Global Change Teachings for the New Millennium

Presented by Gabriel of Urantia and Niánn Emerson Chase

to members and guests of Global Community Communications Church at a World-Wide Sunday Service

(Also available in the book,Global Change Teachings for the New Millennium, Series Three)

Teaching by Niánn Emerson Chase

How many of you have felt like you are just a mediocre person, whether it is in the old order on this fallen world or here in this Divine New Order we are trying to establish on this fallen world? How many of you have felt at times that you are mediocre, and you are frustrated with that, and you want to be more? Have any of you experienced that one? Scary, isn’t it? Of course here at the First Planetary Sacred Home, we know that God does not make junk and, of course, that cosmic and Urantian destiny reservists are not mediocre. To feel that way is something that happens on a fallen world. What does mediocre mean? According to Webster’s Dictionary, mediocre means, “of moderate or low quality; of low value, low ability, low performance; ordinary; so-so.” I think that you all can relate to this because I think that at times almost every single person on this fallen world has felt very so-so, ordinary, or even less than ordinary. They are just trying to feel ordinary. They feel less than that, and there is such a struggle to feel more human, more excellent, more worthy, more worthwhile, more lovable. There are just so many things that people try out in order to find themselves and find that worthiness, to climb out of that mediocrity in certain roles they may play. It may be being a good student. It may be in a relationship. It may be in their good looks. It may be in a career that they pursue. It may be in a group that they belong to, a country club or a sorority. It may be in the type of vehicle they drive, in the beautiful clothes they wear, that type of thing, and, of course, eventually people realize that it is none of that at all. They may still feel very mediocre when they allow themselves to get quiet and the Spirit of God can begin to speak to them.

Listen to what a Melchizedek has to say in The URANTIA Book in that wonderful Paper 100, called “Religion in Human Experience.” In the very first sentence of that paper this Melchizedek tells us, “The experience of dynamic religious living transforms the mediocre individual into a personality of idealistic power.” There are four or five of these papers on religion beginning with “The Social Problems of Religion,” Paper 99, and in these papers on religion, they are talking about revelatory religion, what we would call true religion. They are not talking about the evolutionary religions. That is something you have to keep in mind. When the celestial beings talk about the “religionist,” they are talking about a person who is truly involved in revelatory religion.

What is Dynamic Religious Living?

Now just what is meant by dynamic religious living then? Dynamic means, according to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition, 1993, “marked by usual, continuous, and productive activity or change; energetic; forceful.” We are involved with revelation, continuing revelation. You students of the Starseed and Urantian Schools of Melchizedek have studied about transformation and transition ministers. Some of you students came up with wonderful symbols that represent you in your transition form. We realize that throughout the entire ascension process, we are in transition, continuous change and that revelation doesn’t just stop, that it is a continuing thing. That is what dynamic means. It is marked by usual, continuous and productive activity and change. It is energetic, forceful, and productive.

This dynamic religious living transforms, and to transform means to change, in many ways: in composition, in structure, in outward form, in appearance, in character, in condition, and to even change mathematically and genetically. For us students of Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation, especially as we move into The Cosmic Family, Volumes II and III, we begin to understand more about us changing and transforming mathematically and genetically and in structure; there is a multi-dimensional meaning to it.

Most of us at Aquarian Concepts at times have thought we were mediocre; now, when you get down and you think, “God, I am just this mediocre person,” remember this: are you truly in this religion that is happening? It should transform you in all of these ways, and keep reminding yourself of that. Dynamic religious living transforms this mediocre individual into a personality. In The URANTIA Book and Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation that term “personality” takes on wholly new meanings. In the world, the third dimension, people say, “Oh, he’s got such a nice personality,” talking about that self-made identity, that charm. In Proverbs it says, “Charm is deceitful.” Any of us can be charming, but that is not necessarily our personality. We learn that each person has a unique personality; it is a circuit from the Universal Father. We are rediscovering our higher selves. We first have to peel off the residue of false ideas and false loyalties of a fallen world when we come here. That is why we feel like we are being squeezed when we first come into this reality at the First Planetary Sacred Home. “I am not used to doing things this way, thinking this way, reacting this way, eating this way,” or whatever it is. You find out what The URANTIA Book means when it states, “Loyalties are not exercised in behalf of the great, the good, the true, and the noble without a struggle.” We realize what Jesus meant when He said, “For whosoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whosoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it.” So you have to lose that self-made identity to really begin to find your God-gifted personality.

