confusion

110:3.5Con­fu­sion, be­ing puz­zled, even some­times dis­cour­aged and dis­tracted, does not nec­es­sar­ily sig­nify re­sis­tance to the lead­ings of the in­dwelling Ad­juster. Such at­ti­tudes may some­times con­note lack of ac­tive co-op­er­a­tion with the di­vine Mon­i­tor and may, there­fore, some­what de­lay spir­i­tual prog­ress, but such in­tel­lec­tual emo­tional dif­fi­cul­ties do not in the least in­ter­fere with the cer­tain sur­vival of the God-know­ing soul. Ig­no­rance alone can never pre­vent sur­vival; nei­ther can con­fu­sional doubts nor fear­ful un­cer­tainty. Only con­scious re­sis­tance to the Ad­juster’s lead­ing can pre­vent the sur­vival of the evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul.

99:6.1Sec­tar­i­an­ism is a dis­ease of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion, and dog­ma­tism is an en­slave­ment of the spir­i­tual na­ture. It is far bet­ter to have a re­li­gion with­out a church than a church with­out re­li­gion. The re­li­gious tur­moil of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury does not, in and of it­self, be­to­ken spir­i­tual deca­dence. Con­fu­sion goes be­fore growth as well as be­fore de­struc­tion.

110:4.5There ex­ists a vast gulf be­tween the hu­man and the di­vine, be­tween man and God. The Uran­tia races are so largely elec­tri­cally and chem­i­cally con­trolled, so highly an­i­mallike in their com­mon be­hav­ior, so emo­tional in their or­di­nary re­ac­tions, that it be­comes ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult for the Mon­i­tors to guide and di­rect them. You are so de­void of coura­geous de­ci­sions and con­se­crated co-op­er­a­tion that your in­dwelling Ad­justers find it next to im­pos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate di­rectly with the hu­man mind. Even when they do find it pos­si­ble to flash a gleam of new truth to the evolv­ing mor­tal soul, this spir­i­tual rev­e­la­tion of­ten so blinds the crea­ture as to pre­cip­i­tate a con­vul­sion of fa­nati­cism or to ini­ti­ate some other in­tel­lec­tual up­heaval which re­sults dis­as­trously. Many a new re­li­gion and strange “ism” has arisen from the aborted, im­per­fect, mis­un­der­stood, and gar­bled com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the Thought Ad­justers.

151:2.5The Mas­ter per­mit­ted this con­fu­sion to pass the point of most in­tense ex­pres­sion; then he clapped his hands and called them about him. When they had all gath­ered around him once more, he said, “Be­fore I tell you about this para­ble, do any of you have aught to say?” Fol­low­ing a mo­ment of si­lence, Thomas spoke up: “Yes, Mas­ter, I wish to say a few words. I re­mem­ber that you once told us to be­ware of this very thing. You in­structed us that, when us­ing il­lus­tra­tions for our preach­ing, we should em­ploy true sto­ries, not fa­bles, and that we should se­lect a story best suited to the il­lus­tra­tion of the one cen­tral and vi­tal truth which we wished to teach the peo­ple, and that, hav­ing so used the story, we should not at­tempt to make a spir­i­tual ap­pli­ca­tion of all the mi­nor de­tails in­volved in the telling of the story. I hold that Pe­ter and Na­than­iel are both wrong in their at­tempts to in­ter­pret this para­ble. I ad­mire their abil­ity to do these things, but I am equally sure that all such at­tempts to make a nat­u­ral para­ble yield spir­i­tual analo­gies in all its fea­tures can only re­sult in con­fu­sion and se­ri­ous mis­con­cep­tion of the true pur­pose of such a para­ble. That I am right is fully proved by the fact that, whereas we were all of one mind an hour ago, now are we di­vided into two sep­a­rate groups who hold dif­fer­ent opin­ions con­cern­ing this para­ble and hold such opin­ions so earnestly as to in­ter­fere, in my opin­ion, with our abil­ity fully to grasp the great truth which you had in mind when you pre­sented this para­ble to the mul­ti­tude and sub­se­quently asked us to make com­ment upon it.”

135:7.1John still had con­fused ideas about the com­ing king­dom and its king. The longer he preached the more con­fused he be­came, but never did this in­tel­lec­tual un­cer­tainty con­cern­ing the na­ture of the com­ing king­dom in the least lessen his con­vic­tion of the cer­tainty of the king­dom’s im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance. In mind John might be con­fused, but in spirit never. He was in no doubt about the com­ing king­dom, but he was far from cer­tain as to whether or not Je­sus was to be the ruler of that king­dom. As long as John held to the idea of the restora­tion of the throne of David, the teach­ings of his par­ents that Je­sus, born in the City of David, was to be the long-ex­pected de­liv­erer, seemed con­sis­tent; but at those times when he leaned more to­ward the doc­trine of a spir­i­tual king­dom and the end of the tem­po­ral age on earth, he was sorely in doubt as to the part Je­sus would play in such events. Some­times he ques­tioned ev­ery­thing, but not for long. He re­ally wished he might talk it all over with his cousin, but that was con­trary to their ex­pressed agree­ment.

