Jesus’ Qualities and Values
Values Jesus Displayed
- Love
- Patience
- Compassion
- Good cheer
- Optimism
- Beauty
- Steadfastness
- Integrity
- Courage
- Wisdom
- Truth
- Friendship
- Faith
- Commitment
- Creativity
- Godlikeness
- Stamina
- Enthusiasm
- Peace
- Tolerance
- Spiritual power
- Confidence
- Empathy
- Reason
- Adventure
- Affection
- Mercy
- Understanding
- Perfection
- Trustfulness
- Generosity
- Encouragement
- Balance
- Sincerity
- Discernment
- Reverence
- Light
- Honesty
- Honor
- Forbearance
Jesus Qualities
Poised
Respectful
Imaginative
Prudent
Sympathetic
Unique
Pious
Free
Gracious
Original
Open-minded
Immune to disappointment
Impervious to persecution
Untouced by failure
Confident in people
Inquisitive
Dependable
Accessible
Available
Gracious
Forgiving
Hopeful
Trusting
Tireless
Unified
Genuine
Loyal
Tender
Good
Trustworthy
Fruites of the divine spirit..Gifts of the Spirit Within
Loving service
Unselfish devotion
Courageous loyalty
Sincere fairness
Enlightened honesty
Undying hope
Confiding trust
Merciful ministry
Unfailing goodness
Forgiving tolerance
Enduring peace
Spiritual weapons…
Gifts of Jesus / Michael
Unfailing forgiveness
Matchless good will
Abounding love
To overcome evil with good
To vanquish hate by love
To destroy fear with a courageous and living faith in truth
To be active and positive in your ministry of mercy and manifestations of love
To forgive personal injuries
To keep sweet in the midst of the gravest injustice
To remian unmoved in the face of appalling danger
To challenge the evils of hate and anger by the fearless acts of love and forbearance
The good will of love and mutual trust
The Gift of Faith
By Kaye Cooper
Arlington, Texas
I have had a hard time understanding just what it means to have faith in my brothers and sisters. I am not a particularly naive person. I learn from experience, and that includes learning who I can trust and who has failed to exhibit himself worthy of trust. As an adult with these valuable lessons under my belt, I came face to face two or three years ago with the fact that Jesus urged his followers to have faith in one another. (1574:5) It stopped me in my tracks, and I began to ponder what he could mean. Was I supposed to allow unscrupulous people to take advantage of me repeatedly in fulfillment of a rule of conduct? Was I to ignore the obvious evidence of human behavior and become naive? Was I supposed to disregard a person’s apparent bad habits and unreliability and trust him to be and do things that are apparently not a part of his behavior pattern?
As these questions plagued me, I did what I have found to be the most effective thing in such circumstances. I prayed. Not so much the traditional and specific request in a designated prayer time (although I did that too), but more the investment of my soul’s desire in an intense longing for an answer. When I ask in that way, I do indeed receive. Over the years, insights have occurred, some small, some more outstanding. It is only now that I feel enough of a start on understanding to be able to share some thoughts in writing.
A Change of Attitude
To begin with, having faith in someone is not a rule of conduct that one can adhere to. Faith comes from one’s sincere feelings. It cannot be “play-acted.” We can’t force ourselves to have faith in our brothers because we know Jesus said we should. We have to behave out of whatever level of faith we are capable of at the moment. It is very comforting to understand that our ideals of faith are always going to outstrip our current level of faith. Any change in us toward having more faith is a change in attitude. That sincere attitude change results in a change in our actions. Rather than attempt to force ourselves to change behavior, we can more profitably contribute to this growth by praying for a change of attitude, an enlargement of understanding, and an enhancement of faith-power. We can read, think about, and discuss with friends what it means to have faith in others. We can attempt to perceive what it would be for the individual situation we are in at the moment. We can want with all our heart and soul to grow in our trust and faith of others.
Jesus was not naive. He extended his faith in Judas with full knowledge of the danger he was courting and the odds against success. Naivete would have said, “Everything will work out as I want it to. I just know Judas won’t betray my trust.” But I think Jesus said, “I know that there is a great likelihood that Judas is incapable of responding to my teaching and my relationship with him, but he is worth the risk. I will trust him to respond and grow.”
