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fanofVan wrote:
A loyal and sincere tadpole should love being tadpole first!! All frogs come forth by such unconscious growth and experience AS tadpole. We "mere" mortals/tadpoles have the greatest adventure in all the universes of all creation before us. Choosing the right act comes only from the experiences over time of discerning the reality before us in the moment but right motives can be chosen right now and such a choice immediately changes behavior and act choices. Not to the best or wisest choice just yet. That takes more time and more practice and more error. That's ok. It ain't a race and we will never be done with learning to discern the better choice to ultimately know the best choice among many good choices.

The Jesus Way on the karma scale: Doing the best thing for the best reason. The innocent and wise choice. Beyond my tadpole credentials....way beyond. But we move that direction by doing the right thing for the right reason and even by doing the wrong thing for the right reason. I like to use an analogy: we tadpoles make lemons, the fruits of right motive but with some error of tactic and strategy...and yet the celestials and spirit circuits add the sugar of love and the water of wisdom, stir awhile and serve divine lemonade. We do not make lemonade but the celestials can't make lemonade without our mortal lemons either. This is a team effort. We must only trust the elders on our team to use our best and sincere efforts that bring resonance to the universe and the Supreme.

I think Jesus shows us that self forgetting is the source of divine love...we have ego for many good reasons but we must also transcend it and learn to leave it behind. It's not about us. Jesus said it's not about Him. It's always about others first and always. The reality current beckons and carries us into all truth....eventually....if we but swim along, loyally and sincerely as God's tadpoles.

So glad you share here with us Mark. Yours is not an uncommon quandary. Just shows thinking and progress. Thank you.

Brad

:) wise words brother,
I am but Glad that I have all of you Urantia Beleivers Brothers to share my spiritual experiences with, and to help me in my difficult times, no my friend, I owe the thanks to you :)
God Bless us all in our journey,

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Mark,
9:5.7 Too often, all too often, you mar your minds by insincerity and sear them with unrighteousness;


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boomshuka wrote:
Lol yea kicoverz, I am not sure that was quite where I was going with that. To have a innocent child-like viewpoint was where I was headed there. Not a childish viewpoint, like a impatient kid who wants answers right away lol.

Haha, yet, such "childish" questionings can result to the most important search of mankind's existance.
I heard Chris once emphasize on the notion that if but we pause our incessant mind for a moment and simply start asking "why" like little children do, how much wisdom it can bare, that search , that questioning will ultimately lead to the search for the "Truth", about this universe, the existance and the reasons behind it, and perhaps , one out of a hundred such inquisitors , might be lead to where we stand now :)

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Mark,
9:5.7 Too often, all too often, you mar your minds by insincerity and sear them with unrighteousness;


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Kicoverz aka; Mark, is not the only reader that has real problems with the questions he posts in this thread.


kicoverz asks:
1st Q: Why do I want to be Good ?

Have you already answered the question......Do I want to be good?, with a "yes?"
Or, are you asking "why" as a means to answer the above question?

What about the questions.....Am I Good? (inherently through my very being)
Am I only good by and through choice?


So let's forget about what the UB says on this matter and instead talk about what our lives are like:

I have always "wanted" to be good and for many different reasons in my life.
But, first and foremost it was always a WANT..........a purely selfish desire.
And to this day it remains a purely selfish desire, with an evolved purpose from fear, when I was a young Catholic boy, (the emotion I was taught to save my soul) to the present where I have a need to heal, to find happiness, fulfillment, relationship, to find love and to be loving.

I want to be good because I have this feeling that being good brings "stuff" into my life that may lead to happiness.
I want to be happy and I believe that being good will help bring me that.

I truly don't know that I am good, I often wonder about this.
Life feels like a struggle to be good, a struggle against an inherent nature to be selfish and at odds with other selfish beings who show little or no concern for their fellow humans (especially when we don't know them--strangers).

I also want to be good because I believe that other people rely on "someone" here to show them that humans are good, that something "divine" lives in us and guides us forward to become better (more useful to one another).
I believe that we have a duty to one another.
I believe that this world of sickness needs healing that can only come from healthy relationships that are based on a higher love than we have seen in our past.

Perhaps you could call this the more unselfish "want." ......an ironic contradiction of terms.


kicoverz also asks:
Is this reason a selfish or selfless one? (Is there any form of personal gain/prophet/satisfaction from it!)


For me it all starts out pretty much selfish.
I am hoping that someday it will evolve to be more unselfish.....but, I really don't know what that would feel like.

I know that I have been taught over and over again that the goal is unselfishness and in my life it seems that the only way to get there is through the door of selfishness.

How else can we expect our choices to become Godly? They must first start out UnGodly in order for our will to choose the path that heals, saves.


The UB is in many ways my answer to these perplexing problems. Below are some truly fascinating statements regarding the whole of what is being asked by kicoverz:




(1227.4) 112:1.14 Physical life is a process taking place not so much within the organism as between the organism and the environment. And every such process tends to create and establish organismal patterns of reaction to such an environment. And all such directive patterns are highly influential in goal choosing.

(1227.5) 112:1.15 It is through the mediation of mind that the self and the environment establish meaningful contact. The ability and willingness of the organism to make such significant contacts with environment (response to a drive) represents the attitude of the whole personality.



(1219.5) 111:3.6 Mind knows quantity, reality, meanings. But quality — values — is felt. That which feels is the mutual creation of mind, which knows, and the associated spirit, which reality-izes.


