achievement

• are deeply interested in our real a. on earth

110:1.3Al­though the di­vine in­dwellers are chiefly con­cerned with your spir­i­tual prepa­ra­tion for the next stage of the never-end­ing ex­is­tence, they are also deeply in­ter­ested in your tem­po­ral wel­fare and in your real achieve­ments on earth. They are de­lighted to con­tribute to your health, hap­pi­ness, and true pros­per­ity. They are not in­dif­fer­ent to your suc­cess in all mat­ters of plan­e­tary ad­vance­ment which are not in­im­i­cal to your fu­ture life of eter­nal prog­ress.

• cannot materially alter our career struggles
• permit Adjusters to fight with us and for us

111:7.2May I ad­mon­ish you to heed the dis­tant echo of the Ad­juster’s faith­ful call to your soul? The in­dwelling Ad­juster can­not stop or even ma­te­ri­ally al­ter your ca­reer strug­gle of time; the Ad­juster can­not lessen the hard­ships of life as you jour­ney on through this world of toil. The di­vine in­dweller can only pa­tiently for­bear while you fight the bat­tle of life as it is lived on your planet; but you could, if you only would—as you work and worry, as you fight and toil—per­mit the valiant Ad­juster to fight with you and for you. You could be so com­forted and in­spired, so en­thralled and in­trigued, if you would only al­low the Ad­juster con­stantly to bring forth the pic­tures of the real mo­tive, the fi­nal aim, and the eter­nal pur­pose of all this dif­fi­cult, up­hill strug­gle with the com­mon­place prob­lems of your pres­ent ma­te­rial world.

25:7.2Though you will have earnest and pro­gres­sively dif­fi­cult tasks to per­form on the mor­ontia train­ing worlds of Neb­a­don, you will al­ways be pro­vided with reg­u­lar sea­sons of rest and re­ver­sion. Through­out the jour­ney to Par­a­dise there will al­ways be time for rest and spirit play; and in the ca­reer of light and life there is al­ways time for wor­ship and new achieve­ment.

38:7.5When as­signed to a planet, cheru­bim en­ter the lo­cal courses of train­ing, in­clud­ing a study of plan­e­tary us­ages and lan­guages. The min­is­ter­ing spir­its of time are all bilin­gual, speak­ing the lan­guage of the lo­cal uni­verse of their ori­gin and that of their na­tive super­uni­verse. By study in the schools of the realms they ac­quire ad­di­tional tongues. Cheru­bim and sa­no­bim, like ser­a­phim and all other or­ders of spirit be­ings, are con­tin­u­ously en­gaged in ef­forts at self-im­prove­ment. Only such as the sub­or­di­nate be­ings of power con­trol and en­ergy di­rec­tion are in­ca­pable of pro­gres­sion; all crea­tures hav­ing ac­tual or po­ten­tial per­son­al­ity vo­li­tion seek new achieve­ments.

156:5.7Force­ful am­bi­tion, in­tel­li­gent judg­ment, and sea­soned wis­dom are the es­sen­tials of ma­te­rial suc­cess. Lead­er­ship is de­pen­dent on nat­u­ral abil­ity, dis­cre­tion, will power, and de­ter­mi­na­tion. Spir­i­tual des­tiny is de­pen­dent on faith, love, and de­vo­tion to truth—hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness—the whole­hearted de­sire to find God and to be like him.

44:8.3There is no caste in the ranks of spirit ar­ti­sans. No mat­ter how lowly your ori­gin, if you have abil­ity and the gift of ex­pres­sion, you will gain ad­e­quate rec­og­ni­tion and re­ceive due ap­pre­ci­a­tion as you as­cend up­ward in the scale of mor­ontia ex­pe­ri­ence and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. There can be no hand­i­cap of hu­man hered­ity or de­pri­va­tion of mor­tal en­vi­ron­ment which the mor­ontia ca­reer will not fully com­pen­sate and wholly re­move. And all such sat­is­fac­tions of artis­tic achieve­ment and ex­pres­sion­ful self-re­al­iza­tion will be ef­fected by your own per­sonal ef­forts in pro­gres­sive ad­vance­ment. At last the as­pi­ra­tions of evo­lu­tion­ary medi­ocrity may be re­al­ized. While the Gods do not ar­bi­trar­ily be­stow tal­ents and abil­ity upon the chil­dren of time, they do pro­vide for the at­tain­ment of the sat­is­fac­tion of all their no­ble long­ings and for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of all hu­man hunger for su­per­nal self-ex­pres­sion.

