Urantia book readers in Australia well understand that isolation is not highly regarded by the revelators. They are at pains to point out the danger of personal isolation and the failure to socialize one’s spiritual impulses. Their emphasis is on service, community and social interaction rather than isolation and self contemplation.
Nevertheless, the creators make use of isolation as part of the cycle of growth which moves from interaction to isolation and back again, in a demonstration of progress, in which isolation has an essential part to play.
When we were developing the theme for this conference, we saw a parallel between the situation of Urantia Book readers and the Australia/New Zealand experience. Just as Urantia is isolated in Nebadon, and Nebadon itself is remote in Orvonton, so are students of the Urantia Book thinly scattered throughout the populations in which they live. And just so are Australia and New Zealand isolated from the major centers of civilization of our planet.
When Australia and New Zealand were settled by Europeans, it was a 6 month journey by ship. So over the years we developed the experience of isolation as a cultural habit, a habit that persists even now when air transport and modern communications bring the rest of the world much closer to us. This habit has many disadvantages, but it also allows us a certain freedom of cultural development which derives from not having neighbouring cultures peering over our shoulder all the time. Because nobody else takes too much notice of us, we can get away with things which others can’t, and allows us to cultivate a certain perspective on life which we think may have some peripheral value to civilization at large.
Isolation has a place in the scheme of things, and a good illustration is the notion called Divergence/Convergence by Bill Sadler.