Much of Jesus’ expenditure of faith in men resulted in salvaged mortals. As an example, very few would have expected the tax collector Matthew to be interested in or to respond to Jesus, yet Jesus’ faith in him was very successful. Jesus stretched his faith to the limit of reasonability in Judas, and Judas failed to live up to Jesus’ faith in him. (But perhaps that was not the end of the story. Perhaps Judas did respond and grow. Perhaps Judas too has been saved). Faith Is Active.
At any rate, faith in others is not simply a trusting naivete. It involves seeking to understand the motives of others and consistently looking for and commenting on the best in them. Jesus saw the possibilities in the two prostitutes who propositioned him at Corinth. He saw that their motives were not low, that desperation had driven them to that life. He had faith that they had the capacity and soul desire for growth. The result was two redeemed lives. (pp. 1472-3) Faith in our brothers involves a trust in their ability to grow. We tend to look at people and situations as static. If we project change, it is on the basis of the characteristics which people are displaying at the moment. When one is surrounded by stagnant people, perhaps that is a reasonable expectation.
Now that my life has become filled with alive and growing people, I am constantly amazed. Situations are always turning out better than I expect. My experience with spiritually growing people justifies relatively optimistic faith in what they can be and become. People repeatedly grow beyond reasonable predictions – before my very eyes! My faith can’t seem to keep up with reality-or maybe my faith in them even causes some of the growth that surprises me. If we think back on situations in which others have had faith in us, we can recognize the effect of one person’s faith in another. Faith in us causes us to want to live up to that faith, inspires in us a belief that we can be more than we are, spurs us to do our best by a sense of responsibility (In the best meaning of that word). Jesus valued people so much and had so much faith in their ability to grow and their sincere desire to do so, that he spent himself in serving them. As a result, people all around him became more than they were, more than they had ever hoped to be.
Faith Errors
Some of the confusion about having faith in others may stem from two easy-to-make errors. One of these errors is to confuse faith in growth with expectations. To have faith in another’s capacity and desire for growth is a different matter from expecting that a person will behave in a specific way in a particular situation at a definite time. Someone may on occasion fulfill such defined expectations, but more often the behavior of another person does not fit our specified demands. The temptation then is to view that as a failure-even to assume that having faith in people does not do any good (does not have the desired results of getting them to act as we wish).
Even growing people are not going to grow according to our expectations for their growth. Our faith has to expand beyond those limitations. This type of situation also involves a second misunderstanding about faith. When we have expended faith in our brothers, perhaps time, and again we may eventually come to feel that our faith was wasted or that we were a fool for having faith in that person. Neither of those is true. Our faith is never wasted, nor are we a fool for having it. We may, because of our immature status in the universe, bestow faith in unwise ways; but, after all, everything we do is less than perfect. We can expend our faith and learn and grow from our experiences. Or we can withhold our faith for fear of making an error – and stagnate. We are responsible for acting as wisely, sincerely, and lovingly as we are capable of, and we can leave the out working of those acts to God.
There are many possibilities for success in giving faith where one’s expectations are not met and one’s faith seems to have been in vain. Some examples:
- There may be benefits for our brother which we cannot see.
- There may be benefits to someone else.
- The positive results may be delayed.
- This may be one in a series of similar events which will eventually bear fruit.
- We may have been too ambitious, too specific, or inaccurate in our expectations.
- We may be the primary beneficiaries of the situation.
Faith Wisdom
While accepting·that our application of faith is going to be less than perfect, we will want to seek ways to make it as wise as possible. Wisdom indicates that allowing unscrupulous people to take advantage of us or anyone else is in no one’s highest interest. Jesus seemed to distinguish between those who were malicious and those who were making sincere errors. The money changers in the temple are an example of the malicious and sinful. Jesus used force against the money changers to drive them out. The man beating his wife is an example of someone in sincere error. Jesus approached the man to ascertain his motives and what events had led up to this extreme action. He uplifted the man’s understanding of his relationship with his wife and left the man in the faith that he would grow beyond his violent reactions. (pp. 1888-91; 1470-71)
Even when the situation involves error and not maliciousness, we are not supposed to disregard a person’s apparent bad habits and unreliability and trust him to be and do things that are apparently not part of his behavior patterns. It is our desire that the faith we have in him will empower him to grow. We hope he will live up to a trust placed in him or that failure to do so will stimulate his growth. To have faith that a person be or do something too far beyond his present reach dooms him to failure without even the benefit of learning from that failure. For example, delegation of responsibility involves faith, but it must be dispensed wisely. It is a pattern of the universe to delegate responsibility as soon as maturity warrants. We can more nearly follow this pattern if we watch for the signs of readiness for the responsibility. It is the fourteen-year-old we trust with the lawn mower, not the four year old. Observing the signs of readiness is a wise thing to do. It does not mean one lacks faith in one’s brother.
