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...until we meet again!!

It is a sad day to learn that Truthbook is so soon ending new topics and posts here as of the end of this month.

While I have been an avid student of the Urantia Papers for nearly 50 years, my 12+ years here at TruthBook has been the most fruitful and rewarding season of my studies yet.

I am so grateful for Truthbook and those wonderful servants of truth who have worked so hard for so long to create and host this classroom and community of UB students, learning and sharing such an important gift to our world. I have no doubt that this site and the content archived here will be a lasting tribute of scholarship and dissemination of the teachings in the Papers.

The spectrum of topics and student perspective here is broad and deep. It is my sincere hope that students who visit here will continue to be rewarded and inspired, as I certainly have been, by the insights and assurances so generously provided by the universe reality perspective in the Papers.

Thanks to all who attend here and to those who have added their voices of sharing and caring here.

I'll be back to post additional thoughts and reflections.

Peace be unto you...and our world.

Bradly T. 8)

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The Papers reveal so many essential facts about universe reality which will change us, and will eventually change our world, by its profound perspective expansion of origins, purpose, destiny, and the causes and effects of evolutionary perfecting and experiential progress within the eternal infinitude of perfection.

Our view of reality shapes our very approach to life and living. There is uncertainty enough in the vicissitudes of living and choosing while gaining experiential wisdom and spiritization without being blinded by ignorance and prejudice and poisoned by fears and anxiety. A more factual reality perspective enhances and clarifies our innate spirituality by the Deity Connections each of us is inherently endowed with and by.

This is the very purpose of Epochal Revelation. To expand and clarify and organize our universe reality perspective while erasing our primitive superstitions and the Godless metaphysics of (so called) modern science and philosophy.

The most profoundly important lesson I have found in the Papers is the teaching that our personal Deity Connections and spiritualization are not determined or defined or limited by our knowledge or understanding of universe realities. Faith is our personal response to our Deity Connections who minister to every individual personality in all the universe of universes.

The proof and results of that spiritization are human love and kindness and morality and forgiveness and duty and loyalty. These qualities and attributes originate with Deity and the Spirit source and origin of all creation.

Even false beliefs or disbelief cannot prevent the Deity Connections and Ministries of Love. How exciting!!! How true. So obvious...now. Thanks to the reality perspective I have gained from the Urantia Papers. Love has a source and origin and a transformative power that God has unleashed in time and eternity.

The imperfections found in life and time are merely the incompleteness of an evolutionary and experiential perfecting process of time by those perfecting personalities in time. Immaturity and inexperience delivers errors aplenty in time and ignorance and anxiety and uncertainty certainly delivers even far greater errors and conflicts to evolutionary progress.

But all such error diminishes over sufficient time by the effects of Divine love and influential ministrations of our Deity Connections.

Better and more factual universe reality perspective also certainly helps. We live in a friendly universe of endless adventure and progress with a personal and collective destiny of unimaginable grandeur and achievement.

The Urantia Papers teach but also inspire us to be part of the universe family and to participate and contribute to the great cause of perfecting in time! Personal perfecting. Cultural and community perfecting. World perfecting. Universe perfecting. All by experiential and evolutionary progress by the each and by the all. The part and the whole.

Those relationships between the individual parts, and the universal whole and the parts, and the parts to the whole, and of the each and the all to our First Source and Center deliver an endlessly progressive adventure in time and in eternity.

Bradly. 8)

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Another impressive feature of the Urantia Papers is the fact that the authors do not require or even request any specific beliefs or actions or ceremony or doctrinal creeds by any student.

It is informational. A glimpse of universe reality meant to free us from anxiety and superstition. It is a guidebook, not a rule book.

It is friendly and filled with assurances of God's grace and affection for the children of time.

