Program – ANZURA Conference 2021

By Conference Planning Committee on

The time is drawing near for ANZURA’s annual conference which is being held via Zoom again due to the Covid-19 lockdowns. It will start at 9:45 AM (Sydney time) on Saturday 2nd October and will run for a little over six hours. (See below for the Program.The link to the Zoom room will be sent next week with a final reminder.)

Theme: The Goodness of Love – the Keystone to Reality

When we embark on the quest for the highest value and eliminate the selfish qualities of love, we have the potential to contribute to the creation of finite reality in our own incredibly unique ways. When we become more real—more balanced in our personalities—we come close to understanding that the keystone to reality is the highest value of all—the Goodness of Love.

Please join us for what is promising to be an enlightening and enriching program.

We have allowed for a half hour lunch break where we will stay online so we can chat with one another over lunch! Bring something pre-prepared to eat and drink and take advantage of this informal stage of the program. We will also allowing for short breaks in between presentations where you can stretch, get a drink, chat and listen to some music now and again.

PROGRAM

Start Time
New Zealand		 Start Time
Sydney, Australia		 Presentation Title Presenter
12:45-1:00 PM 9:45-10:00 AM Welcome & Introductions Merindi Belarski (MC)
1:00-1:30 PM 10:00-10:30 AM Living in the Flesh Julian Martin
1:30-2:30 PM 10:30-11:30 PM We Are Because I AM Nigel Nunn
MUSIC
2:30-3:00 PM 11:30-12:00 PM Courageous Loyalty Phillip Marriott
3:00-3:30 PM 12:00-12:30 PM LUNCH & CHAT
3:30-4:00 PM 12:30-1:00 PM How is Truth Coherent? Andrew Swadling
4:00-4:30 PM 1:00-1:30 PM How is Beauty Attractive? Merindi Belarski
4:30-5:00 PM 1:30-2:00 PM How is Goodness Stabilizing? Daniel Swadling
MUSIC
5:00-5:30 PM 2:00-2:30 PM The Benefits of Factual Meditation Robert Coenraads
5:30-6:00 PM 2:30-3:00 PM Fountainhead of Creative Thinking Vern Verass
6:00-6:30 PM 3:00-3:30 PM Worship & Close Rita Schaad

ANZURA Conference a Virtual Experience!

By ANZURA Admin on

Saturday, 2 October 2021

9:45am – 3:30pm (Sydney time)

Click here for PROGRAM

We hope this finds everyone well and coping as best as can be while we bring you the latest news that yet again, we’ve had to cancel ANZURA’s in-person conference that was to be held in Sydney this coming October. Things were looking good there for a while but as the Delta variant of Covid-19 took hold in Sydney and the lockdowns dragged on, just as the New Zealanders had to do last year, we have now had to convert our conference to a Zoom online event which will be held on Saturday 2nd October starting at 9:45am (Sydney time).

Since last year’s lockdowns many of us have had a lot of experience in holding conferences, meetings, and study groups via Zoom. It has proven to be a surprisingly effective alternative in keeping us all connected and has even had the very positive outcome of allowing many, who could not previously attend study groups or gatherings because of distance, to participate now from the comfort of their living rooms!

The theme of our virtual conference remains the same and the presenters are busy adapting their presentations to the Zoom environment.

The Goodness of Love – the Keystone to Reality

Truth is coherent, beauty attractive, goodness stabilizing. And when these values of that which is real are co-ordinated in personality experience, the result is a high order of love conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty. [Paper 2:7.12, page 43.5]

When we embark on the quest for the highest value and eliminate the selfish qualities of love, we have the potential to contribute to the creation of finite reality in our own incredibly unique ways. When we become more real—more balanced in our personalities—we come close to understanding that the keystone to reality is the highest value of all—the Goodness of Love.

…man’s nearest and dearest approach to God is by and through love, for God is love. [Paper 3:4.7, page 50.5 emphasis added]

We hope you will join us on Saturday October 2nd and share in the discovery of some incredible insights that will be explored.

We will send you another notice closer to the date with the Zoom link and meeting ID. We’re looking forward to seeing you then.

Click here for Program

President’s Report – Winter 2021

From , By Phillip Marriott, Adelaide, SA  on

It is extremely easy to see the darkness. There is a lot going on in the world right now that is not great right from an individual level, through our relationships, to our families, communities, cities, countries, races, and our planet. It is all very de-powering and can make one quite despondent.

