February 28, 2002
God is with you in a very real, a very concrete way. It is God’s light and enormous love which we, your guides, reflect upon your lives.
We have spoken of reflection. We have referred to that being a characteristic of spiritual living—living in the spirit while sharing the experience of human life. You are asked to reflect. That is a directing outward of all that comes to you as human beings which is positive and affirming and strengthening. You reflect to those around you. In truth, the warmth that you offer outward is not a warmth which originates from within. The warmth of God’s love is radiated outward to all souls—souls on our side and souls on your side. It is the souls that begin the process of reflection, and it is your human lives that are given the opportunity of allowing that reflection to go beyond yourselves to the wider community that you share. Only a soul is capable of reflecting spiritual life. That is what a soul does. A human being cannot reflect warmth. A human being allows that warmth, that love from the soul to come forth.
Humans also have an ability to restrict that reflection through their actions. This is not surprising when you consider it, for you respond most directly to the feedback, to the behavior of human beings around you. You don’t see another’s soul, but you can either feel its presence because of the behavior of an individual, or you are not aware of the strength of that soul in another. That individual can hide the reflection of the soul. Even when the individual denies the soul’s existence, we on our side see very clearly the reflection of that soul. We are aware of the denial of the human, but the reflection of the soul is a communication between souls. It is a communication between light sources.
The source of all light, spiritual light, is God. The source of light within the human experience is the soul of each human being. While the soul within does not generate that light, it sends that light outward, but that light must penetrate the shell, the human form. When each of you is open to the existence of your souls, the shell becomes transparent.
There are those among you who are aware of the aura that emanates from one individual or another. That aura can be sensed as a brilliant light or a restricted light. The mood of that individual, the attitude of that individual can therefore be gauged by the characteristics of the aura that is observed. The human body therefore controls in a very real way the ability of the soul to reflect light outward.
If you removed the human presence from the soul, the reflection of each individual soul would equal the brilliance of the light coming to that soul—the light of God. When an individual crosses to our plane of life, the filter, the shell, the human component has been removed, and it is therefore possible to observe fully the brilliance of each soul. There is no way that the human form can prevent the soul from receiving the spiritual light of God. The effect of the human form is merely one of inhibiting the soul’s ability to transmit light beyond itself. We speak of souls that are inhibited. This in no way refers to a weakness of the soul for the soul is never weak. The soul grows just as a plant grows when it is watered. The brilliance of that soul is not diminished, but the impact of that brilliance is too often diminished by the human form to which it is attached.
All souls, those within human form and those outside that form, are in themselves perfect. Yes, souls continue to evolve but they are perfect as they are. The seed for a great tree is perfect. If it were not perfect, it would not develop as was intended. All of your souls will develop as they are intended, and therefore, although in different stages of development and growth, they are nevertheless perfect. Your responsibilities as human beings are to allow that perfection to guide you, to come through you, and to bring positive benefits to others. All that is necessary for that to be achieved belongs to the souls whose lives you share. An inhibited soul is not a weak soul. It is merely a soul whose brilliance is being restricted. Consider this, therefore, when you encounter individuals whose behavior you find unacceptable: it is the behavior that is inappropriate. It is that shell, that filter that blocks what is really beautiful within all human beings.
You are not asked to live perfect lives, for that is not possible. You are not asked to live lives with no mistakes, with no weakness, for that is not a part of the human existence. But you are asked, each of you, to find pathways in your humanness that will allow brilliance from within to be reflected outward. Life, then, is a process of finding pathways for the soul.
As the soul reflects, it increases in its capacity to reflect. It is not unlike a muscle that must be pressured, that must be burdened in order to become stronger. The muscle must be used in order to increase its capacity for use. The soul must reflect in order to keep and increase its capacity to reflect. You learn what it means to be loving by being loving. The more you are loving, the more capacity you have to become loving.
This process works negatively as well. An individual who spreads negativity becomes strengthened in the ability to be negative. One doesn’t act with negativism and in the process use up the negativism that is stored within. Whatever you engage in increases your capacity for further engagement. If you are engaged in acts that are selfish, you strengthen your ability to become more selfish. If you engage in acts that reflect love, your capacity to reflect love increases. This you can understand and it is exactly this same principle that is applied to spiritual reflection.