We can benefit in our faith-wisdom by recognizing that faith is undermined by fear. It is our animal nature to fear the unknown (and faith always includes the unknown). We have the difficult job of balancing our judgment of readiness with our instinctive fear of the results of taking a faith step. Knowing that we have spiritual help in making our decisions is an extremely important remedy for the dilemma of choosing wisely while being pulled by fear on one side and desire to live by faith on the other.
The Source of the Faith Gift
It occurs to me that faith in our brothers is also faith in our Father. We can be absolutely confident that he has a plan for each of us, that we can and will grow. We can be certain that we all have helpers on every side and in every situation whose primary aim is to help us grow. We can depend upon him not only to safeguard us spiritually but to guide us constantly. We can step out over the chasm of the unknown, utterly supported by God’s promises: that we can and will grow to be like him, that all things work together for the good of those who love him. It is these assurances – our faith in our Father – which enables us to extend the gift of faith to our brothers.
End
Soak in Service
William Cooper 2011
This activity is based on an exercise from the Joyful Living program created by Sharon Porter and Kaye Cooper. Soaking your whole body is comforting and therapeutic. Let’s see what happens when you actively imagine yourself soaking in a bath of comfortably warm water infused with the concentrated salt of loving service. This salt of service will infuse you with the comfort and satisfaction which comes from being of assistance to others. Service is the raw material of the chemistry of forming friendships and community. Service is the giving of your effort, assets or influence for the benefit of others unselfishly. It is done to give, not to get. It does not create obligation. When recognized, it is appreciated by its recipients.
You are in a private, well lighted and warm bath chamber. There is a large bath tub filled with hot water in the room. You are in your bathing attire. On a shelf in front of you is a large jar of Service Salts. Pour out a double hand full of the salt and spread it in the water. Stir it with your hand. Feel how soothing and warm the water is. Now step into the tub. Feel the heat of the water and the soothing calm of the salts on your feet and legs. Sit down and notice the slight tingle in your body. Imagine this is your soul’s response to the love energy of service in the salts. Ease yourself down until the water covers your whole body. The salts begin to provide you with thoughts and feelings of serving and being served. Feel how wonderful it is when someone does something for you that you want done. Remember the feeling of receiving a massage or of having someone come to your assistance in lifting a heavy load or of having someone help you care for an ailing parent. Recall that special feeling you get when you realize someone has done something specifically to benefit you. Let this feeling expand. Feel the friendliness, the attractiveness of this. Feel your appreciation for this gift of service and for the person giving it.
[Pause 10 sec.]’
Now shift your imagination just slightly to feel what it is like to serve and to have your service appreciated. This giving side of service is a wonderful, magical experience too. The experience of service is a joy to both the giver and the receiver.
Smell the fragrance of service. What is it like?. Is it sweet, fresh, clean?. Taste a drop of the water. What does it taste like?. Does it taste salty or is it sweet like fruit?. Soak in the smell, the taste, the warmth and the pleasure. Soak up the pleasure of serving and being served. Feel the urge to serve others arise in you and gently release any hesitation you may feel.
Now shift slightly again to imagine being service – not the server or the one served – but service itself. As service, you effectively link people together in friendship for one another and in gratitude. Soak for a moment, feeling the magical power of service to cause people to be connected and appreciative of each other.
Allow the service motivation to soak into you. Fill all the spaces within and around the atoms of your body with the desire to serve and with gratitude for being served. Now soak.
[Pause 30 sec.]
Thank you. That is an experience of soaking in the value “service”, a Joyful Living exercise, and I hope you will choose to continue to soak in service for the remainder of eternity.
