difficulties

• difficulties

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.

4:1.8I am en­tirely com­pe­tent to trace out and to an­a­lyze the work­ing of all phe­nom­ena di­rectly re­sult­ing from the func­tion­ing of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the Eter­nal Son, the In­fi­nite Spirit, and, to a large ex­tent, the Isle of Par­a­dise. My per­plex­ity is oc­ca­sioned by en­coun­ter­ing what ap­pears to be the per­for­mance of their mys­te­ri­ous co-or­di­nates, the three Ab­so­lutes of po­ten­tial­ity. These Ab­so­lutes seem to su­per­sede mat­ter, to tran­scend mind, and to super­vene spirit. I am con­stantly con­fused and of­ten per­plexed by my in­abil­ity to com­pre­hend these com­plex trans­ac­tions which I at­trib­ute to the pres­ences and per­for­mances of the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute, the De­ity Ab­so­lute, and the Uni­ver­sal Ab­so­lute.

4:1.9These Ab­so­lutes must be the not-fully-re­vealed pres­ences abroad in the uni­verse which, in the phe­nom­ena of space po­tency and in the func­tion of other super­ul­ti­mates, ren­der it im­pos­si­ble for physi­cists, philoso­phers, or even re­li­gion­ists to pre­dict with cer­tainty as to just how the pri­mor­dials of force, con­cept, or spirit will re­spond to de­mands made in a com­plex re­al­ity sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing su­preme ad­just­ments and ul­ti­mate val­ues.

28:5.133. The Union of Souls. Com­plet­ing the tri­une staff of at­tach­ment to the Per­fec­tors of Wis­dom, are these re­flec­tors of the ide­als and sta­tus of eth­i­cal re­la­tion­ships. Of all the prob­lems in the uni­verse re­quir­ing an ex­er­cise of the con­sum­mate wis­dom of ex­pe­ri­ence and adapt­abil­ity, none are more im­por­tant than those aris­ing out of the re­la­tion­ships and as­so­ci­a­tions of in­tel­li­gent be­ings. Whether in hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions of com­merce and trade, friend­ship and mar­riage, or in the li­aisons of the an­gelic hosts, there con­tinue to arise petty fric­tions, mi­nor mis­un­der­stand­ings too triv­ial even to en­gage the at­ten­tion of con­cil­ia­tors but suf­fi­ciently ir­ri­tat­ing and dis­turb­ing to mar the smooth work­ing of the uni­verse if they were al­lowed to mul­ti­ply and con­tinue. There­fore do the Per­fec­tors of Wis­dom make avail­able the wise ex­pe­ri­ence of their or­der as the “oil of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion” for an en­tire super­uni­verse. In all this work these wise men of the super­uni­verses are ably sec­onded by their re­flec­tive as­so­ciates, the Unions of Souls, who make avail­able cur­rent in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the sta­tus of the uni­verse and con­cur­rently por­tray the Par­a­dise ideal of the best ad­just­ment of these per­plex­ing prob­lems. When not specif­i­cally di­rec­tion­ized else­where, these se­con­a­phim re­main in re­flec­tive li­ai­son with the in­ter­preters of ethics on Par­a­dise.

• challenged and invigorated by

26:5.3That, then, is the pri­mary or el­e­men­tary course which con­fronts the faith-tested and much-trav­eled pil­grims of space. But long be­fore reach­ing Ha­vona, these as­cen­dant chil­dren of time have learned to feast upon un­cer­tainty, to fat­ten upon dis­ap­point­ment, to en­thuse over ap­par­ent de­feat, to in­vig­o­rate in the pres­ence of dif­fi­cul­ties, to ex­hibit in­domitable cour­age in the face of im­men­sity, and to ex­er­cise un­con­quer­able faith when con­fronted with the chal­lenge of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble. Long since, the bat­tle cry of these pil­grims be­came: “In li­ai­son with God, noth­ing—ab­so­lutely noth­ing—is im­pos­si­ble.”

• unafraid when overtaken by

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?

• courageously face problems of universe reality

91:8.2Prayer is not an evo­lu­tion of magic; they each arose in­de­pen­dently. Magic was an at­tempt to ad­just De­ity to con­di­tions; prayer is the ef­fort to ad­just the per­son­al­ity to the will of De­ity. True prayer is both moral and re­li­gious; magic is nei­ther.

• when clouds gather overhead, look beyond mists of mortal uncertainty

108:6.8You hu­mans have be­gun an end­less un­fold­ing of an al­most in­fi­nite pan­o­rama, a lim­it­less ex­pand­ing of never-end­ing, ever-widen­ing spheres of op­por­tu­nity for ex­hil­a­rat­ing ser­vice, match­less ad­ven­ture, sub­lime un­cer­tainty, and bound­less at­tain­ment. When the clouds gather over­head, your faith should ac­cept the fact of the pres­ence of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, and thus you should be able to look be­yond the mists of mor­tal un­cer­tainty into the clear shin­ing of the sun of eter­nal righ­teous­ness on the beck­on­ing heights of the man­sion worlds of Sa­ta­nia.

