© 2010 Sheila Keene-Lund
© 2010 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| The Urantia Book, Human Concepts, and Revelatory Validation | Volume 11, Number 1, 2010 (Summer) — Index | Cosmic Socialization and Planetary Citizenship |
In 1990, I asked Ammachi, an Indian guru, if I would ever feel devotion in my lifetime. Her reply, “Love God because only God truly loves you,” catapulted me into a spiritual roller-coaster ride that lasted for many years. It led to my discovery of The Urantia Book, to being intrigued by it and then rejecting it, and then returning to its pages in a personal challenge to detect its flaws and disprove it. But the mind and spirit adventures triggered by my quest for devotion resulted in the faith embrace of an epochal revelation, and eventually, to write a book that reconciles its superhuman message with a wide swath of human knowledge and beliefs.
Along the way, a series of providential happenings changed the course of my life by giving me the direct experience of God’s love that eventually opened my heart to humanity. The increasing recognition of God’s indwelling presence and a deepening appreciation of God became the portal through which I could expand my expression and ability to receive love. A wealth of insights was gained when I engaged in a sincere exploration of all my previous beliefs. Epochal revelation was a powerful source of light that melted my misinterpretations of love and clarified its transcendent meaning in human experience.
Are we Pure Divine Love, able to love and serve others selflessly at will, or do we have to cultivate our capacity to be unselfish? Can we grow love as we grow flowers in a garden? What is the connection between God, love, and the mind?
The answers to these questions will come after we fully recognize the relationship between love and unselfishness and differentiate love from our expressions of human affection that are so often misunderstood.
Unselfishness is not a natural human characteristic. “It requires the enlightenment of reason, morality, and the urge of religion, God-knowingness, to generate an unselfish and altruistic social order.” [UB 16:9.7] Unselfishness is born of an increasing brotherhood consciousness and love that come with the recognition of God as Father of all.
Unselfishness—being selfless—isn’t a masochistic tendency rooted in self-denial and suppression of desire. “The meaningless and menial practices of an ostentatious and false humility are incompatible with the appreciation of the source of your salvation and the recognition of the destiny of your spirit-born souls. Humility before God is altogether appropriate in the depths of your hearts; meekness before men is commendable; but the hypocrisy of self-conscious and attention-craving humility is childish and unworthy of the enlightened sons of the kingdom.” [UB 149:6.10] Well-intentioned acts of convenience or actions with expectation of reward may be benevolent, but still fall into the human realm of self-interest.
As we grow in our understanding of God, we grow in our appreciation of his selfless nature and the desire to emulate his nature in our relations with others—not from a sense of duty but from the inspiration of love. As we grow in awareness of our Indwelling Spirit, we increasingly recognize that godliness is the destiny of humanity. A spiritual reverence and deep conviction evolve within our soul, reflected in the declaration “It is my will that your will be done.” [UB 111:5.6] [UB 118:8.11] In other words, I choose to show my love and appreciation for God by striving to be Godlike, thereby deepening the capacity to lovingly serve my fellow human beings.
A healthy family unit provides the best setting for learning unselfishness. Ideally, parents embrace the supreme responsibility of assisting the child in the battles of life by caring and through training the child to become a self-supporting, wise, loving, and honest individual who can contribute to the progress of civilization. The young adult attains respect and trust for her parents, not from obligations but as a result of the quality of care, training, and affection that the parents display. “The true parent is engaged in a continuous service-ministry which the wise child comes to recognize and appreciate.” [UB 84:7.26] Young adults are thus trained to expand their perception of a loving family to include their neighbors, their country, and the world.
This quality of unselfishness is the real measure of human greatness. To nurture the selfless element in moral behavior is to nurture the capacity to love, trust, and respect—capacities that thrive on knowledge of God and enhanced spiritual insight. We may have high moral standards and be idealistic, but growth in spiritual insight transforms morality into a driving force of enlightened change for societies and nations.
“Love is the outworking of the divine and inner urge of life. It is founded on understanding, nurtured by unselfish service, and perfected in wisdom.” [UB 174:1.5] Pure love activates the highest expression of trust, respect, and devotion, and rises above conditional feelings and circumstances. Known to the ancient Greeks as agape, it is the force that holds the various conditional expressions of human affection in place. “Agape has to do with the mind: it is not simply an emotion which rises unbidden in our hearts; it is a principle by which we deliberately live. Agape has supremely to do with the will.” [1]
The personal attitude of love springs from loyalty to both divine duty and human need. It activates the unconditional and beneficial concern for the good of others and is expressed in respectful and unselfish behavior. Our depth of love and the quality of its expression is proportional to our comprehension of Deity, our efforts to cultivate the qualities of divinity, and our receptivity to the guidance of the Indwelling Spirit.
Unlike the instability of emotions or fickleness of affection, pure love is loyal, forgiving, reliable, compassionate, and truthful. A profound and poetic description of love is found in 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (New American Standard Bible)1Co_13:4-7: “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Without love, the other virtues lose their vigor.
Love and unselfishness go hand in hand. Selfishness is an inherent characteristic of human behavior; people outside the immediate family are not naturally loved or socially served. Therefore, unconditional love must be cultivated. “Love, unselfishness, must undergo a constant and living readaptative interpretation of relationships in accordance with the leading of the Spirit of Truth. Love must thereby grasp the ever-changing and enlarging concepts of the highest cosmic good of the individual who is loved. And then love goes on to strike this same attitude concerning all other individuals who could possibly be influenced by the growing and living relationship of one spirit-led mortal’s love for other citizens of the universe. And this entire living adaptation of love must be effected in the light of both the environment of present evil and the eternal goal of the perfection of divine destiny.” [UB 180:5.10]
There are several expressions of human affection that are instinctive and, unless cultivated, often remain conditional:
The natural liking or admiration people have for one another was known by the ancient Greeks as phileo and arises out of benevolence or common interests. Most friendships are built on phileo. It is the type of affection that says: “I like you if . . .”