8)

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For more on Divine Assurance:

https://forum.truthbook.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5434

8)

For more on evolutionary progress and Experiential Wisdom:

https://forum.truthbook.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5693

8)

More on our Deity Connections:

https://forum.truthbook.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6137

8)

More about our personal Faith Response to our Deity Connections:

https://forum.truthbook.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5029

8)

(1300.2) 118:6.6 In the mortal life, paths of differential conduct are continually opening and closing, and during the times when choice is possible the human personality is constantly deciding between these many courses of action. Temporal volition is linked to time, and it must await the passing of time to find opportunity for expression. Spiritual volition has begun to taste liberation from the fetters of time, having achieved partial escape from time sequence, and that is because spiritual volition is self-identifying with the will of God.

(1108.3) 101:3.4 Through religious faith the soul of man reveals itself and demonstrates the potential divinity of its emerging nature by the characteristic manner in which it induces the mortal personality to react to certain trying intellectual and testing social situations. .....

(1108.16) 101:3.17 We know, then, by three phenomena, that man has a divine spirit or spirits dwelling within him: first, by personal experience — religious faith; second, by revelation — personal and racial; and third, by the amazing exhibition of such extraordinary and unnatural reactions to his material environment as are illustrated by the foregoing recital of twelve spiritlike performances in the presence of the actual and trying situations of real human existence. And there are still others.

(2095.4) 196:3.20 Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes religion as the motive of inner response to outer conditions. But such a real religion is not a purely subjective experience. It signifies the whole of the subjectivity of the individual engaged in a meaningful and intelligent response to total objectivity — the universe and its Maker.

(2096.5) 196:3.32 Some men’s lives are too great and noble to descend to the low level of being merely successful. The animal must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through this insight of divine love. This concept of love generates in the soul of man that superanimal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does find them, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.

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For those who seek understanding of human suffering and it's causes and cures, the UB has much to offer:

https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/se ... Suffering+

https://forum.truthbook.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5731

https://forum.truthbook.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6164

Happiness is the quest for each and every personality. Our need for happiness is like an itch that must be scratched. Power, money, material wealth, and physical pleasures disappoint us and leave us unfulfilled without love and loyalty and truth, beauty, and goodness.

Indeed... money, power, and pleasure can corrupt our character if not tempered and directed and motivated by love and kindness.

True happiness is a direct result and function of our spirituality and personal progress in experiential wisdom and by our response to our Deity Connections within.

https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/se ... Happiness+

8)

2:7.10 (43.3)The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness. Such a new and righteous vision of morality will attract all that is good in the mind of man and challenge that which is best in the human soul. Truth, beauty, and goodness are divine realities, and as man ascends the scale of spiritual living, these supreme qualities of the Eternal become increasingly co-ordinated and unified in God, who is love.

2:7.11 (43.4)All truth—material, philosophic, or spiritual—is both beautiful and good. All real beauty—material art or spiritual symmetry—is both true and good. All genuine goodness—whether personal morality, social equity, or divine ministry—is equally true and beautiful. Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience. Such levels of efficient living come about through the unification of energy systems, idea systems, and spirit systems.

2:7.12 (43.5)Truth is coherent, beauty attractive, goodness stabilizing. And when these values of that which is real are co-ordinated in personality experience, the result is a high order of love conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty. The real purpose of all universe education is to effect the better co-ordination of the isolated child of the worlds with the larger realities of his expanding experience. Reality is finite on the human level, infinite and eternal on the higher and divine levels.

8)

100:4.3 (1097.7)But the great problem of religious living consists in the task of unifying the soul powers of the personality by the dominance of love. Health, mental efficiency, and happiness arise from the unification of physical systems, mind systems, and spirit systems. Of health and sanity man understands much, but of happiness he has truly realized very little. The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding.

8)

103:5.5 (1134.3) Human happiness is achieved only when the ego desire of the self and the altruistic urge of the higher self (divine spirit) are co-ordinated and reconciled by the unified will of the integrating and supervising personality. The mind of evolutionary man is ever confronted with the intricate problem of refereeing the contest between the natural expansion of emotional impulses and the moral growth of unselfish urges predicated on spiritual insight—genuine religious reflection.

8)

111:4.7 (1220.6) Happiness and joy take origin in the inner life. You cannot experience real joy all by yourself. A solitary life is fatal to happiness. Even families and nations will enjoy life more if they share it with others.

