January 11, 1980
God welcomes you within the company of spirits. You are welcomed in this company in this manner because all spirits or souls belong to God, as your hands belong to you. There is no real separation between souls and the essence of God except as demonstrated through the concept of will. The souls are not aimless realities waiting to be directed. They are vital, thriving, full of life. Your soul has a will of its own.
The closeness of your soul to the essence of God is a matter of will. The closeness of each of you to others is a matter of will. You can choose to join forces and unite, or you can choose to be separate. And so it is with the lives of your souls. There is a natural gravitational pull emanating from God outward to each of your souls, but the soul can exercise will and counter God’s force.
Good and evil can be viewed as the exercise of the will of your soul. Although you learn that your soul is a part of God and is therefore pure, that is true only in part, for the soul is pure in its potential for goodness, but the exercise of will is always present. It is for this reason that you must be concerned about the development of your soul. It is for this reason that we are concerned about the development of ourselves.
Your soul must learn, it must be nurtured, it must be cared for conscientiously just as you nurture and care for your body. And so it is that the will becomes the most important factor relating to the progress of union between yourselves and God.
The will can be likened to blood circulation in the body. The blood has a tendency to be circulated, an impetus, a force generated by the pumping of the heart. But if something disrupts the circulation, there is a feeling of separation between the body which is well and that portion which is starved. By nurturing the soul, you are in effect reopening the circulation, allowing natural forces to prevail.
Certainly all this sounds theoretical. How, you may ask, can I nurture my soul? One of the most effective manners for such development is the experience of communions such as you now receive, for you learn on an intellectual level that which your soul learns on a spiritual level. The fact is that you, as a mortal, and your soul are engaged in growth.
The human form of life is essential for the development of the soul. It is not the only source, but the soul grows because of the experience of human life. The mortal form of life is enhanced by the growth and development of the soul. It is a very close relationship. We refer to it as two different levels of life but in reality it is a single life. Your souls are separated from God by will. As the will reaches forward to God, the soul is drawn closer. It is a lengthy journey in figurative terms and cannot be measured as time. It can only be measured as progress. Each of you is a part of God, as your souls are a part of God. They exist because God exists. In the realm of God, there is no time, only progress.
Because of your need to be organized with a sense of time, it is often described that your souls are old, that they always have been in existence as God has always been in existence. But the use of your concept of time in understanding the existence of spiritual life is impractical and frequently misleading. If you consider only that your souls are in a constant state of development, that they are in a process of evolution, of being drawn toward God, then you will see the matter more clearly. The reality of your soul’s existence having no beginning, no end, carries with it the sense of time. As we have said before, we do not perceive existence as time, only as a continuum of events, of development, of motion. Therefore, we cannot say a soul has existed for a very long time or a short time, for that has no bearing on the nature of its existence. The concept of time was developed by mortals to measure mortal life. We can say all souls are evolving and this condition has always been. Even the use of the term “always” is interpreted by you as an indication of time, but it is not meant to be so. A perfectly drawn circle has no beginning, no end; it just is. That is the state of your soul.
Some souls require a training period involving more than one earthly life, but not all. We are not aware of how many lives, as you use the term, a soul has experienced. We are aware of its progress or its lack of progress. As we progress toward higher levels of awareness or spheres of existence, we are aware only of those who are in our company. If a soul chooses not to move toward God’s light, we lose track of it, not because it is banished, but because we are moving. If you are in a car traveling along and you are aware of a stationary object at the roadside, that object eventually departs from your view. It still exists but you are no longer aware of it. You retain your awareness, however, of those vehicles which travel along beside you.
We know that some souls may need more than one life, for that is an important building block in their development. We cannot say how many times a soul is returned to earthly life because that enters the realm of time as you perceive it. We are aware only of the progress which souls make.
Our study, which we alluded to in your last message, is essential for our growth because there are many lessons to be learned which do not grow out of the experience of earthly life. It is our will, our choice, to continue our growth until at long last we are in the company of God. We do not see God either close up or at some distance, but we feel God’s presence as a warmth, as a glow, a kind of light which is not visible but is felt. It is a light between spirits, as we experience the light of other souls. The more we study, the more we search for greater understanding, the more intense the glow, the warmth, the spiritual light.
As you come to understand the nature of spiritual life, remember the interdependence with earthly life, but do not try to apply laws governing your form of life to our existence, for real understanding will not be achieved. Occasionally we must describe our lives in your terms to facilitate your understanding, but remember that much of what we instruct is done in metaphor and simile so that you may gain a partial understanding of the nature of your existence. The value of these messages to you is not to give you a glimpse of the future, but an understanding of the present.
God surrounds each of you and responds to your needs and all those for whom you pray. God will give comfort and a sense of balance to all those who are in need. We rejoice in your presence in our company, and we rejoice to see the lights of your souls becoming brighter and warmer.
Alleluia! We bless you in God’s name, who is the Source and the End for us all.
Amen.