© 2000 Peep Sõber
© 2000 Urantia Association International (IUA)
| The Way Jesus Discovered and Lived the Father's Will | Journal — September 2000 — Index | The Acme of Religious Living |
Peep Sõber, Estonia
It is one of the basic laws of life and existence in the universe that we all are connected to the network of sharing. It begins with Deities and ends in the life of cells or perhaps even on the quantum level of matter.
If we wish to be God-like, we should become involved in the sharing of our spiritual life. “God is Spirit.” By living our spiritual life we can become more and more spiritual and thereby God-like. “God is love.” Love is nothing more than sharing living relationships. We can share spiritually only those values which we have experienced, comprehended and assimilated. On the material level we can share what we have, but on the spiritual level we can share what we are.
How do we distinguish between having and being? We can agree that having exists on a superficial level; being is all that which lies deep within, the inner state of mind. To have some ideas of truth and to understand them properly does not take much time and effort. We can have some knowledge of truth. We can read The Urantia Book, understand somewhat its basic concepts and teachings, but to live that truth will take much time, struggle, and dedication. But when we live that truth, we start to assimilate it and become that truth. As Jesus said, “I am the truth.”
We can gain much wisdom through understanding the life of Jesus and how he shared his spiritual life. It is such a universal example that each of us can learn something for himself or herself. As my time is very limited, I will focus only on those points which seem to me suitable for our conference, since we came here primarily for sharing.
¶ Sharing as a Natural Attitude of a Loving Person
The entire life of Jesus was actually sharing of himself; therefore, it is called a bestowal. This does not mean that he shared all that he was and had. He always was limited by spiritual receptivity of people, by their language, religious symbols and concepts of the time. He was in sharing relationships in a “vertical” direction with the Father and on a “horizontal” direction with other people. These two directions are very basic also for us, as we share our spiritual life. We have to focus our attention inward, towards the Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth, and outward, towards our brothers and sisters. It is important to note that before each crucial decision or each new stage in his life, Jesus always shared his spiritual life with the Father. There is no doubt that he was in unbroken communion with the Paradise Father during his adult life, but nevertheless he went for short periods of time into seclusion from other people, or he made some moments of silence before new actions or answers to the questions. If even Jesus needed such periods of silence, how much more do we need them? We really need to recharge our spiritual batteries from divine circuits to the highest possible level for us. By sharing our inner life with the Father we can then share with other people.
¶ Sharing and Obtaining.
By our common logic, sharing and obtaining are in contradiction. With material things, we have to obtain them before we can share. It can seem even that sharing is a stupid way of action, since we have to work in order to own more and more properties, gain knowledge, acquire truth or obtain power for ourselves. One who is more enlightened will discover that sharing and obtaining are not in contradiction in the spiritual life; the more we are able to share, the more we can obtain! By sharing the maximum that Jesus found possible in his life, he obtained the maximum he could, becoming Sovereign of the Local Universe, having at the same time gained a wide range of human experience of mortal life.
We can notice that among the Jews there were two categories of listeners to Jesus’ message and both claimed to be religious and serving God. The first group can be termed God-centered—they more or less recognized this new revelation of God through Jesus. The second group can be termed self-centered—they failed to recognize who Jesus actually was as well as what his message was. This basic orientation of their will divided believers into these separate groups. The world has not changed much; we can see these two groups again. If we share our spiritual life, we certainly shall meet with the same orientations of people and they both declare themselves to be religious and spiritual. My own 25 years of experience in the spiritual field has given me some insight about these quite opposite tendencies of people: one group enjoys sharing and other group basically enjoys obtaining. The Urantia Book teachings are a most powerful tool to show us who is who and what are their basic intentions. We know that Jesus gave many opportunities for his enemies to change their minds, but he never governed or exercised control over them. He warned and prayed for his disciples but did not organize a group prayer to change the mind of Judas. When he saw that Judas had made his final decision of betrayal, he even encouraged him to do what he had decided to do! If disciples left Jesus, he never manipulated or used his power of persuasion to convince them to come back. That is a good point to be conscious of as we share our spiritual life, and some people reject it.
¶ Some Social Aspects of Sharing
We can hear a wide range of opinions, concerning whether we need an organization for sharing our spiritual life. It is obvious that we can share our spiritual life in personal relationships among family and friends or at work without any special organization for that. Very often people state that Jesus did not establish an organization for sharing his spiritual life, so why do we need it? It is true, he did not use organization for sharing his personal spiritual life. But the turning point in his life was choosing the first apostles and training them. This was the beginning of the organization which he would use to disseminate his new revelation of God.
