About Spiritual Power
An Exercise
William Cooper 2020
I would like for you to make a journey into your soul to converse with your Inner Spirit about spiritual power. Spiritual power is the ability to ignite or activate spiritual consequences in one’s self or others principally through the energy of attraction, charm, and delight. We need not, and should not, seek spiritual power. It will arise of its own accord when you make yourself into a loving, caring, compassionate and serving person. It is good if you recognize these powers for what they are and cooperate with them.
Spiritual fruits arise naturally as one of the consequences of our communion with the Spirit of God residing in our souls. They have a power from the Spirit to lure and attract other people into trust, cooperation, kindness, respect, and helpfulness.
Some spiritual fruits are:
Loving service | Unselfish devotion | Courageous loyalty
Sincere fairness | Enlightened honesty | Undying hope
Confiding trust | Merciful ministry | Unfailing goodness
Forgiving tolerance | Enduring peace
Spiritual weapons are gifts of the spirit of Jesus which also inhabits our souls. These are the weapons Jesus wants his followers to use to establish the kingdom of God’s love and mercy in the hearts of men. The spiritual weapons are:
Unfailing forgiveness | Matchless goodwill | Abounding love
These weapons are to be applied to overcome evil with good, to vanquish hate and anger by love and to destroy fear with a courageous and living faith in truth. Always are Jesus’ followers to be active and positive in their ministry of mercy and in their manifestations of love. The enemies to be banished with these weapons are evil, hate, anger, suspicion, and fear. The warriors are to display consistent goodness, love, and courageous trust in the truth that God’s love and kindness will transform all creation into God’s ideal of loving connectedness and cooperation.
Faith is trust in God to do God’s part in making truth, beauty, and goodness victorious over evil.
Righteous living is living loyal to the meanings and values God stands for. It is goodness.
Try this: I want you to visit with your Inner Spirit about developing your skill at manifesting spiritual power through spiritual fruits, spiritual weapons, faith, and righteous living. Think, ask, dialog, and/or hot pen (spiritual stream of consciousness writing). Your objective is to develop graciousness and charm in exercising these powers.
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The Correct and Effective Strategy:
Taking the Kingdom by Spiritual Assault
UB 1725:4 and 1726:2/155:1.3 and 5
Bill and Kaye Cooper
Jesus said to the 12 apostles and 12 evangelists who were fleeing through northern Galilee: “You who have professed entrance into the kingdom of heaven are altogether too vacillating and indefinite in your teaching conduct. You are guilty of too much chronic yearning. If you desire to enter the kingdom, why do you not take it by spiritual assault? You are hardly worthy of the kingdom when your service consists so largely in an attitude of regretting the past, whining over the present, and vainly hoping for the future. …Cease your useless yearning and go forth bravely doing that which concerns the establishment of the kingdom.” [Social service and sharing the gospel.]
- What does it mean to take the kingdom by spiritual assault? What weapons are to be used?
- What are we to do which concerns the establishment of the kingdom? Why does that require bravery?
He continued, “Let me emphatically state this eternal truth: If you, by truth coordination, learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of righteousness, others will then seek after you that they may gain what you have so acquired [Character development, Happiness and Joy]. The measure wherewith truth seekers are drawn to you represents the measure of your truth endowment, your righteousness. The extent to which you have to go with your message to the people is, in a way, the measure of your failure to live the whole or righteous life, the truth-coordinated life.”
- What is truth? A truth-seeker would be seeking what?
- What is truth coordination?
- What is this beautiful wholeness of righteousness?
- What does this paragraph tell us about how we are to go forth doing that which concerns the establishment of the kingdom? What is our plan? What do we need to do to set that plan in motion?
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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
Belton, Texas Spiritual Living Conference July 21-23, 2006
By William Cooper
Spiritual power is the attractive lure of loving behavior – goodness. It exists and works because our minds are designed that way. It is inherent and instinctive that goodness begets goodness. Goodness is extremely powerful and transformative for both the person portraying this Godlike behavior and the persons witnessing and benefiting. It is so powerful that it will change those in its presence even if they resist, deny or fight it. But it will change them more quickly and more thoroughly if they cooperate with it.
Spiritual power is available to us as a gift from God. It derives from certain attitudes and the behavior we exhibit as a result of those attitudes. Because spiritual power is nonviolent and nonresistive to evil and even proactive in doing good in all circumstances, it takes considerable courage and faith to live a life of spiritual power. Even so, everyone is capable of claiming the gift of spiritual power if they will only choose the behavior of loving goodness, especially in the difficult and frightening times of life.
Spiritual power is the power over self to live a life of love, forgiveness, justice, mercy and gentleness. Spiritual power is the secret of real achievement in life. The attitudes which bring spiritual power color everything else going on in your mind and every action you take. They also influence other people’s attitudes and behavior through verbal and nonverbal communication and through spirit as well as intellect. These attitudes and behaviors communicate soul to soul. If persisted in, they will transform lives, society and eventually our entire planet. These attitudes are simple enough for everyone to participate. But they are unnatural enough to seem impractical, unrealistic and even foolish unless you know their origin and their powerful consequences.
