Religious Experience through Communion, Meditation, and Worship
H. N. Wieman

How to Get the Benefit of Private Worship

The method of worship best adapted to one person is not always best for another. And the same person in different moods and circumstances will modify his method of worship to suit his need. Hence the suggestions we are about to make must not be taken as rigid rules. We can help one another by making these suggestions. But each must work out his own method. No study of rules and instructions ever enabled a man to swim the first time he jumped into deep water. He had to learn by practice. The same is true of worshipful meditation and communion.

Let us mention first three general conditions or preconditions which are helpful to worship.

The first of these we mentioned earlier. One must be living earnestly. One must not shirk the heavy responsibilities. One cannot swim in shallow water. One must venture out to depths where wading is difficult. If one is to worship successfully he must venture out into the depths. That does not mean that one must do something conspicuous before the world, or seek trouble. It merely means that one shall assume the tremendous responsibilities that await everyone who takes life seriously. It means, for example, if one is a parent, that he shall not treat his child merely as a plaything, but shall assume the enormous responsibility of that child's highest development. No matter how apparently circumscribed one's life may be, the great responsibilities are there for him to bear if he will shoulder them.

The first precondition of effectual worship is, then, that you take life seriously.

The second is sincerity. That means you will not take into your worship any beliefs concerning which you have any doubts. For example, suppose you doubt there is a God. Then do not try to believe there is a God. You can worship better without that belief if you are not absolutely sure of it. Discard any belief and every belief which you cannot hold with complete sincerity. Whenever any belief puts you under a sense of constraint, or gives you a feeling of unreality in your worship, pitch it out. Absolute sincerity, complete honesty with yourself, is indispensable to helpful worship.

A third precondition to worship is seclusion. Even a worshiping group should seclude itself. That is what a church building is for. But in private worship the individual should be alone. Of course one may achieve this required solitude of mind in physical association with others.

But it is best to go to some place where you can be completely alone, preferably at night just before retiring or soon after arising in the morning, or both. The ideal place would be a mountain top at night. That was where Jesus went for his private worship. But for most of us most of the time that is impossible. Some room will serve, especially if you can so shut yourself in that you need not fear others will hear you even when you speak aloud.

This need for solitude for worship arises out of the nature of private communion and meditation. To worship in this fashion means to cease the conduct of ordinary affairs in order to give your whole attention to that feature of your total environment which is supremely important for all human living. It means to turn from the lesser things in order to give the whole attention to God. If one does not believe in God one can call him by another name. I have a little son whom others call Robert, but whom I call Bobby. If you prefer to call God by another name, no harm is done. If the word God brings up doubts, then think of that behavior of the universe, whatever it may be, whether known or unknown, which is most helpful to human kind when we make right adjustment of our own activities to it. God is the supremely important object for all human living, whether or not you call him by that name. To worship is to give your whole attention to this supreme thing. To do this it is necessary to isolate yourself in order not to be distracted by lesser things.

What we have mentioned thus far-earnestness, sincerity, isolation -are the preconditions of worship. Let us now enter into the act of worship itself.

1. The first step in the act of worship is to relax and become aware of the all-encompassing presence. It is difficult to describe just what we mean, as difficult as to describe the acts by which you swim or walk or breathe. Another way of saying it is that we empty the mind and cease to think about anything in particular, yet are not in a state of stupor. It is a state of awareness. Awareness of what? Of that total encompassing presence which sustains you and shapes you and in adaptation to which all your life is lived in so far as it is lived well, and in so far as the greatest goods of life are attained by you. This presence is God; but if you have doubts about God, call it a certain behavior of the universe, or ozone, or electricity, or ether, or innumerable atoms, or any other misconception of God you may prefer. (We are trying to explain how one can worship and at the same time cast out every belief concerning which he has doubts.) Better let belief in God force itself into your mind against your will than try to hold it when it seems to be slipping away. Whatever you do, be honest.

