Planet Urantia

Overcoming Fear - Phobias - Anxieties

Is your life governed by fear, phobias and anxieties?  To a certain extent, we are all governed by what we believe and once we discover what those beliefs are based on, we can take the necessary steps to change our beliefs.  We must know the origin of our problems if we are to have any hope of solving them.  'Know and change' should be our motto. 

Our fears, phobias and anxieties play a major role in the rhythms of our lives.  Knowing why you resort to a particular habit when a particular issue causes fear or anxiety in your life is the key to changing your behavior.  Does the thought of success scare you?  Do you imagine wild success and then succumb to destructive behaviors that prevent you from achieving this success?  Do you sabotage your own success because of fear?  What are you afraid of?   What will happen if you achieve success?  What is the worst thing and the best thing that could happen and what are you willing to live with?

If you were to take a journey to some unfamiliar city, you could learn much from how you react to the new experiences.  Do you move about little by little, or do you jump right in?  Once you've made it through the first day, do you repeat the same steps the next day, or are you excited by each new discovery?  We cannot advance in life by moving sideways or backwards, we should always strive for progress and forward movement, we should be curious enough to want to know what's around the next corner or behind the big door.  Let your past be a guide for helpful living, but do not be ruled by it, do not let your past hinder your forward progress.  Strong willed people accomplish more, not always, but usually.  When you fall down, get back up again.  Turn fear into courage.  Happiness and joy smile upon optimistic and hopeful people, not on pessimistic types.  If you think you're going to have a bad day, the day will not disappoint you.  Everyone has problems, but it's how we react to adversity that determines our future.  The actions of today result in the circumstances of tomorrow. 

We all experience sorrows and trials, joys and victories.  How we handle the sorrows and trials determine the quantity and quality of our joys and victories.  Lack of choice often forces us to overcome our difficulties, but thoughtfulness, prudence, small efforts, and big pushes put us in greater control of the outcome. 

Improving our behavior is the key to overcoming our fears, phobias and anxieties.  Without the assistance of others, without using others as excuses, without resorting to self-pity; take control of your life and make progress, take small steps if you must - but make big pushes.  And then, be patient - if your motives are pure and good - your time will come.

If you want to be more lucky than unlucky, react positively to each circumstance, look at everything as an opportunity - an opportunity to succeed, to learn, to grow, for progress.  Make your supreme gift to your fellow human beings that of a good attitude.  A progressive attitude is indispensable to joy and happiness, a progressive attitude treats every problem as an opportunity.

There is never conflict between true knowledge and truth. There may be conflict between knowledge and human beliefs, beliefs colored with prejudice, distorted by fear, and dominated by the dread of facing new facts of material discovery or spiritual progress. 

Urantia Paper 110 - 1:5

The senselessness of much that so often causes us serious concern, the joy at discovering the unimportance of much of our serious personal anxiety. We are most appreciative of this phase of humor when we are best able to discount the anxieties of the present in favor of the certainties of the future.

Urantia Paper 48 - 4:6

True Religion - According to Jesus

In Paper 155, Section 5 of the Urantia Book, Jesus offers a discourse on true religion.  Following is a summary.

The religions of the world have come about naturally, gradually, and via divine revelation.  The three current types of religion are Primitive, Civilized, and Revelatory.  Primitive religion is the religion of fear, the fear of mysterious energies of a spiritual or physical nature.  Civilized religion tweaks and advances the concepts of primitive religion and begins to use the intellect to establish religious practices.  Revelatory religion, or true religion, is based on personal experience and spiritual insight.  The rocky trail experience of true religion eventually eliminates all tendencies toward primitive religion. 

The religion of the mind might be based on what religious authorities teach us, but true religion of the spirit is based on personal experience, truth is experiential, but this in no way negates the necessity of religious teachers.  Current religious knowledge is based on the entire historicity of primitive, civilized, and revelatory religion; one cannot know all this historical knowledge simply from experiencing a revelation of spiritual reality.   Until all people become more knowledgeable and civilized, primitive forms of religion and the ways of backward peoples will persist.  This is the challenge for the religious leaders of our times.   

Some civilized religions or habits of thought require only intellectual progress, this is at odds with true religion, for true religion requires the active participation of the individual as well as the progress of the intellect.   The purely intellectual approach, and the acceptance of traditional religious authority, are the easy ways out.  They provide a temporary refuge for troubled souls, but they compromise our self-respect, our self-confidence, and they deprive us of the joys of triumph and victory over perfectly normal human events.  Had we relied on true religion, the religion of the spirit, the religion of revealed truth; we would experience all the struggles, all the conflicts, as well as all the joys, all the love, and all the progress.  The gradually developing human personality moves ever onward and forward toward increased revelations of spiritual reality.  Through real and practical experience, you and those around you, receive the fruits of your labor.

