joy

143:2.7“Your son­ship is grounded in faith, and you are to re­main un­moved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the di­vine word, and you shall not there­fore be led to doubt the re­al­ity of the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. It is the very good­ness of God that leads men into true and gen­uine re­pen­tance. Your se­cret of the mas­tery of self is bound up with your faith in the in­dwelling spirit, which ever works by love. Even this sav­ing faith you have not of your­selves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the chil­dren of this liv­ing faith, you are no longer the bond­slaves of self but rather the tri­umphant mas­ters of your­selves, the lib­er­ated sons of God.

111:4.7Hap­pi­ness and joy take ori­gin in the in­ner life. You can­not ex­pe­ri­ence real joy all by your­self. A soli­tary life is fa­tal to hap­pi­ness. Even fam­i­lies and na­tions will en­joy life more if they share it with oth­ers.

196:3.18This pro­found ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­ity of the di­vine in­dwelling for­ever tran­scends the crude ma­te­ri­al­is­tic tech­nique of the phys­i­cal sci­ences. You can­not put spir­i­tual joy un­der a mi­cro­scope; you can­not weigh love in a bal­ance; you can­not mea­sure moral val­ues; nei­ther can you es­ti­mate the qual­ity of spir­i­tual wor­ship.

34:6.13The con­scious­ness of the spirit dom­i­na­tion of a hu­man life is pres­ently at­tended by an in­creas­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Spirit in the life re­ac­tions of such a spirit-led mor­tal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suf­fer­ing, gen­tle­ness, good­ness, faith, meek­ness, and tem­per­ance.” Such spirit-guided and di­vinely il­lu­mi­nated mor­tals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in hu­man faith­ful­ness per­form the du­ties of their earthly as­sign­ments, have al­ready be­gun to dis­cern the lights of eter­nal life as they glim­mer on the far­away shores of an­other world; al­ready have they be­gun to com­pre­hend the re­al­ity of that in­spir­ing and com­fort­ing truth, “The king­dom of God is not meat and drink but righ­teous­ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And through­out ev­ery trial and in the pres­ence of ev­ery hard­ship, spirit-born souls are sus­tained by that hope which tran­scends all fear be­cause the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the pres­ence of the di­vine Spirit.

56:10.20To fi­nite man truth, beauty, and good­ness em­brace the full rev­e­la­tion of di­vin­ity re­al­ity. As this love-com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity finds spir­i­tual ex­pres­sion in the lives of God-know­ing mor­tals, there are yielded the fruits of di­vin­ity: in­tel­lec­tual peace, so­cial prog­ress, moral sat­is­fac­tion, spir­i­tual joy, and cos­mic wis­dom. The ad­vanced mor­tals on a world in the sev­enth stage of light and life have learned that love is the great­est thing in the uni­verse—and they know that God is love.

27:7.5All the arts of all the be­ings of the en­tire uni­verse which are ca­pa­ble of in­ten­si­fy­ing and ex­alt­ing the abil­i­ties of self-ex­pres­sion and the con­veyance of ap­pre­ci­a­tion, are em­ployed to their high­est ca­pac­ity in the wor­ship of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties. Wor­ship is the high­est joy of Par­a­dise ex­is­tence; it is the re­fresh­ing play of Par­a­dise. What play does for your jaded minds on earth, wor­ship will do for your per­fected souls on Par­a­dise. The mode of wor­ship on Par­a­dise is ut­terly be­yond mor­tal com­pre­hen­sion, but the spirit of it you can be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate even down here on Uran­tia, for the spir­its of the Gods even now in­dwell you, hover over you, and in­spire you to true wor­ship.