For me it seems a dilemma: Do we choose to deal only with our own spiritual life or do we deal also with the revelation which is called epochal? For sharing our personal spiritual life we really do not need any special organization—to create it can be even detrimental; this can become a sect or a strange “ism” around our own beliefs which are always in the process of changing. The Kingdom of God cannot be built around our personal beliefs or even personal interpretations of the epochal revelation. This can be built and certainly will be built around epochal revelations, 4th, 5th and those to come. Like the apostles we can be the early teachers of the revelation if we choose. For that purpose it is better to be organized because we need some order, structure, leadership and network. That cannot and should not interfere with sharing our personal spiritual life. By doing this we can experience something additional: as we disseminate the teachings, we can experience spiritual teamwork and spiritual group loyalty. We have read that One of the most important lessons to be learned during your mortal career is teamwork [UB 28:5.14].
Teamwork in a commercial company and teamwork in a spiritual group have different characteristics and aims. Therefore, the best place to share our spiritual life is in a spiritual group. For many of us it is The Urantia Book study group. We know also from the history of the Urantia Movement that from the very beginning the Urantia revelation was given to the group (Contact Commission) not to a separate individual. We know that these people formed a group already many years before the revelation began. The Contact Commission and Forum had an organizational structure; Urantia Foundation and Urantia Brotherhood did not arise from nothing nor from purely human-ambitions. We all have read that there are very few tasks for individualists in the universe. But we observe that only a small number of our readers have joined study groups and reader’s organizations. Why? Is it a lack of dedication? So it seems to me.
The initial experience we have with people who claim to be dedicated to The Urantia Book teachings indicate sometimes this is more or less selfish, even fanatical. It is important to remember that only unselfish dedication is a real fruit of the spirit. There are many lessons on that topic we can learn from the Lucifer rebellion, from the default of Adam and Eve, and from the betrayal of Judas.
¶ Our Partners in Sharing Spiritual Life
We note that the level of spiritual maturity is very different among our readers. It is my opinion that the terms “new reader” and “long time reader” are an inadequate descriptions for spiritual maturity. Dealing with other people I have found it helpful to use Jesus’ description about different levels of the golden rule (1650-1651). If we look carefully from that viewpoint, we can notice how different are levels where people can have their basic focus of attention. Some people live on “flesh level,” others on “feeling level,” “mind level,” “brotherly love level,” “moral level” or maybe even on “spiritual level.” If someone has focused on the feeling level, it does not mean he or she does not have any focus at all on other levels. But to move from brotherhood to mind or feeling level is much easier than in the opposite direction. We can find multiple references about spiritual maturity, including psychic cycles, but let us consider the following quotation from The Urantia Book, again about the golden rule:
Some persons discern and interpret the golden rule as a purely intellectual affirmation of human fraternity. Others experience this expression of human relationship as an emotional gratification of the tender feelings of the human personality. Another mortal recognizes this same golden rule as the yardstick for measuring all social relations, the standard of social conduct. Still others look upon it as being the positive injunction of a great moral teacher who embodied in this statement the highest concept of moral obligation as regards all fraternal relationships. In the lives of such moral beings the golden rule becomes the wise center and circumference of all their philosophy.
In the kingdom of the believing brotherhood of God-knowing truth lovers, this golden rule takes on living qualities of spiritual realization on those higher levels of interpretation which cause the mortal sons of God to view this injunction of the Master as requiring them so to relate themselves to their fellows that they will receive the highest possible good as a result of the believer’s contact with them. This is the essence of true religion: that you love your neighbor as yourself.
But the highest realization and the truest interpretation of the golden rule consists in the consciousness of the spirit of the truth of the enduring and living reality of such a divine declaration. The true cosmic meaning of this rule of universal relationship is revealed only in its spiritual realivation, in the interpretation of the law of conduct by the spirit of the Son to the spirit of the Father that indwells the soul of mortal man. And when such spirit-led mortals realize the true meaning of this golden rule, they are filled to overflowing with the assurance of citizenship in a friendly universe, and their ideals of spirit reality are satisfied only when they love their fellows as Jesus loved us all, and that is the reality of the realication of the love of God. [UB 180:5.6-8]
This explanation I have found very helpful to understand our partner’s spiritual receptivity in shating our spiritual life. If we are on the same level or nearby, it is a most natural and effective situation for sharing. In other cases several problems of misunderstanding can arise if we do not take care to note these different levels. From the life of Jesus we can find many examples how he taught people differently.
This short discourse is my small attempt at sharing spiritual life, but as perhaps I’m not yet enough strongly focused on the “spiritual level,” I will conclude now. Therefore, please excuse my possible ignorance on this difficult topic about sharing our a spiritual life.
| The Way Jesus Discovered and Lived the Father's Will | Journal — September 2000 — Index | The Acme of Religious Living |