This first step in the act of worship, then, is relaxed and empty-minded awareness of the all-encompassing presence.

2. The second step is to think of how this total process of atoms or electricity or ether (of course it is God) is working upon you and in you and through you to shape the cells of your body and the impulses of your mind into the likeness of Jesus Christ when you make right adjustment to it. If this thought about Jesus gives rise to any doubts, then think of that noblest kind of personality, that highest degree of health, that clearness of mind and greatness of purpose which may be yours when you make right adjustment to this total process of God. No matter how you may doubt your own possibilities, at least there is a maximum of nobility, a maximum of health and mentality and purpose of which you are capable, however small that maximum may be.

When we say one thinks about it, we do not mean one must know what that maximum is nor what shape it will assume. In fact one does not know except as he can see the maximum realization of these possibilities in some historic form as in Jesus. But you do not need to know what your highest possibilities are to think of them in the sense here indicated. You need merely to hold in mind that there are such possibilities for you, however, undefined and unexplored, and that they are to be attained through the working of this all-encompassing Reality.

This second step in the act of worship is, then, to call to mind the fact that you have a total maximum of possibility for good which God will accomplish in you and for you in so far as you make right adaptation to him.

3. The third step is to face the chief problem with which you are struggling. If you live earnestly you are always struggling with a problem which taxes your powers. You are in deep water where wading is difficult. So, in this third stage, after you have become aware of God (called by another name if you prefer) and of your own maximum but undefined possibilities through God, then face your major problem. Survey it as comprehensively and acutely as possible to find what most needs to be done.

4. The fourth step is to analyze yourself and find what mental attitude or habit of any kind needs to be corrected and readjusted in yourself in order that your activities may so fit into the behavior of things that the problem can be solved. What habits, not only of word and overt deed, but of inner attitude and secret impulse, must be changed in yourself in order to fit yourself into the working of the all-encompassing Presence. Your task is to adapt your activities and total personality in such a way that you can "mesh in" with that behavior of the universe through which the greatest good can be attained.

But one must face the fact that this survey and analysis of self in face of his major problem may lead to radical change, or even total abandonment, of that program which he has been following. One may find that he is seeking the wrong things or has mistaken his problem. To make such a discovery is one of the great goods achieved through the worship we are describing. As a result of such worship one may turn right about and go in another direction. However, this is by no means the necessary result. The more common result, perhaps, is to find a way to carry through the task one has undertaken.

5. When you have discovered what readjustment is needed in yourself in order to make right connection with the behavior which is God, you must formulate this personal readjustment in positive terms. You must never stop with a merely negative attitude. The overcoming of a fault is always a positive constructive operation. It always consists of making some right adjustment in order to correct the wrong adjustment. This right adjustment must be formulated in mind as clearly, concisely, and accurately as possible. Put it into words. For example: "I am sensitive and sympathetic to the thought and feeling of others." Or: "I remember every detail when it is needed." Or: "I am calm and winsome and adaptable." Or whatever your need may be.

Some one may say: But the chief problem that engages me in worship has nothing to do with myself. I am praying for some one in Africa or otherwise far removed from anything that I can say or do or feel. No adjustment in myself can be of any avail whatsoever. My answer is: Anything which deeply interests you does have something to do with yourself. It has everything to do with yourself. If you pray about it, then it is through wh'at you do, i.e., through your prayer, that any good is accomplished. Either your prayer is effective or it is not. If it is effective then it is because you pra I yed. That means it is effective because of the personal adjustment which you make to the potent working of your total environment. Let no one think genuine prayer is merely a mouthing of words with no adjustment of the total personality to the total environmental working of God.

So we say the fifth step in worship is positive statement to yourself of the required adjustment of your personality in light of the major problem which concerns you, so that God can work his good.

Some will wish to take a sixth step, that of verbal repetition, preferably spoken aloud to yourself, of this required adjustment of your
personality. "I am quick to see and feel the need of another." "I am simple and honest in all my dealings." "I think profoundly, comprehensively, and accurately." I am this or that, or I feel some way or another toward certain things or persons. What it is you repeat and the numb--r of times you repeat it will, of course, depend on what you have found to be the required adjustment of your total thinking, feeling, willing, doing personality.

