self-importance

50:1.2The prince of a newly in­hab­ited world is sur­rounded by a loyal corps of helpers and as­sis­tants and by large num­bers of the min­is­ter­ing spir­its. But the di­rect­ing corps of such new worlds must be of the lower or­ders of the ad­min­is­tra­tors of a sys­tem in or­der to be in­nately sym­pa­thetic with, and un­der­stand­ing of, the plan­e­tary prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties. And all of this ef­fort to pro­vide sym­pa­thetic ruler­ship for the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds en­tails the in­creased li­a­bil­ity that these near-hu­man per­son­al­i­ties may be led astray by the ex­al­ta­tion of their own minds over and above the will of the Su­preme Rulers.

50:1.3Be­ing quite alone as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of di­vin­ity on the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets, these Sons are tested severely, and Neb­a­don has suf­fered the mis­for­tune of sev­eral re­bel­lions. In the cre­ation of the Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns and the Plan­e­tary Princes there oc­curs the per­son­al­iza­tion of a con­cept that has been get­ting far­ther and far­ther away from the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son, and there is an in­creas­ing dan­ger of los­ing the sense of pro­por­tion as to one’s self-im­por­tance and a greater like­li­hood of fail­ure to keep a proper grasp of the val­ues and re­la­tion­ships of the nu­mer­ous or­ders of di­vine be­ings and their gra­da­tions of au­thor­ity. That the Fa­ther is not per­son­ally pres­ent in the lo­cal uni­verse also im­poses a cer­tain test of faith and loy­alty on all these Sons.

12:9.6Mor­tal man has a spirit nu­cleus. The mind is a per­sonal-en­ergy sys­tem ex­ist­ing around a di­vine spirit nu­cleus and func­tion­ing in a ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment. Such a liv­ing re­la­tion­ship of per­sonal mind and spirit con­sti­tutes the uni­verse po­ten­tial of eter­nal per­son­al­ity. Real trou­ble, last­ing dis­ap­point­ment, se­ri­ous de­feat, or in­es­cap­able death can come only af­ter self-con­cepts pre­sume fully to dis­place the gov­ern­ing power of the cen­tral spirit nu­cleus, thereby dis­rupt­ing the cos­mic scheme of per­son­al­ity iden­tity.

48:6.37You will learn that you in­crease your bur­dens and de­crease the like­li­hood of suc­cess by tak­ing your­self too se­ri­ously. Noth­ing can take prece­dence over the work of your sta­tus sphere—this world or the next. Very im­por­tant is the work of prepa­ra­tion for the next higher sphere, but noth­ing equals the im­por­tance of the work of the world in which you are ac­tu­ally liv­ing. But though the work is im­por­tant, the self is not. When you feel im­por­tant, you lose en­ergy to the wear and tear of ego dig­nity so that there is lit­tle en­ergy left to do the work. Self-im­por­tance, not work-im­por­tance, ex­hausts im­ma­ture crea­tures; it is the self el­e­ment that ex­hausts, not the ef­fort to achieve. You can do im­por­tant work if you do not be­come self-im­por­tant; you can do sev­eral things as eas­ily as one if you leave your­self out. Va­ri­ety is rest­ful; mo­not­ony is what wears and ex­hausts. Day af­ter day is alike—just life or the al­ter­na­tive of death.

150:5.2“When men and women ask what shall we do to be saved, you shall an­swer, Be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom; ac­cept di­vine for­give­ness. By faith rec­og­nize the in­dwelling spirit of God, whose ac­cep­tance makes you a son of God. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where it says, ‘In the Lord have I righ­teous­ness and strength.’ Also where the Fa­ther says, ‘My righ­teous­ness is near; my sal­va­tion has gone forth, and my arms shall en­fold my peo­ple.’ ‘My soul shall be joy­ful in the love of my God, for he has clothed me with the gar­ments of sal­va­tion and has cov­ered me with the robe of his righ­teous­ness.’ Have you not also read of the Fa­ther that his name ‘shall be called the Lord our righ­teous­ness.’ ‘Take away the filthy rags of self-righ­teous­ness and clothe my son with the robe of di­vine righ­teous­ness and eter­nal sal­va­tion.’ It is for­ever true, ‘the just shall live by faith.’ En­trance into the Fa­ther’s king­dom is wholly free, but prog­ress—growth in grace—is es­sen­tial to con­tin­u­ance therein.

