Global Change Teachings for the New Millennium

Presented by 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 Two)

I would like to introduce Dr. Scott Peck’s model for the process of becoming a true community as presented in his book A World Waiting To Be Born. I will first present his perception and what that process is in the third dimensional world (mainstream society or the dominant culture), and then how we can build and expand on that and use that same foundation in the Divine New Order community of Aquarian Concepts. One thing that revelation does, and we know this from The URANTIA Book as well as Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation, is take things that we are familiar with—concepts, beliefs, and experiences that are real and valid—and build on them and expand our understanding.

First of all, what is community? The word “community” is often overused. I want to use Scott Peck’s definition of a true community.

A group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together, and to delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own.

For him then, it is not just people coming together in what we would call an intentional community, living together, owning property together, growing together in that way. It can be a corporation of people in business working together. It can be a school; it can be any organization; it can be a church. It can be a very large structure or it can be a very small structure, but it is a group of people who come together for a common purpose. That is what community is. Scott Peck has founded an organization that goes out into the world, and at first they thought they would appeal to churches, but actually, it is the business world that has hired these consultants to come in and teach their organization how to become a true community. Why do these businesses do that? It is because there is better productivity and higher profit when the people are happy on the job and when there is open, honest communication and a sense of comraderie in friendship. It is Peck’s premise that the majority of groups, whether they claim to be religious or nonreligious, are not true community. They are basically stuck in a place of either “pseudo community” or “chaos.”

There is another definition of community given by a Quaker writer named Parker Palmer; “Community is the place you go to get away from people you don’t like, to find people who you don’t like even more.” He has an idea of a process, a growth of people in groups who go through a stage of moving forward. One thing I want to point out is that evolution and ascension are part of human nature. It is moving toward something better, a higher reality, improvement in some way. In the third dimension evolution and ascension should happen too. So for any individual or group who encourages ascension and evolution at some level, that is wonderful. The group may not survive on this planet into the change point, but any improvement that can happen in the lives of any group of people or individuals that results in movement forward is a wonderful thing.

The Four Stages of Community

In this model of third-dimensional community Dr. Peck speaks of four stages of the community-building process. I use these steps in showing evolution and ascension—evolution in understanding, evolution in fulfilling your mandates, evolution in functions within a Divine New Order community. The first stage is pseudo community, and the second stage is chaos. The third is emptying, letting go, and then the fourth stage is true community. During the first three stages of pseudo community, chaos, and emptying and letting go, people may experience a lot of anxiety, frustration, fatigue, and even grief. There is quite a process going on there, because people are being pushed to move forward to evolve. Scott Peck feels that most groups and organizations remain in pseudo community and that our dominant culture encourages us not to go beyond that. If they go beyond that at all, they get stuck in chaos, and if they get stuck there, then not much productivity can go on.

In pseudo community, the focus is on what we have in common—the “we” stage. Usually when people are wanting to form community they get really excited, and they want to have a sense of unity and togetherness. They start out very optimistic and excited and are focused on that. What happens then is that the essential dynamic becomes wanting to avoid all conflict that people get into, fixing things, making things better. They get real nervous if there is any rocking of the boat, because there is an idea that in order to be unified there should be no conflict and there should be no differences. Then what happens is that uniformity sets in. Everyone tries to conform and be just like everybody else. There are some good things, of course, at this stage because the people come together with shared goals no matter what level it is, whether it is to make money or whether it is to grow spiritually; but there is a denial of any differences in individuals, differences in goals, in ideas, and there is a denial that there are any problems or that there is anything wrong. There are a lot of good manners, courtesy, and pretense, a lot of wearing of masks.

A long time ago I came to the realization that good manners sometimes is our biggest enemy because good manners sometimes teach us to be dishonest with each other and wear a mask, when sometimes maybe we should be a little more honest and confront each other instead of pretending. Another thing I want to point out here is that this isn’t only showing the movement of the group, it is showing the movement of individuals, and an individual moving from being in this pseudo community mentality and moving into the true community mentality.

