indolence

155:1.3Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach the twenty-four, say­ing: “The hea­then are not with­out ex­cuse when they rage at us. Be­cause their out­look is small and nar­row, they are able to con­cen­trate their en­er­gies en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. Their goal is near and more or less vis­i­ble; where­fore do they strive with valiant and ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion. You who have pro­fessed en­trance into the king­dom of heaven are al­to­gether too vac­il­lat­ing and in­def­i­nite in your teach­ing con­duct. The hea­then strike di­rectly for their ob­jec­tives; you are guilty of too much chronic yearn­ing. If you de­sire to en­ter the king­dom, why do you not take it by spir­i­tual as­sault even as the hea­then take a city they lay siege to? You are hardly wor­thy of the king­dom when your ser­vice con­sists so largely in an at­ti­tude of re­gret­ting the past, whin­ing over the pres­ent, and vainly hop­ing for the fu­ture. Why do the hea­then rage? Be­cause they know not the truth. Why do you lan­guish in fu­tile yearn­ing? Be­cause you obey not the truth. Cease your use­less yearn­ing and go forth bravely do­ing that which con­cerns the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom.

• service insensitivity

70:2.154. The in­creas­ing dan­gers of in­do­lence, ser­vice in­sen­si­tiv­ity.

• inertia, natural human state

92:3.9Re­li­gion fa­cil­i­tated the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal; it fos­tered work of cer­tain kinds; the leisure of the priests pro­moted art and knowl­edge; the race, in the end, gained much as a re­sult of all these early er­rors in eth­i­cal tech­nique. The shamans, hon­est and dis­hon­est, were ter­ri­bly ex­pen­sive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned pro­fes­sions and sci­ence it­self emerged from the par­a­sit­i­cal priest­hoods. Re­li­gion fos­tered civ­i­liza­tion and pro­vided so­ci­etal con­ti­nu­ity; it has been the moral po­lice force of all time. Re­li­gion pro­vided that hu­man dis­ci­pline and self-con­trol which made wis­dom pos­si­ble. Re­li­gion is the ef­fi­cient scourge of evo­lu­tion which ruth­lessly drives in­do­lent and suf­fer­ing hu­man­ity from its nat­u­ral state of in­tel­lec­tual in­er­tia for­ward and up­ward to the higher lev­els of rea­son and wis­dom.

• slothfulness of animalistic retrogression

117:4.13And so the de­ci­sion awaits each of you as it once awaited each of us: Will you fail the God of time, who is so de­pen­dent upon the de­ci­sions of the fi­nite mind? will you fail the Su­preme per­son­al­ity of the uni­verses by the sloth­ful­ness of an­i­mal­is­tic ret­ro­gres­sion? will you fail the great brother of all crea­tures, who is so de­pen­dent on each crea­ture? can you al­low your­self to pass into the realm of the un­re­al­ized when be­fore you lies the en­chant­ing vista of the uni­verse ca­reer—the di­vine dis­cov­ery of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther and the di­vine par­tic­i­pa­tion in the search for, and the evo­lu­tion of, the God of Su­prem­acy?

• evidence of moral immaturity

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.

130:6.3By this time the young man very much de­sired to talk with Je­sus, and he knelt at his feet im­plor­ing Je­sus to help him, to show him the way of es­cape from his world of per­sonal sor­row and de­feat. Said Je­sus: “My friend, arise! Stand up like a man! You may be sur­rounded with small en­e­mies and be re­tarded by many ob­sta­cles, but the big things and the real things of this world and the uni­verse are on your side. The sun rises ev­ery morn­ing to salute you just as it does the most pow­er­ful and pros­per­ous man on earth. Look—you have a strong body and pow­er­ful mus­cles—your phys­i­cal equip­ment is bet­ter than the av­er­age. Of course, it is just about use­less while you sit out here on the moun­tain­side and grieve over your mis­for­tunes, real and fan­cied. But you could do great things with your body if you would has­ten off to where great things are wait­ing to be done. You are try­ing to run away from your un­happy self, but it can­not be done. You and your prob­lems of liv­ing are real; you can­not es­cape them as long as you live. But look again, your mind is clear and ca­pa­ble. Your strong body has an in­tel­li­gent mind to di­rect it. Set your mind at work to solve its prob­lems; teach your in­tel­lect to work for you; refuse longer to be dom­i­nated by fear like an un­think­ing an­i­mal. Your mind should be your coura­geous ally in the so­lu­tion of your life prob­lems rather than your be­ing, as you have been, its ab­ject fear-slave and the bond ser­vant of de­pres­sion and de­feat. But most valu­able of all, your po­ten­tial of real achieve­ment is the spirit which lives within you, and which will stim­u­late and in­spire your mind to con­trol it­self and ac­ti­vate the body if you will re­lease it from the fet­ters of fear and thus en­able your spir­i­tual na­ture to be­gin your de­liv­er­ance from the evils of in­ac­tion by the power-pres­ence of liv­ing faith. And then, forth­with, will this faith van­quish fear of men by the com­pelling pres­ence of that new and all-dom­i­nat­ing love of your fel­lows which will so soon fill your soul to over­flow­ing be­cause of the con­scious­ness which has been born in your heart that you are a child of God.

16:6.9These sci­en­tific, moral, and spir­i­tual in­sights, these cos­mic re­sponses, are in­nate in the cos­mic mind, which en­dows all will crea­tures. The ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing never fails to de­velop these three cos­mic in­tu­itions; they are con­sti­tu­tive in the self-con­scious­ness of re­flec­tive think­ing. But it is sad to re­cord that so few per­sons on Uran­tia take de­light in cul­ti­vat­ing these qual­i­ties of coura­geous and in­de­pen­dent cos­mic think­ing.