39:4.73. In­ter­preters of Cos­mic Cit­i­zen­ship. When as­cend­ing mor­tals have com­pleted the man­sion world train­ing, the first stu­dent ap­pren­tice­ship in the uni­verse ca­reer, they are per­mit­ted to en­joy the tran­sient sat­is­fac­tions of rel­a­tive ma­tu­rity—cit­i­zen­ship on the sys­tem cap­i­tal. While the at­tain­ment of each as­cen­dant goal is a fac­tual achieve­ment, in the larger sense such goals are sim­ply mile­stones on the long as­cend­ing path to Par­a­dise. But how­ever rel­a­tive such suc­cesses may be, no evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture is ever de­nied the full though tran­sient sat­is­fac­tion of goal at­tain­ment. Ever and anon there is a pause in the Par­a­dise as­cent, a short breath­ing spell, dur­ing which uni­verse hori­zons stand still, crea­ture sta­tus is sta­tion­ary, and the per­son­al­ity tastes the sweet­ness of goal ful­fill­ment.

28:6.18The uni­ver­sal econ­omy is based on in­take and out­put; through­out the eter­nal ca­reer you will never en­counter mo­not­ony of in­ac­tion or stag­na­tion of per­son­al­ity. Prog­ress is made pos­si­ble by in­her­ent mo­tion, ad­vance­ment grows out of the di­vine ca­pac­ity for ac­tion, and achieve­ment is the child of imag­i­na­tive ad­ven­ture. But in­her­ent in this ca­pac­ity for achieve­ment is the re­spon­si­bil­ity of ethics, the ne­ces­sity for rec­og­niz­ing that the world and the uni­verse are filled with a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ing types of be­ings. All of this mag­nif­i­cent cre­ation, in­clud­ing your­self, was not made just for you. This is not an ego­cen­tric uni­verse. The Gods have de­creed, “It is more blessed to give than to re­ceive,” and said your Mas­ter Son, “He who would be great­est among you let him be server of all.”

147:3.3In speak­ing to those as­sem­bled, Je­sus said: “Many of you are here, sick and af­flicted, be­cause of your many years of wrong liv­ing. Some suf­fer from the ac­ci­dents of time, oth­ers as a re­sult of the mis­takes of their fore­bears, while some of you strug­gle un­der the hand­i­caps of the im­per­fect con­di­tions of your tem­po­ral ex­is­tence. But my Fa­ther works, and I would work, to im­prove your earthly state but more es­pe­cially to in­sure your eter­nal es­tate. None of us can do much to change the dif­fi­cul­ties of life un­less we dis­cover the Fa­ther in heaven so wills. Af­ter all, we are all be­holden to do the will of the Eter­nal. If you could all be healed of your phys­i­cal af­flic­tions, you would in­deed mar­vel, but it is even greater that you should be cleansed of all spir­i­tual dis­ease and find your­selves healed of all moral in­fir­mi­ties. You are all God’s chil­dren; you are the sons of the heav­enly Fa­ther. The bonds of time may seem to af­flict you, but the God of eter­nity loves you. And when the time of judg­ment shall come, fear not, you shall all find, not only jus­tice, but an abun­dance of mercy. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you: He who hears the gospel of the king­dom and be­lieves in this teach­ing of son­ship with God, has eter­nal life; al­ready are such be­liev­ers pass­ing from judg­ment and death to light and life. And the hour is com­ing in which even those who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the res­ur­rec­tion.”

48:7.2725. Great­ness lies not so much in pos­sess­ing strength as in mak­ing a wise and di­vine use of such strength.

48:4.13Even mor­tal hu­mor be­comes most hearty when it de­picts episodes af­fect­ing those just a lit­tle be­neath one’s pres­ent de­vel­op­men­tal state, or when it por­trays one’s sup­posed su­pe­ri­ors falling vic­tim to the ex­pe­ri­ences which are com­monly as­so­ci­ated with sup­posed in­fe­ri­ors. You of Uran­tia have al­lowed much that is at once vul­gar and un­kind to be­come con­fused with your hu­mor, but on the whole, you are to be con­grat­u­lated on a com­par­a­tively keen sense of hu­mor. Some of your races have a rich vein of it and are greatly helped in their earthly ca­reers thereby. Ap­par­ently you re­ceived much in the way of hu­mor from your Adamic in­her­i­tance, much more than was se­cured of ei­ther mu­sic or art.

