July 22, 2008
God uplifts and embraces each of you with loving, peaceful and affirming light.
What each of you speaks to is actually about light. It is about light that illuminates your paths and also the paths of others. If you travel along your own path and see what is ahead, you can adjust your actions to whatever best fits the demands of the journey.
You ask about the spiritual stages that we go through. You ask about the healing that is needed. You ask about feeling close to a loved one who has joined us—what does it mean? Each of these concerns comes down to vision and light.
When you are given human life, you are not presented with alternatives to be considered on your journey in total darkness. You cannot decide which way to go unless you can see the options and sense the potentials that each option holds. You cannot contemplate details of our own lives collectively without applying that insight into your own daily experiences, for without such transferal, knowing about our lives has no purpose. There is nothing that we share with you that has meaning outside of how you live your own lives. All that we share is offered in love and with the support that enables you to apply what you learn every day.
There are many stages to our spiritual development. The specifics of each stage are in themselves of little importance outside of curiosity. But what is important, first of all, to acknowledge is that when you join us, your development does not cease. You grow in your awareness of God’s presence. You grow in your vision. You grow in your understanding of what it means to live a life centered totally upon Spirit. There is nothing else that is permanent. It is this growth that is the destiny of all human beings.
Your guides are not limited to the first stage or sphere of growth, but can also come from other spheres of love. Eventually as guides progress through these spheres of development, there is less attachment to the human condition and more focus upon the God Center, the Spirit Center, the Energy Center, the Creator…however you wish to identify this force.
When spirits join us, they join at the initial level of spiritual growth. Some are ready to proceed on their continued journey of development. Others are consumed by questioning: why aren’t they alive, as they assume life must be? Some souls find great difficulty in accepting their new life, for it is wider, it is broader, it is deeper, it is more loving, it is more brilliant, it is more powerful than what was experienced in human form. With no preparation of thought about the next level of life, those souls that join us initially have no perspective for understanding what is now their own universe of awareness. It can take, in human terms, many years before a soul feels ready to stand up and walk toward the Light. But each soul is accompanied by a guide. You do not just have a guide when you live as human beings. All new arrivals are accompanied by the chief guide who was with them in their human existence. The relationship of guide and spirit is much more intense, much more immediate on our side of life than yours.
The learning takes place, but the learning is never imposed. It is a natural process. One learns as one is able to learn. One learns specifically what is best to be learned at the current stage of that soul’s development. It is not a horse race! There is no sense of hurry. There is no sense of pressure. There is no sense of rejection if what is learned comes slowly. There is only a sense that a growth takes place.
On this first plane, souls are aware of the reality of a universe beyond the understanding of human beings. It is a universe beyond the description afforded by science. The soul on the first stage is aware of many more life-forms than were experienced as human beings. The sense of Life with a capital “L” is greatly enhanced and the vision to embrace that view is strengthened, is nurtured, is developed. That’s what takes time, as you would call it. For us, it is not a matter of time. It is only a matter of growth. There are no fast learners and slow learners. All souls learn. They develop as they develop. They mature as they mature. They evolve to subsequent spheres of development as they evolve. There is no sense of some being faster than others. They just develop.
Your guides are generally spirits who are in the early stages of their transition through the many spheres that lead to oneness with God. This does not mean they are somehow less experienced, less insightful, for what you need to learn is easily seen by all guides. Not every soul becomes a guide. Some souls join us at a very high level and the commitment is solely to a union with God. There is no sense of the past, no sense of the human experience. What was learned becomes a part of what is. What is is not conceived as being the result of what was.
You understand the meaning of living in the present. All souls live only in the present, for that is all there is. There is no past, there is no future, there is only the present. You grow as you grow, you learn as you learn, but since there is no future, there is no gauge to measure how quickly the learning takes place. It is not possible for human beings to fully grasp this reality, and yet all human beings ultimately experience it. It is why we can say that all souls are joined together. All souls are in contact with all souls. We say so often that when you pray for another, the soul of that individual is very visible to us, for as you pray, the soul strengthens its radiance, and we see that. Prayer is energy, and there is energy that is positive and energy that is negative. What affirms and unites is positive. What criticizes and divides is negative. It is not for your own guide or for you to criticize and to somehow separate one from another. The growth that is needed is always through support, through uplifting, through a commitment to what you would understand as all things positive.
Jane wonders about her sister. There is no question that the spirit of her sister is with Jane. But what is even more true is that that closeness, that presence of the spirit is not what has become closer. It is Jane’s consciousness and her awareness of spirit that allows her to feel particularly close at this time. Her spirit has not reincarnated, but that will happen and Jane will recognize that presence when it is appropriate. She can have full faith that the spirit of her sister will be reunited with her own soul. What’s more, Jane’s guide will help affirm and strengthen that recognition. [Ed: “Jane’s” sister died suddenly as a young woman many years ago.]
