Cosmic Citizenship: Quotes, Questions, and Comments
We have some idea of what it means to be a good citizen of our city or country. Justice, power, and sovereignty come into the picture. But what does it mean to be a good cosmic citizen? To respond to this question, a virtual conference will be hosted in Peru on April 24-25, 2021. https://urantia-association.org/update-urantia-association-conference-virtual-experience/ In hopes of whetting appetites for the presentations, I offer some quotes and questions related to each topic. If you read and reflect on the topic of one presentation each day, you will be ready when we begin next Saturday. Note: these quotes and questions do not necessarily reflect what the presenters will discuss. And you are free to learn more by writing down responses to the questions and discussing with others. Since writing is such a helpful thinking tool, it will help you grapple with these questions.
I created an 8:43 audio file introducing this blogpost.
One more thing. This is a big weekend for Olga Lopez. She is co-presenter on Day 2. She is part of the translation team that has brought forth a new Spanish translation of El Libro de Urantia. And she is the principal translator of Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness by Jeffrey Wattles. Want to take a look? The Kindle version was timed to launch on April 24.
One more thing. Today’s post represents the launching of this renovated website, with a new section to support this conference.
April 24, Day 1
1.1. What is the Core Spiritual Message of The Urantia Book?
by Angie Thurston (Washington D.C, U.S.A)
What does it mean to you to be a son or daughter of God? The Urantia Book’s teachings are very diverse, but the number one spiritual message is that God is a loving and merciful father and that we are all family, no matter what we believe or don’t believe. This core message is the trunk of a tree with many flowering branches. This talk will introduce the listener to how, in these difficult times, we can experience the supreme joy of spiritual truth and its power to transform.
111:6:6 (1222.5) Man can find the love of God without facts, and man can discover the laws of God without love, but man can never begin to appreciate the infinite symmetry, the supernal harmony, the exquisite repleteness of the all-inclusive nature of the First Source and Center until he has found divine law and divine love and has experientially unified these in his own evolving cosmic philosophy.
- What are examples of divine law that are important in your life?
- What are a few things you have learned in your experience of divine love?
- How do you weave divine law and love together in your experience and your cosmic philosophy?
118:6:8 (1300.4) To recognize Deity omnipotence is to enjoy security in your experience of cosmic citizenship, to possess assurance of safety in the long journey to Paradise.
- The author of the Papers on the Universal Father first leads us into a personal relationship with our Father, next sets forth the nature of God, and only then reveals the awesome attributes including that God is everywhere, all-powerful (omnipotent), and all- knowing. Given your relationship with God and your concept of the nature of God, what happens now when you ponder Deity omnipotence in relation to security and safety?
- What reasons can you think of why recognizing Deity omnipotence lead you to enjoy security and safety in your experience of cosmic citizenship?
1.2. What is Cosmic Citizenship and How Can We Apply it Practically?
by Jeffrey Wattles (Ohio, USA)
God is spirit, but the Creator works on material and intellectual levels, too. Cosmic citizens establish spiritual goals as their top priority, and The Urantia Book teaches many ways to coordinate, integrate, and unify these levels. This talk will touch on the concepts of cosmic mind (16:6), cosmic truth (2:7), using an example that will help listeners understand how to apply and work effectively as a cosmic citizen with the down-to-earth facts of daily life.
110:3:10 (1206.8) Joyful acceptance of cosmic citizenship—honest recognition of your progressive obligations to the Supreme Being, awareness of the interdependence of evolutionary man and evolving Deity. This is the birth of cosmic morality and the dawning realization of universal duty.
According to the wise laws that eternally govern evolution, there are laws of sequence: some things need to be in place before other things can happen. The Creators act first, and we must respond. Only then does God the Supreme culminate the achievement.
- Are you progressing well in overcoming the animal-origin trait of procrastinating about obligations? If so, please teach the rest of us how! If not, what do you need to do?