Receiving A Higher Name and Seeking a Higher Identity

In order to come out of that mediocrity, you have to move into the excellence of who you really are. Why does your name change when you align with Aquarian Concepts? Why are you given a cosmic name, whether it is a more permanent name or just a temporary name? That new spiritual name resonates with a higher reality. It resonates with who you really are, with your God-gifted personality, and every time someone calls you by that name it can trigger responses within you so that you can begin to move out of that old self-identity. Some of you came with names that your parents did not give you. So you already were attempting to move out of an old identity into a higher identity by giving yourself another name. There are a lot of people doing that, seeking a higher identity. Keep reminding yourself of what your name means. We have to work at it because we have such habitual thought forms, and we get into these patterns of beating ourselves into thinking that we are mediocre. So remember that we are moving into our true personality.

The Ideal of Perfection on This World—Jesus

The URANTIA Book says that we are being changed from this mediocrity into a personality of idealistic power. It also has a lot to say about ideals. According to the dictionary, an ideal is “a standard of perfection, beauty, or excellence.” It can be a person too. It can be “one who is regarded as exemplifying an ideal and often taken as a model for imitation.” Of course, the ideal that we look at is Jesus. He’s our number one ideal to look up to as an example of who we would like to imitate in some manner. He is our ideal of a human being. Ideal is also “an ultimate object or aim or endeavor.” It is a goal. It is a vision within the mind, and we are given that often. We are striving to be perfect. And what perfect means on this fallen world of Urantia is totally different than what perfection means on the seventh mansion world of Satania, or what perfection means on Edentia of Norlatiadek, or on one of the Havona worlds. There are one billion Havona worlds, and perfection on each world means something different. So there are many, many ways to see perfection.

So, at this point in our material bodies on this fallen world, we are not striving for the perfection of a Havona native. That would be ridiculous. We are striving for the perfection that we realistically can attain in our bodies within the circumstances that we are surrounded by. That is what we have to realize. That is the kind of perfection that Jesus of Nazareth was able to grasp onto as a human being. That is what makes Him the Son of Man, and that is an inspiration for us. When He was walking on this planet, He didn’t walk as the sovereign of a local universe. He walked as a man, and He had to move into a realization of who He was. Now He is not an ascending mortal; He is a Creator Son. For all of His created, as well as other celestials who are not His created who are Paradise-origin beings or otherwise, it is a mystery how this Creator Son, this Paradise-origin being, can walk a fallen world as a human being and truly experience what it is to walk in the perfection of a human being and temporarily forget about being a Creator Son. We know that eventually He moved into that understanding of being a Creator Son, and then He had to juggle that too. But He is a realistic inspiration for us; He is our standard, our ideal in that area.

Jesus wasn’t a rich person. He was given many opportunities where He could have moved into places of power and wealth, where He could make decisions that would impact people for the good. But He knew that that was not the highest choice that He could make. That was not His mission. He was perfection; He is our ideal, and as Jesus on this fallen world, He was an inspiration for the entire universe of Nebadon, not just for us. But in all of that, He was not at all successful by certain standards within the third dimension, was He? Not at all. Then He died such an ignoble death, according to the standards in the third dimension. So, He was not that powerful by some people’s values, and yet as Jesus, in the life that He lived and how He died, He was the most powerful personality in the universe of Nebadon. Now what does that mean, and what does power mean? Webster’s is a dictionary of third-dimensional understanding and terminology, and yet these words, even when we take them from the dictionary, have much meaning, don’t they? Power means “the ability to act or produce an effect.” It is “a possession of control, authority, or influence over others.” It can be a controlling group of people. So of course power, then, can be dio (evil) power or it can be Deo (godly) power. Naturally then, for religionists who have power, it would be Deo power, not dio power. Jesus did not have dio power, yet for those with true spiritual insight, He did have the Deo power. Those human beings on the planet back then could look upon this man who dressed so simply and see that, but the majority of people could not see it.