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My understanding of the Papers is the teaching that happiness is another fruit of the Spirit...or the mortal's RESPONSE to the Deity Connections inherent to each personality in time.

Morality, generosity, kindness, loyalty, duty, patience, forgiveness, mercy...love and happiness, joy and contentment...all are fruits of our personal responsiveness to our Divine Affection and Assurance ministries of the Spirit within.

The fruits of the Spirit grow and multiply according to our willingness to share them with others...any others and all others.

Every true, beautiful, and good motive, thought, intention, choice, and act have a positive effect on ourselves and our family, tribe, community, world, and universe, as well as experiential Deity too. These positive effects ripple outward from these personality causes to change reality everywhere and forevermore.

The effects of love never ever end.

Or so I understand the Papers to teach.

8)

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"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."


Last edited by fanofVan on Mon Oct 21, 2024 6:00 am +0000, edited 1 time in total.

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The pursuit of happiness is pointless and hopeless without our spiritization by our Deity Connections and the ministry of love. True contentment and joy and personal surety amidst all uncertainties can only come by our faith response to the Spirit within.

Achievement and wisdom are rewarding but only the fruits of the Spirit deliver us from frustration and disappointment. Only God makes us whole and overflows our cup with joy, as God is the source of all goodness and all beauty and all truth and all the love there is or ever will be.

149:5.1 (1674.3)When Jesus was visiting the group of evangelists working under the supervision of Simon Zelotes, during their evening conference Simon asked the Master: “Why are some persons so much more happy and contented than others? Is contentment a matter of religious experience?” Among other things, Jesus said in answer to Simon’s question:

149:5.2 (1674.4)“Simon, some persons are naturally more happy than others. Much, very much, depends upon the willingness of man to be led and directed by the Father’s spirit which lives within him. Have you not read in the Scriptures the words of the wise man, ‘The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts’? And also that such spirit-led mortals say: ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a goodly heritage.’ ‘A little that a righteous man has is better than the riches of many wicked,’ for ‘a good man shall be satisfied from within himself.’ ‘A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance and is a continual feast. Better is a little with the reverence of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted ox and hatred therewith. Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without rectitude.’ ‘A merry heart does good like a medicine.’ ‘Better is a handful with composure than a superabundance with sorrow and vexation of spirit.’

149:5.3 (1674.5)“Much of man’s sorrow is born of the disappointment of his ambitions and the wounding of his pride. Although men owe a duty to themselves to make the best of their lives on earth, having thus sincerely exerted themselves, they should cheerfully accept their lot and exercise ingenuity in making the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s troubles take origin in the fear soil of his own natural heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pursues.’ ‘The wicked are like the troubled sea, for it cannot rest, but its waters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’

149:5.4 (1674.6)“Seek not, then, for false peace and transient joy but rather for the assurance of faith and the sureties of divine sonship which yield composure, contentment, and supreme joy in the spirit.”

149:5.5 (1675.1)Jesus hardly regarded this world as a “vale of tears.” He rather looked upon it as the birth sphere of the eternal and immortal spirits of Paradise ascension, the “vale of soul making.”

8)

"God is love":

https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/se ... od+is+love

Those who have love give love. Those who give love have love. We receive what we give away to others...love, forgiveness, and mercy are received by us as they are given by us.

The universe economy operates by the currency of love and its exchange by and between personalities as the beloved children of God. If we do not give love then we simply cannot receive love. Love is the faith response of personality to our Deity Connections and Ministries.

The command to love one another as God loves us is a simple recognition of universe reality and it's operational functionality!!

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I have been blessed to find the Papers in my truth seeking so long ago. It's teachings have guided my philosophy of living since I first discovered it's celestial presentations of universe reality. I am so happy to share its assurances and encouragement and inspiring descriptions of the eternal mortal adventures with other truth seekers and to share the fruits of the Spirit with all my fellow tadpoles as I pass by.

Material life is hard. And unfair. And sometimes mean and cruel. Enlightenment is also arduous and delivers many obstacles and detours, and the reperc6ussions of inexperience and impatience and self importance and immaturity makes life's vicissitudes difficult to navigate.

