careers

156:5.8Do not be­come dis­cour­aged by the dis­cov­ery that you are hu­man. Hu­man na­ture may tend to­ward evil, but it is not in­her­ently sin­ful. Be not down­cast by your fail­ure wholly to for­get some of your re­gret­table ex­pe­ri­ences. The mis­takes which you fail to for­get in time will be for­got­ten in eter­nity. Lighten your bur­dens of soul by speed­ily ac­quir­ing a long-dis­tance view of your des­tiny, a uni­verse ex­pan­sion of your ca­reer.

110:2.1When Thought Ad­justers in­dwell hu­man minds, they bring with them the model ca­reers, the ideal lives, as de­ter­mined and fore­or­dained by them­selves and the Per­son­al­ized Ad­justers of Di­vin­ing­ton, which have been cer­ti­fied by the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of Uran­tia. Thus they be­gin work with a def­i­nite and pre­de­ter­mined plan for the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment of their hu­man sub­jects, but it is not in­cum­bent upon any hu­man be­ing to ac­cept this plan. You are all sub­jects of pre­des­ti­na­tion, but it is not fore­or­dained that you must ac­cept this di­vine pre­des­ti­na­tion; you are at full lib­erty to re­ject any part or all of the Thought Ad­justers’ pro­gram. It is their mis­sion to ef­fect such mind changes and to make such spir­i­tual ad­just­ments as you may will­ingly and in­tel­li­gently au­tho­rize, to the end that they may gain more in­flu­ence over the per­son­al­ity di­rec­tion­iza­tion; but un­der no cir­cum­stances do these di­vine Mon­i­tors ever take ad­van­tage of you or in any way ar­bi­trar­ily in­flu­ence you in your choices and de­ci­sions. The Ad­justers re­spect your sov­er­eignty of per­son­al­ity; they are al­ways sub­servient to your will.

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.

155:6.11Never for­get there is only one ad­ven­ture which is more sat­is­fy­ing and thrilling than the at­tempt to dis­cover the will of the liv­ing God, and that is the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of hon­estly try­ing to do that di­vine will. And fail not to re­mem­ber that the will of God can be done in any earthly oc­cu­pa­tion. Some call­ings are not holy and oth­ers sec­u­lar. All things are sa­cred in the lives of those who are spirit led; that is, sub­or­di­nated to truth, en­no­bled by love, dom­i­nated by mercy, and re­strained by fair­ness—jus­tice. The spirit which my Fa­ther and I shall send into the world is not only the Spirit of Truth but also the spirit of ide­al­is­tic beauty.

192:2.13Then he walked and talked with the Al­pheus twins, James and Ju­das, and speak­ing to both of them, he asked, “James and Ju­das, do you be­lieve in me?” And when they both an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, we do be­lieve,” he said: “I will soon leave you. You see that I have al­ready left you in the flesh. I tarry only a short time in this form be­fore I go to my Fa­ther. You be­lieve in me—you are my apos­tles, and you al­ways will be. Go on be­liev­ing and re­mem­ber­ing your as­so­ci­a­tion with me, when I am gone, and af­ter you have, per­chance, re­turned to the work you used to do be­fore you came to live with me. Never al­low a change in your out­ward work to in­flu­ence your al­le­giance. Have faith in God to the end of your days on earth. Never for­get that, when you are a faith son of God, all up­right work of the realm is sa­cred. Noth­ing which a son of God does can be com­mon. Do your work, there­fore, from this time on, as for God. And when you are through on this world, I have other and bet­ter worlds where you shall like­wise work for me. And in all of this work, on this world and on other worlds, I will work with you, and my spirit shall dwell within you.”

20:6.3As Je­sus worked on your world as the car­pen­ter’s son, so do other Par­a­dise Sons la­bor in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties on their be­stowal plan­ets. You could hardly think of a vo­ca­tion that has not been fol­lowed by some Par­a­dise Son in the course of his be­stowal on some one of the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets of time.

110:3.4I can­not but ob­serve that so many of you spend so much time and thought on mere tri­fles of liv­ing, while you al­most wholly over­look the more es­sen­tial re­al­i­ties of ev­er­last­ing im­port, those very ac­com­plish­ments which are con­cerned with the de­vel­op­ment of a more har­mo­nious work­ing agree­ment be­tween you and your Ad­justers. The great goal of hu­man ex­is­tence is to at­tune to the di­vin­ity of the in­dwelling Ad­juster; the great achieve­ment of mor­tal life is the at­tain­ment of a true and un­der­stand­ing con­se­cra­tion to the eter­nal aims of the di­vine spirit who waits and works within your mind. But a de­voted and de­ter­mined ef­fort to re­al­ize eter­nal des­tiny is wholly com­pat­i­ble with a light­hearted and joy­ous life and with a suc­cess­ful and hon­or­able ca­reer on earth. Co-op­er­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster does not en­tail self-tor­ture, mock piety, or hyp­o­crit­i­cal and os­ten­ta­tious self-abase­ment; the ideal life is one of lov­ing ser­vice rather than an ex­is­tence of fear­ful ap­pre­hen­sion.

149:4.3On this same oc­ca­sion the Mas­ter talked to the group about the de­sir­abil­ity of pos­sess­ing well-bal­anced char­ac­ters. He rec­og­nized that it was nec­es­sary for most men to de­vote them­selves to the mas­tery of some vo­ca­tion, but he de­plored all ten­dency to­ward over­spe­cial­iza­tion, to­ward be­com­ing nar­row-minded and cir­cum­scribed in life’s ac­tiv­i­ties. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that any virtue, if car­ried to ex­tremes, may be­come a vice. Je­sus al­ways preached tem­per­ance and taught con­sis­tency—pro­por­tion­ate ad­just­ment of life prob­lems. He pointed out that over­much sym­pa­thy and pity may de­gen­er­ate into se­ri­ous emo­tional in­sta­bil­ity; that en­thu­si­asm may drive on into fa­nati­cism. He dis­cussed one of their for­mer as­so­ciates whose imag­i­na­tion had led him off into vi­sion­ary and im­prac­ti­cal un­der­tak­ings. At the same time he warned them against the dan­gers of the dull­ness of over­con­ser­va­tive medi­ocrity.

149:4.6While it is true that many men and women must as­sid­u­ously ap­ply them­selves to some def­i­nite pur­suit as a liveli­hood vo­ca­tion, it is nev­er­the­less wholly de­sir­able that hu­man be­ings should cul­ti­vate a wide range of cul­tural fa­mil­iar­ity with life as it is lived on earth. Truly ed­u­cated per­sons are not sat­is­fied with re­main­ing in ig­no­rance of the lives and do­ings of their fel­lows.

155:1.4“In all that you do, be­come not one-sided and over­spe­cial­ized. The Phar­isees who seek our de­struc­tion ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice. They have be­come so nar­rowed by tra­di­tion that they are blinded by prej­u­dice and hard­ened by fear. Con­sider the Greeks, who have a sci­ence with­out re­li­gion, while the Jews have a re­li­gion with­out sci­ence. And when men be­come thus mis­led into ac­cept­ing a nar­row and con­fused dis­in­te­gra­tion of truth, their only hope of sal­va­tion is to be­come truth-co-or­di­nated—con­verted.

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.