of thanksgiving and adoring reflective meditation) should become habits that will propel the growth of consciousness further and further into superconsciousness where, as We have commented, our Adjuster inhabits to have consciousness of God.
Here are some quotes from where the ideas have been obtained, as well as searches for English terms made in the text of The Urantia Book.
Thanksgiving Prayer
- The prayer of thanksgiving is equal to worship. UB 131:1.8
- Adoration is the ideal prayer. UB 144:2.2
Worshipping Reflective Meditation
- We need a normal body and reasonably good health
- Rest or relaxation (determines the capacity for spiritual receptivity)
- Better alone UB 160:1.10 UB 160:3.1
- Meditation puts mind in contact with spirit. (Feeling of intimate contact and peace of mind)
- Direction or Objective
- Reflexive Meditation=solitary survey of the problems of living
- Reflexive Meditation and beyond Adorative. In my opinion resolve conflicts on the basis of worshiping (=realizing) God or the characteristics that define him (divine values = attractions that awaken the dormant spiritual forces of man)
- Make it a habit of spiritual growth (along with religious devotion) UB 100:1.8
In conclusion, the general objective of the presentation was to highlight some guides that the book gives us and that help us to grow and advance in the ascending career, our authentic mission and spiritual objective in eternity. But warning to navigators: There can be no peace in the heart or progress in the mind, unless you fall in love wholeheartedly with the truth, with the ideals of eternal realities (UB 157:2.2). The love of the Truth is the energy that leads us to the Father. Do we love the Truth enough to carry out this gratifying but tortuous path?
¶ Physical and Material Aids
by José Manual Duarte
Throughout the ascending career of evolutionary mortals, numerous physical and material aids are available, such as the situations that give rise to inevitabilities or the Urantia Book itself. In the same way, other aids benefit the whole of humanity because they make civilization progress, such as the biological improvement originated by the tribal and racial struggles of primitive man that eliminated abnormal and defective lineages.
However, when we refer to material aid in the ascension career, the most remarkable thing is the educational system. Furthering the program of mortal progression appears to be one of the chief occupations of the present organized universe, and most of the innumerable orders of created intelligences are engaged, directly or indirectly, in advancing some phase of this progressive plan of perfection.
The entire universe is an immense school destined to train the mind and educate the spirit of ascending creatures. The mind and spirit are given equal opportunities to form and advance. The universes of space are like vast training schools, schools where the pilgrims of time advance from lifetime to lifetime and from world to world, until they are lovingly sent from the frontiers of their universe of origin to the higher educational regime of the superuniverse, and from there to the spirit formation worlds of Havona, and finally to Paradise and the high destiny of finaliters - eternal assignment to as yet unrevealed missions to the universes of time and space.
This formation of the mind and this education of the spirit are carried out from the worlds of human origin, passing through the worlds of the mansions of the system and the other spheres of progress associated with Jerusem, up to the seventy realms of social life linked to Edentia. and the four hundred and ninety spheres of spiritual progress that surround Salvington.
The cornerstone of the entire educational system is the acquisition of character through enlightened experience. Educators provide illumination; one’s place in the universe and the status of the ascendant provide the opportunity to experiment; the wise use of these two factors increases character.
The divine educational plan ensures the intimate association between work and teaching. We are entrusted with a specific task to perform, and at the same time we are provided with qualified educators to teach us the best method of executing our work.
There is a determined and divine purpose in this entire morontia, and later spiritual, program for the progression of mortals, in this detailed universal training school for ascending creatures.
¶ Planetary Schools
In the evolutionary worlds, the schools of the Planetary Prince and those of the Garden of Eden stand out. The former deal mainly with philosophy, religion, morality, and higher intellectual and artistic achievements.
Adam and Eve Garden Schools are typically devoted to the practical arts, basic intellectual training, social culture, economic development, business relations, physical fitness, and civil government.
With the arrival of the Planetary Prince, his corporeal staff organizes the planetary schools of training and culture, where the cream of the evolutionary races are instructed, and then they are sent to teach these best customs to their peoples. These schools of the Prince are located in the material headquarters of the planet.
Time is divided almost equally between the following occupations:
- Physical work. Cultivation of the soil, associated with the construction and beautification of dwellings.
- Social activities. Representations of works and cultural social groups.
- Educational application. Individual instruction in connection with collective family teaching, completed by specialized training by classes.
- Professional training. Schools for marriage and housework, arts and crafts schools, and classes for the training of teachers - secular, cultural and religious.
- Spiritual culture. The fraternity of teachers, the instruction of children’s and youth groups, and the formation of adopted native children as missionaries for their towns.