These are common religious attitudes and modes of behavior but too few people have persisted in them sufficiently to experience the reliable manifestation of spiritual power. Far too often when we reach the trying and threatening circumstances of life, we abandon our high concepts and resort to social, political, economic, physical or intellectual power if we have it. Among persons of good will, we may believe in these attitudes but among our enemies or those who would abuse or misuse us, we do not trust them – we lack faith in them. But if great things are to be achieved with spiritual power, it must be applied in circumstances where great and surprising consequences are possible. Spiritual power must be challenged so that it can prove itself. Apparent risks must be taken, at least until spiritual power shows itself so unmistakably that we realize how reliable it is.
It is ironic that we consider such attitudes and behavior to be impractical and yet they are the foundation of highly successful human life when success is measured by spiritual standards. Our culture may be more focused on success in the form of wealth, power and fame but when you leave here, spiritual success is the only success you take with you. So which is more real and worth the effort?
These unnatural but highly successful and powerful attitudes and behaviors are part of the new spiritual gifts brought by the spirit of the resurrected Jesus when he returned at Pentecost to reside permanently among us. All of these gift abilities relate to the awesome truth revealed by Jesus that goodness has the power to overcome evil, and nothing else does.
So here are the attitudes and behaviors which bring spiritual power. Study them, meditate on them and pray earnestly about them and for them. Then, when you are ready, go out and live consistent with them and watch the awesome spiritual power destroy all the evils of this world.
Spiritual Power from Unfailing Forgiveness
The unqualified, inexhaustible, ever willing ability to forgive — to release hurt feelings, resentment and anger. Forgiveness is a generosity of spirit which extends the opportunity for a fresh start to the forgiven and frees the forgiver from having to judge, punish or discipline. It is liberating. It is Godlike and it is powerful.
Relax and focus your attention on feeling the calm and liberation of forgiveness. Feel forgiveness flow into you and over you, washing away all resentment, anger and fear. Accept the feeling of letting go, forgive. The experience of forgiving enables you to experience being forgiven. Think deeply about how you would feel to be forgiven of every hurt you had ever caused anyone. Not forgiven if…but…provisionally…or conditionally, but forgiven fully and finally, forever. It is yours in fact and in experience when you learn to forgive.
And how do you learn to forgive? Want to forgive sincerely. Discuss it with God and God will teach you how to forgive. Accept God’s lessons with gratitude. They will of necessity involve some hurts which you must practice your forgiveness skills on. The talent of forgiveness is far too valuable to reject because of the pains of learning.
Spiritual Power from Matchless Goodwill
Cheerful, open, helpful, tolerant, patient, faith-filled, optimism toward all people and the problems and shortcomings in their lives. Be of good cheer. God has a plan for every person and for our world. It is in progress. It will not fail.
Matchless goodwill derives from optimistic expectation of the high possibilities inherent in people as a consequence of their spiritual endowment. It incorporates a generous tolerance and cheerful patience for people (including yourself) to grow at their own pace and at their own choosing. It applies a trusting faith that, in due time, God’s plan will result in truth, beauty, goodness, peace and gentleness beyond our capacity to imagine. Goodwill is friendliness. It is the willingness to encourage everyone in achieving their worthy goals and to assist and support them. It is the willingness to do more for others than duty requires. It is helping even those who misuse or abuse you. It is even returning good for evil because the power to cause change is in acting with good will. Failing to actively display goodwill at every opportunity either gives the victory of the moment to evil…or at least fails to confront it with spiritual power. And someday spiritual power will defeat and vanquish all evil and ugliness.
Relax and ask to feel goodwill flow into you. Feel cheerfulness and wellbeing flow into you. Continue to feel this inflow until you are energized with optimism, buoyancy and enthusiasm. Draw on this power to renew your goodwill as often as you need it, and go forth expending goodwill lavishly on our Father’s other children.
Spiritual Power from Abounding Love
Love abundantly, joyously, and fearlessly.
Love is the desire to do good to others. It is friendship. It is eagerness to help others achieve their worthy goals in life. It is giving of self generously and freely. It is protecting the victim. It is restraining the aggressor without judging or punishing. It is counseling, befriending, comforting and sharing. Love is unselfish, giving of oneself for the benefit of others.
Imagine God’s love or Jesus’ love growing and expanding in your heart. Feel God’s serving friendliness toward you and all God’s children growing stronger within you and expanding until it fills you completely. Let it expand beyond your body so everyone who comes close is engulfed in God’s love.
When you are feeling God’s love, imagine the face of hate before you but you are not afraid. Reach out your hand. Ask and expect that the Father’s love will flow through you, through your hand and transform the face of hate. Now with this love empowered hand gently smooth away the hate from this face and transform it to smiles and joy. See it change from hate to amazed disbelief to hope and finally to relief. See the power of love transform hate to love. This power is real and effective to transform lives if we will sincerely love others without conditions.