Becoming Deo-powerful

The experience of dynamic religious living transforms the mediocre individual into a personality of idealistic power. These papers are talking to people, human beings who live on the fallen planet of Urantia and saying that, even on this fallen planet, you can become this kind of individual. Well, how do you do that? How do you become that kind of person? How do you climb out of that mediocrity? Remember, when you come to this community of Aquarian Concepts your standards change, and they become higher and higher and higher, and what you used to think of as excellent all of a sudden becomes quite mediocre, and you demand more of yourself, and regarding things that you used to think were really cool about yourself, now you hide your face in embarrassment about them. “Oh, I used to do that! Oh, my gosh!” “I used to think that way,” or “I used to talk that way.” The standards will continue to rise if you are a true religionist, where you are constantly in this dynamic energy of a personal religious experience.

How does an individual become Deo-powerful, where you can truly be influential in helping others make higher choices for themselves? If you are here, that is what you really want to do. That is the kind of power and the kind of leadership you want to walk into. That is the kind of reservist you want to be. That is how you want to influence people. You will find that you also struggle, maybe with that other part of you that wants the dio power, but if you stick it out here at Aquarian Concepts, you want that higher part more than the lower. That is the kind of power you want. How do you get that, and how do you overcome all that other stuff that you see that comes up in you, the pride that comes up that you are so embarrassed about, your ego yammering for attention? You just cringe about all these things that you begin to see in yourself, and you see it more and more, and it becomes harder and harder for you to live with that part of yourself. How do you overcome that to become that personality of idealistic power? First and foremost, you have to develop a personal relationship with the Universal Father of All, and it starts with beginning to understand who He really is, that He’s not a punishing God.

Understanding God the Father

We just saw a documentary about a group of musicians who had a lot of tragedy in their lives. The lead singer, the head of that group, was killed in a plane accident along with three or four members of the band. His father said, and I just cringed because he has such a poor understanding of God, “I do not understand why my son had to die. I do not understand why God had to take him. I just know that God is a very jealous God.” He made that statement, and he thinks he’s a Christian and that he loves God, but his understanding of God is so limited. You have to start with beginning to rethink who God is, because He has been so misrepresented on this planet and still is. So many women, and also some men, have been so harmed and hurt by the men in their lives, whether it is their fathers, their husbands, brothers, bosses, friends, or neighbors, that they just turn away from the whole concept of a male God, they just shut it out and they go for the goddess. You cannot do that. You cannot go for what I would call just tapping into the Universe Mother Spirit. You have to first connect with the Universal Father.

So it is rethinking who is God. What is God? That begins to happen within the mind through epochal revelation by studying those first five papers in The URANTIA Book that are so wonderful you could read them every day and get something new from them each time. But it has to be more than that. It has to be that heart experience that we talk about so much. Remember when we gave the teaching, “Knowing God Versus Knowing About God”? You also have to begin to have a personal experience with God. Those wonderful papers on religion in The URANTIA Book talk about how religion truly is an individual personal experience. You cannot really institutionalize it. You cannot dogmatize it. It is a personal experience that each individual has. So you have to begin to have that, and it starts out with faith and trust, and each one of you is going through that. It is a growing thing, because love is a growing thing, and you just keep falling more and more in love with God.

