leadings

• Adjuster leadings › Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God

34:6.12And when such a life of spirit guid­ance is freely and in­tel­li­gently ac­cepted, there grad­u­ally de­vel­ops within the hu­man mind a pos­i­tive con­scious­ness of di­vine con­tact and as­sur­ance of spirit com­mu­nion; sooner or later “the Spirit bears wit­ness with your spirit (the Ad­juster) that you are a child of God.” Al­ready has your own Thought Ad­juster told you of your kin­ship to God so that the rec­ord tes­ti­fies that the Spirit bears wit­ness “with your spirit,” not to your spirit.

• dangers involved with supposed spirit leadings › strong emotions are not equivalent to spiritual leadings

91:7.1Mys­ti­cism, as the tech­nique of the cul­ti­va­tion of the con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God, is al­to­gether praise­wor­thy, but when such prac­tices lead to so­cial iso­la­tion and cul­mi­nate in re­li­gious fa­nati­cism, they are all but rep­re­hen­si­ble. Al­to­gether too fre­quently that which the over­wrought mys­tic eval­u­ates as di­vine in­spi­ra­tion is the up­ris­ings of his own deep mind. The con­tact of the mor­tal mind with its in­dwelling Ad­juster, while of­ten fa­vored by de­voted med­i­ta­tion, is more fre­quently fa­cil­i­tated by whole­hearted and lov­ing ser­vice in un­selfish min­istry to one’s fel­low crea­tures.

91:7.2The great re­li­gious teach­ers and the proph­ets of past ages were not ex­treme mys­tics. They were God-know­ing men and women who best served their God by un­selfish min­istry to their fel­low mor­tals. Je­sus of­ten took his apos­tles away by them­selves for short pe­ri­ods to en­gage in med­i­ta­tion and prayer, but for the most part he kept them in ser­vice-con­tact with the mul­ti­tudes. The soul of man re­quires spir­i­tual ex­er­cise as well as spir­i­tual nour­ish­ment.

91:7.3Re­li­gious ec­stasy is per­mis­si­ble when re­sult­ing from sane an­tecedents, but such ex­pe­ri­ences are more of­ten the out­growth of purely emo­tional in­flu­ences than a man­i­fes­ta­tion of deep spir­i­tual char­ac­ter. Re­li­gious per­sons must not re­gard ev­ery vivid psy­cho­logic pre­sen­ti­ment and ev­ery in­tense emo­tional ex­pe­ri­ence as a di­vine rev­e­la­tion or a spir­i­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Gen­uine spir­i­tual ec­stasy is usu­ally as­so­ci­ated with great out­ward calm­ness and al­most per­fect emo­tional con­trol. But true pro­phetic vi­sion is a super­psy­cho­logic pre­sen­ti­ment. Such vis­i­ta­tions are not pseudo hal­lu­ci­na­tions, nei­ther are they trance­like ec­stasies.

91:7.4The hu­man mind may per­form in re­sponse to so-called in­spi­ra­tion when it is sen­si­tive ei­ther to the up­ris­ings of the sub­con­scious or to the stim­u­lus of the super­con­scious. In ei­ther case it ap­pears to the in­di­vid­ual that such aug­men­ta­tions of the con­tent of con­scious­ness are more or less for­eign. Un­re­strained mys­ti­cal en­thu­si­asm and ram­pant re­li­gious ec­stasy are not the cre­den­tials of in­spi­ra­tion, sup­pos­edly di­vine cre­den­tials.

• practical validations of inspiration

91:7.5The prac­ti­cal test of all these strange re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences of mys­ti­cism, ec­stasy, and in­spi­ra­tion is to ob­serve whether these phe­nom­ena cause an in­di­vid­ual:

91:7.61. To en­joy bet­ter and more com­plete phys­i­cal health.

91:7.72. To func­tion more ef­fi­ciently and prac­ti­cally in his men­tal life.

91:7.83. More fully and joy­fully to so­cial­ize his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

91:7.94. More com­pletely to spir­i­tu­al­ize his day-by-day liv­ing while faith­fully dis­charg­ing the com­mon­place du­ties of rou­tine mor­tal ex­is­tence.

91:7.105. To en­hance his love for, and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of, truth, beauty, and good­ness.

91:7.116. To con­serve cur­rently rec­og­nized so­cial, moral, eth­i­cal, and spir­i­tual val­ues.

91:7.127. To in­crease his spir­i­tual in­sight—God-con­scious­ness.