End
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Cultivate a Value – Adventure
10-25-11 Taos Retreat Bill Cooper
“Cultivating a Value” is a Joyful Living exercise for personal spiritual growth. It was developed by Sharon Porter and Kaye Cooper. This is an example of what following the instructions for Cultivating a Value might produce. This exercise was done on the value of “adventure” but the pattern is applicable to any value. The person who did this was impressed with the apparent responsiveness of spirit and with the benefits to him of the insights. The effect was to make him more enthusiastic about adventure and more likely to pursue it (with the spirit). Keep in mind that the objective here is not to teach about adventure. It is to teach how to cultivate a spiritual value and how to conduct an inner dialog which intentionally invites spiritual input.
Instructions:
- Choose a Value to Cultivate: “Adventure”
- Go to your heart: Relax, breathe, and feel gratitude. Focus your attention on your heart area and on the feelings of love, compassion, and gratitude.
- Open to love and feel your heart respond.
- Let your soul fill with the feeling of affection for everything.
- Ask spirit to give you understanding of “adventure.”
- Imagine yourself experiencing this inner dialog:
- Your Question: What is the meaning of “adventure?”
Spirit’s answer: Ultimately the great adventure is self-mastery. Each increment of self-mastery is itself an adventure of discovery, excitement and commitment to good habits and good character. Self-mastery is creating one’s self by one’s own choices. It is indeed a great adventure. Adventure has elements of risk, courage, fear, faith, and optimism. Adventure involves being attracted sufficiently by the opportunity for discovery to make the effort, take the risk, and explore the experience and its value and meaning. The adventurer loves action and trusts change and progress sufficiently to pursue a string of events or impressions with enthusiasm and expectation.
Q: What does “adventure” look like?
A: It looks like curiosity, action, risking failure but most often only risking looking and feeling silly. But persisted in, adventure eventually brings maturity and wisdom.
Q: How does it feel to be having an “adventure?”
A: It can be frightening at first, like a roller coaster ride. Eventually though, you realize the roller coaster is safe and the ride becomes thrilling and even sought after for the thrill. The thrill of adventure is a plus but the victory to be achieved is the discovery of new truth and that discovery can be blocked or bypassed by your avoidance response to fear, if you permit it.
Q: What insights should I take from this cultivation of the value “adventure”?
A: Your comfort with adventure should grow because adventure will deliver new truth regarding self-mastery, sense of cosmic safety, sense of worth, love, trust, and service destiny.
Q: Does spirit really relate to me in my inner life?
A: Have faith that I am active in your inner life. Allow me to lead you into adventure. Spiritually all roads lead home to me. Often-times apparent failure gets you where you didn’t know you wanted to be and faster than success would have. Adventure and grow. Trust me. Follow me.
End
Working on Forgiving
By William Cooper
These comments are derived from a Truthseekers activity. To forgive is to give up anger and resentment regarding an offense. Forgiveness is more certain to benefit the forgiver than the forgiven. Consequently, it is worth some effort to forgive. Forgiveness is dealt with in more detail in Bill’s Book of Values pp. 30-34.
There are a number of things you can do to be intentional about forgiving.
- Go to your heart. Going to your heart means seeking calm and access to your inner wisdom. A way to seek inner calmness is to breathe a little slower and a little deeper and feel agitation and tenseness dissolve. The place you have prepared for yourself in your heart is a place of refuge and peacefulness that you can retreat to whenever you need to. No one else even needs to know you are there. It is also a place where you have instant access to your values. In your heart, you can tap into strength, courage, tolerance, forgiveness, peacemaking, patience, respect or any other value you recognize. All you have to do is ask and trust that the next step for the revelation of what you need will be revealed to you. In that way your heart is a place for the beginnings of miraculous transformations.
- Gently restrain your wilder emotions. You are unlikely to be your best person when you are under the power of anger, dread, fear, guilt, etc. In your heart, you have available resources to quiet these screeming emotions. They have their purposes but our lives should be under the control of our higher values, not our basic survival emotions. Going to your heart is a great intervention tool to avoid confrontation and to prevent it from escallating into violence.
- While soaking in the calm and wisdom of your heart you can consider the event you need to forgive. In this circumstance, many offenses don’t seem big or important and they can be dismissed as just stuff that happens as imperfect people interact with one another. Everybody is a jerk sometimes and that just has to be tolerated with minimal consequences. When you have reached that point, you have forgiven the offense.
