character

• Gods forge out strong c. by necessity and anguish

23:2.12The con­fu­sion and tur­moil of Uran­tia do not sig­nify that the Par­a­dise Rulers lack ei­ther in­ter­est or abil­ity to man­age af­fairs dif­fer­ently. The Cre­ators are pos­sessed of full power to make Uran­tia a ver­i­ta­ble par­a­dise, but such an Eden would not con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of those strong, no­ble, and ex­pe­ri­enced char­ac­ters which the Gods are so surely forg­ing out on your world be­tween the anvils of ne­ces­sity and the ham­mers of an­guish. Your anx­i­eties and sor­rows, your tri­als and dis­ap­point­ments, are just as much a part of the di­vine plan on your sphere as are the ex­qui­site per­fec­tion and in­fi­nite adap­ta­tion of all things to their su­preme pur­pose on the worlds of the cen­tral and per­fect uni­verse.

• education and experience augment

37:6.3The meth­ods em­ployed in many of the higher schools are be­yond the hu­man con­cept of the art of teach­ing truth, but this is the keynote of the whole ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem: char­ac­ter ac­quired by en­light­ened ex­pe­ri­ence. The teach­ers pro­vide the en­light­en­ment; the uni­verse sta­tion and the as­cender’s sta­tus af­ford the op­por­tu­nity for ex­pe­ri­ence; the wise uti­liza­tion of these two aug­ments char­ac­ter.

• Jesus ennobles c.

100:7.18Je­sus was the per­fectly uni­fied hu­man per­son­al­ity. And to­day, as in Gal­i­lee, he con­tin­ues to unify mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence and to co-or­di­nate hu­man en­deav­ors. He uni­fies life, en­no­bles char­ac­ter, and sim­pli­fies ex­pe­ri­ence. He en­ters the hu­man mind to el­e­vate, trans­form, and trans­fig­ure it. It is lit­er­ally true: “If any man has Christ Je­sus within him, he is a new crea­ture; old things are pass­ing away; be­hold, all things are be­com­ing new.”

• hopeful courage contributes mightily to

127:3.14For four years their stan­dard of liv­ing had steadily de­clined; year by year they felt the pinch of in­creas­ing pov­erty. By the close of this year they faced one of the most dif­fi­cult ex­pe­ri­ences of all their up­hill strug­gles. James had not yet be­gun to earn much, and the ex­penses of a fu­neral on top of ev­ery­thing else stag­gered them. But Je­sus would only say to his anx­ious and griev­ing mother: “Mother-Mary, sor­row will not help us; we are all do­ing our best, and mother’s smile, per­chance, might even in­spire us to do bet­ter. Day by day we are strength­ened for these tasks by our hope of bet­ter days ahead.” His sturdy and prac­ti­cal op­ti­mism was truly con­ta­gious; all the chil­dren lived in an at­mo­sphere of an­tic­i­pa­tion of bet­ter times and bet­ter things. And this hope­ful cour­age con­tributed might­ily to the de­vel­op­ment of strong and no­ble char­ac­ters, in spite of the de­pres­sive­ness of their pov­erty.

• strong c. not derived from not doing wrong

140:4.6Strong char­ac­ters are not de­rived from not do­ing wrong but rather from ac­tu­ally do­ing right. Un­selfish­ness is the badge of hu­man great­ness. The high­est lev­els of self-re­al­iza­tion are at­tained by wor­ship and ser­vice. The happy and ef­fec­tive per­son is mo­ti­vated, not by fear of wrong­do­ing, but by love of right do­ing.

• growth, not building

140:4.7“By their fruits you shall know them.” Per­son­al­ity is ba­si­cally change­less; that which changes—grows—is the moral char­ac­ter. The ma­jor er­ror of mod­ern re­li­gions is neg­a­tivism. The tree which bears no fruit is “hewn down and cast into the fire.” Moral worth can­not be de­rived from mere re­pres­sion—obey­ing the in­junc­tion “Thou shalt not.” Fear and shame are un­wor­thy mo­ti­va­tions for re­li­gious liv­ing. Re­li­gion is valid only when it re­veals the fa­ther­hood of God and en­hances the broth­er­hood of men.

