© 2021 María José Sánchez Santamaría
© 2021 Urantia Association of Spain
| Luz y Vida — November 2021 — Newsletter | Luz y Vida — November 2021 — Index | Urantia Questionnaire: Antonio Moya |
¶ Unique families
In our daily life, where the avalanche of information that surrounds us stuns us, the “experts” pontificate without delving into all the issues and where acceleration is the current trend, everything leads us towards “outer life”, that is, towards the which is sensory, material, cause-effect relationships. Everything is answers and there is almost no space left for questions that do not have a quick answer, that require depth, to reach the depth of the world. But if there is external life, by contrast there is internal or supermaterial life. Don’t you think so, dear reader?
The art of inner life is subtle and extensive. As The Urantia Book understands it, it refers to a journey that can go from self-knowledge to fusion with the Thought Adjuster and the subsequent development as absonite spiritual beings, resorting to meditation, prayer and worship in lonely, true, but above all (as we will see in several examples below), living our existence as a family, as a group.
The development of this precious inner life leads to something ineffable that is within us, an emptiness, something unnameable, unreachable… but that gives meaning to our lives: divinity.
“The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man’s greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of spirit-consciousness—contact with the divine presence.” (UB 196:3.34)
The journey of the inner life allows us to come into contact with and unite with this center within us, which is called by Jesus of Nazareth with terms such as “kingdom within you”, “pearl”, “treasure”, “seed”, “ light”…
A journey where you head out into the open sea: a sea without shores that the eye can distinguish. There are no footprints behind, there is no path traced ahead. No quiet port to take refuge, no anchor to settle, the moorings have been broken. The inner journey is that of a solitary navigator.
One can consult specialists, provide oneself with books recounting explorations similar to that of each one, but each person must do their own internal research, their personal development. However, the description of the paths traveled by others encourages. We meet fellow travelers, and the era in which they lived does not matter. Let’s look at a few of these companions of the eternal journey.
If we place ourselves close to a million years ago, on this same planet, in the Caspian Sea area, we will find a curious couple of human beings. Actually, the first human beings. Surely you already know who I’m talking about: Fonta and Andon, twins who stood out from their peers for their intelligence, spiritual development, and for marking our planet’s entry into the list of planets inhabited by beings with spiritual potential.
It was shocking that this simple couple thought so clearly and made a deliberate decision to flee their tribe, their home to the unknown north, for they felt they were different and more than just animals. Remember, the book tells us that “when the animal becomes conscious of itself, it becomes a primitive man.”
This mental work finally made it possible for the spirit of wisdom to come into contact with these two already human minds, who were 11 years old!! The Thought Adjuster inhabited them and they were marvelous beings who had 19 children and worked without ceasing to feed and build their clan, until an earthquake killed them both at the age of 42.
Dear reader of this newsletter, does it not strike you that these very primitive human beings, our true first parents, managed to fuse on Jerusem with their Adjuster and are now indefinitely on the first mansion world to assist the arriving pilgrims? from Urantia? If such primitive humans, with little technological development, dedicated to survival, sustenance and care of their offspring, have achieved spiritual progress, this should give us hope: they did something very well.
If we take another leap in time, we can find another crucial couple on our planet and well known, although of extraterrestrial origin.
Around 37,000 years ago two seraphic transports arrived in the Garden of Eden with the two biological enhancers: Adam and Eve, beautiful and majestic beings that measured a whopping 2.5m.
They too, like Andon and Fonta, had lives of great challenge and suffering: no Adam and Eve in planetary service had ever faced such a difficult job as on Urantia. They were alone, isolated, and suffered direct and well-organized resistance from Caligastia and Daligastia, brilliant celestial beings.
They fell into the trap that Caligastia set for them, they erred in their judgment, they rushed impatiently to seek shortcuts to the divine plans, which established a larger and far-reaching plan.
They had to leave the Garden of Eden and suffered the separation of a large part of their children who were taken by seraphic transport to Edentia. They started from scratch to build a new cultural and spiritual center in the second garden of Eden.
This would be, broadly speaking, his life trajectory.
It is noteworthy that, being celestial beings of great spiritual power, they coincided with their primitive predecessors in having led a complex and difficult material life, as well as having also founded a large family. And, let’s not forget, in getting a Thought Adjuster.
Let’s take one last leap of thousands of years, until a little over 2000 years ago, to the territory of Palestine. Again we see another couple who were born and died on Urantia.
We are talking about Mary and Joseph, the earthly parents of Jesus of Nazareth. Both possessed the most ideal combination of vast racial ties and above-average personality endowments. For this reason they were chosen by a commission to be the earthly parents of Michael of Nebadon.
They were a young couple in love, both workers (he was a carpenter/builder and she did domestic chores such as weaving, milking, washing, etc.), educated for their time, parents of a large family (9 children), good educators despite having to suffer persecution, economic problems, and the arduous task of raising a child like Jesus, intelligent and very observant, thus accepting the mandate from heaven to be parents of the “child of destiny.”
