August 18, 2011

• Balance requires the positive and negative of life

• There is value in all that exists

• Every individual moves toward God

God is indeed a part of every moment of your lives. You are always embraced by God’s light, by God’s presence. At no time are you left behind. At no time are you left alone. You are in the view of God, just as those whom you love are in your view.

Life brings with it for each person challenges, moments of joy, moments of fear, moments of pleasure, moments of suffering. You wonder about the presence, the function, the importance, the relevance of God when all seems dark and when things seem without hope. God is with you in those moments, just as lovingly as when you are filled with gratitude and thanksgiving. God is with you in those moments of darkness in equal measure to when you experience moments of great balance in your lives.

If God loves you, why are you allowed to experience the darkness in the midst of the reality that is fully Light? As was mentioned, there is a naturalness, a sense of connection, a rhythm that belongs to all that exists. You may feel at times there is disorder and unrestrained chaos, but the truth is that all that happens, all that exists, exists because there is God. It is not God that creates the storm, but it is because of God that storms exist. It is not that God wishes you to experience pain, but rather pain exists because God exists.

The events that occur in life are the result of the natural rhythm of what has been created. When you experience pain, the pain is not a random entity that suddenly exists. Pain is a signal that there is some kind of imbalance. This pain may be a physical pain, it may be an emotional/psychological pain, but clearly the pain is evidence of imbalance that may occur.

All that happens in life is a function of the reality that creation is taking place, creation has taken place, creation will take place. Creation is never static. Creation evolves, and it is because of the existence of God that there is creation. You belong to that system of all that exists, and part of that system is consonant—part of that system is dissonant. Consonance has no meaning without the presence of dissonance. Both are required for the music of life. Both are required for balance. Balance is never achieved when all of the weight is on one side of a fulcrum. Balance is when there are forces that seemingly are opposing one another, but in reality create a sense of stability. You cannot have balance without the fulcrum. You cannot have balance without the scale that measures that balance, and it is God that creates the system that allows for balance to occur.

There are of course opposing forces in life, but those opposing forces belong. Human existence is never a journey in a straight line. You are always pulled in one direction and then another direction, but that countering of energies is what ultimately ensures the final stability that we all seek. That stability is a total union with God, such that you are fully God. You are fully faith. You achieve the peace. You become the peace. It is God’s intention that there will always be forces that counter one another— the positive, the negative. The actions of an atomic particle, the electric charges of an atomic particle are all part of the balance. What brings joy, what brings sadness are part of that balance.

Yes, there is lots of suffering, and you may feel that it is somehow cruel when anyone suffers, but that suffering serves a purpose far greater than the individual awareness. If you are a particle with negative energy, you may perceive life as being negative. If you are a particle that is positive energy, you might perceive the reality as being only positive, but both the negative and positive particles complement one another. They provide an identity to the element being studied.

You are given a kind of personal identity through your experience of what is positive and what is negative. You are given strength, you are given perspective, you are ultimately given humility, and out of that humility you are given love. Love flourishes only through humility. Humility is never achieved without an understanding of what seems negative, and yet can be viewed within a greater perspective that acknowledges the positive. You become humble when you recognize your own shortcomings, when you recognize your own sufferings, and identify the reality that those sufferings are no different from others, that you are not singled out to be special in some unique and elevating manner. When you realize that your lives are touched by the same forces that touch all other lives, that you and another are really equal, acknowledging that equality is the first step to becoming loving, and that step is achieved through the humility of which we speak. If many who were around you suffer, and you perceive your life to be free of any suffering, you will not achieve the humility that is necessary in order to become loving, and ultimately to become Love.

So your experience of pain, your recognition of the pain of others contributes to your sense of absolute equality. Becoming loving requires an experiencing of what may seem negative to you. You don’t become loving just through happiness. You experience happiness by becoming loving, and that happiness is experienced through an acknowledgment of the importance of all varieties of life—achievement, failure, joy, sadness, health, illness, confidence, discouragement, courage, fear. The list is unending, but this contrast of positive and negative resides permanently in importance as you grow in spirit.

