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Spiritual Identity
When animal consciousness transitions to self-consciousness in man, the process is termed individualization.
Man gains a spiritual identity when he develops a soul.
Humanity is the fourth kingdom of nature. It exists between the three lower kingdoms (mineral,
vegetable, and animal) and the three higher kingdoms (Soul, Thought Adjuster (the spirit fragment of the Universal Father
who lives in the human mind), and deity). Man stands at a point of balance between opposites (deity and animal, reality and
misleading appearance).
Every person in time and space is a lesser god of his own universe, which consists of his physical, soul,
and mental bodies. These bodies comprise the lesser lives.
Human
Survival
The continuing survival of mortal creatures is dependent on developing an immortal soul within the human
mind. The soul is the bridge between matter and spirit.
Meditation and service to God align the soul, the mind, and the brain. When
a man performs as soul, the soul is the intermediary between the plane of divine truth and the mental plane.
Divine truth, the thought of deity, is a living organism. Man may know the truth, live the truth, experience
the growth of truth in the soul, and enjoy its enlightenment in the mind.
Role
of Soul
The objective of the soul is participation in divine creation.
Spiritual forward movement
happens in spiraling cycles across ever enlarging levels of consciousness.
In Time, the soul and the personality fuse with spirit (the Thought Adjuster). The new identity
begins to blend with Life Itself and becomes a part of the Supreme Reality.
Souls and Brotherhood
Producing new bodies for incoming souls is the highest service given to the Universal Father. Of course, this service needs continuing care giving and education for those souls within a home.
Man’s progress will be slow until people realize there is a living relationship between all conscious
beings, that is, universal brotherhood. Brotherhood shows all souls are one with the Supreme.
Living within Time, man’s thoughts eventually shift to a higher mental plane with greater alignment
to the urgings of the soul.
Care of the Soul
For rest and relaxation, Jesus sometimes took his apostles away by themselves for short periods to engage in meditation
and prayer. Largely, he kept them serving the multitudes. The soul of man needs both spiritual nourishment and exercise.
Through communion with God comes deliverance from the world’s illusions of evil and material restraints.
When man knows God, he frees the soul to prepare for the spirit struggle of immortality. As the mortal life is ending, man
must not hesitate to abandon the body. He will awaken in a more fitting and beautiful form in the Supreme realms where there
is no fear, sorrow, hunger, thirst, or death. Evil remains behind in this world. Virtue alone follows the soul to heaven.
Linkage
The soul receives and registers idea shadows through intuition. In contemplation, the thinker receives
the image of a subjective skeleton and identifies the form that it should take.
The powerful support received proves the service is the will of the Father.
A son of God cooperates in all to which he may contribute. Meditation
and service provide satisfactory expression for all the powers of the personality and soul.
Participation in the creation requires the thinker to discard all conceited and selfish thoughts.
Spiritual ambition or a fondness for personal power hinders true service. Any emphasis on the personality will
distort the pure light of the soul as it seeks to pour through the lower self.
Expressing
Soul
Men who do not falter in their search for light and for a field in which to serve their soul prove their devotion
to their comrades and the greater Sons who guide the destiny of men.
A son of God accepts all the demands of loyalty that sonship in the Kingdom of God
involves. He seeks expression as a soul recognizing that all souls are one in the Supreme.
In dealing with Deity, man knows God through His nature, which is Spirit (Life) and Soul (love).
Man does not yet know the Universal Father. The Father remains inscrutable, unseen and unknown, except
as revealed through the life of His sons, and by the revelation given by Jesus Christ.
Soul
Consciousness
Humanity must shift its consciousness away from its aggressive acquisitive material wants into soul consciousness.
This is true of individuals, of nations, and of races. As each individual works out his own problems in life, he is helping
to solve world problems.
Every will creature receives
enough time to ensure survival. A person squanders time by failing to use it to guarantee the survival of his soul.
Integration
There is no separation
in the planetary life of mortals and the other forms on the planet. Soul relates all forms and organisms. Plants, dogs, and
people share life's circulation as it streams through the mass of forms that, as a group, make up our planet.
The difference in organisms
is levels of consciousness.
Soul Progress
Nothing can prevent the
progress of the human soul on its long ascent from ignorance to wisdom, from mortal death to immortality.
If the churches of all
faiths fail to offer spiritual guidance and help, humanity will find another way. Nothing can keep the spirit of man from
God.
The qualities of
reality (spiritual expression) occur in human experience in the physical electrochemical body and in the thinking, sensing,
and feeling experience of the mind.
Intelligence related to
the emotional life helps in the upward evolution to the soul and spiritual levels.
The soul of man matures with altruistic
experience. Since altruism is essential for soul development, life experience must provide encounters with social inequalities.
Soul
Growth
Soul is not a part of a
man's initial body, mind, or spirit. Neither is personality. Personality is an
unchanging reality in the ever-changing human experience. Personality fuses all the associated energies of matter, mind, and
spirit that survive with the soul.
