Spiritual Growth III

A Few Words About Worshipful Problem Solving

Developing Spiritual Relationship with God

You Are A Child of God, Yes You

Truth about Communicating with Spirit

Memorable Truths and Considerations

Why We Should Proclaim Jesus’ Message

Prayer of Gratitude

By Kathy Beckten

Prayers of spiritual aspiration and thanksgiving lead us up into worship and worship leads us to become like the one we worship. The following prayer is offered for that purpose.

*****

Oh Father, we wish to thank you for this glorious and gorgeous creation you have made for us and for this life in the flesh you have given us to experience emotions and thoughts filled with free choice and spirit potential.

We are truly, deeply thankful for your Son, Jesus Christ, the greatest expression of your love, gentleness and spiritual maturity.

May we be your instruments of expression, reflecting your divine spirit of truth, beauty and goodness.

And in our social service to our fellow man, may we come equipped with tact, wisdom of mind, tolerance and the charm of personality.

With this grace, presented to our companions, may we also remember to be gracious to ourselves.

In our memories may we hold fast a sacred trust, the strength-giving and worthwhile episodes of life, building a reserve of galleries of beauty, goodness and artistic grandeur.

The most noble of these treasured memories are recollections of superb friendships. The most precious of these being the relationship with you in spiritual worship.

May this give us strength and courage in our daily living and in our solving the problems of an ever-changing existence.

Through our hands may your will be done.

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A Few Words on Worshipful Problem Solving

By William Cooper

Worship is admiring and being grateful for all the wonderful qualities of God and longing to be like that yourself.

Worshipful meditation is the greatest of all methods of problem solving. It is part thought, part inspiration, and part creative imagination of dialogue with God. You describe your problem. Then you think about and feel the values and qualities of God which might influence your choice.

Worship brings relaxation, illumination, courage, self-understanding, consciousness of union with divinity, relieves tension, removes conflict and very significantly augments the total resources of the personality.

Worship-communion augments energy to do spiritual work. It transforms weakness to strength, fear to courage, mind of self to the will of God. Communion with God is an experience of intimate sharing of being together in warm personal relationship of affection and acceptance.

Worshipful practices, when persisted in, become habits. Habits become character. Character

becomes spiritual maturity.

Try this:

Pick 3 higher values such as parental love, mercy, forgiveness, tolerance, patience, etc. and meditate reflectively on what they mean, how you feel as you experience them, and how they are interrelated. See lists of higher values in Bill’s Book of Values at BillsBooks”N”Beyond.com.

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Entering the Kingdom

With suggested questions to discuss

By Kaye Cooper

For our material lifetimes, the Kingdom of heaven is not a place, a government or an organization. It is connection and relationship. It is the spirit of God teaching and leading the soul of man. It is spiritual and it is real but it is not material. UB 1536:6 /.137:8.9

How does the process of entering the kingdom begin? What is the prerequisite to entering the kingdom?

You initiate this process of living in the kingdom by wanting to be like your Heavenly Parent. Wanting the values that express God’s goodness. Seeking to know what is spiritually real. Yearning for loving relationships. Delighting in the beautiful and the good. UB 1536:5 / 137:8.8

Jesus said that our striving to be like God must be done with the faith and trusting dependence of a little child. What is the faith of a little child?

Simply trusting, without the doubts that experience and adulthood in the material world tend to develop in us. The complete trust that all that you need will be provided lovingly. You will be cared for. UB 1536:5./ 137:8.8

What does it feel like to have the trusting dependence of a little child in your Daddy God? (your Mother God, your friend God)

Secure. Filled with assurance that comes not from the mind but from a place at the center of my chest. A strength that holds me and won’t let in the fear that waits just outside that strength.

Jesus said, “If you would but believe that my Father loves you with an infinite love, then you are in the kingdom of God.” How do you know your Heavenly Mother-Father-Friend loves you with an infinite love? What is it within you that makes you believe this? UB 1537:4 / 137:8.17

That feeling of being loved. An affirmation from that place at the center of my chest. Sometimes it is in words, but more often it is in a feeling (for want of a better word) that my mind interprets into words.

What effect does this love have on you?

Stabilizes, strengthens, uplifts, calms, reassures, and affirms me. My desire to be like God constantly grows stronger and deeper as a result. God’s love pours through me and to others – changing the way I see them, changing the way I feel about them, changing the way I treat them.

Once we faith-discover ourselves as cherished children of our Heavenly Parent (Friend), we will desire to be taught and led by the spirit of God. It happens naturally as a result of the experience of being loved. How are you taught and led by the spirit of God? What do you experience?

Feelings, confirmations, words, pictures, the voices or examples of other people, media articles, books, coincidences, surprises, unconscious direction, changes of mind during sleep. All of these teach me. The experience is mostly experience of insights and meanings falling into place.

What are you taught? What are you led to do?

What I am taught: how to see through the superficial to the real person or the real situation, how to see people as weak rather than wicked, compassion, objectivity, strength of character, patience, interest in people rather than what they can do for me, to laugh rather than get upset, to be aware of the people around me, to think in terms of needs. These are all lessons in being more loving.

What I am led to do: to listen, to watch for needs, to give with joy.

What we are led to, expressed in one word, is “service.” We are attracted to it, not coerced by guilt. It is not a test we have to pass. To be led to service is a spiritually natural outcome of the changes within us. Jesus said it this way, “And when the feelings of service for your fellow men arise within your soul, do not stifle them; when the emotions of love for your neighbor well up within your heart, give expression to such urges of affection in intelligent ministry to the real needs of your fellows.” UB 1745:1 / 157:2.2

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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!
Peace be with you!

End

Rodan’s Philosophy of Living

And His New Religion of Maturity

Revised August 2020 William Cooper

A dictionary definition of “philosophy”: A system for guiding life. A body of principles of conduct, religious beliefs, or traditions.

Rodan was an extraordinary philosopher of Jesus’ time and a follower of Jesus. His writings are lost to history. He was a Greek Jew of Alexandria in Egypt. He visited Jesus’ camp at Bethsaida for a period of time and carefully observed the way Jesus lived his religious life. He commented on Jesus’ practices with strong approval. It is a high honor that he is the only mortal given space for presentation of his beliefs in several pages of the Fifth Epochal Revelation of truth to this planet. This honor suggests that his ideas are of particular value to us and deserve our special attention.

Rodan spoke directly to two things the Urantia Book revelators identified as centrally important. 1) He was a careful and educated observer of the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it—Jesus’s art of living. 2) He was an advocate of personal religion based on a philosophy of living in cooperation with God and with the goals of finding God and becoming like him. The Urantia Book salvages these lost achievements of Rodan by presenting them in detail. The following comments explore 1) Rodan’s philosophy of pursuing really startlingly ambitious goals of God consciousness and Godlikeness, 2 ) Rodan’s admiration of Jesus’ art of using spiritual resources directly in solving life’s problems, and 3) the way Rodan connected his philosophy, Jesus’ gospel and Jesus’ art of spiritual living into a new and superior religion .

