The Sanctity of Service by Carlos Leite da Silva

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The Sanctity of Service by Carlos Leite da Silva

Unread postby admin » Wed Jun 08, 2011 3:28 am

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The Sanctity of Service

5:4.1 […] The religions of revelation allure men to seek for a God of love because they crave to become like him. But religion is not merely a passive feeling of "absolute dependence" and "surety of survival"; it is a living and dynamic experience of divinity attainment predicated on humanity service.

5:4.3 […] the truly religious individual seeks to identify the self with the universe and then to dedicate the activities of this unified self to the service of the universe family of fellow beings, human and superhuman.

5:5.4 Moral conduct is always an antecedent of evolved religion and a part of even revealed religion, but never the whole of religious experience. Social service is the result of moral thinking and religious living.

195:9.6 […] The religion of Jesus does, indeed, dominate and transform its believers, demanding that men dedicate their lives to seeking for a knowledge of the will of the Father in heaven and requiring that the energies of living be consecrated to the unselfish service of the brotherhood of man.

28:6.17 Service is productive of the highest satisfaction and is expressive of the divinest dignity. Service -- more service, increased service, difficult service, adventurous service, and at last divine and perfect service -- is the goal of time and the destination of space.



Recently I came upon a reality that is very distant from my own life experience. In this case, there are several realities, though, that astonish me and make me wonder, and which are concentrated in a single individual.

First, as a man, I have a somewhat inaccurate and very speculative idea as to what it is to be woman. To us men, given the impossibility of completely knowing what being a woman is like, we remain with the grace of having beside us creatures who in their nature possess numerous features in a superlative degree compared to us.

But this apparently better-equipped creature for the diversified demands and complexities of life is, paradoxically, before us, men, in the weakened position of holding less physical strength.

I consider this a condition that beforehand gives this soul growing in a female body a greater potential of courage and humility. It is not by chance that, throughout the main event in the history of the planet – the life of Jesus – we saw women being unshakable in situations of higher risk.

Always they dared to risk their social integrity and their lives upon the razor-edge by loyalty and total surrender to Jesus. Where men fled, women remained. And we know that the common life is full of examples of the small and big things where such history keeps repeating. Among the big things, just think that from the portal of the soft belly of a woman emerge new cosmic creatures in intimate association with creative divinity.

Second, as a creature born in the West, I was able to grow in an environment that is formatted in vast, comprehensive and diverse plains of free thought, which are permanently intersected by temperate breezes or powerful cyclones of the most diverse sources, permeating, saturating, impregnating the progressive Christianity's common ground with all the nuances of all ideas as well as philosophical and religious ideals from the whole world. As such, I do not know and never will know what is to be born and educated in the hermetically-closed system of the most radical Islam that is ever-present in the Middle East.

How is it to be born within a religion that says of itself that the revelations have finished in itself, that the last prophet of all time in the planet expressed the absolute and perfect sacredness of God in a sacred book?! I do not know what that is, I do not know how overwhelming it can be to experience conditions such as these.

But, on the other hand, if one has not experienced anything else, this will serve the purpose of elevating the soul to God (and I believe that, even in this so anti-natural condition, this religion can fulfill this function, indeed... but this just proves the power of RELIGION, that wins even when it is reviled by the caricature of religion [i.e. fundamentalism]).

But, let’s face it, we are in a position to know that this way the quest becomes extremely impoverished. How very shocking it is to realize that there are places where, in the very 21st century, life still is at risk for religious reasons. If you practice the "wrong" religion you may actually die because of that. Also in this, few of us Westerners, will ever know what it is like to live in such condition.

Third, in order to reach the status of an adept and student of The Urantia Book, I had with me a huge facilitator, which provided me with an intuitive access door. I grew up as a Christian, hence the essential of the Urantian concepts are immediately intelligible to me, despite inward difficulties and resistance to be able to incorporate those renovated and in-depth concepts into my old beliefs, which have only been torn down after years of an intimate, strengthening and illuminating "war in the heavens" of my mind, heart and soul.

But, again, suppose I was born in a viscerally Islamic country. The concepts so masterfully revealed in The Urantia Book about the Trinity and God the Sevenfold, so central to realizing the framework of reality, cannot be penetrated by the understanding of Islamic fundamentalism. Worse than that, they will not be accepted by it, being perceived as something out of satanic nature. Islamic fundamentalism is imprisoned on the paradigm of one God, and this fundamentalist eye is so restrictive that it would fail to realize that this is also the ultimate concept defended in The Urantia Book.

