© 2014 Richard Goodman
© 2014 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| Origin, Nature, Ministry, and Destiny of Thought Adjusters | Volume 14, Number 1, 2014 (Summer) — Index | Prayer? Why Bother? |
_The following was presented on May 17, 2014, at the First Society Mini-Conference in Chicago. _
Hello everyone and welcome to the 2014 First Society Mini-Conference, matter-of-factly themed, “Spiritual Unity.” I especially want to welcome all of the out-of towners to Chicago. Yes, we are, indeed, in Chicago. And while I’m in a welcoming mood, I give additional thanks to many of the Chicagoans here as well, since your lengthy commute may have you feeling very much like an out-of-towner. Indeed, we are well northwest of downtown and of Urantia Book Mecca, (no spiritual pun intended) otherwise known as Bill’s Place. We are in the community of O’hare, one of Chicago’s 77 official communities, known far and wide for its airport, but did you also know that O’hare is home to the headquarters of True Value Hardware, U.S. Cellular, and the Consulate General of the Dominican Republic? Local Faith based organizations include the headquarters of the Lutheran Church in America, and also St. Joseph the Betrothed Greek Orthodox Church. What would I do without Wikipedia???
My objective here is to provide some context for today’s experience, beginning with a consideration of words. I think we can all agree, The Urantia Book is very big. You get that a lot when introducing it to people, don’t you? It’s a big book with lots of words. If you know how many, hang on to that number…
Thirty years ago a friend of mine shared his copy of The Urantia Book with me. I started reading, AND counting. It took me a little more than a couple of months to finish— reading, that is. But I’m still not done counting. Actually, in preparing this keynote I took time to estimate the total number of words in The Urantia Book… The highest quality research is both blind AND randomized, so I closed my eyes, opened the book and let my index finger oijua its way to page 1762, paragraph 2. I then counted words contained in three sentences. With that vast sampling I found the mean, median and mode for a given sentence in the book. I then conducted a similar procedure for the number of lines on a given page. Twelve words times 46 lines = 552 words per page. Multiply that by 2097 pages and… anyone? No calculators now… Oh, ok who has a calculator? How’s this for audience engagement… (someone will shout the answer or not) The answer is approximately one million one hundred fifty-seven thousand five hundred forty-four words in The Urantia Book, not including the foreword or table of contents. However, today, for the sake of brevity and practicality we will be focusing on just two.
Paper 56, entitled “Universal Unity”, effectively places the topic within Cosmic Context. One need not search too far to gain a broad understanding of the topic, since the paper opens up with one of those signature statements found throughout the book… God is unity. Note it does not say ‘God is unified.’ It’s a much more profound statement; similar to the phrase, God is Love. What we know as unity, we can understand as the ubiquity of God. Here is an instance where The Urantia Book provides a powerful yet simple concept that begs the question, why has unity become so complicated? More important, why is it so difficult to create and promulgate spiritual unity?
Good question, in my humble opinion. To some extent, since Spiritual Unity is nonmaterial, it’s beyond our comprehension. We can look forward to getting a better handle on it once we progress to the mansion worlds, where per capita, you might say, more beings have been more successful spreading spiritual unity than here on this planet. All right, that’s a blatant assumption, but work with me, if you would. Essentially, the more spiritual we are, the more sensitive to, and aware we are, of spiritual unity. That’s a pleasantly reassuring outlook for all mortals keen on survival. Right here and now though, it’s apparent to many that on this plane of existence, we are not where we want to and should be with regard to spiritual unity. After all, today’s theme is not, “Celebrating Spiritual Unity On Urantia…” Upbeat, but excessively self-congratulatory, and dare I say—of course I dare, no one actually suggested this—insincere, from my perspective. Far from unified, society is still trying to get good at tolerance and acceptance. Agondonters appreciate imagery, so picture two former, since deceased, mid-east political leaders, Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat on the White House lawn in 1993. Remember that scene? Yes, that was more than twenty years ago, and sadly, the hope it represented has born little if any fruit. Suffice to say, we are still off the mark.