Most people have an opinion, whether it’s well informed or not, and tend to think that their view is right. Better to have an opinion than not (that’s my opinion). Who is responsible? – not me, it must be someone else; the government, big business, the Illuminati, The Rockefellers, the evil scientists, the minion’s, the church, Elvis, the aliens, the virus?

What to do? Well, that depends on how comfortable you are with your current position. Do nothing, keep plodding on, hope for the best, it’ll be alright, don’t see the point anyway. Concerned but don’t know what you can do.

Or perhaps you can see the light, you have the answer and you’re not going to be beaten. You know that anything good requires effort, work, intention, and deliberate action. You have made a choice, a decision to acknowledge and see the good.

In my opinion it’s all about perspective. With which lens do I choose to view the world? For me I believe I can take responsibility for the things that I can control. It takes work and effort because I often slip and lose control, but I believe I can choose how I respond, how I view the world and my surroundings. That’s not to say I’m a space cadet, I still need to eat, sleep, pay bills, and do all the practical things while I live my life and honour my relationships.

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Sydney Conference Reminder – 2021

From ,

For those planning on coming to this year’s Sydney conference being held 1 – 4 October at the Peter Canisius House in Pymble, this is a reminder to send us your registration.

Although we’ve all no doubt been affected by the July Covid-19 lockdowns, we’re still anticipating that the conference will go ahead as an in-person event in October. As it’s still a couple of months away and the vaccines continue to roll out, it’s still possible that things will be under control by then. And if we do go ahead, we’ve been assured by the staff at the venue (who continued to operate last year during the initial outbreak) that they will take all the necessary precautions to minimise the chances of spreading the virus. Of course, if we do need to cancel, we will fully reimburse those who have already paid their registrations.

About the Program: The Goodness of Love – The Keystone to Reality

The universe we live in is a wonderful and mysterious place and our minds are innately equipped to embark on an alluring adventure of discovery. This mind can be likened to a living instrument. Each of us are the creative personal players and composers of it. We each have the potential and responsibility within us to contribute to the creation of finite reality as we are all incredibly unique and can be of tremendous value to one another. Collectively we can—over time—make a truly good and beautiful finite world for our children and our children’s children.

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Study Day 2021 – Reflections

From ,

When ANZURA arranges a Study Day, the hope is to provide an opportunity for students of The Urantia Book to participate in a specially formed study group in their regional areas so that reads are meeting on the same day studying the same paper. The value of meeting with other readers is not to be underestimated—after all, our personal growth and religious experiences are best fostered while we are relating – inter-acting – with other personalities!

Groups met over the weekend of 19th June to study Paper 2: The Nature of God. The following articles contain some reflections from some who met.

Hunter Region Meeting Reflections

Reflections by Marianne Cameron, Jim Neal, Andrew Swadling and Rita Schaad, Newcastle

The Revelators (in this case the Divine Counselors, the third in the group of Coordinate Trinity-Origin Beings) and a small group amongst 21 billion stationary Divine Counselors, assigned to function within the Universe of Nebadon, start by apologizing. Well, maybe not apologizing, but rather attempting to explain their inability to fully disclose to us the Nature of God.

They call the material at hand ‘poorly’, although they agree that the olden prophets did understand somewhat the eternal, never-beginning, never ending, circular nature of the Universal Father. Much that has been used in this paper from the old scriptures to describe God’s infinity, perfection, righteousness and love sounds awfully good to us.

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Mining the Archives

From ,

(Editor’s Note: Mining the Archives is a collection of articles that have been published in various newsletters over the years and have been lying buried in the archives. A team of volunteers have been “mining the archives” for the gems, so now we can bring them into the light of day to share using modern-day technology. This one is from Innerface Newsletter, September 2002. Additional note: The next two articles in this issue of Arena-Winter 2021 by William Wentworth and Nigel Nunn are thoughts inspired by this 2002 article of Gen Glasziou’s.)

Mathematics and Science Catch up with The Urantia Book

The Late Ken Glasziou, Qld

In the mortal state, nothing can be absolutely proved; both science and religion are predicated on assumptions. [Paper 103:7.10, page 1139.2]

In 1935 that statement could only have been made with confidence by a handful of our most learned men.

The foundation for logical thinking was laid by the Greeks way back in ancient times. Initially they were trying to formulate the guiding principles of discourse—which gradually broadened into Aristotelian logic, the latter work holding sway for almost two thousand years.