• growth, not building

140:8.27The three apos­tles were shocked this af­ter­noon when they re­al­ized that their Mas­ter’s re­li­gion made no pro­vi­sion for spir­i­tual self-ex­am­i­na­tion. All re­li­gions be­fore and af­ter the times of Je­sus, even Chris­tian­ity, care­fully pro­vide for con­sci­en­tious self-ex­am­i­na­tion. But not so with the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life is with­out re­li­gious in­tro­spec­tion. The car­pen­ter’s son never taught char­ac­ter build­ing; he taught char­ac­ter growth, declar­ing that the king­dom of heaven is like a mus­tard seed. But Je­sus said noth­ing which would pro­scribe self-anal­y­sis as a pre­ven­tion of con­ceited ego­tism.

• make sure of intellectual and moral foundations

156:5.2It was dur­ing this same ser­mon that Je­sus made use of his first and only para­ble hav­ing to do with his own trade—car­pen­try. In the course of his ad­mo­ni­tion to “Build well the foun­da­tions for the growth of a no­ble char­ac­ter of spir­i­tual en­dow­ments,” he said: “In or­der to yield the fruits of the spirit, you must be born of the spirit. You must be taught by the spirit and be led by the spirit if you would live the spirit-filled life among your fel­lows. But do not make the mis­take of the fool­ish car­pen­ter who wastes valu­able time squar­ing, mea­sur­ing, and smooth­ing his worm-eaten and in­wardly rot­ting tim­ber and then, when he has thus be­stowed all of his la­bor upon the un­sound beam, must re­ject it as un­fit to en­ter into the foun­da­tions of the build­ing which he would con­struct to with­stand the as­saults of time and storm. Let ev­ery man make sure that the in­tel­lec­tual and moral foun­da­tions of char­ac­ter are such as will ad­e­quately sup­port the super­struc­ture of the en­larg­ing and en­nobling spir­i­tual na­ture, which is thus to trans­form the mor­tal mind and then, in as­so­ci­a­tion with that re-cre­ated mind, is to achieve the evolve­ment of the soul of im­mor­tal des­tiny. Your spirit na­ture—the jointly cre­ated soul—is a liv­ing growth, but the mind and morals of the in­di­vid­ual are the soil from which these higher man­i­fes­ta­tions of hu­man de­vel­op­ment and di­vine des­tiny must spring. The soil of the evolv­ing soul is hu­man and ma­te­rial, but the des­tiny of this com­bined crea­ture of mind and spirit is spir­i­tual and di­vine.”

• by converting natural urges into higher longings

160:1.2Hu­man life con­sists in three great drives—urges, de­sires, and lures. Strong char­ac­ter, com­mand­ing per­son­al­ity, is only ac­quired by con­vert­ing the nat­u­ral urge of life into the so­cial art of liv­ing, by trans­form­ing pres­ent de­sires into those higher long­ings which are ca­pa­ble of last­ing at­tain­ment, while the com­mon­place lure of ex­is­tence must be trans­ferred from one’s con­ven­tional and es­tab­lished ideas to the higher realms of un­ex­plored ideas and undis­cov­ered ide­als.

• appreciation essential to development of
• marriage best develops

160:2.61. Mu­tual self-ex­pres­sion and self-un­der­stand­ing. Many no­ble hu­man im­pulses die be­cause there is no one to hear their ex­pres­sion. Truly, it is not good for man to be alone. Some de­gree of rec­og­ni­tion and a cer­tain amount of ap­pre­ci­a­tion are es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment of hu­man char­ac­ter. With­out the gen­uine love of a home, no child can achieve the full de­vel­op­ment of nor­mal char­ac­ter. Char­ac­ter is some­thing more than mere mind and morals. Of all so­cial re­la­tions cal­cu­lated to de­velop char­ac­ter, the most ef­fec­tive and ideal is the af­fec­tion­ate and un­der­stand­ing friend­ship of man and woman in the mu­tual em­brace of in­tel­li­gent wed­lock. Mar­riage, with its man­i­fold re­la­tions, is best de­signed to draw forth those pre­cious im­pulses and those higher mo­tives which are in­dis­pens­able to the de­vel­op­ment of a strong char­ac­ter. I do not hes­i­tate thus to glo­rify fam­ily life, for your Mas­ter has wisely cho­sen the fa­ther-child re­la­tion­ship as the very cor­ner­stone of this new gospel of the king­dom. And such a match­less com­mu­nity of re­la­tion­ship, man and woman in the fond em­brace of the high­est ide­als of time, is so valu­able and sat­is­fy­ing an ex­pe­ri­ence that it is worth any price, any sac­ri­fice, req­ui­site for its pos­ses­sion.