If people ever get to the point where they really do begin to see that there are some problems, that everything is not perfect and not going just right, and don’t run away from it, or don’t want to fix it, cover it up, sweep it under the rug, then individuals or a group in general begin to move into the next stage which is chaos. Remember that this can be applied to individuals as well as to a group. Chaos is the focus on the differences within the group. It is the you stage. You are looking at everyone else and seeing how they don’t agree with you, how they are different and on and on and on. It is the stage where a lot of judgments can come in. It is that stage where we begin to realize that we do have some problems. We are not perfect. Everything isn’t hunky dory. It is the stage where people can begin to get honest and see the differences and problems, and they can begin to look at them. If they focus just on the differences though and have constant conflict with no resolution, then nothing can get done. No growth can happen. A person can stay right there for the rest of his or her life, and a group or organization can stay in that place of chaos for the rest of its existence too. Then there is a lot of anger. I am sure that you all know individuals who are in this place and have never gotten out of it, and they are very angry and confused, constantly in conflict with others. There is constant confrontation, but it is not productive or creative confrontation. It is just constant blaming and judgment without resolution. There is no movement forward. I guess we could call it static chaos.

If a business stays in that place very long, they will go under; they will go bankrupt. If a church or any social organization stays in that place long and doesn’t move into the resolutions, they will crumble too. For a while it can be a real time of fighting and struggle. It is very common during this stage for an individual or a group to begin to attack the leader or leaders of the organization and begin to blame them for the situation. It is also typical to constantly deny an individual, to deny their responsibility or their participation in a problem. They always blame everyone else for the problem. I am sure we also know people who have stayed in that place of denial.

But if you get tired of that fighting, and you begin to let go and try to say, “Hey, we’ve got to do something about this; we are not getting anywhere,” then that conflict and confrontation can become very constructive. Then you can move into the emptying and letting go stage, and at that stage, you don’t focus on people out there; each person goes inward and focuses on him/herself. It is an internal focus. You begin to look at yourself and how you are a part of the problem, and this begins to be the bridge between chaos and true community. Most people who go into any kind of situation in life have many expectations, many ideas of how things should be done, and when those expectations don’t manifest, when their beliefs don’t pan out, a lot of conflict and confusion can occur. In this place of internal focus, you begin to let go of those false beliefs that don’t work out. You begin to let go of those unreal expectations of yourself, as well as of others and of the group. You begin to let go of all those things that aren’t going to work. Then, in that emptying and letting go, you begin to adjust your thinking and to move into another way of looking at things, re-thinking and relearning. It is a time that can be quite painful. Often the time of chaos can be really noisy, and the emptying, letting go time can be very quiet. The letting go stage is a time when a lot of grief can happen within an individual, because you are basically dying to a certain order of things, a certain way of doing things. It is a time you empty yourself so that you can create a space to listen to others. In the chaos stage, you are so busy yammering, defining, and defending yourself and your own belief systems, pointing a finger and blaming everyone else that you don’t have time to really listen to anyone. When you finally get exhausted with that, if you do, then you can just release all that, and suddenly, when you shut up long enough, you can actually listen to other people and begin to hear them. What you are doing there, beginning in the chaos area, is realizing that people are individuals. At first you don’t want to accept that, but in the emptying and letting go, you begin to accept yourself as an individual, as well as others.

The chaos and letting go stages are a wonderful bridge, and from there you go into the fourth stage, which is true community. There the focus is on unity, as well as individuality. So there is a “we” stage, and an “I” stage, and a “you” stage. Conflict will come up. Confrontations will happen, but they will be resolved. There is a true spirit of community. Remember Scott Peck’s definition of community. This stage brings about a trust and a sense of harmony. There is a wonderful sense of belonging and a sense of cooperation. It is not perfect, but there is that sense of finding your place, finding your niche in life, belonging, being fulfilled in some manner. This is when joy and peace can come in, and a sense of accomplishment.