- If the short cut to forgiveness doesn’t resolve your feelings of hurt or anger, you need to respect your feelings and explore their causes. I said respect your feelings, not trust them or be controlled by them.
- Seeing with new eyes involves going to your heart and considering with charity and good will what alternative and justifiable assumptions might have caused the offense. When you access the situation more charitably, it is easier to let go of anger and hurt.
- You may need first to act to right an injustice to yourself or another.
- You may need to act to control the damage or end the threat.
- You may need to talk through the offense with the offender.
- Whatever action you decide to take, be sure to stay connected to your heart and treat the other person with respect and caring. Whenever memory of the offense arises, remind yourself of your decision or desire to forgive.
End
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Soaking in Values Visualization
2011 William Cooper
This is an activity based on a spiritual growth technique given to us by Sharon Porter and Kaye Cooper in their Joyful Living Program. Following an exploration of higher values at a retreat at Belton, Texas in the spring of 2011, Sharon related a dreamlike insight she had during the night. Her insight was that values are alive and vibrant. They are full of spiritual energy. They are not just words. They have an ability to move about among people, to grow, to express themselves.
“ Alive” means values grow, mature, act and adapt. Here’s an analogy that helps me understand what “alive” means. Compare a photograph of a puppy to the actual presence of an active and friendly puppy. The picture is fixed, cute and unchanging, not alive. It is a pretty piece of paper but you can’t have much of a relationship with a picture. The puppy itself is affectionate, interactive and full of activity, surprise and joy. It is alive in an extremely good way. So in my analogy, values are alive, charged with energy and interactive like the puppy only they are alive in mind and in spiritual experience, not material experience.
Sharon led us in a brief activity in which we visualized ourselves soaking in a warm tub full of the value “gratitude.” What follows is my effort to make a longer visualization out of Sharon’s exercise. The intent is to allow the spirit within to make the value gratitude more real, alive and vivid while we are immersed (soaking) in its energy. While we soak, we will think about and feel the spiritual power of gratitude. We are using our imagination to open our awareness but the mind/spirit energy is real, not imaginary.
[Pause 5 sec.]
Relax. Breathe normally but deeply. Breathe out tension. Breathe in relaxation. Feel your body relax. Breathe again and again. You are now present and attentive on three real levels. Your relaxed body is present. Your mind is here. You are spiritually present because you choose to be. You are now relaxed in body, attentive in mind and alert in your spirit to engage in contact with the spirit of everything that is.
You are in a beautiful room carved entirely out of one huge piece of translucent, warm white crystal. There is soft light suffusing everything. In the middle of the room is a small bathing pool carved out of the same stone and decorated on its edges with carvings of vines and flowers. On the wall on one side of the pool is a list of available values and spiritual practices you may select. You reach for the list and touch the word “gratitude” and instantly the pool is full of pale lavender colored light which is transparent and sparkling with flashes of white and silver. You place your finger in the pool. You are faintly aware of feelings of calm, peace, gentleness and fullness. The pool is entirely safe and totally inviting. Your urge is to immerse yourself completely in this energy of gratitude. You are alone, you are safe.
Quickly you slip into the pool. As your body touches the light in the pool, the light melts into you. You absorb it. The light is pure spiritual energy filtering into the spaces between the electrons in your body. You feel thankful and generously blessed. Your sense of self becomes positive and you grasp that Spirit regards you as worthy of her love and her nurture. You are treasured, cherished and adored. Now soak and
- Feel grateful that Spirit has faith in you to progress in nobility of character and how she loves you.
- Feel thankful for the many unearned gifts you have been immersed in.
- Feel generously blessed.
- Feel cherished, treasured and adored.
- Soak in the love, blessing and generosity of spirit.
[Pause 15 sec]
The ennobling energy of gratitude is yours to use forever. It will lead you to be more gracious, generous and forgiving. This power, along with life and all that life involves for eternity, are Spirt’s gifts to you. Enjoy and use the spirit energy that continues to resonate clearly in your soul. Live fully in spirit. Soak eternally in the living, changing, growing power of gratitude.
Here is a short list of values to soak in. Enjoy!
