© 2022 Olga López
© 2022 Urantia Association of Spain
Newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain
Light and Life — September 2022
¶ In this number
- Editorial – September 2022
- Works – our recommendations of the month
- History and teachings – Chronicle of the life of Jesus
- A Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book: Jesus at Seven Years
- Other spiritual growth books
- Video – our recommendation of the month
- Navigating through life – Balloons
- My favorite paragraph
- Urantia Questionnaire: Juan José López Vallejos
- News about the III European Conference
- More articles translated into Spanish on the AUI website
- About the Light and Life newsletter
¶ Editorial – September 2022
M. José Sánchez Santamaría
Know yourself
During the summer holidays, with the transfer of trips, excursions, outings that many people usually do, we can make this reflection:
How is it that we travel to marvel at the greatness of the mountains, the undulation of the seas, the evolution of the rivers, the magnificence of the oceans, the evolution of the stars… while we pass by ourselves without ever being amazed?
Have you noticed that we are always wanting to travel to visit beautiful places, go to parks for a walk while listening to the sounds of nature, even going to museums to admire the beauty of artists who wanted to capture their ideas in paintings or sculptures?
It is very common to admire external issues such as trees, skyscrapers, the sea or the possibility that, today, we can travel half the world in a few hours.
But wait a minute, I ask you:
Do you realize how wonderful it is to be alive, to move with this body, to create a simple cooking recipe? Do we admire ourselves, in some pause that we make in our life, of something as close as our body or our mind? Do we admire the fact of EXISTING?
¶ Works – our recommendations of the month
Uversano Registry of Personalities (Santiago Rodríguez)
One of our recommendations is a series of 4 diagrams, with the common title of “Uversan Personality Register”, in which the author places and groups by categories the different orders of beings of the created universe, in which the arrows indicate which beings originate others. It is very useful to get an idea of the origin of each of the orders, which always provides very revealing information about their characteristics and functions.
Here are the links to the second, third and fourth part of the Uversan log.
From matter to spirit passing through the mind (Jean-Claude Romeuf)
In this work, its author reviews the evolution of the species and how the different spirit-mind adjutants were incorporated into them until they reached the human species and its ability to know God and love him. «The learning of love is not a purely human fact. Everything happens as if the helpers [adjutores] prepared in the course of evolution the animal mind to become sensitive to the superior influences of the spirit. Added to physical development, this makes the animal indispensable for the intellectual development of man."
Eugenics, races and The Urantia Book (Halbert Katzen)
The issue of eugenics and race is undoubtedly a controversial issue that is not easy to approach from a dispassionate and objective point of view. Many readers tend to overlook it, considering that society is not prepared to consider these issues in a way that is no longer spiritual, but simply ethical. That is why secondary works such as this one are welcome, an extensive essay (171 pages) whose main objective is, in the words of the author, “to provide a comprehensive review of the statements of The Urantia Book related to eugenics and races and, in particular , focus on the aspects of these issues that are most likely to be misunderstood and/or cause concern.”
Mary, the mother of Jesus (Javier Martínez)
This is the PowerPoint of the presentation given by the author on the figure of Mary, a figure deified by Catholicism and who in The Urantia Book is presented as who she really was: a human being with her successes and her mistakes. The author puts the public in context with the religious concepts of his time, the situation of women and traditions, to later address María’s family and the development of her life, in light of the book’s teachings, which clarify many confusions and misrepresentations that occurred during the following centuries and that continue to date.
¶ History and teachings – Chronicle of the life of Jesus
JOURNALISTIC ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE URANTIA BOOK
We present the following installment of the chronicles of the life of Jesus, which on this occasion contains what the revelators tell us in document 136 (Baptism and forty days). Inside the PDF you will see a button from where you can access the text of the document from the Urantia Foundation website.
