© 2004 Patrick Beaupre
© 2004 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 30 — Summer 2004 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 30 — Summer 2004 | Beauty |
There is no worse blindness than he who does not want to see.
Is there a blind man in the world foolish enough to refuse to “see” if he has the power? Or a fool blind enough to live in the dark when all is light?
For any sane person, the refusal of light may seem madness!
Because to maintain the night and rush into the dark is to deny life and refuse hope.
It is also silencing the doors of one’s soul from view, it is ignoring the day that bathes the morning, it is dying to the love that offers itself to the next day.
Man in his immense pride prefers to remain blind.
If he would open one eye, he would begin to see, there would be hope. In the Kingdom of the Blind, aren’t the one-eyed kings?
But in madness, there is no respite! Fear, doubt, cold, evil make their way into everyday life without changing habits. There is nothing we can do about that!
Let us observe this deceiver who bows his back and leans his head towards the bewitching mirages of pseudo-freedoms.
In his perversity, he sometimes even dares to declare the primacy of his uniqueness.
What immense madness, what lack of wisdom!
Man does not know it, but his worst enemy is none other than himself!
And here is the madman, who wanders through his life, naturally endowed with a gift of “double sight” that he cannot perceive because he is so stubborn.
To believe in the light is to believe in the invisible. Man is made in such a way that he has difficulty believing in his own eternity.
Like Rumi, he reminds me of the child in his mother’s womb bathed in blood and darkness; he feels so good there that he wouldn’t want to change anything. Even if we told him about the exterior spectacle of the mountains and the sky, the grandeur of the sea, the incredible scents, the panoramas of beauty that await him outside, would he agree to leave this cocoon and come out of himself? I doubt it.
So it is with the rest of us.
If for many adventure is illusion, the restricted sites of mediocrity, selfishness and vanity, there nevertheless exists behind the wall of material appearances, the divine promise of a universe filled with houses of light, joy and love.
So let’s accept childbirth!
But it is difficult to dedicate yourself to eternity and trust it when you cannot trust yourself!
Let us therefore accept to die to what we are today, to be reborn with the rediscovered virtues of a lost confidence.
On fallow land, nothing grows. We must constantly prune, pull out weeds, and the dead roots of our sleeping lives. We must let go of everything and wash away this past cluttered with sterile fears, servile habits.
It is daily work, endless growth, a path of suffering and joy combined.
This work leads to an exceptional state of consciousness very close to universal reality.
So it cannot be done without true faith. But be careful, belief is not faith!
Besides, we do not choose faith, it is faith that chooses you(1) and reveals to you the indubitable fact that the Father is only love and that in fact we are truly “LOVED”. Each of us is unique and constantly loved in this uniqueness.
Will we one day understand how important it is for man to know that he is “loved” in this way? That it is the conditional basis for changing the panorama of a life obscured by doubt and pollutions of the mind.
Let us imagine for a moment our life guided solely by the feeling of this intense love of the Father and we will be able to see how everything can change suddenly!
— But love cannot be commanded, it is love that commands you.
For “the experience of loving is to a large extent a direct response to the experience of being loved.” (UB 2:5.8)
The Father, through this exceptional generous gift, shows us that we are not isolated in a hostile universe, but on the contrary that we already belong to the great family of Universal love. It is up to us to grasp the invisible message, this accent of measured timelessness.
And when love calls us, we must be ready, not resist it and let ourselves be guided by its divine directives.
Let us therefore know how to show ourselves worthy of him and live our living faith through him in the best expressions of our daily life.
When an individual begins to know God, to go towards him, he feels as a natural consequence of his spiritual evolution, the intense need to express his faith which has become alive in the sincere expression of loving his brothers. He contributes to the general well-being by redistributing his acquired knowledge.
Experimenting then becomes an almost obsessive leitmotif.
In this experiment, some, more receptive than others, quickly cross the delicate border where the individual manages to realize himself “entirely”, in the natural expression of daily brotherly love and the fruits of the spirit which result from it.