The words repeated are not necessarily prayers to God, although one may so apply them to God if he chooses. The communion with God has already been accomplished in the earlier stages of the worship as previously described. What one is now doing by this repetition is to reap the benefits of that worship and enter into a realization of the possibilities which it has opened up. Through this repetition of words you are simply establishing as an enduring habitual attitude of the total personality that adjustment to God which you have attained through worship. You are sealing, conserving, "nailing down" the benefits of that worship.

This repetition of words by which a personal attitude is established is the last stage in the complete act of worship. It should not be done with any sense of strain or anxiety, but in the spirit which the preceding worship has engendered.

We suggest the foregoing program as an experiment in personal religion. If you will try it every night just before retiring for three or four weeks we believe you will note some very marked results.

Religious Experience through the Outer World of Nature
H. N. Wieman

The Method of Religious Experience

In this study we want to do two things. We want to learn how to prepare for religious experience and profit by it, and we want to pool our experiences so that we can learn from one another. The art of how to prepare for religious experience and profit by it is one of the great practical arts of human living. Like every other art it must be developed. The only way to develop any art is for people to tell one another what they have learned through their experiences and efforts. Cannot we all, who have a share in this course, co operate in the enterprise of improving the art of entering into and profiting by the religious experience? Wonderful possibilities for increasing joy and mastery in living are attainable through proper use of religious experience. Indeed, its proper use is the master art in life, for through it all the other arts of living can be improved.

We crudely talk about air and water and food and social group as the factors upon which we must depend for our welfare and improvement. But these are mere fragments in that vast, mysterious, mighty Working which operates in us and upon us and around us throughout all nature. In religious experience there is some conscious awareness of this mighty and blessed Working. When we come into the presence of some great manifestation of nature we may suddenly become aware of this all-sustaining Working. We may feel ourselves borne up by it, or see it gazing up at us in the face of a flower, or towering over us in the mountains, or feel it encompassing us with the greenery of the wood.

But this sense of the mighty Working does not always come to us in the presence of nature. There may be some to whom it never comes. Others it may visit very rarely.

Here we are face to face with a subtle and loathsome temptation. It is the temptation to make ourselves think that we have this exalted experience when we do not have it. Our minds run something like this: It is the proper thing to have this experience in the presence of nature. Poets and prophets and many great souls have had it. I guess I can too. Then we go through all the motions of having the experience and really make ourselves think that we have it.

Can, then, one cultivate this experience? No, not directly. But one can prepare himself for it. One may put himself in the way of having it. It is like love. One cannot make himself love his brother. But the great contagion is likely to infect him if he is receptive to it and puts himself in situations where it is likely to befall him. So religious experience must come of itself, often quite unexpectedly; but one can conduct his life in such a way that it is likely to befall him. That is part of what we mean by the art of preparing for religious experience.
But when the experience comes it may have no value save to provide the luxury of a pleasant or stirring emotion. To have conscious awareness of this all-sustaining Working does not bring one any closer to it, for one is always as close to it as he can get. There are some natures who can enter frequently and deeply into genuine and vivid awareness of God and yet live weak, futile, slovenly lives. To have conscious experience of God does not necessarily help a man at all. To conduct ourselves in such a way that religious experience not only may befall us but that it may have beneficial results for us is the whole of what we mean by the art of preparing for religious experience and profiting by it.

Great living depends on making proper adaptation to that Working upon which all life is dependent. If conscious experience of that Working helps one to make better adaptation to it, his life will be better. But merely to have a vivid and exalted consciousness of that Working will not help him if the experience does not enable him to make better adaptation. On the other hand, a man who does adapt himself to the working of God, even though he may have no conscious experience of God, will live a great life. Through the teaching of others, and through results of careful experimentation, a man can learn how to adapt to many things of which he has never had any conscious experience. This applies to the working of God as well as to other matters. But religious experience may be of great help to a man in making better adaptation to that Working upon which human life is dependent for its greatest goods. In fact, this is the only enduring and practical value religious experience can have. If it does not do this its value is purely sentimental. It is quite easy to be unduly sentimental and rapturous about religious experience for its own sake.