¶ Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book: Jesus at Seven Years
We continue to review the secondary work A Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book, by Mary Livingston. This is the next chapter, dedicated to the time when Jesus was seven years old, and it begins like this:
«María and José had their fourth child. They called him Jose. Then we already have Jesus, James, Miriam and Joseph. Several things happened that year. There was a big snowstorm during the winter, snow fell up to about two feet. It was the largest amount of snow ever seen by Jesus."
Download the entire chapter in PDF format
¶ Other spiritual growth books
More Plato and less Prozac (Lou Marinoff)
The Urantia Book repeatedly tells us that we must reconcile science, philosophy and religion if we want to develop harmoniously. However, we live in times of exaltation of science, so that philosophy and religion have been relegated for not being able to explain reality through tangible evidence according to the scientific method. In addition, given the prevailing utilitarianism in society, everything that is not useful is useless, and both philosophy and religion are considered “useless.” Lou Marinoff is in charge of refuting this precisely in this book.
See full review on our website
God exists, I found him (André Frossard)
This book is the story of a conversion written in the first person. He describes a very attractive experience and his story has become a classic of the autobiographical and testimonial genre. André Frossard, a member of the French Academy, has been one of the most influential intellectuals in France during the 20th century. He was born in the only town in France that did not have a church and was raised in total atheism until his sudden conversion at the age of 20 completely changed his life. As he himself says: “Having entered, at ten past five in the afternoon, a chapel in the Latin Quarter in search of a friend, I left at a quarter past five in the company of a friend who was not from earth.”
¶ Video – our recommendation of the month
The Pineal Gland and The Urantia Book (Study of the Urantia Writings)
In this video, references to the pineal gland in The Urantia Book are collected, which greatly influences spiritual receptivity. The documents reveal that we humans on Urantia have two main glands: the pituitary or pituitary gland, and the pineal gland, which regulate the most important hormonal processes. Specifically, the latter has always been associated with mystical and spiritual powers. According to the author, it is a kind of antenna that serves us during life in the flesh. It is a means, not an end, that is responsible for facilitating communication with the Adjuster.
¶ Navigating through life – Balloons
A teacher gave a balloon to each student, who had to inflate it, write their name on it, and throw it in the hallway.
The teacher then mixed up all the balloons. The students were given 5 minutes to find their own balloon.
Despite a hectic search, no one found his balloon. At that point, the teacher told the students to take the first balloon they found and give it to the person whose name was written on it. In 5 minutes each had their own balloon.
The teacher told the students: “These balloons are like happiness. We will never find it if everyone is looking for theirs, but if we care about the happiness of others… we will find ours too.
¶ My favorite paragraph
Jael Gonzalez
This quote is my favorite:
You cannot truly love your fellows by a mere act of the will. Love is only born of thoroughgoing understanding of your neighbor’s motives and sentiments. (UB 100:4.6)
Love is such a word used by our humanity. In songs, books and poems it appears millions of times, for thousands of years. But we don’t really know how to love. We see love as a simple state of mind, a changing drive. Instead, this sentence from The Urantia Book explains how to truly love others. It teaches us to love.
And the context sets a brilliant example. We can even love those we don’t like, if we do the exercise of comprehension, to understand the sometimes irritating motivations of our fellow men. That understanding leads us to tenderness, compassion and love. I always recommend reviewing my favorite quote and the context paragraphs in which it is inserted.
¶ Urantia Questionnaire: Juan José López Vallejos
Juan José lives in Pamplona. He is married and has 5 children. He is a doctor engineer I.C.A.I. You have known The Urantia Book for about 30 years. Participate in the study group of the northern zone.
- How did you get to The Urantia Book and why do you think you found it?
Always attracted to esoteric themes and also interested in religious issues (although observing them from a very critical perspective), I have been a regular reader of books related to both issues. The Trojan Horse was a starting point that opened my way to The Urantia Book, although it came into my hands years later, incidentally, it would seem thanks to synchronicity.
- What was your first impression when reading it?