Jesus gave this discourse on religion to his apostles and some evangelists after they had asked him to explain the difference between their religion, meaning the religion of Jesus, and the religion of those in Jerusalem.   When he was finished, he asked them: 

"And now, which one of you would prefer to take this easy path of conformity to an established and fossilized religion, as defended by the Pharisees at Jerusalem, rather than to suffer the difficulties and persecutions attendant upon the mission of proclaiming a better way of salvation to men while you realize the satisfaction of discovering for yourselves the beauties of the realities of living and personal experience in the eternal truths and supreme grandeurs of the kingdom of heaven?  Are you fearful, soft, and ease-seeking?  Are you afraid to trust your future in the hands of the God of truth, whose sons you are?  Are you distrustful of the Father, whose children you are?  Will you go back to the easy path of the certainty and intellectual settledness of the religion of traditional authority, or will you gird yourselves to go forward with me into that uncertain and troublous future of proclaiming the new truths of the religion of the spirit, the kingdom of heaven in the hearts of men?"                Urantia Paper 15 - 5:13

Needless to say, all the apostles and evangelists present were uplifted and inspired - each one choosing to proclaim the better way of salvation and the new truths of true religion.

When the Board is No Good - Lessons from a Carpenter

But do not make the mistake of the foolish carpenter who wastes valuable time squaring, measuring, and smoothing his worm-eaten and inwardly rotting timber and then, when he has thus bestowed all of his labor upon the unsound beam, must reject it as unfit to enter into the foundations of the building which he would construct to withstand the assaults of time and storm.

Urantia Paper 156 - 5:2

We can relate this lesson from Jesus to not only our own lives, but also to anything we put our hands to.  Is your personal foundation built on solid ground, or are you relying on a mish-mash of philosophies to get you through?  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to re-create your mind by building up the intellectual and moral foundations of character.  You do this by gradually developing, or evolving your own soul through experiential growth.  The goal being to go from a human and physical being (matter) ever onward and upward toward a divine spiritual destiny.

The religion of Jesus, not about Jesus, teaches us how to build our lives on a firm foundation.  On a more earthly (Urantially?) and material note; here's how you can apply this lesson from the world's most famous carpenter, Jesus, to your own lives:

1. Is the board any good?  Do not waste time on bad materials.
2. Look at the destination - is it worthy?
3. Raise your own personal human standards and learn to love these higher standards.
4. Be ambitious, intelligent, wise, faithful, and devoted to truth.
5. Be an outgoing lover (the 'Love is patient, Love is kind.....' kind of lover) as well as an incoming love receptor. 

Let every man make sure that the intellectual and moral foundations of character are such as will adequately support the superstructure of the enlarging and ennobling spiritual nature, which is thus to transform the mortal mind and then, in association with that     re-created mind, is to achieve the evolvement of the soul of immortal destiny. Your spirit nature -- the jointly created soul -- is a living growth, but the mind and morals of the individual are the soil from which these higher     manifestations of human development and divine destiny must spring. The soil of the evolving soul is human and material, but the destiny of this combined creature of mind and spirit is spiritual and divine.

Urantia Paper 156 - 5:7

The Art of Living on Purpose

The art of living versus mere animal urge to live.  Forsake a life of natural cravings for one of adventure, art, and uncertain logic.  Mammals are content - but a spiritual urge will most certainly disrupt your life a bit. 

Purposive potential - our purpose as it relates to God.  We must of ourselves in our own hearts - recognize, love, and voluntarily worship God.  God does not coerce or compel us to submit to him.  Our gift to God is our loving dedication to doing his will.  It's the only truly valuable gift we can give God. 

The inevitable result of choosing to do God's will is eventual divine perfection through experiential spiritual achievement.  In case you should have any delusions of grandeur, this state of divine perfection does not equal the same capacities as God, as he reigns supreme over all mind, matter, and spirit.   It is the perfection attainment of what we are that we seek to achieve - on track and on purpose.

Men all too often forget that God is the greatest experience in human existence. Other experiences are limited in their nature and content, but the experience of God has no limits save those of the creature's comprehension capacity, and this very experience is in itself capacity enlarging. When men search for God, they are searching for everything. When they find God, they have found everything. The search for God is the unstinted bestowal of love attended by amazing discoveries of new and greater love to be bestowed.     

All true love is from God, and man receives the divine affection as he himself bestows this love upon his fellows. Love is dynamic. It can never be captured; it is alive, free, thrilling, and always moving. Man can never take the love of the Father and imprison it within his heart. The Father's love can become real to mortal man only by passing through that man's personality as he in turn bestows this love upon his fellows. The great circuit of love is from the Father, through sons to brothers, and hence to the Supreme. The love of the Father appears in the mortal personality by the ministry of the indwelling Adjuster. Such a God-knowing son reveals this love to his universe brethren, and this fraternal affection is the essence of the love of the Supreme.                                     Urantia Paper 117 - 6:9

Urantia References:

• Paper 1 - 2:3
• Paper 102 - Sections 4-5
• Paper 31 - Sections 1-6