• dangers involved with supposed spirit leadings › uprush from unconscious mistaken for spirit leadings

100:5.6If one is dis­posed to rec­og­nize a the­o­ret­i­cal sub­con­scious mind as a prac­ti­cal work­ing hy­poth­e­sis in the oth­er­wise uni­fied in­tel­lec­tual life, then, to be con­sis­tent, one should pos­tu­late a sim­i­lar and cor­re­spond­ing realm of as­cend­ing in­tel­lec­tual ac­tiv­ity as the super­con­scious level, the zone of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the in­dwelling spirit en­tity, the Thought Ad­juster. The great dan­ger in all these psy­chic spec­u­la­tions is that vi­sions and other so-called mys­tic ex­pe­ri­ences, along with ex­traor­di­nary dreams, may be re­garded as di­vine com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the hu­man mind. In times past, di­vine be­ings have re­vealed them­selves to cer­tain God-know­ing per­sons, not be­cause of their mys­tic trances or mor­bid vi­sions, but in spite of all these phe­nom­ena.

100:5.7In con­trast with con­ver­sion-seek­ing, the bet­ter ap­proach to the mor­ontia zones of pos­si­ble con­tact with the Thought Ad­juster would be through liv­ing faith and sin­cere wor­ship, whole­hearted and un­selfish prayer. Al­to­gether too much of the up­rush of the mem­o­ries of the un­con­scious lev­els of the hu­man mind has been mis­taken for di­vine rev­e­la­tions and spirit lead­ings.

• Adjuster leadings › Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God

101:2.13True re­li­gion is an in­sight into re­al­ity, the faith-child of the moral con­scious­ness, and not a mere in­tel­lec­tual as­sent to any body of dog­matic doc­trines. True re­li­gion con­sists in the ex­pe­ri­ence that “the Spirit it­self bears wit­ness with our spirit that we are the chil­dren of God.” Re­li­gion con­sists not in the­o­logic propo­si­tions but in spir­i­tual in­sight and the sub­lim­ity of the soul’s trust.

• Adjuster leadings › Adjusters constantly communicate with human subjects
• Adjuster leadings › autorevelation is work of Adjuster

101:4.3Truth is al­ways a rev­e­la­tion: au­torev­e­la­tion when it emerges as a re­sult of the work of the in­dwelling Ad­juster; ep­ochal rev­e­la­tion when it is pre­sented by the func­tion of some other ce­les­tial agency, group, or per­son­al­ity.

• Adjuster leadings › Adjusters constantly communicate with human subjects

108:6.7The Ad­justers are the eter­nal an­ces­tors, the di­vine orig­i­nals, of your evolv­ing im­mor­tal souls; they are the un­ceas­ing urge that leads man to at­tempt the mas­tery of the ma­te­rial and pres­ent ex­is­tence in the light of the spir­i­tual and fu­ture ca­reer. The Mon­i­tors are the pris­on­ers of undy­ing hope, the founts of ev­er­last­ing pro­gres­sion. And how they do en­joy com­mu­ni­cat­ing with their sub­jects in more or less di­rect chan­nels! How they re­joice when they can dis­pense with sym­bols and other meth­ods of in­di­rec­tion and flash their mes­sages straight to the in­tel­lects of their hu­man part­ners!

• Adjuster leadings › man may hear Adjuster’s direct voice in supreme decision

109:5.2It is some­times pos­si­ble to have the mind il­lu­mi­nated, to hear the di­vine voice that con­tin­u­ally speaks within you, so that you may be­come par­tially con­scious of the wis­dom, truth, good­ness, and beauty of the po­ten­tial per­son­al­ity con­stantly in­dwelling you.

• recognize thoughts for what they are; disregard what they might have been

109:5.3But your un­steady and rapidly shift­ing men­tal at­ti­tudes of­ten re­sult in thwart­ing the plans and in­ter­rupt­ing the work of the Ad­justers. Their work is not only in­ter­fered with by the in­nate na­tures of the mor­tal races, but this min­istry is also greatly re­tarded by your own pre­con­ceived opin­ions, set­tled ideas, and long-stand­ing prej­u­dices. Be­cause of these hand­i­caps, many times only their un­fin­ished cre­ations emerge into con­scious­ness, and con­fu­sion of con­cept is in­ev­i­ta­ble. There­fore, in scru­ti­niz­ing men­tal sit­u­a­tions, safety lies only in the prompt rec­og­ni­tion of each and ev­ery thought and ex­pe­ri­ence for just what it ac­tu­ally and fun­da­men­tally is, dis­re­gard­ing en­tirely what it might have been.