For their part, the Gardens of Eden are magnificent cultural centers that function as social models of behavior and planetary customs. Its schools welcome suitable candidates from the races of the world, while the garden’s industrial developments open up new channels of trade relations.
This is how the Adams and Eves and their progeny contribute to the sudden expansion of culture and the rapid improvement of the evolutionary races of their worlds. The amalgamation of the evolutionary races with the children of Adam increases and seals all these relationships, resulting in the immediate improvement of the biological state, the stimulation of the intellectual potential and the increase of the spiritual receptivity.
In normal worlds, the garden seat of the violet race becomes the second center of world culture and, together with the seat city of the Planetary Prince, sets the tone for the development of civilization. The schools of the seat city of the Planetary Prince and the schools of the garden of Adam and Eve are contemporary for centuries. They are generally not too far apart, and work together in harmonious cooperation. These world centers eventually amalgamate, but this effective association sometimes does not occur until the time of the first Magisterial Son.
¶ Educational Systems in Morontia Life
Those things which we could have learned on Earth, but fail to learn, must be acquired in the schools of morontia life. On the mansion worlds, resurrected mortal survivors resume intellectual education and spiritual development at the exact level at which it was interrupted when death overtook them.
The schools are organized on the mansion worlds into three general groups of one hundred divisions each: the schools of thought, the schools of feeling, and the schools of action. When we come to the constellation, schools of ethics, schools of administration and schools of social adaptation are added. On the universe headquarters worlds we enter the schools of philosophy, divinity, and pure spirituality.
One of the objectives of the morontia career is to eradicate permanently in mortal survivors those rudimentary animal characteristics such as procrastination, ambiguity, insincerity, problem avoidance, unfairness, and ease-seeking.
No ascending mortal can evade the experience of raising children - his own or those of others - either on the material worlds, or later on the finalitary world or on Jerusem. Fathers must go through this essential experience as certainly as mothers. The relationship between parents and children is fundamental to understanding the essential concept of the Universal Father and his universe children. That is why this experience is indispensable in the experiential formation of all ascendants.
The Melchizedeks are the directors of that large body of teachers–will creatures and others, partially spiritualized–who so acceptably function on Jerusem and its associated worlds, but especially on the seven mansion worlds.
¶ The Seven Mansion Worlds
In the world of number one mansions almost all experience is related to the correction of deficiencies. The survivors who reach this first sphere of detention have so many and such varied character flaws as creatures, and so many deficiencies in their human experience, that the main activities of the kingdom are to correct and heal these many legacies of life in the flesh. . Biological deficiencies are compensated. The defects of the planetary experience related to the sexual life, the family association and the parental function are corrected, or plans are made for their future rectification within the families of the material Sons on Jerusem.
In mansion world number two, work groups and social organizations begin to function, and the elimination of all intellectual conflicts and the healing of mental disharmony are ensured. The effort to master the meaning of the morontia mota continues.
The third mansonia is a world of great personal and social achievements and a more positive educational work begins, in contrast to the formation of the first two worlds, which is more negative in the sense of compensating for deficiencies, completing the experience of life in the meat. The survivors actually begin their progressive morontia culture.
The main purpose of this education is to increase the understanding of the correlation between the morontia mote and the logic of mortals, the coordination of the morontia mote with human philosophy. Mortals come to understand well in practice the true metaphysics. It is the introduction to the understanding of cosmic meanings and universal interrelationships.
In the fourth mansonia the individual ascendant more appropriately finds its place in group work and in the class activities of morontia life. Ascendants here develop a greater appreciation of transmissions and other phases of local universe culture and progress. Ascending mortals are truly initiated for the first time into the demands and allures of the true social life of morontia creatures, which are based neither on self-aggrandizement nor on selfish conquest. The new social order is based on the sympathetic sympathy of mutual appreciation, the selfless love of serving each other, and the overriding motivation of realizing a common and supreme destiny - the Paradise goal of worshipful and divine perfection.
The fifth mansion world represents a tremendous step forward in the life of a morontia progressor, a true anticipation of life on Jerusem. Having mastered the language of the local universe before leaving the fourth mansion world, more time is now spent perfecting the language of Uversa, to bilingual when Jerusem citizenship is achieved, and even to Havona.
On the sixth mansion world one receives the first lessons relating to the future spiritual career beginning immediately after graduation from the local universe morontia education. The initial instruction in the technique of the administration of the universe begins. The first lessons covering the affairs of an entire universe are now being given. It is a brilliant age for ascending mortals, which generally witnesses the perfect fusion between the human mind and the divine Adjuster. This fusion may have potentially occurred earlier, but many times your true valid identity is not achieved until you reside on the fifth or even sixth mansion world.