Rodan’s Philosophy

Goals, ideals, and the new religion of maturity

UB reference: (P.1774:6 – 1775:1) [161:1.14-15]

Rodan observed, “In a continually changing world, in the midst of an evolving social order, it is impossible to maintain settled and established goals of destiny if they are based only on what history and the current circumstances indicate goals should be. Stability of personality can be experienced only by those who have discovered and embraced the living God as the eternal goal of infinite attainment. And thus to transfer one’s goal from time to eternity, from earth to Paradise, from the human to the divine, requires that a person shall become regenerated, converted, be born again; shall become the re-created child of the divine spirit and thus gain entrance into the family of God. All philosophies and religions which have goals that fall short of these ideals are immature. The philosophy which I teach, linked with the gospel which you preach, represents the new religion of maturity, the ideal of all future generations. And this is true because God, our ideal, is final, infallible, eternal, universal, absolute, and infinite.

“My philosophy gave me the urge to search for the realities of true attainment, the goal of maturity, of Godlikeness. But my urge was impotent; my search lacked driving power; my quest suffered from the absence of certainty of directionization. I did not know for certain where to find God. And these deficiencies have been abundantly supplied by this new gospel of Jesus, with its enhancement of insights through seeking the leading of the Inner Spirit, elevation of ideals, and settledness of goals by wholehearted joining in God’s goal of uniting the entire universe by the attraction of love. Without doubts and misgivings, I can now wholeheartedly enter upon the eternal venture. 161:1.15 (P.1775 – §1)

Questions to ponder:

What is the ideal of this new religion of maturity which Rodan boldly says is “final, infallible, eternal, universal, absolute, and infinite? Is pursuing and progressive achievement of Godlikeness all of these things?
Rodan’s search for the “realities of true attainment” was lacking “driving power and certainty of directionization. He says his deficiencies were supplied by three aspects of Jesus’ new gospel and his art of living: enhancement of insights (experiencing insights from the Spirit Within), elevation of ideals (aspiring to goodness like God), and settledness of goals (becoming like God and working with God to achieve God’s goals). Can we see how his philosophy would help us in our search for insights, ideals, and settled goals? Would becoming an ever more capable partner with God and the celestial family in implementing God’s plan for all time and all space give you driving power and certainty of directionization regardless of changing of intermediate goals caused by increasing complexities over time?

Philosophy of Remastering the art of living

UB reference: (P.1772:4) [160:1.3]

The art of living is exercising creativity in adjusting to society’s here and now condition while maintaining loyalty to the ultimate objective. The art of living is the art of not losing one’s way while negotiating the chaos. The art of living reconciles the goal with the way things are, the way things should be with the present situation. The art of living applies principles and habits of character (values) to define the correct present action.

“The more complex civilization becomes, the more difficult will become the art of living. The more rapid the changes in social usage, the more complicated will become the task of character development. Every ten generations mankind must learn anew the art of living if progress is to continue. And if man becomes so ingenious that he more rapidly adds to the complexities of society, the art of living will need to be remastered in less time, perhaps every single generation. If the evolution of the art of living fails to keep pace with the technique of existence, humanity will quickly revert to the simple urge of living—the attainment of the satisfaction of present desires. Thus will humanity remain immature; society will fail in growing up to full maturity.

Questions to ponder:

Based on your own observations, reflections, insights, do you think/believe that we have come to a time when the art of living needs to be remastered every single generation in order to keep pace with the technique of existence? If so, what does remastering the art of living entail? [ For the children of God, remastering the art of living means reconsidering what love should do in the changing circumstances. That actually should be a constant concern, not just an occasional one.]

How do changes in social usage complicate the task of character development? Some changes in social usage which complicate character development include changes in gender equality, changes in sexuality norms, extensions or contractions of democracy, attitudes toward abortion, pregnancy prevention, universal suffrage, racial fairness, economic fairness, equal opportunity, and spiritual versus material purpose for life. Is all life sacred? Is it ok to cheat the ignorant, the poor, the weak and everyone else so long as it is for your own benefit? Does the accumulation of immense wealth in the control of a very few at the same time many suffer from insufficient necessities or comforts suggest the need for adjustments in the values of those in power? Does humanity’s damage to nature call for readjustments in the art of living or will the Rodan-Jesus philosophy and art of living continue to serve? Does the material and ethical destructiveness of warfare suggest we must find other ways to resolve disputes? Does humanity show signs of reversion to the simple urge of living, the attainment of the satisfaction of present desires?

Jesus’ Art of Living According to Rodan

Jesus’ art of the mastery of dependable techniques for solving life’s problems

UB reference (p.1774:3)[160:1.11]

Rodan said: “I am deeply impressed with the custom of Jesus in going apart by himself

to engage in these seasons of solitary survey of the problems of living
to seek for new stores of wisdom and energy for meeting the manifold demands of social service
to quicken and deepen the supreme purpose of living by actually subjecting the total personality to the consciousness of contacting with divinity
to grasp for possession of new and better methods of adjusting oneself to the ever-changing situations of living existence
to effect those vital reconstructions and readjustments of one’s personal attitudes which are so essential to enhanced insight into everything worth while and real.
to do all of this with an eye single to the glory of God – to breathe in sincerity your master’s favorite prayer, “Not my will, but yours, be done.”

Questions to ponder:

If you go apart with God as Rodan observed Jesus doing, what does it feel like? Don’t guess. Do it and feel it.
What does it mean to “actually subject the total personality to the consciousness of contacting with divinity”? What does it feel like?
Does going apart with God “quicken [make more alive] and deepen [give greater meaning] to the supreme purpose of living”? Is character development by deity values incorporation the supreme purpose of living?
Can we do it? How do we do it? Rodan observed that Jesus’ technique was to go apart and visit with God about everything. Is that the way?
Ask your Inner Spirit how to incorporate contact with spirit into daily life.

The benefits of spiritual communion to one’s art of living

UB reference (P.1774:4} [160:1.12]

Rodan said: “This worshipful practice of your Master brings:

that relaxation which renews the mind.
that illumination which inspires the soul.
that courage which enables one bravely to face one’s problems.
that self-understanding which obliterates debilitating fear.
that consciousness of union with divinity which equips man with the assurance that enables him to dare to be Godlike.

“The relaxation of worship, or spiritual communion as practiced by the Master,

relieves tension,
removes conflicts, and
mightily augments the total resources of the personality.

And all this philosophy, plus the gospel of the kingdom, constitutes the new religion as I understand it.”

Rodan was talking about his philosophy of setting and pursuing the goal of Godlikeness linked to Jesus’ good news that we are children of God and can have a relationship of friendship and constant guidance from God as being the fundamentals of a new religion.

Questions to ponder:

What is debilitating fear? Is it fear of failure that prevents you from acting? Is it fear of ridicule, of loss, of punishment, of misinterpretation?
What kind of self-understanding can obliterate debilitating fear? Is it understanding who you really are and the consequences, responsibilities, and privileges that being a child of God brings? Is it the reassurance that you really do know what is right to do?
According to your personal understanding, what does it mean “to dare to be Godlike”? What can happen when we dare to be Godlike? What are the benefits? What are the risks?
Can you recall a personal example of how spiritual communion relieves tension and/or removes conflicts? What do you do? What happens? What is your experience?
Rodan speaks of “the total resources of the personality” which spiritual communion will “mightily augment”? What do you think he is referring to? The total resources of personality would include every influence a person could bring to bear on an issue. These would include psychological powers (self confidence, optimism, self encouragement), intellectual ability (define the problem, identify possible solutions, outline an action plan), spiritual power (engage spiritual resources through prayer, worship, meditation and receptivity), power of creative imagination (ability to frame the issue differently to take advantage of the barriers), and the physical resources of speech and action. Is it possible that communion unifies these resources and gets them working together and stable?