• allow Adjusters to strengthen while wrestling with

111:7.3Why do you not aid the Ad­juster in the task of show­ing you the spir­i­tual coun­ter­part of all these stren­u­ous ma­te­rial ef­forts? Why do you not al­low the Ad­juster to strengthen you with the spir­i­tual truths of cos­mic power while you wres­tle with the tem­po­ral dif­fi­cul­ties of crea­ture ex­is­tence? Why do you not en­cour­age the heav­enly helper to cheer you with the clear vi­sion of the eter­nal out­look of uni­ver­sal life as you gaze in per­plex­ity at the prob­lems of the pass­ing hour? Why do you refuse to be en­light­ened and in­spired by the uni­verse view­point while you toil amidst the hand­i­caps of time and floun­der in the maze of un­cer­tain­ties which be­set your mor­tal life jour­ney? Why not al­low the Ad­juster to spir­i­tu­al­ize your think­ing, even though your feet must tread the ma­te­rial paths of earthly en­deavor?

• wrest victory from jaws of defeat

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.

• those seeking God delivered from captivity

130:1.2One day af­ter the evening meal Je­sus and the young Phil­is­tine strolled down by the sea, and Ga­diah, not know­ing that this “scribe of Da­mas­cus” was so well versed in the He­brew tra­di­tions, pointed out to Je­sus the ship land­ing from which it was re­puted that Jonah had em­barked on his ill-fated voy­age to Tarshish. And when he had con­cluded his re­marks, he asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “But do you sup­pose the big fish re­ally did swal­low Jonah?” Je­sus per­ceived that this young man’s life had been tremen­dously in­flu­enced by this tra­di­tion, and that its con­tem­pla­tion had im­pressed upon him the folly of try­ing to run away from duty; Je­sus there­fore said noth­ing that would sud­denly de­stroy the foun­da­tions of Ga­diah’s pres­ent mo­ti­va­tion for prac­ti­cal liv­ing. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My friend, we are all Jon­ahs with lives to live in ac­cor­dance with the will of God, and at all times when we seek to es­cape the pres­ent duty of liv­ing by run­ning away to far-off en­tice­ments, we thereby put our­selves in the im­me­di­ate con­trol of those in­flu­ences which are not di­rected by the pow­ers of truth and the forces of righ­teous­ness. The flight from duty is the sac­ri­fice of truth. The es­cape from the ser­vice of light and life can only re­sult in those dis­tress­ing con­flicts with the dif­fi­cult whales of self­ish­ness which lead even­tu­ally to dark­ness and death un­less such God-for­sak­ing Jon­ahs shall turn their hearts, even when in the very depths of de­spair, to seek af­ter God and his good­ness. And when such dis­heart­ened souls sin­cerely seek for God—hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—there is noth­ing that can hold them in fur­ther cap­tiv­ity. No mat­ter into what great depths they may have fallen, when they seek the light with a whole heart, the spirit of the Lord God of heaven will de­liver them from their cap­tiv­ity; the evil cir­cum­stances of life will spew them out upon the dry land of fresh op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­newed ser­vice and wiser liv­ing.”

• challenged and invigorated by

130:6.4“This day, my son, you are to be re­born, re-es­tab­lished as a man of faith, cour­age, and de­voted ser­vice to man, for God’s sake. And when you be­come so read­justed to life within your­self, you be­come like­wise read­justed to the uni­verse; you have been born again—born of the spirit—and hence­forth will your whole life be­come one of vic­to­ri­ous ac­com­plish­ment. Trou­ble will in­vig­o­rate you; dis­ap­point­ment will spur you on; dif­fi­cul­ties will chal­lenge you; and ob­sta­cles will stim­u­late you. Arise, young man! Say farewell to the life of cring­ing fear and flee­ing cow­ardice. Has­ten back to duty and live your life in the flesh as a son of God, a mor­tal ded­i­cated to the en­nobling ser­vice of man on earth and des­tined to the su­perb and eter­nal ser­vice of God in eter­nity.”

• many are the afflictions of the righteous, but God delivers them

131:2.10“‘Come now, let us rea­son to­gether,’ says the Lord, ‘Though your sins be as scar­let, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crim­son, they shall be as wool.’ But there is no peace for the wicked; it is your own sins which have with­held the good things from you. God is the health of my coun­te­nance and the joy of my soul. The eter­nal God is my strength; he is our dwell­ing place, and un­der­neath are the ev­er­last­ing arms. The Lord is near to those who are bro­ken­hearted; he saves all who have a child­like spirit. Many are the af­flic­tions of the righ­teous man, but the Lord de­liv­ers him out of them all. Com­mit your way to the Lord—trust him—and he will bring it to pass. He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.

• unafraid when overtaken by

156:5.13God-know­ing in­di­vid­u­als are not dis­cour­aged by mis­for­tune or down­cast by dis­ap­point­ment. Be­liev­ers are im­mune to the de­pres­sion con­se­quent upon purely ma­te­rial up­heavals; spirit liv­ers are not per­turbed by the episodes of the ma­te­rial world. Can­di­dates for eter­nal life are prac­ti­tion­ers of an in­vig­o­rat­ing and con­struc­tive tech­nique for meet­ing all of the vi­cis­si­tudes and ha­rass­ments of mor­tal liv­ing. Ev­ery day a true be­liever lives, he finds it eas­ier to do the right thing.