Gabriel gave a wonderful teaching about a year ago on your first lover being God the Father. That should be who your first lover is. Some of you speak in front of the community before Gabriel and I come into the room each Sunday. We get those tapes and listen to them and the one thing that touches my heart more than anything, besides your humility and your beauty and your willingness to share yourself with the rest of the family, is when you make those statements like, “You know what? I have really grown to know and love the Father through Christ Michael.” What a wonderful experience. The first thing you have to do to become that Deo-powerful individual is to get into that, and it is an unfolding thing, a growing thing.

We also know through The URANTIA Book, and many Christians do also know in a limited way, that it is through the Creator Son Christ Michael who did bestow as Jesus, that we come to really know God in a personal way. A Divine Counselor tells us, in one of those beginning papers about God on page 30:

God is spirit—spirit personality; a mortal is also a spirit—potential spirit personality. Jesus of Nazareth attained the full realization of this potential of spirit personality in human experience; therefore his life of achieving the Father’s will becomes the mortal’s most real and ideal revelation of the personality of God. Even though the personality of the Universal Father can be grasped only in actual religious experience, in Jesus’ earth life we are inspired by the perfect demonstration of such a realization and revelation of the personality of God in a truly human experience.

On page 1128 (again in one of those papers on religion) a Melchizedek states:

True religion has nothing to do with alleged miracles, and never does revealed religion point to miracles as proof of authority. Religion is ever and always rooted and grounded in personal experience. And your highest religion, the life of Jesus, was just such a personal experience: man, mortal man, seeking God and finding him to the fullness during one short life in the flesh, while in the same human experience there appeared God seeking man and finding him to the full satisfaction of the perfect soul of infinite supremacy. And that is religion, even the highest yet revealed in the universe of Nebadon—the earth life of Jesus of Nazareth.

In the entire universe of Nebadon the highest revealed religion is the earth life of Jesus of Nazareth. When you think about that, and it will unfold even more over the years, you will realize how precious the “planet of the cross,” Urantia, must be to the universe of Nebadon. How watched over and how observed it is. We know that also from Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation, and that that’s why there are so many wonderful experiments happening here for the first time, not only in the universe of Nebadon. For some of these experiments, it is the first time in the grand universe. It is pretty amazing. That is not mediocrity, is it? So we have to remember those things.

Religious Living Means Interaction with Others

We know also that this ever-expanding personal relationship with God the Father, being dynamic, cannot stop; it has to constantly be growing, and it does not happen by being isolated from others. It happens in your personal experience and your personal relationship with Christ Michael and God the Father, between just you and Them; but in order for your religious experience to be dynamic, in order for you to grow and continue to grow, you have to not only receive, you must give out. It is a circuit, and The URANTIA Book talks about the circuitry of God and the circuit of God’s love. You need to be in a union of souls. You need to be with others. Again, back to Paper 100, the Melchizedek tells us (and remember what religion means—how we are using this word today) “Religion ministers to the progress of all through fostering the progress of each individual, and the progress of each is augmented through the achievement of all. Spiritual growth is mutually stimulated by intimate association with other religionists.” They are talking about the union of souls there. In the last community transmission, Paladin or the Bright and Morning Star, or maybe both, gave the message to us that you cannot truly grow the way you want to by withdrawing from others, that living with others, interacting with others, learning to love others, being kind to others, communicating with others, enjoying others, is how you truly will find God. There is a place for solitude, for meditation, for prayer, for that privacy with just you and God, but there is also a very, very important place for the interaction with others, and that is why it is so important to have that interaction in community.

