September 8, 2003
You are with God intimately, personally and permanently. You always have been with God. None of you has experienced, in this life or another, a time when you were virtually alone.
The concept of loneliness is a human-made concept that has no bearing whatsoever to the truth. When individuals feel separated and lonely, they are aware of a breakdown of communications between friends, family, colleagues. The cause of the loneliness is that breakdown. It is not being separated from others. How often children experience what they say is loneliness and separation, when in fact the parents love them very deeply. It is their perception that has broken down. It is the communication between child and parent that has suffered, but the love of parent for child continues. It is exactly that which occurs when individuals feel somehow removed from their own surroundings. You may be deeply valued, deeply loved and respected, but if you create a barrier around you, for whatever reason, those relationships are incapable of penetrating and reaching you.
You are given your human lives to learn, to grow, to assimilate, to expand God’s love. That is why you experience a consciousness that leads you to question your relationship to God. That relationship is dependent solely upon your sensitivity to what lies beyond, be that the presence of God or the presence of another human being. Severing the means of communication only creates the perception of being alone. No one is alone—that is a fact. You all can be engaged with others in the pursuit of shared goals or objectives.
You seek an increase in your faith. Sharing in that search results in acquiring greater faith. The cleric who believes the way of salvation to be paved alone is, in fact, not alone, for that individual is accompanied in principle by others who share the same belief. So even in your efforts to be alone, if that is your means of knowing God, those efforts are shared by others. The fact that those efforts are shared denies the very principle of being alone.
You seek a greater view, vision, of God, and you’re joined by many others in that same pursuit. Your lives are blessed because of what you share. Your lives are enhanced by your awareness of others on the same path. There is therefore no truth to being alone.
What does this have to do with your relationship to your soul, to your understanding of the beginning of that relationship? Simply put, your asking the question and sharing in the asking of that question means that you are all tied together in a common search for greater understanding. You are connected spiritually, you are connected because you seek. The answers that you receive may differ from individual to individual, but you are nevertheless seeking an understanding that has meaning in your own lives.
When are you given a soul? Many ask, many wonder, many laws are created and then repealed, and created again and repealed again because of differences in understanding of when human life, the spirit, is at work together. You are given a soul as you are conceived. But the implications that society draws upon “the beginning of soul presence in life,” far exaggerate what is intended.
Your understanding of soul evolves very slowly. A child is not aware of soul, but a child is, in a very clear way, aware of some kind of life preceding its human life. It is not necessarily labeled as spiritual life, but as a fetus develops the brain and mental processes begin, and there is a slow recognition that life of self exists. There is no flash of recognition that suddenly one becomes conscious of life beginning. The evolution of that consciousness is gradual and continuous.
There are many questions related to ending the life of a fetus. Is it moral? Does it somehow reflect God? Is it cruel? Is it equivalent to killing a young child or a grown adult? It is a dilemma for all societies. Everyone must develop a perspective that is in keeping with one’s sense of God. We do not wish to say that all abortion is acceptable or unacceptable, for that is a matter for every individual to grapple with and ultimately to feel at peace. What we can say, and what must be understood, is that human life, spiritual life, begins at conception when that life is associated with an evolving human being. It is also important to acknowledge that the spirit that is a part of that human life has existed for an eternity, and that spirit will continue to exist for an eternity. The spirit is not quenched, the spiritual life is not ended when a fetus is no longer viable. The spirit continues.
The decision is a very personal one. There is no absolute position that can be taken. There are those who will not consume red meat. There are those for whom the consumption of meat is not a great difficulty. There are those who will consume no flesh but will find sustenance only from the plant world. For them, that is the correct decision, the correct path to follow. That path may change. The one who insists on plant nourishment may change and consume other nourishment. Those who have found meat acceptable will perhaps change and only consume vegetative matter. There is no right or wrong procedure. It is only what seems fitting for the individual.
It must always be your guiding principle to avoid inflicting pain on another at all costs when possible. There is no justification for causing another to suffer. Does a fetus suffer in an abortion? It depends on the kind of abortion. It depends on the development of the nervous system of the fetus. It is not possible to say “yes, pain is experienced, no matter what.” Is there reaction? There is reaction. All organisms react when invaded by something from the outside. Is that reaction pain? It is not necessarily so.
We say to you, “Don’t kill. No war is just.” What does that mean? It means you are not to cause pain to another human being. Pain may be physical, but often and more profoundly, the pain can be emotional. It can be personal. It is for this reason we say you must uplift and affirm and strengthen and be compassionate and nonjudgmental in your love of others, for no pain is associated with affirmation. No pain is connected with an expression of love. No pain is offered another when you try to be supportive, affirming.
