© 1987 Stephen Zendt
© 1987 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
| The square root of nothing | December 1987 Issue. Special Conference Double Issue — Index | Our relationship with God |
I want to begin by telling you an anecdote about the renowned American evangelist, Billy Graham. It seems he was in a small community where he was scheduled to speak that evening. During the day, he was anxious to put some letters into the mail and went out for a walk. He stopped a young fellow on the street to ask directions to the local Post Office. After the youngster had given him the information, Graham invited him to his evening preaching engagement, saying that he would be speaking on the topic, “The Way to Heaven,” But the young fellow replied that he’d probably not be there. “Gosh,” he said, “you don’t even know your way to the Post Office.”
The great Danish philosopher and religionist, Kierkegaard, has said, “Most people believe that the …commandments, that is, to love one’s neighbor as oneself (and so forth) are intentionally a little too severe — like putting the clock ahead half an hour to make sure of not being late in the morning.”
I am beginning to think that the act of personal transformation is to bring our interior clocks to the point where they tell true time.
Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary defines transformation in the following way: “To change in character, to convert.” There is an additional comment that says “Transform implies a major change in form, nature or function.” Certainly, spiritual transformation implies all three, both temporally and eternally.
I believe the good people who asked me to speak today felt that I had had some acquaintance with personal transformation. During my career as an actor, I sometimes transformed myself eight times each week. In addition to this, over the years I have transformed myself from a skinny dope-smoking Hippy into an overweight and stressed-out businessman approaching mid-life crisis. But to return for a moment to the theatre, it is the task of the actor to motivate oneself to behave as though he were another person, in order to achieve the playwright’s intended meaning, following the director’s instructions, while wearing the costumer’s creations. One simply does not act like oneself when the curtain goes up.
What a surprise it must be for sincere spiritual seekers who become students of the fifth epochal revelation to learn that we are expected to choose to write our own portion of the Cosmic Drama, and to act on the highest ideals for the benefit of our fellow mortals. Most of all, to become truly and sincerely real.
On UB 117:4.12 of The URANTIA Book, a Mighty Messenger tells us: “Into the keeping of mortal man has been given not only the Adjuster presence of the Paradise Father but also control over the destiny of an infinitesimal fraction of the future of the Supreme. For as man attains human destiny, so does the Supreme achieve destiny on deity levels.” (UB 117:4.12) “And here is mystery: The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality — actuality — of that man.” (UB 117:4.14)
Here then is our motivation as actors in this enormous universe theatre: to love as Jesus loves us.
The Supreme Being needs our infinitesimal input toward his completion, and the Father is asking us to return home. We’re not here seeking the way to the Post Office. We’re actually taking the first steps on our journey to Paradise.
That same Mighty Messenger also has said: “As we master the problems of self-realization, so is the God of experience achieving almighty supremacy in the universes of time and space.” (UB 117:4.6) “It is out of the very reality of the Supreme that the Adjuster, with the consent of the human will, weaves the patterns of the eternal nature of an ascending son of God.” (UB 117:4.8)
So, as we transform our personal lives through spiritual growth, we are achieving actuality in the cosmos, we are becoming cosmic citizens, ambassadors of God.
When we take a closer look at the process of personal transformation, we approach the inner life, that singular most intimate locale inside us, where we choose the Father’s will. It is the place where we come closest to the God who is within.
Meister Eckhart, the great German mystic, once wrote: “The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hardworking farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly, its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seed into God.” This deceptively simple statement contains for me the astounding realization that we are transforming our mortal natures into clarified vessels of love. And we know that that love is of God, and from God, and will ultimately lead us into the presence of the Father himself, who is living love.
So, how do we do it? How do we perform the act of transformation on ourselves? Our twentieth century has seen the development of a plethora of cults, “isms” and “ologies”, all of them reflecting the deep need many people feel for techniques and training in enlightenment. But, The URANTIA Book indicates that our slothful human minds want everything complex rendered simple. We choose secondary status, supporting priestcraft on every side, to show us how to become fully conscious. This must be a stage in our evolutionary development, and it brings us quite a variety of kooks and would-be saints packaging their own brand of developmental wisdom. From Shirley McLaine to the Maharishi to Jim and Tammy Bakker, we have a smorgasboard of good advice and bad.