Summary:

Rodan found in Jesus’ gospel of the fatherhood of God and individual relationship with God the missing aspects of his philosophy of living. Rodan’s philosophy said that the individual’s goals should be to know God and to become like him. But the philosophy lacked the motivation and the means, the why and the how to do this. Rodan saw in Jesus’ art of living by active and intimate association with God and following the leading of God, the means to know and to become like God. He saw in the fatherhood of God the promise of a noble and grand destiny of service in achievement of God’s objectives, doing the will of God, thus providing both the confirmation of the possibility of becoming like God and the motivation to engage in the effort. In the unification of these elements of philosophy, gospel and art of living, Rodan saw the possibility of a worthwhile new personal religion. And what a religion it can be!

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Developing Spiritual

Relationship with God

and the Cosmic Family

by William Cooper

Talking Things Over with God

Jesus in his prayers as a youngster would just talk to his heavenly Father in the fashion he used with Joseph, who was a very attentive and caring mortal Father. He would talk, ask questions, “listen”, discuss, and interpret his impressions. It was embarrassing to Jesus’ parents that Jesus did not observe the forms and fashions of prayer for their religious culture and he was open and obvious about it. Like us, Jesus was often not certain exactly what God’s response was, but he was sure that God was responding.

As Jesus matured and began to understand who he was, he continued to relate to the I Am in informal discussion mode. He was using this mode of prayer when he prayed repeatedly in Gethsemene. Talking things over with God makes God very real and near, which he is. God will respond to even the faintest indication of faith. I think that attempting to intuit God’s responses to us is more than a faint flicker of faith. To attempt such is an extremely appropriate application of faith. God would never fail to respond to such an act of faith. Seriously, try it. This prayer practice promotes a rich and constant relationship with God, Spirit and our cosmic family.

Commitment to Spiritual Family

Jesus tried to teach his followers that he was here to establish the Family of God on earth. They were too much caught up in the concept that the Messiah would come and found a material kingdom. So, Jesus altered his approach to talk in terms of a kingdom. He taught that the kingdom he came to found was not an earthly kingdom but rather it was/is a kingdom in the hearts of people who follow the leading of the spirit within each person. This inner kingdom he described as presided over by a loving and patriarchal king. And this is true, but it is not his preferred concept. He wanted us to see the spiritual reality, that engulfs our material reality, as a family that has our personal and collective welfare as a central and constant concern. To Jesus, family was not merely a kinship, it included a purpose of taking care of the family enterprise of pursuing God’s plan. God’s plan is to knit together the cosmos by the attraction of the love and goodness of God. This plan includes high adventure of our being a growing and serving part in expanding the inhabited and unified cosmos. It includes participating actively in our deity parent’s plans and thereby advancing in becoming like God, deity ourselves.

Jesus said if you believe that God loves you with an infinite love and follow the leading of the spirit within your heart, then you are in the family of God. That sounds kind of cool but what are the consequences, expectations and opportunities?

Let’s stop just a minute and consider the difference in the way we feel first when we see our eternal destiny to be a loyal servant of God the good king. (Pause) Is that exciting to you? Now, second, feel what it is like to look at yourself as a beloved and privileged child of God and of the vast, loving family of God, whose destiny is to choose a personal path to grow up to be like his / her parent. Now, is that exciting to you? (Pause) I hope you can feel the difference. I certainly can. Now back to the expectations, opportunities and consequences of this status.

One consequence is the opportunity for an eternal life of service to God’s ongoing adventure with love. I call God’s adventure of fostering and proving the truth of the effectiveness of love via experience,” the family business”. This is what God and all creation are currently doing. This has been going on for trillions of years and will continue into eternity, will never end. We will never run out of important things to do. Ours is not a static job or a bit role to play as a servant at a king’s court. The family of God provides progressively more and more responsible roles for all of its members. As recipients of Adjusters and of personality, there is no known limit to how far we may progress in eternity. Our progress entails study, service, mastery of power, responsibility, loyalty to God’s will and all of these with the love, graciousness and generosity of our divine parents.

The Family of God is so vast that we lack words for the number of its members but everyone in the family who is pursuing the family business is devoted to achievement of God’s good, gracious, generous and merciful goals –infinite love permeating everyone, everything and every action. In committing to God’s family business, we are committing to join all other family members in humble efforts to achieve love, to enthusiastically pursue the way of love and to institutionalize it as a living, enlarging practice for all. Joinder in this family and its business is God’s plan for us all.

There is a great deal more that can be said about spiritual family. It can be, after all, the core around which each of us can form our philosophy of living. But the last observation I want to make in closing is that all of the members of the spiritual family want all of its members to succeed in doing and fostering God’s way of love and will help each other achieve that goal in any way consistent with God’s will. Just ask and then listen and follow expectantly.

Exercise

Letter to and From Mom and Dad

Now let’s take about 5min to write a quick note to Mom and Dad about their spiritual family. You might want to be grateful. You might want to explore with them what spiritual family means to you. How do you feel about being a member of such a vast, purposeful and mutually supportive spiritual family? Examine the extent of your desire to participate. [Allow 5 min.]

Time is up.

But don’t put your pen down. Now take 5 min to write what seems to you to be the response Mom and Dad would make to you.

Exercise

Developing Relationship by Conversation

Ask key and/or immediately relevant questions. Use a form of question and answer dialog. You ask the question and you imagine an appropriate answer from the Spirit Within and you make notes.

In circumstances usually of quiet contemplation I ask how to take known macro principles of God’s will and interpret them to fit my immediate micro needs. Some examples are:

How can I be loving to this person or even this thing?
How can I truly forgive disloyalty or betrayal?
Contempt and anger must go or at least be diminished. How can I do this?
How can I contribute love, mercy, truth, beauty and goodness to improve this situation?
What higher value do I need to apply here to adjust my attitude or that of another?
How would applying acceptance, inclusion and respect help this situation?
How can I be courteous, generous, trusting and charming in anticipated difficult circumstances?
From where I am right now, how can I make good come from this?
In the face of apparent failure, what can I learn from this?

You may say, ”But Bill I already ask myself these things.” And I reply, “That is wonderful, but do you ask these as questions to your human experience and wisdom alone or as questions explicitly directed to your spiritual guides and tutors, of which there are many.” There is a strong spiritual quality, even an urge to action, when you address your spiritual helpers and seek to be sensitive to their responses. This ask, listen, interpret and act/respond process builds relationship that becomes very real, very revealing of truth, beauty, goodness and Love.

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Why The Urantia Book Now?

By Meredith Sprunger Fort Wayne, Indiana

Editors’ note: This article was first printed in the September 1981 issue of YOU-BE, a magazine of opinion published by The Tortoise, 1306 34th Avenue, San Francisco, California It was reprinted in The Circles by permission from the author and the YOU-BE

The growing edge of evolutionary religion today has arrived at basically the same religious philosophy as we find in The URANTIA Book. Many religious leaders are presenting views almost identical with Urantia Book teachings. So it is philosophically appropriate to ask, “Why was The Urantia Book given to our planet when evolution is accomplishing the same goals?”

