Episode:Jesus in Galilee—Early Public Work (Part 7)
While at the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, Jesus said: “If you could all be healed of your physical afflictions, you would indeed marvel, but it is even greater that you should be cleansed of all spiritual disease and find yourselves healed of all moral infirmities. You are all God’s children; you are the sons of the heavenly Father. The bonds of time may seem to afflict you, but the God of eternity loves you.”
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Emotional Disturbances, Golden Rule, Levels of Meaning
Summary by Kermit
Commentary on the Review
Harkening back to some of the lessons on prayer we studied at the beginning of this arc, we remarked on the salutary effect of adding reflection to the prayer practice resulting in a greater objective consciousness. Instead of seeking to wield God in the control of things and beings through prayer, enhanced objectivity leads to discoveries and insights that improve attitudes and suggest new and profitable action on our part. Remembering that prayer is the most potent spiritual-growth stimulus we acknowledge the Life Carrier programming that initially moves us to pray, inasmuch as we mortals are not spiritually self-activating.
147:2. The Journey to Jerusalem
We noted that Jesus and the apostolic party journeyed to Jerusalem by a less traveled route avoiding undue attention from the civil and religious authorities. Their relative freedom of travel and action was propitious for the spread of their teaching. The midwayer account mentions the deposit by Judas of the excess of funds in their possession, pointedly underscoring the attention to material pragmatism in support of their spiritual idealism. Jesus counseled against worry about material concerns, not practical consideration. This led to an intriguing discussion about the mechanism whereby fear in the moment can become spiritually elevated to the level of dread.
Again, Jesus’ fame as a healer forced the party to leave their usual headquarters in Bethany for the more secluded Gethsemane. During their three weeks in Jerusalem the twelve were enjoined to do no public preaching. It was while at Bethany that Jesus and the twelve celebrated their first bloodless Passover. How ironic that Christian traditions assign to Jesus the role of the sacrificial lamb in spite of his express desire to replace sacrifice with faith as the price of God’s favor. Such is the magnitude of the evolutionary overcontrol of the universes of time and space. This is further illustrated by the outworking of the bestowal legacy with Paul’s less accurate version of Jesus’ gospel message gaining ascendancy over the now forgotten albeit truer gospel message held by Abner and his group. We remarked on the implications of Jesus’ choice to prosecute his post-baptismal career according the Father in a potentializing mode as opposed to pursuing an actualizing mode characteristic of the Supreme.
147:3. At the Pool of Bethesda
Here’s another event in Jesus’ ministry where actual process whereby the sufferers benefited from contact with the Master is lost in the Biblical account. Jesus rebukes the Apostle John’s attempt to inveigle him into performing a healing miracle by leading him to a group of sufferers seeking healing from the reputed mystical pool. Instead, Jesus speaks words of good cheer and eternal comfort to them, thereby inducing and inspiring them to utilize their own encircuitment in the Holy Spirit to release their willful but ignorant misdirected minds in perpetuating their spiritual disease and moral infirmities. Note the emphasis of Jesus’ words to the gathering on the eternal nature of the kingdom and how their faith grasp on this truth spiritually revivified them to the point that they ascribed the improvement in their conditions to Jesus’ healing power. Refer to John 5.2-15 for the Biblical account.
The final few minutes of the broadcast were given to an examination and explanation of the question of when are our actions willful and the result of genuine personality activity versus our actions being merely the consequence of the natural working of adjutant mind. Much of what passes for acts of will can be thought of more accurately as natural reactions of a complex mind to various spiritual, moral, and ethical situations. Listen carefully for our discussion concerning a person’s positive but unnatural response to a negative situation.
Notes by Brad
- Was there freedom of speech in Jesus' time?
- Don't count on it. It was monarchy-like, including the whims of the ruler that can lead to.
- Certainly no bill of rights!
- Notice that the synagogues were where MORE freedom of speech was sparked.
- Today religion is often seen as a source of tolerance by secular society. Suggest problems.
- Jesus, a Creator Son, keeps having his plans dashed.
- He is subject to the whole.
- He is a potentializer role, not an actualizer role
- There is a remarkable subtext here about how humble we should be when our plans are dashed.
- A disturbed, frothing pool, that calms down and becomes tranquil?
- That's a powerful visual metaphor for someone sitting there whose mind is not at ease because they have willed it out of its graceful position of grace we all get at age 6.
- We all still have this grace. We all still can be calm and at peace in our minds.
- If we 'just let go. Stop trying to will calm and tranquility yourself. You'll only make it worse. That's self-righteous of you.
- What is "many years of wrong living?" It isn't just drugs (chemicals). It's anything that disrupts the innate unity of your mind.
- Yes, chemistry can disrupt fom the bottom-up
- But your own will can disturb it fom the top-down.
- Which bucket does your wrong living fit into?
- suffering from accidents of time
- results of the mistakes of forebears
- struggling under handicaps of our imperfect existence
- victim of the feeling of your helplessness.
- Helplessness gets put in place. It generates a feeling. And your are a victim of that feeling.
- Fear can turn to dread by an amped up 3rd adjutant.
- Dread is the beginning of a long-term form of fear, instead of pure in-the-moment fear
- Someone who we would dreadful (full of dread), these days we'd more succinctly call depressed
- A depressed person has used spirit to wield fear into their entire being.
- But this can be correct through spirit revivication.
- So you have a major turnaround? Will it last?
- You must tend to you own mind.
- If you got into this state naturally, why would you not naturally drift back to it again?
- If I have a genetic tendency to dread, that's with me for my whole life here.
- I must remain vigilant, and not let my mind do what it does naturally.
- Avoid getting stuck with a feeling. That makes you a victim. An addict.
- The man with the bed here was an addict of self-pity.
- Don't take your sanity and health for granted.
- These are not natural for matter, in the highest and strictest sense. Mind is what's allowing sanity and health.
- So what's keeping your mind held together? It's not innately divine, after all.
- Spirit, of course.
- Health, sanity, and happiness.