Working within Divine Administration

No matter what job you are doing, what living situation you are in, whether you are living and sleeping in a bunk bed, or in a big double bed, or whatever the situation, whatever your job, whether it is cleaning the Community House, digging ditches at Avalon Gardens, or working in the Administration office, it is not mediocre; it is part of Divine Administration, and all of it is so important. You have to remember that. For you who feel like, “Gee, I know I really am talented in this area, and I want to be an artist,” or “I want to be a poet,” or “I want to sing,” or “I want to be this great administrator,” or “I want to be able to teach in the adult schools,” or “I want to be a morontia counselor, and I am not doing that yet,” there is a reason you are not doing that yet. You are in training, and when you are ready to do it, you will do it. Whatever you are doing at the moment is very important; it is preparing you; it is not mediocre, and you are not mediocre, even if you have not yet reached that place where your personal transmission says, “This is your destiny here on Urantia in this Divine Administration.” You are to be an ambassador, and travel, and speak to thousands of people, et cetera, and you are not there yet, but that doesn’t mean you are mediocre or that you haven’t hit the mark; it simply means that that is your ideal. That is the goal you are headed for, but where you are in the moment is a place of excellence, and you want to do the best you can in that place of excellence, as a student and as whatever your function is, in whatever you are doing to help this. Gabriel honored one of you for pounding nails. It is a very important function.

Whatever you are doing, you are honored, and you are in that place of excellence, and the dio in you is what is mediocre. That is what you want to overcome, not any of these other things. I want to read the last two sentences on page 1094 of The URANTIA Book. (This whole teaching was centered basically on the first two paragraphs of Paper 100.) “Love supplies the soil for religious growth—an objective lure in the place of subjective gratification—yet it yields the supreme subjective satisfaction.” Here they are talking about love from a celestial perspective. Divine love isn’t subjective; it is objective, because it is within God’s absolutes. Your relationship with God is the subjective thing, how you personally experience it, and the way The URANTIA Book talks about love is not that sentimental version that the world uses in which the word “love” has been so abused. It is not a word to use to manipulate someone, to get them to do what you want them to do, or “I do not love that person anymore because they do not make me feel good,” or whatever that is. That is not love at all. That is something else. The love they are talking about here is the kind of love that you receive from God and that God is asking you to give others.

“And religion ennobles the commonplace drudgery of daily living.” We used to think washing dishes was horrible or bookkeeping was horrible. For those kinds of things that we consider drudgery, when we are truly in religious living, it transforms all those little mundane jobs that we do, and it can transform them into something of tremendous joy. It ennobles them and makes them excellent. So remember, we are not in drudgery. I, too, want to remind myself of that tomorrow morning when Monday sets in.

Thank you.
Teaching by Gabriel of Urantia

The Not-So-Great American Dream

In Western civilization, just about everybody is taught to seek for the wrong things in life. To fulfill one’s happiness, we are taught to be a model citizen, a respected citizen, to be the good neighbor, to be a member of the sorority, my club, your club, and to be like the Waltons or the Nelsons, you know Ricky Nelson and that family with Ozzie and Harriet.

It was pretty simple growing up here in America in the fifties and sixties and seventies, and even now in the nineties, it is basically the Great American Dream. We still have it. What is that Great American Dream? I wrote a song titled “The Great American Dream”; listen to it on my CD Holy City. Your goals from childhood are having security and a good job. That is a vocation, so that you can then marry and have children. If you do not have a good job, the woman that you are going to marry most likely will say, “Get one before we get married.” Or she will look at you as not a prospect for marriage, right? So, most of the time we ascending sons must have that security before we are even eligible for the “right” lady. Once you have those two things, then of course you buy your dream home and have children. Well, none of that really works. You have all that, and it does not really settle you. It does not bring you true happiness, true peace.

Then you begin to try another variety. So you try to do it all over again. It must have been the wrong job. It must have been the wrong woman. I’ll have more children. Maybe these other children will be different. Try it all over again. When that doesn’t work, some of you even try it again and again. First of all, consider the job that is a vocation. Many jobs, many avocations, should actually be your real vocation. I have said this before. Perhaps what you consider to be just a hobby is what you really should be doing as a vocation in God’s perfect will. That is what you would have been doing, but you are basically taught and told to earn a lot of money. So you have a job, what you call a career.

In the Fall 1997 issue of the New Thought Journal there is an article called, “America: Redefining the Dream,” written by Norman Stevens. It is a very good little article, and I’ll read just a few sentences.

