We Are Not Bodies, but More.
Video Teaching – We Are Not Bodies
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Supporting “We are not bodies”, here we’re told our personality is not identified as the body.
The human personality is identified with mind and spirit held together in functional relationship by life in a material body. The material body has personality and identity, but temporal identity. The personality imparts value of identity and meanings of continuity [spiritual life]. In the human system it is the personality which unifies all activities and in turn imparts the qualities of identity and creativity.
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 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 may have changed because of the modification of the vehicle of expression and manifestation of his personality.
No other being, force, creator, or agency in all the wide universe of universes can interfere to any degree with the absolute sovereignty of the mortal free will, as it operates within the realms of choice, regarding the eternal destiny of the personality of the choosing mortal, as pertains to eternal survival, God has decreed the sovereignty of the material and mortal will, and that decree is absolute. Taken from “Urantia Papers” by Celestials.
This teaching support for “we are not bodies”, expounds our personalities do not ever change; but bodies die while the mind survives and continue to evolve eternally with its personality.
It is the gift of the universal Father, the first source of all creation. That which comes from the Father is like the Father eternal, and this is just as true of personality which God gives by his own freewill choice. Human personality is the time-space image-shadow cast by the divine Creator personality; it is identified with mind and spirit held together in a functional relationship by life in a material body. No actuality can ever be adequately comprehended by an examination of its shadow. Shadows should be interpreted in terms of the true substance.
It is real only in so far as the personality elects to become a continuing universe phenomenon. Shadows, in this context, represent the superficial and incomplete understanding of a phenomenon. To grasp the essence of human personality, one must delve deeper and interpret the shadows in light of the underlying reality. It is important to note here that understanding the true nature of something cannot be achieved solely by examining its external.
But with regard to IDENTITY, it is a conditioned eternal reality. Therefore, man’s participation is optional, personal, and experiential. Personality is the one changeless reality in an otherwise ever-changing physical experience and unifies all other associated factors of individuality. Taken from “Urantia Papers”
Supporting, “we are not bodies, but more”, here we’re told our experiences of this world are based on belief in what self is. If personality choice and by mind identify self to the material body and world, mind can only perceive and project its perceptions.
Projection, NOT perception, is a fundamental law of the MIND, and therefore one which always operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the spirit Kingdom and keeps it in the mind of God.
PERCEPTION IS projection. You look in [at your thoughts of desires] before you look out. As you look in, you choose the guide for seeing, and then look out, and behold his witnesses.
You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there.
Perception has no other law than this. The rest stems from this to hold it up and offer it support. This is perception’s form, adapted to this world, of God’s more basic law; that Love creates itself, and nothing but itself.
There has been much confusion about what perception means, because the same word is used both for awareness, and for the interpretation of awareness. But you cannot BE aware without interpretation, and what you perceive IS your interpretation. Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, and with them different perceptions. For perceptions are learned WITH beliefs, and experience teaches.
Perception selects and makes the world you see. It literally PICKS IT OUT, as mind directs. The laws of size and shape and brightness would hold, perhaps, if other things were equal. They are NOT equal. For what you look FOR you are far more likely to discover, REGARDLESS of its color, shape, or size, than what you would prefer to overlook.
But on this choice depends far more than you may realize as yet. For, on the voice you choose to hear, and on the sights, you choose to see, depends entirely on your whole belief in What You ARE. Perception is a witness only to this, and never to reality. Yet it can show you the conditions in which awareness of reality is possible, or those where it could never be. Reality needs no cooperation from you, to be itself. But your awareness of it needs your help, because it IS your choice.
The still small Voice for God is NOT drowned out by all the ego’s raucous screams and senseless ravings, to those who want to hear. Learning of Christ is easy, for to perceive with Him involves no strain at all. HIS perceptions are your NATURAL awareness, and it is only distortions that you introduce that tire you. Taken from “A Course in Miracles”.