• challenged and invigorated by
• unafraid when overtaken by

156:5.21The true be­liever does not grow weary in well-do­ing just be­cause he is thwarted. Dif­fi­culty whets the ar­dor of the truth lover, while ob­sta­cles only chal­lenge the ex­er­tions of the un­daunted king­dom builder.

• must traverse fringe of conflict

159:3.7Fore­warn all be­liev­ers re­gard­ing the fringe of con­flict which must be tra­versed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly within ei­ther realm, there is lit­tle con­flict or con­fu­sion, but all are doomed to ex­pe­ri­ence more or less un­cer­tainty dur­ing the times of tran­si­tion be­tween the two lev­els of liv­ing. In en­ter­ing the king­dom, you can­not es­cape its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or avoid its obli­ga­tions, but re­mem­ber: The gospel yoke is easy and the bur­den of truth is light.

• unafraid when overtaken by

159:3.13Teach all be­liev­ers that those who en­ter the king­dom are not thereby ren­dered im­mune to the ac­ci­dents of time or to the or­di­nary catas­tro­phes of na­ture. Be­liev­ing the gospel will not pre­vent get­ting into trou­ble, but it will in­sure that you shall be un­afraid when trou­ble does over­take you. If you dare to be­lieve in me and whole­heart­edly pro­ceed to fol­low af­ter me, you shall most cer­tainly by so do­ing en­ter upon the sure path­way to trou­ble. I do not prom­ise to de­liver you from the wa­ters of ad­ver­sity, but I do prom­ise to go with you through all of them.

• must traverse fringe of conflict

160:1.6When men dare to for­sake a life of nat­u­ral crav­ing for one of ad­ven­tur­ous art and un­cer­tain logic, they must ex­pect to suf­fer the con­se­quent haz­ards of emo­tional ca­su­al­ties—con­flicts, un­hap­pi­ness, and un­cer­tain­ties—at least un­til the time of their at­tain­ment of some de­gree of in­tel­lec­tual and emo­tional ma­tu­rity. Dis­cour­age­ment, worry, and in­do­lence are pos­i­tive ev­i­dence of moral im­ma­tu­rity. Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­fronted with two prob­lems: at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the in­di­vid­ual and at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the race. The ma­ture hu­man be­ing soon be­gins to look upon all other mor­tals with feel­ings of ten­der­ness and with emo­tions of tol­er­ance. Ma­ture men view im­ma­ture folks with the love and con­sid­er­a­tion that par­ents bear their chil­dren.

• use moral power and spiritual energy to solve d.

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.

• not concerned by temporal upheavals

176:3.2“And even you, Thomas, fail to com­pre­hend what I have been say­ing. Have I not all this time taught you that your con­nec­tion with the king­dom is spir­i­tual and in­di­vid­ual, wholly a mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the spirit by the faith-re­al­iza­tion that you are a son of God? What more shall I say? The down­fall of na­tions, the crash of em­pires, the de­struc­tion of the un­be­liev­ing Jews, the end of an age, even the end of the world, what have these things to do with one who be­lieves this gospel, and who has hid his life in the surety of the eter­nal king­dom? You who are God-know­ing and gospel-be­liev­ing have al­ready re­ceived the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. Since your lives have been lived in the spirit and for the Fa­ther, noth­ing can be of se­ri­ous con­cern to you. King­dom builders, the ac­cred­ited cit­i­zens of the heav­enly worlds, are not to be dis­turbed by tem­po­ral up­heavals or per­turbed by ter­res­trial cat­a­clysms. What does it mat­ter to you who be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom if na­tions over­turn, the age ends, or all things vis­i­ble crash, since you know that your life is the gift of the Son, and that it is eter­nally se­cure in the Fa­ther? Hav­ing lived the tem­po­ral life by faith and hav­ing yielded the fruits of the spirit as the righ­teous­ness of lov­ing ser­vice for your fel­lows, you can con­fi­dently look for­ward to the next step in the eter­nal ca­reer with the same sur­vival faith that has car­ried you through your first and earthly ad­ven­ture in son­ship with God.

• Master’s love does not deliver us from d.

180:1.5If you would share the Mas­ter’s joy, you must share his love. And to share his love means that you have shared his ser­vice. Such an ex­pe­ri­ence of love does not de­liver you from the dif­fi­cul­ties of this world; it does not cre­ate a new world, but it most cer­tainly does make the old world new.

• gospel is solvent for d.

194:2.1Je­sus lived on earth and taught a gospel which re­deemed man from the su­per­sti­tion that he was a child of the devil and el­e­vated him to the dig­nity of a faith son of God. Je­sus’ mes­sage, as he preached it and lived it in his day, was an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties in that day of its state­ment. And now that he has per­son­ally left the world, he sends in his place his Spirit of Truth, who is de­signed to live in man and, for each new gen­er­a­tion, to re­state the Je­sus mes­sage so that ev­ery new group of mor­tals to ap­pear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up-to-date ver­sion of the gospel, just such per­sonal en­light­en­ment and group guid­ance as will prove to be an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s ever-new and var­ied spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties.

• many truths only felt in adversity

48:7.1816. You can­not per­ceive spir­i­tual truth un­til you feel­ingly ex­pe­ri­ence it, and many truths are not re­ally felt ex­cept in ad­ver­sity.

