JarEl121498Arcadia-SpiritualGrowthPart1

ARCADIA TEACHING MISSION,  Arcadia, California

Teachers:  JarEl, Corelli, Machiventa

Spiritual Growth Part 1

December 14,1998

T/R Henry Z.

Opening Prayer: We seek the guidance of your light and spirit. Guide us in our discussions. Be our connection to the guidance and the presence of spirit here in this room. We ask for your love and your mercy for all of us, especially now in this Christmas season, to all our family and friends in need around the globe. This is the time in which we try to encourage as much joy and spirit as possible, during this season of the year. Thank you, Father, for the opportunity to be here, to have this group in love and fellowship.

JarEl: Greetings to you, friends. I am JarEl. It is good to be here again this afternoon and it is good to see the many returning faces gathered around our monthly discussions. I would first like to open up to anyone who would like to transmit a message; anyone who is prepared to do so may continue now.

Corelli (t/r Stella): This is Corelli & Aflana, with Master Eckhart standing by. We are glad that you, Stella, have been so industrious with your book of revelations. It is coming along very well. We commend you for it. Your friends here will be very pleased with the results. We know that they will be glad to read what you have written. This is one way of reaching the world. We know that you have been troubled that the Urantia book has not reached the public. One way of doing this is indirectly, through other books and other readings, as S. is doing. We are pleased with any approach with which one feels most comfortable.

Your group, we know, has been most active spiritually in its desire to disseminate the teachings and the concepts of the Urantia Book. You are doing very well, and there are others who will be reaching the door of the Kettells' home. We commend them for their hospitality and for their efforts to bring light to a suffering world. Each of you is well loved by our Father, and Christ Michael sends his blessings and love. You will all be reached in one way or another in the future. We are happy that you are all together again. We send you our love and season's greetings on this celebration of Christ's birth. You know the correct story, of course, but this is a good way to keep Christ's love alive in the hearts of many people who often forget his loving message throughout the rest of the year. Keep up the good work. We salute you. We love you. Goodbye for now.

Machiventa (t/r Henry): I am your spiritual brother Machiventa. Welcome to all of you here. Welcome to your teacher JarEl who has diligently instructed this group over the years. I personally send my love and joy to you during this season. In a few words, I send my encouragement to this group to continue in your spiritual growth, in your personal relationship with the Father, that each of you constantly seeks the presence of the Father within, for it is God the Father who is your prime personal teacher. It is he who knows you better than anyone else, and will help to bring a better understanding of who you are and what you must do. We have provided an opportunity to have many celestial beings here to also assist you, not to mention the daughters of the Mother Spirit Nebadonia, her seraphim, who are here and have been here on this planet for quite a while trying to help service your needs and spiritual desires. It is hoped that on your world, as more of you grow spiritually, the light of truth will begin to shine brighter; and as the light of truth begins to shine brighter more darkness will be dispelled, and it is wished that the light becomes so bright that all darkness is dispelled. It is through the conscious effort and everyone of you to discern the love of the Father in your own life and in all of your relationships with your fellows, that will progress the spiritual advancement of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man on your world.

My message to you today is brief. I personally thank you for coming, for supporting this group and supporting our endeavors to set up these host groups of you, those who have studied the Urantia Book and are going the second mile with your own spiritual development.

JarEl: Greetings again. It is good to get encouragement from our supervisor on our activities here. So today I would like to continue our discussion, as we have started today by reading last session's lesson on spiritual growth. I would hope to bring another perspective for you. In the Paradise realm of deity, all light is created in perfection. What this means is that God the Father and his manifestations as the Son and the Spirit, their manifestations of all their ministering spirits, the citizens of Paradise and all who dwell there, are what is known as the state of perfection. State of perfection ensues when there is absolutely no conflict, everything is in supreme and absolute balance; it is as if everything is sustained infinitely and eternally. But this is not so when one leaves the nest of Paradise and comes into the worlds of time and space, in which the perfection of Paradise is counterbalanced by the imperfection of created reality. This is the arena of the evolving Supreme, and this is why the Father has chosen to send the very essence of himself in the form of the Thought Adjusters, the spirit fragment, to come and indwell the mortals of time, you, as an opportunity for the perfection of deity to become augmented by experiencing the imperfection of creation.