There are probably many more reasons for this action than any of us know; but, fundamentally, revelation is given because it is an effective expediter of evolution and saves aeons of time. A second and related question is, “Why does God lead individuals to become missionaries of new and enlarged truth when this action causes opposition and persecution in their own families, among their friends, and in society?” The preponderance of rational thought and “sensible” human wisdom cautions against such controversial ministry. A committee of contemporary friends would have almost certainly advised Moses against his mission to revitalize a group of Hebrew former slaves and with this unlikely group spearhead a new religious awakening. They would have told Jonah that it was absurd that he should attempt to reform Ninevah. Paul was told that he was mad to assume the Christian gospel was the wave of the future and that he deserved death for going about stirring up religious and social unrest. The ways of God often do appear to be absurd, or even evil to a great many people

Many of these missionaries of the past have been reluctant messengers. Moses tried to escape by pleading inability. People would not listen to him. He was not a public speaker. Jonah fled to the sea. Paul suffered blindness and intense mental anguish; but eventually he followed God’s inner leading in his life. Doing so does not usually lead to a life of ease or popularity.

I have long felt a calling to bring a knowledge of The URANTIA Book to the religious and educational leaders of our culture. I have tried to examine this sense of calling critically, to question it, even to ignore it. But, if I am to keep my integrity of soul, I cannot deny it. As Paul Tillich points out, we must have the courage to be, to actualize our authentic selves. I have tried, therefore, to follow this inner guidance. I believe an outreach ministry of The URANTIA Book should be activated now; indeed, that it is past due. If this is the Father’s will for me (which I believe), why? I am not sure that I know. It is relatively easy to give “rational” reasons on both sides of this or any controversial issue. I am happy to share some of the insights which seem self-evident to me as to why The URANTIA Book is needed in our culture now.

After twenty-five years of thought and experimentation, I am convinced that only The URANTIA Book itself can bring about a spiritual renaissance. Evolutionary bootlegging the teachings of the book merely adds, on the same level, to that which many religious teachers are now doing. Only the integrated message of The Urantia Book, in my judgment, can transform our society in time to save our world from much evolutionary disaster and suffering.

The growing edge of religious development in our society has already arrived at the essential truths of The URANTIA Book. It is evolutionarily important that this vanguard of religious leaders know about The URANTIA Book. Fundamentalists are even now denouncing the book and it is wise to acquaint mainline religious leaders with the book before reactionary zealots distort information about it. The angels of the churches are in charge of supervising developments in the first one hundred years of the URANTIA movement.

This illustrates the importance which the revelators place on the Christian Church being introduced to the fifth epochal revelation. One fourth of this critical period has already passed with no serious, systematic ministry of outreach to church leaders. It would be tragic to default in this crucially significant missionary responsibility.

It may be later than we think.

Demoralization and crime are commonplace. Much of our world is experiencing chaotic conditions. Terrorism threatens the social order in many areas. Nuclear holocaust is an ever-present possibility. Our world is in critical need of spiritual foundations which are large enough, solid enough, and have the spiritual power to both prevent catastrophe and give guidance and stability to the new age which is struggling to be born. I believe The URANTIA Book has the greatest potential for serving in this capacity of any philosophical – religious resource now available to man. It may be crucially important to the future of this planet. In such a situation, to be primarily concerned with individualistic pursuits and cultish, ingroup, preoccupations may be analogous to Nero’s fiddling while Rome burned. To have spiritual resources which the world desperately needs and fail to share them is difficult to understand or justify. Do not misinterpret my concern. I am not trying to persuade anyone else to engage in outreach ministry. These observations are simply some of the reasons for explaining objective aspects of my own subjective sense of calling. You must follow your own inner guidance.

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Toolbox for The Inner Life

Collected by William Cooper

1. Intentionally Foster a Strong Spiritual Inner Life. Focus your efforts on attending to your spiritual inner life. Your inner life is where your values and meanings in life reside. It is also where you have the most control over your life. Your inner life interacts with the Spirit Within which can be relied upon always to favor what is truly in your best interests. Your outer life interacts with people, things and institutions that frequently are not in your favor and may even unfairly oppose you. Your outer life is subject to bad judgment, accidents, betrayal, disloyalty, selfishness, envy, affairs and many other disturbing and destructive events and emotions.
2. Use Relaxation and Meditation. Relaxation and meditation help you access your inner life where you can choose to affirm what you personally believe to be important and meaningful. Relaxation and meditation will help you reconcile your outer life to your inner life. Do not compromise the values and meanings of your inner life to fit your outer life. That leads to dissatisfaction and unhappiness even in the presence of apparent material success.
3. Go to Your Heart Place. Your heart place is a place of calm refuge and beauty where you are safe and comforted. Remember the process: Relax; drift gently into the special place of calm you have mentally prepared; Experience the presence of the persons, pets, plants and things you have chosen to be there; enjoy; return when you are refreshed.
4. Consult with Your Inner Spirit. You have within your heart a reliable spirit counselor. If you will consult this spirit especially regarding meanings and values and morals and ethics you will receive high quality advice on attitudes and behaviors that will benefit you with a happier and more productive life. The process is simple. In calm circumstances if possible, ask for help as specifically as possible. Wait in silent receptivity for a few minutes to see if any impressions present themselves immediately. Remain receptive and expectant as you go about your life for relevant impressions and insights.
5. Optimism, Expectation and Cooperative Attitude. These are your allies in achieving anything. Believing you can achieve something is the starting place of success. What you believe is possible, you may attempt. What you attempt, you might achieve. What you do not try, has no chance.
6. See with New Eyes. Seeing a situation with new eyes is a useful process in many circumstances, especially as preparation for forgiveness. This process applies imagination to explain an offense as understandable and forgivable behavior. You do this because bearing a grudge, resentment or fear is so damaging to you spiritually that you should risk forgiving even in the absence of apology or expressions of regret. The forgiver benefits even if the forgiven does not. Seeing with new eyes intentionally seeks an alternative understanding of events from a higher spiritual perspective of compassion, empathy, error, generosity of spirit, etc.
7. Cool Down and Open to Spirit. Your capacities are measurably improved when your interactions with others (and self ) are as free of anger, fear and suspicion as possible. That is the cool-down benefit of this process. Opening to the spirit intends to access the rich inner source of caring for the other person’s needs as much as your own. When you do this, compromises to everyone’s satisfaction are often possible and peaceful interaction is to be expected. The spirit will always lead you to treat the other person as you would like to be treated.

Focus on what is ideal and Right. Your inner life is where you are free to define what is ideal and right. What is ideal and right is what you want to support and advocate in your outer life. Life may force compromises but betrayals or intentional hypocrisy are to be avoided. They will certainly lead to unhappiness.

Respect your feelings. Your feelings mean something. They are not necessarily answers or even indications of truth but they should be considered. They certainly affect your behavior. If you understand them, they can have a rational and appropriate effect. If you do not, they will have an effect that is haphazard and often not beneficial. Ignore your feelings or surrender to them at your risk.

Forgive. Forgiving frees the forgiving person from the burden of spiteful thinking and scheming. Most of the benefits of forgiving flow to the forgiving person. So it is to the forgiver’s benefit to be generous, even lavish in letting go of hurt feelings from all causes. Forgive as much as you can as quick as you can even when the offender is unworthy of forgiveness and unrepentant. Forgiveness is that important to your spiritual growth.