They no longer live love, they are living love!
By their glorified nature, these sacred masters of “total experience” become beacons of hope, spiritual guides who show us in their stories the path of the possible and the achievable.
But as enviable as this “state of grace” may be that most of us seek as the dreamed outcome of a successful life, the transmuted gold of the alchemists, this state requires such self-forgetfulness, such a desire to sincerely do the will of the Father that very few people manage to achieve it during this time on earth.
— Here the expression: “Many are called, few are chosen” – seems to take on its full meaning!
In reality, we know very well that the realization of “the self” is a very long and very painful process. That it goes through intense moments of happiness but also of “nigredo” or dark periods that few of us are capable of assuming. That this process remains very dependent on many factors, the first of which is the potential for receptivity to the “call” and the quality of the response that we give to it.
In all cases and at whatever level, it always remains within the reach of the person who achieves it.
The situation can be summed up very well like this: Many understand the message, few feel it, even fewer realize it.
But do we really and sincerely want to accept doing the Father’s will? Many try and try again…but in vain!
If the vast majority remains cloistered in the pain of not doing, it is because the path remains long, very difficult and strewn with pitfalls. Let us not forget that life is full of delicate compromises and that one of the great difficulties of man lies in the fact of granting his ideals of life to his effective achievements.
Then, the tendency towards discouragement and harmful introspection is great. The use of certain so-called “practical” methods suddenly appears an absolute necessity.
But please let us not succumb to the childish temptation to find some infallible and ideal method in order to achieve our goals.
Man in his laziness loves shortcuts, easy methods, ridiculous tricks and illusory tips. What a reductive trap! This recourse will always remain the refuge of the weak.
Today, I say it clearly: There is no method other than that of our heart.
Within each of us resides the secret of the path, it is called Adjuster.
This divine temple that is the body shelters and protects within it a great sacred jewel, a stone of wisdom of extreme purity that we call here below deity.
They are special gifts from God to each individual, unique associates, voices of infinite wisdom who love us and truly help us steer our lives in the right directions. These gifted spiritual counselors are the go-to for all souls on call.
By their unifying presence, they bring joy and comfort to all the afflicted, they help the lost…
They are the “total presence”, this accent of absolute truth which opens the way for us towards infinity in perspective.
Through them and in them is woven the indissoluble bond that connects us to the deity and therefore to the possibility of speaking to God face to face.
And if we listen to their wise advice we are sure to achieve the most beautiful actions of our daily life.
But how lucky we are to be inhabited like this!
So what’s the point of searching so far in life for a treasure that we already hold in our hearts.
The momentous fact that a fragment of deity graces us with its invisible divine presence was certainly the greatest revelation ever bestowed upon men. Let us be proud of it and thank the Father.
Everyone has the duty, according to their strength and their own will, to find, alone, without any other help than themselves, this marvelous spiritual guide hidden within us in order to better reveal it to others.
Is there a greater adventure for man than to brave all the difficulties of earthly life to recognize God through his Adjuster and to associate with him in the path of the wide expanses of space and time to infinity? I do not think so.
Better still, I affirm today: There is nothing more important in this world!
Besides, doesn’t the book end like this:
“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. Such an experience constitutes God-consciousness, an experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent truth of the religious experience of knowing God. Such spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the knowledge of the actuality of sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of sonship is the experience of faith.” (UB 196:3.34)
What more can I say!
There is no secret method. It’s up to us to play from now on.
““Your sonship is grounded in faith, and you are to remain unmoved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the divine word, and you shall not therefore be led to doubt the reality of the Father’s love and mercy. It is the very goodness of God that leads men into true and genuine repentance. Your secret of the mastery of self is bound up with your faith in the indwelling spirit, which ever works by love. Even this saving faith you have not of yourselves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the children of this living faith, you are no longer the bondslaves of self but rather the triumphant masters of yourselves, the liberated sons of God.” (UB 143:2.7)
Patrick Beaupré
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 30 — Summer 2004 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 30 — Summer 2004 | Beauty |