Since my recent travels have generally covered familiar territory, any further descriptions of them will be repetitious. Until I visit someplace new (wait till you hear about our plans for June!) there will be more commentary on various subjects. The main topic for today is “Toward a Philosophy of Living,” a collection of thoughts about developing a personal roadmap toward our spiritual goals. This will be an outline only since each of us is unique and therefore have different spiritual starting places. Each of us require our own spiritual growth pathway. First there will be a brief description of an interesting store in the Florida panhandle. In addition to pictures of the store, there will be a photo of an interesting little critter in a Louisiana State Park.
The
Little Big Store, Defuniak Springs, FL
Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and
constitutes him merely an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the
mathematical formula of an unromantic and mechanistic universe. But whence
comes all this vast universe of mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science
may expatiate on the conservation of matter, but religion validates the
conservation of men’s souls — it concerns their experience with spiritual
realities and eternal values. Urantia
Book (2077.4) (195:6.8)
The Little
Big Store is on 8th street in downtown Defuniak Springs,
Florida. It looks tiny on the outside
but inside it is crammed with goods and artifacts reflecting a simpler bygone
era. One can certainly get a full dose
of nostalgia here. We were there a
couple of years ago and bought some tupelo honey; I (travelling alone this
time) was hoping to get some more but on this trip was told they had none. It was a bit early in the season and also
large companies from up north have been invading the region and buying up all
the tupelo honey so that local people have difficulty getting any. The proprietor went into a long discussion
about greedy materialistic companies taking out the honey and shipping it away. As we know, The Urantia Book has a lot to say about our materialistic society;
a full posting and more could be done about the evils of the rampant materialism
of today, perhaps another time. There
are however quotations above and at the end covering the topic.
Toward a Philosophy of
Life
The world is filled
with lost souls, not lost in the theologic sense but lost in the directional
meaning, wandering about in confusion among the isms and cults of a frustrated
philosophic era. Too few have learned how to install a philosophy of living
in the place of religious authority.
Urantia
Book (1098.4) (100:5.1) (Emphasis added)
Instead of blindly
following what “religious authority” might dictate for us, we could think for
ourselves and design a life plan for our own particular needs. What then would this “Philosophy of Living”
look like? How could one construct this
personal philosophy? It would be of
great spiritual assistance for each of us to formalize our thoughts on this
subject so that we can have a better idea of where we stand and where we are
going spiritually. Jesus carefully
planned each aspect of his life, recall for example how he educated and
nurtured his brothers and sisters after Joseph died. In a similar manner we would do well to
organize our own thoughts and plans in a systematic manner. This philosophy must be personal and
different for each of us but perhaps we can outline what it may consist of.
There should be four
main aspects of this philosophy: what do we believe as an individual, what is
our goal in this life and beyond, what is our current situation, and how do we
go from where we are to our goal. This
plan must be flexible, continually updated to account for changing conditions,
but most of all we must be honest with ourselves in our self-assessment and our
plans for the future. This plan need not
even be written down but we would do well to ponder our personal plan for
spiritual growth from time to time to evaluate our progress and to make
adjustments as necessary.
Post Office in Little Big Store
A parenthetical
comment first. While The Urantia Book is an important
revelation for our times, it is only a tool to be used in our efforts at
spiritual progress. If we concentrate on
obtaining spiritual guidance solely from printed sources, regardless of how
illuminating they may be, we will hinder the efforts of our indwelling fragment
of God as it seeks to guide us toward greater spiritual awareness. We must allow our spiritual guides to lead us
in ways that are designed for each of us as an individual. Since we truly have God within we do not
necessarily need external sources if we are courageous, sincere, honest of
heart, and deeply desire to follow the plan God has prepared for us. Besides, how could any printed source know
what you as a unique individual needs to do to progress, what issues you must
overcome, what strengths you have? We
certainly use our spiritual guide books as references in our efforts at growth
but the vital step is how we apply them to our own situation.
Personal
Beliefs: Most religions have some doctrine that
outlines the believer’s faith. “I
believe in… (insert statement here)” is sometimes even part of the worship
service. Would it not be more useful if
it were stated in a way that fully satisfies you? Something in your own words, your personal
Nicene Creed if you will. You may truly
believe the faith statement in the worship service, but might wish to add
something or use a different emphasis on the various components. Go ahead and make a statement of what your
beliefs are. We are not expecting
something of publication significance; rather it will be something meaningful
to you as an individual, something that can guide your spiritual growth. As we progress and become more spiritually
aware this statement will naturally expand.
Spiritual
goals: I am certain that few people, after they have
become settled in their life work, consciously think about what their goal in life
is beyond the obvious, beyond family goals, retirement planning and other
material issues. If we truly have faith
then we know we will certainly attain eternal life, but how can we enhance this
faith, strengthen it and apply it in this life in the flesh? By this I mean what are your spiritual goals
for now and for the eternal future?