162:2.1The first af­ter­noon that Je­sus taught in the tem­ple, a con­sid­er­able com­pany sat lis­ten­ing to his words de­pict­ing the lib­erty of the new gospel and the joy of those who be­lieve the good news, when a cu­ri­ous lis­tener in­ter­rupted him to ask: “Teacher, how is it you can quote the Scrip­tures and teach the peo­ple so flu­ently when I am told that you are un­taught in the learn­ing of the rab­bis?” Je­sus replied: “No man has taught me the truths which I de­clare to you. And this teach­ing is not mine but His who sent me. If any man re­ally de­sires to do my Fa­ther’s will, he shall cer­tainly know about my teach­ing, whether it be God’s or whether I speak for my­self. He who speaks for him­self seeks his own glory, but when I de­clare the words of the Fa­ther, I thereby seek the glory of him who sent me. But be­fore you try to en­ter into the new light, should you not rather fol­low the light you al­ready have? Moses gave you the law, yet how many of you hon­estly seek to ful­fill its de­mands? Moses in this law en­joins you, say­ing, ‘You shall not kill’; not­with­stand­ing this com­mand some of you seek to kill the Son of Man.”

25:1.1Though de­nom­i­nated servi­tals, these “mid­way crea­tures” of the cen­tral uni­verse are not ser­vants in any me­nial sense of the word. In the spir­i­tual world there is no such thing as me­nial work; all ser­vice is sa­cred and ex­hil­a­rat­ing; nei­ther do the higher or­ders of be­ings look down upon the lower or­ders of ex­is­tence.

48:4.14All Sa­ta­nia, dur­ing times of play, those times when its in­hab­i­tants re­fresh­ingly res­ur­rect the mem­o­ries of a lower stage of ex­is­tence, is ed­i­fied by the pleas­ant hu­mor of a corps of re­ver­sion di­rec­tors from Uran­tia. The sense of ce­les­tial hu­mor we have with us al­ways, even when en­gaged in the most dif­fi­cult of as­sign­ments. It helps to avoid an overde­vel­op­ment of the no­tion of one’s self-im­por­tance. But we do not give rein to it freely, as you might say, “have fun,” ex­cept when we are in re­cess from the se­ri­ous as­sign­ments of our re­spec­tive or­ders.

48:4.15When we are tempted to mag­nify our self-im­por­tance, if we stop to con­tem­plate the in­fin­ity of the great­ness and grandeur of our Mak­ers, our own self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion be­comes sub­limely ridicu­lous, even verg­ing on the hu­mor­ous. One of the func­tions of hu­mor is to help all of us take our­selves less se­ri­ously. Hu­mor is the di­vine an­ti­dote for ex­al­ta­tion of ego.

48:4.16The need for the re­lax­ation and di­ver­sion of hu­mor is great­est in those or­ders of as­cen­dant be­ings who are sub­jected to sus­tained stress in their up­ward strug­gles. The two ex­tremes of life have lit­tle need for hu­mor­ous di­ver­sions. Prim­i­tive men have no ca­pac­ity there­for, and be­ings of Par­a­dise per­fec­tion have no need thereof. The hosts of Ha­vona are nat­u­rally a joy­ous and ex­hil­a­rat­ing as­sem­blage of su­premely happy per­son­al­i­ties. On Par­a­dise the qual­ity of wor­ship ob­vi­ates the ne­ces­sity for re­ver­sion ac­tiv­i­ties. But among those who start their ca­reers far be­low the goal of Par­a­dise per­fec­tion, there is a large place for the min­istry of the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors.

48:4.17The higher the mor­tal species, the greater the stress and the greater the ca­pac­ity for hu­mor as well as the ne­ces­sity for it. In the spirit world the op­po­site is true: The higher we as­cend, the less the need for the di­ver­sions of re­ver­sion ex­pe­ri­ences. But pro­ceed­ing down the scale of spirit life from Par­a­dise to the se­raphic hosts, there is an in­creas­ing need for the mis­sion of mirth and the min­istry of mer­ri­ment. Those be­ings who most need the re­fresh­ment of pe­ri­odic re­ver­sion to the in­tel­lec­tual sta­tus of pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ences are the higher types of the hu­man species, the mor­ontians, an­gels, and the Ma­te­rial Sons, to­gether with all sim­i­lar types of per­son­al­ity.