To aid evolution, prayers of mortals should be for life experiences.
Assisting
Soul Growth
The time is coming when medical doctors will study all children (with special attention to the endocrine
glands). Vocational experts will also study children to place them where their
gifts and abilities can find fullest expression. Spiritual counselors will seek
to unify the child in brain, mind, and soul.
Through a person’s own choosing within his or her short life span, a mortal may elect to transfer
his or her identity from the temporary physical-intellect organism to the more enduring soul. To make a choice, it is important
the individual collects all the knowledge and wisdom that he or she can gain in a lifetime.
It is important the civilization that humans live in progresses from the material plane to the spiritual
plane as fast as possible to make the learning experience of individuals easier.
Fountainhead
Mind is the cosmic instrument on which each mortal can play the music of God or the strident chords of
self-destruction. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle taught that virtue is knowledge, goodness, and health of the soul. It is
better, they said, to suffer injustice than to be guilty of it, and it is wrong to return evil for evil. Jesus warned his
followers against the evil of even holding a grudge.
For mortals with freewill, the soul is the fountainhead of the highest and best values of human life.
The soul within all forms obeys cosmic law. It does not have the slightest wish to do otherwise. Still,
the soul does not impinge the freewill of the individual. Resistance to the values of the soul in humans comes from the material
portion of humans. (This resistance is the basic cause of all physical disease
as well.)
Laws
of Nature
The Laws of Nature (inherent in the life of the physical form) carry the
seeds of mortal death. The Laws of the Soul supersede the Laws of Nature. They are the highest laws to which humanity can
respond.
When the flood tides of human misfortune, selfishness, cruelty, hate, malice,
and jealousy rage around the mortal soul, the soul, which is the citadel of the spirit, is unassailable.
The challenge of this age is for forward-looking men and women to erect
a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the soul’s integrated ideas of truth, beauty, and goodness. A new and righteous vision of morality will beckon all that is good in the mind of man and best in the
human soul.
Law of the Soul
A law is an expression or process
whereby some thinker or group of thinkers, manifests and applies a compelling force.
Cosmically, a law is the effect
of the life of a greater entity as it encloses a lesser being within its living processes.
The law embodies the formulated purpose or organized will of the enfolding life.
The enfolded purpose or will complies.
For mortals with freewill, the
soul is the fountainhead of the highest and best values (potential laws) of human life.
The soul itself within all forms
freely obeys and follows cosmic law. It does not have the slightest wish to do
otherwise. The soul does not infringe upon the freewill of the individual. Resistance to the values of the soul in humans comes from the "not-self" or the material
aspect of humans. (This resistance is the basic cause of all disease.)
The Laws of Nature (inherent in
the life aspect of the physical form) carry the seeds of death. The Laws of the
Soul subordinate the Laws of Nature. They are the highest laws to which humanity
can respond.
America’s legal system interferes with the proper adjudication
of justice when it uses laws for selfish gain. This interference arises when an individual or group disregards the fact that
laws are meant to serve the common good.
The increasingly litigious nature of American society has created a fear of
being sued. The ramifications of this concern have forced doctors to practice
medicine defensively rather than using their professional judgment. Similarly,
the threat of lawsuits by parents has undermined the authority of teachers to maintain student discipline. In every country,
there are those who seek to over-extend the intended meaning of the law for their own advantage. They avoid the legitimate responsibilities of citizenship through "loopholes" in legislation. Non-conformity
to law causes social maladies as well as individual illnesses.
Rebirth
When spiritual rebirth occurs in an individual (whether by gradual growth or crisis), there follows a new
orientation of personality and development of new standards of values.
Spirit-born individuals are so motivated in life that they can serenely watch their fondest earthly ambitions and hopes
crash. They realize that catastrophes wreck their temporal creations before raising
more enduring and sublime realities.
Values
The religion of Jesus is not a
technique for gaining a static and blissful peace of mind. It is an impulse for
organizing the soul for service. It is enlisting selfhood in the loyal service of loving God and serving man.
In pondering values, men must think about their pleasures and how to integrate them into higher levels of human experience.
Meaning is what experience adds to value. It is the conscious appreciation
of values. A purely selfish pleasure may mean a devaluation of meanings bordering on relative evil.
The worth of human life consists in the growth of values, progress in meanings, and realization of the cosmic
relationship of both of these experiences. This experience is God-consciousness. Such a
mortal is becoming superhuman as his immortal soul evolves.
Conflict
Religious perplexities are unavoidable. There can be no growth without psychic conflict and spiritual agitation.
The human intellect protests
weaning from the material energies of temporary existence. The lazy animal mind rebels at the effort demanded in wrestling
with cosmic problem solving.
New religious insights arise out
of conflicts that need new and better reaction habits in place of the older and inferior reaction patterns. Conflict persists in any refusal to adopt the higher values suggested by superior meanings.
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