Spiritual Power from Persistent Goodness
Proactive Goodness in all situations. Goodness responding to goodness. Goodness in the face of evil. Goodness when you are misused. Goodness when you are unfairly and treacherously attacked. Goodness in all situations because there is spiritual power in goodness to transform evil. Goodness is the only effective response to evil. And it is the only possible response which augments the goal of behaving as God would have the sons and daughters of God to behave. Responding with goodness in the face of meanness and unfairness, violence and brutishness is unnatural, but it is God’s way and it is loaded with spiritual power to transform those who witness it. It must be always sincere and never suggest sarcastic confrontation or any other bad attitude.
The best demonstration and proof of the power of goodness I can think of is Jesus’ behavior on the day of his crucifixion. He remained gentle and good throughout this horrible ordeal of unjust trial, scourging, taunting, mockery, being nailed on a cross and exposed publicly as a criminal. And yet, he acted with such goodness that one of his executioners and one of the thieves were both converted by the experience of observing him. There is great spiritual power even in less extreme tests of one’s ability to demonstrate goodness.
Spiritual Power from Living Faith
Faith is trust. It is confidence and reliance. Faith is a gift of the indwelling spirit of God. Faith can grow and becomes one of the pillars of our lives. Faith pushed, tested and prayed for earnestly is sure to grow. Faith is the antidote for fear, so faith is a valuable attribute both now and in eternity. There are, after all, so many unknown and frightening things. A robust faith is needed to eliminate our fears.
Faith in the watch care of God’s spiritual protection. Faith that God has a plan which is in progress. Faith that God’s plan cannot fail, but will see to the spiritual welfare of each and every person. Faith liberates us from our fear of God and from our fear of falling victim to the evil one. Armed with mature and reasoned faith in God, we can live courageously. By calling on the spiritual power resident in faith, we have the ability even to remain unmoved in the face of appalling danger. You have the right to claim the courage God offers through the gift of faith. Ask sincerely, and it is yours.
Spiritual Power from Positive Action
Never passive. Never negative. Always positive, affirmative and actively doing good as you pass by. Positive action showcases goodness and enhances the power of goodness to change lives. Goodness can and will transform lives and cultures if it is actively lived so that others come in contact with it. The active, happy, positive behavior of those who love God and live lives of spiritual power attract attention to the right way of living…and then spiritual power flows freely.
The spiritual power of goodness in all circumstances has the strength to destroy evil and solve this planet’s problems and nothing else does.
Love, Bill Cooper
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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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Enlisting Spiritual Power to
Transform Yourself and Others
by Kaye Cooper
When you are born of the spirit, your only purpose in living will be to do the will of our Heavenly Father. God’s plan for knitting the grand universe together by the power of love is so intriguing and so alluring and such a joy that it becomes a consuming adventure for the spirit-led person.
Discussion points and Urantia Book references
Consider these questions:
- What is spiritual power?
- What does it enable us to do?
- How do we invoke spiritual power?
The following statements may clarify and enlarge your answers.
Because you are willing to be led by the spirit which indwells you, very soon you will begin to see with the eyes of the spirit [understanding, tolerant, forgiving and loving], and when you wholeheartedly choose to be guided by the spirit, you will be born of the spirit—i.e. your only purpose in living will be to do the will of your Father who is in heaven. Ref. UB 1602:6 / 142:6.7
As a result of your sincere desire to be like God and because of your faith and trust in your Heavenly Father, you will be transformed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strengthened in your inner soul by the constant spiritual renewing of your mind—and in this way you are endowed with the power to do the will of God. Ref. UB 1609:5 / 143:2.3
You must come to that place of spiritual advantage where you fall in love with those higher and more idealistic forms of conduct that your mind desires. You will in this way be delivered through spiritual transformation. Beauty is always triumphant over ugliness in the hearts of all who are illuminated by the love of truth. There is a mighty power in the expulsive energy of a new and sincere spiritual affection. Don’t be overcome by evil but rather overcome evil with good, especially within yourself. Ref. UB 1739:0 / 156:5.5
How to help others find their path to spirit.
Never should a righteous cause be promoted by force; spiritual victories can be won only by spiritual power. Do not use psychic force—overpowering arguments, mental superiority, logic, or shrewd eloquence. Do not use emotion—fear, pity, or mere sentiment. Do not attack using condemnation, sarcasm, or cynicism. Instead use faith encouragement – introduce people to the God who lives within them. Teach friendship with God. Exude the joy, good will, and good humor that comes from knowing God. Extend sympathy to the brave and courageous as they meet the trials of living. Above all, proclaim a message of good news that is infectious in its transforming power. Ref. UB 1765: 3 / 159:3
Spiritual power is the attraction, allure, magnetism, gravity-pull of love, truth, beauty, and goodness. Depending on the circumstances, you can be either the beneficiary of spiritual power or its catalyst for others experience of it.
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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.
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