• Adjuster leadings › Adjusters constantly communicate with human subjects

110:1.1Ad­justers should not be thought of as liv­ing in the ma­te­rial brains of hu­man be­ings. They are not or­ganic parts of the phys­i­cal crea­tures of the realms. The Thought Ad­juster may more prop­erly be en­vis­aged as in­dwelling the mor­tal mind of man rather than as ex­ist­ing within the con­fines of a sin­gle phys­i­cal or­gan. And in­di­rectly and un­rec­og­nized the Ad­juster is con­stantly com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the hu­man sub­ject, es­pe­cially dur­ing those sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ences of the wor­ship­ful con­tact of mind with spirit in the super­con­scious­ness.

• dangers involved with supposed spirit leadings › product of intellect indistinguishable from that of Adjuster

110:3.1Ad­justers are play­ing the sa­cred and su­perb game of the ages; they are en­gaged in one of the su­preme ad­ven­tures of time in space. And how happy they are when your co-op­er­a­tion per­mits them to lend as­sis­tance in your short strug­gles of time as they con­tinue to pros­e­cute their larger tasks of eter­nity. But usu­ally, when your Ad­juster at­tempts to com­mu­ni­cate with you, the mes­sage is lost in the ma­te­rial cur­rents of the en­ergy streams of hu­man mind; only oc­ca­sion­ally do you catch an echo, a faint and dis­tant echo, of the di­vine voice.

• dangers involved with supposed spirit leadings › product of intellect indistinguishable from that of Adjuster
• Jesus did not indulge in religious l.

110:4.1Ad­justers are able to re­ceive the con­tin­u­ous stream of cos­mic in­tel­li­gence com­ing in over the mas­ter cir­cuits of time and space; they are in full touch with the spirit in­tel­li­gence and en­ergy of the uni­verses. But these mighty in­dwellers are un­able to trans­mit very much of this wealth of wis­dom and truth to the minds of their mor­tal sub­jects be­cause of the lack of com­mon­ness of na­ture and the ab­sence of re­spon­sive rec­og­ni­tion.

110:4.2The Thought Ad­juster is en­gaged in a con­stant ef­fort so to spir­i­tu­al­ize your mind as to evolve your mor­ontia soul; but you your­self are mostly un­con­scious of this in­ner min­istry. You are quite in­ca­pable of dis­tin­guish­ing the prod­uct of your own ma­te­rial in­tel­lect from that of the con­joint ac­tiv­i­ties of your soul and the Ad­juster.

110:4.3Cer­tain abrupt pre­sen­ta­tions of thoughts, con­clu­sions, and other pic­tures of mind are some­times the di­rect or in­di­rect work of the Ad­juster; but far more of­ten they are the sud­den emer­gence into con­scious­ness of ideas which have been group­ing them­selves to­gether in the sub­merged men­tal lev­els, nat­u­ral and ev­ery­day oc­cur­rences of nor­mal and or­di­nary psy­chic func­tion in­her­ent in the cir­cuits of the evolv­ing an­i­mal mind. (In con­trast with these sub­con­scious em­a­na­tions, the rev­e­la­tions of the Ad­juster ap­pear through the realms of the super­con­scious.)

110:4.4Trust all mat­ters of mind be­yond the dead level of con­scious­ness to the cus­tody of the Ad­justers. In due time, if not in this world then on the man­sion worlds, they will give good ac­count of their stew­ard­ship, and even­tu­ally will they bring forth those mean­ings and val­ues in­trusted to their care and keep­ing. They will res­ur­rect ev­ery wor­thy trea­sure of the mor­tal mind if you sur­vive.

• Adjuster leadings › many isms have arisen from garbled Adjuster communications

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.

110:4.6For many thou­sands of years, so the rec­ords of Je­ru­sem show, in each gen­er­a­tion there have lived fewer and fewer be­ings who could func­tion safely with self-act­ing Ad­justers. This is an alarm­ing pic­ture, and the super­vis­ing per­son­al­i­ties of Sa­ta­nia look with fa­vor upon the pro­pos­als of some of your more im­me­di­ate plan­e­tary super­vi­sors who ad­vo­cate the in­au­gu­ra­tion of mea­sures de­signed to fos­ter and con­serve the higher spir­i­tual types of the Uran­tia races.

• Adjuster leadings › man may hear Adjuster’s direct voice in supreme decision

110:5.2Man’s dream ex­pe­ri­ences, that dis­or­dered and dis­con­nected pa­rade of the un-co-or­di­nated sleep­ing mind, pre­sent ad­e­quate proof of the fail­ure of the Ad­justers to har­mo­nize and as­so­ciate the di­ver­gent fac­tors of the mind of man. The Ad­justers sim­ply can­not, in a sin­gle life­time, ar­bi­trar­ily co-or­di­nate and syn­chro­nize two such un­like and di­verse types of think­ing as the hu­man and the di­vine. When they do, as they some­times have, such souls are trans­lated di­rectly to the man­sion worlds with­out the ne­ces­sity of pass­ing through the ex­pe­ri­ence of death.

