LESSON 1: First Things First — The Big Decision

As we learned from the INTRODUCTION, not everything about your mortal life will become integrated into your soul. Only those worthy experiences, values, and moral decisions that embody Truth Beauty and Goodness, and are deemed to be of survival value by your Thought Adjuster (TA) will become part of your growing soul.

You have everything to do with the healthy development, or disease and decay of your soul. It is a choice to be made, and the better informed you are about the various aspects and requirements of this choice, the more confident, effective and wise you can be in carrying out your decision.

Many have never thought about the soul this way, yet this is so important for your future development both here and hereafter! Your current mortal life — your interests, your relationships, your activities, your adventures, your thoughts — all those things that feed your experiences become the palate for the appetite of the soul, but we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start with the soul's beginning.

Mortal life begins soulless

The physical fact of the biological birth of a new child of our species does not come with a ready made soul. Souls are not born this way. Souls are not biologically produced. Souls do not have DNA. 

Souls do have an origin, a beginning, a point of creation. Souls are initially created by the indwelling Thought Adjuster, and remain in embryonic form during our mortal life. But when does this happen and under what conditions?

The simple answer is that the soul is created when the Thought Adjuster first arrives to join its new ward. Upon arrival, the first act of the TA is to create a new, blank, soul pattern for its ward. This begs the question, when does this happen in a person's life?

Regardless of a person's age, the TA always arrives when a person makes his/her first moral decision. On average this occurs in childhood around the age of 6, but it can sometimes occur earlier or later. Essentially it can occur at anytime during the mortal life, but the deciding factor is always that first moral decision.

The Urantia Book 108:2.4: Even with a Spirit of Truth endowed mind, the Adjusters cannot arbitrarily invade the mortal intellect prior to the appearance of moral decision. But when such a moral decision has been made, this spirit helper assumes jurisdiction direct from Divinington. There are no intermediaries or other intervening authorities or powers functioning between the divine Adjusters and their human subjects; God and man are directly related.

While it is somewhat beyond the scope of this lesson, it will be of great comfort to parents who have lost a young child before the arrival of his/her TA to know that children dying before getting Thought Adjusters are repersonalized on a special nursery world concomitant with the arrival of either parent on the mansion worlds. Urantia Book 49:6.12

What is a moral decision?

Let's begin answering this question with this hint. The first promptings of a child’s moral nature have to do with justice, fairness, and kindness. The first moral personality decision is automatically indicated in the seventh mind–adjutant of wisdom. It is interesting to note that the sixth mind-adjutant is about worship and is always accomplished before the seventh. Therefore we can deduce that one's first moral decision incorporates an element of worship as well as wisdom. In simpler terms, one's first moral decision can be stated as one's first acted upon desire to do good. Beyond that we have little comprehension of all the parameters that constitute such a decision. These decisions seems to be something that only the Thought Adjusters and the mind-adjutants are capable of fully grasping.

Regardless of what we know, or don't know, about these special decisions, we are clearly instructed as follows: Since the arrival of the Spirit of Truth, on that faithful day of Pentecost about 2000 years ago, all normal minded people who make their first personal and wholehearted moral decision automatically receive their own Thought Adjuster, and that the current day average for these occurrences is around the age of 6 years.

The purpose of life

There is in the mind of the Creator a plan which embraces every creature of all the vast domains of the universe, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life.

Love of adventure, curiosity, and dread of monotony — these traits inherent in evolving human nature — were not put there just to aggravate and annoy you during your short time on Earth, but rather to suggest to you that death is only the beginning of an endless career of adventure, an everlasting life of anticipation, an eternal voyage of discovery.

Throughout the eternal career you will never encounter monotony of inaction or stagnation of personality. Progress is made possible by inherent motion, advancement grows out of the capacity for action, and achievement is the child of imaginative adventure. But inherent in this capacity for achievement is the responsibility of ethics, the necessity for recognizing that the world and the universe are filled with a multitude of differing types of beings. All of this magnificent creation, including yourself, was not made just for you.

Resurrected (ascending) mortals gradually progress from the physical to the spiritual. As they progress, they serve on countless assignments in association with their teachers and in company with their more advanced and senior fellows.

If you are a willing learner, if you want to attain spirit levels and reach divine heights, if you sincerely desire to reach the eternal goal, then you will be gently and lovingly led along the pathway of spiritual progress. Every step you take must be one of willingness, intelligent and cheerful co-operation. This process is never tainted with coercion nor compromised by compulsion.

The mortals of the realms of time and space may differ greatly in innate abilities and intellectual endowment, they may enjoy environments exceptionally favorable to social advancement and moral progress, or they may suffer from the lack of almost every human aid to culture and supposed advancement in the arts of civilization; but the possibilities for spiritual progress in the ascension career are equal to all; increasing levels of spiritual insight and cosmic meanings are attained quite independently of all such environmental differences.

The pursuit of the ideal is a continuous effort before death and after. The life after death is no different in the essentials than the mortal existence. Everything we do in this life which is good contributes directly to the enhancement of the future life. Real religion does not foster moral and spiritual laziness by encouraging the vain hope of having all the virtues of a noble character bestowed upon you as a result of passing through the portals of natural death. True religion does not belittle one’s efforts to progress during the mortal life. Every mortal gain is a direct contribution to the enrichment of the first stages of the immortal survival experience, the building of your soul.