Acceptance

Today brothers an sisters, we continue to study love. God is love, but as we have learned love is not the
only attribute of God. Today we turn our attention to a facet of love which is often not considered. It is
acceptance. Acceptance is self-tolerance. It is also the tolerance of the will of God.

First to the self. As we have learned, tolerance for loving, kindness, mercy, and compassion towards
others is necessary to love your fellows. It is also equally necessary in order to love yourself. For, if you
are not self-tolerant you can fall into the traps of negative thinking, encompassing judgment, criticism
and ego traps of self-obsessiveness.

You are the creation of God and the experiences and decisions of your free will and environment. All
the factors were created to foster soul evolution. You were not created in perfection as members of the
first universes were, therefore you must learn to love your imperfections as well as your spirit victories.
Your imperfections will be the greatest source of learning you will experience. Many of your flaws will
take centuries and centuries of time as you know it to even understand, let alone transcend. How can you
experience the joy of fusion and the ultimate joy of perceiving the creator without the recognition of the
validity and honor of the struggle for a godly character. These flaws must be perceived as blessings to
humans, as markers on your path as ascendent children of time and space.

Self-tolerance is often a forgotten virtue. Without self-tolerance issues of morality rather than spirituality
take the fore, so to speak. You have been created in this fashion because it is the Father's wish for this
universe. It is therefore God's will that you be thus imperfect.

How do you understand the will of the Father? You cannot understand His will totally for He is the
creator and you are the creation. To understand His will for you, you should simplify: one, you are
created this way; two, God creates good; three, because God has created you with love, who are you not
to love this creation. So, acceptance - self-tolerance - is necessary to evolve a truly spiritual human and
not a judgmental human from which divisions must spring.

It is an error to approach imperfections with a vengeful heart or an arrogant intellect. Rather,
weaknesses, imperfections, should be viewed lovingly as opportunities for soul growth, and should be
viewed in long-term ways of their eventual outworking into more desirable or mature spiritual qualities.
Every flaw has an evolution and can either be ignored, be rationalized into a good quality and therefore
pursued into possible error, or can be seen as a lesson for soul growth tolerantly. If one views the final
outcome to be not only the absence of that quality but the victorious spiritual shining of light which
ensues from the struggle, that is the benefit that is permitted only to those who actively and lovingly
desire to mold their characters into more evolved souls. 

Many religionists have made the error of thinking the moral struggle is between good versus evil within
the individual human. It is not. It is between acceptance of who you are today - knowing who you will
become with faith in God's will - and who you fool yourselves into believing you are. This is the
struggle of the spiritually dedicated mortal. So acceptance is necessary in order to perceive spiritual realities within your own evolving being, for without acceptance you will, children - rest assured, fool
yourselves, or judge yourselves too harshly, or misperceive your status.

There is no competition for first place in the spiritual race. There is only the motivation spurred on by a
thirst for God-knowingness that thrusts us forward to become better and better sons and daughters of our
eternal Father.

If God can love you unconditionally now, the way you are, why can you not love yourself? Think about
that in your daily meditations and prayers. For is it not an ungrateful act to not love what such a supreme
creator has made and loved so dedicatedly?

If you cannot forgive yourself, you cannot forgive others. If you cannot accept your humanity, you
cannot grant your brothers and sisters the same gift of this humanity. Self-acceptance, self-tolerance, is
necessary in order to: one, be more open (next few words unintelligible) and two, to be able to bestow
Divine love through your life and interactions with others. You cannot be loving in the world or to the
Divine without also feeling love for the miracle of your beingness and uniqueness.

You are a part of the tapestry of time surging forward into eternity, the tapestry of imperfection
becoming perfect, the tapestry of the mortal creature becoming one with a creator. If you do not
celebrate and be humbled by such a gift, you will not fully participate in this wonderment.

