© 2023 María José Sánchez Santamaría
© 2023 Urantia Association of Spain
¶ Become yourself
Dear reader friends of this monthly bulletin: welcome one more month to this space to analyze, debate, disseminate and share the extensive teachings of the blue book.
We believe that the newsletter for the month of May is a small “feast” where you will find such a diversity of “dishes” that we hope you will enjoy them during this month that we are now inaugurating. The dedication and love put into its preparation makes us anticipate that it will be to your liking. And if there is any “dish” that you think is not so successful, let us know and we will work even harder for the next month. That’s what life is all about, isn’t it? We always seek to improve and learn but, above all, to be of service to others.
Allow me to share this short story that you may know. Anthony de Mello offers us this account:
During years I was a neurotic. I was an angsty, depressed, selfish being, and everyone kept telling me to change. They kept reminding me how neurotic I was.
I was offended, although I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but I didn’t quite get it no matter how hard I tried. The worst part was that my best friend also kept reminding me how neurotic I was, and insisted on the need for me to change.
I also agreed with him, and I couldn’t feel offended with him, so I felt powerless and trapped.
But one day he told me: “don’t change. Keep being the way you are. It doesn’t really matter if you change or stop changing. I love you as you are and I can’t stop loving you.”
Those words sounded in my ears like music: “don’t change. Do not change. Don’t change… I love you”.
Then I calmed down, and I felt alive. And oh, wonder! I changed. I know now that I couldn’t really change until I found someone who loved me, whether or not they changed. Is this how you want me, my God?
This beautiful story tells us about the facet that can move us the most: unconditional love for us. A love that allows us to become ourselves. Love and respect ourselves. Something heroic in these times of large multinational corporations that are interested in blurring our personalities, assimilating us to a mass identity.
Be yourself? But what is the human being? Are we just biological processes? Do we have a component like the soul? Is there a spiritual, immaterial element in us? It is necessary to be clear about the answer, because if we see the human being as something “flat”, only with a material or perishable dimension and we really are not just that, we fall into a serious error. We would be thinking that we are something much smaller, superficial and limited than we really are.
The well-known neuroscientist Anil Seth is very clear: “Consciousness is not given by a divine being, it is part of nature.” This materialistic conception of existence is very common, more than we think. In the press, the media, educational centers, etc., nothing that can be seen as spiritual or transcendent is usually alluded to; we only talk about matter, about what is directly observable. But are we only what we see with our eyes, what is conscious, what we see on the surface?
Our intuition tells us that there is something more than this skin or these hands. If we want to explore ourselves more thoroughly, to know ourselves better, this implies going rather inwards, towards the deepest and most unconscious parts. All an infinite path, it seems.
This path of inner exploration is very necessary. We can remember some error in human history that makes us value precisely this work of becoming aware of our interior. We all remember how, a few years ago, in Europe there was a democratically elected leader who committed atrocities never seen before and on a staggering scale. How could a civilized people come to consent to these atrocities?
In reality, the mass of the people were beside themselves, disconnected from themselves, captivated by something external, terrible. Thousands of people marched and thought en masse. The speech was unique. The truth was with the leader. Outside of oneself was the solution to problems. How could we not lose ourselves in these circumstances!
When an ideology offers the solution to your problems, it protects you, supports you, thinks for you, it is no longer necessary to think, meditate, reflect, assume responsibilities. If I am developing my life abroad, I am no longer inside myself, I no longer see my shadows, my aspects that can be improved, my authentic dreams, what makes me happy (not another, just me). I no longer have problems, it’s true, but I also ignore my inner light, what I bring to the world. I am a small and expendable being that is left over in the world, in that formless mass of humanity (there are already so many humans on Earth, right?)
The Urantia Book speaks to us in a diametrically opposed way to these materialistic salvage proposals that bring us solutions from outside ourselves. Let’s reflect for a moment on this spectacular idea in the book: creation is practically infinite and there is room for an infinite number of beings. Paradise (center of everything) will be able to sustain an infinite universe in incessant growth:
In principle, that is, in eternal potential, we conceive of material creation as being infinite because the Universal Father is actually infinite, (UB 12:0.2)
The universe is not finished and can support infinite sons and daughters of God, unique, original, unrepeatable. All beloved.
All the myriad planetary systems were made to be inhabited over time by many different kinds of intelligent creatures, beings who could know God, receive divine affection, and love him in return. UB 1:0.2
Therefore, establish in your philosophy now and forever that, for each one of you and for all of us, God is accessible, the Father is attainable, the way is open. The forces of divine love and the ways and means of divine administration are all interconnected in an effort to facilitate the advancement of all worthy intelligences of all universes to the presence of the Universal Father on Paradise. UB 5:1.8
No one is left over in an infinite creation, we all contribute talents in its development. The infinite hands of the workers are needed in this endless work.
“The harvest is indeed plenteous, but the laborers are few; therefore I exhort all of you to pray that the Lord of the harvest will send still other laborers into his harvest. (UB 163:1.3)
How far is this vision provided by the blue book from the impoverishing and limiting ideas that powerful minorities have about our planet and about life on our current planet! How far are they from the immense value that human beings have! How good it is for that minority that we humans underestimate ourselves and do not know who we are!
If on the planet, right now, the millions of humans who inhabit it discovered our inner strength, our own light, our value, wouldn’t things change a lot? Can you imagine millions of people united to their Thought Adjuster, carrying out the divine will on earth, deploying in matter the eternal values that Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed? A Jesus who had great faith in the human being, in his great possibilities.
The religion of Jesus fosters the highest type of human civilization in that it creates the highest type of spiritual personality and proclaims the sacredness of that person. (UB 194:3.7)
This beautiful ideal will occur on Earth. That is our hope. It is the horizon towards which we are walking, without a doubt. That is the good news that is missing from so many media outlets.
And then will these spirit-born souls quickly supply the leadership and inspiration requisite for the social, moral, economic, and political reorganization of the world. (UB 195:9.4)
The solution to everything is to return to ourselves. An infinite path inside. An invitation to be ourselves.
Becoming aware of God in us, within us and with us makes us value and love humanity, but above all love ourselves and together make the great heavenly family:
Then the Master . . .restated 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)
Let’s fight to be ourselves every day, let’s go against the current, because becoming aware of who we really are is the greatest gift that anyone can offer the world. Any increase in individual consciousness also raises the collective consciousness of the planet. This elevation occurred more than two thousand years ago with the life of Jesus and it can continue to happen now with us, his creatures.
¶ References
- Article of the Magazine Light and Life Online: https://aue.urantia-association.org/2023/04/30/editorial-mayo-2023/