The Urantia Papers offers relief and hope and encouragement and specific, actionable motives and priorities by expanding our reality perspective. The UB teaches us how to reduce anxiety and eliminate fear from all uncertainty and how to gain a sublime surety of our place as God's beloved children.

Do you seek hope? Understanding? Assurance?

The Papers claim to be a gift to reduce confusion and eliminate the errors of superstition and ignorance and prejudice by showing us a new perspective of universe reality.

Such a glimpse, when believed and embraced, most certainly changes our motives and priorities for the endless choices we face every day.

Such a blessing.

8) Bradly

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FAIR WARNING! !!!!!!!!! :!: :idea: :mrgreen: :-# :-s

Please be advised:

The Urantia Papers are a most readable and understandable text of information and universe reality perspective. It is comprehensive and consice and redundant throughout its articulations. The UB speaks for itself. It speaks best for itself.

Anything written about the Urantia Papers is NOT the same as what the UB says for itself. No matter who says it or what they may say.

Please READ the text. Study it for yourselves. It is a big book. But it is fascinating to read. It builds a portrait of colors and texture that, over time, presents a wonderfully compelling tapestry of truth and delivers endless insights of personal revelation which inspire the highest thoughts and spiritual contemplations.

I have found over the decades that many readers merely seek self justification and affirmation of personal prejudices and entrenched belief systems and wacko metaphysical constructs of mind boggling distortions and contortions.

Some more priestly folk seek to impress others with how special they are and will gladly offer to interpret the Papers and tell you what and whom to fear and who to blame and what to do and how to think or what to do. Beware those who claim to speak to or for the gods or for the authors of the Papers or the dead or any celestials.

God speaks to us directly and personally. There are no mediums or interpreters or intermediaries or intercession required. We are each and all directly connected to Deity.

Please study. And pray. Seek the voice within. Trust God.

Personally...I am just another tadpole student, a fellow pilgrim on the Paradise Trail...wishing you peace and joy. Be seeing you!!

Love, Bradly. 8)

1:4.2 (26.4)The physical bodies of mortals are “the temples of God.” Notwithstanding that the Sovereign Creator Sons come near the creatures of their inhabited worlds and “draw all men to themselves”; though they “stand at the door” of consciousness “and knock” and delight to come in to all who will “open the doors of their hearts”; although there does exist this intimate personal communion between the Creator Sons and their mortal creatures, nevertheless, mortal men have something from God himself which actually dwells within them; their bodies are the temples thereof.

1:4.3 (26.5)When you are through down here, when your course has been run in temporary form on earth, when your trial trip in the flesh is finished, when the dust that composes the mortal tabernacle “returns to the earth whence it came”; then, it is revealed, the indwelling “Spirit shall return to God who gave it.” There sojourns within each moral being of this planet a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity. It is not yet yours by right of possession, but it is designedly intended to be one with you if you survive the mortal existence.

1:4.4 (26.6)We are constantly confronted with this mystery of God; we are nonplused by the increasing unfolding of the endless panorama of the truth of his infinite goodness, endless mercy, matchless wisdom, and superb character.

1:4.5 (26.7)The divine mystery consists in the inherent difference which exists between the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, the time-space creature and the Universal Creator, the material and the spiritual, the imperfection of man and the perfection of Paradise Deity. The God of universal love unfailingly manifests himself to every one of his creatures up to the fullness of that creature’s capacity to spiritually grasp the qualities of divine truth, beauty, and goodness.

1:4.6 (27.1)To every spirit being and to every mortal creature in every sphere and on every world of the universe of universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his gracious and divine self that can be discerned or comprehended by such spirit beings and by such mortal creatures. God is no respecter of persons, either spiritual or material. The divine presence which any child of the universe enjoys at any given moment is limited only by the capacity of such a creature to receive and to discern the spirit actualities of the supermaterial world.