Imagine. You have the gift of imagination. Use it to imagine a good and rewarding path through life. It is better to be optimistic without fantastic or miraculous events. It is OK to strive to dream / imagine realistically but avoid applying your imagination cynically. Imagining can be like mentally preparing yourself to succeed in future opportunities. It has been proved repeatedly to work in sports and other skilled activities.

Communicate Calmly. Expressing anger, fear, violence or agitation motivates others to get away from you. Calmly confide and trust in others and observe how this builds relationships. Relationships are real, eternal and worth the effort.

Be Thankful. Counting your blessings elevates your mood, relieves depression and helps you define what is important to you and what you should do to foster your own happiness.

Stacked in Your Favor. The universe is stacked in your favor. No, really it is, when you are pursuing what you believe is right. If you will presume that and act accordingly many wonderful consequences will follow. You will undoubtedly suffer a lot of failure. You will grow a lot in character. You will also succeed a lot too, if you define success broadly.

Lavish Gift Giving. There are more than these three valuable gifts you can afford to give lavishly to everyone. In fact, You will profit by giving them. You can count on an endless supply and widespread appreciation.

Forgiveness

Respect

Caring about all people

Positive Self Talk. Tell yourself good things. What you tell yourself, good or bad, confident or doubting will influence your behavior and your friends. What you tell yourself, and believe, is more likely to manifest in your experience.

Use the Peacemaker’s Checklist.

Try to calm down before you react.
Do your best to avoid physical fighting.
Avoid arousing anger or fear in your adversary.
Avoid using put-downs, cursing, calling names or using profanity.
Say what is on your mind but do it respectfully.
Really listen (with an open heart) to what your adversary has to say.
Try to see how you are responsible. Don’t just blame the other person.
Try to put yourself in the other person’s place to understand where they are coming from.
Look for ways to solve the problem, not just win the argument.
Be willing to compromise.

Golden Rule. You have heard it all your life but it really is the most reliable spiritual rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated if your roles were reversed.

Practice Nonviolent Communication. Be gentle and respectful with others.

Don’t fear failure. Take reasonable risks. Failure is an especially good learning opportunity leading eventually to success.

Live your values. Live your life as loyally as you are able to the truth you have discovered.

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You Are A Child of God, Yes You

WILLIAM Cooper 11-8-2016

Following his resurrection, Jesus made 19 appearances to groups of his followers. His message to all of them was that they should go into all the world teaching and preaching to everyone the good news that God is our Father and we are therefore family. Jesus instructed us to follow the leading of the spirit of God within us to do unselfish good in everything. That is the highly condensed or compacted good news. The good news in its fullness is extensive and perhaps infinitely extensive. The following is a first step in decompacting Jesus’s highly compacted good news message.

You are a spiritual person who inhabits a physical body. They are both you, but the spiritual you is eternal. Your personality, character, and loving memories are part of the spiritual you and survive.
God is your loving spiritual parent. God the Father is your spiritual father and loves you and cares for you as an excellent father. God the Spirit is your spiritual mother and loves you and cares for you as your mother. Both are very deeply, personally and constantly involved in your welfare and rearing. They are interested foremost in your spiritual rearing, welfare and education. You are a first generation offspring of these two aspects of the one God who is the originator and creator of all that is. You are not a slave, a distant grandchild, an adopted child nor merely analogous to a child of God. You are the real thing and you are loved, forgiven and enjoyed as a unique person.
All people everywhere are children of God and therefore are entitled to the respect due to the immediate family of the most gracious, generous and powerful person in all of creation. Since all people are children of God, they are all brothers and sisters and should behave with love, compassion and mutual support for one another.
All children of God have a fabulous, exciting and unique destiny which is important to them and to God and should be encouraged and cooperated with by all persons.
God’s domain operates as a loving family, not an arbitrary kingdom of servants. The family needs every child. You have an important part to play.
An immediate two way personal relationship between God and each of his children (through prayer, worship, meditation and ethical living) is available to each child simply for the striving to have such a relationship. The benefits of this relationship are immense, awesome and eternal. (But many of the benefits come through growth, insight and education over time.)
Each child of God can experience the fatherhood of God and the motherhood of God. For each child, God as father has in mind an eternal career of growing knowledge and wisdom and progressive service to the family. As father, God will give power and authority to each child as soon as he/she is sufficiently educated to exercise power and authority responsibly. (Necessarily limited power in this mortal lifetime.) God as mother comforts, encourages and nurtures each child both physically and spiritually. From physical conception and forever thereafter, God as mother supports, cherishes and comforts every child without preference or qualification. By paying attention to these parental ministrations, the children of God can get to know their spiritual parents.

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Mechanics of Spiritual Power

William Cooper Oct 2020

What is spiritual power?

Spiritual power is something you never expected to have, even in your afterlife. However, it is something you already have. The spiritual power you have for the most part is not the power to do miracles in defiance of laws of science. The spiritual power you “have” is an attractive power and a transformative power which you can exercise by doing and championing goodness. It is not something you control but rather a power inherent in mind that causes goodness to be attractive. It doesn’t compel. It attracts. It doesn’t overwhelm will. It appeals as an attractive choice.

Spiritual power has a consequence when someone experiences goodness and appreciates it. You can be the beneficiary of your own appreciation of goodness. But you can also be the vector of spiritual power by portraying goodness to others. It is in these ways that you “possess” spiritual power. The experience of Spiritual power provides energy and motivation to love and serve others and to love and become like God. It does this by influencing your emotions and your process of thinking. It has the ability to transform a person from within by confirming rightness and by bestowing warm spiritual pleasure as a consequence of righteous desires and behavior. It is an instinct placed in mind as a gift from deity for you to exercise spiritual power by doing good – fostering godlikeness.

What does it do?

It works in at least three circumstances that I have experienced or observed in others.

When a person chooses to do unselfish good for others, that opens a channel from spiritual sources that brings ability to the unselfish person to express spiritual blessings such as tolerance, faith, forgiveness, service, etc. These behaviors and attitudes simply seem more appropriate and become easier to express and do. So there is spiritual power in unselfish service.
When a person observes that another is expressing spiritual virtues, spiritual power causes an attraction or lure for the observer to want to live that way too. There are spiritual effects on both the actor and the intended beneficiary as well as on third party observers.
When one person prays for spiritual blessings for another, spiritual power touches the mind and soul of the other person and causes those blessings to become more easily available to the other person and the other person is helped to realize that they have choices to live more spiritually, more fully and more joyously.

What do we do to implement it?

Spiritual power is not magical. It operates according to spiritual laws. Sometimes it results automatically like gravity or magnetism operate automatically according to physical laws. Sometimes spiritual power works more like chemistry where manifestation of spiritual power results from mixing faith, love, and other higher values in appropriate proportions to react together and express goodness. We probably are not ready to actually be allowed authority to exercise control over undirected spiritual power but we can cooperate with the limited spiritual power made available to us so that its consequences can “automatically” happen. Except they do not automatically happen. They only happen if we act in ways that cause them.