However, the Nebadon Melchizedeks remind us that “Man’s sole contribution to growth is the mobilization of the total powers of his personality — living faith.” (UB 100:3.7) And the midwayers reassure us that, “It requires time for men and women to effect radical and extensive charges in their basic and fundamental concepts of social conduct, philosophic attitudes, and religious convictions.” (UB 152:6.1)
The great task, after we have experienced re-birth in the Spirit, is to realign the concepts we used in the past to simplify and explain our existence, with the real universe and the real influences that our Thought Adjuster and our unseen friends are providing for our development. I’m speaking of the period after we realize that our Thought Adjuster is present in our mind. (What a shame that we don’t have an archangel visitation introducing us to our very own Mystery Monitor: “Little Stevie, this is your Father Fragment,” while the trumpets blare.) Seriously, though, the assurance of the presence of our divine companion often comes only after one of those “redirecting cataclysms” (UB 100:2.8) has that the influence of our Thought Adjuster is helping to spiritualize our thinking, literally to change our minds. We are helped to know how to pick up the pieces. Remember the remark of the Melchizedek: “New meanings only emerge amid conflict; and conflict persists only in the face of refusal to espouse the higher values connoted in superior meanings, Religious perplexities are inevitable; there can be no growth without psychic conflict and spiritual agitation… But, the great problem of religious living consists in the task of unifying the soul powers of the personality by the dominance of LOVE.” (UB 100:4.1-3)
And this, I want to submit to you, is the place where we transform ourselves. With the conspiracy of spiritual help that we have available to us, our unseen friends and our precious Thought Adjuster offer us the opportunity to take the shattered remains of our former lives and use them artfully to create the mosaic of the future. We can make the difficult choices, in fact, if we are not to stagnate, we simply must make them in order to bring forth Spirit fruit. We must transform our concept of reality into the realization of the actuality of God’s living cosmos. We transform ourselves at every juncture by our decisions to do it God’s way, the better way toward perfection.
Finally, we know for certain that this is not a “how-to” religion we are involved with. Michael of Nebadon has created a universe based on Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. He was and is a hands-on Creator Son, whose life on this planet has left us with the urgency of loving as he loves, of doing as he does, not according to some pre-arranged formula, but simply by the doing of our living, every day, It is in our prayer and worship sessions that we can acknowledge whatever transformation we have performed upon ourselves, and see the potentials to be realized in growth yet to come. Jesus urges us to jump into experience, not as a divine fool, but as wisdom-hungry human, ready to practice forgiveness and strong to go the second mile.
Remember that Jesus told Ganid: “If we know God, our real business on earth is so to live as to permit the Father to reveal himself in our lives, and thus will all God-seeking persons see the Father and ask for our help in finding out more about the God who in this manner finds expression in our lives.” (UB 132:7.2) What an opportunity this is! The transformation process brings us away from our old selves to such an extent that we may actually introduce other mortals to our heavenly Father.
A Mighty Messenger gives us the clue to the whole process: “Man’s great universe adventure consists in the transit of his mortal mind from the stability of mechanical statics to the divinity of spiritual dynamics, and he achieves this transformation by the force and constancy of his own personality decisions, in each of life’s situations declaring, ‘It is my will that your will be done.’” (UB 118:8.11)
In closing I want to read to you the words of a mortal, Francois de Sales, who once questioned the Bishop of Geneva concerning the attainment of perfection. The wise and wily old Bishop replied, “There are many beside you who want me to tell them of methods and systems and secret ways of becoming perfect, and I can only tell them that the sole secret is a hearty love of God, and the only way of attaining that love is by loving. You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves. If you want to love God, go on loving Him more and more. Begin as a mere apprentice, and the very power of love will lead you on to become a master in the art,”
May God bless you with daily spiritual renewal and lifelong personal transformation. Thank you.
Stephen Zendt
San Francisco, California
| The square root of nothing | December 1987 Issue. Special Conference Double Issue — Index | Our relationship with God |