Those who have been at the top—and returned—may tell you it is not what it’s cracked up to be. You may hear words about great expectations never quite realized; even when there was nothing left to want for, something was still missing. Those who stayed at the top may tell you of much time and effort spent looking over one’s shoulder.
. . . Entirely basing one’s personal existence on the existence of others is also a risky business [my wife, my husband, my children, my aunt, my grandmother]. With fifty percent of all American marriages doomed to fail, one faces the prospect of not only losing one’s spouse, but the relationship with one’s children being one day reduced to visiting rights.
Asking where the old American Dream went wrong is not denigrating motherhood, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Possibly, the error lies in the objects and titles we got lost in; lots of things with little meaning.

I wrote a song in 1976, twenty-one years ago. It is called “It’s Not What You Are, But Who You Are Inside”.

Feeling like a losing man, life has passed me by.
What the world considers win, I feel like it is sin.
Failure plays my tambourine
Lonely sounds of violins
And all the while I ask you Lord,
Why in this life am I so bored
Even though you are my Lord? (Why am I so bored?)My son it is not what you are, no
But who you are inside.
Put aside your pride.

My son it is not what you have, no
For these things cannot make you glad inside.
Put aside your pride.

My son it is not what you do, no
But it is why you do inside.
Put aside your pride.

Open up your heart and look around the world
What do you really see?
False pride and greed you see.
Surrender all to Me, my son.

Open up your eyes but then look within yourself.
What do you really want?
A home and family, these things I promised thee.
Or do not you trust in Me, my son?

Consider kings and queens.
Are they my favorite ones
Because I gave them reigns?
As I control the sea
I hold man’s destiny, my son.

Put aside your pride.
Put aside your pride.

Who or What Is Your First Love?

Finding God first is the First Commandment. Perhaps that First Commandment should be the First Grand Hint, because you have choices. Any commandment is not really a commandment; it is a grand hint. Think about it. You have choices, and God is a jealous lover. He does not treat you like a human jealous lover would. He doesn’t create the death of your sons and daughters because He is jealous. That is not the kind of jealousy I am talking about, but in a divine way, He is divinely jealous of anything you put before Him, anything. You see, you cannot really get to the Second Commandment, the Second Grand Hint, until you have the first one right. You cannot really love your neighbor as yourself until you love God unquestionably in every aspect and in every area of your life and breath, because you will be loving that other thing or person, more than God.

I produced my first album in 1985, just ten years ago. There is a song on it called “Unicorn Love,” and if you have ever seen the unicorns flying through the cartoons, you see how evasive they are. You are trying to catch them and vroom! As soon as you think you have got it, whoosh! It is gone. Right? As soon as you think you have it, it is gone. Guess what that is? That is human love, the love of male to female and female to male. For many of us trying to get that true love relationship, being the romantic that I am, “Unicorn Love” was a very appropriate title for this particular song. If any of you have not heard the song, it is on my album Escape, and if you have, I suggest you re-listen to it. This time you will get it.

The four girls on the album cover are all beautiful. I have known some beautiful ladies in this life, and I am sure in many other ones, but it seems as though I could never keep hold of any one of them. I was always losing them, you know. This one is going away by boat; this one is going away by airplane. This one is just going away. But they are all going away. I am sad in each one of those pictures. I am saying, “Ooh, oh oh.” Now, my plan was that I was going to be famous, and I was going to explain this to the world, but I never got famous, so when anybody looked at this album they would say, “What an egomaniac! Look at all those girls! Wow! It is not a spiritual album.”