Acceptance also encompasses the will of God which we talk much of when we pray “thy will be done,”
“It is my will to do thy will.” But do we really understand this? First, it is God's will that you exist or
you would not be here at all. So therefore, if your prayer is sincere to accept God's will, why not accept
yourself as you are today? This is God's will. Two, you pray to know God's will, but children, you
cannot fully know God's will until you stand in the presence of the I AM. Until that day some amount of
partiality is necessary in terms of understanding and acting. So, the idea of understanding God's will in
totality is therefore unachievable.

Simplify again. Acceptance of the mystery of God is part of worship. There is no momentous handing
down of tablets of stone for us. There is only common sense, filtered through the desire to do good, be
loving, see beauty, speak truth, and continue to learn. How simple it is - when one rises - to thank God
for this day, to get out of bed, to love those around you, to have a cheerful word, to take time out to lend
a hand to others, to service. You can rest assured that when you drive in traffic, that it is God's will that
you smile rather than be angry or yell. If you simplify, it is quite easy to do God's will. Would God
prefer you to be kind and loving towards your family or to be withholding and mean? Would God prefer
you to take time to listen to another's suffering or to busy yourself with tasks? As you go through your
day look at the simple things. It is God's will for you to work and earn your daily bread or is it God's will
that you steal?

These are simple things. There is not confusion. Is it God's will for you to try always to reflect the
inspiration of Jesus in your daily tasks? Yes. This is not something one should meditate on for years and
discuss in forums.

Your will enters with choices. You are tired, you would prefer not to listen to a friend, but you do
service because that is the higher value. That, then, is God's will, and your free will is to accept it. God
in His wisdom, and through the ministry of the celestial beings on this planet, throws into each life
millions upon millions of opportunities for soul growth, millions upon millions of situations to choose
higher values. Rather than question what is the will of God, what is the will of God for me, which gets
you no where, accept all of the opportunities that come your way as gifts from the celestial
overcontrollers.

The people who ask for your love, and kindness, and attention, and time, are sent by angels and social
architects, and by the spirit - Divine Mother - as opportunities for soul growth. The will of the Father is
for you to choose always to do higher values. There is no mystery here, or great theological discussion.
Some days you may choose better than other days, and that is where self-tolerance enters. But always be
dedicated to doing the Will of the Father, which is to shed more spiritual light as you go through your
life in very simple ways. When the book says “love acts,” that is what it means. You need not have a
grandiose, dramatic, epiphanal moment for love to act. Rather, love acts in the tiny insignificant
moments of time which will one day add up to fusion for you. So, you must accept God's will. Life is
but a days' work. Do it well.

Your work is of a spiritual nature, and it is not involved in the historical moments that will be
remembered here in Urantia. It is involved rather in the moments which are recorded on high. The
actions which constitute your survival and soul evolution, the things which you so often forget to pay
attention to, this constitutes a life of loving service. That should be your highest consecration to God.
When you look back on your life weave a wonderful memory all the tiny acts of love will make. What a
shining soul for the rest of the world to see. For this is what creates you.
Acceptance is something you may pray for: acceptance of who you are, acceptance of God's will, and -
between the two in the act of daily living - the birth and growth of your soul, and the metamorphosis
from a physical animal being into a spiritual perfecter. This is what it is about. It is a slightly new way to
look at truth.

We can reject God's will. Therein lies soul insanity. We can pretend there is no choice - as many mortals
do on this planet - or we can actively choose in our actions to do the will of the Father, knowing that we
will not always behave correctly, and we will forgive ourselves for the lapses because that is part of the
Divine plan.

This is not a world for perfection; it is a world of recognizing imperfection and doing the best we can
with our imperfectness. Please keep in mind that these choices, all of them, contribute to the Supreme,
and even when you have not done your best you are creating the God of experience. You are also
allowing your Thought Adjuster to participate in imperfection, which is a gift.

So acceptance, self-tolerance of yourself, first in your imperfect state, acceptance of God's will that you
are created this way and what awaits you is perfection, and acceptance that you will never totally
understand God's will, are part of living a spiritually dedicated and conscious life.

My advice again, simplify, for it is in living faithfully as tadpoles that we become frogs. You are
tadpoles now, as I am, and one cannot expect your life to be more than it is. We make tadpole decisions
and we do the will of God by recognizing what we are.