(1219.6) 111:3.7 In so far as man’s evolving morontia soul becomes permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness as the value-realization of God-consciousness, such a resultant being becomes indestructible. If there is no survival of eternal values in the evolving soul of man, then mortal existence is without meaning, and life itself is a tragic illusion. But it is forever true: What you begin in time you will assuredly finish in eternity — if it is worth finishing.



(1220.1) 111:4.2 Meanings are derived from a combination of recognition and understanding. Meanings are nonexistent in a wholly sensory or material world. Meanings and values are only perceived in the inner or supermaterial spheres of human experience.

(1220.2) 111:4.3 The advances of true civilization are all born in this inner world of mankind. It is only the inner life that is truly creative. Civilization can hardly progress when the majority of the youth of any generation devote their interests and energies to the materialistic pursuits of the sensory or outer world.


(1220.6) 111:4.7 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.



(51.12) 3:5.13 8. Is unselfishness — the spirit of self-forgetfulness — desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake. Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.



kicoverz asks:
Is GOD GOOD by nature or by choice ?!Is GOD LOVE by nature or by choice?! Did he DECIDE to be good ? WHY...?

I believe (I do not know of a certainty, I just believe) that God is good by nature yet, it is through "you and I' that God can experience being good by choice.......same thing applies to Love as well as to decision.

God is not only good, God is the source of good.
God is not only love, God is the source of love.
God is not only choice, God is the source of decision.

God is the source and we are the experience.


(52.1) 3:5.15 Throughout the universe, every unit is regarded as a part of the whole. Survival of the part is dependent on co-operation with the plan and purpose of the whole, the wholehearted desire and perfect willingness to do the Father’s divine will. The only evolutionary world without error (the possibility of unwise judgment) would be a world without free intelligence. In the Havona universe there are a billion perfect worlds with their perfect inhabitants, but evolving man must be fallible if he is to be free. Free and inexperienced intelligence cannot possibly at first be uniformly wise. The possibility of mistaken judgment (evil) becomes sin only when the human will consciously endorses and knowingly embraces a deliberate immoral judgment.


You are right to question each and every thing that puzzles you, that is our search in action, our process of becoming that which we are not yet but "want" to become.

For now I am weighed and found wanting.
Perhaps here (our planet) that is neither bad nor good.
Perhaps rather, it is just the location of the path we are on.
Sometimes the location of the path you are on brings with it a great need for clarity.

~Paul
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I would like to further add to my previous post the following:

Although I have these teachings, these concepts, the ideas in my head.

I don't know that I hold any original thoughts, it seems that most, if not all, are borrowed.


It is one thing to keep an ideal in your mind.
It is another whole different universe to take an ideal and attempt to live it out, to make it your personal reality.

I must confess that I am much better at keeping these ideals within my beliefs than I am at actually living them out.

In my life when I reflect back on the times where I have made sincere attempts to be good, they have been accompanied by situations where this goodness was being taken advantage of. This seemed to happen to my Father when we were growing up.
He was exceptionally kind and giving, only to be made fun of by the family. We took advantage of it, we were ungrateful and many times impatient of his overwhelming patience. I believe that my Father suffered in silence. There is something inside me that wonders how anyone could continuously be taken advantage of and simply let it roll of their shoulders time and time again.

So, part of me wonders if his passivity (he truly believed that being Christ-like was a passive life) caused him his physical illness as he was sick most of his adult life (emphysema).
And I also wonder why it seems such a struggle to avoid this very same dilemma in my own adult life.
My need to be giving/forgiving seems to allow for overmuch abuse.
It appears that I am to learn street-wisdom, that this wisdom is to replace my naive nature.

I don't think that I know how to do this without being passive-aggressive to some extent.
When you realize that you have been naive, you resent it when you discover that it brought you pain, and you resent the people who took advantage of you, and you resent yourself for being so stupid.

This is only one tiny aspect of the kaleidoscope of inherited and learned dysfunctions I live with as part of who I have become over the years.


Sometimes I wonder if I am actually learning anything.
Mostly I wonder "WHAT" it is that I am supposed to learn.

I know that this thing "courage" is part of my path yet, I also know it is not something that comes naturally for me. Cowardice comes naturally, not courage.

I wanted to add this to illustrate that I don't know how to be good unselfishly and the above might illuminate why.
I know what the UB has to say on these matters but I don't know how to live it.

~Paul
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I know this is an old thread, but an important one I think.

Like all of the commenters I have pondered this question too. Even as a pretty new fan of the UB
I find that deep thoughts often lead to deeper questions.

As to the question of how to unselfishly be unselfish, I tend to think about it this way: If God is love, how would God know this? (I know I’m thinking in human terms but at the moment that’s what I have to work with). How would God know anything about His true nature without the benefit of knowing what He is not?

Perhaps, in the end, that is why creation was undertaken. To create a vast field of endless situations where choices must be made so as to see what wins out, what is truly REAL as opposed to what is not.
In that field of experience lies the answer to the eternal question… who am I?

Selfish?
Seems certain that the answer is yes.
But to selfishly long for a sense of self by sharing this journey, and the resultant joys that accompany it,
with a virtually infinite number of sentient creatures seems unselfish at the same time.
What other way could it work?
I’ve yet to come across anything in the UB that would undermine this view, but I’m admittedly new at this.

Chris
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