You hate to see the suffering of others, and you easily ask, “Where can God be to allow something so horrible to happen?” But if you step back and realize that your experience of life is only a part of the totality of creation, then you are on your way to accepting what life gives you, accepting the experiences that are yours as gifts. So often we say you learn through the challenges, and yet it is often felt, “I have enough challenges. I don’t want more. The learning has to rest. The challenges must cease.” The human spirit can be fatigued by challenges. The human spirit can be pulled down by whatever is perceived as negative. But if you accept that all which takes place occurs because God exists, then you are on the path toward experiencing reality on a far greater plane.

It is because God Is that you are. It is also because God Is that all happens. Your lives are not specially determined as being created by God in opposition to what else may exist, for there is no opposition. There is nothing that exists that has not been created by the Spirit Center that is God. Because it has been created, there is purpose, there is value. From your perspective, you may not see that purpose. You may not acknowledge its value. All you see is a countering force. All you see is the other side of the fulcrum. All you see is the other side of the scale, the balance. But God creates the balance that is necessary.

You seek peace, and that is a condition of seeking, of moving toward, but in that seeking you recognize that there is a reality that is labeled as peace, and therefore you see yourself seeking what is a reality. But the counterbalance to peace is also a reality. Does God intend individuals to fight in wars? Specifically “no,” but God creates human beings who grow and whose souls experience the challenges of human life. That growth is never in a straight line, but that growth is assured. The direction of that path of growth may at times wander into conflict with others. God does not wish the conflict, but God ordains the process of growth. When there is war, when there is strife, when there is any discord, that discord is a lack of balance in the process of growth. For growth to be achieved, there must be detours, and those wrong turns in life invariably conflict with the paths of others.

What is happening for every human being is growth. There is some measure of movement toward God in virtually every life, even when you consider individuals who seem the very embodiment of evil. God ordains growth. It is God’s will, as felt by many, that growth must be achieved. Growth is a process. The process is necessary. When there is conflict, when there is destruction of the natural environment, when there is anything that is perceived as being negative, that action is still a function of growth at some level.

It is for that reason that we always urge that you must be nonjudgmental. You are not asked to approve of all actions, but you are asked to acknowledge that even in actions that are perceived to be negative, there is something that is being affected positively and which grows closer to God. You are asked to be nonjudgmental of an individual, while at the same time making a determination whether the actions of another are appropriate or not. You can condemn the actions but never the person. The actions that you see are never the full story. They tell only a part of what lies within someone else.

You are all equal. You are all growing. Your paths are sometimes parallel. Sometimes they move in contrary direction. Your lives sometimes are consonant with another, and at another moment may create great dissonance, but that dissonance is part of the process of growth.

It makes little sense to ask yourself constantly, “Does God belong to the suffering?” It is more beneficial to your spiritual development to say that God exists, and therefore all that God creates exists. All that happens is because there is a God. You thereby acknowledge that God is present, but avoid the pitfall of trying to second-guess whether God wants that suffering to take place, whether God wants that imbalance to take place. It is not a matter of what God wants, but rather it is the reality, the natural course that God creates.

All that God creates is directed toward a kind of coming home. All that God creates is related permanently to a spiritual center point, a spiritual energy, a spiritual life-force that insists all exists that must exist. You will never ultimately sort out the reason why all exists, but that is not your goal in life. Your goal is rather to fully acknowledge that God Is, and you belong to that marvelous creation. It is through your understanding of belonging that you embrace All That Is, and that you work for consonance, you work toward balance.

Where you see what you perceive to be negative, dedicate yourself to being a positive presence, and that effort that you make, all that you do that is positive, brings strength to your spirit, to your soul, and to the spirit centers of all others. Live your life focused on creating that balance, of being positive, and allow yourself to accept, even without understanding, that which seems dark and negative, knowing full well that all that is positive and all that is negative exists because God Is.

You are blessed in the creation. You are blessed in your ability to transform—to transform what you see that is negative into an image that reflects your understanding of God.

Amen.