Global Community Communications Alliance Member Profile
Ionia
Greetings to all my brothers and sisters on Urantia,
My prayers of gratitude, a desire to do God's will, and meeting up with a cosmic brother allowed the midwayers to be able to lead me to our First Planetary Sacred Home. It is with tremendous thanksgiving that I serve daily in Divine Administration. I am deeply grateful to God, Christ Michael, all of the spirit celestials, and Gabriel of Urantia and Niánn Emerson Chase for the opportunity to help this planet and ultimately the Supreme through my service here during the Fifth Epochal Revelation of God to man on Urantia.
Finding Gabriel of Sedona and Niánn Emerson Chase and our First Planetary Sacred Home in this life, was the culmination of a search for truth that began before I was five years old. After the death of my father when I was fifteen, I knew that the things I had learned in Sunday school about what Jesus had taught were true. I knew there was life after death and I knew that I had existed before this life. After that I did not wonder about these things.
When I graduated from college, I made a conscious decision that free time would be more important than money in my life. Over the next seven years I moved a dozen times, living, working, and vacationing in many beautiful places. I even spent a winter alone in the back bush of northern Ontario, where I had to melt snow for water. It was so cold, even inside my cabin, that unless I stacked the firewood next to the stove, the ice never melted from it. Most of my days were devoted to surviving, ice-fishing, and cross country skiing. At three o'clock in the morning, while I waited for a fire to catch in the drafty wood stove, I wrote poetry. Here as always I felt protected. I was adventurous and fun loving and as a result I now realize that I often put the midwayers to a lot of extra work in protecting me. When I was twenty-eight I discovered rock climbing and began devoting my life to it. I discovered that I especially liked climbing the big walls of Yosemite Valley.
When I was twenty-nine I woke up to the fact that I was not going to be able to do anything of value if I tried to do it alone. I got on my hands and knees and asked God to help me become what He wanted me to be. Because He came to my rescue with such surety, I began trusting Him. I started praying and meditating regularly. When I climbed El Capitan, I prayed for world peace as I ascended. I became grateful for the small things in my life.
During the next decade I continued with my theme of taking summers off, by finding a management position near the ski area, that allowed me to do so. I continued to rock climb and study the worlds' religions. I bought a "fixer-upper" with a friend and spent many hours turning a neglected piece of property into a beautiful home and garden. In 1986, while standing on the summit of Mount Huxley during a solo back packing trip on the John Muir trail, I heard a voice clearly inside my head that indicated to me that my life would soon be changing. Although the voice was very comforting and fatherly, the thought of changing my life scared me. If I had listened to this guidance I might have saved myself much grief, and I would likely have arrived in Sedona much sooner. After 1989, although I was continually restless, my fear of leaving home, kept me from hearing clearly from God. I continued to search and eventually (and thankfully), just like Job, I began reaching the spiritual height of abhorring myself. Each time I reached that edge, I turned again to God. Gradually I became a tiny bit more humble and all the while by faith was continuously expanding.
My search for truth was upstepped when I found The URANTIA Book and began learning Fifth Epochal Revelation. I didn't anticipate what I was to find. I had always reasoned that the great spiritual books, while containing much truth, also contained partial truths, because they were written by men. My expectations were heightened with this book, but I still read it with a mission to see if it was true. Long before I reached the end of The URANTIA Book , I knew it was real. I had never met a man, or read a book written by a man, who could speak with the language used in this book. The URANTIA Book uses the English language in a way that is not found in the other teachings of this planet—clear, concise, straightforward and truthful, with a written melody that I had never experienced. Because it is epochal revelation for our entire global family, it brings together the truths of all religions and makes the many fractured teachings of our planet intelligible.
After I finished reading this epochal revelation, I began sharing it with others, gifting family members and friends with books. I soon discovered that not everyone was searching for expanded truth. At the time I could not suitably answer to myself why that was so, but I often thanked God that I had the capacity to read and understand it myself. I knew there was something I was preparing myself for but I didn't yet know what that was. In 1995 I finally met some other readers of the revelation when I went to an International Conference of readers in Nashville, Tenn. There were less than 200 people there. Exactly forty years after the publication of this incredible book, only 180-some people were willing to gather with the trustees of the Urantia Foundation to study it. Something was wrong with this picture, but I didn't know yet what it was. Over the next few years I attended other conferences, and I discovered that the Urantia movement, which had started in Chicago earlier this century, had fractured and lines had been drawn. "Unity without uniformity" was failing. Often when another reader spoke about the other faction I would wonder if we had read the same book.