• Andon and Fonta bred in difficult environment

61:6.3This event oc­curred at about the time of the be­gin­ning of the third glacial ad­vance; thus it may be seen that your early an­ces­tors were born and bred in a stim­u­lat­ing, in­vig­o­rat­ing, and dif­fi­cult en­vi­ron­ment. And the sole sur­vivors of these Uran­tia abo­rig­ines, the Es­ki­mos, even now pre­fer to dwell in frigid north­ern climes.

• man learned industry through oppression

69:8.8True, slav­ery was op­pres­sive, but it was in the schools of op­pres­sion that man learned in­dus­try. Even­tu­ally the slaves shared the bless­ings of a higher so­ci­ety which they had so un­will­ingly helped cre­ate. Slav­ery cre­ates an or­ga­ni­za­tion of cul­ture and so­cial achieve­ment but soon in­sid­i­ously at­tacks so­ci­ety in­ter­nally as the gravest of all de­struc­tive so­cial mal­adies.

• missteps because perfection is goal, not origin

75:8.6All in all, there prob­a­bly never was a more dis­heart­en­ing mis­car­riage of wis­dom on any planet in all Neb­a­don. But it is not sur­pris­ing that these mis­steps oc­cur in the af­fairs of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses. We are a part of a gi­gan­tic cre­ation, and it is not strange that ev­ery­thing does not work in per­fec­tion; our uni­verse was not cre­ated in per­fec­tion. Per­fec­tion is our eter­nal goal, not our ori­gin.

75:8.7If this were a mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse, if the First Great Source and Cen­ter were only a force and not also a per­son­al­ity, if all cre­ation were a vast ag­gre­ga­tion of phys­i­cal mat­ter dom­i­nated by pre­cise laws char­ac­ter­ized by un­vary­ing en­ergy ac­tions, then might per­fec­tion ob­tain, even de­spite the in­com­plete­ness of uni­verse sta­tus. There would be no dis­agree­ment; there would be no fric­tion. But in our evolv­ing uni­verse of rel­a­tive per­fec­tion and im­per­fec­tion we re­joice that dis­agree­ment and mis­un­der­stand­ing are pos­si­ble, for thereby is ev­i­denced the fact and the act of per­son­al­ity in the uni­verse. And if our cre­ation is an ex­is­tence dom­i­nated by per­son­al­ity, then can you be as­sured of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of per­son­al­ity sur­vival, ad­vance­ment, and achieve­ment; we can be con­fi­dent of per­son­al­ity growth, ex­pe­ri­ence, and ad­ven­ture. What a glo­ri­ous uni­verse, in that it is per­sonal and pro­gres­sive, not merely me­chan­i­cal or even pas­sively per­fect!

• many find God seeking divine help to resolve d.

103:2.4Ev­ery hu­man be­ing very early ex­pe­ri­ences some­thing of a con­flict be­tween his self-seek­ing and his al­tru­is­tic im­pulses, and many times the first ex­pe­ri­ence of God-con­scious­ness may be at­tained as the re­sult of seek­ing for super­hu­man help in the task of re­solv­ing such moral con­flicts.

• prepare us for wisdom, higher learning

132:7.2“Ga­nid, the man was not hun­gry for truth. He was not dis­sat­is­fied with him­self. He was not ready to ask for help, and the eyes of his mind were not open to re­ceive light for the soul. That man was not ripe for the har­vest of sal­va­tion; he must be al­lowed more time for the tri­als and dif­fi­cul­ties of life to pre­pare him for the re­cep­tion of wis­dom and higher learn­ing. Or, if we could have him live with us, we might by our lives show him the Fa­ther in heaven, and thus would he be­come so at­tracted by our lives as sons of God that he would be con­strained to in­quire about our Fa­ther. You can­not re­veal God to those who do not seek for him; you can­not lead un­will­ing souls into the joys of sal­va­tion. Man must be­come hun­gry for truth as a re­sult of the ex­pe­ri­ences of liv­ing, or he must de­sire to know God as the re­sult of con­tact with the lives of those who are ac­quainted with the di­vine Fa­ther be­fore an­other hu­man be­ing can act as the means of lead­ing such a fel­low mor­tal to the Fa­ther in heaven. If we know God, our real busi­ness on earth is so to live as to per­mit the Fa­ther to re­veal him­self in our lives, and thus will all God-seek­ing per­sons see the Fa­ther and ask for our help in find­ing out more about the God who in this man­ner finds ex­pres­sion in our lives.”

• must be encountered as training for soul

154:2.5Uni­verse dif­fi­cul­ties must be met and plan­e­tary ob­sta­cles must be en­coun­tered as a part of the ex­pe­ri­ence train­ing pro­vided for the growth and de­vel­op­ment, the pro­gres­sive per­fec­tion, of the evolv­ing souls of mor­tal crea­tures. The spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the hu­man soul re­quires in­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ence with the ed­u­ca­tional solv­ing of a wide range of real uni­verse prob­lems. The an­i­mal na­ture and the lower forms of will crea­tures do not pro­gress fa­vor­ably in en­vi­ron­men­tal ease. Prob­lem­atic sit­u­a­tions, cou­pled with ex­er­tion stim­uli, con­spire to pro­duce those ac­tiv­i­ties of mind, soul, and spirit which con­tribute might­ily to the achieve­ment of wor­thy goals of mor­tal pro­gres­sion and to the at­tain­ment of higher lev­els of spirit des­tiny.