In short: I am a man, I am Westerner, I am a Urantian in the West.



How much can I perceive, feel and talk about what it is to being a woman, being born and living in the Middle East and still, joining these two features, to be a Urantian?

Almost nothing, actually... but these three features gathered are a reality that is being experienced by a person whom I recently heard of. Nadia Gill is a young Pakistani woman, who grew up within the Christian tiny minority (pass the pleonasm) of a overwhelmingly Islamic (and fundamentalist) country as Pakistan. Shouldn’t this be enough to make an uncommon woman of her, she is also Urantian.

I believe The Urantia Book is really a great revelation that is inaugurating the avenue of great planetary religious unification, and I think this is still a incipient process and that it will take centuries, if not millennia. But it is starting, even if the avenue still is by now a modest footpath crossing the thickets of evolutionary religions and human prejudices. And this footpath is going forward, although slowly, but increasingly consistent, through the Western cultural scenarios, fairly quietly because it traverses the territories of Christianity, in all its branches.

And yet, despite this semicultivated path, we few students of this book, from our own experience, we quite well know how everything still isn’t done and how it seems that it will take such a long time to build it...

Then, if that’s so here, in the Christian West, imagine the multitude of obstacles when these concepts should penetrate the eastern half of the planet. I do not predict major difficulties for the UB to enter into Hinduism, since the latter is very "democratic" by nature, acceptant of all gods one could imagine and used to the trinity principles of the divine.

But I always felt perplexed wondering which "engineering" the hosts of Michael would use to penetrate the Islamic mentality. Understandably, I could not come to anything deep in this speculation, so prohibitive that it seemed to me to come close to any conclusion.

Then, suddenly, almost inconceivable to me, I came to know Nadia Gill. Still I haven't revealed the best. Besides being a woman in a patriarchal and shockingly sexist culture, besides being a Christian in an Islamic fundamentalist dogmatized country, not only is she a Urantian but, moreover, she is the mentor and founder of two Urantia Book study groups... and all this right in Pakistan!

My friends, that has a name: heroism!!!

I wonder: what a soul is this? What a Thought Adjuster dwells in this creature? I can only imagine that looking into this situation and this person we are watching an unusual spiritual phenomenon. I am perplexed because I imagined that the armies of Michael would carry the UB ostensibly into Islamic territory within 100 or 200 years... suddenly I see that the thing, still barely started here, already started also there. I don't know what to say... I don't really understand anything of spiritual "engineering"!

I think the work of Nadia will be engraved in history, that thousands of years from now mankind will know that in this process of penetration of religious Urantian concepts into such wild and inhospitable territory, it was by these groups that everything began... a small flame, that these few creatures fanned in the midst of tremendous, frightening, spiritual and cultural darkness, became an immense bonfire of a planet in light and life.

I pray to God that, if possible, there will be no martyrs... But what do I know... Each soul knows of its own commitment, and what matters most is that love, light and the truth will prevail, should the nobility and loyalty of martyrs manifest itself... The truth is that this very Nadia has already received it and has passed safely through threats of the Islamic fundamentalists.

But now there is another detail, my friends, upon which I wish to draw your particular attention and ask for your support.

Nadia Gill took in hand the task of helping the Christian community in the aftermath of what is considered the greatest human disaster of known history: the floods which occurred in Pakistan.

20 million people were directly affected… 12 million live in desperate conditions of absolute emergency, missing all of the essentials of living that were swept away by the recent floods.

Unfortunately, being the tiny Christian community so underestimated within that culture, the humanitarian aids are not reaching it. This is why Nadia Gill decided to take on this specific task.

So, I come before you to make an appeal to the generosity of all. I want you to know that the standard of living in Pakistan is so modest that any value that we consider most derisory there is worthy enough. To give you just one example, Nadia made a visit to one of these localities affected by the cataclysm, facing a trip of 10 hours that just cost $20.00 by train. This already gives you a perception that if someone can only make donations of 20, 30, 50, 100 will be having a gesture of great worth considering the extreme needs.

My friends, there you have a link that can be accessed for an in-depth accounting of the situation and where you can make your donations:

LINK] http://www.causes.com/causes/536262

In that same link, even for those who are not able to make some donation, is of the utmost importance that you join the cause. From there you may (by Facebook or via other means) promote this cause to your friends and acquaintances. And thus a growing number of people will become aware of such a situation, and this can only be beneficial for everyone: donors and beneficiaries.

All of you who decide to join this cause, please accept my deepest gratitude.

May the Light and Peace of Michael always be with you!



Carlos Leite da Silva
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