These four unicorns on the cover represent the individuality of each woman, yet they are all beautiful. There is a beauty in all women that we love, yet they are all different, too. When I wrote this song and did this album, I had already been a Christian minister. People called me “Reverend” for several years, and on the album cover I am sitting on the stairway to heaven. I heard the song, and I was resting in God in many, many ways in my life. I knew God. I understood God. I followed God. I served God. But there was an unquenchable thirst in me for a relationship with a woman. Ooh it hurt. I wrote song after song after song about a relationship with a woman. “When are you going to send me my complement, my God?” I am looking up at Him saying, “I know you. I love you. I serve you. Where is she?” Look at the face of the cover close up. Way in the background there is a cross of Christ, with purple flowers in the basket. Now what that is supposed to mean is that God, even though I claim to know Him and love Him and everything, He is not first in my life. The song goes on to say that, and I was just coming to that realization when I wrote the song. I knew I had to bring that cross up to the forefront of my life, and I had to put the complement back there, so that the metamorphosis would happen.

The First Commandment: You cannot love husband or wife, even the thought of one, son or daughter more than me. He will test you. If you are at the First Planetary Sacred Home, I guarantee you, you are being tested. And He will do it out there too. The thing is, out there you do not have elders saying, “Yep, that’s what’s happening. Uh-huh, that’s right. Mmm hmm.” You do not have that out there. Here you have it. Not only can you hate the fact that you do not have a relationship, but then you can hate me. So you have a scapegoat.

Until you love God, you cannot be a fourth-dimensional father—until you have the relationship going with the Father on His level, God’s level. What level is that? It is the third psychic circle, stabilization on the third psychic circle. “Oh, I read The URANTIA Book fifteen times, man. I got it together, man. I can tell you what it is.” You cannot tell anybody what it is until you have it, really have it. You cannot just have it in your head. Lucifer had it there. You have to have it everywhere. He lost it. Now those fourth-order starseed who failed are trying to get it back again. Then on a fallen world, every soul unfortunately has to get it. Get what? The book? The Bible? The URANTIA Book? CFER? No, God. You see, the only thing that is real is the Father of All. That’s it, nothing else. Burn the books and walk with God if the books are causing you to be merely academic and intellectually proud.

When some of you call me father now; I have learned to grow into that. Being raised Catholic, I called many male priests fathers. I called them Father. To me, it was an honor to them, because I felt they were serving me and my family. I had no problems calling them Father. I am honored when some of you call me Father. The idea is that I have to have a relationship with my Father in heaven to really be a father. It is reciprocal. I love the Father and the Father gives me a father’s love, you see. Then I can love my neighbors. I can really begin to love my neighbors. The Second Commandment is, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Teaching after teaching, and sermon after sermon for centuries and centuries has been given on that subject.

I complained so many times in my relationship with the Father, “Where, when is my complement coming? Oh God, when is this going to happen?” Complaint after complaint after complaint after complaint. Then I try to make it happen. I go after the girl. I go after the thing. I go after the band. I try to make it happen, and every time I tried to make it happen within God’s will, I would get slapped down. I would get embarrassed. Something would happen. If you are double-minded, you are praying, “Oh Father, thy will be done,” and then you are trying to make something happen, rather than being still and knowing that He is God.

Joni Eareckson was a seventeen-year-old girl, beautiful inside and out, who went swimming, jumped in the water, hit her head on a rock, and she is paralyzed for the rest of her life. She almost died. She is not only paralyzed, but she cannot even use her hands. She prayed, “Father, your word says right there, ‘If you just pray and believe that thou shall be healed.’” So she and a young man she met prayed, but she wasn’t healed. She didn’t regain the use of her hands. Why? What kind of loving God would do that, right? How come God didn’t heal her? If one of you do not get a new shirt, you are ready to turn your back on the Father. You do not get your complement, and you are ready to run out of here. You do not get this or that, and you are ready to take off. You will go get it yourself, right? That is how you think, because from the very beginning you have been trained wrong. Joni Eareckson went in front of thousands of people at a Billy Graham crusade and said that the best thing that ever happened to her was to become paralyzed, for she now knows her Lord, and she would not be there in front of those hundreds of thousands of people, telling them about their God and the importance of knowing God in a personal way and having that relationship with God and making God one’s all in all, if she had not had that accident. She could have been ugly about it. She could have turned into an angry person. She could have gotten mad at God because God didn’t give her what she wanted—complete physical healing. But no, she is waiting, waiting for the promise that she will be healed that way, and in the meantime she knows that she has a mission.