68:4.5Early man was might­ily gripped by cus­tom; the sav­age was a ver­i­ta­ble slave to us­age; but there have arisen ever and anon those vari­a­tions from type who have dared to in­au­gu­rate new ways of think­ing and im­proved meth­ods of liv­ing. Nev­er­the­less, the in­er­tia of prim­i­tive man con­sti­tutes the bi­o­logic safety brake against pre­cip­i­ta­tion too sud­denly into the ru­inous mal­ad­just­ment of a too rapidly ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

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.

194:3.11Pen­te­cost, with its spir­i­tual en­dow­ment, was de­signed for­ever to loose the re­li­gion of the Mas­ter from all de­pen­dence upon phys­i­cal force; the teach­ers of this new re­li­gion are now equipped with spir­i­tual weapons. They are to go out to con­quer the world with un­fail­ing for­give­ness, match­less good will, and abound­ing love. They are equipped to over­come evil with good, to van­quish hate by love, to de­stroy fear with a coura­geous and liv­ing faith in truth. Je­sus had al­ready taught his fol­low­ers that his re­li­gion was never pas­sive; al­ways were his dis­ci­ples to be ac­tive and pos­i­tive in their min­istry of mercy and in their man­i­fes­ta­tions of love. No longer did these be­liev­ers look upon Yah­weh as “the Lord of Hosts.” They now re­garded the eter­nal De­ity as the “God and Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus Christ.” They made that prog­ress, at least, even if they did in some mea­sure fail fully to grasp the truth that God is also the spir­i­tual Fa­ther of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual.

111:1.9Mind is your ship, the Ad­juster is your pi­lot, the hu­man will is cap­tain. The mas­ter of the mor­tal ves­sel should have the wis­dom to trust the di­vine pi­lot to guide the as­cend­ing soul into the mor­ontia har­bors of eter­nal sur­vival. Only by self­ish­ness, sloth­ful­ness, and sin­ful­ness can the will of man re­ject the guid­ance of such a lov­ing pi­lot and even­tu­ally wreck the mor­tal ca­reer upon the evil shoals of re­jected mercy and upon the rocks of em­braced sin. With your con­sent, this faith­ful pi­lot will safely carry you across the bar­ri­ers of time and the hand­i­caps of space to the very source of the di­vine mind and on be­yond, even to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of Ad­justers.

102:2.7Evo­lu­tion­ary man does not nat­u­rally rel­ish hard work. To keep pace in his life ex­pe­ri­ence with the im­pelling de­mands and the com­pelling urges of a grow­ing re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence means in­ces­sant ac­tiv­ity in spir­i­tual growth, in­tel­lec­tual ex­pan­sion, fac­tual en­large­ment, and so­cial ser­vice. There is no real re­li­gion apart from a highly ac­tive per­son­al­ity. There­fore do the more in­do­lent of men of­ten seek to es­cape the rig­ors of truly re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties by a species of in­ge­nious self-de­cep­tion through re­sort­ing to a re­treat to the false shel­ter of stereo­typed re­li­gious doc­trines and dog­mas. But true re­li­gion is alive. In­tel­lec­tual crys­tal­liza­tion of re­li­gious con­cepts is the equiv­a­lent of spir­i­tual death. You can­not con­ceive of re­li­gion with­out ideas, but when re­li­gion once be­comes re­duced only to an idea, it is no longer re­li­gion; it has be­come merely a species of hu­man phi­los­o­phy.

102:2.8Again, there are other types of un­sta­ble and poorly dis­ci­plined souls who would use the sen­ti­men­tal ideas of re­li­gion as an av­enue of es­cape from the ir­ri­tat­ing de­mands of liv­ing. When cer­tain vac­il­lat­ing and timid mor­tals at­tempt to es­cape from the in­ces­sant pres­sure of evo­lu­tion­ary life, re­li­gion, as they con­ceive it, seems to pre­sent the near­est refuge, the best av­enue of es­cape. But it is the mis­sion of re­li­gion to pre­pare man for bravely, even hero­ically, fac­ing the vi­cis­si­tudes of life. Re­li­gion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s su­preme en­dow­ment, the one thing which en­ables him to carry on and “en­dure as see­ing Him who is in­vis­i­ble.” Mys­ti­cism, how­ever, is of­ten some­thing of a re­treat from life which is em­braced by those hu­mans who do not rel­ish the more ro­bust ac­tiv­i­ties of liv­ing a re­li­gious life in the open are­nas of hu­man so­ci­ety and com­merce. True re­li­gion must act. Con­duct will be the re­sult of re­li­gion when man ac­tu­ally has it, or rather when re­li­gion is per­mit­ted truly to pos­sess the man. Never will re­li­gion be con­tent with mere think­ing or un­act­ing feel­ing.

69:9.2Prim­i­tive com­mu­nism did not es­pe­cially level men down, nor did it ex­alt medi­ocrity, but it did put a pre­mium on in­ac­tiv­ity and idle­ness, and it did sti­fle in­dus­try and de­stroy am­bi­tion. Com­mu­nism was in­dis­pens­able scaf­fold­ing in the growth of prim­i­tive so­ci­ety, but it gave way to the evo­lu­tion of a higher so­cial or­der be­cause it ran counter to four strong hu­man pro­cliv­i­ties:

71:6.2In eco­nomics, profit mo­ti­va­tion is to ser­vice mo­ti­va­tion what fear is to love in re­li­gion. But the profit mo­tive must not be sud­denly de­stroyed or re­moved; it keeps many oth­er­wise sloth­ful mor­tals hard at work. It is not nec­es­sary, how­ever, that this so­cial en­ergy arouser be for­ever self­ish in its ob­jec­tives.

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.