When you have been born of the spirit and have answered into the life of spiritual endeavor you may find that your life has taken a much more serious and somewhat difficult turn, for this is truly what the Father seeks. The Father seeks conflict and difficulty, unrighteousness and imbalance, for it is the nature of deity to set all of these things straight, to correct, to balance, and to bring things into righteousness. This is why when you dedicate your life to doing the will of the Father you will be led into situations in which you are to use the things you have been preparing for - your trust and faith in a loving and merciful God, trust and faith in your own spirituality, and to answer into the arena of difficulty and conflicting situations and to attempt to bring some light into these areas. This is the function of perfect deity in an imperfect world. God has no need for your comfort zones, and your complacency and your reluctance. God seeks, therefore, for the heart and the meat of the matter: Where is the problem? Where is the conflict? Let us resolve it now. So be not discouraged when you open up your life to the spiritualizing influences of the Thought Adjuster and other spiritual agencies, that you will be led into areas that will force you to deal with some unpleasantness.

God himself starts with you the individual. God is constantly bringing what you need to deal with into your life, in essence, "up in your face." He will bring you face to face with your own problems, with your own seemingly insurmountable situations, so that you can get a handle on these things, that you can come to some understanding, and make an attempt to bring your life into focus and balance and move forward. You can find this over and over again in the life of the Master as he lived his life on this planet, as he trained the men and women who would be his spokespersons when he left, how he brought them into situations, into cities they did not want to enter into, to groups of people they did not want to face. And he eventually brought them, each and every one, into the ultimate test of situations of confronting those who adamantly opposed their presence. You live in a somewhat more civilized world - you notice I said somewhat, for many of you will be confronted for what you believe, not necessarily in the same way Christ and the prophets were, but in a philosophical sense the same. So you must come to a firm understanding of what you believe and how you are to live your life and practice these beliefs. For it is not so important to mend and bend someone's belief system to your own, but that you treat another with respect, so that the person will have a need to seek more of your own beliefs.

This is my lesson for today. And I will now entertain any questions you may have.

Q: JarEl, would you comment on the recent development between the Foundation and the Fellowship, and what role the teachers might have played behind the scenes ?

JarEl: My brief comment on this concern is that you are noticing the outworking of a vast spiritual agency on the planet, not specifically the teachers, but inclusive of the spiritual administration and the agencies under its supervision, mainly the seraphim. And yes, it is always quite fortuitous when certain beings, particularly organizations like the Urantia Foundation who are in positions of great responsibility, heed a spiritual presence and spiritual direction in dealing with their brothers and sisters. It is hoped that the placing of this book into the hands of a group responsible for maintaining the integrity and the publishing of the book retain its original purpose. And it has never been fully sanctioned by the spiritual agencies for this organization to become, shall we say, sidetracked into other policies and endeavors relating to the use and dissemination of the book. I cannot answer your question specifically as to how this has come about, but we are all taking a much elated view of the recent decisions that have taken place.

Q: Could you enlarge upon the main topic of spiritual growth? What are our basic requirements for spiritual growth and how do we best accomplish this?

JarEl: My friends, you already have the spiritual requirements for basic growth. You are each a fully functioning, living human being, indwelt by a fragment of the Father. You have opened up your mind and your life to become influenced by this presence, to become a personal friend with this presence. This is the basic requirement, for where there is a normal mind and a functioning human energy system the rest will hopefully ensue. Sometimes the mortal is brought into a conflicting situation where he may possibly sense the need for God, and therefore choose God. Choose to believe in the reality of such presence, therefore to begin to start living and knowing this presence. Man's relationship to God is a personal relationship; your spiritual growth, the growth of your soul, is an extremely intimate and personal phenomena. There are no guidelines for its development other than once you begin to attune to the presence of the God within, your activities will take on a nature that is compelling of knowing God, finding aspects of God in your life, and getting to know God in others. In this area it would be SENSE, the most important area next to knowing God personally is the socializing aspect of this ministry, the knowing God in others; for other than knowing God in yourself, the only other way to find evidence of the creative deity is by contacting that presence in others; therefore your attitudes, your actions, your communications towards others, become reflective of this relationship.

