ACTUALIZING THE SUPREME IN YOUR LIFE
Rosey Lieske
The Urantian Journal of The Urantia Brotherhood
Winter, 1983
The Supreme is described in many ways. But in my mind I keep seeing him as the mysterious, all-seeing fetus, alive and forming in space at the conclusion of 2001. A God striving and active and, yet, restlessly incomplete. He is literally 'our God' - our simultaneously evolving Creator/ creature. In him we have our origins and real significance, and in us he finds access to another facet of realizable experience - another avenue to the source of his being - the Paradise Father.
He steps through our steps, sees through our eyes, reacts to our thoughts and actions, and struggles inside of our struggles.
His substance surrounds us cocoon-like, forever influencing the environment within and without, like a spirit mother developing, laboring, and delivering a soul into existence.
Someday, the Supreme himself will be actualized -born - and we'll be there to witness heaven rumble with God-Power as finite experience and infinite power fuse in eternity. The moment will arrive when we see through the eye of the Supreme with the insight of God himself.
There are many beautiful descriptions of the Supreme in our book. Five succinct ones are these:
"The actualizing and evolving God of time and space"
"The personal spirit reflection of triune Paradise Deity"
"The oversoul of the Grand Universe"
"The consciousness of the finite cosmos"
"The personification of Creator-creature experience"
But as clear and beautiful as the descriptions of the Supreme are, the deep dark riddles of the "Why" of Supremacy lure and confound. The most obvious reason is existent in the nature of infinity itself. By definition, the infinite must embrace everything, even that which it is not - the finite. This sets up the necessity for the Trinity to exercise a "maximum self-limitation." And with that, that which has beginning and origin comes into being within the context of eternity.
But why such a big deal? Couldn't God have created a finite leaf or blade of grass or simply one or two finite people to accomplish this purpose? Why seven superuniverses and 700,000 Creator Sons? Why the Supreme?
Past hypothesis and reason, one simply runs into the nature of the Father himself. And whatever else may be true about him, one thing is obvious - he thinks big, however else we reason.
We find this statement in Paper 115:
"The realms of the finite exist by virtue of the eternal purpose of God. Finite creatures, high and low, may propound theories, and have done so, as to the necessity of the finite in the cosmic economy, but in the last analysis it exists because God so willed." (1260:5)
Of course when God wills and acts, tremendous and replete reactions occur in the formation and shifting of reality. In the course of study we become aware of spirit/ non-spirit relationships - as with the Spirit Father "I am" and "the material fulcrum of infinity" Paradise - eternity/ non-eternity relationships, which become existential/ experiential reality; and we read of personal /non-personal realities. Within God, and resultant of his will, these functional and replete separations occur; separations which at first look so simple and, upon thought, reveal an infinite beauty of purpose reflective of God's nature.
Through faith experience we come to personally know this identifying mark of the Father; and in the study of the Supreme we see it again in a remarkable variety and musicality of purpose. In his embrace of the finite, God accomplishes many things at once. He gains his experience as an infinite Father through the creation of a seemingly endless variety and array of incomplete creatures. He exercises his divine love in intimate spirit contact by living within us and, in the process, he is creating a finite counterpart - the Supreme - a unique person within God, who has origin and, yet, will approach the infinity of his Ancestor through experience upon experience in a grand universe. God is not content to merely be in perfection and infinity. He peoples his eternity with possibilities and shares his potential through a Supreme Aspect of himself, which does through experience and action.
Supremacy - Actual and Potential
The growth and function of the finite God is governed by the Triodities of Actuality and Potentiality in triune relationships exclusive of the Father. The origin of the Supreme himself is yet to be, but the originating factors of Supremacy are taking root through God the Sevenfold, which has its origins in the Paradise Trinity.
Throughout the Sevenfold, the Trinity influence reverberates from local grand universe levels. Its powerful, extensive influence draws God to creature and creature to God, while experience within this originating path repercusses to the reality of the growing Supreme.
The triodities must govern this constant growth, as infinity's embrace of the finite brings vast and inevitable tensions at this becoming of possibility in the face of the finite.
