Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:29 am +0000 Posts: 4634
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One way to approach and consider how mortals are made in God's image I think is to study that which differentiates us from the plant and animal kingdoms - there is life that is not made in God's image but is made to evolve into that and those which might be made so...the canvas and framework of life upon which is immortal potential created and which itself now creates new potential for actualization and realization - a grand symphony of experience and expression of reality. I think such a transformation of being made in "our image" is not validated or true or proofed, if you will, until the mortal mind makes our first moral free will choice - that choice where another being receives our love and/or our mercy. Then have we truly chosen our first God-Response and made a choice that is not self centered or self important - and this is a reflection of God's nature and not the animal nature - the birth of the spirit nature and the arrival of the duality of the mortal mind and being.
I think that the phrase to be made in God's image also does not mean a one and done event - we are not simply born in God's image but we are "made" into God's image....by time, free will, personality, and mind endowments over time in conjunction with the Spirit ministries and endowments of the Adjutants, the Holy Spirit, the Father Fragments, and here for the last 2000 years, the Spirit of Truth. The angels and TA's lead us into situations and circumstances of decision to affect and form our transformation of motive, intent, priority, and choice. We are "made" by such an ongoing process and not by any singular event...like our birth. We are designed and wired for this process of spiritization and spiritualization.
Also, I noticed that we are made in "our" image in the many quotes including those from the Bible as well. We are a composite of images of the Father, Son, and Mother Spirits and share some attributes from all 3 Sources of life and creation.
I think perhaps that we are not made in the image of the gods until our soul is born? And it is the soul that is so created or "made"? The Adjutants give ministry to material mind but soul is spiritized and morontial mind. What do you think?
6:5.7 (78.3) Though the Eternal Son cannot personally participate in the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, he did sit in council with the Universal Father in the eternal past, approving the plan and pledging endless co-operation, when the Father, in projecting the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, proposed to the Son, “Let us make mortal man in our own image.” And as the spirit fragment of the Father dwells within you, so does the spirit presence of the Son envelop you, while these two forever work as one for your spiritual advancement.
108:6.3 (1193.2) The Mystery Monitors are undoubtedly the bestowal of the Universal Father, the reflection of the image of God abroad in the universe. A great teacher once admonished men that they should be renewed in the spirit of their minds; that they become new men who, like God, are created in righteousness and in the completion of truth. The Adjuster is the mark of divinity, the presence of God. The “image of God” does not refer to physical likeness nor to the circumscribed limitations of material creature endowment but rather to the gift of the spirit presence of the Universal Father in the supernal bestowal of the Thought Adjusters upon the humble creatures of the universes.
108:6.4 (1193.3) The Adjuster is the wellspring of spiritual attainment and the hope of divine character within you. He is the power, privilege, and the possibility of survival, which so fully and forever distinguishes you from mere animal creatures. He is the higher and truly internal spiritual stimulus of thought in contrast with the external and physical stimulus, which reaches the mind over the nerve-energy mechanism of the material body.
108:6.5 (1193.4) These faithful custodians of the future career unfailingly duplicate every mental creation with a spiritual counterpart; they are thus slowly and surely re-creating you as you really are (only spiritually) for resurrection on the survival worlds. And all of these exquisite spirit re-creations are being preserved in the emerging reality of your evolving and immortal soul, your morontia self. These realities are actually there, notwithstanding that the Adjuster is seldom able to exalt these duplicate creations sufficiently to exhibit them to the light of consciousness.
108:6.6 (1193.5) And as you are the human parent, so is the Adjuster the divine parent of the real you, your higher and advancing self, your better morontial and future spiritual self. And it is this evolving morontial soul that the judges and censors discern when they decree your survival and pass you upward to new worlds and never-ending existence in eternal liaison with your faithful partner—God, the Adjuster.
108:6.7 (1193.6) The Adjusters are the eternal ancestors, the divine originals, of your evolving immortal souls; they are the unceasing urge that leads man to attempt the mastery of the material and present existence in the light of the spiritual and future career. The Monitors are the prisoners of undying hope, the founts of everlasting progression. And how they do enjoy communicating with their subjects in more or less direct channels! How they rejoice when they can dispense with symbols and other methods of indirection and flash their messages straight to the intellects of their human partners!
108:6.8 (1194.1) You humans have begun an endless unfolding of an almost infinite panorama, a limitless expanding of never-ending, ever-widening spheres of opportunity for exhilarating service, matchless adventure, sublime uncertainty, and boundless attainment. When the clouds gather overhead, your faith should accept the fact of the presence of the indwelling Adjuster, and thus you should be able to look beyond the mists of mortal uncertainty into the clear shining of the sun of eternal righteousness on the beckoning heights of the mansion worlds of Satania.
Me here: In many ways we mortals might be considered the last and the least of the spirit natured creatures of the universe of universes. One poster here claims we are "merely human" and another has lamented we should never have been created at all and the plan and process of perfecting is flawed because we are not created perfect to begin with. Such disappointment and lamenting our humanity and our origin denies the miracle and potential we enjoy and the very purposes, plans, and power of God Almighty! Others lay blame for our suffering on God or on the Devil...or both for God allowing sin and iniquity. We mortals find much to complain about, indeed so. And much to blame others for too.
Such disappointments in God and others and our circumstances or even our being are regrettable and but vestiges of our animal heritage of self importance and our inability to embrace reality and our own blessings and the glorious achievement of the gods we have been given. Some of us appear to embrace misery and suffering and to reject love and mercy. Such a perspective denies reality and will suffer for it for as long as the embrace lasts. They have rejected the "image" that has been given to each of us and have chosen some personal construct that isolates them and makes everything cruel and harsh. So sad.
We are not born this way!!
103:2.5 (1131.4) The psychology of a child is naturally positive, not negative. So many mortals are negative because they were so trained. When it is said that the child is positive, reference is made to his moral impulses, those powers of mind whose emergence signals the arrival of the Thought Adjuster.
103:2.6 (1131.5) In the absence of wrong teaching, the mind of the normal child moves positively, in the emergence of religious consciousness, toward moral righteousness and social ministry, rather than negatively, away from sin and guilt. There may or may not be conflict in the development of religious experience, but there are always present the inevitable decisions, effort, and function of the human will.
103:2.7 (1131.6) Moral choosing is usually accompanied by more or less moral conflict. And this very first conflict in the child mind is between the urges of egoism and the impulses of altruism. The Thought Adjuster does not disregard the personality values of the egoistic motive but does operate to place a slight preference upon the altruistic impulse as leading to the goal of human happiness and to the joys of the kingdom of heaven.
103:2.8 (1131.7) When a moral being chooses to be unselfish when confronted by the urge to be selfish, that is primitive religious experience. No animal can make such a choice; such a decision is both human and religious. It embraces the fact of God-consciousness and exhibits the impulse of social service, the basis of the brotherhood of man. When mind chooses a right moral judgment by an act of the free will, such a decision constitutes a religious experience.
We are truly made in the image of the gods and have been given all that is needed to find the happiness and purpose and contentment and joy hat is our heritage and to gleefully and generously share those with all others, which will and does transform all of creation into the image of its source. Our source is also our destiny. Our source is love and love is the way home to our destiny and our source. Every love response we choose we take a step closer. What an adventure!!
Bradly 
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