28:5.165. The Joy of Ex­is­tence. By na­ture these be­ings are re­flec­tively at­tuned to the super­aphic har­mony super­vi­sors above and to cer­tain of the ser­a­phim be­low, but it is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain just what the mem­bers of this in­ter­est­ing group re­ally do. Their prin­ci­pal ac­tiv­i­ties are di­rected to­ward pro­mot­ing re­ac­tions of joy among the var­i­ous or­ders of the an­gelic hosts and the lower will crea­tures. The Di­vine Coun­selors, to whom they are at­tached, sel­dom use them for spe­cific joy find­ing. In a more gen­eral man­ner and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors, they func­tion as joy clear­ing­houses, seek­ing to up­step the plea­sure re­ac­tions of the realms while try­ing to im­prove the hu­mor taste, to de­velop a super­hu­mor among mor­tals and an­gels. They en­deavor to demon­strate that there is in­her­ent joy in free­will ex­is­tence, in­de­pen­dent of all ex­tra­ne­ous in­flu­ences; and they are right, al­though they meet with great dif­fi­culty in in­cul­cat­ing this truth in the minds of prim­i­tive men. The higher spirit per­son­al­i­ties and the an­gels are more quickly re­spon­sive to these ed­u­ca­tional ef­forts.

108:5.6Your tran­sient and ever-chang­ing emo­tions of joy and sor­row are in the main purely hu­man and ma­te­rial re­ac­tions to your in­ter­nal psy­chic cli­mate and to your ex­ter­nal ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment. Do not, there­fore, look to the Ad­juster for self­ish con­so­la­tion and mor­tal com­fort. It is the busi­ness of the Ad­juster to pre­pare you for the eter­nal ad­ven­ture, to as­sure your sur­vival. It is not the mis­sion of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tor to smooth your ruf­fled feel­ings or to min­is­ter to your in­jured pride; it is the prepa­ra­tion of your soul for the long as­cend­ing ca­reer that en­gages the at­ten­tion and oc­cu­pies the time of the Ad­juster.

25:1.6The Ha­vona Servi­tals and the Grad­u­ate Guides man­i­fest a tran­scen­dent de­vo­tion to their work and a touch­ing af­fec­tion for one an­other, an af­fec­tion which, while spir­i­tual, you could only un­der­stand by com­par­i­son with the phe­nom­e­non of hu­man love. There is di­vine pathos in the sep­a­ra­tion of the servi­tals from the guides, as so of­ten oc­curs when the servi­tals are dis­patched on mis­sions be­yond the lim­its of the cen­tral uni­verse; but they go with joy and not with sor­row. The sat­is­fy­ing joy of high duty is the eclips­ing emo­tion of spir­i­tual be­ings. Sor­row can­not ex­ist in the face of the con­scious­ness of di­vine duty faith­fully per­formed. And when man’s as­cend­ing soul stands be­fore the Su­preme Judge, the de­ci­sion of eter­nal im­port will not be de­ter­mined by ma­te­rial suc­cesses or quan­ti­ta­tive achieve­ments; the ver­dict re­ver­ber­at­ing through the high courts de­clares: “Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant; you have been faith­ful over a few es­sen­tials; you shall be made ruler over uni­verse re­al­i­ties.”

149:5.4“Seek not, then, for false peace and tran­sient joy but rather for the as­sur­ance of faith and the sureties of di­vine son­ship which yield com­po­sure, con­tent­ment, and su­preme joy in the spirit.”

194:0.1About one o’clock, as the one hun­dred and twenty be­liev­ers were en­gaged in prayer, they all be­came aware of a strange pres­ence in the room. At the same time these dis­ci­ples all be­came con­scious of a new and pro­found sense of spir­i­tual joy, se­cu­rity, and con­fi­dence. This new con­scious­ness of spir­i­tual strength was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a strong urge to go out and pub­licly pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom and the good news that Je­sus had risen from the dead.

100:4.3But the great prob­lem of re­li­gious liv­ing con­sists in the task of uni­fy­ing the soul pow­ers of the per­son­al­ity by the dom­i­nance of LOVE. Health, men­tal ef­fi­ciency, and hap­pi­ness arise from the uni­fi­ca­tion of phys­i­cal sys­tems, mind sys­tems, and spirit sys­tems. Of health and san­ity man un­der­stands much, but of hap­pi­ness he has truly re­al­ized very lit­tle. The high­est hap­pi­ness is in­dis­sol­ubly linked with spir­i­tual prog­ress. Spir­i­tual growth yields last­ing joy, peace which passes all un­der­stand­ing.

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.