In eternity, potential and actual are already unified -but in the finite realm of time and space, they must be experienced and synthesized to be unified. And so these divinity tensions of actual and potential come into being. The motion of Supremacy toward actualization and toward the realization of the limitless potential of God thus becomes the intention and potential of a God-knowing creature.
The Triodity of Actuality - the Eternal Son, Infinite Spirit, and Paradise - itself functions to actualize the Supreme. The physical, mental, and spirit-ministry currents emanating from this triodity relationship in the Grand Universe all flow in the direction of this realization. Supremacy is the very will and volition of the Paradise Father. So when we align our will with God's, or when we simply desire to do the right thing, we become subject to a strange cosmic economy. We're like 'surfers' riding a gigantic wave, or the transport seraphim traveling in the pathways of the universe. This consecration of will enables us to realize, through this Influence of Actuality and God's grace, his infinite potential in our experience.
Experience and growth are made possible by the Supreme's potential for self -realization. If he weren't in the process of growth, we wouldn't grow either. And the Triodity of Potentiality - the relationship of the Deity, Unqualified, and Universal Absolutes - creates a vibrant matrix of possibility for this growth, a vast reserve within the Father that is the Supreme's potential in God and our potential within the Supreme.
This potential will enable God, most infinitely capable, powerful, and brilliant, to actualize a phase of the Supreme's growth-experience through us. We are each representative of a unique experience within the God of Experience, as inseparable from him as the facet of a gem. This reality of experience - organized, synthesized, and unified in the Supreme - is in dual motion ... inward and outward. On a deeper level I like to think of it as divine intention and extension. As tension is always a feature - like an intricate watchwork - pulling in while extending outward that "trail of actualized reality" moving, shifting, and affecting matter; fusing infinite power with experiencing personality and eventually pulling the Supreme into actual existence. It is said that through our long ascent and final attainment of the Father, we achieve just one thing - perfection of intention. I like to daydream about the moment in eternity when the Supreme is born. Maybe then we'll be able to participate in the perfection of extension, too.
These relationships are beautifully summarized:
"The Supreme is symmetrically inclusive. The First Source and Center is potential in the three great Absolutes, is actual in Paradise, in the Son, and in the Spirit; but the Supreme is both actual and potential, a being of personal supremacy and of almighty power, responsive alike to creature effort and Creator purpose; self-acting upon the universe and self-reactive to the sum total of the universe; and at one and the same time the supreme creator and the supreme creature. The Deity of Supremacy is thus expressive of the sum total of the entire finite." (*1279:8)
The Supreme is in the business of synthesizing and mobilizing all this effort and purpose, striving for his own realization and gaining sovereignty step by step. He immediately functions in our lives as the unifier of our experience in God the Sevenfold. He is the very depth of deity we will ever understand. We may attain the Father, but we will comprehend the Supreme. And he is ultimately our only approach to those processes and mentalities which transcend time and space and to those who are perfect and/or eternal in nature. When we step back and witness our innate processes of thought - constantly co-relating, sorting, and unifying our experience - it's easy to see that the functions of Supremacy in our lives are so elemental as to be almost unnoticeable. Like water to fish - a reaction reliability as cosmically supportive and all-embracing as sunshine and air.
In this substance of the Supreme we are born and move through our lives actualizing potentials, with and without thought; consciously, superconsciously, subconsciously, and unconsciously absorbing the movements and leadings of God. Mentally chasing desires that may only serve us in the wake of their destruction, and weaving the fabric of destiny in spite of ourselves. Always, with or without knowledge, we actualize and destroy potentials. Potential is the shadowy mercury that surrounds every choice-decision, every action. Avenues are ever being opened and closed around us. Choices to act are always manifold and meaningful according to the fact of their acknowledgement or disregard.
Our Relationship to the Supreme
But how do we stimulate the greatest capacities in ourselves for the recognition of choices and actions that will actualize the Supremacy of God's will in our lives? I really feel that, from faith, sincere desire is the first step, Sincere desire to serve God; desire to be like God; then a real effort, in faith, to be effective in that desire. Cosmic orientation is another step, and, last, the development of a very functional viewpoint.
