April 6, 1983
God and we are all joyous in your again being united in prayer and thought spiritually in your search for truth and in understanding of your place within the sphere of God’s creation.
Each of you has different responsibilities in relating God’s purpose and will to life around you. Each is endowed with gifts that are different from another. Each is presented with opportunities for growth, realized through service to another. But the direction of that service, the character of that service, is the essence of God’s individual gift to each. Some communicate to others nonverbally. Maybe it is being a good listener. Perhaps it is in being present. For another, it is providing advice offered in love and self-sacrifice. For another, it may be teaching or learning so as to teach in the future. It may be in helping another, meeting another’s needs in very specific ways. Yes, each of you is given vastly different gifts, but each of those gifts, regardless of their difference, is vital, is essential for operating within God’s creative environment.
The word does create. There are not those who are creative and those who may be neutral, and others who are destructive. All create—all create good will or ill will. All create excitement or pessimism or a feeling of not caring. This creativity is best described in the sense of initiating an attitude, spreading an attitude.
You do not live in a vacuum. This we have said many times before. You do not exist only to yourselves. You are individuals, of course, but you function, you operate within a society. You create in your dealings with others. There is nothing that you do which does not have some effect on another person. There are those who wish to be alone. That insistence on loneliness has an effect on others. The effect may be positive or negative. For some they will say, “Yes, that is the route I wish to take.” Others will say, “How unfortunate, I wish I could bring a sense of belonging to that person.” Others may just question why such loneliness. But you see, even the person who chooses to be alone has an effect on others.
There is no way that one can escape the influence one has upon one’s surroundings. If you recognize the constant presence of this influence, not just a potential for influence, but real influence, then you have a view of the intricacy with which all humankind interrelates. This interrelationship exists on countless levels. It may be superficial, brief, temporal. It may be very long lasting. It may be penetrating in its influence and impact. It may be disturbing or confirming, comforting or aggravating. Whatever the result, the interaction, the influence is always present.
Each of you must recognize not only your responsibility of reaching out to others, but also the unconscious ways in which you communicate. One can show impatience or intolerance and it may be received as a rejection. Another can show preoccupation or animosity. These reactions are not intentional, they are not preplanned, and in most instances, are unrecognized.
Yes, it would be great to see yourselves as others see you, but it could also be disturbing. It is more important for you to accept the recognition of your constant interrelationships with others than it is to try to ferret out “What am I really like? Do I like who I am? What do I wish to be and how do I become that?” Such searching, in the end, is futile, for it leads to frustration and a feeling of inadequacy. You are who you are; you respond as you respond. It is essential merely that you do not blind yourself to this fact.
You are correct in your understanding of the relationship of an individual’s spiritual growth to humanity’s growth, and yet it does not imply that each individual grows at the rate of humanity. The meaning behind such an understanding is that you grow and we grow on our side through our relationships with all humankind. That means not only close neighbors but acquaintances. Obviously it cannot imply every person, nor does it imply that one must make an impact on all of humanity in order to achieve spiritual growth. It is intended that you understand the relationship between you and others is a spiritual unity, and therefore the obligation and the responsibility is to that unified whole.
The commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself” states this succinctly and to the point, for you must love your neighbor by recognizing the divinity in another, just as you recognize and accept the divinity within each of you. You cannot feel that you are divine and yet reject the divinity of another, for why would you be selected for such divinity when such a gift was not a part of the spiritual makeup of another? God does not pick favorites. God does not select a group of individuals or a race of humanity and state that these people will be divine, that these people will be more select than any other. God wishes humankind to recognize that humanity is divine, that every person is unique and important and special to God.
Your relationships with others, therefore, are because of this unity of divine content, the presence of your spiritual entities, your souls. You relate to others because you are a soul and another is a soul. That relationship should be natural. Obviously during the human phase of your life, individuals do not, as a rule, respond to others in love and understanding. There is competition. There is rivalry and jealousy and anger, impatience, intolerance. But that is not because God chooses this as a way of life. It is humans responding in a human way to human realities of earthly life.
Your charge, as it were, is to recognize a division between human response and God-ordained response. The entire evolution of spiritual thought centers around the distinction between what is of humanity and what is of God. Your tasks in your lives, as you travel your individual paths, is to be open to a distinction of what is of humanity and what is of God, and having distinguished the differences, to have both the courage and the knowledge necessary to choose that which is of God. To choose the response that you feel God would offer. To choose the reaction to another as you would perceive God to wish. To choose to love, to be accepting and nonjudgmental. To choose to be good listeners and not good speakers. To choose to reach out and not wait to be touched.
Many devote their lives to that which comes from humans and have little time or energy to devote to that which comes from God. Your awareness of your spiritual selves, your awareness of the position of influence that God can hold within your lives, is evidence of your ability to distinguish between humans and God. Our responsibility is to clarify that distinction and to help you to choose the direction of God, to set your priorities in life around a perception of God which has importance and meaning for your life at this stage in your travels. It is very simple to state this distinction; it is very difficult to respond to it.
Each of you looks for evidence of God, for further confirmation. You have all experienced God at some time. But humans are curious in that having once experienced God, they continually searches for additional confirmation that God is really there, that God is really in control, if you welcome that control. It is like children who needs frequent confirmation at a young age that a parent is in the house. For awhile, the children’s only recognition of the presence of a parent is when they can see the parent. If the parent leaves the room, it does not mean the parent is away from the house. The child, not realizing this, goes to seek the parent.
So it is with humankind. You may recognize that God is in the room with you, so to speak, but when you do not see God, you wonder whether God is really there, and wait or search for an additional confirmation. Just as the parent remains in the home with the child, although perhaps out of sight, so God remains a part of each of your lives, whether or not you actually are aware of that presence.
Some seek the presence of God, but they seek also the recognition of the presence of God, and those are two different desires. The first is easily responded to, although difficult to internalize. God is with them as God is with each of you, but they seek the recognition of God. The recognition which they seek is the recognition which each of you seeks at various stages in your lives. You may look for evidence of God and look some more and still not see it, yet you are willing to accept in principle the fact that God is present. But, you see, that acceptance as we stated, is in principle. If each of you truly accepts the undeniable fact that God is with each of you always, the recognition of that fact is the evidence which you seek.
Your lives change in their perspective of God. Sometimes you see God clearly and other times with great difficulty. It is natural; it happens to each. It has happened to each of you, and it will continue to be that way throughout your lives. There will be periods of brightness and darkness, but it is your faith that despite the cycles of life, God is indeed there, that gives you the strength to endure and to proceed forward in your lives.
We cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of actually accepting the fact of God’s presence. We have reiterated it many times, but it is so central to your human existence that we must continue to remind you. Don’t be discouraged when you have difficulties in your view of God, for the problem is in the view, not in what is there. Sooner or later each of you will receive the view of God as a clear recognition of God’s presence. It may not be through a thunderbolt, but through a calm peace.
God’s presence speaks to you, each of you, in different ways. God speaks through your conscience, through nature, through others, through light, through peace. God speaks most clearly through prayer, and that is why that channel of recognition of God must always remain open. Prayer is the most important means by which you receive the light of God. Continue to use it. Continue to believe in its strength and influence—its influence on your lives and its influence on the lives of those for whom you have prayed, for God responds through prayer, not because of prayer.
God is with each and surrounds all of you with love and peace and a sense of presence throughout your lives. We bless you with God’s love, light and everlasting presence.
Amen.