There are, then, two very urgent and very practical questions pertaining to religious experience: (i) how to put one's self in the way of having the experience; (2) how to use the experience in such a way as to attain better adaptation to the working of God as he operates throughout space and time. Let us reduce these two questions to one: how to prepare for religious experience in such a way that it will bring us into better adjustment to God.

We answer this question under four points.

1. One must face the chief difficulties and perplexities of his life and wrestle with them. He must take life seriously. He must draw on his every resource of physical endurance and mental agility and nervous energy and dogged determination to master circumstance and make human life more satisfactory for himself and others. This strain and burden-bearing, this taking of life seriously, is necessary preparation for profitable religious experience. The frivolous and superficial generally do not have great religious experiences. Some of them, however, do; but when they do, their experience is only the luxury of a sweet and exalted emotion such as we described above.

2. But earnest wrestling with the serious problems of life is only preparation for profitable religious experience. Such wrestling does not ordinarily in itself yield the experience. Rather the experience is likely to come when one stops the fight for a breathing spell and a short period of relaxation. One goes off, let us say, where he can be alone with nature, in a scene quite different from that in which he has been trying to solve his difficult problems.

This, then, is the second requirement for entering into a profitable religious experience. One must leave the struggle of life, occasionally, for a little spiritual relaxation. In this month's study we suggest turning to nature. Further suggestions for the use of this time of relaxation will be made in later lessons. In this period of relaxation, if rightly conducted, the religious experience is most likely to come.

3. The experience that comes in the interval of relaxation should provide some insight toward the solution of the problems which have been engaging one's attention in the struggle of living. Here we have the chief function of religious experience. It is an experience through which discoveries are made concerning how to live more effectively and more abundantly; how to achieve mastery over difficulties and mount to higher levels; in a word, how to live in better adaptation to the working of God. Religious experience should be the moment of profound insight and new adjustment to the total environment. Great conversions occur in such experiences. All the famous conversions, from Paul's down, have occurred through such experiences. A conversion is simply the discovery and adoption of some new way of living in better adaptation to the Working which is God. But conversion is not the only form of moral and spiritual discovery and initiation that may occur through religious experience. After "conversion" one may make further discoveries. Often the new insight is of such a nature that you cannot word it. You simply have found out how to live with peace and power you never had before.

4. The fourth requirement is that this new way of living which has come to one in the religious experience must be carefully, observantly, and patiently tested by living it. A new way of living is not necessarily successful at the very start. Generally it is not. And often its success is not apparent to any save those of deepest insight. But one must be teachable in the conduct of his new way of life. He must modify and adapt and reshape it to fit the conditions with which he has to deal. No one is worse than the hair-brained fanatic who will not learn from the results of trial and error, but insists that his way is unalterably right because he got it from God.

It is even possible that one's new way of life, discovered through religious experience, may be a mistake. The human mind is always fallible, and it does not cease to be human even when it undergoes religious experience. He who must have an iron-clad guaranty that he will make no mistakes can have no share in great living whether through religious experience or otherwise. But the great insights, the great transformation of personality and human history, have been initiated in such experiences.

The whole value of religious experience, we repeat, aside from the luxury of emotion, is that through it we discover how better to adapt our human lives to the Working upon which we are dependent for the greatest good. It should enable us to make better adjustment to God.

Two final points must be clear. The experience need not be highly emotional. The important thing is the insight that is attained concerning how better to live with God. There may or may not be a thrill and sense of exaltation. Secondly, the insight may not be something that will revolutionize human history. Generally it is not. It may be a discovery of how better to deal with your child; or how ro win the good will of your neighbor; or how to make better use of your time; or how to get over some nagging perplexity which is important to you personally, although it may never be known to any other.