I continued to study alone and with one friend. I had taken up windsurfing and although I dearly loved the sport and often went three or four days a week, I gradually found myself studying more and sailing less. I asked God what I should do. The URANTIA Book talked in depth about service. I knew I was kind and loving to others, but when I evaluated my life, nothing in it fulfilled my desire to serve. I felt I needed to do more. But what?
In 1997, I went to a conference of URANTIA Book readers in Glen Ivy, California. In the days following the conference I realized that God was asking me to move to Utah. My home had become a retreat for dozens of my friends from many states, who often gathered there for long weekends of adventure and recharging. I had recently gotten a job as a designer with a computer accessories company. I was enjoying this very creative work. The person I shared my home with was as dear a friend as I had ever had. But I knew God was telling me to move and within a month I left my home on the creek, my life style in the mountains, the clean air, fresh water and star-filled skies behind. I gave away my house, my bikes, my climbing and back-country gear, my windsurf boards, my tools, my clothes—just about everything. I had done this other times in my life, moving with just a few possessions in my car, searching for someone or something. This time I was moving to Utah to join forces with another reader of The URANTIA Book , and somehow, some way, we were going to help the planet. I wondered if God was ready for the Mormons to embrace The URANTIA Book . My friend had a mortgage business and I decided to start one myself. By the time I had closed my first loan I felt sick. As my education of the mortgage industry continued, I grew ill. I discovered the incredible amount of hidden profit in a loan that was not disclosed to the client. There were fees on the front end, fees on the back end, and padded fees in between. After twelve loans, I called the phone company and asked them to disconnect me. At that time interest rates were very low—below 7%. Everyone wanted to refinance and making money was very easy. I wasn't sure what God wanted me to do, but I knew it was not this.
When I had first arrived in Provo, Utah, where the population is over 90% Mormon, I was delighted to find out that almost everyone was willing to talk about God. However, I soon discovered that although their religion claimed to accept truth from many sources, very few of them could read more than one passage from The URANTIA Book . After hours and hours of conversation with many Mormons I concluded that the only way the Mormons will be blessed with this revelation is if their leaders wake up and recommend it to them.
Shortly after I closed my business, my friend found a benefactor who wanted to help us start a community/school based on the teachings of The URANTIA Book . We found a beautiful ranch in eastern Utah, which was exactly the size of the first Garden of Eden. It was bordered on three sides by the Green River. We began making plans.
At this same time, in 1998, an attempt was being made to put the various factions of the Urantia movement together; to try to bring harmony after the copyright lawsuit had been settled. In November, I attended a planning session for teachers and leaders of the movement. Close to one-hundred people attended this meeting in Chicago. There was obviously still distrust among the factions. While I was there, I was asked by the International Urantia Association to start an association in my area. I declined. I felt that the factions of the movement were becoming too much like the denominations of Christianity. Because I was making plans to start a school for all readers of The URANTIA Book , I did not want to be associated exclusively with one of the factions. It was there that I met some of the leaders of the Teaching Mission—the group of URANTIA Book readers that started channeling in 1992.
I had always wondered why the celestial spirits had not continued to guide the revelation after it was published, and I had heard that the Teaching Mission was getting continuing revelation, but I didn't know much else. I met some of the leaders of this movement. As a result, I attended five meetings in Salt Lake City, where a being who called himself Abraham was channeled. I discovered that most of these people were not reading The URANTIA Book , let alone studying it. They gathered once a week to ask their channel questions and share information from lots of sources, but The URANTIA Book was rarely discussed. While this group consisted of very relative thinkers—there was nothing absolute about their beliefs—they did introduce me to various teachings, which then led me back to the bookstores, where I made an incredible discovery. Whole sections of book stores were now being devoted to channeled material. I wondered what was going on. I started pouring through the channeled books, sometimes reading a book a day. I started searching the Internet as well—Kryon, Solara, Pleaidians, God conversing, Archangel Michael, Abraham, Abraham-Hicks, Ramtha, St. Germain, Drunvalo Melchizedek, Orin and DaBen, walk-ins, energies, healers. Most were teaching that all paths of light lead to the same enlightenment. Some channels were even writing "how to channel" books. The "greys" had a website. All of them were talking about earth changes, DNA changes—but none of them agreed about anything. I even read a book consisting of ten chapters, with each chapter being written by a different channel, all answering the same question. If you accepted the answer of any one of the channels, you would have to discard the other nine. I read critiques of the other channels by the channels themselves. What was going on?