Religion is no more than the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, knowing that God is the Father and you as brothers and sisters have a responsibility to worship this aspect of deity within your own selves and how you relate to each other.

Q; I might pursue that a bit more with a rather facetious question for this group, but why do we want to become a spiritual nature? I know many people who lead a wonderful loving life down here and have no interest in developing a relationship with the Father. Is it really that necessary ?

JarEl: It is a matter of perspective. Let me ask you this: If corn left no seed what would the next generation have to eat? If man lives his life and does not prepare for eternal life, what will he do after he dies? Do you think that man just because he has followed all the rules in his complacency, and has lived a comfortable life, that all will be fine for that person? That that person will wake up on the mansion worlds and be welcomed graciously for having been given an opportunity and not taken advantage of it? So in a sense God is a seed and you are the fertile soil in which this seed has been planted; and when this seed sprouts in you a soul is formed, and this soul is your potential vehicle for eternal existence of goodness and love. Also on this world there has been much confusion about what is God, who is God, and where is God. We in the spiritual realm are very much aware of this. And as you pointed out, there are many wonderful people who live on this world who are very good people, and are very well-meaning and follow the leading of their internal guidance, yet in the realm of beliefs have chosen not to seek what they term as a God, or an ever-present deity, and are in some type of confusion as they were brought up.

Q: Will they not wake up on the mansion worlds and start a new class in the first grade, with new experiences? If they lived a reasonably good life in the kindergarten down here, will they not start new experiences with new things to learn up there while they correct their deficiencies from down here? Why is it so important to delve into the spiritual nature? Just as a point for discussion.

JarEl: Because the spiritual nature is who you truly are, and you are given this opportunity to become that which you truly are. If every child died at the age of 14 the human race would be no more. It is important to reach physical maturity as well as it is to reach a mental consciousness and awareness of who you really are, and why you are here. Purpose and value could not ensue were it not for the fact that there was the presence of deity, alive and well on the planet. If the Adamic sons were not sent to this world, and your genetic genealogy not mixed with their life plasma, and the Thought Adjuster never came here, you would still be as your ancestors were, in the caves of savage days. So before you take for granted this spiritual world that has been prepared for this age in which you live, this age of seeming wonderful technology, this age of seeming pleasantness and comfortable living, remember that this has ensued partially because of man's spiritual evolution. Man has not yet discovered, and stubbornly so, that the relationship between spiritual growth and material reality is very real, and eventually when the spiritual growth reaches a threshold, great and wonderful things will happen to this world and the people on it. And yes, it is unfortunate in some respects that the status of your world is such that you must believe all of this from your own personal experience, rather than from a universal knowledge. So consider these facts.

Q: Then it is for the evolvement and improvement of the planetary evolution and the society that goes with it. But as for the individual, if he leads a good life and graduates from kindergarten and receives a new teacher in the first grade, the new teacher takes him from where he is, and teaches him his needed lessons. Is not this the way the morontia worlds function in our growth? I am taking, shall we say, the "devils advocate" position, as to why do we want all of this spiritual growth, other than for the growth and evolution of the planet.

JarEl: How would you assess your own spiritual growth ?

Q: Well, I did reasonably well until I got the Urantia Book and became interested in my own spiritual growth and spiritual evolution. It was not a bad life before.

JarEl: You can choose to not read the Urantia Book.

Q: Which many have.

JarEl: And you could choose to stop growing spiritually.