This is also the place where all of a sudden a lot of sexuality can come up. The reason is that we mortals are sexual beings, and in that torn and broken third dimensional world that is based on Luciferic teachings, most people feel very isolated, very frightened, very much on the defensive and basically have to wear masks to protect themselves. They don’t want to be vulnerable. It is not a safe place to be who you really are, so most people don’t feel loved, don’t feel accepted. They haven’t found their real source, unless they are in a religion of some kind that does honor and acknowledge the First Source and Center of all, the Universal Father. Of course then those people do have a sense of belonging and a sense of destiny at some level, but unfortunately for the majority of people, that is not the case. When they come into any semblance of true community, when they have evolved into that, as a group or as an individual, in the third dimension, whether it is a secular or religious situation, there is much more happiness than there was before. They have moved forward. They are more effective; they are more efficient; their lifestyle is improving, and so on. But when people come out of that place of isolation and fear and begin to trust each other, begin to feel a real love for other people, sexual feelings are going to come up, and they have to be very careful. Scott Peck has noticed that this happens in organization after organization after organization that he and his fellow workers have consulted with where they have brought them through this process into true community. So people have to be aware of that and begin to use a little self mastery and self control and not behave as though it is a free-for-all type of situation. They have to use a little wisdom; sexual feelings might come up for people whom they might have actually disliked before, and it is not appropriate just to jump into an intimate relationship with everyone you are feeling love for all of a sudden.

Another thing Dr. Peck emphasizes is that moving through these stages takes work. You have to do it with intent, as an individual and as a group of people coming together. They have to want to do it, to be motivated, and then make it happen. It doesn’t just happen by itself. It is a lot of work, and that is why they have consultants who go in and work with a group to help bring them to that point. Once you get to true community, the group of people or an individual can very easily fall clear back into pseudo community, into old patterns and old ways of doing things. At each step, each stage, individuals or groups can get stuck, can stay right there and not move on. That is what we in Aquarian Concepts call “static spirituality.” A group could be stuck right at the emptying and letting go stage and never get beyond that. The whole idea is to keep constantly moving. Peck’s idea is that once you get to true community, that is it, that is where you stay, and then you have to work hard to stay there.

A Divine New Order Community

Global Community Communications is not just any community, it is a Divine New Order community that we all know is multidimensional, and it includes many things. I want to use Scott Peck’s definition of true community, but I want to expand on it so that it is more applicable to us here at our planetary sacred home. A true Divine New Order community is a group of individuals—material, morontial, and spiritual—who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other in divine pattern and proper procedure, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, pride, and denial, and who have developed a significant commitment to rejoice together in our ascension victories, to mourn together over the lost loved ones, and delight in each other’s manifestations of the higher self, making others’ conditions our own, realizing that what we have in common is our status as ascending sons and daughters of God who struggle to move into our destinies and to be perfect as the Father is perfect.I want to talk a little bit about this definition of community. It is a group of individuals here at the First Planetary Sacred Home, but it is not just who we see; it is not just evolutionary material beings here. We are also talking about morontia and spirit beings. We have midwayers; we have sanobim, cherubim, and seraphim; we have Lanonandeks and Melchizedeks; we have student visitors from all over, in many morontial level forms as well as spirit forms. We have archangels, supernaphim, and seconophim, and there are so many here who have been unrevealed to us, whom we don’t even know, but are all part of this community. They are part of Aquarian Concepts. We can feel their presence. They are sitting right here, hanging out in this room with us. Many of us can sense them; some of us have actually had little glimpses of them; some of us have heard them; some of us have felt them.

So we are not just a group of human beings; we have numerous spiritual personalities here working with us.We are learning how to communicate honestly with each other, but in divine pattern and proper procedure. We don’t just walk up to someone and lay something on them. We don’t sit around gossiping. We don’t gripe and complain, or I should say that is our goal as a true Divine New Order community. It is important that we do communicate honestly but in divine pattern, and everyone here is learning how to do that and what the proper procedure is. I am not going to go into great detail about that, but there is a fallacy in believing that you should be honest in such a way that you just go up to someone and slap them in the face or insult them because you dislike them, or talk indiscriminately with no discernment about someone else. Gossip is a very common thing in the third dimension, and it is enjoyable. It is stimulating and it is fun. You feel pretty good because you don’t gossip about yourself; you are gossiping about someone else, and it makes you feel pretty good about who you are. Almost every single person who comes into this community carries that pattern with them. Our goal is to get out of those patterns that do not work in divine administration, and one of them is gossip. We are learning to express ourselves honestly, with wisdom and discernment, understanding what is appropriate when, with whom, and how to do it.Our relationships go deeper than the masks of composure, the masks of pride, and the masks of denial. We have developed a significant commitment to rejoice together, and though we can get some enjoyment from trivial things, our true joy comes when we see each other’s growth, when we see each other ascending, evolving, moving forward, overcoming dio (erroneous) reality, and growing in Deo reality. We mourn together—not sitting on the pity potty, weeping, sniveling, and feeling sorry for ourselves together—but mourning together over those human beings who turn away from their Source and Center, the Universal Father. We mourn together over those family members and friends whom we have had to leave, but not only that, every single person who turns away from the Universal Father, for we learn to love all people on this planet.We delight in each other’s manifestation of the higher self. We don’t delight in each other’s weaknesses, terrible mistakes, or drawbacks.