In the seventh world we will receive the teaching of many educators, and all will cooperate in the task of preparing us to reside on Jerusem. The last remnants of the “mark of the beast” are eradicated here.
¶ The Headquarters of the System. jerusem
Arriving at Jerusem the activities are of three different types: work, progress and entertainment. In other words: service, study and distraction. The compound activities consist of social relations, collective amusements and divine worship. The fact of mixing with different groups of personalities, with very different orders from oneself, has great educational value.
Mortal survivors spend much of their free time in the system capital observing and studying the habits of life and behavior of the Material Sons and Daughters. All surviving mortals who have not experienced parenthood on the evolutionary worlds must acquire this necessary training while residing in the homes of the Material Sons of Jerusem as parental associates of these magnificent fathers and mothers. This is so, except insofar as such mortals have been able to make up for their deficiencies in the system’s nursery school, located on the first transitional culture world of Jerusem.
The Melchizedek Sons run over thirty different educational centers on Jerusem. These formative schools begin with the college of self-examination and end with the schools of citizenship on Jerusem, where the Material Sons and Daughters join the Melchizedeks and other beings in their all-out effort to train mortal survivors to assume the high responsibilities of representative government. The entire universe is organized and administered at the representative level. Among non-perfect beings, representative government is God’s ideal of self-government. All representatives or other delegates are elected by the council of one thousand electors, and must be graduates of the Melchizedek College of Administration high school.
Under the supervision of the Melchizedeks, the Material Sons take care of the ascending mortals, especially those who are slow to unify their personalities on the new morontia levels, and give them intensive training designed to rectify such deficiencies. No ascending mortal leaves the system headquarters to undertake the most extensive and varied career of adaptation to social life in the constellation until these Material Sons have certified the achievements made in mote by their personality - an individuality that combines consummated human existence in experiential association with the budding morontia career, and the two are duly harmonized through the spiritual overcontrol of the Thought Adjuster.
¶ The Constellation of Norlatiadek. Edentia
The Melchizedeks also maintain two special colleges at Edentia. One, the emergency school, is dedicated to the study of the problems derived from the rebellion of Satania. And the other, the school of donation, is dedicated to mastering the new problems resulting from the fact that Miguel made his final donation in one of the worlds of Norlatiadek. This latter college was established almost forty thousand years ago, immediately after Michael announced that Urantia had been chosen as the world for his final bestowal.
The univitatia, who are the permanent citizens of Edentia and its associated worlds, preside over the special educational and cultural schools of progressive, occupational or practical adaptation to social life on one of the ten satellites that revolve around each of the worlds. principal of Edentia. These seven hundred minor worlds are technical spheres of practical education in the workings of the entire local universe, and are open to all classes of intelligent beings. These schools of special skills and technical knowledge are not organized exclusively for ascending mortals, although morontia students constitute by far the largest group of all who attend these training courses.
Our sojourn on Edentia and its associated spheres will be primarily devoted to mastering collective ethics, the secret of congenial and beneficial relationships among the various universal and superuniverse orders of intelligent personalities. On the mansion worlds we finished unifying the evolving human personality; in the system capital we attain Jerusem citizenship and consent to submit our selves to the disciplines of collective activities and coordinated enterprises; but now, on the formative worlds of the constellation, we have to make our evolutionary morontia personality really sociable. This heavenly cultural acquisition consists of learning to:
- Live happily and work effectively with ten different morontia companions.
- Reside with joy and cordially cooperate with ten univitatias.
- Achieving simultaneous adaptation to both fellow morontia and host univitatia.
- Achieve an intellectual harmony and make a practical adjustment with the two groups of associates.
- Experience less and less irritability and less resentment.
- Adjust all these various adaptation techniques to social life to further the ascension career to Paradise.
- And finally, bring to their culminating point all these multiple procedures of adaptation to social life with the simultaneous increase of spiritual insight. Intellectually, socially, and spiritually, when two moral creatures use the association technique, they not merely double their personal potentials for universal attainment, but almost quadruple their possibilities for attainment and fulfilment.
¶ The Headquarters of the Local Universe. Salvington
The Melchizedeks occupy a world of their own near Salvington, the headquarters of the universe. This sphere, called Melchizedek, is the pilot world of Salvington’s circuit of seventy primary spheres, each of which is surrounded by six tributary spheres devoted to specialized activities. These wonderful spheres - seventy primaries and 420 tributaries - are often called the Melchizedek University. Ascending mortals from all the Nebadon constellations pass through the formation of these 490 worlds to acquire residential status on Salvington. But the education of the ascenders is only one phase of the many activities that take place in the Salvington group of architectural spheres.