Despite the effort that reading it caused me (it was the old version translated in America, in which I could not repress my obsession with correcting its infumable text), it seemed to me a great discovery, since it answered many of my permanent questions.
- At what point in the reading (document, sentence, etc.) did you accept that The Urantia Book is really what it claims to be?
Given the time that has elapsed, it is difficult for me to point out this aspect. I remember being particularly drawn to the description of the life of Jesus.
¶ News about the III European Conference
The registration period for the III European Conference of Readers of The Urantia Book, which will be held from October 20 to 23 in Torremolinos, Málaga, is still open. In this link there is all the information about the conference. Don’t miss the opportunity to be present at the first Urantia conference since the start of the pandemic!
Presentation of the program
According to the revelators, “the worst of the materialistic age is past and the day of a better understanding is beginning to dawn” UB 195:6.4 and “The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the mortal experience born of the spirit who effectively reveal the Master to all men” UB 195:10.1.
But how can we really leave materialism behind and be born of the spirit? How can we develop spiritually? Jesus himself said that “self-control is the measure of man’s moral nature and the indicator of his spiritual development” UB 143:2.3, then learning the art of self-control seems essential to progress both morally and spiritually. For this reason, in the III European Conference we are going to explore the facets that seem most important to us to govern our own self, and with that intention, a series of workshops has been proposed under the common title of “The route of self-control”.
Taking into account the physical, mental and spiritual part of ourselves, we have designed the workshops with the intention of examining all the aspects and tools that allow us to master the government of our self:
- Self-control from the neurophysiological point of view (body): we are mortal beings who live their lives through a body of flesh and blood, and therefore still highly conditioned by the material. In this workshop, aspects related to genetics and other physiological conditions will be discussed, such as the parts that make up the brain and the way in which they influence our behavior, and its neuroplasticity, which offers the possibility of changing our behavior patterns. .
- Learning self-control and communication tools (mind): we will study what self-control is, we will review human emotions and how to manage them, and we will also discuss the tools we have to communicate lovingly with our peers. In this aspect we have as a reference the life of Jesus of Nazareth, “the perfect example of human self-control”.
- Spiritual aids (spirit): we will take a look at what The Urantia Book tells us about meditation, prayer and worship and about the benefits they bring to make us progress spiritually.
The purpose of the workshops is fundamentally practical, for this reason a brief theoretical approach will be made at the beginning and then a series of group activities will be carried out in which the participation of the attendees is essential. It is about sharing our efforts to improve in all aspects and mastering the art of self-control. The idea is that from this conference we not only take away the good times spent with other readers, but also new tools and ideas that help us in our daily lives.
¶ More articles translated into Spanish on the AUI website
Many articles on the Urantia Association International website containing very interesting material on study groups, presentations given at international conferences, and much more have recently been translated into Spanish. We encourage you to visit the Introduction Articles section, as well as other works related to study groups, such as:
- The value of study groups
- Tips for Hosting Study Groups
- Effective study groups
And many more!
You can also read articles published in the Journal or Tidings, such as this December 2014 issue, which contains an article referring to the Webb telescope: “Monotheistic starter: how the launch of the Webb telescope in 2018 will consummate a global awareness of the Universal Father."
¶ About the Light and Life newsletter
Light and Life is the newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain. From 2005 to 2016 it was published in PDF format and distributed by mail and email to the association’s reader list, but it is currently distributed in newsletter format from content in HTML format.
If you want to receive the newsletter in your email, contact the association to subscribe to the mailing list.
All papers and news from readers and study groups are welcome, so if you want to share any side work, writing, outline, image, etc., you can send it to the association and we will publish it previous evaluation of its suitability. Likewise, the Communication commission of the board of directors of the Urantia Association of Spain reserves the right to edit it so that it meets minimum spelling quality.
¶ References
- Article of the Magazine Light and Life Online: https://aue.urantia-association.org/newsletter/luz-y-vida-septiembre-2022/