- What motivates you to accept your duty of cosmic citizenship joyfully?
104:3:2 (1146.4) Mortal man is passing through a great age of expanding horizons and enlarging concepts on Urantia, and his cosmic philosophy must accelerate in evolution to keep pace with the expansion of the intellectual arena of human thought. As the cosmic consciousness of mortal man expands, he perceives the interrelatedness of all that he finds in his material science, intellectual philosophy, and spiritual insight.
- When you consider our struggling world, what is an example in which you integrate the factual realism of science with insight into spiritual values by means of the cosmic philosophy of evolution presented in The Urantia Book. Extra credit: drawing on the sciences from physics and biology to psychology, sociology, and history, write down a list of truths that are relevant. List some relevant truths of philosophy (gems of wisdom) and spirituality (including Jesus’ many-sided gospel).
- Without mentioning The Urantia Book, how do you express to others something of an integrated cosmic vision?
1.3. How Does Humankind Evolve from Primitive Origins to a Glorious Planetary Destiny?
by Elisabeth Callahan (California, USA)
We are on the way to the age of light and life; in that age, we integrate in our lives the positive achievements of all previous ages. A review of these ages helps us understand what happened in the distant past that helps explain the turmoil in our world today.
From the Lucifer rebellion and the default of Adam and Eve, we learn:
75:8.5 (846.4) Never, in all your ascent to Paradise, will you gain anything by impatiently attempting to circumvent the established and divine plan by short cuts, personal inventions, or other devices for improving on the way of perfection, to perfection, and for eternal perfection.
- Scattered here and there in The Urantia Book are indications that truth is normally to be presented according to people’s capacity of receptivity. In most situations, we are to meet people where they are, and present basic truth before giving advanced truth. What implications does this lesson in cosmic citizenship have for your practice in introducing The Urantia Book to people?
Regarding the age of light and life, we are told: 118:10:15 (1306.4) Such advanced planets are indeed poems of harmony, pictures of the beauty of achieved goodness attained through the pursuit of cosmic truth.
- Why is it about truth, beauty, and goodness that make them so important?
- Why is the pursuit of cosmic truth the key to goodness? Why is achieved goodness the basis for a planet becoming a poem of harmony and a picture of beauty? (Note that there are different sequences that also are instructive.)
Workshops
See at the end of the Program information on how to view the workshop descriptions and how to make your choices as part of the registration process.
Day 2: Cosmic Citizenship, Holistic Personal Growth, and Our Planetary Contributions
The New Urantia Book High-Quality Spanish Revision – Unity, Teamwork, and Advanced Methodological Processes in the Creation of a Referential System for Quality Work.
by Panelists: Anibal Pacheco (Chile), Olga Lopez (Spain), Raul Pujol (Cuba), and Víctor García-Bory (Mexico)
An interactive panel will discuss a 10-year long journey of challenges, service, teamwork, and friendship, as well as the results achieved.
Day 2
2.1. What Are Some Principles of Holistic Personal Growth for Cosmic Citizenship?
by Alejandro Ampudia (Lima, Perú)
Personal growth should be understood as the way to awaken cosmic consciousness and elevate spiritual perception in order to become cosmically mature and balanced beings. There is a set of values that we must acquire faithfully and consistently because they constitute the steps of holistic growth. As we seek for perfection in the love of God, prayer and worship are indispensable tools to move forward on this path.
We return to the previous quote and transfer the idea from the planet to the individual. Cosmic growth embraces body, mind, and soul in the realms of truth, beauty, and goodness. 118:10:15 (1306.4) Such advanced planets are indeed poems of harmony, pictures of the beauty of achieved goodness attained through the pursuit of cosmic truth.
- What personal growth are you engaged in at this stage of your life? How are you integrating the levels of cosmic truth—encompassing the truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience? (See the exercise presented in connection with presentation 1.2.)
- How are you using cosmic truth to guide your growth in goodness in a way that enhances the beauty of harmony in your daily life?
