LESSON 2: Father's Gift to Man — His Spirit Fragment
It all begins with the gift of personality
Personality is difficult to define — but it always seeks unification.
Personality is recognized as functioning on diverse levels:
- Physical level — the physique.
- Intellectual level — the mind.
- Emotional level — temperament.
- Social level — ethical disposition.
- Moral level — the character.
Personalities may be similar, but they are never the same. Persons of a given series, type, order, or pattern may and do resemble one another, but they are never identical. Personality is that feature of an individual which we know, and which enables us to identify such a being at some future time regardless of the nature and extent of changes in form, mind, or spirit status. Personality is that part of any individual which enables us to recognize and positively identify that person as the one we have previously known, no matter how much he/she may have changed. It is through personality that you will be able to recognize your friends and loved ones in Heaven. Personality is like a unique signature that each one of us has, and it cannot be forged or duplicated.
Personality is distinguished by two self-manifesting phenomena of behavior: self-consciousness and associated relative free will.
Self-consciousness consists in intellectual awareness of personality; it includes the ability to recognize the reality of other personalities. It indicates capacity for individualized and shared experience. Self-consciousness recognizes the functioning of mind and the relative independence of creative and determinative free will.
The relative free will which characterizes the self-consciousness of human personality is involved in:
- Moral decision, highest wisdom.
- Spiritual choice, truth discernment.
- Unselfish love, brotherhood service.
- Purposeful co-operation, group loyalty.
- Cosmic insight, the grasp of universe meanings.
- Personality dedication, wholehearted devotion to doing the Father’s will.
- Worship, the sincere pursuit of divine values and the wholehearted love of the divine Value-Giver.
The full function of a personality indwelt by a fragment of God the Father (a Thought Adjuster), is what constitutes a spiritual son/daughter of God.
Father's downreach to the inner man via His Thought Adjusters
As discussed in The Soul in Man LESSON 1, Father's next gift to man is a fragment of Himself in the form of a divine and perfect Thought Adjuster (TA), which arrives when the first moral decision is made.
A person's biological sex is of no consideration in the assignment of a Thought Adjuster. Both males and females are equal recipients of TAs.
Man does not have to go farther than his own inner experience of the soul's contemplation of this spiritual-reality presence to find God and attempt communion with him because God lives through His Thought Adjusters in every one of his Spirit-born sons and daughters. What a mistake to dream of God in some far off place when the Spirit of the Universal Father, His TA, lives within your own mind!
Man does not passively surrender his will to the Adjuster. Man is not a slave to his Adjuster. Instead, man can choose to actively, positively, and co-operatively follow the Adjuster's leading. To the Thought Adjuster the human will is supreme. And they so regard and respect it while they strive to achieve the spiritual goals of thought adjustment and character transformation in the almost limitless arena of the human intellect.
That somewhat explains what this downreach is, but how does it actually work in man?
The very simplest way of explaining it is that mind is your ship, the Adjuster is your pilot, the human will is captain.
Remember from The Soul in Man LESSON 1, that the arrival of the Thought Adjuster also signifies the creation of a new nascent soul. That person is then responsible for the growth and survival of his/her new soul, but man is not born with an instruction manual on soul growth. In a simple sense the Thought Adjuster is akin to such an instruction manual. The TA is the one who guides, teaches and encourages a person to pursue the types of adventures and experiences that promote genuine soul growth. And this is not done haphazardly. There is a universal approach to soul growth based on 7 fundamental, essential and sequential stages of soul development. These are referred to as the 7 psychic circles.
These 7 psychic circles are an inner reflection of the universal expression of the 7 Heavens which are discussed in our School of Cosmology curriculum called: A Traveler's Guide to the Galaxy.
We know very little about these 7 psychic circles other than psychic circle 4 has to do with becoming socialized (according to Father's standard), and that one cannot progress through them randomly. They must be accomplished in sequential order and an inner journey of self discovery, leading prograssively inward. They deal with inner personal growth of survival value, in other words soul growth. While full knowledge of these 7 psychic circles is the domain of the Thought Adjuster, how they are applied to each person's soul growth can vary significantly from one person to the next, and that makes these 7 psychic circles difficult of precise explanation.
The Urantia Book has extensive coverage of Thought Adjusters in papers 107 to 112.
Father's downreach to the outer man via His Spirit of Truth
The new helper which Jesus promised to send into the hearts of believers, to pour out upon all flesh, is the Spirit of Truth. This divine endowment is not the letter or law of truth, neither is it to function as the form or expression of truth. The new teacher is the conviction of truth, the consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels. And this new teacher is the spirit of living and growing truth, expanding, unfolding, and adaptative truth. Urantia Book 180:5.1
Father's Thought Adjusters function in the human mind in perfect synchrony and co-ordination with all other spirit ministries, including adjutant mind-spirits, Holy Spirit, Spirit of Truth, and other influences.
While the Thought Adjuster functions in the human mind and guides us through the inner journey of our own intimate spiritual journey to contact the Father, the Spirit of Truth functions in the human heart to lead us through the 4 levels of outward interpersonal growth.
The Spirit of Truth is covered in LESSON 7.
