June 12, 1982
God is with you as a great flood of light and energy flowing through each of you individually and as a group.
We are present in your lives in such strong fashions that are not visible but are nevertheless important. Your guides are essential for your wellbeing in life, but we serve an important function for all human beings. We serve to focus God’s light on the lives of all. There are so many who do not know of our existence, and yet we still reach out and work with God guiding and directing their lives. If we, in our earthly form, had but an inkling of vision of the reality of spiritual guides and of the real and enduring power of God, our lives would have been much richer, more meaningful. They would have served others more effectively. They would have spread love in the world. We would have lived our lives in a different manner, if we had known of life beyond its earthly form.
Even you who are aware of the presence of guides in life have only a limited understanding, a limited view, of what lies ahead in your spiritual lives, but that view serves as a foundation which builds your life in directions more closely aligned with the purposes of God. If you were somehow able to physically see all that is described by us, your lives would be immediately transformed. Your priorities would be astonishingly clear, and your relationships with others would be harmonious in all ways.
But it is not God’s purpose that you should view the next stage of your spiritual life while you are yet in human form. Such purposes as God has revealed to each of you would be negated, for you would no longer have the need for exercising faith. You would no longer seek a greater understanding of your lives, for such understanding would be immediately complete. Therefore, no growth would occur, for your growth takes place in the very seeking.
There is no point in traveling on a long journey without a sense of direction, without a map, for such motion would be wasted energy. Maps provide a way of using your energy constructively and with less waste. Perhaps you would succeed in your journey without the guidance of maps, but the travels would be more tumultuous and less satisfying. Our purposes as guides are to serve as spiritual maps. You may not see a destination when you embark, but you know how to reach it, and you have faith in your ability to pursue the chosen paths.
So it is with the spiritual journey. You do not see the destination from your present position, but because of prayer and the help of your guides, you are helped to travel upon a path which is of direct benefit for that spiritual journey. The journey, as you know, does not end when you reach our side. It is only an intermediate stop, but it is essential to reach this objective before going further. So your guides concern themselves with the tasks necessary to bring you toward the ultimate objective—a complete unity with God.
It is impossible to measure time in such travel. All that is visible is motion, spiritual progress. There is no way of determining if one individual is more successful in drawing in closer proximity to God than another, for throughout the journey of your spiritual development you are always as close to God as is possible. We who have completed our earthly existence are not closer to God than you. God is within you. God is also within us. It cannot be closer than that.
When we speak of a journey in a spiritual sense, it is more a development of vision than an exchange of position. We are more aware of God’s light, a strong visible light, than you are, but that does not suppose that we are any closer than you. It is only our spiritual vision which has developed. It is important to remember this fact, for too often it is easy to imagine yourselves as somehow moving closer in proximity to God, and that quite simply is not the case, for you are with God now just as we are with God now. You were with God before you were aware of us with the same intensity, the same closeness. The difference is one of vision. It is a difference of feeling or awareness. God is always present, but you grow in your awareness of that presence.
When you face difficulty in life, you may not be aware of God’s presence. It may be that you must be reminded of God’s presence by another. You must be reminded to pray. You must be reminded to be still and listen to God’s response. But in those times you are still in the immediate presence of God. You are not at any time separated from God and you shall never be separated, for in your growing awareness of God, although that vision may falter at times, you are gaining a strength of sight which makes it impossible to deny God’s existence. You cannot deny what you have seen; you can only deny what you have not seen. These experiences in your circle are opportunities of seeing God not as some sort of physical presence but as a feeling, as a feeling within, a calmness, a sense of peace. Such peace only comes when you have a vision of God. It cannot be brought about in any other way.
We know that you have experienced some considerable pressures which at times dim a view of God, but it is the vision and the experience of that vision which provide strength for the future. It is true of each of you. Once having viewed God in a sense of strong spiritual presence, that experience can carry each of you through times of difficulty, concerns or worries. Therefore, these opportunities of being together become more important as they strengthen you and enable you to carry forward when your vision is clouded.
The difficulties which were experienced in your recent sharing of parts of these messages with others are actually not to be received as a difficulty. It is a manifestation by some of their present vision. Each seeks God in a way that has meaning, in a way that fulfills a need or an urge. As we have said before, there is no one way to reach God. The atmosphere at times was tense, but the tension was due to your perception of the environment, the perception of attitudes and not due to any real threat or confrontation.
You live by your perceptions. You relate to your world around you through your perceptions of it. Your response to that world is the result of those perceptions. There is no other way to act. You cannot expect to respond as the result of someone else’s vision. A blind man does not see through another’s eyes. A person with limited vision does not perceive the world through the eyes of another with clear vision, but for those with limited vision, their perceptions of the world are believed to be accurate, just as those with clear vision believe their perceptions to be accurate.
There is much that we see in your world that you cannot see. Does that mean that your perception is inaccurate and that only ours is a clear view of what really is? Of course not. Therefore, when you are faced with individuals whose response to elements of your life which are of importance to you is not according to your perception, you cannot find criticism. You must only recognize that they are responding through their view, just as you.
The world has seemingly unlimited perceptions of God and seemingly unlimited ideas of how best to draw close to God to get a better view. In a strange way each of those perceptions is accurate. For one individual, reaching God is serving another. To another individual, it is praying. To yet another, it is listening. It matters not the direction by which one seeks a clearer view of God; it matters only what one seeks.
Each of you in this room perceives God in your own way. Each of you has periods within your lives when that perception is clearer than at other times, but your concept of God is nevertheless the result of that perception, that vision. It is we, your guides, who help each of you individually to develop a view of God which is particularly suited to you and you alone. Every soul is different, and therefore the perception of each soul will be different and it follows that the response will differ. You cannot expect two people to agree fully on the nature of God within their lives, and it is not important that they do. It is only important that they look and listen and be patient.
Patience seems in such sort supply when dealing with God. You may wait for a friend to write a letter, but you will never wait to sense the answer to a prayer. It is the nature of your human lives that you exercise impatience so often in your dealings with God. You must learn to wait and listen, listen to God speaking from within. It may be a voice or a dream. It may be that special hunch, but if you give it a chance, you will perceive God’s answers to prayers. You will see God’s presence in life, in your life and in the lives of all who are around you.
Open your eyes to God. Open your eyes to all who are with you. Be ready to see the presence of God in your lives and be willing to reflect toward others that presence. It is so much more beneficial for peace in the world and peace within to act with God than it is to merely talk about God. It is in the acting, it is in the doing, that God’s peace and love and light are spread in the world. It is not just in the telling, for in the end words are empty and they are forgotten. It is the actions that are remembered. It is the actions which carry impact.
We pray for each of you. We pray that you may be open to a more intense vision of God and the lasting conviction that God is not just a presence somewhere in the future, that God is with you totally at this time and at this stage in each of your lives. And now we bless you with God’s strength and light, and we pray for your continued widening vision.
Amen.