• times of testing always times of great revelation

195:9.3The teach­ings of Je­sus, even though greatly mod­i­fied, sur­vived the mys­tery cults of their birth­time, the ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion of the dark ages, and are even now slowly tri­umph­ing over the ma­te­ri­al­ism, mech­a­nism, and sec­u­lar­ism of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. And such times of great test­ing and threat­ened de­feat are al­ways times of great rev­e­la­tion.

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.”

143:3.1About this time a state of great ner­vous and emo­tional ten­sion de­vel­oped among the apos­tles and their im­me­di­ate dis­ci­ple as­so­ciates. They had hardly be­come ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing and work­ing to­gether. They were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in main­tain­ing har­mo­nious re­la­tions with John’s dis­ci­ples. The con­tact with the gen­tiles and the Samar­i­tans was a great trial to these Jews. And be­sides all this, the re­cent ut­ter­ances of Je­sus had aug­mented their dis­turbed state of mind. An­drew was al­most be­side him­self; he did not know what next to do, and so he went to the Mas­ter with his prob­lems and per­plex­i­ties. When Je­sus had lis­tened to the apos­tolic chief re­late his trou­bles, he said: “An­drew, you can­not talk men out of their per­plex­i­ties when they reach such a stage of in­volve­ment, and when so many per­sons with strong feel­ings are con­cerned. I can­not do what you ask of me—I will not par­tic­i­pate in these per­sonal so­cial dif­fi­cul­ties—but I will join you in the en­joy­ment of a three-day pe­riod of rest and re­lax­ation. Go to your breth­ren and an­nounce that all of you are to go with me up on Mount Sartaba, where I de­sire to rest for a day or two.

48:7.75. Dif­fi­cul­ties may chal­lenge medi­ocrity and de­feat the fear­ful, but they only stim­u­late the true chil­dren of the Most Highs.

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.

25:3.7The mo­ment the Cre­ators bring into ex­is­tence evolv­ing in­di­vid­u­als with the power of choice, that mo­ment a de­par­ture is made from the smooth work­ing of di­vine per­fec­tion; mis­un­der­stand­ings are cer­tain to arise, and pro­vi­sion for the fair ad­just­ment of these hon­est dif­fer­ences of view­point must be made. We should all re­mem­ber that the all-wise and all-pow­er­ful Cre­ators could have made the lo­cal uni­verses just as per­fect as Ha­vona. No con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sions need func­tion in the cen­tral uni­verse. But the Cre­ators did not choose in their all-wis­dom to do this. And while they have pro­duced uni­verses which abound in dif­fer­ences and teem with dif­fi­cul­ties, they have like­wise pro­vided the mech­a­nisms and the means for com­pos­ing all these dif­fer­ences and for har­mo­niz­ing all this seem­ing con­fu­sion.

105:6.43. The crea­ture reper­cus­sion to fi­nite-re­al­ity pro­mul­ga­tion re­sulted in the ap­pear­ance of per­fect be­ings on the or­der of the eter­nal in­hab­i­tants of Ha­vona and of per­fected evo­lu­tion­ary as­cend­ers from the seven super­uni­verses. But to at­tain per­fec­tion as an evo­lu­tion­ary (time-cre­ative) ex­pe­ri­ence im­plies some­thing other-than-per­fec­tion as a point of de­par­ture. Thus arises im­per­fec­tion in the evo­lu­tion­ary cre­ations. And this is the ori­gin of po­ten­tial evil. Mis­adap­ta­tion, dishar­mony, and con­flict, all these things are in­her­ent in evo­lu­tion­ary growth, from phys­i­cal uni­verses to per­sonal crea­tures.

91:6.5Do not be so sloth­ful as to ask God to solve your dif­fi­cul­ties, but never hes­i­tate to ask him for wis­dom and spir­i­tual strength to guide and sus­tain you while you your­self res­o­lutely and coura­geously at­tack the prob­lems at hand.

1:5.15The ab­so­lute per­fec­tion of the in­fi­nite God would cause him to suf­fer the aw­ful lim­i­ta­tions of un­qual­i­fied fi­nal­ity of per­fect­ness were it not a fact that the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther di­rectly par­tic­i­pates in the per­son­al­ity strug­gle of ev­ery im­per­fect soul in the wide uni­verse who seeks, by di­vine aid, to as­cend to the spir­i­tu­ally per­fect worlds on high. This pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of ev­ery spirit be­ing and ev­ery mor­tal crea­ture through­out the uni­verse of uni­verses is a part of the Fa­ther’s ever-ex­pand­ing De­ity-con­scious­ness of the never-end­ing di­vine cir­cle of cease­less self-re­al­iza­tion.