Taking into consideration the uniqueness of individual ability and the constructions of circumstance that tell us each, "This is the way," the variables of such a functional viewpoint are insights leading to actions based on faith, love, and service, supreme spiritual values reflective of God's will.
"The keys of the kingdom of heaven are: sincerity, more sincerity, and more sincerity. All men have these keys. Men use them - advance in spirit status - by decisions, by more decisions, and by more decisions. The highest moral choice is the choice of the highest possible value, and always -in any sphere, in all of them - this is to choose to do the will of God." (*435:8)
Our business is to perfect our intention within the motion of the Supreme. To create an alignment of will by decisions based on the desire for alignment. The experiential realization of God's will in our lives is based on decision-making and this all has greater significance when we consider our place in the Supreme.
We are the last link - the lowest order of intelligent will creature God can fathom in the context of the finite. However much that may fulfill our science fiction fantasies, we quickly come to see that fact of our limitation as a tremendous asset to acquiring experience - the substance of the Supreme.
Consider again the statement about the "maximum self-limitation of the Trinity." If we are the least God can attain in a creature of will, then our situation is a primal one in Supremacy. We are the greatest limitation of intellect the Supreme must strive through. Therefore, our situation is the most reflective of the Supreme.
We also have the greatest distance to go Godward, which enables us the greatest amount of experience, and this feeds directly into the reality of the Supreme. And on this level, as mortals on our native world, we are the equivalent of spirit embryos. However we may look to ourselves as full grown, mature people we are, in reality, a soul-manufacturing unit, an experiencing personality, a pre-personal fragment of existential Deity, and a tender evolving third - a soul, whose living essence is the realized potential of the Supreme in our experience.
When we take all these factors into consideration, we see that our relationship to God, ourselves, and the Supreme is almost wholly potential. We suffer the greatest imbalance we ever will between actual and potential -seeing, as we do, with partial vision and moving through an incomplete Deity in our embryonic state. Yet, alive within is the driving power of the God fragment, tiny and potent, pulling every situation into creative alignment with the all-important task of soul-making.
So our most important relationship is with the divine fragment, and our ascension Godward is characterized in the universe by that changing and dynamic relationship of faith: When we first find personal faith we're considered "Faith Sons." From the time of actual fusion when the intention of the Adjuster becomes our own, we're called "Ascending Sons," and then from the time we actually attain the presence and embrace of the Father, we're considered "Mortal Finaliters."
As Faith Sons our faith reactions toward the Father fragment determine the content of our survivable experience and the depth of our soul translation on the intervening morontia level.
Faith exists on many levels. "Few persons live up to the faith which they really have." (*556:4), and faith, being our survival connection, must function on the elemental levels of Supremacy itself.
Faith is a human decision and a divine gift, accessible and recognizable. The influence of the Eternal Son in Actuality is a spirit gravity influence, drawing all faith and all desire for faith into the light of Actuality. Faith cannot remain in the mind; it travels directly to the heart of all reality, affecting our soul development and the sovereignty of the Supreme. It is the human fuel for God potential, simulating the presence of God on every level of our being.
There is no substitute for the beautiful experience of being in a conscious and dynamic faith relationship with the Divine Adjuster; to connect the Adjuster presence, through conscious decisions which engage us, with the infinite potentials of God existent in our lives, which can only be actualized on conscious levels. The fact of our free will status makes conscious faith-decisions the decisive factor in much that is realizable in our immediate experience.
It is through the medium of mind that we stimulate faith-decision. Thought feeds or denies Adjuster presence and determines the context for spiritual experience. Faith leads directly to faith experience and, after awhile, we may find ourselves in an oddly familiar but constantly moving and sensate relationship within our own minds. Adjusters may inconveniently set knowledge up in our minds as a thing of beauty. Something oddly desirable that can't be tasted or touched - only attempted - and once attempted may change the very ground of our reality. We may look back inside for our familiar selves and find dynamics different, circumstances seen in a new light, or merely a new understanding that persistently alters our course. We may be vaguely aware of a restless energy and then, for no apparent reason, a new and profound direction will focalize in our minds.