• perfected in partnership with God

186:2.9Je­sus said lit­tle dur­ing these tri­als, but he said enough to show all mor­tals the kind of hu­man char­ac­ter man can per­fect in part­ner­ship with God and to re­veal to all the uni­verse the man­ner in which God can be­come man­i­fest in the life of the crea­ture when such a crea­ture truly chooses to do the will of the Fa­ther, thus be­com­ing an ac­tive son of the liv­ing God.

48:7.31. A dis­play of spe­cial­ized skill does not sig­nify pos­ses­sion of spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity. Clev­er­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for true char­ac­ter.

34:6.6The dead the­ory of even the high­est re­li­gious doc­trines is pow­er­less to trans­form hu­man char­ac­ter or to con­trol mor­tal be­hav­ior. What the world of to­day needs is the truth which your teacher of old de­clared: “Not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit.” The seed of the­o­ret­i­cal truth is dead, the high­est moral con­cepts with­out ef­fect, un­less and un­til the di­vine Spirit breathes upon the forms of truth and quick­ens the for­mu­las of righ­teous­ness.

• unification of scientific, moral, and spiritual intuitions of cosmic mind

16:6.10In the lo­cal uni­verse mind be­stowals, these three in­sights of the cos­mic mind con­sti­tute the a pri­ori as­sump­tions which make it pos­si­ble for man to func­tion as a ra­tio­nal and self-con­scious per­son­al­ity in the realms of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and re­li­gion. Stated oth­er­wise, the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­al­ity of these three man­i­fes­ta­tions of the In­fi­nite is by a cos­mic tech­nique of self-rev­e­la­tion. Mat­ter-en­ergy is rec­og­nized by the math­e­mat­i­cal logic of the senses; mind-rea­son in­tu­itively knows its moral duty; spirit-faith (wor­ship) is the re­li­gion of the re­al­ity of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. These three ba­sic fac­tors in re­flec­tive think­ing may be uni­fied and co-or­di­nated in per­son­al­ity de­vel­op­ment, or they may be­come dis­pro­por­tion­ate and vir­tu­ally un­re­lated in their re­spec­tive func­tions. But when they be­come uni­fied, they pro­duce a strong char­ac­ter con­sist­ing in the cor­re­la­tion of a fac­tual sci­ence, a moral phi­los­o­phy, and a gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. And it is these three cos­mic in­tu­itions that give ob­jec­tive va­lid­ity, re­al­ity, to man’s ex­pe­ri­ence in and with things, mean­ings, and val­ues.

• love of service

71:7.116. The love of ser­vice—char­ac­ter.

• co-ordination of idea-decisions, ideals, and truth

101:6.7Rev­e­la­tion teaches mor­tal man that, to start such a mag­nif­i­cent and in­trigu­ing ad­ven­ture through space by means of the pro­gres­sion of time, he should be­gin by the or­ga­ni­za­tion of knowl­edge into idea-de­ci­sions; next, man­date wis­dom to la­bor un­remit­tingly at its no­ble task of trans­form­ing self-pos­sessed ideas into in­creas­ingly prac­ti­cal but nonethe­less su­per­nal ide­als, even those con­cepts which are so rea­son­able as ideas and so log­i­cal as ide­als that the Ad­juster dares so to com­bine and spir­i­tize them as to ren­der them avail­able for such as­so­ci­a­tion in the fi­nite mind as will con­sti­tute them the ac­tual hu­man com­ple­ment thus made ready for the ac­tion of the Truth Spirit of the Sons, the time-space man­i­fes­ta­tions of Par­a­dise truth—uni­ver­sal truth. The co-or­di­na­tion of idea-de­ci­sions, log­i­cal ide­als, and di­vine truth con­sti­tutes the pos­ses­sion of a righ­teous char­ac­ter, the pre­req­ui­site for mor­tal ad­mis­sion to the ever-ex­pand­ing and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the mor­ontia worlds.