48:4.18Hu­mor should func­tion as an au­to­matic safety valve to pre­vent the build­ing up of ex­ces­sive pres­sures due to the mo­not­ony of sus­tained and se­ri­ous self-con­tem­pla­tion in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tense strug­gle for de­vel­op­men­tal prog­ress and no­ble achieve­ment. Hu­mor also func­tions to lessen the shock of the un­ex­pected im­pact of fact or of truth, rigid un­yield­ing fact and flex­i­ble ever-liv­ing truth. The mor­tal per­son­al­ity, never sure as to which will next be en­coun­tered, through hu­mor swiftly grasps—sees the point and achieves in­sight—the un­ex­pected na­ture of the sit­u­a­tion be it fact or be it truth.

• exaggerated ideas of

139:12.6Ju­das was an only son of un­wise par­ents. When very young, he was pam­pered and pet­ted; he was a spoiled child. As he grew up, he had ex­ag­ger­ated ideas about his self-im­por­tance. He was a poor loser. He had loose and dis­torted ideas about fair­ness; he was given to the in­dul­gence of hate and sus­pi­cion. He was an ex­pert at mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the words and acts of his friends. All through his life Ju­das had cul­ti­vated the habit of get­ting even with those whom he fan­cied had mis­treated him. His sense of val­ues and loy­al­ties was de­fec­tive.

• resentful his abilities unrecognized

177:4.4And now, as never be­fore, Ju­das found him­self be­com­ing strangely re­sent­ful that Je­sus had never as­signed him a po­si­tion of greater honor. All along he had ap­pre­ci­ated the honor of be­ing the apos­tolic trea­surer, but now he be­gan to feel that he was not ap­pre­ci­ated; that his abil­i­ties were un­rec­og­nized. He was sud­denly over­come with in­dig­na­tion that Pe­ter, James, and John should have been hon­ored with close as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus, and at this time, when he was on the way to the high priest’s home, he was bent on get­ting even with Pe­ter, James, and John more than he was con­cerned with any thought of be­tray­ing Je­sus. But over and above all, just then, a new and dom­i­nat­ing thought be­gan to oc­cupy the fore­front of his con­scious mind: He had set out to get honor for him­self, and if this could be se­cured si­mul­ta­ne­ously with get­ting even with those who had con­tributed to the great­est dis­ap­point­ment of his life, all the bet­ter. He was seized with a ter­ri­ble con­spir­acy of con­fu­sion, pride, des­per­a­tion, and de­ter­mi­na­tion. And so it must be plain that it was not for money that Ju­das was then on his way to the home of Cai­a­phas to ar­range for the be­trayal of Je­sus.

• heart set on self-exaltation

177:4.7When his cousin had fin­ished speak­ing, he pre­sented Ju­das, who, step­ping for­ward near the high priest, said: “All that my cousin has prom­ised, I will do, but what are you will­ing to give me for this ser­vice?” Ju­das did not seem to dis­cern the look of dis­dain and even dis­gust that came over the face of the hard­hearted and vain­glo­ri­ous Cai­a­phas; his heart was too much set on self-glory and the crav­ing for the sat­is­fac­tion of self-ex­al­ta­tion.

66:8.2It should be noted that both Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia had been pa­tiently in­structed and lov­ingly warned re­spect­ing their crit­i­cal ten­den­cies and the sub­tle de­vel­op­ment of their pride of self and its as­so­ci­ated ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the feel­ing of self-im­por­tance. But all of these at­tempts to help had been mis­con­strued as un­war­ranted crit­i­cism and as un­jus­ti­fied in­ter­fer­ence with per­sonal lib­er­ties. Both Cali­gas­tia and Lu­cifer judged their friendly ad­vis­ers as be­ing ac­tu­ated by the very rep­re­hen­si­ble mo­tives which were be­gin­ning to dom­i­nate their own dis­torted think­ing and mis­guided plan­ning. They judged their un­selfish ad­vis­ers by their own evolv­ing self­ish­ness.