1:5.16It is lit­er­ally true: “In all your af­flic­tions he is af­flicted.” “In all your tri­umphs he tri­umphs in and with you.” His preper­sonal di­vine spirit is a real part of you. The Isle of Par­a­dise re­sponds to all the phys­i­cal meta­mor­phoses of the uni­verse of uni­verses; the Eter­nal Son in­cludes all the spirit im­pulses of all cre­ation; the Con­joint Ac­tor en­com­passes all the mind ex­pres­sion of the ex­pand­ing cos­mos. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther re­al­izes in the full­ness of the di­vine con­scious­ness all the in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence of the pro­gres­sive strug­gles of the ex­pand­ing minds and the as­cend­ing spir­its of ev­ery en­tity, be­ing, and per­son­al­ity of the whole evo­lu­tion­ary cre­ation of time and space. And all this is lit­er­ally true, for “in Him we all live and move and have our be­ing.”

160:2.94. The en­hanced de­fense against all evil. Per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion and mu­tual af­fec­tion is an ef­fi­cient in­sur­ance against evil. Dif­fi­cul­ties, sor­row, dis­ap­point­ment, and de­feat are more painful and dis­heart­en­ing when borne alone. As­so­ci­a­tion does not trans­mute evil into righ­teous­ness, but it does aid in greatly less­en­ing the sting. Said your Mas­ter, “Happy are they who mourn”—if a friend is at hand to com­fort. There is pos­i­tive strength in the knowl­edge that you live for the wel­fare of oth­ers, and that these oth­ers like­wise live for your wel­fare and ad­vance­ment. Man lan­guishes in iso­la­tion. Hu­man be­ings un­fail­ingly be­come dis­cour­aged when they view only the tran­si­tory trans­ac­tions of time. The pres­ent, when di­vorced from the past and the fu­ture, be­comes ex­as­per­at­ingly triv­ial. Only a glimpse of the cir­cle of eter­nity can in­spire man to do his best and can chal­lenge the best in him to do its ut­most. And when man is thus at his best, he lives most un­selfishly for the good of oth­ers, his fel­low so­journ­ers in time and eter­nity.

117:7.13The pres­ent goal of the super­uni­verses is to be­come, as they are and within their po­ten­tials, per­fect, even as is Ha­vona. This per­fec­tion per­tains to phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, even to ad­min­is­tra­tive, gov­ern­men­tal, and fra­ter­nal de­vel­op­ment. It is be­lieved that, in the ages to come, the pos­si­bil­i­ties for dishar­mony, mal­ad­just­ment, and mis­adap­ta­tion will be even­tu­ally ex­hausted in the super­uni­verses. The en­ergy cir­cuits will be in per­fect bal­ance and in com­plete sub­ju­ga­tion to mind, while spirit, in the pres­ence of per­son­al­ity, will have achieved the dom­i­nance of mind.

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.

• refused to apply material tests to spirit problems

136:9.9By these de­ci­sions Je­sus set a wor­thy ex­am­ple for ev­ery per­son on ev­ery world through­out a vast uni­verse when he re­fused to ap­ply ma­te­rial tests to prove spir­i­tual prob­lems, when he re­fused pre­sump­tu­ously to defy nat­u­ral laws. And he set an in­spir­ing ex­am­ple of uni­verse loy­alty and moral no­bil­ity when he re­fused to grasp tem­po­ral power as the pre­lude to spir­i­tual glory.

• left untangling of d. to outworking of Father’s will

137:5.3That night Je­sus did not sleep. Don­ning his evening wraps, he sat out on the lake shore think­ing, think­ing un­til the dawn of the next day. In the long hours of that night of med­i­ta­tion Je­sus came clearly to com­pre­hend that he never would be able to make his fol­low­ers see him in any other light than as the long-ex­pected Mes­siah. At last he rec­og­nized that there was no way to launch his mes­sage of the king­dom ex­cept as the ful­fill­ment of John’s pre­dic­tion and as the one for whom the Jews were look­ing. Af­ter all, though he was not the Da­vidic type of Mes­siah, he was truly the ful­fill­ment of the pro­phetic ut­ter­ances of the more spir­i­tu­ally minded of the olden seers. Never again did he wholly deny that he was the Mes­siah. He de­cided to leave the fi­nal un­tan­gling of this com­pli­cated sit­u­a­tion to the out­work­ing of the Fa­ther’s will.

193:4.73. He never ac­quired a philo­sophic tech­nique for meet­ing dis­ap­point­ment. In­stead of ac­cept­ing dis­ap­point­ments as a reg­u­lar and com­mon­place fea­ture of hu­man ex­is­tence, he un­fail­ingly re­sorted to the prac­tice of blam­ing some­one in par­tic­u­lar, or his as­so­ciates as a group, for all his per­sonal dif­fi­cul­ties and dis­ap­point­ments.

193:4.106. He dis­liked to dis­cuss his per­sonal prob­lems with his im­me­di­ate as­so­ciates; he re­fused to talk over his dif­fi­cul­ties with his real friends and those who truly loved him. In all the years of their as­so­ci­a­tion he never once went to the Mas­ter with a purely per­sonal prob­lem.