34:7.6Not­with­stand­ing this dou­ble dis­as­ter to man’s na­ture and his en­vi­ron­ment, pres­ent-day mor­tals would ex­pe­ri­ence less of this ap­par­ent war­fare be­tween the flesh and the spirit if they would en­ter the spirit king­dom, wherein the faith sons of God en­joy com­par­a­tive de­liv­er­ance from the slave-bond­age of the flesh in the en­light­ened and lib­er­at­ing ser­vice of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Je­sus showed man­kind the new way of mor­tal liv­ing whereby hu­man be­ings may very largely es­cape the dire con­se­quences of the Cali­gas­tic re­bel­lion and most ef­fec­tively com­pen­sate for the de­pri­va­tions re­sult­ing from the Adamic de­fault. “The spirit of the life of Christ Je­sus has made us free from the law of an­i­mal liv­ing and the temp­ta­tions of evil and sin.” “This is the vic­tory that over­comes the flesh, even your faith.”

4:3.3Much, very much, of the dif­fi­culty which Uran­tia mor­tals have in un­der­stand­ing God is due to the far-reach­ing con­se­quences of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion and the Cali­gas­tia be­trayal. On worlds not seg­re­gated by sin, the evo­lu­tion­ary races are able to for­mu­late far bet­ter ideas of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; they suf­fer less from con­fu­sion, dis­tor­tion, and per­ver­sion of con­cept.

4:1.5God up­holds “all things by the word of his power.” And when new worlds are born, he “sends forth his Sons and they are cre­ated.” God not only cre­ates, but he “pre­serves them all.” God con­stantly up­holds all things ma­te­rial and all be­ings spir­i­tual. The uni­verses are eter­nally sta­ble. There is sta­bil­ity in the midst of ap­par­ent in­sta­bil­ity. There is an un­der­ly­ing or­der and se­cu­rity in the midst of the en­ergy up­heavals and the phys­i­cal cat­a­clysms of the starry realms.

4:1.7A be­ing of my or­der is able to dis­cover ul­ti­mate har­mony and to de­tect far-reach­ing and pro­found co-or­di­na­tion in the rou­tine af­fairs of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion. Much that seems dis­jointed and hap­haz­ard to the mor­tal mind ap­pears or­derly and con­struc­tive to my un­der­stand­ing. But there is very much go­ing on in the uni­verses that I do not fully com­pre­hend. I have long been a stu­dent of, and am more or less con­ver­sant with, the rec­og­nized forces, en­er­gies, minds, mor­ontias, spir­its, and per­son­al­i­ties of the lo­cal uni­verses and the super­uni­verses. I have a gen­eral un­der­stand­ing of how these agen­cies and per­son­al­i­ties op­er­ate, and I am in­ti­mately fa­mil­iar with the work­ings of the ac­cred­ited spirit in­tel­li­gences of the grand uni­verse. Not­with­stand­ing my knowl­edge of the phe­nom­ena of the uni­verses, I am con­stantly con­fronted with cos­mic re­ac­tions which I can­not fully fathom. I am con­tin­u­ally en­coun­ter­ing ap­par­ently for­tu­itous con­spir­a­cies of the in­teras­so­ci­a­tion of forces, en­er­gies, in­tel­lects, and spir­its, which I can­not sat­is­fac­to­rily ex­plain.

27:4.3All Par­a­dise con­duct is wholly spon­ta­neous, in ev­ery sense nat­u­ral and free. But there still is a proper and per­fect way of do­ing things on the eter­nal Isle, and the di­rec­tors of con­duct are ever by the side of the “strangers within the gates” to in­struct them and so guide their steps as to put them at per­fect ease and at the same time to en­able the pil­grims to avoid that con­fu­sion and un­cer­tainty which would oth­er­wise be in­ev­i­ta­ble. Only by such an ar­range­ment could end­less con­fu­sion be avoided; and con­fu­sion never ap­pears on Par­a­dise.

100:4.2Re­li­gious per­plex­i­ties are in­ev­i­ta­ble; there can be no growth with­out psy­chic con­flict and spir­i­tual ag­i­ta­tion. The or­ga­ni­za­tion of a philo­sophic stan­dard of liv­ing en­tails con­sid­er­able com­mo­tion in the philo­sophic realms of the mind. Loy­al­ties are not ex­er­cised in be­half of the great, the good, the true, and the no­ble with­out a strug­gle. Ef­fort is at­ten­dant upon clar­i­fi­ca­tion of spir­i­tual vi­sion and en­hance­ment of cos­mic in­sight. And the hu­man in­tel­lect protests against be­ing weaned from sub­sist­ing upon the non­spir­i­tual en­er­gies of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence. The sloth­ful an­i­mal mind rebels at the ef­fort re­quired to wres­tle with cos­mic prob­lem solv­ing.

34:7.8Hav­ing started out on the way of life ev­er­last­ing, hav­ing ac­cepted the as­sign­ment and re­ceived your or­ders to ad­vance, do not fear the dan­gers of hu­man for­get­ful­ness and mor­tal in­con­stancy, do not be trou­bled with doubts of fail­ure or by per­plex­ing con­fu­sion, do not fal­ter and ques­tion your sta­tus and stand­ing, for in ev­ery dark hour, at ev­ery cross­road in the for­ward strug­gle, the Spirit of Truth will al­ways speak, say­ing, “This is the way.”