May 29, 1982
God, your protector and illuminator of your life, is with you as a group strongly and clearly at this time. There is a strength in the closeness that you experience currently which makes it so much easier for us to transmit God’s light and love to you.
James remarked about the difficulty of receiving at your last meeting. We too found it most difficult, for there were so many barriers felt between one another that they provided a blinding shield which was difficult for us to penetrate. You must not be overly concerned when at times you receive with less ease than at others for that is understandable and expected whenever people gather in search of the truth from differing perspectives. The difficulty may be there, but God’s light, transmitted through us, is nevertheless powerful and strong in its direction and intensity, and you must not fear that you will be unable to receive when such happens. We do, nevertheless, find it so much easier to illuminate your souls with God’s light when the communication is free and uncluttered and easy—free of emotional turmoil, free of concerns about self.
It is the same condition of receptivity when you prayerfully listen to God at other times. To be most successful you must find times in each of your lives when there is peace, when there is a tranquility within. So much can be gained through such an experience of listening to God in your own individual ways when all is quiet. The silence around you at this time is strong and pervades your conscious hearing. It is a time when you can relax and reach out to touch God with your spirits. When you pray as individuals, such peace is so beneficial. When you meet as a group, it does not necessarily fall in a period of your lives when you can be calm, and for that reason the channel, the means by which God reaches each individually, is constricted.
There is a feeling of closeness at this hour which is not frequently achieved. The sense of openness and respect and love must be sought after throughout your daily lives. It is an indication of your spiritual ties to one another. When a chord is sounded with each tone at the appropriate frequencies, there is a marvelous resonance, but when your tone is out of adjustment, the whole chord fails to resonate as it should.
And so it is with you as a group. Each must try to continue in a spirit of sharing and acceptance—sharing where you are on your spiritual journey and an acceptance of the place of another along that same journey. We have said before, and it bears repeating, it makes no difference whether one is ahead of another, it is only important that you travel on a road toward God at your own pace. It is only important that each of you progresses. Speed and position are immaterial.
Your experience of sharing your spiritual journeys with others in the church is beneficial for you and also for those for whom all that you share is new and unique and different. It is important for you because you are more aware of your spiritual search and its importance within your lives. Some concepts which are given you may be clear on the surface but more difficult to fathom when studied with thought, and that is as it should be. Were it only necessary to approach these communions superficially, then that which is given you would have little meaning. But what God shares with you through us is of great importance and must be read and thought through, studied if you wish.
Through such efforts you may not fully understand what is given, but you will nevertheless gain a clearer view of the direction that your lives must proceed in in obtaining a clearer view of God. Your sharing with others provides a means of recognition of where you are in your understanding—that place, we say, is not important—but you must still recognize the need for participation in that progress. You sense that as you try to explain evidence of God’s presence within your lives.
Others benefit not because they may accept all that you share with them. They benefit rather because of the example you set in being willing to be open, open to receive a sense of God and open to a willingness to share what is of such importance in your lives. In the end you are not sharing specific concepts; you are sharing a piece of yourselves. You are giving others a part of you. They may accept or they may reject what you say, what you profess, what you give, but they cannot reject the giving, the saying, the professing per se. Most of those who participate in the group at church do not share their sense of God to another with complete honesty and openness. There is a natural reluctance to being fully open and that reluctance must be respected. But for others to be more willing to open themselves in an expression of faith, an example which is set by each of you can be an important link between their reticence and their openness.
In that way, each who attends your sharing can benefit. You are not thrusting yourselves upon others by sharing your faith. You are only imposing yourselves when you claim complete knowledge, when you claim to be privy to special information, when you claim to be somehow select, set apart for a special task. But that is not your desire. You wish merely to demonstrate an experience of God within your lives which has meaning for you. You need not feel rejections and criticisms, for such reactions are directed not toward you but toward an experience which you describe. God placed you, each of you, in this situation for a purpose, that purpose being your spiritual development and the development of others. You cannot possibly know results in full detail of all that you are doing, for much that happens is silent and is experienced from within, giving no outward manifestation.
Each of you has concerns about the conditions of another and God is aware of your prayers and love, your light offered to another soul. You cannot lay a judgment on the position of one individual in a search for spiritual awareness and a sense of God, and there is no one way to reach God. One road to God is equally valid to another as long as the intention is to serve God, to know God in a personal way.
Each of you can provide real, tangible, recognizable comfort to another. That comfort may take on many forms, but it is in your own strength that you can provide strength to another. It is a part of your spiritual strength that enables you to strongly influence another’s perception of life, of themselves, of the past, present and future, the perception of God. It is not only a responsibility, for frequently one interprets responsibility as a duty. It is even more importantly a gift, a pleasurable gift, the opportunity of aiding another, of providing peace and tranquility. It can be joyfully worked at. You do not serve another because you have to serve another. You do so because you want to, because you sense the rightness of it, not merely the necessity, the duty-bound requirement of such action.
When we say that you have great responsibility because of what God has given you, do not feel that duty-bound pressure, rather feel your response to others as a release of energy, a freely offered release of energy, joyfully given out with no desire for return. That is the real implication of responsibility as it relates to a perception of God within your lives. Feel that you may be freer in your release of spiritual energy, in your release of love. It is like a bird in a cage. God gives life to that bird, but you can open the door and release it, let it out, let it free.
God gives each of you an energy, a spiritual strength, a sense of service, love. With that love your response is one of release. Feel that you can be open to those opportunities for release. Be ready to share your spiritual strength through such release. Do not feel that it is merely a duty that one has to do because of what is given. God provides you with a gift of spiritual strength. God did not have to provide you with such a gift. It was a gift out of love, and your response to the world about you must also be a response of love, and that is done through such release, not through some internal pressure or sense of duty.
Our communions with you are a release for us. God provides us with an enormous spiritual intensity, but we are not told, so to speak, “Make sure that your charge understands.” We are assigned to each of you by God, but our response in communicating to you is one of letting go, of letting our energy flow freely to each one of you. That is how we reach you. It is done with unrestricted love and the desire for sharing. Approach your session with members of the church through a sense of loving release and with no feeling of responsibility put upon you as a result of all that you have received through us.
We are with each of you. We, your guides, pray for you. We pray that you may be open to receiving God’s strength and direction. When you are in need and do not pray, we pray. We open your channel. We search for ways of uncluttering the field to allow God’s light to shine through. That is our loving duty and we exercise it most joyfully.
In the many times ahead that you will meet as a group, establish a sense of unity. Establish a recognition of common search. Establish a manifestation of love through spiritual closeness and acceptance and mutual light, for that is the purpose for which you meet. When that occurs, we find ourselves greatly facilitated by your light, and it becomes so much easier for us to speak to each of you in ways that have meaning now and in the future.
Your lights are strong individually and as a group. We see the peace that you experience. Carry it with you in the days and weeks and months and years ahead, and continue to look for opportunities of sharing that peace with another. God’s peace is with you as it is with us here. God’s light surrounds you as it surrounds us. We are all truly one in spirit. You and we are enfolded in the arms of God, in love and light.
Amen.