Reincarnation does not occur immediately. It does not necessarily occur within the human measurement of one lifespan. It occurs when it is appropriate. It will happen when it is best to happen.
You talked this evening about patience. For us, patience is not something we pursue because patience exists within a framework of time. Time is a human construct, but in essence really does not exist. Without time there is no context for patience, for all that is, is. All that will be, will be. It all occurs in the present. We have no concept of past, present, future. We only see what is. We see faith. We see hope. We see worry. We see suffering. We see peace. We see joy. We see faith in a strong light, a light that embraces all other emotions.
Faith is the most powerful emotion that leads to love. If you have faith, you can feel loved. You can feel loving. If you have no faith, then all efforts to be loving appear to be empty, and anything which occurs in life that is seen as negative is then self-affirming. With no faith, all that is negative seems to justify continuing to reject faith. You must have faith to accept love and to give it, for faith is a belief in a change in the energy that is positive and affirming. You may not feel positive. You may not feel affirmed, but you have faith that somehow you may experience that. When you feel loved, you feel that a path has been illuminated that you may take that carries you forward to the goal that you seek. Faith provides a context for all that is possible, for all that is positive, for all that is loving. You speak of creating your own reality. Without faith the reality is empty.
How do you persevere at times in your lives when you are surrounded by what is dark, what is negative, what produces fear? You survive because you believe in the possibility of what is good, what is loving, what is light. You may not know how to get there, but you believe somehow that that goal can be achieved. Having that belief, you are more willing to recognize the loving help of others. How do you persevere? You do not persevere alone. You ultimately persevere through the interaction that you have with others. You persevere because others offer you strength and it is through that strength that you are in turn illuminated and are able to see your next steps on your own path to development. In a way, you can say to persevere means you must be vulnerable, for if you are certain there is no way out, losing hope, losing the possibility for light, then you block through that position the efforts of others that helps to move you forward.
All human beings experience a feeling of being lost. All human beings witness others who appear to be lost. Your concerns are part of what it means to be human beings, but how you endure, how you persevere in those moments is through your ability to become vulnerable, putting down your walls, your defenses, so that others may join you on your path. You do not pull yourself out of agony on your own. You ultimately can only do this through the intervention, the cooperation, the compassion, the giving, the uplifting, the supporting of others.
When you are down and you try to divert your attention to something that provides joy, you are making yourselves vulnerable to that which is around you that is joy. You can only allow into your lives according to your capacity for destroying what blocks that which is outside of your human existence. If you build walls, the walls may keep you in, but they keep others out. If you are filled with fear and defensiveness, you are constructing walls that are nearly impenetrable. By destroying the wall or at least weakening it, you are allowing yourselves the vulnerability that permits the light from the outside to enter in and illuminate your path.
You are given life to live. You are given life to experience joy. You are given life to be challenged. You are given life to suffer at some level. You are given life to experience all that is shared by every human being. None of you are special. None of you are unique and for whom it is unnecessary to experience what is negative. Your lives void of the negative only occur on our side. There is no negative for us. There is only love. There is only light. There is only affirmation. There is only a loving support. There is only a loving connection to All That Is.
We are able to see the energies of life-forms, of universes that are undetectable by human beings. We do not need to be at the top spiritual plane in order to peer out across the plane. We see the plane clearly. We see what is real. We see the direct creation of God. Our journey is not one of vision but one of understanding. It is one thing to see what God has created. It is something very different to understand what has been created. You see much of what is created, and you understand little. As you progress spiritually in human life and on our side, your understanding of what has been created deepens and broadens. Be accepting and rejoice in your understandings, and when such understanding appears limited, accept that limitation. Likewise, accept the progression of your understanding, and have faith that that understanding will lead you to a richer, more profound, more loving existence.
God is with you. God is with us. God is with all that has been created. There is nothing that exists that is not related to what God creates. That creation continues. It is not something that happened, in your terms, a long time ago. You are a part of the continuum of God’s creation, and as a result you are connected permanently to that continuum. There is nothing you can do to pull yourself away from that creative line. You are a part of that line. You are as much a part of that line as anything else.
Human beings are not special. They were not created to rule the world, as is often believed. You are created with your own purpose, but so is the smallest plant, the smallest animal, the smallest stone that has been refined in its own creative process. All belong to this continuous progression, and therefore all are connected.
Rejoice in your connection to the stone! Be loving in your connection to all human beings. And be faithful so that you may be vulnerable. Accept being loved so that you can become more loving. And have faith that in becoming loving, you are ultimately becoming Love.
Amen.