As spirit embryos we simply can't hope to be immediately conscious of all the workings of the Adjuster presence. We're very much in the position of a fetus attempting to visualize its parent through the muffled darkness of the womb. But we can visualize correctly
this parental fragment as the spirit counterpart of the living germ in a seed. The potential of the oak tree is alive and programmed within the acorn. Our potential as Faith Sons, Ascending Sons, and Mortal Finaliters is alive and programmed within the Adjuster.
Thoughts and experiences eventually comprise a compendium of spirit value - the substance from which the Adjuster weaves the living threads of our present and future souls.
"The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward." (*1104:6 - 1105:1)
They say it is through the medium of thought that we engage in our destiny making. Thoughts forge a path from matter to spirit - from potential to actual. Thoughts develop, color, and change the world and the soul. The one realm which we have clear access to in our embryonic state is mind.
We may always be hounded by many useless, uninspired processes of thought. But through spiritual study -especially the life and teachings of Christ Michael - and through this element of faith, we can engage the Adjuster in thought direction which will liven our instincts toward dynamic, creative, and serving patterns of behavior. God-serving becomes man-serving and man-serving is an accessible technique toward the development of a service sensitivity; a way of being, loving, and serving equipped with a gauge and a timing - an ability to sense Supremacy potentials existent in our lives.
We actualize the Supreme through our experience with these potentials. And experience being a mobile, reflexive reality contact exists on a myriad of levels. But in the Supreme our spiritual experience is always resonant with value-meanings reflective of God's will, both in our environment and our minds. Let's look at these Supreme value potentials accessible to our experience, which ultimately will create a reaction and expansion of Supreme sovereignty in the wake of their realization.
Living Supreme Values
Once again we deal with the dual motion of Supremacy, an outward extending of Divine Will evidenced by the potential in the universe for truth, beauty, and goodness, and an inward motion evidenced by the human potential for faith, love, and service intentions. Before we consider their co-ordinate possibilities, we'll look at their relationship to us and to the Supreme in Actuality:
Nothing rolls off the tongue faster than truth, beauty, and goodness. Nothing is easier to say or agree with intellectually. But as easy as they are to say is how difficult they are to live and how dynamic they become in experience.
For instance, let's look at truth. We are always in dynamic relationship to the truth. Our cosmic scope and reality is determined by the truth we recognize and live. Truth recognition leads to spiritual conflicts we never had to grapple with when we were ignorant of the truth. Truth always has significance in its acknowledgement or disregard, and the rejection of a once-known truth is the basis of real sin.
Beauty rolls off the tongue, where the challenge to create beauty can enthrall the most gifted artist for a millenium.
And goodness truly reflective of God's grace and love is the hardest thing to do as a human being. Easy to talk about goodness when we're not steeped in the personal tensions and intense conflicts that can exist in the course of daily life.
Faith becomes the technique of engaging the infinite in the struggles of the finite for a reflective perfection. Love becomes the most recognizable and spontaneously do-able manifestation of God's will accessible to our experience. And service demands the discipline to actually spiritually synthesize our experience with these ideals.
Now let's look at their relationship to the Supreme in the Triodity of Actuality. We find that:
"Universal beauty is the recognition of the reflection of the Isle of Paradise in the material creation, while eternal truth is the special ministry of the Paradise Sons who not only bestow themselves upon the mortal races but even pour out their Spirit of Truth upon all peoples. Divine goodness is more fully shown forth in the loving ministry of the manifold personalities of the Infinite Spirit. But love, the sum total of these three qualities, is man's perception of God as his spirit Father." (*647:9-648:1)
Then we're back to man again - recognizing God as love, mobilizing God's potential through faith, and manifesting it through service.
As Einstein once said, "God doesn't play dice." But being a Urantia Book student I do know of his proclivity for mathematical combination, and I had fun once I saw it was evident again in the inter-relatedness of Supreme value possibilities in our experience. For example, you can experience truth in faith, faith in goodness, and beauty in service. And we experience goodness in faith, love in beauty, faith in love, and truth in service - not to mention service in truth, beauty in goodness, goodness in service, and, of course, beauty in love.
