Perhaps the example of the reversion center and directors and activities should be considered as well? I think there is “mental” and “emotional” pleasure as well as sensual or they too are also sensual? Happiness requires a release from stress, no matter its source(s) and on the Mansion Worlds, lots of time and attention is spent in organized and sponsored relaxation and diversion. Relaxation, humor, play…all are important and all are pleasurable!!
While my tribe has never suffered from such melancholy and aversion to fun, it is odd how many religions and religionists find all forms of pleasure and play and even relaxation to be the devil’s workshop! The puritanical mores and ethics which make all forms of pleasure/happiness antithetical to all spirituality. Indeed there are extreme religionists who teach that only by guilt and suffering can one become saved and hope for eternal life…..that also lacks any form of bliss or joy one must presume!!
The pursuit of material wealth and the expression of ambition also often offers a low opinion of what it might think trivial or frivolous pursuits!
Ironically, the UB teaches that half or more of our non-resting celestial time will be focused on these activities of pleasure, relaxation, play, reversion, exploration, visitation/socializing, etc.
Consider these many quotes from a keyword search for “play”:
https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/search?keys=play&op=Search
48:4.16 (549.3) The need for the relaxation and diversion of humor is greatest in those orders of ascendant beings who are subjected to sustained stress in their upward struggles. The two extremes of life have little need for humorous diversions. Primitive men have no capacity therefor, and beings of Paradise perfection have no need thereof. The hosts of Havona are naturally a joyous and exhilarating assemblage of supremely happy personalities. On Paradise the quality of worship obviates the necessity for reversion activities. But among those who start their careers far below the goal of Paradise perfection, there is a large place for the ministry of the reversion directors.
48:4.17 (549.4) The higher the mortal species, the greater the stress and the greater the capacity for humor as well as the necessity for it. In the spirit world the opposite is true: The higher we ascend, the less the need for the diversions of reversion experiences. But proceeding down the scale of spirit life from Paradise to the seraphic hosts, there is an increasing need for the mission of mirth and the ministry of merriment. Those beings who most need the refreshment of periodic reversion to the intellectual status of previous experiences are the higher types of the human species, the morontians, angels, and the Material Sons, together with all similar types of personality. *
48:4.18 (549.5) Humor should function as an automatic safety valve to prevent the building up of excessive pressures due to the monotony of sustained and serious self-contemplation in association with the intense struggle for developmental progress and noble achievement. Humor also functions to lessen the shock of the unexpected impact of fact or of truth, rigid unyielding fact and flexible ever-living truth. The mortal personality, never sure as to which will next be encountered, through humor swiftly grasps—sees the point and achieves insight—the unexpected nature of the situation be it fact or be it truth.
48:4.19 (549.6) While the humor of Urantia is exceedingly crude and most inartistic, it does serve a valuable purpose both as a health insurance and as a liberator of emotional pressure, thus preventing injurious nervous tension and overserious self-contemplation. Humor and play—relaxation—are never reactions of progressive exertion; always are they the echoes of a backward glance, a reminiscence of the past. Even on Urantia and as you now are, you always find it rejuvenating when for a short time you can suspend the exertions of the newer and higher intellectual efforts and revert to the more simple engagements of your ancestors.
48:4.20 (550.1) The principles of Urantian play life are philosophically sound and continue to apply on up through your ascending life, through the circuits of Havona to the eternal shores of Paradise. As ascendant beings you are in possession of personal memories of all former and lower existences, and without such identity memories of the past there would be no basis for the humor of the present, either mortal laughter or morontia mirth. It is this recalling of past experiences that provides the basis for present diversion and amusement. And so you will enjoy the celestial equivalents of your earthly humor all the way up through your long morontia, and then increasingly spiritual, careers. And that part of God (the Adjuster) which becomes an eternal part of the personality of an ascendant mortal contributes the overtones of divinity to the joyous expressions, even spiritual laughter, of the ascending creatures of time and space.
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."