177:2.2“I know you will prove loyal to the gospel of the king­dom be­cause I can de­pend upon your pres­ent faith and love when these qual­i­ties are grounded upon such an early train­ing as has been your por­tion at home. You are the prod­uct of a home where the par­ents bear each other a sin­cere af­fec­tion, and there­fore you have not been overloved so as in­ju­ri­ously to ex­alt your con­cept of self-im­por­tance. Nei­ther has your per­son­al­ity suf­fered dis­tor­tion in con­se­quence of your par­ents’ love­less ma­neu­ver­ing for your con­fi­dence and loy­alty, the one against the other. You have en­joyed that pa­ren­tal love which in­sures laud­able self-con­fi­dence and which fos­ters nor­mal feel­ings of se­cu­rity. But you have also been for­tu­nate in that your par­ents pos­sessed wis­dom as well as love; and it was wis­dom which led them to with­hold most forms of in­dul­gence and many lux­u­ries which wealth can buy while they sent you to the syn­a­gogue school along with your neigh­bor­hood playfel­lows, and they also en­cour­aged you to learn how to live in this world by per­mit­ting you to have orig­i­nal ex­pe­ri­ence. You came over to the Jor­dan, where we preached and John’s dis­ci­ples bap­tized, with your young friend Amos. Both of you de­sired to go with us. When you re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, your par­ents con­sented; Amos’s par­ents re­fused; they loved their son so much that they de­nied him the blessed ex­pe­ri­ence which you have had, even such as you this day en­joy. By run­ning away from home, Amos could have joined us, but in so do­ing he would have wounded love and sac­ri­ficed loy­alty. Even if such a course had been wise, it would have been a ter­ri­ble price to pay for ex­pe­ri­ence, in­de­pen­dence, and lib­erty. Wise par­ents, such as yours, see to it that their chil­dren do not have to wound love or sti­fle loy­alty in or­der to de­velop in­de­pen­dence and en­joy in­vig­o­rat­ing lib­erty when they have grown up to your age.

166:1.4When the Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, they cast their eyes upon the ta­ble and re­mained silent. And since no one spoke, Je­sus con­tin­ued: “Many of you Phar­isees are here with me as friends, some are even my dis­ci­ples, but the ma­jor­ity of the Phar­isees are per­sis­tent in their re­fusal to see the light and ac­knowl­edge the truth, even when the work of the gospel is brought be­fore them in great power. How care­fully you cleanse the out­side of the cups and the plat­ters while the spir­i­tual-food ves­sels are filthy and pol­luted! You make sure to pre­sent a pi­ous and holy ap­pear­ance to the peo­ple, but your in­ner souls are filled with self-righ­teous­ness, cov­etous­ness, ex­tor­tion, and all man­ner of spir­i­tual wicked­ness. Your lead­ers even dare to plot and plan the mur­der of the Son of Man. Do not you fool­ish men un­der­stand that the God of heaven looks at the in­ner mo­tives of the soul as well as on your outer pre­tenses and your pi­ous pro­fes­sions? Think not that the giv­ing of alms and the pay­ing of tithes will cleanse you from un­righ­teous­ness and en­able you to stand clean in the pres­ence of the Judge of all men. Woe upon you Phar­isees who have per­sisted in re­ject­ing the light of life! You are metic­u­lous in tithing and os­ten­ta­tious in alms­giv­ing, but you know­ingly spurn the vis­i­ta­tion of God and re­ject the rev­e­la­tion of his love. Though it is all right for you to give at­ten­tion to these mi­nor du­ties, you should not have left these weight­ier re­quire­ments un­done. Woe upon all who shun jus­tice, spurn mercy, and re­ject truth! Woe upon all those who de­spise the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther while they seek the chief seats in the syn­a­gogue and crave flat­ter­ing salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places!”

54:1.6True lib­erty is the as­so­ciate of gen­uine self-re­spect; false lib­erty is the con­sort of self-ad­mi­ra­tion. True lib­erty is the fruit of self-con­trol; false lib­erty, the as­sump­tion of self-as­ser­tion. Self-con­trol leads to al­tru­is­tic ser­vice; self-ad­mi­ra­tion tends to­wards the ex­ploita­tion of oth­ers for the self­ish ag­gran­dize­ment of such a mis­taken in­di­vid­ual as is will­ing to sac­ri­fice righ­teous at­tain­ment for the sake of pos­sess­ing un­just power over his fel­low be­ings.