Your souls, although reflectors of God’s brilliance, do not initiate that brilliance, but they do grow in their ability to reflect. It is not a passive action that a soul pursues. It is active, it can be strengthened, it becomes enhancing in its ability to transform itself to a higher potential. In loving, you become more loving. In rejoicing, you find more reason to rejoice. In expressing what is positive to life, you become stronger in your ability to reflect what is positive.
Reflection, therefore, is a natural and completely logical process. It is a little different than your concept of a mirror reflecting light, for in reflecting light the mirror does not increase in its capacity to reflect light. The mirror is a passive reflection. Your souls engage in active reflection, reflection that continues and strengthens and reaches out in ever wider circles.
When you contemplate the tragedies of loss of life that all would seem to be too early, it is easy to feel that somehow an injustice has been committed. It is easy to ask, “Where is God that such a loss could be permitted?” But think for a moment about the meaning of reflection. A life that may, according to some measurements, be brief has in effect freed the soul to reflect ever brighter. That soul may select another chance for human life in order to increase its ability to reflect, to emanate the warmth of unconditional love.
Death of any kind is a freeing of the soul. It is a removal of the filter. That is one way that a soul learns to fly. Other souls learn to fly because of the efforts of the human being to which they are attached. You, as living human beings, have a direct bearing on your soul’s ability to increase its reflections. By providing a window of recognition that God exists, that the spiritual world flourishes and is infinite, you are actually increasing the intensity of the light focused on your soul. An example of this is a lens, a magnifying glass, any prism that serves to focus light upon an object. Your awareness of God, your awareness of your guides, your desire for more meaningful life actually is like a prism. It takes God’s light and focuses it with even greater intensity upon your soul. Because the light that enters the soul is more intense, its ability to reflect such brilliance outward is enhanced.
The same prism that focuses light on a particular point can be moved such that it diffuses and weakens the light at a particular point. It is precisely the same with your physical human lives. Each of you has the power to strengthen the intensity of God’s light upon your souls or to diffuse that intensity. So your relationship between God’s light and your soul’s ability to reflect is very direct. How do you know whether you are enhancing the light that reaches your soul or diffusing that light? You know through your attitudes. If you greet life around you with a loving patience and a compassionate nature, you are enhancing that light, for that is the nature of the soul. If you approach your lives with skepticism, fear, doubt, anger, jealousy—all of these negative forces serve to diffuse the strength of such light that is approaching your lives, so that this light is unable to penetrate sufficiently to bring new intensity and new reflection of your own souls.
You therefore have an important role to play in your soul’s development. You can diffuse God’s light; you can focus it. You can allow the light of your souls to emanate outward, or you can restrict and confine that light, all being done through your own attitude toward others. A restricted soul is by no means a soul whose light has become dimmer. The light remains. It is only the impact of that light through the human form that is in some way restricted.
As you move among others, you must be aware of the potential you have for allowing the brilliance of your soul to move outward so that it may enter the brilliance of the soul of another human being. Souls reflecting light to other souls—that is really what life can be. That is what our life is entirely.
You have much to give one another. You have much to share with one another. We urge you to open those channels of reflection, allowing God’s light to penetrate your soul and allowing your soul to penetrate life around you. It is a beautiful relationship, one that ultimately leads to compassion and a loving peace that enhances and gives value and affirms all human beings. It is at times like these that you are especially open to God’s light penetrating through to your souls. It is a kind of magic moment, for your lives often are so occupied that such channels are not always open. Know what it feels like to be open. Know what it feels like to sense that warmth. Bathe in it, be consumed by it, and be ready to share that life, that light, that essence that is your spiritual center. You will then be living a life as God would have it, and you will be giving your lives permanent meaning and relevance.
You are blessed by that light that penetrates into your spiritual core and you are blessed when you allow that light to be reflected outward. It is a great blessing, for you are aware of this, and so many have yet to learn. God bestows upon each of you the enormous warmth of a compassionate, nonjudgmental, all-inclusive love.
Amen.