The URANTIA Book talks about what high humor is, which is very different from much of the humor that is on Urantia. Unfortunately, on our planet a very popular humor is making fun at the expense of another person, delighting in someone else’s pain or downfall or embarrassment. That is definitely not high humor. Here, we don’t take delight in that type of thing. We take delight in seeing other people move into healing, into joy, into a higher reality. Making others’ conditions our own does not mean operating from misplaced compassion. It means realizing that we are all basically in the same boat, that what we have in common is that we are indeed loved by the Universal Father of all, that we are ascending sons and daughters of God, not descending and not being static or stationary, and that we struggle often in this ascension; we struggle with our lower selves as we attempt to move into our destinies and to become perfect as the Father is perfect.

A beautiful section from The URANTIA Book, on page 1737, is from Jesus’ teaching at Tyre. I can’t really say this is my favorite, because almost any page in The URANTIA Book is my favorite page, but this is a really special one.

On this Wednesday afternoon, in the course of his address, Jesus first told his followers the story of the white lily which rears its pure and snowy head high into the sunshine while its roots are grounded in the slime and muck of the darkened soil beneath. “Likewise,” said he, “mortal man, while he has his roots of origin and being in the animal soil of human nature, can by faith raise his spiritual nature up into the sunlight of heavenly truth and actually bear the noble fruits of the spirit.”
It was during this same sermon that Jesus made use of his first and only parable having to do with his own trade, carpentry. In the course of his admonition, to “Build well the foundations for the growth of a noble character of spiritual endowments” he said: “In order to yield the fruits of the spirit, you must be born of the spirit. You must be taught by the spirit, and be led by the spirit if you would live the spirit-filled life among your fellows. But do not make the mistake of the foolish carpenter who wastes valuable time squaring, measuring, and smoothing his worm-eaten and inwardly rotting timber and then, when he has thus bestowed all of his labor upon the unsound beam, must reject it as unfit to enter into the foundations of the building which he would construct to withstand the assaults of time and storm. Let every man make sure that the intellectual and moral foundations of character are such as will adequately support the superstructure of the enlarging and ennobling spiritual nature, which is thus to transform the mortal mind and then, in association with that recreated mind, is to achieve the evolvement of the soul of immortal destiny. Your spirit nature–the jointly created soul–is a living growth, but the mind and morals of the individual are the soil from which these higher manifestations of human development and divine destiny must spring. The soil of the evolving soul is human and material, but the destiny of this combined creature of mind and spirit is spiritual and divine.”

When any one comes here to the First Planetary Sacred Home, moving into community, they move in with a desire to ascend, to move out of the muck and mire of the soil of their material nature, and to grow morally, intellectually, and spiritually. They want to rise above the third dimensional Luciferic tendencies and move into their destiny and those values that will last eternally. Not every person in the third dimension who moves into community has those desires. The process of Divine New Order community building is a spiritual birthing process, and it is a conscious and committed one for each individual as well as for the group as a whole. In The URANTIA Book, on page 1739, Jesus says:

If you would be truly triumphant over the temptations of the lesser and lower nature, you must come to that place of spiritual advantage where you have really and truly developed an actual interest in, and love for, those higher and more idealistic forms of conduct which your mind is desirous of substituting for those lower and less idealistic habits of behavior that you recognize as temptation. You will in this way be delivered through spiritual transformation rather than be increasingly overburdened with the deceptive suppression of mortal desires. The old and the inferior will be forgotten in the love for the new and the superior. Beauty is always triumphant over ugliness in the hearts of all who are illuminated by the love of truth.

