2024-05-23-Personality is Devoid of Identity in Itself

Heading

Facilitators

Session

Opening

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael: Welcome, dear parents. Mother Spirit, tonight I would like to ask you to give us a lesson on something Michael gave in a recent organization called Mission Urantia. It’s a new organization formed to include, organize, and coordinate all the different Urantia study groups. Michael gave an hour-long session that brought up the subject of personality but left it rather unresolved. So if you would please, Mother Spirit, could you give us a little more information on this mysterious living being we are? Thank you.

Lesson

(Personality is devoid of identity in itself)

Nebadonia: Good evening, my beautiful children. I would be happy to expand your knowledge about the transcendent reality that you are. Let me start by noting that personality is one of those words that has such various meanings and importance in the different societies of the world’s religions and philosophies. It goes all the way down to your pictures of “Personality Pete and Petunia of the Hallways” in your high school yearbook. Almost universally it refers to a person’s essential identity, so it comes as a surprise to read in your Urantia Book that personality has no identity in and of itself, ever.

(Unchanging uniqueness with free-will autonomy)

There it states that personality denotes an unchanging uniqueness of living beings endowed with mind or spirit, through the incessant changes of time. It’s as if God buds off little bits of himself, then gives them free-will autonomy. They have his ability of experiencing and, most importantly, unifying their experiences. They become part of God’s personality circuit and the Deity Absolute.

When do human personalities begin, associated in their first life with, eventually, a full, living, physical body with all its mind/spirit senses and dimensions? After physical death, personality awaits a Morontia body to once again start experiencing. In that wonderful chapter of your Urantia Book--number 112, called Personality Survival--it makes the statement that the transcendent reality of living exists mostly not so much internally as between the personhood and its surrounding environment.

(When does personality really begin)

In the case of higher spiritual beings who are created fully developed, self-conscious adult individuals, this is when personality is assigned. But in the case of human beings, you begin physically as a fertilized human egg and develop for quite a while before you attain a full, self-conscious life. So when does your personality association really begin?

When you think of conception, remember that even though the event is not unique, but takes place millions of times a day on your world, the result is unique. As we have pointed out so many times, in a large, old-fashioned family of eight or ten brothers and sisters with obvious family identity, still each one is unique. Their conception differs from an animal’s insofar as only a human’s finds true personality repercussion--recognition and response—in the Ultimacy of Deity—time-and-space-transcending God-the-Ultimate, a personal being.

That little fertilized human egg--about the size of the period ending this sentence—with its associated personality repercussion--has the potential of achieving a full personhood whose ultimate destiny is endless. A human person will only achieve his or her full potential in eternity. This is both the meaning and the value of that human beginning. Each unique, living personality has this ultimate destiny. Though depending during their first life on an association with a physical living entity for identity, upon death they retain identity with their God-co-authored soul.

So only upon birth does a personality begin to experience and acquire an identity with a consciously living, experiencing body. Those of you who have been parents, or fortunate enough to be with a newborn, have seen their consciousness is pretty basic at first--just being awake or sleeping. But they have feelings of hunger, or cold, or sometimes lack of support; and they have a response of crying or stopping—when fed or held. Even at birth their little hands can respond to something and grab hold. But there is yet no self-consciousness as such. This gradually begins evolving until they get to the age you call the “Terrible-Twos” when a fledging self-conscious often comes out as denial. With all the life going on within and around them, their stubborn “No!” is often one of their first expressions of individual being.

(When does your Thought Adjuster become part of you)

This self-consciousness continues to grow until, around the age of three or four, they are capable of making a certain quality of decision. Then, like Anton and Fonta--the first human beings nearly a million years ago--this quality of decision is the signal for their Thought Adjuster to take up a presence in their mind. This individualized presence of God has been surrounding since birth, but now starts actively fulfilling its function of supplying ideas to adjust the totality of thoughts occurring to this youngster.

This is when a full-fledged personality can fulfill its transcendent function of unifying all the constituent parts of an individual such as thinking, feeling, and creating. With a creative spirit helping them to fully relate with their environment, they become a full person.

This is the origin and the development of human personality, continuing to death and beyond. It is the fervent desire of the whole spiritual community--especially including Michael and myself--that the recognition and honoring of all that constitutes a human being is further advanced on your world. It would render such terrible effects as crime and warfare, cruelty and neglect, more and more unlikely. We love to refer to you as “Little Walking Infinities” because personality is such a transcendent reality. By contrast there is nothing you experience and come to know that is not changing and limited--except your deepest self.

(You are unique from any other—past or current)

Upon notice, it becomes both an intellectual and emotional challenge to entertain this notion of being an unchanging reality in a dynamic universe. In another way it is an assurance your very uniqueness invalidates what you call reincarnation. You are in no way burdened with some previous human life. You were and continue to be a fresh, God-created mindful/spiritual being, unique from any other, past or current.

Give yourselves this special consideration, my dear ones. Know and feel you are unique. Be kind and gentle with yourselves because everything you have had to learn from your moment of birth is uniquely yours. At first you could barely respond to a few things like being hungry or being fed and held. Yet now you have a soul of experience that is, like your personality, a transcendent reality.