1:4.7 (27.2)As a reality in human spiritual experience God is not a mystery. But when an attempt is made to make plain the realities of the spirit world to the physical minds of the material order, mystery appears: mysteries so subtle and so profound that only the faith-grasp of the God-knowing mortal can achieve the philosophic miracle of the recognition of the Infinite by the finite, the discernment of the eternal God by the evolving mortals of the material worlds of time and space.

8)

101:3.1 (1107.8) Religion is so vital that it persists in the absence of learning. It lives in spite of its contamination with erroneous cosmologies and false philosophies; it survives even the confusion of metaphysics. In and through all the historic vicissitudes of religion there ever persists that which is indispensable to human progress and survival: the ethical conscience and the moral consciousness.

101:3.2 (1108.1)Faith-insight, or spiritual intuition, is the endowment of the cosmic mind in association with the Thought Adjuster, which is the Father’s gift to man. Spiritual reason, soul intelligence, is the endowment of the Holy Spirit, the Creative Spirit’s gift to man. Spiritual philosophy, the wisdom of spirit realities, is the endowment of the Spirit of Truth, the combined gift of the bestowal Sons to the children of men. And the co-ordination and interassociation of these spirit endowments constitute man a spirit personality in potential destiny.

101:3.3 (1108.2)It is this same spirit personality, in primitive and embryonic form, the Adjuster possession of which survives the natural death in the flesh. This composite entity of spirit origin in association with human experience is enabled, by means of the living way provided by the divine Sons, to survive (in Adjuster custody) the dissolution of the material self of mind and matter when such a transient partnership of the material and the spiritual is divorced by the cessation of vital motion.

101:3.4 (1108.3)Through religious faith the soul of man reveals itself and demonstrates the potential divinity of its emerging nature by the characteristic manner in which it induces the mortal personality to react to certain trying intellectual and testing social situations. Genuine spiritual faith (true moral consciousness) is revealed in that it:

101:3.5 (1108.4)1. Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent and adverse animalistic tendencies.

101:3.6 (1108.5)2. Produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God even in the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat.

101:3.7 (1108.6)3. Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and physical calamity.

101:3.8 (1108.7)4. Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquillity notwithstanding baffling diseases and even acute physical suffering.

101:3.9 (1108.8)5. Maintains a mysterious poise and composure of personality in the face of maltreatment and the rankest injustice.

101:3.10 (1108.9)6. Maintains a divine trust in ultimate victory in spite of the cruelties of seemingly blind fate and the apparent utter indifference of natural forces to human welfare.

101:3.11 (1108.10)7. Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations of logic and successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries.

101:3.12 (1108.11)8. Continues to exhibit undaunted faith in the soul’s survival regardless of the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of unsound philosophy.

101:3.13 (1108.12)9. Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times.

101:3.14 (1108.13)10. Contributes to the continued survival of altruism in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments.

101:3.15 (1108.14)11. Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin.

101:3.16 (1108.15)12. Goes right on worshiping God in spite of anything and everything. Dares to declare, “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.”

101:3.17 (1108.16)We know, then, by three phenomena, that man has a divine spirit or spirits dwelling within him: first, by personal experience—religious faith; second, by revelation—personal and racial; and third, by the amazing exhibition of such extraordinary and unnatural reactions to his material environment as are illustrated by the foregoing recital of twelve spiritlike performances in the presence of the actual and trying situations of real human existence. And there are still others.

101:3.18 (1109.1) And it is just such a vital and vigorous performance of faith in the domain of religion that entitles mortal man to affirm the personal possession and spiritual reality of that crowning endowment of human nature, religious experience.

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So...we are taught that children and superstitious primitives and even barbarians and pagans have the Deity Connections of the Spirit Within and respond to those in ways which are demonstrated by hope, idealism, ethics, morality, kindness, generosity, forgiveness, mercy, duty, loyalty, and love.

Not one of these attributes are possible without our Divine Connection and spirit nature. To be human is to be connected to Deity. Much of our faith and religious progress and soul growth is unconscious as a reflexive response to the Spirit presence within us each and all.

