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March 22, 2006 | Light and Dark DRIVING home on a long car trip today, my first experience driving in nearly a year, I stated telling my traveling partner stories I knew from offbeat mythologies. As I was rambling along, ignited by a sudden plunge into Paris rush hour traffic, a story from the Urantia Book came up. I told it as best I remembered it: the story of the first two human beings. What the Urantia Book is, who actually wrote it, and how it came into being is a long story. But essentially, the material is presented by angelic or higher-dimensional entities in a series of papers which have been collected into a book. The Urantia Book relates in some detail the history of our world (which it tells us is really called Urantia), the history of the local and larger universe, and the life and teachings of Jesus. The historical paper covering the first human beings was purportedly presented by an entity called a "Life Carrier." Andon and Fonta, the first two human beings, are, according to this work, the missing link. This link did not involve a skull that an anthropologist would find, but rather the decision to be human, and the emotonal and intellectual capacity to be so. They were a pair of twins, male and female, who were the first people to fall in love and communicate in language. They lived a little less than 100,000 years ago, and were the offspring of compassionate, not-so-very-bright, forest dwelling primates. Let's pick up the story of the founders of the human race in the Life Carrier's own words: 708§6 62:5.8 When about nine years of age, they journeyed off down the river one bright day and held a momentous conference. Every celestial intelligence stationed on Urantia, including myself, was present as an observer of the transactions of this noontide tryst. On this eventful day they arrived at an understanding to live with and for each other, and this was the first of a series of such agreements which finally culminated in the decision to flee from their inferior animal associates and to journey northward, little knowing that they were thus to found the human race. I offer this story as an illustration of something else: Note that there are limits set on the extent to which divine intervention in human affairs is permissible. Entities serving the light cannot arbitrarily influence the decisions of human beings. They can guide, assist and inspire, but our decisions are our own. Put in plain terms, God does not control us. That means we decide where to place our allegiances, and whether to act on what we discern. In this sense, our free will is the most important instrument of divinity. And, when a decision is made by us, it is really our own, and represents an actual step and many times crucial in our development. What I will politely call the 'dark side' does not work this way. Direct intervention and manipulation happen all the time. It is possible to yield one's free will entirely, and even to have it seized -- though usually it would appear that considerable cooperation is involved. In either case, the issue is specifically that free will is not honored. What I will kindly call 'liberties' are taken and in a very real sense control over human affairs can be seized away from those either willing to yield their autonomy or their conscience, or those who are incautious in their decisions, associations and actions. Others are actually preyed upon unwittingly. In my mind, this accounts for the vast differences between the effects and actions of what we think of as good and evil, particularly how long the light side takes to get its boots on before darkness has walked halfway around the world, to borrow an old phrase. We who seek to heal and love need to muster the inner strength to make up our minds and contribute positively and creatively to the world -- and this does indeed take time. This is because our free will is respected by those beings who observe and guide us, and, it would seem that looked at one way, learning to use our free will is the whole purpose of existence. Where manipulation, possession, forfeiture of responsibility, subjugation of others, subservience to objectives we really do not hold, and so on and on, are all fair game, then it's possible to be a lot more 'effective' a lot quicker. After all, there are no rules. In many ways, the first and only decision we make is whether we will honor our own free will, or not. Many people are hung up for decades and indeed for many lifetimes before they learn to make decisions, or to free themselves even from voluntary bonds. Making decisions involves seeing options; there is a perceptual ability that's prerequisite. As A Course in Miracles suggests, we learn to see through contrasts. Seeing what we do not want is critical because we can then make an actual decision. And lately, we are getting plenty of that. | ||||||
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