• dangers involved with supposed spirit leadings › blunder to exalt reaction of mind to divine dignity

110:5.5It is ex­tremely dan­ger­ous to pos­tu­late as to the Ad­juster con­tent of the dream life. The Ad­justers do work dur­ing sleep, but your or­di­nary dream ex­pe­ri­ences are purely phys­i­o­logic and psy­cho­logic phe­nom­ena. Like­wise, it is haz­ardous to at­tempt the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the Ad­justers’ con­cept reg­istry from the more or less con­tin­u­ous and con­scious re­cep­tion of the dic­ta­tions of mor­tal con­science. These are prob­lems which will have to be solved through in­di­vid­ual dis­crim­i­na­tion and per­sonal de­ci­sion. But a hu­man be­ing would do bet­ter to err in re­ject­ing an Ad­juster’s ex­pres­sion through be­liev­ing it to be a purely hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence than to blun­der into ex­alt­ing a re­ac­tion of the mor­tal mind to the sphere of di­vine dig­nity. Re­mem­ber, the in­flu­ence of a Thought Ad­juster is for the most part, though not wholly, a super­con­scious ex­pe­ri­ence.

• dangers involved with supposed spirit leadings › product of intellect indistinguishable from that of Adjuster

110:5.6In vary­ing de­grees and in­creas­ingly as you as­cend the psy­chic cir­cles, some­times di­rectly, but more of­ten in­di­rectly, you do com­mu­ni­cate with your Ad­justers. But it is dan­ger­ous to en­ter­tain the idea that ev­ery new con­cept orig­i­nat­ing in the hu­man mind is the dic­ta­tion of the Ad­juster. More of­ten, in be­ings of your or­der, that which you ac­cept as the Ad­juster’s voice is in re­al­ity the em­a­na­tion of your own in­tel­lect. This is dan­ger­ous ground, and ev­ery hu­man be­ing must set­tle these prob­lems for him­self in ac­cor­dance with his nat­u­ral hu­man wis­dom and super­hu­man in­sight.

• dangers involved with supposed spirit leadings › unbalanced spiritual growth produces fanatical interpretation of spirit leadings

110:6.2The Ad­juster is your equal part­ner in the at­tain­ment of the seven cir­cles—the achieve­ment of com­par­a­tive mor­tal ma­tu­rity. The Ad­juster as­cends the cir­cles with you from the sev­enth to the first but pro­gresses to the sta­tus of su­prem­acy and self-ac­tiv­ity quite in­de­pen­dent of the ac­tive co-op­er­a­tion of the mor­tal mind.

• Adjuster leadings › Adjusters speak directly with 1st psychic circlers

110:6.15The first cir­cle. The Ad­juster can­not, or­di­nar­ily, speak di­rectly and im­me­di­ately with you un­til you at­tain the first and fi­nal cir­cle of pro­gres­sive mor­tal achieve­ment. This level rep­re­sents the high­est pos­si­ble re­al­iza­tion of mind-Ad­juster re­la­tion­ship in the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence prior to the lib­er­a­tion of the evolv­ing mor­ontia soul from the ha­bil­i­ments of the ma­te­rial body. Con­cern­ing mind, emo­tions, and cos­mic in­sight, this achieve­ment of the first psy­chic cir­cle is the near­est pos­si­ble ap­proach of ma­te­rial mind and spirit Ad­juster in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• Adjuster leadings › man may hear Adjuster’s direct voice in supreme decision

110:7.9While the voice of the Ad­juster is ever within you, most of you will hear it sel­dom dur­ing a life­time. Hu­man be­ings be­low the third and sec­ond cir­cles of at­tain­ment rarely hear the Ad­juster’s di­rect voice ex­cept in mo­ments of su­preme de­sire, in a su­preme sit­u­a­tion, and con­se­quent upon a su­preme de­ci­sion.

• dangers involved with supposed spirit leadings › strong emotions are not equivalent to spiritual leadings

159:3.6Some­time the chil­dren of the king­dom will re­al­ize that strong feel­ings of emo­tion are not equiv­a­lent to the lead­ings of the di­vine spirit. To be strongly and strangely im­pressed to do some­thing or to go to a cer­tain place, does not nec­es­sar­ily mean that such im­pulses are the lead­ings of the in­dwelling spirit.

• Jesus did not indulge in religious l.

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.