The Urantia Book

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4 paragraphs · about 2 minutes · 3 chapters

The paragraphs in the index’s own groups, a chapter to each, in the order the index prints them, and in the order of the book within each. A paragraph read in an earlier chapter is named in one line.

capacity for higher celestial ministry doesn’t necessarily imply ability to function on lower levels 1 paragraph

39:0.10Hu­man be­ings some­times find it hard to un­der­stand that a cre­ated ca­pac­ity for higher-level min­istry does not nec­es­sar­ily im­ply abil­ity to func­tion on rel­a­tively lower ser­vice lev­els. Man be­gins life as a help­less in­fant; hence ev­ery mor­tal at­tain­ment must em­brace all ex­pe­ri­en­tial pre­req­ui­sites; ser­a­phim have no such pread­ult life—no child­hood. They are, how­ever, ex­pe­ri­en­tial crea­tures, and by ex­pe­ri­ence and through ad­di­tional ed­u­ca­tion they can aug­ment their di­vine and in­her­ent en­dow­ment of abil­ity by the ex­pe­ri­en­tial ac­quire­ment of func­tional skill in one or more of the se­raphic ser­vices.

inherent capacities cannot be exceeded 1 paragraph

48:7.53. In­her­ent ca­pac­i­ties can­not be ex­ceeded; a pint can never hold a quart. The spirit con­cept can­not be me­chan­i­cally forced into the ma­te­rial mem­ory mold.

sources are inherent aptitude, Adjuster leading, help of spirit artisans 2 paragraphs

44:8.2There are three pos­si­ble sources of spe­cial hu­man abil­ity: At the bot­tom al­ways there ex­ists the nat­u­ral or in­her­ent ap­ti­tude. Spe­cial abil­ity is never an ar­bi­trary gift of the Gods; there is al­ways an an­ces­tral foun­da­tion for ev­ery out­stand­ing tal­ent. In ad­di­tion to this nat­u­ral abil­ity, or rather sup­ple­men­tal thereto, there may be con­tributed the lead­ings of the Thought Ad­juster in those in­di­vid­u­als whose in­dwelling Ad­justers may have had ac­tual and bona fide ex­pe­ri­ences along such lines on other worlds and in other mor­tal crea­tures. In those cases where both the hu­man mind and the in­dwelling Ad­juster are un­usu­ally skill­ful, the spirit ar­ti­sans may be del­e­gated to act as har­mo­niz­ers of these tal­ents and oth­er­wise to as­sist and in­spire these mor­tals to seek for ever-per­fect­ing ide­als and to at­tempt their en­hanced por­trayal for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion of the realm.

160:4.11Abil­ity is that which you in­herit, while skill is what you ac­quire. Life is not real to one who can­not do some one thing well, ex­pertly. Skill is one of the real sources of the sat­is­fac­tion of liv­ing. Abil­ity im­plies the gift of fore­sight, farsee­ing vi­sion. Be not de­ceived by the tempt­ing re­wards of dis­hon­est achieve­ment; be will­ing to toil for the later re­turns in­her­ent in hon­est en­deavor. The wise man is able to dis­tin­guish be­tween means and ends; oth­er­wise, some­times over­plan­ning for the fu­ture de­feats its own high pur­pose. As a plea­sure seeker you should aim al­ways to be a pro­ducer as well as a con­sumer.