48:4.14All Sa­ta­nia, dur­ing times of play, those times when its in­hab­i­tants re­fresh­ingly res­ur­rect the mem­o­ries of a lower stage of ex­is­tence, is ed­i­fied by the pleas­ant hu­mor of a corps of re­ver­sion di­rec­tors from Uran­tia. The sense of ce­les­tial hu­mor we have with us al­ways, even when en­gaged in the most dif­fi­cult of as­sign­ments. It helps to avoid an overde­vel­op­ment of the no­tion of one’s self-im­por­tance. But we do not give rein to it freely, as you might say, “have fun,” ex­cept when we are in re­cess from the se­ri­ous as­sign­ments of our re­spec­tive or­ders.

48:6.37You will learn that you in­crease your bur­dens and de­crease the like­li­hood of suc­cess by tak­ing your­self too se­ri­ously. Noth­ing can take prece­dence over the work of your sta­tus sphere—this world or the next. Very im­por­tant is the work of prepa­ra­tion for the next higher sphere, but noth­ing equals the im­por­tance of the work of the world in which you are ac­tu­ally liv­ing. But though the work is im­por­tant, the self is not. When you feel im­por­tant, you lose en­ergy to the wear and tear of ego dig­nity so that there is lit­tle en­ergy left to do the work. Self-im­por­tance, not work-im­por­tance, ex­hausts im­ma­ture crea­tures; it is the self el­e­ment that ex­hausts, not the ef­fort to achieve. You can do im­por­tant work if you do not be­come self-im­por­tant; you can do sev­eral things as eas­ily as one if you leave your­self out. Va­ri­ety is rest­ful; mo­not­ony is what wears and ex­hausts. Day af­ter day is alike—just life or the al­ter­na­tive of death.

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.

48:6.35From them you will learn to let pres­sure de­velop sta­bil­ity and cer­tainty; to be faith­ful and earnest and, withal, cheer­ful; to ac­cept chal­lenges with­out com­plaint and to face dif­fi­cul­ties and un­cer­tain­ties with­out fear. They will ask: If you fail, will you rise in­domitably to try anew? If you suc­ceed, will you main­tain a well-bal­anced poise—a sta­bi­lized and spir­i­tu­al­ized at­ti­tude—through­out ev­ery ef­fort in the long strug­gle to break the fet­ters of ma­te­rial in­er­tia, to at­tain the free­dom of spirit ex­is­tence?

• survival decision not determined by

25:1.6The Ha­vona Servi­tals and the Grad­u­ate Guides man­i­fest a tran­scen­dent de­vo­tion to their work and a touch­ing af­fec­tion for one an­other, an af­fec­tion which, while spir­i­tual, you could only un­der­stand by com­par­i­son with the phe­nom­e­non of hu­man love. There is di­vine pathos in the sep­a­ra­tion of the servi­tals from the guides, as so of­ten oc­curs when the servi­tals are dis­patched on mis­sions be­yond the lim­its of the cen­tral uni­verse; but they go with joy and not with sor­row. The sat­is­fy­ing joy of high duty is the eclips­ing emo­tion of spir­i­tual be­ings. Sor­row can­not ex­ist in the face of the con­scious­ness of di­vine duty faith­fully per­formed. And when man’s as­cend­ing soul stands be­fore the Su­preme Judge, the de­ci­sion of eter­nal im­port will not be de­ter­mined by ma­te­rial suc­cesses or quan­ti­ta­tive achieve­ments; the ver­dict re­ver­ber­at­ing through the high courts de­clares: “Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant; you have been faith­ful over a few es­sen­tials; you shall be made ruler over uni­verse re­al­i­ties.”

• righteousness yields satisfactions transcending material rewards

39:4.13To the in­hab­ited worlds the quick­en­ers of moral­ity por­tray mor­tal life as an un­bro­ken chain of many links. Your short so­journ on Uran­tia, on this sphere of mor­tal in­fancy, is only a sin­gle link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across uni­verses and through the eter­nal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing this life that is im­por­tant. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so im­por­tant as the way in which you do this work. There is no ma­te­rial re­ward for righ­teous liv­ing, but there is pro­found sat­is­fac­tion—con­scious­ness of achieve­ment—and this tran­scends any con­ceiv­able ma­te­rial re­ward.

