Like many others, Jim Cleveland despaired of the greed and corruption that has spawned great suffering on our planet. Despair turned to cynicism, a feeling of hopelessness that things would ever be better, that we were hell-bent for our own environmental destruction.

Turning to the spiritual realms and anchored with revelations such as the Urantia papers and A Course in Miracles, the author turned inward for answers, posing frustrated, angry questions to supernal teachers who call themselves the One Team.

In the manner of ‘Conversations with God,’ the author keystrokes provocative questions and opens himself to key the poignant and illuminating answers of a candid team of celestials who return Love for every cynical challenge.

The author also presents an overview of the techniques of Stillness, a daily time for open communion with our Universal God as our ultimate Father. By joining Eastern-style meditation with Western concepts of worship, prayer and forgiveness, the threshold can be crossed to be delivered our own individual spiritual teachers who will guide us from within. Beyond gurus, preachers and psychics, the Stillness produces a personal relationship with the Universal Father, which means you need nothing else.

JIM CLEVELAND has had a long career in journalism, public relations, publications and marketing. He has a B.S. in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi and an M.A. from the University of Mississippi, along with years of theological and spiritual studies. He is owner and manager of lightandlife.com and its related periodicals, a charter director of The Stillness Foundation, and active with Urantia Book, Teaching Mission and A Course in Miracles organizations. 

THE FIRST QUESTION:  There are many of us for whom the yoke of cynicism and despair over the human condition has become nearly too much to bear. I guess I’m one of them. I’m wanting to know if there are any answers I can understand that can help me cope with the daily hassles of an alienated world?

My son, these burdens are imaginary, as fleeting in your lifetime as the breeze upon the plain. You have within yourselves the power to understand a higher level of spiritual reality, and to respond to that understanding with sure spiritual growth. If you would undertake a dialogue to find this peace, then so would we. 

Okay, where do we start? Is there a primer?

One of the greatest lessons that humankind should know is that God resides within each and every one of you of sound mind, an indwelling spirit fragment of God that experiences life with you.  In fact, this is how God experiences life in the form of all His creations in the worlds of time and space, eternally evolving with you through the inner presence of a prepersonal being that has variously been called the soul, the indwelling spirit, the higher self, the light. There is little significance to language names, only to realities. Bear in mind that terminologies and definitions are somewhat variable based on prior understandings as we go through these lessons.

The point is that you, each living expression of God, have within your being the knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil, as well as the fatherly guidance of God to choose correctly by listening and trusting this inner voice. Attunement to your inner higher selves, this spiritual spark, is the great quest of mankind, accessing God’s piloting hand to help you steer forward on an eternal ascension toward perfection, aligning your will with God’s so that the trip can be one of accelerating joy.

Then I will play devil’s advocate. Please excuse the term. Most people think it’s far-fetched to envision any kind of perfection for the miserable mass of mankind.  How would you respond to them?

In this short life, you won’t. But do you consider that’s all there is? This life is a school, with classrooms and laboratories for material experience, and for your indwelling spirit as much as you, for you are separate, but entwined. Together you strive toward that perfection as far as it can be carried in this material life. But this life is only the beginning. When you look up into the billions of stars and planets, do you not get a glimpse of the enormity of the plan? Do you not see a God behind the plan for all this? Do you not conceive that the bringing to perfection of all the creatures of time and space would be a fascinating preoccupation of such a God, one that God can share and experience with each individual personality of the creation?

You make it sound like a super celestial game of some kind. Are we just pawns in a game?

The enormous amount of celestial resources devoted to the ascension of God’s time and space beings makes this far more than a game. It is the plan for the universes. The seven universes of the superuniverse, as explained in your Urantia text, are essentially schools, environments for learning and growth.