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Contacting God.
What can we expect?
"But the mind that really discerns God, hears the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind." (1100)
Can we really expect to hear with our physical ears, actual sound waves, a real voice, that of our Indwelling Father-Spirit, presumably speaking in our mother tongue? Or do words of this nature simply follow old established biblical traditions of presenting concepts, for which we have no human idiom, as "figures of speech."
Examples from the Book of Psalms are: "Without holiness no man may see the Lord." "For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today if you will hear his voice..."
Do men really "see" God with their eyes and "hear" God's voice with their ears?
The Urantia Book is confusing in this regard:
"The ear of the human mind is almost deaf to the spiritual pleas which the Adjuster translates…" (1213)
"While the voice of the Adjuster is ever within you, most of you will hear it seldom during a lifetime. Human beings below the third and second circles of attainment rarely hear the Adjuster's direct voice…" (1213)
"The Thought Adjuster has no special mechanism through which to gain self-expression; there is no mystic religious faculty for the reception or expression of religious emotions. These experiences are made available through the naturally ordained mechanism of mortal mind." (1104)
"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. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind." (1104)
"It is sometimes possible to have the mind illuminated, to hear the divine voice that continually speaks within you, so that you may become partially conscious of the wisdom, truth, goodness, and beauty of the potential personality constantly indwelling you." (1199)
If you are desperate to hear voices, you may consider there is sufficient support to justify that attitude. But on balance, communication with the Spirit-Within appears to be through conscious awareness of our 'nearness to God', fortified by faith, and a lot of hard work.
The description given of Jesus' own relationships is helpful:
"The secret of his (Jesus) unparalleled religious life was this consciousness of the presence of God; and he attained it by intelligent prayer and sincere worship--unbroken communion with God--and not by leadings, voices, visions, or extraordinary religious practices. (2088)
And in conclusion:
"Religion lives and prospers, then, not by sight and feeling, but rather by faith and insight. It consists not in the discovery of new facts or in the finding of a unique experience, but rather in the discovery of new and spiritual meanings in facts already well known to mankind. The highest religious experience is not dependent on prior acts of belief, tradition, and authority; neither is religion the offspring of sublime feelings and purely mystical emotions. It is, rather, a profoundly deep and actual experience of spiritual communion with the spirit influences resident within the human mind and as far as such an experience is definable in terms of psychology, it is simply the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God as the reality of such a purely personal experience. (1105)
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