• utilize energy of spiritual drive for

127:6.12Je­sus is rapidly be­com­ing a man, not just a young man but an adult. He has learned well to bear re­spon­si­bil­ity. He knows how to carry on in the face of dis­ap­point­ment. He bears up bravely when his plans are thwarted and his pur­poses tem­porar­ily de­feated. He has learned how to be fair and just even in the face of in­jus­tice. He is learn­ing how to ad­just his ide­als of spir­i­tual liv­ing to the prac­ti­cal de­mands of earthly ex­is­tence. He is learn­ing how to plan for the achieve­ment of a higher and dis­tant goal of ide­al­ism while he toils earnestly for the at­tain­ment of a nearer and im­me­di­ate goal of ne­ces­sity. He is steadily ac­quir­ing the art of ad­just­ing his as­pi­ra­tions to the com­mon­place de­mands of the hu­man oc­ca­sion. He has very nearly mas­tered the tech­nique of uti­liz­ing the en­ergy of the spir­i­tual drive to turn the mech­a­nism of ma­te­rial achieve­ment. He is slowly learn­ing how to live the heav­enly life while he con­tin­ues on with the earthly ex­is­tence. More and more he de­pends upon the ul­ti­mate guid­ance of his heav­enly Fa­ther while he as­sumes the fa­therly role of guid­ing and di­rect­ing the chil­dren of his earth fam­ily. He is be­com­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in the skill­ful wrest­ing of vic­tory from the very jaws of de­feat; he is learn­ing how to trans­form the dif­fi­cul­ties of time into the tri­umphs of eter­nity.

• work persistently to better our lives

148:5.3“But, my son, you should know that the Fa­ther does not pur­posely af­flict his chil­dren. Man brings down upon him­self un­nec­es­sary af­flic­tion as a re­sult of his per­sis­tent re­fusal to walk in the bet­ter ways of the di­vine will. Af­flic­tion is po­ten­tial in evil, but much of it has been pro­duced by sin and in­iq­uity. Many un­usual events have tran­spired on this world, and it is not strange that all think­ing men should be per­plexed by the scenes of suf­fer­ing and af­flic­tion which they wit­ness. But of one thing you may be sure: The Fa­ther does not send af­flic­tion as an ar­bi­trary pun­ish­ment for wrong­do­ing. The im­per­fec­tions and hand­i­caps of evil are in­her­ent; the penal­ties of sin are in­ev­i­ta­ble; the de­stroy­ing con­se­quences of in­iq­uity are in­ex­orable. Man should not blame God for those af­flic­tions which are the nat­u­ral re­sult of the life which he chooses to live; nei­ther should man com­plain of those ex­pe­ri­ences which are a part of life as it is lived on this world. It is the Fa­ther’s will that mor­tal man should work per­sis­tently and con­sis­tently to­ward the bet­ter­ment of his es­tate on earth. In­tel­li­gent ap­pli­ca­tion would en­able man to over­come much of his earthly mis­ery.

• work persistently to better our lives

149:5.3“Much of man’s sor­row is born of the dis­ap­point­ment of his am­bi­tions and the wound­ing of his pride. Al­though men owe a duty to them­selves to make the best of their lives on earth, hav­ing thus sin­cerely ex­erted them­selves, they should cheer­fully ac­cept their lot and ex­er­cise in­ge­nu­ity in mak­ing the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s trou­bles take ori­gin in the fear soil of his own nat­u­ral heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pur­sues.’ ‘The wicked are like the trou­bled sea, for it can­not rest, but its wa­ters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’

• requires working in channel of wealth

160:4.10It re­quires in­tel­li­gence to se­cure one’s share of the de­sir­able things of life. It is wholly er­ro­neous to sup­pose that faith­ful­ness in do­ing one’s daily work will in­sure the re­wards of wealth. Bar­ring the oc­ca­sional and ac­ci­den­tal ac­quire­ment of wealth, the ma­te­rial re­wards of the tem­po­ral life are found to flow in cer­tain well-or­ga­nized chan­nels, and only those who have ac­cess to these chan­nels may ex­pect to be well re­warded for their tem­po­ral ef­forts. Pov­erty must ever be the lot of all men who seek for wealth in iso­lated and in­di­vid­ual chan­nels. Wise plan­ning, there­fore, be­comes the one thing es­sen­tial to worldly pros­per­ity. Suc­cess re­quires not only de­vo­tion to one’s work but also that one should func­tion as a part of some one of the chan­nels of ma­te­rial wealth. If you are un­wise, you can be­stow a de­voted life upon your gen­er­a­tion with­out ma­te­rial re­ward; if you are an ac­ci­den­tal ben­e­fi­ciary of the flow of wealth, you may roll in lux­ury even though you have done noth­ing worth while for your fel­low men.