65:3.6Man­kind on Uran­tia must solve its prob­lems of mor­tal de­vel­op­ment with the hu­man stocks it has—no more races will evolve from pre­hu­man sources through­out all fu­ture time. But this fact does not pre­clude the pos­si­bil­ity of the at­tain­ment of vastly higher lev­els of hu­man de­vel­op­ment through the in­tel­li­gent fos­ter­ing of the evo­lu­tion­ary po­ten­tials still res­i­dent in the mor­tal races. That which we, the Life Car­ri­ers, do to­ward fos­ter­ing and con­serv­ing the life strains be­fore the ap­pear­ance of hu­man will, man must do for him­self af­ter such an event and sub­se­quent to our re­tire­ment from ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in evo­lu­tion. In a gen­eral way, man’s evo­lu­tion­ary des­tiny is in his own hands, and sci­en­tific in­tel­li­gence must sooner or later su­per­sede the ran­dom func­tion­ing of un­con­trolled nat­u­ral se­lec­tion and chance sur­vival.

143:3.6The third day when they started down the moun­tain and back to their camp, a great change had come over them. They had made the im­por­tant dis­cov­ery that many hu­man per­plex­i­ties are in re­al­ity nonex­is­tent, that many press­ing trou­bles are the cre­ations of ex­ag­ger­ated fear and the off­spring of aug­mented ap­pre­hen­sion. They had learned that all such per­plex­i­ties are best han­dled by be­ing for­saken; by go­ing off they had left such prob­lems to solve them­selves.

128:5.7But hu­man af­fairs on the worlds of time and space do not run smoothly for long. In De­cem­ber James had a pri­vate talk with Je­sus, ex­plain­ing that he was much in love with Esta, a young woman of Naz­a­reth, and that they would some­time like to be mar­ried if it could be ar­ranged. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that Joseph would soon be eigh­teen years old, and that it would be a good ex­pe­ri­ence for him to have a chance to serve as the act­ing head of the fam­ily. Je­sus gave con­sent for James’s mar­riage two years later, pro­vided he had, dur­ing the in­ter­ven­ing time, prop­erly trained Joseph to as­sume di­rec­tion of the home.

32:5.1There is a great and glo­ri­ous pur­pose in the march of the uni­verses through space. All of your mor­tal strug­gling is not in vain. We are all part of an im­mense plan, a gi­gan­tic en­ter­prise, and it is the vast­ness of the un­der­tak­ing that ren­ders it im­pos­si­ble to see very much of it at any one time and dur­ing any one life. We are all a part of an eter­nal project which the Gods are super­vis­ing and out­work­ing. The whole mar­velous and uni­ver­sal mech­a­nism moves on ma­jes­ti­cally through space to the mu­sic of the me­ter of the in­fi­nite thought and the eter­nal pur­pose of the First Great Source and Cen­ter.

32:5.2The eter­nal pur­pose of the eter­nal God is a high spir­i­tual ideal. The events of time and the strug­gles of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence are but the tran­sient scaf­fold­ing which bridges over to the other side, to the prom­ised land of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and su­per­nal ex­is­tence. Of course, you mor­tals find it dif­fi­cult to grasp the idea of an eter­nal pur­pose; you are vir­tu­ally un­able to com­pre­hend the thought of eter­nity, some­thing never be­gin­ning and never end­ing. Ev­ery­thing fa­mil­iar to you has an end.

194:3.2Many things which hap­pen in the course of a hu­man life are hard to un­der­stand, dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with the idea that this is a uni­verse in which truth pre­vails and in which righ­teous­ness tri­umphs. It so of­ten ap­pears that slan­der, lies, dis­hon­esty, and un­righ­teous­ness—sin—pre­vail. Does faith, af­ter all, tri­umph over evil, sin, and in­iq­uity? It does. And the life and death of Je­sus are the eter­nal proof that the truth of good­ness and the faith of the spirit-led crea­ture will al­ways be vin­di­cated. They taunted Je­sus on the cross, say­ing, “Let us see if God will come and de­liver him.” It looked dark on that day of the cru­ci­fix­ion, but it was glo­ri­ously bright on the res­ur­rec­tion morn­ing; it was still brighter and more joy­ous on the day of Pen­te­cost. The re­li­gions of pes­simistic de­spair seek to ob­tain re­lease from the bur­dens of life; they crave ex­tinc­tion in end­less slum­ber and rest. These are the re­li­gions of prim­i­tive fear and dread. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is a new gospel of faith to be pro­claimed to strug­gling hu­man­ity. This new re­li­gion is founded on faith, hope, and love.

19:1.5For ex­am­ple: The hu­man mind would or­di­nar­ily crave to ap­proach the cos­mic phi­los­o­phy por­trayed in these rev­e­la­tions by pro­ceed­ing from the sim­ple and the fi­nite to the com­plex and the in­fi­nite, from hu­man ori­gins to di­vine des­tinies. But that path does not lead to spir­i­tual wis­dom. Such a pro­ce­dure is the eas­i­est path to a cer­tain form of ge­netic knowl­edge, but at best it can only re­veal man’s ori­gin; it re­veals lit­tle or noth­ing about his di­vine des­tiny.

19:1.6Even in the study of man’s bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion on Uran­tia, there are grave ob­jec­tions to the ex­clu­sive his­toric ap­proach to his pres­ent-day sta­tus and his cur­rent prob­lems. The true per­spec­tive of any re­al­ity prob­lem—hu­man or di­vine, ter­res­trial or cos­mic—can be had only by the full and un­prej­u­diced study and cor­re­la­tion of three phases of uni­verse re­al­ity: ori­gin, his­tory, and des­tiny. The proper un­der­stand­ing of these three ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­i­ties af­fords the ba­sis for a wise es­ti­mate of the cur­rent sta­tus.