(Re-personalization after natural death)

Upon re-personalization after natural death, you will be given a special Morontia body with which to once again be aware of and respond with your surroundings. With it you will be more spiritually sensitive and in touch with your soul and your whole life experiences. The presence of God within you will be much more palpable, if you will. Even now, as you grow older, with meditation and reflection you can recognize the origin of past experiences being held in your soul. They reflect the meaning and the value you find in things--maybe some delightful hobby you’ve had since childhood, or even being so fortunate to still have some precious physical object from then.

Think about this transcendent destiny you have. It’s God’s dimension of ultimacy, of what will ultimately happen someday, even if your future has no existence--yet. The future truly does not exist, for all your delightful science-fiction time-traveling off into it. But there is that aspect of God which transcends time and space.

(Free will is real and can be developed)

His sense of what is possible—even probable--is especially delightful for God because he cannot fully know what will happen. There are the choices of trillions of trillions of personal beings he’s endowed with free will. Free will, my dear ones, is real. It is yours to manifest however you can. You can tap into your own creativity and not just react within your life, but truly act. Exercise your free will and enjoy unparalleled events by having created something new in time and space.

There is such a thing as genuine achievement your personality is capable of. This is your contribution to not only your fellows, but even to Michael and me and our whole spiritual community. We all delight in your creations. You are endowed with a creative spirit and a free will to explore.

Make use of this ability. Cherish and develop it not only for yourself but--so importantly--for those who depend on you. In a wonderful way all the societies in your world recognize and depend upon really good ideas. Your great inventiveness has you living in outer space, standing on the moon, and replacing living hearts with another. As Michael said recently, even though life is such a transcendent reality it cannot--like your personality--be exhaustively defined, all you need to do is wiggle your fingers to be aware you already have it, potentially forever.

(Glory in your full personhood and share it with others)

My dears, glory in the reality of your full personhood and join us in thanking our Father—as Michael and I do--for our lives. It is God’s nature of sharing his life that has given rise to us all, so enjoy sharing your life with others. Let them too fill your soul. Now if you have any questions or comments, you can create those.

Dialogue

Student: I have a question, Mother. People who have had adversity in their lives; sometimes their personality becomes negative, cruel, or even mean. What happens when they transcend? Are they able to overcome this with the goodness they had? You know there are people with PTSD who were once kind, but they come home very bitter. You can’t blame them, but what happens there?

Michael: Well yes, my dear. There is such an enormous shock upon regaining consciousness on the Mansion worlds that, as your Urantia Book states, you will never in all eternity forget this moment of having survived. With a body of a different, more spiritual Morontia material, you are on a real physical world where everything is equally transformed. You awake in an enormous resurrection hall with a “Morontia Companion”--a junior angel you can visualize, taking you by the hand and leading you out into an impossible-to-imagine world.

(Reawakening on the Mansion world is universally humbling)

This amazement of having survived in such a state on such a world is so universally humbling, the humility gained from such an event can cause even terribly impoverished and cruel individuals to recognize the chance to start again. Just to take one step after another into this transformed reality is a blessing of humility. Being aware of something so enormous makes you feel like a very tiny—and grateful—person. You begin again.

Remember: the closest English equivalent to the word “Morontia” is “soul.” The first mansion world is such a soulful reality, so replete with amazing, inexplicable meaning and value, it calls forth and reflects each person’s full soul. These are their whole life’s experiences, not just recent events of having witnessed terrible things in warfare or having been treated cruelly and meanly. The overwhelming realization of life itself—being alive and having survived—counterbalances even the truly terrible things in their soul.

(Through God’s mercy, eternal life is forced on no one)

Yet still with free will, those who chose not to continue are only those whose newly hyper-conscious soul is full of the real pain they themselves deliberately caused others in their life. Think of the really soulless, despicable tyrants in human history. Their emerging God co-authored soul--they managed to deny while living--is suddenly so overwhelming they beg God to cease living and experiencing, which he grants out of mercy. Eternal life is forced on no one. If you want, this is the ultimate justice of soulful reality. For everyone else it is a new beginning in a transformed, soulful world. Does that answer your question?

Student: Yes, it did. Thank you very much. Yes, that was nice. Good thought to keep.

Nebadonia: To a much smaller degree, every time you lose consciousness in sleep, and reawaken in another new day, it is also an opportunity to start anew. You are actually given the creative ability to do so, if you will. Be in my Love.

Student #1: Thank you.

Closing

Nebadonia: Well!--my dears. I hope my lesson tonight has given you a deeper appreciation of God’s handiwork—You!--your personality--with a living awareness he shares with you. Be aware you are living to develop your shared divine ability to consciously unite all the different aspects of you—spiritual, physical, mental, and soulful. We see human beings living in some thirty dimensions of reality, looking forward to three hundred dimensions by the time you grow to achieve Paradise.

(Your unchanging personality was off and away! You began)

So!--you are off to a good start with God the Ultimate’s personal nudge. This was his first fond repercussion of recognition and response when your associated, living identity was no more than the size of a period at the end of a sentence. Still, your unchanging personality--beyond time and space--was off and away. You began. All my love, dear ones. Good night.