• utilize energy of spiritual drive for

166:3.8Even 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.

• some lives too great to descend to mere success

196:3.32Some men’s lives are too great and no­ble to de­scend to the low level of be­ing merely suc­cess­ful. The an­i­mal must adapt it­self to the en­vi­ron­ment, but the re­li­gious man tran­scends his en­vi­ron­ment and in this way es­capes the lim­i­ta­tions of the pres­ent ma­te­rial world through this in­sight of di­vine love. This con­cept of love gen­er­ates in the soul of man that super­an­i­mal ef­fort to find truth, beauty, and good­ness; and when he does find them, he is glo­ri­fied in their em­brace; he is con­sumed with the de­sire to live them, to do righ­teous­ness.

171:8.101. Abil­ity is the prac­ti­cal mea­sure of life’s op­por­tu­ni­ties. You will never be held re­spon­si­ble for the ac­com­plish­ment of that which is be­yond your abil­i­ties.

115:7.2All this must be ac­cord­ing to the Fa­ther’s plan, which has pred­i­cated fi­nite prog­ress upon ef­fort, crea­ture achieve­ment upon per­se­ver­ance, and per­son­al­ity de­vel­op­ment upon faith. By thus or­dain­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence-evo­lu­tion of the Su­preme, the Fa­ther has made it pos­si­ble for fi­nite crea­tures to ex­ist in the uni­verses and, by ex­pe­ri­en­tial pro­gres­sion, some­time to at­tain the di­vin­ity of Su­prem­acy.

110:6.19There is only an in­di­rect re­la­tion be­tween cos­mic-cir­cle at­tain­ment and ac­tual spir­i­tual re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence; such at­tain­ments are re­cip­ro­cal and there­fore mu­tu­ally ben­e­fi­cial. Purely spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment may have lit­tle to do with plan­e­tary ma­te­rial pros­per­ity, but cir­cle at­tain­ment al­ways aug­ments the po­ten­tial of hu­man suc­cess and mor­tal achieve­ment.

28:6.17Ser­vice—pur­pose­ful ser­vice, not slav­ery—is pro­duc­tive of the high­est sat­is­fac­tion and is ex­pres­sive of the di­vinest dig­nity. Ser­vice—more ser­vice, in­creased ser­vice, dif­fi­cult ser­vice, ad­ven­tur­ous ser­vice, and at last di­vine and per­fect ser­vice—is the goal of time and the des­ti­na­tion of space. But ever will the play cy­cles of time al­ter­nate with the ser­vice cy­cles of prog­ress. And af­ter the ser­vice of time there fol­lows the super­ser­vice of eter­nity. Dur­ing the play of time you should en­vi­sion the work of eter­nity, even as you will, dur­ing the ser­vice of eter­nity, rem­i­nisce the play of time.

26:5.5Time is of lit­tle con­se­quence on the Ha­vona cir­cles. In a lim­ited man­ner it en­ters into the pos­si­bil­i­ties of ad­vance­ment, but achieve­ment is the fi­nal and su­preme test. The very mo­ment your super­aphic as­so­ciate deems you to be com­pe­tent to pass in­ward to the next cir­cle, you will be taken be­fore the twelve ad­ju­tants of the sev­enth Cir­cuit Spirit. Here you will be re­quired to pass the tests of the cir­cle de­ter­mined by the super­uni­verse of your ori­gin and by the sys­tem of your na­tiv­ity. The di­vin­ity at­tain­ment of this cir­cle takes place on the pi­lot world and con­sists in the spir­i­tual rec­og­ni­tion and re­al­iza­tion of the Mas­ter Spirit of the as­cend­ing pil­grim’s super­uni­verse.

20:8.3The Teacher Sons com­pose the fac­ul­ties who ad­min­is­ter all ex­am­i­na­tions and con­duct all tests for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of all sub­or­di­nate phases of uni­verse ser­vice, from the du­ties of out­post sen­tinels to those of star stu­dents. They con­duct an age­long course of train­ing, rang­ing from the plan­e­tary courses up to the high Col­lege of Wis­dom lo­cated on Sal­ving­ton. Rec­og­ni­tion in­dica­tive of ef­fort and at­tain­ment is granted to all, as­cend­ing mor­tal or am­bi­tious cheru­bim, who com­plete these ad­ven­tures in wis­dom and truth.