• capital accumulation of decisions illuminated by worship and love, consummated in service
• consequence of having used mind and spirit circuits

117:5.13What man him­self takes with him as a per­son­al­ity pos­ses­sion are the char­ac­ter con­se­quences of the ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing used the mind and spirit cir­cuits of the grand uni­verse in his Par­a­dise as­cent. When man de­cides, and when he con­sum­mates this de­ci­sion in ac­tion, man ex­pe­ri­ences, and the mean­ings and the val­ues of this ex­pe­ri­ence are for­ever a part of his eter­nal char­ac­ter on all lev­els, from the fi­nite to the fi­nal. Cos­mi­cally moral and di­vinely spir­i­tual char­ac­ter rep­re­sents the crea­ture’s cap­i­tal ac­cu­mu­la­tion of per­sonal de­ci­sions which have been il­lu­mi­nated by sin­cere wor­ship, glo­ri­fied by in­tel­li­gent love, and con­sum­mated in broth­erly ser­vice.

112:6.5Crea­ture vo­li­tion can­not ex­ist with­out mind, but it does per­sist in spite of the loss of the ma­te­rial in­tel­lect. Dur­ing the times im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing sur­vival, the as­cend­ing per­son­al­ity is in great mea­sure guided by the char­ac­ter pat­terns in­her­ited from the hu­man life and by the newly ap­pear­ing ac­tion of mor­ontia mota. And these guides to man­so­nia con­duct func­tion ac­cept­ably in the early stages of the mor­ontia life and prior to the emer­gence of mor­ontia will as a full-fledged vo­li­tional ex­pres­sion of the as­cend­ing per­son­al­ity.

112:6.7Mor­tal mind, prior to death, is self-con­sciously in­de­pen­dent of the Ad­juster pres­ence; ad­ju­tant mind needs only the as­so­ci­ated ma­te­rial-en­ergy pat­tern to en­able it to op­er­ate. But the mor­ontia soul, be­ing super­ad­ju­tant, does not re­tain self-con­scious­ness with­out the Ad­juster when de­prived of the ma­te­rial-mind mech­a­nism. This evolv­ing soul does, how­ever, pos­sess a con­tin­u­ing char­ac­ter de­rived from the de­ci­sions of its for­mer as­so­ci­ated ad­ju­tant mind, and this char­ac­ter be­comes ac­tive mem­ory when the pat­terns thereof are en­er­gized by the re­turn­ing Ad­juster.

76:2.6The ob­ser­va­tion of Abel’s con­duct es­tab­lishes the value of en­vi­ron­ment and ed­u­ca­tion as fac­tors in char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment. Abel had an ideal in­her­i­tance, and hered­ity lies at the bot­tom of all char­ac­ter; but the in­flu­ence of an in­fe­rior en­vi­ron­ment vir­tu­ally neu­tral­ized this mag­nif­i­cent in­her­i­tance. Abel, es­pe­cially dur­ing his younger years, was greatly in­flu­enced by his un­fa­vor­able sur­round­ings. He would have be­come an en­tirely dif­fer­ent per­son had he lived to be twenty-five or thirty; his su­perb in­her­i­tance would then have shown it­self. While a good en­vi­ron­ment can­not con­tribute much to­ward re­ally over­com­ing the char­ac­ter hand­i­caps of a base hered­ity, a bad en­vi­ron­ment can very ef­fec­tively spoil an ex­cel­lent in­her­i­tance, at least dur­ing the younger years of life. Good so­cial en­vi­ron­ment and proper ed­u­ca­tion are in­dis­pens­able soil and at­mo­sphere for get­ting the most out of a good in­her­i­tance.

100:7.2The un­fail­ing kind­ness of Je­sus touched the hearts of men, but his stal­wart strength of char­ac­ter amazed his fol­low­ers. He was truly sin­cere; there was noth­ing of the hyp­ocrite in him. He was free from af­fec­ta­tion; he was al­ways so re­fresh­ingly gen­uine. He never stooped to pre­tense, and he never re­sorted to sham­ming. He lived the truth, even as he taught it. He was the truth. He was con­strained to pro­claim sav­ing truth to his gen­er­a­tion, even though such sin­cer­ity some­times caused pain. He was un­ques­tion­ingly loyal to all truth.

