March 14, 2006
The loving spirit that you refer to as God surrounds your souls and your human form with great love and a penetrating peace that gives comfort, that strengthens and refreshes.
You come to the experience of knowing God with many questions, with many fears, and also with joy and with peace. It is at times like these when you settle back and listen and learn that you begin to experience a part of the peace that is an integral part of our life, for as we communicate with you we communicate not only through words and ideas. We communicate also through peace. It is our loving responsibility and choice to provide each of you with an understanding of peace, but it is also important for you to learn and to grow, to allow yourselves to be peaceful. You cannot fully connect spiritually with us as you are now connected unless you acknowledge a place of peace in your lives that you can now occupy.
Our lives are characterized in your terms as being filled with peace—peace that is all-pervasive, peace that is constantly present. When we experienced human lives, our lives, although different in some ways, were essentially no different from yours. The details were of course other, but in substance they were the same. We laughed and cried, we experienced much joy, we experienced much sadness. We experienced desires, we sought fulfillment, we sought understanding. We valued relationships, we found ourselves in disagreement with others. We experienced anger, greed, jealousy. We experienced compassion. We experienced what it means to be loved, and we were often loving. So our experience as human beings, in substance, was the same as yours.
You wonder then if we remember those experiences or whether they are removed from our current consciousness. The answer is a resounding, “Yes, we remember our lives!” We remember all our experiences, for part of our growth is experiencing again in our memory, in our consciousness, that which was human, for we can learn much from that reality. You know the purpose of human life is ultimately spiritual growth, but how does that growth take place if there is no recollection, for in the process of experiencing human life, we often missed what it was that we must learn. Living in the spiritual plane of reality, it is easy for us to draw from that human past and carry that life to a new level of understanding that results in compassion and truly nonjudgmental love.
For individuals whose lives are not characterized as being compassionate, as being loving, for those lives that were primarily self-serving, souls who join us have difficulty in understanding the relevance of their new energy, their new life-form. Our awareness of what it means to be godly is for some immediate, but for other souls, more reflection of their human life is necessary.
Each of you must learn the same lessons. You either learn them in human life, or subsequently you must learn them in spiritual form. Regardless of the condition by which you learn, the lessons are a part of the common experience of all. When a soul joins our side, All That Is, all that is meant by love is immediately present. This does not mean that all souls can fully grasp that reality, but that reality is evident. We learn, we develop, we pass through stages of spiritual growth, as you do. But that growth is essentially a growth in our understanding of what it is that we immediately see. There is no veil, there is no barrier, there is no wall that separates who we are as spirits from the ultimate love, the ultimate compassion, the ultimate presence that is God. But just as a baby is aware of surroundings without necessarily an understanding, so it is that a soul who joins us initially is aware of all that is love, but the understanding must evolve. It is a process. For some souls, a reflection of their human lives is appropriate and helpful. For others who are unable to draw from that experience, the learning continues by rejoining human life, by reincarnating, but the lessons still are to be learned.
So in answer to your concerns or interests in whether we are aware of pure love or whether that awareness is revealed gradually, we are aware of this immediately, but we are not fully understanding of it. As a result, souls learn through experiencing. Souls learn what it means to evolve into love because they all experience unconditional love. It is not unlike a school with various academic levels. You grow, you evolve, you gain more insight, more understanding. You reach a higher level of perception and depth, and the process continues.
You wonder about a kind of guidepost, an anchor, a beacon, some indication of what you must do in human life in order to be more fully prepared to join our side. It is true, there is much diversity even within unity. The more unified you become as human beings in your relationships with one another, the more you also are aware of the differences that surround you.
The question was raised about scriptures, about whether such writings, such thought is essential to all human beings in order to live a godly life. Each of you is different. Each of you resonates differently to life around you. For each of you, there are certain elements of life that are more important than others. It does not mean they are more important, but rather that they are more important to you according to your own perceptions. The Bible is not a collection of infallible, undeniable truths and nothing more. That document is the result of many interpreting their own spiritual reality.
What then do you look for, given the diversity but acknowledging your unity? Quite simply, you look for what components are presented that have relevance to your own objectives of living a life reflective of God. Your reflective life will change in character as your perception changes, and therefore you draw upon the scriptures as you may need them. For some, the writings carry great importance. They are indeed relevant. For others, that importance is less critical, and that is okay. You draw from the well as you are thirsty, not because it is your duty. You draw from the well because it is relevant to you at a given moment. If you are thirsty, water has more importance than if you are fully satisfied with no thirst. If you are hungry, you seek food as part of your nourishment. If you are no longer hungry, the food holds less importance to your wishes. Therefore, what is offered through any scriptures, for any set of religious beliefs, is given meaning as a result of the needs that are acknowledged.
There is no one single source that must be pursued, for such singularity negates the value of ideas and concepts out of that conviction. All sources are valid. All documents that relate to a life that is loving and that acknowledge a form of energy that is total love are valid. All sources. It is not uncommon to change the sources one seeks as one’s needs change. It is not a single source that is the issue. It is your commitment to seeking which is crucial. You grow only because you need what is available for growth. You don’t grow merely because something is available.
As you continue your human lives, it is important that you acknowledge what is important for you at this moment. What is it you seek? What is it that your lives are missing from your own perspective? Knowing what it is you need, you are more able to identify means of responding to those needs in a direct and productive fashion.
Human life is to be lived. It is to be stretched. It is to be challenged. To be human is to have needs, and it is in the recognition of those needs that you ultimately discover sources for their fulfillment. You have a need to be loving and you must find opportunities where you can experience what it means to be loved. In so doing, you will find the sources necessary to become loving. But if you have no recognized need to become loving, the sources that are around you have no meaning, have no relevance, have no connection to you whatsoever. They are there but you do not see.
We feel it is essential for all of you to find ways of expressing nonjudgmental, nonself-oriented or directed love. If you are committed to being loving, then you are being committed to an exercise of your understanding of God. There is nothing more that can be asked of you. As you journey through life, that understanding will change. It will become broader, it will become more inclusive in all ways. Grasp onto all that life offers and be assured of its value. Be assured of its necessity in your growth, and realize that it is those challenges that you face that provide you with a perspective that means a full embracing of the loving spirits that are constantly with you, and it means a full acceptance of the loving spirits when you join us.
You are surrounded by God’s love. You are surrounded by your guides. Be open to their presence. Be open to their support, and be ever desirous to reflect that openness toward all that you encounter. You are loved, you are learning to be loving, and you are a part of that journey to becoming Love. What a great transformation you share with one another! It is a transformation that binds you permanently to the totality of God’s creation.
Rejoice in those connections. Find joy every day. Find ways to give thanks every day. No days are filled entirely with pleasure, but every day contains something from God that you can recognize. Embrace that vision and let it guide you always.
Amen.