Generosity, Love, Service, Forgiveness, Tolerance, Patience, Loyalty, Courage, Trustworthiness, Mercy, Honesty
Love One Another
By Kaye Cooper
Note to readers: References are to THE URANTIA BOOK in two forms. 1. page: paragraph for books printed according to the format of the original printing and 2. paper: section. paragraph for translations and books formatted differently from the original.
Jesus said, “You shall love one another with a new and startling affection.”
- What does it mean to love one another? Define love.
Unselfishness. (1950:5/180:5.10)
The desire to do good to others. (648:4/56:10.21)
- Who are we to love?
Unbelievers: The love call of the spiritual family should prove to be the effective destroyer of the hate urge of the unbelieving and war-minded citizens of the earthly kingdoms. (1930:1/178:1.4)
Believers: You are all the children of light; therefore, stumble not into the misunderstanding entanglements of mortal suspicion and human intolerance. If you are ennobled by the grace of faith to love unbelievers, should you not also equally love those who are your fellow believers in the far-spreading household of faith? (2042:0/191:4.4)
- What does it mean to love “with a new and startling affection?”
Spontaneous, generous, and sincere friendliness. (1951:1/180:5.12)
Genuine compassion for your fellows. (1951:1/180:5.12)
Relate to others so they receive the highest possible good as a result of your contact with them. (1950:2/180:5.7)
Serve for their benefit with a wholehearted affection. (1945:2-3/180:1.5-6)
Have faith in one another. (2040:2/191:2.1)
Trust and confide in one another. (2055:2/193:3.2)
I want you all to be one, even as the Father and I are one. (1964:3/182:1.6)
- Why should we love one another?
“And so I give you this new commandment: That you love one another even as I have loved you. And by this will all men know that you are my disciples if you thus love one another.” (1944:4/180:1.1) ” And when people see you so love them, and when they behold how fervently you serve them, they will perceive that you have become faith-fellows of the family of God, and they will follow after the Spirit of Truth which they see in your lives.” (2044:3/191:6.2)
The Father and I will be “able to live in the souls of each one of you and also in the hearts of all other men who love us and make that love real in their experiences by loving one another, even as I am now loving you.” (1949:1/180:4.5)
- How do we learn to love?
Through the “living interpretation of the Spirit of Truth, who directs the loving contact of one human being with another.” (1951:0/180:5.1)
“This new teacher is the Spirit of Truth who will live with each one of you, in your hearts and so will all the children of light be made one and be drawn toward one another.” (1949:1/180:4.5)
If you love your fellow men, you must have discovered their values. 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. 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.” (1098:1&3/100:4.4&6)
End
We All Need Love…Now!
Kaye Cooper 2020
In times of uncertainty, confusion, and even fear, we all need the comfort and reassurance of love more than ever. Parents and children, friends and strangers, leaders and victims—everyone needs more love. How do we squeeze out more love for those around us, especially our families, when we desperately need to be loved, ourselves?
An answer? Find more sources of love to give. Stick with me now! That may sound impossible, but I want to share with you where I have found the love to give. You have probably already tapped this well of love within you without realizing its source and what an endless supply is available for the asking. Receiving love is important but giving love refreshes one’s soul too. You get a love benefit from having love flow through you. Have you ever heard a baby cry when you are really tired? If you put aside your own need and discover the compassion to comfort the child, you have connected with the Source of love.
What is it that makes us able to overlook our own weariness and need? You may already have an opinion. I believe that our connection with Spirit gives us the capacity to forget our own needs to help another. Mixed in with all our emotions, thoughts, and physical bodies, we are spiritual beings, as well—children in a spiritual family. And we are connected to the universal source of all selfless love. When we see others (such as that distraught baby) with our spiritual eyes, we can draw to us the love we need—and the strength, wisdom, and courage. So there is a spiritual source of love that we can tap into in order to pass it on to others.
Try it now.
Let’s shift to an exercise of tapping-in and passing-on love. Think of someone you care for and appreciate—someone you know personally. Relax for a moment. Close your eyes if you wish. Imagine this person close to you. Open your heart to appreciate him or her. Focus on the things you appreciate about your loved one. Allow a grateful feeling to expand in your chest. Feel gratitude growing stronger and stronger. See them as the best they can be. This is seeing them as Spirit sees them.
As you progress toward seeing with more spiritual vision, notice your understanding gradually begin to change. Your spiritual eyes see people more like a loving parent sees a precious young child, as full of potential for goodness, as growing, maturing, and as having a marvelous destiny—you view them with gentleness and understanding, without anger or blame.