42:9.2The num­ber seven is ba­sic to the cen­tral uni­verse and the spir­i­tual sys­tem of in­her­ent trans­mis­sions of char­ac­ter, but the num­ber ten, the dec­i­mal sys­tem, is in­her­ent in en­ergy, mat­ter, and the ma­te­rial cre­ation. Nev­er­the­less the atomic world does dis­play a cer­tain pe­ri­odic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion which re­curs in groups of seven—a birth­mark car­ried by this ma­te­rial world in­dica­tive of its far-dis­tant spir­i­tual ori­gin.

103:5.7The pur­suit of the ideal—the striv­ing to be God­like—is a con­tin­u­ous ef­fort be­fore death and af­ter. The life af­ter death is no dif­fer­ent in the es­sen­tials than the mor­tal ex­is­tence. Ev­ery­thing we do in this life which is good con­tributes di­rectly to the en­hance­ment of the fu­ture life. Real re­li­gion does not fos­ter moral in­do­lence and spir­i­tual lazi­ness by en­cour­ag­ing the vain hope of hav­ing all the virtues of a no­ble char­ac­ter be­stowed upon one as a re­sult of pass­ing through the por­tals of nat­u­ral death. True re­li­gion does not be­lit­tle man’s ef­forts to pro­gress dur­ing the mor­tal lease on life. Ev­ery mor­tal gain is a di­rect con­tri­bu­tion to the en­rich­ment of the first stages of the im­mor­tal sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence.

28:5.197. The Dis­cerner of Spir­its. A spe­cial li­ai­son ex­ists be­tween the coun­selors and ad­vis­ers of the sec­ond Ha­vona cir­cle and these re­flec­tive an­gels. They are the only se­con­a­phim at­tached to the Uni­ver­sal Cen­sors but are prob­a­bly the most uniquely spe­cial­ized of all their fel­lows. Re­gard­less of the source or chan­nel of in­for­ma­tion, no mat­ter how mea­ger the ev­i­dence at hand, when it is sub­jected to their re­flec­tive scrutiny, these dis­cern­ers will forth­with in­form us as to the true mo­tive, the ac­tual pur­pose, and the real na­ture of its ori­gin. I mar­vel at the su­perb func­tion­ing of these an­gels, who so unerringly re­flect the ac­tual moral and spir­i­tual char­ac­ter of any in­di­vid­ual con­cerned in a fo­cal ex­po­sure.

28:6.14On Uran­tia, you grotesquely es­say to read char­ac­ter and to es­ti­mate spe­cific abil­i­ties, but on Uversa we ac­tu­ally do these things in per­fec­tion. These se­con­a­phim weigh trust­wor­thi­ness in the liv­ing scales of unerring char­ac­ter ap­praisal, and when they have looked at you, we have only to look at them to know the lim­i­ta­tions of your abil­ity to dis­charge re­spon­si­bil­ity, ex­e­cute trust, and ful­fill mis­sions. Your as­sets of trust­wor­thi­ness are clearly set forth along­side your li­a­bil­i­ties of pos­si­ble de­fault or be­trayal.

28:6.134. The Solem­nity of Trust. Trust is the cru­cial test of will crea­tures. Trust­wor­thi­ness is the true mea­sure of self-mas­tery, char­ac­ter. These se­con­a­phim ac­com­plish a dou­ble pur­pose in the econ­omy of the super­uni­verses: They por­tray to all will crea­tures the sense of the obli­ga­tion, sa­cred­ness, and solem­nity of trust. At the same time they unerringly re­flect to the gov­ern­ing au­thor­i­ties the ex­act trust­wor­thi­ness of any can­di­date for con­fi­dence or trust.

184:2.12Hav­ing taken the first step along the path of com­pro­mise and least re­sis­tance, there was noth­ing ap­par­ent to Pe­ter but to go on with the course of con­duct de­cided upon. It re­quires a great and no­ble char­ac­ter, hav­ing started out wrong, to turn about and go right. All too of­ten one’s own mind tends to jus­tify con­tin­u­ance in the path of er­ror when once it is en­tered upon.