The power made available for us to exercise is significant to our personal spiritual growth, to the progress of our planet in becoming more advanced and in the achievement of the goals of our cosmic family. There is spiritual power attached to all of the following which need our cooperative involvement.

Spreading the Gospel has magical spiritual power because the gospel message, when understood, unlocks life changing spiritual ministries directly to the mind and soul of the recipient.
Living a life of loving service, tolerance, and forgiveness activates spiritual power because this attracts similar behavior in others.
There is power in living by reasonable and appropriate faith because this leads to rich personal relationship with God and our cosmic family.
There is power in trusting others because this causes them to want to be trustworthy.
There is a power in falling in love with goodness because this expels evil desires.
There is power in all higher values because they breed friendliness and peace.
There is power in optimism and reasonable self-confidence because they cause confidence in positive change.
Reliable concern for the benefit of others fosters trust and cooperation and that is powerful.

So you have a considerable amount of spiritual power available for your exercise. But it does not happen independently of your reliable, generous, and loving actions and attitudes.

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Spiritual Power Definition

Spiritual power is energy and desire to love and serve others and to love God and become like him. Spiritual power motivates us and gives us faith and energy to live according to what has meaning and value to us. It does this by influencing our emotions and our process of thinking. It has the ability to transform a person from within by confirming rightness and by bestowing warm spiritual pleasure as a consequence of righteous desires and behavior. It works in at least three circumstances:

When a person chooses to do unselfish good for others, that opens a channel from spiritual sources that empowers the person to express spiritual blessings such as tolerance, faith, forgiveness, service, etc. These behaviors and attitudes simply seem more appropriate and become easier.
When a person is present where another is expressing spiritual blessings, spiritual power causes an attraction or lure for the observer to live that way too.
When one person prays for spiritual blessings for another, spiritual power touches the mind and soul of the other person and causes these blessings to become more easily available to the other person and the other person is helped to realize that they have choices to live more spiritually, more fully and more joyously.

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Truth about Communicating with Spirit

By William Cooper 8-10-10.

Introduction:

Every sincere effort to communicate with the spirit within has spiritual benefits for the person communicating.

Popular concepts of what we can expect the Spirit to do in response to our requests for material rewards and miracles are so misguided(essentially magic), that they may have the ultimate effect of discouraging efforts to communicate because of disappointment.

It is experience of the spiritual consequences of communion with spirit that is important. The spiritual consequences are joyful urges to be helpful, tolerant, unselfish, forgiving, encouraging, optimistic, generous, empathetic, etc.

Communication with spirit is a tonic for health, focuses our attention on finding solutions to the matters we submit to the spirit and deepens the channels of our receptivity to spiritual blessings. Sincere communications with the spirit are dispatched in faith that they are heard and answered, so the independent and substantial power of faith is also involved with the consequences of spiritual communion. These are all benefits to the one who communicates with the spirit within.

Asking the spirit for spiritual benefits for another person expresses love for that person. There is spiritual power in parental/brotherly love which flows to the soul, mind and / or physical energy of the intended beneficiary. This spiritual power creates a spiritual blessing available to the intended beneficiary if they are willing and receptive.

Children of the Spirit have a spiritual teacher to be listened to and followed. The teacher is your personal inner spiritual mentor. Close friendship with the inner Spirit is the most important thing we can achieve in this life and heartfelt communication is the best technique for pursuing relationship with the Spirit within.

Communication with the spirit within is the most potent spiritual growth stimulus. The Spirit answers our concerns by giving an increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty and an augmented concept of goodness. The spirit’s response to all requests is the gift of enhanced ability to bear (express) fruits of the spirit and then there are many beneficial consequences of bearing fruits of the spirit including better health, more energy, joy in living, optimism, charm, dependability and trust. All of these generate positive power for success in all aspects of life.

Communication with the spirit gradually enables us to exercise more and more spiritual power (spiritual lure and attraction) arising from our characteristic attitudes and behaviors of loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance and enduring peace. These are fruits of our connection with the Spirit within. They are the consequences we can expect as a result of maintaining an inner communion with the Spirit indwelling the soul of each of us. The experience of communication with the spirit establishes and matures the channels of receptivity to these spiritual gifts.

The Spirit is almost never going to fix things for us. It will help us get through anything and everything that comes our way for whatever reason, even if our burdens are our own fault. Sincere communication with spirit has many benefits other than getting our spiritual partner to fix things for us. Conversation with spirit is a type of thought which helps us solve our own problems. It has very valuable health and social benefits. Spiritual communion enables the human ego to look both to self and to spirit for help. For material help it initiates receptivity to the subconscious reservoir of mortal experience, memory and wisdom. For inspiration and guidance, spiritual communion encourages receptivity to contact with spiritual intelligence.

Some petitions to spirit can be unethical, morally wrong. A petition to spirit is unethical when the petitioner seeks for selfish advantage over his fellows. Be fair in all your requests to the spirit. Do not expect our spiritual Parent to love you more than his other children.

Petitions to the spirit must never be a substitute for action. All ethical spiritual communion is a stimulus to action and a guide for the progressive striving for idealistic goals.

Materialistic petitions to the spirit are destined to bring disappointment and disillusionment because humanity lives in a physical universe of law and order which the Spirit will not violate. Selfish and materialistic petitions are beneficial only to the extent that they lead to human efforts and exertions that contribute to achieving the goals of those petitions. Petitions to the spirit do not change the Spirit but they often effect great and lasting changes in the one who petitions in faith and confident expectation. Spiritual communion is the ancestor of much peace of mind, cheerfulness, calmness, courage, self-mastery and fair-mindedness.

Only under very rare circumstances does petitioning the spirit have any direct effect on one’s physical circumstances. The zone of effectiveness of requests to the spirit relates most directly to the spiritual and psychological attitudes of the person communing.

Requests to the spirit will not cure real and organic diseases but they contribute enormously to the enjoyment of abundant health and to the cure of numerous mental, emotional and nervous ailments. Even in bacterial disease, petitions to the spirit often add to other remedies. The sincere petition in faith is a mighty force for promotion of personal happiness, individual self-control, social harmony, moral progress and spiritual attainment.

Spiritual communion is an efficient technique for approach to the realization of the reserve powers of human nature stored and conserved in the unconscious realms of the human mind. These include insight, experience, custom, education and wisdom. Communion with the spirit is a sound psychological practice even aside from its spiritual significance.

Problems are learning opportunities our spiritual Parent will use for our benefit. The Spirit is not absent, passive, overburdened or distracted. He is actively and constantly involved in every aspect of every person’s life. He uses the problems we face as opportunities for our character development. While it is not appropriate to ask the Spirit to make your problems disappear, it is appropriate to ask the spirit for help in learning the available lessons and for calm and reassurance in the midst of the turmoil.

Words, posture and attitudes:

Spiritual communion is intentional communication with the Spirit. Most people use words silently or out loud most of the time, but words are not really necessary. You can communicate in feelings or images or music so long as you are communicating from your soul/heart your sincere longings, goals and desires for good, your love of truth or your appreciation of beauty.

Communing with the spirit with faith, hope and trust brings expectations of divine assistance which encourages personal effort and thereby makes the desired result more likely. One who steps out in faith and takes the risks is sometimes successful even in the absence of divine intervention. One who does not act has no opportunity to succeed.