Certainly, some are more idealistic, more hopeful, more moral, more loyal, and more loving and kind and generous and dutiful. Those who grow most and fastest in spiritization are more intentional and more responsive and more insightful and more attuned to the voice within.

But there are 8 billion souls on our world directly and personally connected to Deity. Each and all are the beloved children of God and abide in the family of creation in God's friendly universe.

Indeed, the UB teaches there are 7 trillion such evolutionary worlds like our own, each at some evolutionary stage of progressive planetary development whereby each and every such world will eventually reach an ever perfecting stage of Light and Life.

8)

https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/se ... t+and+life

The children of time evolve culture and society by freewill choices and spiritization, gaining experiential wisdom by our motives, priorities, decisions, and by choosing in response to our Deity Connections...or by not so choosing we delay evolutionary progress, both personally and collectively.

Or so I understand the Papers to teach us.

8)

100:4.1 (1097.5)Religious living is devoted living, and devoted living is creative living, original and spontaneous. New religious insights arise out of conflicts which initiate the choosing of new and better reaction habits in the place of older and inferior reaction patterns. New meanings only emerge amid conflict; and conflict persists only in the face of refusal to espouse the higher values connoted in superior meanings.

100:4.2 (1097.6) Religious perplexities are inevitable; there can be no growth without psychic conflict and spiritual agitation. The organization of a philosophic standard of living entails considerable commotion in the philosophic realms of the mind. Loyalties are not exercised in behalf of the great, the good, the true, and the noble without a struggle. Effort is attendant upon clarification of spiritual vision and enhancement of cosmic insight. And the human intellect protests against being weaned from subsisting upon the nonspiritual energies of temporal existence. The slothful animal mind rebels at the effort required to wrestle with cosmic problem solving.

100:4.3 (1097.7)But the great problem of religious living consists in the task of unifying the soul powers of the personality by the dominance of love. Health, mental efficiency, and happiness arise from the unification of physical systems, mind systems, and spirit systems. Of health and sanity man understands much, but of happiness he has truly realized very little. The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding.

100:4.4 (1098.1)In physical life the senses tell of the existence of things; mind discovers the reality of meanings; but the spiritual experience reveals to the individual the true values of life. These high levels of human living are attained in the supreme love of God and in the unselfish love of man. If you love your fellow men, you must have discovered their values. Jesus loved men so much because he placed such a high value upon them. You can best discover values in your associates by discovering their motivation. If someone irritates you, causes feelings of resentment, you should sympathetically seek to discern his viewpoint, his reasons for such objectionable conduct. If once you understand your neighbor, you will become tolerant, and this tolerance will grow into friendship and ripen into love.

100:4.5 (1098.2) In the mind’s eye conjure up a picture of one of your primitive ancestors of cave-dwelling times—a short, misshapen, filthy, snarling hulk of a man standing, legs spread, club upraised, breathing hate and animosity as he looks fiercely just ahead. Such a picture hardly depicts the divine dignity of man. But allow us to enlarge the picture. In front of this animated human crouches a saber-toothed tiger. Behind him, a woman and two children. Immediately you recognize that such a picture stands for the beginnings of much that is fine and noble in the human race, but the man is the same in both pictures. Only, in the second sketch you are favored with a widened horizon. You therein discern the motivation of this evolving mortal. His attitude becomes praiseworthy because you understand him. If you could only fathom the motives of your associates, how much better you would understand them. If you could only know your fellows, you would eventually fall in love with them.

100:4.6 (1098.3)You cannot truly love your fellows by a mere act of the will. Love is only born of thoroughgoing understanding of your neighbor’s motives and sentiments. It is not so important to love all men today as it is that each day you learn to love one more human being. If each day or each week you achieve an understanding of one more of your fellows, and if this is the limit of your ability, then you are certainly socializing and truly spiritualizing your personality. Love is infectious, and when human devotion is intelligent and wise, love is more catching than hate. But only genuine and unselfish love is truly contagious. If each mortal could only become a focus of dynamic affection, this benign virus of love would soon pervade the sentimental emotion-stream of humanity to such an extent that all civilization would be encompassed by love, and that would be the realization of the brotherhood of man.