That is what eldership asks in having that sense of respect and sacredness, and changing old patterns and habits of being sloppy, of leaving things lying around, realizing that not only is Avalon Gardens sacred, but also the home that you live in is sacred. Wherever it is, wherever you are, we are at the First Planetary Sacred Home, and we should have that sense of sacredness and respect for the home we live in. As Jesus was saying here, in leaving that old stuff behind there is a switch that happens in your mind. Many of you, before you came here, never would have thought of volunteering to go to class two or three or four nights each week. Now when you come, there should be a sense of anticipation and excitement, because you indeed are learning the highest truth on the planet. You are getting epochal revelation which is literally truth coming from heaven.

The URANTIA Book says on page 1130:

Many spiritual births are accompanied by much anguish of spirit and marked psychological perturbations, as many physical births are characterized by a “stormy labor” and other abnormalities of “delivery”. Other spiritual births are a natural and normal growth of the recognition of supreme values with an enhancement of spiritual experience, albeit no religious development occurs without conscious effort and positive and individual determinations.

Some of us can look at our own history. We each are a book, and in writing our own history, some of us are a thicker book than others because of past repersonalizations. Each of us has a history of some sort, and for some of us, as we look back, our spiritual religious growth was fairly even. It didn’t seem to have a lot of conflict; it just seemed to move right along smoothly or fairly smoothly with minor conflicts. For others, it has been a torment, up and down and all around. There are many ways of moving into enlightenment. We are all individuals. This spirit birthing that we are involved in is an evolving from that lower self that has its roots down at the base level to the higher self moving further and further up. It is an ascension from that material-controlled nature to a spirit-controlled nature. It is a movement towards fusion with God within us. In The URANTIA Book on page 1131, Jesus again is speaking:

But before a child has developed sufficiently to acquire moral capacity and therefore to be able to choose altruistic service, he has already developed a strong and well unified egoistic nature. And it is this factual situation that gives rise to the theory of the struggle between the “higher” and the “lower” natures, between the “old man of sin” and the “new nature” of grace. Very early in life the normal child begins to learn that it is “more blessed to give than to receive.”
Man tends to identify the urge to be self-serving with his ego—himself. In contrast he is inclined to identify the will be to altruistic [the desire to serve others, to be selfless] with some influence outside himself—God. And indeed is such a judgment right, for all such non-self desires do actually have their origin in the leadings of the indwelling Thought Adjuster, and this Adjuster is a fragment of God. The impulse of the Spirit Monitor is realized in human consciousness as the urge to be altruistic, fellow-creature minded.

That Thought Adjuster is pulling us, and working with us trying to adjust our thoughts; that is why he is called the Thought Adjuster. On that same page, 1132:

…sooner or later the evolving religion requires that the individual make some personal sacrifice for the good of his social group, should do something to make other people happier and better. Ultimately, religion is destined to become the service of God and of man.

As the Fragment of the Father works with us, we begin to move from being totally wrapped up in ourselves and making ourselves happier to wanting to reach out to others and bring some joy to them and make them happier. When an individual moves to that place, s/he usually does make a move into a higher life and service, and for all of you who were in the third dimension, you probably had, in some way, at some level, to get to that place. You heard that call to try something higher. You have been searching, and you ended up here, because you were listening to the spiritual forces that were working with you. If you look back it may seem that you have been pushed into this ascension, into this place with the different situations that have come up for you, but it is a leading. I have referred to the spirit of God in me as the “Hound of Heaven,” and some other people have referred to it to that way too, because that is what it seems like sometimes, just hounding, pushing.

When you come into this community (Global Community Communications), even though you personally are probably at the stage of pseudo community, you are already beginning to start to start to stick your big toe into fourth-dimensional consciousness, because here at the First Planetary Sacred Home, you can’t help but do that or you won’t stay. If you don’t want to even keep just that big toe in fourth dimensional consciousness, you’ll leave. But if you stay, you will put your foot in, then the leg, then the other one, as you keep going up. So remember, if you as an individual think that you are still in that pseudo community stage, remember that you have still got part of yourself in the beginning stage of fourth-dimensional consciousness, which is morontia reality.

August 3, 1995