Belonging to a Study Group
After discovering The Urantia Book quite unexpectedly in a book shop in 1986, I spent some fifteen years as a solo reader grappling with its vast content with many new names and concepts. Initially, I often felt overwhelmed in the same way that the Contact Commission did when they were being prepared to receive the papers, as they commented:
“Our superhuman friends thus spent upward of two decades in extending our cosmic horizons, enlarging our theologic concepts, and expanding our over-all philosophy. We never realized how much our religious thinking had been expanded until the papers began to arrive. As the Revelation progressed we came more fully to appreciate how we had been prepared for the vast alteration of our religious beliefs by these preliminary contacts extending over a period of twenty years of pre-education.”
While reading The Urantia Book initially on my own was stimulating and necessary, it was challenging, but I managed to gain a good grasp of the content, only to realize that a single reading was not enough because many aspects of the revelation are complex and multi-faceted. The content is extensive and requires life-long, in depth study. I found joining a study group immensely beneficial, not only as a motivation to study regularly, but also to benefit from the insight and understanding gained in the discussion and sharing of ideas with other, often more advanced readers. Having access to online meetings since 2020 has been a great benefit in that it enabled me to join an ANZURA study group which has been a big stimulus especially in the study of Part IV which I did in less detail on my own.
I highly recommend the study group method as an essential way to gain a deeper understanding of the revelation in addition to being the dissemination method envisaged by the revelators. It is also a good way to make new friends, in my case in a different country, with a common and worthwhile cause, the aim of becoming a person of survival value with qualities that align with spiritual growth, moral integrity and the pursuit of divine will.