13:1.6This sphere also holds the se­crets of the na­ture, pur­pose, and ac­tiv­i­ties of all other forms of Fa­ther frag­ments, of the Grav­ity Mes­sen­gers, and of hosts of other be­ings un­re­vealed to you. It is highly prob­a­ble that those truths per­tain­ing to Di­vin­ing­ton which are with­held from me, if re­vealed, would merely con­fuse and hand­i­cap me in my pres­ent work, and still again, per­haps they are be­yond the con­cep­tual ca­pac­ity of my or­der of be­ing.

39:5.9In the more ad­vanced plan­e­tary ages these ser­a­phim en­hance man’s ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the truth that un­cer­tainty is the se­cret of con­tented con­ti­nu­ity. They help the mor­tal philoso­phers to re­al­ize that, when ig­no­rance is es­sen­tial to suc­cess, it would be a colos­sal blun­der for the crea­ture to know the fu­ture. They heighten man’s taste for the sweet­ness of un­cer­tainty, for the ro­mance and charm of the in­def­i­nite and un­known fu­ture.

138:7.1Je­sus had planned for a quiet mis­sion­ary cam­paign of five months’ per­sonal work. He did not tell the apos­tles how long this was to last; they worked from week to week. And early on this first day of the week, just as he was about to an­nounce this to his twelve apos­tles, Si­mon Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee, and Ju­das Is­car­iot came to have pri­vate con­verse with him. Tak­ing Je­sus aside, Pe­ter made bold to say: “Mas­ter, we come at the be­hest of our as­so­ciates to in­quire whether the time is not now ripe to en­ter into the king­dom. And will you pro­claim the king­dom at Ca­per­naum, or are we to move on to Je­ru­sa­lem? And when shall we learn, each of us, the po­si­tions we are to oc­cupy with you in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom—” and Pe­ter would have gone on ask­ing fur­ther ques­tions, but Je­sus raised an ad­mon­i­tory hand and stopped him. And beck­on­ing the other apos­tles stand­ing near by to join them, Je­sus said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, how long shall I bear with you! Have I not made it plain to you that my king­dom is not of this world? I have told you many times that I have not come to sit on David’s throne, and now how is it that you are in­quir­ing which place each of you will oc­cupy in the Fa­ther’s king­dom? Can you not per­ceive that I have called you as am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom? Do you not un­der­stand that soon, very soon, you are to rep­re­sent me in the world and in the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom, even as I now rep­re­sent my Fa­ther who is in heaven? Can it be that I have cho­sen you and in­structed you as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, and yet you do not com­pre­hend the na­ture and sig­nif­i­cance of this com­ing king­dom of di­vine pre-em­i­nence in the hearts of men? My friends, hear me once more. Ban­ish from your minds this idea that my king­dom is a rule of power or a reign of glory. In­deed, all power in heaven and on earth will pres­ently be given into my hands, but it is not the Fa­ther’s will that we use this di­vine en­dow­ment to glo­rify our­selves dur­ing this age. In an­other age you shall in­deed sit with me in power and glory, but it be­hooves us now to sub­mit to the will of the Fa­ther and to go forth in hum­ble obe­di­ence to ex­e­cute his bid­ding on earth.”

• partnership technique quadruples possibilities

43:8.117. And then, cli­max all of these pro­ce­dures of mul­ti­so­cial­iza­tion with the con­cur­rent en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual in­sight as it per­tains to the aug­men­ta­tion of all phases of per­sonal en­dow­ment through group spir­i­tual as­so­ci­a­tion and mor­ontia co-or­di­na­tion. In­tel­lec­tu­ally, so­cially, and spir­i­tu­ally two moral crea­tures do not merely dou­ble their per­sonal po­ten­tials of uni­verse achieve­ment by part­ner­ship tech­nique; they more nearly quadru­ple their at­tain­ment and ac­com­plish­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties.

• depends on wisdom, charm that wins co-operation

160:1.9Even though you are ef­fec­tively armed to meet the dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions of life, you can hardly ex­pect suc­cess un­less you are equipped with that wis­dom of mind and charm of per­son­al­ity which en­able you to win the hearty sup­port and co-op­er­a­tion of your fel­lows. You can­not hope for a large mea­sure of suc­cess in ei­ther sec­u­lar or re­li­gious work un­less you can learn how to per­suade your fel­lows, to pre­vail with men. You sim­ply must have tact and tol­er­ance.