Jesus, in his second discourse on religion, spoke to the apostles, describing them as “You have elected to exchange your feelings of authoritative certainty for the assurances of the spirit of adventurous and progressive faith.” [UB 155:6.2] It is the illusion of certainty and security that holds us back; a false comfort, a sense that ultimately makes little sense. Add to that the insidious grip of authority, and spiritual superiority that foments disharmony within and between religious organizations.
I have long wondered why the concept of tolerance has gained so much traction. It has become society’s goal in the effort to improve relations between cultural groups (and I use the term culture broadly, to include race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual preference etc.). Is that truly the best we can do? If tolerance is intended as an acceptable first step toward unity, that process is completely unclear to me. Without being cynical, the emphasis on tolerance suggests that we are so inured to contemptuous conflict that we ought not to fathom the notion of anything more progressive, more aggressive, more idealistic.
Perhaps alternatives will emerge in the next few hours here. Paper 56 gives us a head start, explaining how we reside in a grand universe that is divinely harmonized, synchronized, correlated, coordinated—in a word…unified. We are told that even the imperfect and the perfect are divinely interrelated. It’s difficult for us mortals to comprehend but it’s true that unity sets the stage and provides the backdrop for all the diversity that enhances our existence, now and forever.
There are now a conservative estimated seven hundred thousand Urantia Books in print and electronic media, distributed to virtually every country on the planet. How spiritually unified we readers are is difficult to ascertain. Spiritual Unity is based on something more than sharing an epochal revelation, as profoundly gratifying, spiritually uplifting and epochally revealing as that may be. We share the book but are we unified in our definition of spiritual unity? Are we united in our objective of spiritual unity? Should we first ask the question, “Why Unite? If nothing more, is it for the sake of truth, beauty and goodness?”
A well conducted orchestra, playing with technical precision and shared emotional expression by most if not all accounts, is better than a disunited group of musicians. The athletic team that has practiced and prepared together, that has learned to trust each other, plays better and usually wins more games and brings increased ticket and team apparel sales. In some cases Unity requires practice and effort, but not as much as one might think.
Spiritual unity is, indeed, a collective AND individual process. Throughout his seven bestowals, Michael himself was undergoing a process of spiritual unification. In paper 21, the Paradise Creator Son, we learn that the process of obtaining universe sovereignty includes seven steps. The sixth is to “unify creature experience with the sevenfold experience of consecration to the revelation of the nature and will of Deity.” [UB 21:3.22] (emphasis mine)
Apparently, the celestial beings tasked with writing and creating The Urantia Book understood that humans enjoy lists, because the book is replete with them. In Paper Three, The Attributes of God, a Divine Counselor and one of the book’s main authors includes nine human traits, what he, she or it (is there an accepted pronoun for our celestial friends?)—what the Counselor calls inevitabilities. I’m sure you’re familiar—“Is Courage a valued character trait? Then challenges must exist. Is Altruism desirable? Then social inequality is necessary. Idealism is imponderable without relativity of goodness and beauty. It’s interesting to note that Spiritual Unity is absent from the list. Perhaps we can give it a shot today. The if-then dialectic isn’t too hard to imagine. It would go something like, Is Spirit Unity attainable? Then mortals must recognize and honor diversity, and individuality.” [UB 3:5.6-14]
For material creatures, likely morontial and spiritual beings too, unity begins within the individual. Sadly, and all too frequently, humans begin their lives dis-unified by unhealthy childhood experiences. In the early twentieth century the eminent psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung, created a new theory of personality. He posited discreet aspects of personality and talked of the shadow—one or more of those aspects that exist outside of our day to day consciousness. As children, and as adults, we unconsciously place aspects of our personality in shadow, where they can’t cause trouble, or so we believe.
While hidden, the obscured parts of our ego plot, maneuver, and strike. Under the cover of darkness, unconscious aspects, usually in the form of unmet needs, gain control of not just our actions, but our intentions as well. The process of Jungian psychotherapy is to first acknowledge one’s enshadowed aspects, and then accept them for what they are. The goal of all this said Jung, was personal integration. The rejoining of the now illuminated aspects with the rest of the healthy ego, forming an integrated personality, a unified individual.