Her hands represent your complements that you do not have right now. Her paralyzed body represents that career that you are not walking into right now. Her paralyzed whatever represents that thing that you think you should have right now. That is what it represents, and in that paralyzed body is this magnificent spirit of a soul, called Joni, Joni Eareckson.

The Universal Father, The Universal Lover

So, I guess I shouldn’t complain. In June 1986 I was sitting outside of Telluride where there was a music festival. I had all these beautiful songs that I thought should be heard, and basically I wasn’t playing them in front of those thousands. I am still not. But:

By the Colorado River, sitting in the sun
Listening to the birds in the trees.
Niánn sits beside me, deep in
Spiritual things
And I am philosophizing.Wondering why it is not time
To sing my special songs
To the ones gathered for the fun
It always seems to be right down the road
But now I am just a forsaken one

Guess I shouldn’t complain ’cause
I cannot change a thing
I’ll take that next moment
And listen to the buzzin’ bee

By the mountain called Thumb Butte
In our sacred land
With Alcyone and Sonta-an
Waiting on destiny
To write this gentle song
Knowing with each other we belong

Fighting off the Red Dogs
Beaming down the light
Trying so hard to do what is right

Spent my whole life trying
To change the world
When all I ever really wanted to do was sing a song.

That song is about the excitement of a relationship with the Universal Father, the Universal Lover. I had to make the Father my Unicorn Love. I had to walk with Him and let Him see the mountains with me and let Him see the trees with me and the flowers and smells. I had to make Him my lover. And when I did, when I didn’t care anymore, guess what happened? Niánn came into my life. I had to pass the test. Now I not only have one complement, but I have two.

There is a lot involved in this. What is right for me may not be right for you right now. However, if you are from the same reality that I was once from, someday it will be right for you, because you will be growing and are growing into your cosmic mind and your interuniversal cultural reality in which you once lived. All must happen in God’s perfect will and timing. I am the unicorn. Niánn and I are the unicorn in the sense that we are out there first with our horn, taking the brunt of everything, particularly me, being the father and protector.

In my relationship with my First Lover, my First Love, God the Father, I learned to develop a romance with Him. That is how I wrote many of those beautiful songs. I sang to God. When people listen to them, they may think I am singing to a human female, but I am not. I am singing to God, my Lover. I became intimate with the Father, very intimate. You may think that I am writing about the intimacy between a male and a female. Listen to those songs. I am not.

Trust, oh that is a big one. I learned to trust my Father in heaven. Without trust, there is no love. Until you learn to really trust the Father, you will never have a perfect love with a female or a male, not perfect. An imperfect one, yes, but not a perfect one. We are striving for perfection here, quality relationships. We are striving for the top, for complementary polarities. In order to get that, you must first have that personal relationship with the Father, and first and foremost in that relationship, you must have trust. Then it is no longer, “When am I going to get this or that.” It is just a matter of time. I know that I am going to sing in front of hundreds of thousands of people. I know that is going to happen. But if I try to make it happen before God’s time, I am going to fall flat on my little face. I have to do what He wants me to do when He wants me to do it. He’ll make the rest happen. He’ll do it in His way, in His time. That is the fourth dimension. In the third dimension, you are out there busting the walls down trying to make it happen.

Something you have to learn is to have a sense of adventure with God. When you walk with God in a romantic and intimate and trustful way, it is very adventurous. You never know what is going to happen. You learn to look and sense things and people, and you know without a doubt in your mind, like the French Jesuit priest said, that every instant is an instant of providence for you that your Lover has sent to help you know Him, your First Love. Then reality becomes so much more precious. Your moments become so much more meaningful, and you are never, ever alone. You know without a doubt, without anything else, that God is near with you, right beside you and inside you, and His angels are ever present with you. When you lose track of that, then you do not know your Lover like God wants you to know Him.

October 26, 1997