After all, when we leave this life we will embark on our preliminary
spiritual adventure. What can we do here
and now to get a head start on this upcoming quest? These goals should be specific but not very
easily attained. A meaningful goal must
push us to reach beyond what we may think of as being possible, it should
inspire us to attempt the seemingly impossible.
Answering the phone (but the cell
phone under the apron is before its time)
Current
situation: This should be a spiritual
self-assessment. The key to this
appraisal is total honesty. It is
imperative that we are always open and fully honest with God and with
ourselves. Honesty with God is necessary
because otherwise our communication with Him becomes strained. Honesty with ourselves is necessary because
we must have an accurate picture of our current situation before a pathway to
our goals can be devised. Honesty is
vital in these matters not only because it is the right thing to have, but also
total honesty opens up the lines of spiritual communication. God, as well as His helpers, has great
difficulty breaking through the barriers of our self-delusions or our walls of
shame and fear. When we attempt to hide
personal emotions and thoughts from God (“He wouldn’t want to know about that!”) this does not affect God or our
Guardian Angels except to push them away from us, rather these efforts to hide
embarrassing thoughts from God make true spiritual progress nearly impossible
for us. Also our heavenly helpers fully
respect our free will decisions, so if we choose to close off part of our being
and keep them out, they will stay out.
Personal honesty becomes the certain defense against spiritual isolation
and stagnation because when we are fully open with our spiritual guides they
can better assist us in dealing with our difficulties.
The description of
our current situation would include how we judge ourselves in various aspects
that have an impact on our spiritual nature.
The most obvious one is our faith, how strong is it, do we truly believe
without seeing. Next would be our truth
hunger, how strongly do we want to improve ourselves and take the next
spiritual step or are we content to sit back and wait for events to
unfold. True spiritual progress only
comes to those who strongly desire it.
Also important is do we have genuine brotherly love for each of our
brothers and sisters. Finally do we have
that spiritual peace within, because no matter how strongly we “Hunger and
thirst after righteousness” we absolutely must await His guidance. This spiritual peace enables us to balance
our hunger for spiritual growth with the need for patience in awaiting
developments. It also assists us in
dealing with everyday events, frustrations and incidents that may challenge our
spiritual equanimity and our quest desire.
The
roadmap: Now we come to the heart of this exercise,
however for this discussion it would be futile to attempt to go into any
specific detail because there is no way of knowing where you as an individual
are starting from and exactly where you want to go. You cannot obtain a roadmap if you have no
idea where you are and where you are going.
Another issue is the different nature of spiritual reality. If we wish to achieve a certain material goal
we can reason out a procedure to reach that goal, for example we go to the
store for a loaf of bread. Spiritual
reality is more about values than reason, faith rather than facts, what you
wish to become rather than what you are.
Our roadmap will be useless unless we take this into consideration. This is a spiritual quest and therefore our
efforts are spiritual in nature.
It is certainly easy
to pray to do God’s will, but each time you make any decision, consideration
must be given to what God would realistically expect you to do. At each choosing it is His will that must be
actively chosen. I would even suggest
that saying “May God’s will be done” might not be good enough because it is
passive, expecting somebody else to do all the choosing, all the work. It might be better instead for us to pray
that “Each of us choose to do God’s will.”
For each of us who sincerely desire to progress spiritually the most
vital consideration is our own personal choice to do God’s will at each
opportunity and accepting the consequences, even eternal ones, of these
choices.
Showing
off in Tickfaw State Park, LA
When devising your roadmap toward spiritual goals it is
imperative to balance the desire for growth with wisdom; do not expect a sudden
leap into full spiritual reality. Our
goal should be progression by evolution
and not revolution by revelation. Urantia
Book (750.1) (66:6.6) Finally we
need to remember we each have a perfect guide within and if we follow this
guidance we cannot fail to reach the goal of the ages, spiritual awareness and
eternal life in our Father’s magnificent creation.
Do you desire to attain this spiritual goal of the
ages? Are you as an individual willing
to make the effort to attain this eternal goal?
Then you must get to work and develop your personal philosophy of life
to assist in the quest, develop your own roadmap. Who should you trust your eternal future to:
philosophers and theologians who may burry their heads in dusty books of yore
but have no clue about your situation
in life and where you wish to go or
will you trust it to your own fragment of God within?
We close with another quotation about materialism.
If man is only a machine, by what technique does this man
come to believe or
claim to know that he is only a machine? The experience
of self-conscious evaluation of one’s self is never an attribute of a mere
machine. A self-conscious and avowed mechanist is the best possible answer to
mechanism. If materialism were a fact, there could be no self-conscious
mechanist. It is also true that one must first be a moral person before one can
perform immoral acts. Urantia Book
(2079.8) (195:7.13)
All
photos by Doug Cable