He also introduced the world to the collective unconscious; the notion that we all share within us various ideas, images, symbols, and even memories, passed from down through the generations.
Jung was a pantheist, deeply spiritual if not religious. For him, the process of individuation was as much a spiritual as it was a psychological process, common and fundamental to every religion. What we have in Jung’s ideas is one way of becoming unified on an individual level. And the collective unconscious closely aligns with the general idea of spiritual unity. Perhaps Jung caught spiritual wind of what was going on at 533 W. Diversey.
We know that one purpose for Michael’s bestowal was to proclaim sovereignty of a local universe. His life and gospels were set forth for all inhabitants of his universe, past and future. Thus, the enlightenment and education he gave the apostles was meant for us as well. Through Jesus’ training and teaching of the apostles, we can learn a great deal about the effective approach to fostering and furthering Spiritual Unity on our planet. And from the discourse on true religion, we learn that there is an important distinction between religions that have evolved with advancing civilization and true religion, derived from revelation. The religion of civilization is also considered the religion of the mind. It is essentially theology, rooted in ecclesiastical authority and stagnant tradition. True religion on the other hand, is experiential— the individual’s quest to know God through Faith. It is a journey that requires full commitment. Speaking to the apostles, Jesus said, “. . . you who have been called out of darkness into the light are expected to believe with a whole heart; your faith shall dominate the combined attitudes of body, mind, and spirit.” [UB 155:6.17] It is a task worthy of all that we can give…
In Galilee, Jesus lit into his apostles and disciples for being hesitant, ambivalent, and downright wishy-washy. (I told myself I would refrain from including lengthy quotes but here’s one I couldn’t resist) Jesus is explaining why the Heathen rage. Their goal is: “You who have professed entrance into the kingdom of heaven are altogether too vacillating and indefinite in your teaching conduct. The heathen strike directly for their objectives; you are guilty of too much chronic yearning. If you desire to enter the kingdom, why do you not take it by spiritual assault even as the heathen take a city they lay siege to? You are hardly worthy of the kingdom when your service consists so largely in an attitude of regretting the past, whining over the present, and vainly hoping for the future. Why do the heathen rage? Because they know not the truth. Why do you languish in futile yearning? Because you obey not the truth. Cease your useless yearning and go forth bravely doing that which concerns the establishment of the kingdom.” [UB 155:1.3] It’s the kind of kick in the pants we could use today.
The great comedian and pioneer of cinematic sarcasm, Groucho Marx, echoed Jesus’ sentiments regarding childlike simplicity. In the movie, Duck Soup, Marx plays a newly appointed leader of a small country. Commenting on an overly simple report he received from his treasury secretary, Marx says, wryly, “Even a four year-old child could understand that. Quick, run out and find me a four year-old child. I can’t make head or tail of it.” I sincerely doubt Jesus would ever resort to sarcasm, or even self-incrimination to make a point. But very often he used the metaphor of an eager child when describing the corrected approach to entering God’s Kingdom. For example, in Northern Galilee he remarked, “I have so often taught you that the kingdom of heaven can best be realized by acquiring the spiritual attitude of a sincere child. It is not the mental immaturity of the child that I commend to you but rather the spiritual simplicity of such an easy- believing and fully trusting little one.” [UB 155:6.12] I dare say “easy for Jesus to say.” But entrance was designed for simplicity, and it truly would be, if we mortals didn’t have such a penchant for complication. Perhaps it’s out of necessity, due to the unhealthy experiences in humanity’s early childhood, but we try too hard to unite. The truth is, we are united by God, through the identical nature of our Thought Adjusters. Not to make excuses, but if not for rebellion and default, all of this would be easier. If we let Spirit Unification happen we would be living lives with a united spiritual purpose and destiny.
Richard Goodman is a clinical counselor practicing individual and couples therapy in Chicago and the northern suburbs. He began reading The Urantia Book in 1983 and became a member of The First Society soon thereafter. Richard feels blessed to have two daughters, ages 10 and 14.
| Origin, Nature, Ministry, and Destiny of Thought Adjusters | Volume 14, Number 1, 2014 (Summer) — Index | Prayer? Why Bother? |