Familial love, which includes parental love, was labeled by the Greeks as storge. Storge is a strong, bonding, and protective love toward an animal, object, or person. A living being with storge feels a strong sense of duty and is often willing to die to protect this love. Storge is a conditional love that says: “I love you because I should.” The strength and devotion of storge is often proportional to the need of the loved one and may be thwarted by influences such as ambition, selfishness, or religious conviction.
Physical attraction, called eros by the ancient Greeks, is the chemical reaction, the sex urge, the infatuation between two people. “Notwithstanding the personality gulf between men and women, the sex urge is sufficient to insure their coming together for the reproduction of the species. This instinct operated effectively long before humans experienced much of what was later called love, devotion, and marital loyalty.” [UB 82:1.1] Eros is often mistaken for love and therefore easily abused. Without phileo and storge, eros is passion, the sex urge that, when unbridled, can devastate personal lives, its effect radiating into families and society. But the sex impulse is the catalyst that eventually leads to love. Eros gets beyond the romance stage with the support of phileo, storge, and agape, which helps sustain the friendship and spirituality that long-term relationships require.
After starting my journey into devotion, the most common expressions I heard were, “Follow your heart” and “Listen to your heart, not your mind.” I knew that in spiritual circles, the heart had long been considered the energy center from which feelings of love emanated. While my friends kept insisting that love grows through the practice of meditation, I instinctively knew that a greater understanding of God was my path to loving more deeply.
Meditation is generally considered to be a technique for opening the heart to spirit, yet the spirituality I witnessed in the meditating community in which I lived was not the vibrant and selfless spirituality that I truly desired. After years of meditation and deep subjective experiences, my connection to God remained impersonal and lacked devotion. Likewise, my relationships with others were friendly but guarded and often judgmental. I even found myself indulging in an “enlightened” self-image, the shadow of spiritual ego.
It wasn’t until I allowed my mind to explore the personality of God through the cosmic lens of epochal revelation that I began to feel spiritual humility and sense a change in the quality and depth of my love for others. Reconciling these experiences with news from the emerging science of neurocardiology served to deepen my understanding of the subtle ties between the mind, heart, and spirit.
While the mind is “[t]he thinking, perceiving, and feeling mechanism of the human organism,” [UB 0:5.8] scientists are offering new insight into the intimate connection between the heart and the brain: “Groundbreaking research in the field of neurocardiology has established that the heart is a sensory organ and a sophisticated information encoding and processing center, with an extensive intrinsic nervous system sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as a ‘heart brain.’” [2] In fact, “. . . about sixty to sixty-five percent of all the cells in the heart are neural cells which are precisely the same as in the brain, functioning in precisely the same way, monitoring and maintaining control of the entire mind/brain/body physical process as well as direct unmediated connections between the heart and the emotional, cognitive structures of the brain.” [3]
Humans were created and wired to know God and experience his love. The heart is where we “feel” love, and the mind is where the Indwelling Spirit fosters the love of God and individualizes the Father’s love in each human soul. It is through the mind that we can know and love God and know and love our neighbors. Through the cultivation of universal intelligence and the application of those associated insights in our daily lives, we can experience the full and undiminished impact of the Father’s love in our hearts.
The quality of our experience of the Father’s love is always varied and unlimited. And though we can share human affection without developing our consciousness, that affection remains conditional, selective, and incomplete; it pales in comparison to the human reflection of divine and enduring love. The quantity of the Father’s love that we experience is precisely measured by our spiritual receptivity and capacity to return the love of our Father. The more we know and love God as our Father, the better we can understand and live the familial relationship that we share with each human being. When we act with love toward our fellow humans, the Father’s love becomes increasingly reflected in our experience, and that love is replete, compassionate, trusting, reverent, and unconditional.
The mind is the key to attaining new and higher spiritual meanings and values—and to expressing and experiencing greater love in our hearts. The cultivation of universal intelligence forges the gap between basic human affection and living agape love. “While the mind is not the seat of the spiritual nature, it is indeed the gateway thereto.” [UB 155:6.13]
Sheila Keene-Lund is a long-time student of The Urantia Book and serves as Education Committee Chair of UAI and Vice President of Urantia Association of Florida. This article is excerpted from her new book, Heaven Is Not the Last Stop, which offers the first full explication of the Urantia revelation along with a framework for “Living the Religion of the Spirit” based on its teachings. In the last two years, Keene-Lund has presented at Fellowship, UAI, and unaffiliated conferences and retreats. She is currently promoting her book with appearances in the United States and internationally. Copies are now available at: www.heavenisnotthelaststop.com.
| The Urantia Book, Human Concepts, and Revelatory Validation | Volume 11, Number 1, 2010 (Summer) — Index | Cosmic Socialization and Planetary Citizenship |
William Barclay, New Testament Words: The Greatest of the Virtues (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2000) ↩︎
J. Andrew Armour, Neurocardiology: Anatomical and Functional Principles, http://www.heartmathstore.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?item=enro. ↩︎
“Waking up to the Holographic Heart: Starting Over with Education,” a conversation between Joseph Chilton Pearce and Casey Walker, editor and publisher of the Wild Duck Review, on May 29, 1998 , with the production assistance of KVMR, a community-supported radio station in Nevada City, CA http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/JCP98.html. ↩︎