I knew God was urging me to do something but I could not figure out what it was. I decided to go camping alone to find out. I told my friends that I might be gone five days, or I might be gone two months, but that I wasn't coming back until I knew what God wanted me to do. I knew if I could get camped beside a mountain stream I could hear clearer. I arrived at Canyonlands after dark, so I camped near the entrance, planning to move further into the back country the following day. The next morning I packed up my camp and found myself making a right turn to leave the park instead of turning left toward the back country. I was being told to go to Sedona and I arrived there in time to find a campground before dark. Over the next few days I came across Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation twice, and I had several serendipitous experiences that led me to purchase The Cosmic Family, Volume I . Even though I knew very little about Gabriel of Urantia, I had a prejudice against him based on some comments made by a trustee of the Urantia Foundation at a meeting in California several years before. I remember thinking that the leaders of the Foundation would be disturbed to see Gabriel of Urantia's books along side The URANTIA Book , as they were in this bookstore in Sedona. Browsing through The Cosmic Family, Volume I , I saw that it was very different from The URANTIA Book , but I told myself that if I was willing to read all of the so-called channeled material, I ought to check out revelation that had URANTIA Book terminology in it and was claiming to be a continuation of The URANTIA Book . I tossed it into the box with the other books I had with me.
A week later, I was back in Canyonlands, having acquired at least a dozen more books. I was determined to find out what God wanted me to do. I found a nice campsite, and for several days I painted water colors and read three or four books simultaneously. My head was swimming with the unbelievable amount of contradictory information that I had been reading nonstop for four months. Late one night, I was reading what the Arcturians had to say, by flashlight, in my tent. I closed the book, turned the light off and prayed to God to have the truth revealed. What was going on? I had to know what was going on—on this planet. I asked God for help. The next morning I took The Cosmic Family, Volume I out and started reading it. By the time I reached page twenty-four, I knew what was going on. By noon, I had read a hundred pages, and I knew my prayers had been answered. I packed up my camp and drove the four hours home. I finished reading the book late that night and shared it with my friend, who also recognized the truth in it. The following day we called our First Planetary Sacred Home. I knew this book was speaking to me, and I knew I had only one choice. I knew God wanted me to join Divine Administration in Sedona, and I was prepared to answer the call. I didn't know all the details of my soul's history, but I knew I was doing what I had done before. I didn't waste any time in visiting; getting a personal transmission; and attending a seminar, which included a community transmission. I immediately made plans to align. I had been praying since I was twenty-nine to know what God's will for me was, and through trial and error I was learning how to tell. I recognized my past life family members, and I knew I was supposed to help them with this renaissance as I had in other lives. I knew I was a starseed, a cosmic reservist, as mentioned on page 1258:05 in The URANTIA Book .
That was over a year ago. I now thank God every moment of the day for this reality; for the sacrifices of Gabriel and Niánn that brought them to be chosen for the Mandate of the Bright and Morning Star; for their leadership, guidance, and tireless efforts for the good of this planet, this system and ultimately for all creation. Stabilizing on the third psychic circle is very difficult on Urantia. Here it is a reality. Here I can make a difference by helping to stabilize the nucleus of divine reality on Urantia, established by the Mandate of the Bright and Morning Star.
Just before finding Divine Administration, I was planning to start a school to teach what I had learned in The URANTIA Book . I wondered who would appear to teach the schools of Thinking, Feeling, and Doing. I didn't know at the time about the Global Community Communications Schools—the schools of self-awareness. It is hard to describe this type of education to someone who has not experienced it first hand—but it is accelerated, concentrated, and manifesting. School is not just in the classroom. It is twenty-four hours a day. At the heart of it, each one of us is striving to live in the moment-to-moment will of the Father for our lives. Real growth takes place. I see changes every day in the beautiful souls around me. The celestial spirits can't make us perfect, but they can create circumstances that force us to make choices that lead to our perfection. On my own, I made choices that sometimes caused years of descension before I realized what God was trying to tell me. In Divine Administration, with the benefit of eldership, and surrounded by community members who have also chosen to live the will of the Father, poor choices become visible quickly, and good ones can be made instead. I thank God every day for the choices I made that led me to be mandated by Christ Michael to serve in His administration on Urantia. My life is now dedicated to helping all of the sons and daughters of God who do not yet know what I know—to make a higher choice, to find out about this revelation that has been given to all people, to come out of rebellion, to say no to wrong-doing, to join the cosmic family, to help our world neighbors, to save planet Earth, to choose light and life!
In loving service to Christ Michael,
Ionia,
Minister
First Assistant
to Gabriel of Urantia and Niánn Emerson Chase and the Mandate of the Bright and Morning Star