The Seasons of Our Soul
We have spiritual seasons in our lives just as the natural world has its seasons. Spring is the season of renewal and rejuvenation, the season of new beginnings and rebirths. Summer is the time to grow in fullness, blooming with gregarious activity. Autumn is the time of harvesting, being shaken up, and then slowing down, in preparation for a winter of quiet reflection.
Often autumn is the time of discontent, a time of intensified discomfort with our immature and harmful dio patterns that are not in sync with divine pattern. Fall is the season when we are restless with those things that keep us from moving into a level of perfection realistic for us individuals at our place of ascension. During the fall season, we are often much more uncomfortable with our erroneous ways than in other season. We feel “the squeeze” from the living spiritual forces to move out of our complacency and compromise with that which is not of truth, beauty, or goodness.
If we cooperate with the nudges and pulls of the Threefold Spirit, we then move into the stage of humility where we feel stripped naked before our God and before those humans who are our close associates, just as trees, shrubs, and other plants are stripped naked of their leaves during the autumn season.
Humility is so important because until we allow ourselves to be stripped of our subtle, dishonest, manipulative thought forms and behavioral patterns, until we get to that point of realizing that we do need to remove the dress of dio leaves, we cannot even begin to move into a new form of dress—Deo dress.
If we are flowing with the Spirit of God that is trying to get to each one of us, we move into a time of thanksgiving stemming from humility. We begin to experience and understand at a much deeper level the grace of God. The season of Thanksgiving (which should be a daily, year-long season) empowers us to feel gratitude for everything, every little thing—even gratitude for being stripped of the leaves of our dio dress and for the pain that we go through in having to confront our own stupidities and imperfections. But we also have gratitude for the harvest of the fruits of the spirit that each one of us, as individuals as well as a family and community, have nurtured and grown into. We can rejoice for this spirit harvest along with the harvest of our gardens. There is anticipation for what is yet to be harvested in the future for each one of us, as well as for the group as a family, a community, and a divine administration.
The season of Christmas is definitely a season of holiday and jubilee. It is a season of contentment. This is the season where we celebrate the mass of Christ (Christ Mass).
According to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of mass is: “a celebration of the Eucharist.” What is the Eucharist? The dictionary definition of Eucharist is: “spiritual communion with God.” So, during this time, during the mass of Christ, Christ Mass, we should have an intensified spiritual communion with God.
If we mindfully follow the seasons of the soul that God brings to us, if we have cooperated and participated with the Spirit of God, allowing ourselves to go through our discontent, shame, grief, and any other uncomfortable emotions; if we allow ourselves to be humbled, feeling temporarily very small, insignificant, and diminished within our lower selves and false identities, then we can move into a sense of gratitude—gratitude to be alive, gratitude for the love, mercy, and ministry of God. Then we truly can move into an intensified spiritual communion with God, especially through developing an even closer communion in our relationship with Christ Michael of Nebadon.
The Winter of Our Content
The season of Christ Mass does not just end after December 25; it is just beginning and lasts for the whole winter. Just as in the winter certain varieties of animals and plants go into sort of a dormant state, a sleep state, or a very slowed-down state, if we follow these seasons, we too can go into a state where we quiet ourselves inside, so that we can truly begin to listen to the spirit of God and commune at even a closer and higher level with God.
We should be more contemplative, for winter is the time to begin to work on focusing more on our inner life and spirit rest. As we go about that quiet work with shortened days and longer nights, it is easy at times to get discouraged. As we rest and reflect during these dark nights of the soul, it is easy at times to allow ourselves to get too bogged down with the reflection of soul correction and not allow our movement into the winter of our contentment.
Why contentment? Because we are moving in our realization of our imbalances and errors into the cocoon state that allows a time of semi-hibernation from excessive outward activity so that God can work with us on our inner transformation.
According to the dictionary definition, contentment means: “to appease the desires.” What are your desires? There are many people who try to appease their desires in ways that are only temporarily gratifying, and so these people continue to be unhappy and discontented. The desires I am talking about are the true desires of the heart, of the spirit, of the personality, of the true God-given identity, not the desires of our self-made identity or false desires.
Jesus gave a beautiful lesson regarding contentment.
When Jesus was visiting the group of evangelists working under the supervision of Simon Zelotes, during their evening conference Simon asked the Master: “Why are some persons so much more happy and contented than others? Is contentment a matter of religious experience?” Among other things, Jesus said in answer to Simon’s question:
“Simon, some persons are naturally more happy than others. Much, very much depends upon the willingness of individuals to be led and directed by the Father’s spirit which lives within them. Have you not read in the Scriptures the words of the wise man, ‘The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts?’ And also that such spirit-led mortals say: ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a goodly heritage.’ ‘A little that a righteous man has is better than the riches of many wicked,’ for ‘a good man shall be satisfied from within himself.’ ‘A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance and is a continual feast. Better is a little with reverence of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted ox and hatred therewith. Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without rectitude.’ ‘A merry heart does good like a medicine.’ ‘Better is a handful with composure than a superabundance with sorrow and vexation of spirit.’
