Which Way Is Up?

Growing up, I was a good son, an earnest student, healthy, well behaved and totally embedded in a vibrant social network.  Life was good: all I needed was provided before I even asked. I perceived myself to be successful, progressive and modern.  But in my second year of university I began to experience acute existential longings accompanied by the feeling that something really central, vital and essential was missing from my life. 

 

I really, really, really wanted to know the "TRUTH".  Who was I, what was I, where had the "I" in I come from and what was my ultimate destiny?  What did the word 'meaning' actually mean, and where could I find real value?  My worldview was beginning to unravel and I felt like I was falling off the edge of the known universe.  It was scary but exhilarating- frightening and exciting.  A grand adventure with no map to show the way forward.

Eventually the lure of the unknown overcame my fear and I broke out of my comfy stall in search of answers.  It wasn't until I encountered the 'Urantia Book' that I found satisfactory answers to my questions.  The Urantia Book is a hefty tome of 2000+ pages, a collection of papers authored by various celestial beings that covers topics such as the nature of God, cosmology, the history of this planet from the nebular stage to the 20th century, plus religion, spirituality and much, much more.  I studied it for years.  It became the bedrock for and framework of my intellectual understanding and provided me with a cosmic perspective that just made sense.

 

One concept from the Urantia Book relates to the existential angst of my college years: Humans are endowed with 'perfection hunger'.  Perfection hunger is not just the physiological drive for homeostasis, the mind's search for equilibrium or the desire for emotional stability.  Perfection hunger also operates in the spiritual domain, ever drawing us upward (or inward) towards the Divine, towards the Beloved, expressing as a yearning for union.  Perfection hunger is the precursor to many mystical and religious experiences.

Perfection hunger sets humans apart from their animal cousins.  It is the secret of personal growth and progressive civilization.  It enables us to fulfill the divine injunction: "Be you perfect even as I am perfect."  In one sense it is a circuit into which we are all connected, originating in Source and terminating in Source, a circuit that came into existence when the One became the Many, when the "I Am" became "We Are".  Originating so close to the source of All That Is, perfection hunger connects us to the primal forces of creation.  Perfectly awesome!!