And we must remember that anything which truly and in the long run benefits human life is, ultimately, a better adaptation to the vast and mighty Working which lifts us to the highest when we find how to yield ourselves to its lifting power.

Keeping in mind, therefore, the nature of religious experience, the possibility of placing one's self in the way of it and the resultant effect upon the art of practical living, can we, after our observations of the experience of historical characters, turn our eyes upon our own immediate environment, and learn to recognize the results of religious experience in others, and to recall some data regarding our own religious experience.

It will be a good plan to keep a notebook with this course, jotting down observations, memories and new experiences which seem to you to have some bearing upon the question, this month especially observing the extent to which contact with the world of external nature may foster and suggest a religious experience, always distinguishing those experiences which will stand the test of the points raised in this portion of our study. Students of the course are invited in addition to answering the review questions to report sach observations and experiences. On the following page will be found an outline of work for those who desire to have criticism by correspondence.

This idea-ideal of doing good to others—the impulse to deny the ego something for the benefit of one’s neighbor—is very circumscribed at first. Primitive man regards as neighbor only those very close to him, those who treat him neighborly; as religious civilization advances, one’s neighbor expands in concept to embrace the clan, the tribe, the nation. And then Jesus enlarged the neighbor scope to embrace the whole of humanity, even that we should love our enemies. And there is something inside of every normal human being that tells him this teaching is moral—right. Even those who practice this ideal least, admit that it is right in theory.103:5:2

POSITIVE WAY MISSION CHURCH MONTHLY REPORT FOR MARCH 2024

The month of March was quite a busy month for us. While the Urantia Book training continued
normally, we had other programs that we handled this month. First was the Discipleship Training
Program that took place on the 2nd and 3rd of March where we made an effort to introduce the
Urantia Book. Then we had the Pastors Fellowship for two Saturdays in the month, that is the
second and the third Saturdays where we gathered fellow Pastors and introduced them to the
Urantia Book. We had an encouraging response and we gifted the Urantia Book to the Pastors
that honored our invitation.

Then we had our five days Easter Program from Wednesday 27th to Sunday 31st of March
2024. On Wednesday we discussed the overview of the Urantia Book, on Thursday we had a
filmshow on The Life of Jesus and at the end we celebrated the Remembrance Supper. On
Friday we spoke about The Father”s Bestowal Program. On Saturday we spoke about The
Benefits of The Bestowal and the release of The Mighty Spirit of Truth. On Sunday we
celebrated The Resurrection and Sovereignty of Our Lord Jesus. The program was well
attended.

Regarding the funding received for this month, on 11/03/24 we received 114,610.00 Naira which
went a long way in assisting us in attending to the preliminary preparatory expenses for the five
days program and hosting the Pastors Fellowship. On 27/03/24 we received our monthly
funding of 1,427, 720.00 Naira. This was significantly lower than the usual funding received and
it affected a lot of our operations especially as regards the five days Easter Program. We had
eighteen trainees and four trainers and we paid out a total of One Million Naira on salaries,
allowances and medicals. The balance was used to run the Easter Program and for
maintenance.

We received higher funding last month and we were able to pay out more money to our trainees
and trainers to cushion the effect of the inflation in our economy. This month it was tough on all
sides.

We thank God for everything.
In loving Service
Iheanacho and Alicejane Uwaoma

Some people find it very hard to believe that salvation and spiritual growth can occur outside their religion. 

Enoch and Elijah were not Christians, Muslims, Hindus, etc. Elijah may have practiced Judaism but definitely not Enoch. 

These two men grew in faith, in love, in intelligence and spirituality to such an extent that they qualified to ascend to heaven without even tasting death! 

It's not about evolutionary, man-made religion. It's about walking in the spirit, manifesting the fruits of the spirit. It's about personal, conversational relationship with God.