Q: Yes. And many people appear to have learned all they want to learn down here. Will they not get a new teacher and a new environment in which to learn new lessons on the morontia worlds, and make up their deficiencies from here ?

JarEl: Have you learned all there is to know spiritually on your world ?

Q: Heavens, no!

JarEl: This is an interesting topic for discussion. It seems that in the light of this discussion, you voice the general sentiment of your world.

This is a world in which not many people do take God and spirituality very seriously. Your churches do not take God and spirituality very seriously, and now your planet has been brought to the threshold of, shall we say, near extinction, because of this attitude toward spirituality. Therefore things such as this Teaching Mission, which is an emergency spiritual mission, as is the Urantia Book, have been called forth, to afford those of the light on this world a little presence of grace and support in this spiritual endeavor. Therefore what you have stated is a very real situation, in the sense that man's spiritual directive is very personal, at first it is exclusively personal, but just because you live in an age in which you can enjoy the benefits of enlightenment doesn't necessarily mean you acquire this enlightenment by osmosis, or proximity. Each one must experience the opportunity to know God personally, and therefore to make a choice whether to serve the light or not to serve the light.

Q:(Joe) JarEl, this Joe. Greetings from a long-ago student to you and to the old and new members, brothers and sisters and our unseen friends. My question: Is there something that we could look for, in the many lives we meet on our path along the way, something like a gauge that will allow us to see if, in fact, we are making progress in our spiritual path?

JarEl: This is a good question. One of the obvious gauges is your relationship with your brothers and sisters: How have you grown? and how have you changed in the past amount of time in how you relate to others? Are we becoming more patient and tolerant of others in their differences? Are we able to bring and feel the presence and love of God within into our lives and into the lives of others? Are you bearing any fruits of the spirit? Are you beginning to discern any consistent values that are beginning to surface in your life? Are the things which you have asked for and prayed for coming into fruition? I am giving you many areas in which to look. Of course, it is not like the weather, as there is not an all-purpose thermometer that one can gauge one's spiritual references and spiritual balances to. But there are indicators, such as when you begin to develop a consistency in your relationship with the presence of Deity within, and this relationship grows into a loving and serviceable nature, in which those around you are benefiting from your "beingness" and presence. This is a tremendous indication of spiritual progress. Does this help ?

Q: It does indeed. On a personal level, and as I listen to and relate to your comments in my life, I see the realization of many answers to prayers that I do send out. There are, however, other areas, such as less tolerance among my close ones, that are more common now than before, in the way I relate to others, and this makes me wonder whether I am assimilating the lessons from the teachers the way I need to. But yes, your answer does help.

JarEl: You know, you must be very cautious in not berating yourself for imagining that you have not assimilated all of the teachings. As with everyone else, this is an ongoing daily progression. It takes experiences in one's life in which one can consciously discern where the need for change lies. And once this is discerned it is easier to focus your attention and maintain your consciousness in this area of correction. For example, the question of tolerance: This is something that must be worked at. There are many issues and levels of reactions that cause intolerance; there are things that are deep within, that have to do with who we are, how we were raised, how we were brought up, what we believe and think; patterns that need to be changed, certain reactions and reactive conditions that we find ourselves in. So we need to recognize these areas, and it is okay to ask for help from the spirit presence within, which will definitely help to guide, to pinpoint those areas of conflict, those areas of doubt, those are of weaknesses and confusion; to help you to see more clearly where these issues stem from and how you can heal those issues, and go beyond them emotionally into a more balanced working relationship.

Q: JarEl, I have found that in the last twenty years, since I found the book and have become aware of angelic help, my life seems to go quite smoothly, as though they are laying out the path for me, getting me parking places and so on. Yet in the Urantia book it says that the angels are actually trying to make our lives more difficult, to give us more obstacles to overcome. Are they referring to the moral realm? It does seem as though I have more difficult mental decisions to make, on a much higher level than before. On the physical plane I don't seem to have any problems.

Comment: Maybe it is your attitude towards problems that has changed.

Q: Yes, maybe.