Although they had the high privilege of being close to a divine being like Jesus, family life was also hard because:
- Two deaths occurred (Amos and Joseph)
- Joseph and Mary protected Jesus against death threats, illnesses, accidents…
- There was more and more misunderstanding of the family towards the saving role of Jesus
- After the death of José, they went through greater economic hardships.
Once again we find ourselves with another exceptional couple who had to deal with great problems and this contributed powerfully to developing strong and noble characters in them, despite everything.
We can extract multiple lessons from these three couples, but in this issue of the newsletter we are not going to dwell on it.
We highlight these two above all:
1) Paternity or family work IS VERY IMPORTANT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF INNER LIFE
Don’t you find it very interesting that these three crucial couples in our planetary history formed large families? Why is it important to form families with children in our inner or spiritual development?
The Urantia Book highlights:
“The family is the fundamental unit of fraternity in which parents and children learn those lessons of patience, altruism, tolerance, and forbearance which are so essential to the realization of brotherhood among all men.” (UB 84:7.28)
It is valid that we can speculate and ask ourselves: the death of Joseph, the father of Jesus of Nazareth, was it “programmed” so that our creator also served as a family man? The Urantia Book reminds us that Jesus himself valued the family extraordinarily, since it was the nucleus of his message: the universal, cosmic brotherhood of the sons and daughters of the same Father.
The family occupied the very center of Jesus’ philosophy of life—here and hereafter. He based his teachings about God on the family, while he sought to correct the Jewish tendency to overhonor ancestors. He exalted family life as the highest human duty but made it plain that family relationships must not interfere with religious obligations. He called attention to the fact that the family is a temporal institution; that it does not survive death. Jesus did not hesitate to give up his family when the family ran counter to the Father’s will. He taught the new and larger brotherhood of man—the sons of God. (UB 140:8.14)
2) Love is the key that unites the individuals that make up the family.
Andón and Fonta, Eva and Adán, María and José loved each other deeply and wanted to be together. Adam went to the extreme of voluntarily failing in his duty rather than spend thousands of years on Earth without his mate.
“Love is the highest motivation which man may utilize in his universe ascent. But love, divested of truth, beauty, and goodness, is only a sentiment, a philosophic distortion, a psychic illusion, a spiritual deception.” (UB 196:3.29)
A love that has a divine origin that transcends us and unites us to the great cosmic family of unique and incomparable beings:
The love of the Father absolutely individualizes each personality as a unique son of the Universal Father, a son without a duplicate in infinity, an irreplaceable volitional creature in all eternity. The Father’s love glorifies each child of God, illuminating each member of the heavenly family, sharply outlining the unique nature of each personal being against the impersonal levels outside the fraternal circle of the Father of all. The love of God vividly portrays the transcendent value of each volitional creature, unequivocally reveals the highest value that the Universal Father has placed on each and every one of his children, from the highest creative personality of a paradisiacal state to the lowest personality of dignity. volition among the tribes of wild men at the dawn of the human species, on some evolutionary world of time and space. UB 12:7.9
God’s very love for the individual creates the divine family of all individuals, the universal brotherhood of the freewill children of the Paradise Father. UB 12:7.10
The Urantia Book inspires us to create family ties, true, but knowing that the earthly family grows and expands, encompassing the universal brotherhood of all the children of God, of all the inhabitants of this immeasurable great universe:
Jesus said: “The people of another age will better understand the gospel of the kingdom when it is presented in terms expressive of the family relationship—when man understands religion as the teaching of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, sonship with God.” Then the Master discoursed at some length on the earthly family as an illustration of the heavenly family, restating the two fundamental laws of living: the first commandment of love for the father, the head of the family, and the second commandment of mutual love among the children, to love your brother as yourself. (UB 142:7.4)
Consequently, those of us who are parents know the hard and exciting tasks and responsibilities that we must carry out with our children, but without forgetting that these are traveling companions who will grow up to have their own role in the great heavenly family, but they are not our belongings. As the poet would say: they are your children, but they are not yours.
Your children are not your children,
are sons and daughters of life
desirous of herself.
They do not come from you, but through you,
and even if they are with you,
they don’t belong to you.
You can shelter their bodies,
but not their souls,
because they
they live in the house of tomorrow,
that you cannot visit,
not even in dreams.
You can strive to be like them,
but do not try to make them similar to yourself,
because life does not go back or stop at yesterday.
You are the bow from which your children,
like living arrows,
are thrown.
Let the tilt,
in your archer’s hand,
be for happiness.
Let us therefore love our family on Earth, let us assume its achievements and its problems, let us defend its great value on the cosmic scale… but without forgetting the cosmic perspective that gives it its greatest meaning.
The world needs these examples of families that we have highlighted above. Now is the time.
“Remember that the most appropriate moment is only one: now, and it is the most important because only in it do we own ourselves.”
Leo Tolstoy
¶ References
- Article of the Magazine Light and Life Online: https://aue.urantia-association.org/2021/10/29/editorial-luz-y-vida-noviembre-2021/
| Luz y Vida — November 2021 — Newsletter | Luz y Vida — November 2021 — Index | Urantia Questionnaire: Antonio Moya |