2.2. How Shall We Design Projects to Promote Planetary Progress as True Cosmic Citizens?
by Olga López (Barcelona, Spain) & Sebastián Nozzi (Argentinian in Heidelberg, Germany)
How can we help during this difficult and dangerous transition in our planetary history? What great projects for planetary progress are highlighted in The Urantia Book? We may design a contribution to one of these. We may modify a project that we are already working on or join an existing project (teamwork multiplies results).
The Universal Father has a creative design that underlies all universe phenomena. Before a Creator Son goes forth to begin working with the Creative Mother Spirit on their creation, he studies the universes already created by his brothers (not to mention the Havona pattern for them all).
When we discover that great cosmic wisdom is available in The Urantia Book, it becomes clear that we could upgrade our project designs by studying the entire book for guidance. Remember the conditions of effective prayer (91:9/1002).
If you would engage in effective praying, you should bear in mind the laws of prevailing petitions:
1. You must qualify as a potent prayer by sincerely and courageously facing the problems of universe reality. You must possess cosmic stamina. (In what ways might cosmic stamina go beyond ordinary human stamina?)
2. You must have honestly exhausted the human capacity for human adjustment. You must have been industrious. (Here’s where study and more gathering of scientific knowledge, philosophical wisdom, and spiritual insight come in).
3. You must surrender every wish of mind and every craving of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth. You must have experienced an enhancement of meanings and an elevation of values. (If God answers prayer by giving “an expanded revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an augmented concept of goodness,” how can we discern these gifts in the answer(s) to prayer that we receive?)
4. You must make a wholehearted choice of the divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.
5. You not only recognize the Father’s will and choose to do it, but you have effected an unqualified consecration, and a dynamic dedication, to the actual doing of the Father’s will.
6. Your prayer will be directed exclusively for divine wisdom to solve the specific human problems encountered in the Paradise ascension—the attainment of divine perfection.
7. And you must have faith—living faith.
2.3. What Sources of Spiritual Power Enable Us to Go Forward With Our Goals?
by Emeka Anazodo (Lagos, Nigeria)
The very power or energy that flows from the Deities into all universes, creating and sustaining all things and beings, is the ultimate source of spiritual power. All spiritual power emanates from God, the Universal Father, as he is the First Source and Center of all things and beings. The spiritual power is the quickening effect of all spiritual influences which indwell, surround, and impinge upon us and we need it in order to break through our own resistance and outer obstacles to living spiritual values (166:3.8).
166:3.8 (1829.5) Even the apostles were unable fully to comprehend his teaching as to the necessity for using spiritual force for the purpose of breaking through all material resistance and for surmounting every earthly obstacle which might chance to stand in the way of grasping the all-important spiritual values of the new life in the spirit as the liberated sons of God.
- What it is like to exert physical force, psychological influence, or will-power when you are not spiritually connected?
- What changes do you see when you are spiritually connected?
- What conditions favor your being endowed by spiritual force?
Now, dear friend, as you go forward, do not expect too much of yourself too fast. Savor and nurture the gems that the spirit has highlighted for you. In time they will bear fruit—on the schedule of divine sequence, when things are in place for God to give you that next layer of growth.
103:4.2 (1133.2) The hunger and thirst for righteousness leads to the discovery of truth, and truth augments ideals, and this creates new problems for the individual religionists, for our ideals tend to grow by geometrical progression, while our ability to live up to them is enhanced only by arithmetical progression.
The sense of guilt (not the consciousness of sin) comes either from interrupted spiritual communion or from the lowering of one’s moral ideals. Deliverance from such a predicament can only come through the realization that one’s highest moral ideals are not necessarily synonymous with the will of God. Man cannot hope to live up to his highest ideals, but he can be true to his purpose of finding God and becoming more and more like him.
I hope you will be there on April 24 and 25.
Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Making_Peruvian_Inca_Textiles.jpg