JarEl: This is good, for there are many other problems that need your help and attention at this time. This is part of what you are being prepared for. You have balanced out your own life situations so that you can be of service in other areas that you are being prepared for. And yes, as one grows spiritually the dimensions of reference do move on to higher realms, that the difficulties become less physical and more philosophical, or moral as you say, more spiritual, in which your decisions are much more critical to your own thinking and defining your personality to yourself. It is an area in one's spiritual development where you are receiving excellent input from your higher spirit guidance, and you are paying attention, and following the leading of his will. It is not necessary that one's physical life become devastated with conflict and difficulty by choosing a spiritual path, but it is hoped that one will be challenged to balance one's own physical needs and physical presence on this material level to deal with the much more rigorous challenges of the moral issues and philosophical decisions which must be made to turn the thinking attitude of the general public into the direction of correction, of spiritual awareness, of a more real reality, for much, too much time and precious material is being wasted on just the everyday physical living on your world, with seemingly total disregard for implications for not only one's own spiritual life, but the spiritual and social life of those you are responsible for, and ultimately the whole world at large. So yes, as you grow spiritually your implications are felt on a much greater level.

Q: JarEl, I'd like to ask about relationships on your planet of origin - like your parents, family, and close friends. Is it possible to maintain those relationships throughout your ascending career, or do all relationships fade into memory? Is there spiritual value in trying to connect? Is it better to just go through a continual flow of meeting new people ?

JarEl: Thank you for your question. Let me first say that all relationships ideally are spiritual. What this means is that all relationship have the potential to develop into a consciousness of a level of beingness between two God-knowing individuals, be it your intimate family, or the people you work with, or the people you will meet in the future. In this respect all relationships are ongoing and do not necessarily fade into memory. As a matter of fact these relationships are quite integral to the development, nurturing of your own nature, your soul and your personality, albeit that some of your relations who, for one reason or another, do not chance to survive, you will retain the memory of that relation. The surviving of the other person assures that you will have a chance to continue this relationship into not only the next life, but into eternity. And it is not uncommon for your so-called marital relationships to last on into eternity also. (A comment, not picked up by the recorder, caused great laughter.) That is also correct. But what you said about pursuing your relationships is very important because this gives the potential to increase your scope of defining yourself spiritually, and challenging what you know and believe, because as you grow into the spiritual realm where there are many, many more beings than exist on your world, it is important for you to learn to socialize with others who are not like you. So therefore do the inhabitants of the world of origin find it extremely challenging on the next worlds to socialize with those who are not like themselves. To begin to socialize on a world like Urantia where there are quite an expansive diversity in beliefs, in genetics, in governments, in ideologies, you have a marvelous opportunity to develop and hone those socializing skills of really expanding the brotherhood of man here in this life. So I would say yes, it is encouraged from a spiritual standpoint to develop as many what you would call relationships as possible.

Q: Will our ability to encompass a greater number of relationships increase as we progress on our ascending journey ?

JarEl: Not necessarily so. The only thing that is increased is the potential, because there are so many more people. You are still challenged, like you are here, to love those that are different than you, different in the color of their skin, different in their native origin, different in the way they believe in their lives, different in the way they think, different in the way they do business with you. So translating to the mansion worlds does not instantly give you an opportunity that you wouldn't otherwise have access to here. You are still challenged on the mansion worlds just as much as you are here, to let go of what is holding you back, to grow more gregarious socially, and more tolerant and more loving and learning. This is a learning process on the mansion worlds just as it is here. Fortunately, on the mansion worlds the genetic material of the system is quite consistent, so you will not necessarily be confronted with others who are totally unlike yourself. You will get to see the potential diversity of your own genetic stock on the mansion worlds, but when one goes on to the constellation headquarters where you get to see genetic stock from many other systems you will be challenged on a much greater level to accept diversity and differences, unlike that which your mind can imagine.

Comment: And yet these other beings all have the same spirit of God, so that we should learn to recognize him in the other beings.

END