Episode:Personality and Selfhood (Part 2)

From Symmetry of Soul


In our continuing effort to illuminate the subtleties of personality and selfhood, we explore the nature of the Paradise Father of personalities and our relationship to him.

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Keywords: Universe, Personality, Soul, Paradise, Urantia

Summary by Kermit

We with a return to the idea of SELFHOOD; that enduring, ongoing quality that threads through the various selves that we become during the ascending stages of our universe career. Like personality it is not a thing but a quality of self that is upheld by God the Mother.

6.1-6.2. Personality in the Universe

The idea of personality is indissolubly linked with the idea of God. Enhanced consciousness of one enhances consciousness of the other in a reciprocal dynamic, with our understanding of the personality of God only becoming fully adequate in the divine embrace of the living God on Paradise.

Human personality being a time-space shadow of the creator personality makes us creator-like rather than creators.

6.3

The antipodal viewpoints of God and man as concerns personality i.e. (top down and bottom up respectively) require us to achieve improved ideas of human personality before we can understand divine personality. And such improved ideas of both human and divine personality are to be found beautifully revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus.

6.4

The Adjuster’s presence is its own proof of existence, while divine personality is only grasped through the spiritual insight of genuine personal religious experience (our third cosmic intuition).

6.5

The moral affinity and spiritual harmony essential to friendship between two persons invokes the levels of meaning. The levels of meaning are defined in only one place in the book (P 147:4 p. 1650), yet they appear throughout the book. This along with an understanding of the nature of the adjutant mind constitute two of the most important foundational teachings in the book, without which a deeper understanding of the book is not possible.

Also, the point is made that in coming to know divine personality, only our wholehearted efforts will succeed.

6.6

Important to remember that we describe our spiritual experiences for the mutual edification of believers, not to convince unbelievers.

6.7

The universe is mind made and personality managed. If our personality can experience the universe, then logic demands that there must be a divine mind and personality concealed in that universe.

Man’s attempt to understand the universe through the disciplines of science, philosophy and religion, become degraded into data collection and analysis; opinion, and superstition, respectively without a God of personality at the center.

6.8

Again we are directed to the life and teachings of Jesus as the most real and ideal revelation of the personality of God. Our study of personality is inextricably linked to higher levels of recognition about things like science and even Part IV. Only when we attempt to engage this study as a personalized self, as opposed to a mere animal origin self will we be successful in reaching this higher recognition.

5:6.1 The God of Personality

The Father is described as the center and circumference of the domain of personality, the bestower and conservator of personalities and the destiny of all who wholeheartedly choose to do the divine will, who love God and long to be like Him.

6.2-6.3

Personality is here described as one of the unsolved mysteries of the universes. Again, bestowed by the Father and not a progressive attainment.

6.4

Selfhood is introduced here for the first time. The bestowal of personality, the attributes of human selfhood and the absolute Adjuster nucleus of the human personality are the exclusive bestowals of the Father.

6.5-6.6

The prepersonal Adjusters ensure our survival to personalize as morontia creatures, with the potential of ultimate spirit attainment going all the way to attempting the realization of the Absolute.

6.7

In our bottom up viewpoint we have a complex evolutionary sequence from the life animation of matter up to the manifestation of volition an earmark of functioning personality. From the Father’s view there is no such sequence of events. To Him it is all one fact. In the top down view God starts with the Adjuster nucleus, wraps an experiential self around it and engages it with personality.

In truth of course both perspectives are correct, and we can begin to challenge ourselves to hold both points of view simultaneously. This is what cosmic consciousness is all about, the bottom up, individuality viewpoint, and the top down unity viewpoint.

6.8-6.14

Finally we are told of God’s absolute decree that man himself, is empowered to will the creation or inhibit the creation of his surviving self-the immortal soul, free from any interference from any being, force, creator, or agency as regards the eternal destiny of the personality of the choosing mortal.

Personality bestowal confers relative liberation from antecedent causation. The kinship shared with all other personalities ever draws each towards The Father’s Paradise presence. There is a kinship of divine spontaneity in all personality.

The Father’s personality circuit enables The Father to be conscious of all personalities, independent of the Thought Adjuster.

Even for those personalities not Adjuster indwelt, the eternal adventure opens only in response to their freewill choice.