19:1.7When the hu­man mind un­der­takes to fol­low the philo­sophic tech­nique of start­ing from the lower to ap­proach the higher, whether in bi­ol­ogy or the­ol­ogy, it is al­ways in dan­ger of com­mit­ting four er­rors of rea­son­ing:

19:1.81. It may ut­terly fail to per­ceive the fi­nal and com­pleted evo­lu­tion­ary goal of ei­ther per­sonal at­tain­ment or cos­mic des­tiny.

19:1.92. It may com­mit the su­preme phil­o­soph­i­cal blun­der by over­sim­pli­fy­ing cos­mic evo­lu­tion­ary (ex­pe­ri­en­tial) re­al­ity, thus lead­ing to the dis­tor­tion of facts, to the per­ver­sion of truth, and to the mis­con­cep­tion of des­tinies.

19:1.103. The study of cau­sa­tion is the pe­rusal of his­tory. But the knowl­edge of how a be­ing be­comes does not nec­es­sar­ily pro­vide an in­tel­li­gent un­der­stand­ing of the pres­ent sta­tus and true char­ac­ter of such a be­ing.

19:1.114. His­tory alone fails ad­e­quately to re­veal fu­ture de­vel­op­ment—des­tiny. Fi­nite ori­gins are help­ful, but only di­vine causes re­veal fi­nal ef­fects. Eter­nal ends are not shown in time be­gin­nings. The pres­ent can be truly in­ter­preted only in the light of the cor­re­lated past and fu­ture.

19:1.12There­fore, be­cause of these and for still other rea­sons, do we em­ploy the tech­nique of ap­proach­ing man and his plan­e­tary prob­lems by em­barka­tion on the time-space jour­ney from the in­fi­nite, eter­nal, and di­vine Par­a­dise Source and Cen­ter of all per­son­al­ity re­al­ity and all cos­mic ex­is­tence.

156:5.18As you grow older in years and more ex­pe­ri­enced in the af­fairs of the king­dom, are you be­com­ing more tact­ful in deal­ing with trou­ble­some mor­tals and more tol­er­ant in liv­ing with stub­born as­so­ciates? Tact is the ful­crum of so­cial lever­age, and tol­er­ance is the ear­mark of a great soul. If you pos­sess these rare and charm­ing gifts, as the days pass you will be­come more alert and ex­pert in your wor­thy ef­forts to avoid all un­nec­es­sary so­cial mis­un­der­stand­ings. Such wise souls are able to avoid much of the trou­ble which is cer­tain to be the por­tion of all who suf­fer from lack of emo­tional ad­just­ment, those who refuse to grow up, and those who refuse to grow old grace­fully.

48:5.8One of the pur­poses of the mor­ontia ca­reer is to ef­fect the per­ma­nent erad­i­ca­tion from the mor­tal sur­vivors of such an­i­mal ves­ti­gial traits as pro­cras­ti­na­tion, equiv­o­ca­tion, in­sin­cer­ity, prob­lem avoid­ance, un­fair­ness, and ease seek­ing. The man­so­nia life early teaches the young mor­ontia pupils that post­pone­ment is in no sense avoid­ance. Af­ter the life in the flesh, time is no longer avail­able as a tech­nique of dodg­ing sit­u­a­tions or of cir­cum­vent­ing dis­agree­able obli­ga­tions.

196:3.1Per­sonal, spir­i­tual re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is an ef­fi­cient sol­vent for most mor­tal dif­fi­cul­ties; it is an ef­fec­tive sorter, eval­u­a­tor, and ad­juster of all hu­man prob­lems. Re­li­gion does not re­move or de­stroy hu­man trou­bles, but it does dis­solve, ab­sorb, il­lu­mi­nate, and tran­scend them. True re­li­gion uni­fies the per­son­al­ity for ef­fec­tive ad­just­ment to all mor­tal re­quire­ments. Re­li­gious faith—the pos­i­tive lead­ing of the in­dwelling di­vine pres­ence—un­fail­ingly en­ables the God-know­ing man to bridge that gulf ex­ist­ing be­tween the in­tel­lec­tual logic which rec­og­nizes the Uni­ver­sal First Cause as It and those pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tions of the soul which aver this First Cause is He, the heav­enly Fa­ther of Je­sus’ gospel, the per­sonal God of hu­man sal­va­tion.

165:6.2“In the time of test­ing, a man’s soul is re­vealed; trial dis­closes what re­ally is in the heart. When the ser­vant is tested and proved, then may the lord of the house set such a ser­vant over his house­hold and safely trust this faith­ful stew­ard to see that his chil­dren are fed and nur­tured. Like­wise, will I soon know who can be trusted with the wel­fare of my chil­dren when I shall have re­turned to the Fa­ther. As the lord of the house­hold shall set the true and tried ser­vant over the af­fairs of his fam­ily, so will I ex­alt those who en­dure the tri­als of this hour in the af­fairs of my king­dom.