8)

More on our faith experience as children, primitives, and pagans:

https://forum.truthbook.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5757

More on Epochal Revelation:

https://forum.truthbook.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5114

8)

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"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."
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I give thanks everyday for God's love and the inner life of Spirit guidance and Divine Assurance we all share as God's beloved children in the universal family of creation. We children of time hope, yearn, aspire, endeavor, endure, overcome, share, and care in this adventure of life.

To be human is a gift and privilege with eternal destiny potential. All we must do is respond to our Deity Connections and learn to love one another and share the fruits of the Spirit, which are inevitable and transforming for each of us and for all of us together.

I hope all who study the Papers find inspiration and insight and guidance and understanding and perspective and the assurance of hope within its teachings, as I have.

It's been a great privilege to be here at TruthBook and share these teachings with one another. God bless and farewell.

8) Bradly


102:0.1 (1118.1) TO THE unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man’s only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.

102:0.2 (1118.2)But such is not man’s end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of God’s children on earth.

102:0.3 (1118.3) This saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time to eternity.

"Assurance":

https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/se ... Assurance+

100:2.4 (1096.1)Spirituality becomes at once the indicator of one’s nearness to God and the measure of one’s usefulness to fellow beings. Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in values. Spiritual development is determined by capacity therefor and is directly proportional to the elimination of the selfish qualities of love.

100:2.5 (1096.2)Actual spiritual status is the measure of Deity attainment, Adjuster attunement. The achievement of finality of spirituality is equivalent to the attainment of the maximum of reality, the maximum of Godlikeness. Eternal life is the endless quest for infinite values.

100:2.6 (1096.3)The goal of human self-realization should be spiritual, not material. The only realities worth striving for are divine, spiritual, and eternal. Mortal man is entitled to the enjoyment of physical pleasures and to the satisfaction of human affections; he is benefited by loyalty to human associations and temporal institutions; but these are not the eternal foundations upon which to build the immortal personality which must transcend space, vanquish time, and achieve the eternal destiny of divine perfection and finaliter service.

100:2.7 (1096.4)Jesus portrayed the profound surety of the God-knowing mortal when he said: “To a God-knowing kingdom believer, what does it matter if all things earthly crash?” Temporal securities are vulnerable, but spiritual sureties are impregnable. When the flood tides of human adversity, selfishness, cruelty, hate, malice, and jealousy beat about the mortal soul, you may rest in the assurance that there is one inner bastion, the citadel of the spirit, which is absolutely unassailable; at least this is true of every human being who has dedicated the keeping of his soul to the indwelling spirit of the eternal God.

100:2.8 (1096.5) After such spiritual attainment, whether secured by gradual growth or specific crisis, there occurs a new orientation of personality as well as the development of a new standard of values. Such spirit-born individuals are so remotivated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fondest ambitions perish and their keenest hopes crash; they positively know that such catastrophes are but the redirecting cataclysms which wreck one’s temporal creations preliminary to the rearing of the more noble and enduring realities of a new and more sublime level of universe attainment.

8)

101:0.3 (1104.3) Religion, the conviction-faith of the personality, can always triumph over the superficially contradictory logic of despair born in the unbelieving material mind. There really is a true and genuine inner voice, that “true light which lights every man who comes into the world.” And this spirit leading is distinct from the ethical prompting of human conscience. The feeling of religious assurance is more than an emotional feeling. The assurance of religion transcends the reason of the mind, even the logic of philosophy. Religion is faith, trust, and assurance.


8)

32:5.7 (365.3)There is in the mind of God a plan which embraces every creature of all his vast domains, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life. And the infinite treasures of such a matchless career are yours for the striving!

32:5.8 (365.4)The goal of eternity is ahead! The adventure of divinity attainment lies before you! The race for perfection is on! whosoever will may enter, and certain victory will crown the efforts of every human being who will run the race of faith and trust, depending every step of the way on the leading of the indwelling Adjuster and on the guidance of that good spirit of the Universe Son, which so freely has been poured out upon all flesh.

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