© 2002 Jean Claude Romeuf
© 2002 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Joy | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 21 — Spring 2002 | A Glimpse of the General Organization of the Master Universe and Theory of Totality by the Researchers of Uversa |
Page UB 39:4.11 “You cannot take much without giving anything. As you rise on the ladder of personality, you learn first to be loyal, then to love, then to be filial, and then you can be free”
1— first to be loyal. Loyalty is the fruit of an intelligent appreciation of human brotherhood. But being loyal to one’s brothers first involves a phase of loyalty to oneself. Loyalty is inconceivable without sincerity and uprightness. These two personal characteristics are the first rungs to climb in our quest for “Freedom”.
Claiming one’s freedom loudly and clearly makes no sense. At most, one can find a certain morbid independence which isolates one from the fraternal, the social or the conjugal, reinforcing our fears, our pride and our solitude.
Seeking freedom without sincerity and without righteousness is an intellectual deception that has failure as its reward. Lucifer the rebel fell from heaven out of pride, because he dared to proclaim his personal freedom, he would have liked to be recognized as god and to be adored.
On a human level, demanding one’s freedom is an infantile act, it is ignoring what the word “freedom” means, it is having a need for recognition that is often undeserved, a desire for misunderstood respect that satisfies the ego. In fact, it is isolating oneself from others through alienation. It is starting from very high to fall very low.
Yes, truly, claiming one’s freedom is only a decoy because true freedom is deep within us. However small it may be, it is already trying to grow. It is a source oozing drop by drop that only asks to burst forth. It mocks prisons and constraints. It heals us of fears and constraints. It is above all a path open to others, a small flame that flickers in our hearts. It can give everything without taking anything, but the one who gathers it within himself, receives everything!
Through the personal relationship maintained between the human being and the divine spark inhabiting his mind is found “True Freedom”. This relationship can only lead to love, because God is “Love”. We can only effectively exercise our free will to the extent that our choices are free, devoid of false ideas and fears. Any relationship between human or divine personalities can only be made with sincerity, righteousness, fidelity, loyalty, trust and courage. This is why we are told:
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. The highest moral choice is the choice of the highest possible value, and always—in any sphere, in all of them—this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the humblest citizen of Jerusem or even the least of mortals on Urantia. (UB 39:4.14)
2— then to love. Who am I to speak of love? Me so small by my human and animal condition!..But so great by the love which is consumed in me and which develops to infinity! Love is my goal, my destiny, because only love can make eternal. I am on earth to learn to love.
Paul, criticized in his remarks on women, had understood everything about love. “Woman is the glory of man” he said, but also “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” or “love never fails” or even “if I do not have love I am nothing”.
Whoever once said “I love you” and later “I don’t love you anymore” only had an erroneous concept of love, because love is not retrograde, it only asks to grow and is not restrictive. If love remains at the level of its mental meaning, it has no future. True love, real love is a spiritual value. It is intended to participate in the development of the soul, daughter of the mind and the voice of God. It is the purest spiritual reality. It is a drop of water from the crystal sea. Only love is divine because it contains all the truth, beauty and goodness of the world.
Love has no limits, it is absolute. It comes from God the absolute and returns to God the absolute. Love is a snowball that begins its growth on earth and reaches its fullness in Paradise. It gives the caterpillar its butterfly wings.
What can be said of love, can also be said of freedom. Love is the door to freedom. Only a mind freed from its fears and governed by the love that liberates, is capable of decisive and eternal choices. It is love that saves: “if I do not have love I am nothing!” Love begins with oneself, then with the other, then becomes social, then becomes fraternal and finally paternal. Only love allows our free will to be effective in its decisions, in its way of discovering the divine will in oneself and agreeing to do this will. Giving our love to the other, without fear and without sacrifice, is doing what God wants for us and for the other. To love is to serve in and with the Supreme! To love is to give everything to the other with happiness!
3— then to be filial. UB 115:0.1 “With God the Father, the great relationship is filiation”. The paternity of God is not real without filiation. To fulfill his role as father, God needs us to be his sons!
We are children of God by faith. How can we not be free when we are “children of God” and have placed our destiny in the hands of a benevolent and all-powerful father. “Let your will be done” takes on a new meaning; it is now a question of thinking: “may my will be unified with yours” or “may my will be to do your will”. When we are capable of expressing and feeling this deep in our soul with sincerity, it is because we have made the supreme choice. And, if our mind fails us, because it is not always clear-sighted with accuracy and justice, we can then, in common agreement with the Father, use the mind of Jesus, son of man. Our free will no longer matters to us because it is entrusted to the care of the one we already love in eternity. It is given to someone greater who awaits us and frees us.
To know that one is a son of God by faith is to live in the most complete security. It is to know that nothing bad can happen to us and that the supra-human and personal forces all contribute to our happiness. All our physical or mental fears disappear and even the last fear that can remain after the others: the fear of not being able to love. This is what it means to “be free”.
Conclusion. Now that night has fallen on Valentine’s Day and daylight illuminates these few written pages, I get up under the weight of my servitude to the flesh, thinking perhaps as the poet wrote that we must try to live. “The immense air opens and closes my book.” “Fly away, dazzled pages!”
I am also tempted to believe that a Christian who is aware of his universal destiny has no right to be sad,… But Jesus himself cried. Each time he cried, it was out of love and because of love.
If this hymn to freedom is also a hymn to love, may it penetrate your hearts like a prayer rises to the Father and rests on your cheeks like the kiss of a brother.
Jean-Claude Romeuf
| Joy | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 21 — Spring 2002 | A Glimpse of the General Organization of the Master Universe and Theory of Totality by the Researchers of Uversa |