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Application of Scientific Thinking…

From , By William Wentworth, Canberra on

…to Cosmology in The Urantia Book

Ken Glasziou was a scientist who took pains to make his reasoning comprehensible to the general reader. As one of those general readers, I was often interested in what he had to say. Recently my attention was drawn to something he wrote in an article he wrote in 2002 titled “Mathematics and Science Catch up with The Urantia Book” where he was pointing out the significance of mathematics and some of its limitations as well.

Science develops so rapidly that I don’t really know whether his comments are still relevant, but it led me to think about the application of scientific thinking to cosmology as The Urantia Book explains it.

Scientists have been trying to develop a theory which accounts for everything in the cosmos, both large scale and small, from the largest clusters of galaxies to the smallest particles within atoms.  Some of the most accomplished physicists and mathematicians have given themselves to this effort, so far without success, since they restrict themselves to consideration of only a part of the whole of which the cosmos consists.

While they have developed some of the most amazing methods to measure both sub-atomic particles on the one hand, and enormous aggregations of matter on the other, they have not been able to blend them into a unified theory which accounts for all the measurements. There always seems to be something which doesn’t fit.

Because science and mathematics are so intertwined, scientists have been attempting to treat cosmology as if it were an aspect of material science. They think that with enough measurement and mathematical ingenuity, a theory of origin, function and evolution of the material cosmos can be derived which accounts for past, present and future—and all the unexpected variations of phenomena—within a self-contained mathematical system which is both self-evident and self-explanatory.

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Recent Developments in the Astrophysics Sector

From , By Nigel Nunn, ACT on

Interesting development: for 40 years cosmologists have been arguing about the best way to simulate (1) the clustering of galaxies and (2) the flat rotation curves of spiral galaxies. Invisible (dark) matter works well for explaining the clustering, but modified Newtonian gravity works better for spiral galaxies.

Around 2015, researchers began to take seriously the idea that there might be at least two distinct types of invisible mass: one kind that forms halos around galaxies, and another that forms a superfluid disk of axion-like particles within galaxies. This is very nearly the exact same picture presented in The Urantia Book: halos of segregata, within which whirlpools of ultimata form.

This kind of two-phase model for dark matter has now reached the pop.sci domain: in the links below, Sabine Hossenfelder sketches the idea. See especially from time 9:10 in the video, where she proposes that all we need are (1) a new field and (2) a new particle formed by a phase transition of that field. Her “field” becomes our pool of segregata, and her “particle” becomes our quantized vortex in that field, the ultimaton.

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The Challenges of Diversity

From , By Marion Steward, Auckland, New Zealand on

A Never-Ending Adventure

[This article is based on a presentation made as part of Urantia Association’s Urantiathon, held on 30 January, 2021]

Diversity is one of the dominant aspects of the universe as described in The Urantia Book. It pervades all of the grand universe, including spiritual and ascending beings and the physical environments.  Diversity presents challenges to us all as we go about our daily lives, but because of its never-ending and constantly expanding presence, it is very important to learn how to deal with it here on Urantia in preparation for our future universe career.

The article will first outline the scope and range of diversity in the Universe, and portray just how individual and varied almost everything is. It will focus first on what can be called outer diversity – how the appearance and form of almost everything and every living being varies in the universe, and of course on our planet. This will be followed by a brief overview of what I have called inner diversity, which is some of the main ways in which people can vary, including mental, emotional, social, racial, cultural and personality.   The next section will discuss how diversity is part of God’s plan for the universe, and is never-ending, followed by a brief outline of how this diversity presents challenges to us in the world today.  Finally, there will be a discussion of what Jesus had to say about this aspect of life, and how his advice might be applied, in very broad terms. to the situations we might find ourselves in in our everyday lives.

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True Success

From , By Neil Francey, QLD on

(Editor’s note: This is an introduction to another well-researched study project undertaken by Neil Francey. Click on the links at the end to see the complete work.)

The Harmonious Balance of Our Physical, Mental and Spiritual Energies

The Papers in The Urantia Book teach personal growth as the proportional expansion of the whole self. This creates the balance necessary to make progress towards self-mastery in all aspects of our living and being. That is, the harmonious balance of our physical, mental, and spiritual energies.

Books and courses which offer self-development are usually limited in their scope, and can often omit the appeal to, and nourishment for, our spiritual natures. True Success is a course that corrects that deficiency as it incorporates the spiritual dimensions as portrayed in the Urantia revelation.

True Success collates text in a study format by topic. This allows readers to gain an appreciation of some of the key concepts in the revelation. Preference is given to quotations that are relative to our everyday activities.

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