“Much of man’s sorrow is born of the disappointment of his ambitions and the wounding of his pride. Although men owe a duty to themselves to make the best of their lives on earth, having thus sincerely exerted themselves, they should cheerfully accept their lot and exercise ingenuity in making the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s troubles take origin in the fear soil of his own natural heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pursues.’ ‘The wicked are like the troubled sea, for it cannot rest, but its waters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’
“Seek not, then, for false peace and transient joy but rather for the assurance of faith and the sureties of divine sonship which yield composure, contentment, and supreme joy in the spirit.”
Jesus hardly regarded this world as a “vale of tears.” He rather looked upon it as the birth sphere of the eternal and immortal spirits of Paradise ascension, the “vale of soul making.” (The URANTIA Book, Paper 149, Section 5)
Instead of looking at life on this world as a “vale of tears,” we should look upon living our lives as a vale of the soul’s journey of unfoldment and ascension. This world at this moment in time and space is our home, a beloved home. It is a home for reconciliation, a home for reconstruction, a home for rebirth and rejuvination.
When we begin to change our attitudes about the situations in our life and about being here on this planet, when we truly begin to look through the eyes of Michael of Nebadon with the help of His Spirit of Truth, then we can be truly content, rather than discontented. We can change our whole way of looking at ourselves, our reality, our work, and why we are here. We can walk through the days dancing rather than trudging.
Our winter of content is a time to consider that we indeed are on a world of reconstruction—getting back to our point-of-origin reconstruction for starseed, and for the Urantians it is getting back to that place of innocence, that place of childlikeness where you can begin to grow the wings of a spirit child. For starseed, it is that place where we had evolved to the highest point before defaulting. For you Urantians it is that place you want to get back to before becoming tainted and hurt and broken by the experiences that you have had on this planet in this life, and if you are second-time Urantians, in a previous life.
The older starseed have more dio leaves to discard than the younger ones, and the Urantians are such young trees that they have very few dio leaves that need to drop, but no matter the number of dio leaves on the tree, in order for each of you to truly be a tree of life for each other, those leaves must fall.
Let those leaves fall, and let yourselves experience fully the dark night of the soul this winter by living Christ Mass daily. If you do so, this will be the winter of your content.
Running the Race of Reconstruction
In order for us starseed to get back to our highest point of evolution and ascension, we cannot just jump. Guess what we each have to do? For all those situations and times and people and places, lifetime after lifetime that we have made mistakes, that we have erred, that we have made choices which were not the highest—whether they were out of error or whether they were out of sin or whether they were out of iniquity—we are going to be put into those situations again. We are going to be given the opportunity to make the higher choice this time around. If we do not make the higher choice, guess what? We will be put back into the situation to try again, and again, and again if need be.
So, we have to trudge forward, situation by situation, step by step, individual by individual, relationship by relationship until we complete that reconstruction. It is not a quick fix, and it does not just go away. We have to reconcile. We have to be reconstructed, and so that is the reason for lots of emotional memories and other types of memories that come up for us starseed with each other. That is the reason we are put into situations with certain people who we would like to strangle—they push our buttons, and we have to get to the point where we do not want to strangle them, where they do not push our buttons. We have to get to a point where we respond to them in a higher way.
We will be put into situations that can cause tremendous fear and distress for us. We have to get to the point where we look at those situations, and they no longer cause that fear or anxiety because we have gotten to a point in our inner development and growth in our relationship with God where we feel peace and contentment. Then we truly understand that with God on our side, who is against us?
There are all kinds of dio patterns that each one of us have that we need to get rid of. If any of you have done any kind of construction or when you are tearing down an old place to redo it, you know that you have to restore some things that are damaged and get totally rid of other things and rebuild completely. There are certain things that have to be taken apart, torn down, before things can be reconstructed. There are certain things within us that need to be taken apart or torn down before we can move into our own point-of-origin reconstruction.
In this walk of reconstruction and reconciliation, we can do it more quickly here in Divine Administration, and we can actually dance, skip, and sing in our rehabilitation, in our return to contentment. As I have pointed out before, we can be experiencing grief; we can be experiencing physical illness; we can be experiencing dissatisfaction with a certain part of ourselves, or disappointment in a person, and at the same time, we can experience cheerfulness, contentment, and be functional.
This contented functionality, in spite of the struggles and challenges we may be going through, is what we all need to manifest. We are multi-dimensional beings, and we can be simultaneously experiencing all of these emotions, because if we are spirit-led, then the Spirit of God controls those emotions rather than those emotions controlling us.
But if one little thing throws us off, if all of a sudden we are totally lost and drowning in anger at an individual, then we cannot think of anything else; we cannot function; we cannot do anything but get wrapped up in that anger with that person or anger at ourselves. We may think, “My gosh, I’m rotten; I’m no good.” If we cannot do anything else but wallow, then that emotion has gotten us, and there is no way that God can work with us until we quit drowning in that emotional muck and mire.
Some people may wallow in that muck and mire for several years. Here at the First Planetary Sacred Home, if any of us plan on wallowing for a long time, we will spin ourselves out of Divine Administration. Here we have the “Hound of Heaven” nipping at our heels, pushing us on in our race to contentment, inner peace, and fulfillment. We can run that race with joy and gratitude. We can skip and dance, or we can run and be bawling the whole time, whining and sniveling, fighting the encouragement of the spiritual forces and of the human eldership.
It is your call.