Spiritual communion can be the personal and spontaneous expression of your soul toward the Spirit. Communicating with the spirit should be a communion of the child with the spiritual Parent and the expression of fellowship. Spiritual communion, when from the soul, leads to personal cooperation in the spiritual progress of one’s self and others. The ideal communication is a form of spiritual communion (intimate spiritual sharing of thoughts and feelings) which leads to intelligent worship. True spiritual communion is the sincere attitude of approaching the spirit within for the inspiration and attainment of your ideals.

Spiritual communion is the way we make contact with our souls. This benefit of bringing the content of our souls to our conscious attention should motivate us to be persistent in our attempt to ascertain the Spirit’s will. The answers to our questions about spiritual reality are in our souls. The Spirit is a willing and generous giver of spiritual blessings and spiritual power. Persistence is not to change our spiritual Parent’s attitude but to change our preconceptions and prejudices so that our conscious minds may be receptive to the Spirit’s blessings. Persistence gives spiritual insights repeated opportunities to drop into place.

When we commune with the spirit, we exercise too little faith. Faith is more than belief. It is trust in the Spirit to do its part in achieving its goals. Genuine faith will remove mountains of material difficulty which may be in the path of soul expansion and spiritual progress.

Commune with the spirit honestly, unselfishly, with fairness and without doubting.

Just talk things over with your spiritual Parent in a purely personal way. Do it often and regularly. Don’t be afraid to talk to the Spirit, but don’t undertake to persuade or change your spiritual Parent.

Words are irrelevant to prayer. The Spirit answers the soul’s attitude, not the words. Attitude does matter. Our attitude should be faith filled and trusting. We should sincerely believe in the Spirit’s good and loving wisdom in answering. We should have no withholds in truly wanting our spiritual Parent’s will, not our own, to be done. His will is the best of all possible outcomes.

The earnest and longing repletion of any petition when sincere and uttered in faith, no matter how ill-advised or impossible of direct answer, nevertheless always expands the soul’s capacity for spiritual receptivity. The soul’s spiritual capacity for receptivity determines the quantity of heavenly blessings (fruits of the Spirit, consciousness of the Spirit’s presence, peace, joy, etc.) which can be personally appropriated and consciously realized as an answer to our petitions.

Petitions to the spirit are heard and answered:

Opening the human end of Spirit-man communication makes the ever flowing stream of divine ministry immediately available.

The sincerity of any spiritual communion is the assurance of its being heard. The spiritual wisdom and universe consistency of any petition is the determiner of the time, manner and degree of the answer. The Spirit will not give us the requests of our foolish petitions. While spiritual communion does not change the spirit’s attitude, it does change our attitude toward our spiritual Parent. The unselfish motive of a spiritual communion gives it right of way to the divine ear.

Sincere communications of the longing of the heart are always answered. Sometimes the answer is greatly delayed while the spirit world devises a better answer to meet the needs of the spirit of man. Sometimes prayers are so vast they can only be answered later in our progressive spiritual growth; sometimes only when we reach Paradise.

Petitions are addressed to spiritual beings and must be answered in spiritual terms and all such answers must consist in spiritual realities. Spirit beings cannot bestow material answers to the spirit petitions of even material beings. Material beings can commune effectively only when they commune in the spirit.

All spirit born petitions are certain of an answer. Full personal reception of the answer may be time delayed. The answer is seldom exactly what you asked for but the answer is never “No!” The answer will bring comfort, calm and reassurance of personal spiritual safety. It will be something spiritually and emotionally beneficial.

What to ask the Spirit to do:

Guard against the great danger of becoming self-centered in your petitions. Avoid petitioning the spirit for yourself. Ask more for the spiritual progress of your brethren. Avoid materialistic requests. Communicate in the spirit and for the abundance of gifts of the spirit. Petition the spirit for the sick and afflicted but don’t expect this to replace the benefit of loving and intelligent ministry to their needs.

The most important request to the spirit is for knowledge of the will of the Spirit. The next most important request to the spirit is for guidance over the pathway of earthly life. This in reality is a request for divine wisdom.

Material things are not the province of requests to the spirit.

The truest communication with the spirit is in reality a communion (intimate spiritual sharing) between man and the Spirit within.

Spiritual communion is not a technique of escape from conflict but rather a stimulus to growth even in the face of conflict. Ask for insight into values, not things; for growth, not for gratification.

Ask for the welfare of family and friends and others but especially petition the spirit for those who curse you and make loving requests to benefit those who persecute you. It is easy to petition the spirit even for those who misuse you to bear fruits of the spirit. After all, what you are asking for is for the desire to do good for others to take hold in their lives and to transform them. This feels right and good for either a friend or an enemy.

When and where to commune with the spirit:

When should you commune with the spirit? Commune with the spirit whenever the indwelling spirit moves you to express your inner relationship with our spirit Parent. Any time or any circumstance is appropriate. Commune when in trouble but not just then. Commune also when all is well.

Your real petitions, your personal, intimate declarations and requests should be in secret. Declarations of thanksgiving are appropriate both in personal communion with the spirit and group spiritual communion. Petitions of the soul are a personal matter (secret). All believers should ask sincerely for extension of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven exists when and where we encourage and allow the spirit within to lead us in doing the will of our heavenly Parent.

Laws of prevailing petitions

Sincerely and courageously face the problem.
Industriously exhaust human capacity to adjust.
Surrender everything to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth. (Expect insights into truth, beauty, goodness, meanings and values.)
Wholeheartedly desire the Spirit’s will.
Dedicate yourself to action to do the Spirit’s will.
Ask only for divine wisdom to solve specific human problems in the Paradise assent.
Have Faith that your petitions will be answered.

There is quite a variety of types of spiritual communion including:

Expressions of pure gratitude and thanksgiving

Petitions for help

Communion – intimate spiritual sharing of thoughts and feelings with the Spirit

Consecration of self to the Spirit’s way

Consultation with the Spirit – thinking (inner dialog) with the Spirit

Communing with spirit to elevate thoughts to a higher and more spiritual level

Requests to the spirit for clarification of view point

Requests to the spirit for faith, optimism, hope, courage

Petitions for healing of mood, attitude or body

Requests to the spirit to make spiritual goals and means more vivid

Requests for inspiration and guidance to resolve the matters you are praying about

Petitions to the spirit for wise leadership

There are many good reasons why we commune with the spirit including:

We communicate for the comfort, reassurance and courage communing with the spirit brings to face life and to fight the battles against evil and doubt.

We petition the spirit to feel like we have done something.

We commune with the spirit because it elevates our mood.

We commune with the spirit because we feel the comforting love of our spiritual Parent.

We commune with the spirit because it reduces a burden or shares a joy.

Spiritual communion is an all-important practice. It stimulates greater receptivity to spiritual gifts and it is the most potent spiritual growth stimulus.

There are a lot of material requests to the spirit which are not going to be answered in the terms requested. But there are also many consequences of spiritual communion which are highly beneficial and are insufficiently appreciated as answers to our petitions to the spirit. These include:

Spiritual communion relieves stress.

Communion with the spirit elevates your mood and attitude.

Spiritual communion brings inner peace.

Communion with the spirit clarifies and corrects confusion about meanings and values.

Spiritual communion focuses your talents and mental and material assets on your problems, enabling you to answer your own petitions.