All evolutionary mortals who have completed their training in the constellations are destined to land in the Melchizedek world, where they are initiated into the regimen of disciplines and spiritual progression of the Salvington educational system.
Ascending mortals reside on the world Melchizedek while they continue their training on the six surrounding planets of specialized education. And this same method is applied throughout the stay in the seventy cultural worlds, the primary spheres of the Salvington circuit.
Many various activities occupy the time of the numerous beings residing on the six tributary worlds of the Melchizedek sphere, but as far as ascending mortals are concerned, these satellites are engaged in the following special phases of study:
- Sphere number one deals with reviewing the initial planetary life of ascending mortals. This work is done in classes composed of those who come from a given world of mortal origin. Those from Urantia do this experiential review together.
- The special work of sphere number two consists of a similar review of the experiences of the mansion worlds surrounding the first satellite of the local system headquarters.
- The reviews of this third sphere are related to the stay in the capital of the local system and cover the activities of the rest of the architectural worlds of the group that forms the headquarters of the system.
- The fourth sphere is concerned with reviewing the experiences of the seventy tributary worlds of the constellation and their associated spheres.
- In the fifth sphere, the revision of the ascending stay in the world headquarters of the constellation is carried out.
- Time is dedicated, in sphere number six, to try to correlate these five epochs and thus achieve a coordination of experience, as a preparation to enter the Melchizedeks primary schools of universal formation.
- The schools of universal administration and spiritual wisdom are located in the native world of the Melchizedeks, where there are also schools dedicated to a single line of research, such as energy, matter, organization, communication, the archives, ethics and the comparative existence of creatures.
In the Melchizedek College of Spiritual Endowment, all the orders of the Sons of God, including those on Paradise, cooperate with the Melchizedeks and the seraphic educators to train the multitudes of evangelicals of destiny who go out to proclaim spiritual freedom and divine sonship even to the far worlds of the universe.
This particular faculty of the Melchizedek University is an exclusive institution of the universe; student visitors from other realms are not admitted here.
The highest training course in universal administration is given by the Melchizedeks on their native world. This Faculty of Higher Ethics is presided over by the original Father Melchizedek. It is to these faculties that the various universes send their exchange students.
Although the young universe of Nebadon is low on the scale of universes in terms of spiritual attainment and high ethical development, yet our administrative problems have so turned the entire universe into one vast clinic for other nearby creations, that the Melchizedek faculties are crowded with student visitors and observers from other kingdoms.
In addition to the huge group of local enrollees, there are always over a hundred thousand foreign students attending Melchizedek schools, for the Nebadon order of Melchizedeks is famous throughout Splandon.
¶ Outside the Local Universe
Leaving the local universe, we find the minor sector of Ensa, which is composed of one hundred local universes and has a capital called Uminor the third. This minor sector is number three of the major sector of Splandon. Splandon is made up of one hundred minor sectors and has a headquarters world called Umajor the fifth. It is the fifth major sector of the Orvonton superuniverse, the seventh segment of the grand universe.
The headquarters worlds of the minor sectors are the great meeting points of the Master Physical Controllers. These headquarters worlds are surrounded by seven instructional spheres which form the superuniverse admission schools and are the centers where physical and administrative knowledge relating to the universe of universes is taught. That is to say, they are spheres dedicated to the higher physical studies of the ascending life.
The seventy satellites of Umajor the fifth are dedicated to our superuniverse intellectual formation and development, that is, to the advanced intellectual formation of the superuniverse. Here gather from all over Orvonton the wise beings who work tirelessly to prepare the mortals of time for their further progress toward the career of eternity. Most of this training of ascending mortals takes place on the seventy worlds of study.
Uversa, the seat of Orvonton, our superuniverse, is directly surrounded by the seven higher universities of advanced spiritual teaching for ascending will creatures. Each of these seven groups of marvelous spheres is composed of seventy specialized worlds containing thousands and thousands of institutions and replete organizations dedicated to universal education and spiritual culture, where the pilgrims of time are re-educated and reexamined with a view to his long journey to Havona.
¶ References
- Light and Life Magazine (all old issues): https://aue.urantia-association.org/numeros-antiguos-del-lyv/
| The ascension race from a bird's eye view | Luz y Vida — No. 44 — June 2016 — Index | The survival of the personality |