53:1.3Lu­cifer is now the fallen and de­posed Sov­er­eign of Sa­ta­nia. Self-con­tem­pla­tion is most dis­as­trous, even to the ex­alted per­son­al­i­ties of the ce­les­tial world. Of Lu­cifer it was said: “Your heart was lifted up be­cause of your beauty; you cor­rupted your wis­dom be­cause of your bright­ness.” Your olden prophet saw his sad es­tate when he wrote: “How are you fallen from heaven, O Lu­cifer, son of the morn­ing! How are you cast down, you who dared to con­fuse the worlds!”

175:1.10“While you should honor your rulers and rev­er­ence your teach­ers, you should call no man Fa­ther in the spir­i­tual sense, for there is one who is your Fa­ther, even God. Nei­ther should you seek to lord it over your breth­ren in the king­dom. Re­mem­ber, I have taught you that he who would be great­est among you should be­come the server of all. If you pre­sume to ex­alt your­selves be­fore God, you will cer­tainly be hum­bled; but whoso truly hum­bles him­self will surely be ex­alted. Seek in your daily lives, not self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, but the glory of God. In­tel­li­gently sub­or­di­nate your own wills to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

156:5.14Spir­i­tual liv­ing might­ily in­creases true self-re­spect. But self-re­spect is not self-ad­mi­ra­tion. Self-re­spect is al­ways co-or­di­nate with the love and ser­vice of one’s fel­lows. It is not pos­si­ble to re­spect your­self more than you love your neigh­bor; the one is the mea­sure of the ca­pac­ity for the other.

158:6.3“No sooner does your faith grasp the iden­tity of the Son of Man than your self­ish de­sire for worldly prefer­ment creeps back upon you, and you fall to dis­cussing among your­selves as to who should be great­est in the king­dom of heaven, a king­dom which, as you per­sist in con­ceiv­ing it, does not ex­ist, nor ever shall. Have not I told you that he who would be great­est in the king­dom of my Fa­ther’s spir­i­tual broth­er­hood must be­come lit­tle in his own eyes and thus be­come the server of his breth­ren? Spir­i­tual great­ness con­sists in an un­der­stand­ing love that is God­like and not in an en­joy­ment of the ex­er­cise of ma­te­rial power for the ex­al­ta­tion of self. In what you at­tempted, in which you so com­pletely failed, your pur­pose was not pure. Your mo­tive was not di­vine. Your ideal was not spir­i­tual. Your am­bi­tion was not al­tru­is­tic. Your pro­ce­dure was not based on love, and your goal of at­tain­ment was not the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

163:3.4And then said Pe­ter, “But, Mas­ter, we have left ev­ery­thing to fol­low you, what then shall we have?” And Je­sus spoke to all of the twelve: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, there is no man who has left wealth, home, wife, breth­ren, par­ents, or chil­dren for my sake and for the sake of the king­dom of heaven who shall not re­ceive man­i­fold more in this world, per­haps with some per­se­cu­tions, and in the world to come eter­nal life. But many who are first shall be last, while the last shall of­ten be first. The Fa­ther deals with his crea­tures in ac­cor­dance with their needs and in obe­di­ence to his just laws of mer­ci­ful and lov­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for the wel­fare of a uni­verse.

166:3.5“But fear not; ev­ery one who sin­cerely de­sires to find eter­nal life by en­trance into the king­dom of God shall cer­tainly find such ev­er­last­ing sal­va­tion. But you who refuse this sal­va­tion will some day see the proph­ets of the seed of Abra­ham sit down with the be­liev­ers of the gen­tile na­tions in this glo­ri­fied king­dom to par­take of the bread of life and to re­fresh them­selves with the wa­ter thereof. And they who shall thus take the king­dom in spir­i­tual power and by the per­sis­tent as­saults of liv­ing faith will come from the north and the south and from the east and the west. And, be­hold, many who are first will be last, and those who are last will many times be first.”

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.”