Each of you, then, should be guided in your activities in ways that avoid creating pain whenever possible. There are, of course, those instances where treatment, medical treatment, may actually result in some pain being presented, but the objective is still an alleviation of that pain, a lifting up of the other person.
War is the infliction of pain on others for self-advancement. War is never defensive. You may feel you must bear arms to defend yourselves, but inflicting pain on others is not a defense. Your relationships towards others can never be motivated by the infliction of pain. Any relationship that is carried on at the expense of another is wrong.
What, then, can you learn about the massive infliction of pain upon others in the name of war or in the name of defense? You can learn the futility of domination of one over another. The boat sails through the seas because the crew works together. If one portion of the crew puts down, denigrates, reduces the effectiveness of another portion of that crew, the ship does not have a full component of crew that is necessary to move forward. War is not an answer. It never has been. It never will be an appropriate answer. But it is a part of the human experience and always will be.
What do you learn from war? You learn the sacredness of your enemy, for one of the results of war is an acknowledgment of its tragedy and its waste and its misuse of human energy. Nations at war are always wiser at the end. There is always a sense of the tragedy. There is never complete acknowledgment of the vindication of war’s results. So there is much that can be learned. Human life is sacred. All life is sacred.
The question was raised this evening about the evolution of human beings, and whether or not their souls inhabit other animal forms before or after human life. The answer is clearly no, they do not. The soul that each has exists only in human form. But the soul in its truest expression values, acknowledges, and reinforces the sacredness of all God’s creation. It is true, other animals love, accept being loved. They care for others. But that is not the same as the human soul or spirit. Loving behavior teaches what it means to be loving. You learn to be loving because you have been loved. In the case of domestic pets, you are loved by domestic pets. You learn what it means to be loved and you are more capable of becoming loving. There is much you can learn from the nonhuman world. It is this trait that helps differentiate your spiritual entities from the sacred energies of other life-forms. Your souls are permanent just as the energy of all that has been created is permanent.
Each of you has received an awareness. You have choices to accept what you are aware of or to reject it. You are aware of the concept of God’s presence. You can accept it, you can deny it, but the concept is there. No other animal form has that kind of awareness, and it is that awareness which serves as a manifestation of your spiritual self. A young child may not manifest the spirit, but as that child develops, the awareness also develops.
You have been given great insight and will continue to be given such insight. But it is true that the insight you have means you have a greater responsibility to respond with that insight. It is a gift that each of you has, but that gift of insight is not a free gift. It comes with a price tag. There is a cost, and the cost is your obligation to live as you believe, to live as you understand, and to be willing to be committed to those beliefs as long as you have them. Your understandings evolve, they change, and with those changes come changes in your own lives. That is progress; that is part of the rhythm of human life.
As you receive more love from others, it is easier to feel more loving. As your capacity to be loving expands, your life will change in direction and reflect that new capacity. Life is to be experienced. The purpose of life is to learn. It is for the evolution, the growth of your soul. When a young child perishes, that soul is not lost for that soul will enter a new human life and lessons will be learned. And when that human life-form is finished, if there are still lessons to be learned, the soul enters yet another life. You are all but shells, housing for your soul. Your physical lives, though they are evident and important to you, are temporary, impermanent. They only provide a means for your soul to expand through human interaction. That is what you learn. When a soul has learned the lessons that can only be achieved through human life, that soul is all-loving. That soul is patient. That soul is nonjudgmental.
We have gone through the experiences that you have. We know what it is like to be discouraged, to be worried, to be anxious, to be joyful, to bereave, to be jealous, for those were part of the lessons that we needed to experience. Your guides are totally selfless. Your guides are the energy of complete love. Your guides are never impatient. Your guides are never vengeful. There is no jealousy. There is no anger. There is only great peace and astounding joy, for we have learned the lessons that you are learning. For some of us, those lessons were learned through multiple lives. For others, those lessons were learned in one life. But it is unimportant how many lives it took. And in the end, it was unimportant whether our human lives were short or long. It is what we learned that counted. It is what you learn in your lives that counts.
We ask you, therefore, to be open. First, to the goodness and love you experience from others—human beings and nonhuman beings. And then, to give freely of your love, to give freely of your God-spirit, that it may indeed uplift and enhance and affirm.
You are loved by God because you have always been loved by God. Your souls respond to God’s light because your souls have always responded to God’s light. Be willing to make choices—the choices that have as their foundation your understanding of God, your understanding of the sacred entity that is within each of you.
Believe in others.
Be true to all others.
Be true to yourselves.
Be true to your souls.
We bless you with that truth. We bless you with an eternal love and an abiding peace that can surround you, sustain you, uplift and affirm each one of you.
Amen.