Communion with the spirit brings comfort, reconciliation and acceptance of what cannot be changed.

Spiritual communion relieves loneliness.

Communion with the spirit reinforces optimism, steadfastness and dependability.

Spiritual communion helps you reach for anything you value.

Communion with the spirit enhances self-control.

Communion with the spirit helps you value and love others.

Spiritual communion helps you feel valued and loved.

Spiritual communion improves your decision making ability.

Communion with the spirit and faith together cure many emotional and psychological illnesses.

Communion with the spirit often makes medical remedies more effective.

Spiritual communion builds hope, confidence, expectation and trust.

Communion with the spirit supports action and achievement.

Communion with the spirit stimulates spiritual growth.

The ideal form of communion with the spirit is a personal communion of fellowship with our spiritual Parent. Communion with the Spirit is simply an event of intimate spiritual sharing of our inner life of aspirations, hopes, fears, loves and feelings. Imagine the Spirit’s presence. Imagine the Spirit’s responses. Expect it to suggest in all circumstances how you can express loving and unselfish motivations. Actually what you are imagining is true. Your spiritual Parent is in fact present and hearing and responding to your concerns in a guiding, nondirective way.

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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

Back to Top

Why We Should Proclaim Jesus’ Message

By William Cooper

Jesus taught his apostles that there are five cardinal features of his core message. (Paper 170 Section 4 Paragraphs 8 -13 / Page 1863 Paragraphs 6-11)

Preeminence of the individual. God is concerned with each woman or man personally and directly. There is no involvement of tribe or priest required. Nor is apprenticeship in low orders of spiritual hierarchy required before we have personal and instantaneous access to God. You are a beloved direct spiritual child of God and he protects, educates, and supports you and is always present with you.
The will as the determinative factor in human experience. You will succeed in progressing if you choose righteousness. Progress will not be withheld nor will it be imposed. It is your sacred right and responsibility to choose what you are becoming.
Spiritual fellowship with God the father. You and the father are close personal associates. You have a parent-child relationship – intimate and familiar – unless you neglect or refuse to choose to have it.

The Supreme satisfactions of the loving service of humanity. Loving service is the way of joy, satisfaction, and eternal progress in attaining God likeness. It is all yours for the wanting and the doing. It is your choice again.

The transcendence of the spiritual over the material in human personality. As you choose to live the loving and serving life in all circumstances, you will create a spiritual self of God-like and eternal potential even while the physical origins of you melt into the material past.

So according to Jesus that is what his message was and is.

The Spirit of Truth resides in this message. (Paper 178 Section 1 Paragraph 6 / Page 1930 Paragraph 3). Our loving service is the mighty social lever to uplift the races of darkness and the Spirit of Truth is our power multiplying fulcrum. Our loving service and the Spirit of Truth are supposed to work in partnership to achieve God’s goal of revealing truth to humanity.

(Paper 34 Section 5 Paragraph 5 / page 379 Paragraph 5)

The Spirit of Truth is poured out on all people but it is almost wholly limited in function and power by the individual’s personal reception of that which constitutes the sum and substance of the mission of the bestowal son.

(Paper 128 Section 7 Paragraph 6 / Page 1417 Paragraph 5)

The prime purpose of the bestowal mission was to provide God the experience of human life from the viewpoint of the human creature. This was required for Michael to achieve sovereignty over his universe. A second purpose of the bestowal mission was to make the supreme revelation of God to humanity. Accepting Jesus’ message constitutes the personal reception of the substance of the mission of the bestowal son to reveal God to man. In the process of his bestowal mission Jesus decided to teach a new religion – the religion of being led by the Inner Spirit into the doing of loving service. (This is the will of God for us.)

In proclaiming Jesus’ message, human proclaimers are serving the John the Baptist herald function for the ministry of the Spirit of Truth to the souls of humanity. This herald function of declaring the good news puts those who accept it in a position to make meaningful choices to progress or not. It starts the person considering real and meaningful choices. It liberates the Spirit of Truth ministry to that person.

Just to remind you of the consequences the Spirit of Truth can have if liberated by people accepting Jesus’ core message. (Paper 194 Section 2 / Page 2060 Paragraphs 2-7)

The Spirit of Truth works to foster and personalize truth. (The truth is that all reality works to advance the Father’s will to unite all persons and things by the magnetic attraction of love. What advances God’s will is real. What does not, is not real.) Truth reveals what is real and how reality works.
The Spirit of Truth works to destroy the believers feeling of orphanhood.
The Spirit of Truth helps people recall and understand the words of Jesus.
The Spirit of Truth helps to illuminate and reinterpret Jesus’s life on earth.
The Spirit of Truth helps believers witness to the reality of Jesus’ teachings and his life as he lived it. It provides a fresh interpretation for each believer and each generation.
The Spirit of Truth leads all believers “into all truth, into the expanding knowledge of the experience of the living and growing spiritual consciousness of the reality of eternal and ascending sonship with God.”

So why proclaim Jesus’ message? Because it is something that God trusts you to do and something of immense value to humanity and the spiritual family. It is partnering with God in achieving one of God’s spiritual purposes and it will be an exciting and entirely meaningful adventure. Without the proclamation of the good news, the mighty Spirit of Truth is almost powerless. The herald function is an essential part of the plan.

End

Prayer of Gratitude

By Kathy Beckten

A Few Words on Worshipful Problem Solving

By William Cooper

Entering the Kingdom

With suggested questions to discuss

By Kaye Cooper

We All Need Love…Now!

Kaye Cooper 2020

Try it now.

Rodan’s Philosophy of Living

And His New Religion of Maturity

Revised August 2020 William Cooper

Rodan’s Philosophy

Goals, ideals, and the new religion of maturity

UB reference: (P.1774:6 – 1775:1) [161:1.14-15]

Philosophy of Remastering the art of living

UB reference: (P.1772:4) [160:1.3]

Jesus’ Art of Living According to Rodan

Jesus’ art of the mastery of dependable techniques for solving life’s problems

UB reference (p.1774:3)[160:1.11]

The benefits of spiritual communion to one’s art of living

UB reference (P.1774:4} [160:1.12]

Summary:

Developing Spiritual

Relationship with God

and the Cosmic Family

by William Cooper

Talking Things Over with God

Commitment to Spiritual Family

Exercise

Letter to and From Mom and Dad

Exercise

Developing Relationship by Conversation

Why The Urantia Book Now?

By Meredith Sprunger Fort Wayne, Indiana

Toolbox for The Inner Life

Collected by William Cooper

Use the Peacemaker’s Checklist.

You Are A Child of God, Yes You

WILLIAM Cooper 11-8-2016

Mechanics of Spiritual Power

William Cooper Oct 2020

What is spiritual power?

What does it do?

What do we do to implement it?

Spiritual Power Definition

Truth about Communicating with Spirit

By William Cooper 8-10-10.

Introduction:

Words, posture and attitudes:

Petitions to the spirit are heard and answered:

What to ask the Spirit to do:

When and where to commune with the spirit:

Laws of prevailing petitions

There is quite a variety of types of spiritual communion including:

There are many good reasons why we commune with the spirit including:

Memorable Truths and Considerations

By William Cooper

Why We Should Proclaim Jesus’ Message

By William Cooper

So according to Jesus that is what his message was and is.

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