• accomplish more permanent things by working with brethren

181:2.22“If you would learn to work with your breth­ren, you might ac­com­plish more per­ma­nent things, but if you find your­self go­ing off in quest of those who think as you do, in that event ded­i­cate your life to prov­ing that the God-know­ing dis­ci­ple can be­come a king­dom builder even when alone in the world and wholly iso­lated from his fel­low be­liev­ers. I know you will be faith­ful to the end, and I will some day wel­come you to the en­larged ser­vice of my king­dom on high.”

54:2.3Lu­cifer’s folly was the at­tempt to do the non­doable, to short-cir­cuit time in an ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verse. Lu­cifer’s crime was the at­tempted cre­ative dis­en­fran­chise­ment of ev­ery per­son­al­ity in Sa­ta­nia, the un­rec­og­nized abridg­ment of the crea­ture’s per­sonal par­tic­i­pa­tion—free­will par­tic­i­pa­tion—in the long evo­lu­tion­ary strug­gle to at­tain the sta­tus of light and life both in­di­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively. In so do­ing this one­time Sov­er­eign of your sys­tem set the tem­po­ral pur­pose of his own will di­rectly athwart the eter­nal pur­pose of God’s will as it is re­vealed in the be­stowal of free will upon all per­sonal crea­tures. The Lu­cifer re­bel­lion thus threat­ened the max­i­mum pos­si­ble in­fringe­ment of the free­will choice of the as­cend­ers and servers of the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia—a threat forever­more to de­prive ev­ery one of these be­ings of the thrilling ex­pe­ri­ence of con­tribut­ing some­thing per­sonal and unique to the slowly erect­ing mon­u­ment to ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom which will some­time ex­ist as the per­fected sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia. Thus does the Lu­cifer man­i­festo, mas­querad­ing in the ha­bil­i­ments of lib­erty, stand forth in the clear light of rea­son as a mon­u­men­tal threat to con­sum­mate the theft of per­sonal lib­erty and to do it on a scale that has been ap­proached only twice in all the his­tory of Neb­a­don.

34:6.5The di­vine Spirit is the source of con­tin­ual min­istry and en­cour­age­ment to the chil­dren of men. Your power and achieve­ment is “ac­cord­ing to his mercy, through the re­new­ing of the Spirit.” Spir­i­tual life, like phys­i­cal en­ergy, is con­sumed. Spir­i­tual ef­fort re­sults in rel­a­tive spir­i­tual ex­haus­tion. The whole as­cen­dant ex­pe­ri­ence is real as well as spir­i­tual; there­fore, it is truly writ­ten, “It is the Spirit that quick­ens.” “The Spirit gives life.”

67:3.6Through­out the seven cru­cial years of the Cali­gas­tia re­bel­lion, Van was wholly de­voted to the work of min­istry to his loyal army of men, mid­way­ers, and an­gels. The spir­i­tual in­sight and moral stead­fast­ness which en­abled Van to main­tain such an un­shak­able at­ti­tude of loy­alty to the uni­verse gov­ern­ment was the prod­uct of clear think­ing, wise rea­son­ing, log­i­cal judg­ment, sin­cere mo­ti­va­tion, un­selfish pur­pose, in­tel­li­gent loy­alty, ex­pe­ri­en­tial mem­ory, dis­ci­plined char­ac­ter, and the un­ques­tion­ing ded­i­ca­tion of his per­son­al­ity to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise.

118:5.2In the be­gin­ning the Fa­ther does all, but as the pan­o­rama of eter­nity un­folds in re­sponse to the will and man­dates of the In­fi­nite, it be­comes in­creas­ingly ap­par­ent that crea­tures, even men, are to be­come God’s part­ners in the re­al­iza­tion of fi­nal­ity of des­tiny. And this is true even in the life in the flesh; when man and God en­ter into part­ner­ship, no lim­i­ta­tion can be placed upon the fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties of such a part­ner­ship. When man re­al­izes that the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is his part­ner in eter­nal pro­gres­sion, when he fuses with the in­dwelling Fa­ther pres­ence, he has, in spirit, bro­ken the fet­ters of time and has al­ready en­tered upon the pro­gres­sions of eter­nity in the quest for the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.