None of us will be perfect at spiritual vision because, after all, we are all very immature spiritual beings. Nevertheless, seeing with spiritual eyes can change the way we feel. The more loving we feel, the more empowered we are to express our concern and appreciation to another. The more we make the effort to use our spiritual eyes, the stronger our connection to the Source of all love. Continue to explore what you see and feel for a few more moments.
In your everyday life, allow new spiritual love to flow through you to others. Spiritual love is appreciation, kindness, gentleness, trust, graciousness, respect, desire to benefit the other person, and much more high, ethical, unselfish treatment of others. Use this method frequently and you will grow deeper in your spiritual connection, clearer in your spiritual vision, and stronger in your capacity to give your family and friends love in all circumstances!
Parable of Fatherly Service
A visualization and worship experience.
By Kaye Cooper
One way that worship is defined is this: Looking to the nature of God for the inspiration of service to the many. Out of worship comes our own growth in the family of God—the enrichment of our desire to serve, our energy for service, and our effectiveness at service. I want to share a short visualization with you. It is called “The Parable of Fatherly Service.” At the end of the visualization, I will give you a time of silence to worship as you wish. I will close the worship time with a piece of music. Are there any questions before I begin?
The Parable of Fatherly Service
Let me first set the stage for you. On Thursday night, only hours before he was arrested, Jesus took his apostles to the safety of an upper room to enjoy an uninterrupted time with them. He wanted to share with his apostles some last words of caution and encouragement before he departed his mortal life. There they celebrated Passover and Jesus instigated the new sacrament of communion.
Because Jesus wanted privacy with his close associates, no servant was provided that night to wash the dust of the roadway from their feet. Each of the apostles avoided taking the role of servant upon himself, and so their feet remained unwashed as the supper began. Jesus took advantage of this situation to enact a parable for his apostles. To demonstrate for them one last time the nature of his life of loving service, to encourage them to follow his example.
And now relax in your chair. Close your eyes if you wish. And imagine that you are one of those apostles, sharing a last precious evening with your beloved Master. You and the other apostles have been seated around the Passover table with Jesus for some time. Then, without explanation he rises and walks to the door where basins, towels and pitchers of water have been provided for the washing of feet. He removes his outer robe and wraps a long, slender towel around the waist of his tunic. He pours water into a bowl and walks over to kneel at the feet of one of your fellow apostles. All of you are horrified when it becomes evident that Jesus intends to take upon himself the role of servant and wash the feet of the apostle before whom he has knelt. But Jesus insists despite objections.
You watch as he washes the feet of an apostle and gently dries them, then another and another. And now he kneels before you. He removes your sandals and washes your dusty feet in the clean water from the pitcher. He dries them gently.
Then he looks up directly into your eyes, and you see love and understanding…and insight into your life. And with a final, gentle smile he says, “I enact this parable of service so you will remember that he who would be great in my family must become the server of all. If you would follow me, serve my children.”
(allow 4 minutes of meditative music or silence)
End
Memorable Truths and Considerations
By William Cooper
- You are a first-generation child of the God of all creation. So, what do you expect you will grow up to be?
- You are material and spiritual in nature. The material part of you is temporary. The spiritual part survives and continues to grow. What you achieve now toward spiritual maturity is real and lasting.
- This life is the important beginning of your eternal career, not a purposeless occurrence.
- We are supposed to be brothers and sisters, partners in each other’s lives. We are supposed to be linked to one another by love, caring and respect.
- Your personal religion should be unique. It should consist in following the leading of your own Spirit Within.
- Life has meaning. We can choose to be an animal or a noble spirit being. The animal part of us will die. The spirit being will live forever.
- It is a great privilege to experience life on such an uncivilized planet. It will help us understand and serve others in our eternal career.
- We can use our creativity to invent ourselves by imagining the best possible behavior and then managing ourselves to display that behavior.
- God is your parent. Children just naturally grow up to be like their parents. In fact they must work hard to avoid it.
- It does not matter how slow you go as long as you do not stop. (Confucius)
- When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them. (Confucius)
- Inner beauty is far more significant than outer beauty. Inner beauty comes from loving, caring attitudes carried into action.