Think of the infinite variations of possible experience inherent in any one of those combinations. Think of your own experiences reflective of your faith in love or, in light of this revelation, the goodness in truth. The Supreme value co-ordinates are infinitely and actually accessible to our experience - made unique by our humanity, capacity, and personality - with differential meanings inherent in time, place, and circumstance, and common denominators in potentials arising from shared planetary conditions. The Supreme is actualizing through experiences harmoniously reverberating with this value tonality.
Let's look at just three of these combinations actualizable in our experience: Goodness in faith; beauty in love; truth in service.
The element of faith allows the potential of God's power to become actual in affecting action through us reflective of the goodness of the Supreme.
The element of love can function to empower the presence of the Father, as we choose to allow this one we love to be present and necessary in our lives. The beauty of God is only visible to the one who loves him, and loving him stimulates the potential to love everybody. People become so much more palatable when you see them as part of God.
The desire to serve and service itself opens up the way for actualizing understanding and concern. How many times have you gone ahead and attempted the living of the truth in the book, only to find an illuminated and broadened understanding of it when you came back? Service and experience heighten truth sensitivity and this co-ordinate potential is intensely alive in the life of any dedicated Urantia Book reader.
These co-ordinate value potentials are all enhanced by our situation as students in this age of our planet. In assessing our actualizable potential, let's consider the vast possibilities for service in the here and now.
A Call to Action
Just two of the planetary age potentials we share, knowing what we know or what we can know, create tremendous possibilities for action on our parts to increase the sovereignty of the Supreme exponentially in our lifetimes:
We know the history of our planet, its trials and tribulations, tensions and odd privileges. We also know that our planet is destined to survive any apparent devastation to attain an age of light and life.
But as the stage is set before us and our apocalyptic brothers are drooling over the prospect of devastation and rapture, we know that the business at hand is truly intense - ripe with possibility. First, there is a need for a real international awareness in our lives. The work of the Urantia Book movement and the work in our own living of these truths is outward flowing - embracing all the planet - sharing the reality of God through these enlightened concepts devoid of fear and dread and blood. Our direction is outward and upward, loving and intelligent. We want to sow seeds which will result in the fruition of a spiritual age where we've never had one. Work may be large or small; we may teach thousands or just our children. But all work is important. The currents of actuality are all flowing in the direction of a worldwide recognition of the sovereignty of God and the cosmic relatedness of all persons. Our efforts may appear invisible to society, but they will be magnified and intensified by our spiritual aids until our planet flowers as it is destined to do.
The newspapers and magazines and newscasts all broadcast reasons for despair and paranoia. But we read that our planet is "quivering on the brink of a spiritual age," and we hold the evidence of a new dispensation in our hands. What a tremendous potential for service we have in front of us.
I mentioned before that the development of a functional viewpoint is helpful in working effectively and fearlessly to actualize the Supreme. It is good to understand our possibilities with the Supreme and interpret them within the framework of a viewpoint which embraces:
1) An appreciation of the fact that our planet was made as a consequence of the actions of a divine but finite creator - Christ Michael. We should look at the problems which have resulted from our origin in the finite as containing tremendous potentials for experience, decision-making, and contribution to the actualization of the Supreme.
2) We should have an understanding of the fact that Christ is our first revelation of the Supreme. His life and teachings are our text for actualizing the Supreme on this mortal level and especially on this planet. The study of his life is a sure way to organize and enjoin our thoughts - to engender the most beneficial behavior patterns for the Supreme.
3) And we should see the fact of our Faith Sonship as a clue that the most important spiritual quality to develop is faith. Through faith we will be effective, especially in realizing the potential of the Urantia Book revelation in our lives and on our planet.
I had a beloved friend once - a big, hulking, monstrous looking man whom people used to openly deride as being retarded or insane. He wrote a poem about his "insanity," which is probably the most descriptive piece of writing about the Supreme's potential I've ever seen. It was called "Madness" and went like this:
I love the star that you cannot see. My eyes so full I cannot see!
But if the dream of dreams is found Long ago
Without a sound
Between the lilac and the wind, There was a door to enter in.
("Ting" Craig)
He would close his fingers to a glint of space and say, "That's where He lives, Rose. That's His doorway." If your capacity is only that big or your desire or even your faith, God will find a way to get through.
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship