sharing

54:2.1With the Son and in the Spirit did God project eter­nal Ha­vona, and ever since has there ob­tained the eter­nal pat­tern of co-or­di­nate par­tic­i­pa­tion in cre­ation—shar­ing. This pat­tern of shar­ing is the mas­ter de­sign for ev­ery one of the Sons and Daugh­ters of God who go out into space to en­gage in the at­tempt to du­pli­cate in time the cen­tral uni­verse of eter­nal per­fec­tion.

54:2.2Ev­ery crea­ture of ev­ery evolv­ing uni­verse who as­pires to do the Fa­ther’s will is des­tined to be­come the part­ner of the time-space Cre­ators in this mag­nif­i­cent ad­ven­ture of ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Were this not true, the Fa­ther would have hardly en­dowed such crea­tures with cre­ative free will, nei­ther would he in­dwell them, ac­tu­ally go into part­ner­ship with them by means of his own spirit.

10:1.3Di­vine per­son­al­ity is not self-cen­tered; self-dis­tri­bu­tion and shar­ing of per­son­al­ity char­ac­ter­ize di­vine free­will self­hood. Crea­tures crave as­so­ci­a­tion with other per­sonal crea­tures; Cre­ators are moved to share di­vin­ity with their uni­verse chil­dren; the per­son­al­ity of the In­fi­nite is dis­closed as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, who shares re­al­ity of be­ing and equal­ity of self with two co-or­di­nate per­son­al­i­ties, the Eter­nal Son and the Con­joint Ac­tor.

111:5.1The do­ing of the will of God is noth­ing more or less than an ex­hi­bi­tion of crea­ture will­ing­ness to share the in­ner life with God—with the very God who has made such a crea­ture life of in­ner mean­ing-value pos­si­ble. Shar­ing is God­like—di­vine. God shares all with the Eter­nal Son and the In­fi­nite Spirit, while they, in turn, share all things with the di­vine Sons and spirit Daugh­ters of the uni­verses.

94:6.6His un­der­stand­ing of the eter­nal pur­pose of God was clear, for he said: “The Ab­so­lute De­ity does not strive but is al­ways vic­to­ri­ous; he does not co­erce man­kind but al­ways stands ready to re­spond to their true de­sires; the will of God is eter­nal in pa­tience and eter­nal in the in­evitabil­ity of its ex­pres­sion.” And of the true re­li­gion­ist he said, in ex­press­ing the truth that it is more blessed to give than to re­ceive: “The good man seeks not to re­tain truth for him­self but rather at­tempts to be­stow these riches upon his fel­lows, for that is the re­al­iza­tion of truth. The will of the Ab­so­lute God al­ways ben­e­fits, never de­stroys; the pur­pose of the true be­liever is al­ways to act but never to co­erce.”

103:2.9But be­fore a child has de­vel­oped suf­fi­ciently to ac­quire moral ca­pac­ity and there­fore to be able to choose al­tru­is­tic ser­vice, he has al­ready de­vel­oped a strong and well-uni­fied ego­is­tic na­ture. And it is this fac­tual sit­u­a­tion that gives rise to the the­ory of the strug­gle be­tween the “higher” and the “lower” na­tures, be­tween the “old man of sin” and the “new na­ture” of grace. Very early in life the nor­mal child be­gins to learn that it is “more blessed to give than to re­ceive.”

193:4.2As we look back upon this tragedy, we con­ceive that Ju­das went wrong, pri­mar­ily, be­cause he was very markedly an iso­lated per­son­al­ity, a per­son­al­ity shut in and away from or­di­nary so­cial con­tacts. He per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in, or freely frat­er­nize with, his fel­low apos­tles. But his be­ing an iso­lated type of per­son­al­ity would not, in and of it­self, have wrought such mis­chief for Ju­das had it not been that he also failed to in­crease in love and grow in spir­i­tual grace. And then, as if to make a bad mat­ter worse, he per­sis­tently har­bored grudges and fos­tered such psy­cho­logic en­e­mies as re­venge and the gen­er­al­ized crav­ing to “get even” with some­body for all his dis­ap­point­ments.

193:4.3This un­for­tu­nate com­bi­na­tion of in­di­vid­ual pe­cu­liar­i­ties and men­tal ten­den­cies con­spired to de­stroy a well-in­ten­tioned man who failed to sub­due these evils by love, faith, and trust. That Ju­das need not have gone wrong is well proved by the cases of Thomas and Na­than­iel, both of whom were cursed with this same sort of sus­pi­cion and overde­vel­op­ment of the in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic ten­dency. Even An­drew and Mat­thew had many lean­ings in this di­rec­tion; but all these men grew to love Je­sus and their fel­low apos­tles more, and not less, as time passed. They grew in grace and in a knowl­edge of the truth. They be­came in­creas­ingly more trust­ful of their breth­ren and slowly de­vel­oped the abil­ity to con­fide in their fel­lows. Ju­das per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in his breth­ren. When he was im­pelled, by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of his emo­tional con­flicts, to seek re­lief in self-ex­pres­sion, he in­vari­ably sought the ad­vice and re­ceived the un­wise con­so­la­tion of his un­spir­i­tual rel­a­tives or those chance ac­quain­tances who were ei­ther in­dif­fer­ent, or ac­tu­ally hos­tile, to the wel­fare and prog­ress of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the heav­enly king­dom, of which he was one of the twelve con­se­crated am­bas­sadors on earth.

25:4.12Those mor­tals and mid­way­ers who serve tran­siently with the ad­vis­ers are cho­sen for such work be­cause of their ex­pert­ness in the con­cept of uni­ver­sal law and su­preme jus­tice. As you jour­ney to­ward your Par­a­dise goal, con­stantly ac­quir­ing added knowl­edge and en­hanced skill, you are con­tin­u­ously af­forded the op­por­tu­nity to give out to oth­ers the wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence you have al­ready ac­cu­mu­lated; all the way in to Ha­vona you en­act the role of a pupil-teacher. You will work your way through the as­cend­ing lev­els of this vast ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­ver­sity by im­part­ing to those just be­low you the new-found knowl­edge of your ad­vanc­ing ca­reer. In the uni­ver­sal regime you are not reck­oned as hav­ing pos­sessed your­self of knowl­edge and truth un­til you have demon­strated your abil­ity and your will­ing­ness to im­part this knowl­edge and truth to oth­ers.

48:7.2826. Knowl­edge is pos­sessed only by shar­ing; it is safe­guarded by wis­dom and so­cial­ized by love.

100:1.8Re­li­gious habits of think­ing and act­ing are con­trib­u­tory to the econ­omy of spir­i­tual growth. One can de­velop re­li­gious pre­dis­po­si­tions to­ward fa­vor­able re­ac­tion to spir­i­tual stim­uli, a sort of con­di­tioned spir­i­tual re­flex. Habits which fa­vor re­li­gious growth em­brace cul­ti­vated sen­si­tiv­ity to di­vine val­ues, rec­og­ni­tion of re­li­gious liv­ing in oth­ers, re­flec­tive med­i­ta­tion on cos­mic mean­ings, wor­ship­ful prob­lem solv­ing, shar­ing one’s spir­i­tual life with one’s fel­lows, avoid­ance of self­ish­ness, re­fusal to pre­sume on di­vine mercy, liv­ing as in the pres­ence of God. The fac­tors of re­li­gious growth may be in­ten­tional, but the growth it­self is un­vary­ingly un­con­scious.

133:2.2And then, in bid­ding him farewell, Je­sus said: “My brother, al­ways re­mem­ber that man has no right­ful au­thor­ity over woman un­less the woman has will­ingly and vol­un­tar­ily given him such au­thor­ity. Your wife has en­gaged to go through life with you, to help you fight its bat­tles, and to as­sume the far greater share of the bur­den of bear­ing and rear­ing your chil­dren; and in re­turn for this spe­cial ser­vice it is only fair that she re­ceive from you that spe­cial pro­tec­tion which man can give to woman as the part­ner who must carry, bear, and nur­ture the chil­dren. The lov­ing care and con­sid­er­a­tion which a man is will­ing to be­stow upon his wife and their chil­dren are the mea­sure of that man’s at­tain­ment of the higher lev­els of cre­ative and spir­i­tual self-con­scious­ness. Do you not know that men and women are part­ners with God in that they co-op­er­ate to cre­ate be­ings who grow up to pos­sess them­selves of the po­ten­tial of im­mor­tal souls? The Fa­ther in heaven treats the Spirit Mother of the chil­dren of the uni­verse as one equal to him­self. It is God­like to share your life and all that re­lates thereto on equal terms with the mother part­ner who so fully shares with you that di­vine ex­pe­ri­ence of re­pro­duc­ing your­selves in the lives of your chil­dren. If you can only love your chil­dren as God loves you, you will love and cher­ish your wife as the Fa­ther in heaven hon­ors and ex­alts the In­fi­nite Spirit, the mother of all the spirit chil­dren of a vast uni­verse.”