- Inner beauty, with a little encouragement, grows eternally and lasts forever.
- You can smell beauty from fresh mowed grass, cinnamon, wisteria, yeast bread baking, sea breezes.
- Practice love, forgiveness, service and respect. They will reward you and all who know you.
- Love is the best action and the best reaction, always. Love does good in all circumstances.
- Every living thing and person responds favorably to being loved.
- Love given and love received are both worthy rewards of living. The joy of love given is ours to take by giving service and caring.
- An attitude of persistent, unselfish love works miracles of values transformation and good health in the person holding that attitude.
- Love grows vigorously when its seed takes root in a love hungry soul.
- Love can transform persons, cultures, and even entire planets. If you want a better world, love lavishly.
- With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love. (Rumi)
- Love serves. It does not exploit. Love is gentle, kind, forgiving, merciful and tolerant.
- Despise the sin but love the sinner.
- Respect virtue even in the sinner. It proves the Spirit still dwells within.
- Love disciplines but it does not hurt, harm, or administer vengeance.
- Love should be our universal mode of behavior. It has magical power on personal, social and political levels to achieve things that are super important and which nothing else can achieve.
- Love benefits both the giver and the receiver and even the observer. All feel richer who recognize that the gift of love has been given.
- Love is the way of the Spirit Within.
- Love rules the universe. Inevitably, love will one day rule this world and every heart in it.
- Slay evil with love. Start within.
- Be aggressive and lavish with love.
- It is better to love too much than to love too little.
- Prayer communicates with God. Faith acts according to his leading.
- Pray for spiritual growth (character development) because that is the purpose of life. Learn to cope cheerfully and graciously with disappointment because that is the fast path to spiritual growth.
- You won’t find anything in life that gives you more pleasure than being of service to others.
- While love is the desire to do good for others, service is the action of doing good for others.
- Service is not just an attitude or desire. It is good deeds.
- A lot of little services by many people will do. Serving as you pass by requires only modest levels of planning and commitment.
- A smile, a helping hand, courtesy, good attitude, cheerfulness, polite assistance; these are all services to others requiring no planning and no sacrifice.
- Don’t resist your urges to service when they arise.
- Service is how love gets expressed through action. It is a primary way we develop our connectedness to others through love.
- Service is helping another achieve her worthy needs and goals.
- Service develops friendships. If you want a friend, be a friend.
- To make a friend of someone, find something you know they want and do it for them.
- A few small services by many people does more to improve the world than the dedicated lives of a few saints.
- Service shows actual willingness to give one’s self and assets for the benefit of another.
- Service builds a mutual sense of relatedness on which all sorts of benefits grow.
- Service is a cause of love and it is a consequence of love. Service / love is emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually very powerful, very attractive, and very inspiring.Service is love expressed in action and it participates in the immense magical power of love.
- Service extends the helpful hand of brotherhood and that is important.
- Allowing yourself to seek vengeance or to hold grudges involves great spiritual costs to you and to everyone related to you. And we are all related to you.
- When you forgive another, you relieve yourself of the ugly burden of assessing the guilt and punishment of the offender and of determining how much they must suffer to pay their debt.
- When you forgive, you reopen the possibility of beneficial relationship.
- Forgiveness does not require forgetting. It does require setting aside the desire to punish, to penalize or to even scores. When you forgive, you are saying “Here is a fresh chance to do right.”
- For inner peace and satisfaction, establish a continuous, constant, eternal relationship with your Spirit Within.
- Your thought will be clearer and higher quality if you meditate and think with God.
- The truth response in your heart guides you and counsels you on all things having meaning and value.
- Continual progress toward excellence of character is the objective and purpose of this life. Excellence of character is not completed in this life, but direction can be reliably set.
- The values you actually live by are the building blocks of your character. Your loyalty to your values stabilizes your character. Your disloyalty to your values proves they have not yet become really a part of you.
- Your values are your attitudes and actions you base your life on. They are the way you distinguish and present yourself to the universe.
- Optimism is your ally. What you believe, you might possibly try. What you try, you might possibly achieve. What you do not try, has no chance.
- Your feelings mean something. Examine them.
- Most of the benefits of forgiving flow to the person who forgives. Forgive as much as you can as quick as you can, even when the offender is unworthy or unrepentant.
End