February 8, 2010
God, your Creator, your Protector, the Force of love, of balance, of light, surrounds each of you and all that has been created, uplifting, providing peace, providing balance.
This is a particularly important juncture in the progress of the human condition. While there is in no sense a specific date, as you would measure it, after which humanity ceases strife and lives with a commitment toward harmony, it is nevertheless a kind of turning point of attention. There is untold suffering beyond your intellectual awareness in terms of time and space, and yet it is also true that many are being drawn toward the truth that frees each of you toward a life of compassion and nonjudgmental love. When you are aware of suffering and pain and loss, your response is compassionate, your response is sadness, your response is, at times, guilt. But all of these responses are part of the experience of interacting with those whose lives surround your very existence.
You do not live on an island. You do not live alone. You do not live in some way separate from others, and yet you can live at times unaware, but that unawareness does not mean you are indeed separated. The unawareness you experience is the imbalance that we speak of. But as your lives emerge from that unawareness by whatever means, you find yourselves reaching out through prayer or action of some kind in an attempt to bolster, to support, to uphold, to protect, to caress, to be loving, to be compassionate.
The peace that we speak of so often can be characterized by your loving response to another. You cannot easily be loving if you are not at peace. You cannot give to another if you have nothing to give. If you are filled with anger, you cannot fully give in love. Your awareness of yourselves and your awareness of others in achieving this peaceful balance is necessary. It is ultimately what governs your lives.
Humanity is indeed moving slowly toward a balance, moving slowly toward an awareness of what it means to know and then to act upon what you know, to recognize when there is need and then to act according to your recognition. Being loving is what life truly is about, but you do not act with love, with compassion if you cannot see in what direction that love and compassion must be presented. You cannot be compassionate if your lives are perceived as being alone. You can only be compassionate when you are aware of its need. You cannot be loving unless it is directed outside of the self. That requires a recognition of that external reality—the presence of another, the need of another, the suffering of another, the joy of another.
You can act with loving compassion towards someone who is filled with joy for the reason that no life is totally consumed in joy. You cannot lose hope because no life is totally consumed by darkness. A loving life, a compassionate life is always needed. Every human being needs the compassionate presence of another, regardless of what kind of life is being perceived. You reach out to others for the simple reason that they exist.
If you are aware of another, then be aware there is need for loving presence. There is need for compassion. There is need for uplift. Every human being grows through being loved. Every human being grows through the act of being loving. At such times when there is heightened awareness of great human need, humankind is asked to respond, and in that response, every individual learns to relate the need for a similar response one-on-one. It is not merely when millions suffer. It is because all human beings have needs to which you can respond.
Everyone has an ability to respond, but that does not mean everyone can respond at any given moment. When the cup is empty, you cannot nourish, you cannot refresh. You may wish to, but it cannot be done. When the cup is empty, it must be filled. That filling of the cup is done by others. Yes, you have your own responsibility to your own life, but when you are in great need, it is others that respond, and in time you are filled again and ready to reach out to others in need.
This reaching out to others is, in its own way, an attempt at balance. It is the effort that is the realization of God’s presence. This balance, then, is an expression from one to another. Such an outreach is individual, corporate, communal, national, international. It is an effort to create a presence that is more equally divided in terms of light or dark, in terms of hope or despair, health/illness, joy/sadness. It is the balance that is the property of all.
You wonder about the balance of inanimate objects—wood, stone—but you also recognize the reality of a molecular space. The balance that is sought can be a balance of emotion. It can be a balance of matter. Everything that exists consists of molecules and atoms and smaller particles. The smallest particle nevertheless contains a flow of energy, and that flow of energy seeks an equilibrium. It may be a chemical equilibrium, it may be an electrical equilibrium, but this balance exists in a microscopic space. This space is meaningless except as it relates to balance. You are made up of much space, but that space seeks its own equilibrium. A stone has much space, but the particles of that stone move toward an equilibrium. There is always motion—motion of particles, motion of energy—and that motion seeks the balance.
When two children play on a seesaw and they finally achieve a balance, motion ceases and all is peaceful. If one child gets off the apparatus, motion is resumed and imbalance dominates.
The peace you seek in life, the peace that God wishes for all human beings, is that peace of awareness—an awareness surrounded by faith, an awareness characterized by peace, balance, recognition of other states, recognition of what is sad in the presence of joy and what is joyful in the presence of sadness. You never escape either extreme, but you seek a balance.
To understand the true nature of suffering, you must understand the true nature of joy, for without joy, suffering dominates and controls and stifles and overwhelms. Joy with no understanding of a counterbalance is foolhardy and ultimately shallow. Why is it in life that you experience joy? You experience it because joy brings hope, and when you are filled with anxiety, the recognition of hope gives strength and is the real core of faith. You can have faith that life will bring positive energy only when you have experienced positive energy and know how it feels and what it can do. But if you have never experienced the positive, then you have little to view that gives comfort when you are pulled down by imbalance.
Faith is not a firm belief in something never having been evidenced as real. Faith is an acknowledgment that what is real and good will ultimately prevail. It is a belief in a reality that has been experienced at some level enough that you know that such reality exists. It is for this reason that you should welcome what brings joy, for it is in its acknowledgment that you are given strength for your own journey and for the journey of others.
You have faith in God because you have experienced the presence of your spirit guides. You do not have faith in God merely because someone says there is a God. You have faith in the reality of God because you sense at moments in your life that very presence. You are loving only because you have experienced what love is. You are compassionate only because you have experienced what compassion is. You are aware personally of suffering only because you have experienced suffering. That which human beings associate as terrible components of life are in reality precisely what it is that can motivate you to be the hand of God, and in the process you become God.
You are all God collectively. Seek out your opportunities for being godly. Draw upon your experiences in life that they will provide strength and direction and peace. You are blessed in that wonderful peace and vision and faith.
Amen.