September 19, 2024

• Becoming more loving

The light of God, the presence of love, is undeniable. You are uplifted in your growth, in your awareness, your openness, and in your searching. God’s presence in the reality of all that is affirms the truth that nothing exists outside of that all- encompassing love.

You are as bound to God as you are to those whom you hold most dearly. This connection that we speak of so often between human beings and God, between inanimate as well as animate entities and God, the river that we have spoken of so frequently is one of awareness, awareness of your own presence and an affirmation of all else that belongs in that spiritual flow.

You wonder about that awareness. You wonder about its purpose, its expression, and how it is experienced. Your experience of oneness is never constant, and it is not intended that it must be. Your experience of oneness with God, oneness with love, and oneness with all that you encounter nevertheless serves a purpose. It is not the intention, if you wish to call it that, that you and all human beings should become one hundred percent aware of their connection with God and with one another at all times and in all circumstances. That is not what is important. What is important is that there is growth in your understanding, growth in your faith, growth in your awareness of the sanctity of everything and everyone. That growth occurs not through the experience of constant awareness, for if it were evident at all times to all people, there would be no growth.

Even though the goal of all human life is a unity with God, it doesn’t mean or imply that the faster that unity is understood and achieved, the better. Sure, the unity of that understanding and the understanding of the unity is a part of the path of everyone, but that is not the purpose of your human life. It is not the objective that you learn all that you need to learn, you know of all that needs to be known. The objective is transformation. The objective is change. It is the evolution of understanding. It is not the acquisition of all-knowing.

But if the goal is with God, then why is there more importance placed on the journey rather than the goal itself? You must remember that your spirit grows in part through its engagement with your human life. It is in the growing, the pursuit, and in the engagement of that pursuit that the growth is not a unidirectional pathway. The growth occurs on many levels, and the consequence of those levels is a greater capacity to become more loving. It is the strengthening that occurs in life that deepens the impact of love.

We could say there is a magic way in which if a certain procedure is followed, all would be loving, all would be accepting, all would be given to others. While that is indeed how things are at the end of the spiritual journey, it is only in the process of seeking those objectives that the real meaning of being loving is given strength.

You know that in some religious practices great attention is placed on the need to love others. “Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” as an example. You can say, “Okay, I will love my neighbor as myself. I will be nonjudgmental.” You know what the objective is, but knowing that objective is not the same as experiencing how that love is truly needed and what the skills are that are necessary to put that love into practice. It is, of course, good to know the goal to be pursued, but the real power of that goal is not in acknowledging that’s the goal. It is the pursuit of that goal. It is in the pursuit that you understand on a very personal level what being loving truly means.

When you have glimpses of a profound connection to the presence of God, the presence of an overwhelming sense of love, those experiences serve to motivate you to make the effort to become more loving. You know what the benefits of being loving are, but that is different than experiencing the challenges in strengthening your abilities to be more loving. Those moments when you feel surrounded by a loving presence are, of course, important, but their purpose is to encourage you to pursue opportunities for making such an experience more central to your own life.

One doesn’t achieve the state of being fully loving merely by being told that is the objective of life. Becoming more loving is only possible when you commit yourself to doing what you can to becoming more loving. That is a process, and pursuing the process results in a far deeper experience of what it means to be loving than merely to be instructive. Be more loving, and respond, “Okay, I will now be more loving.”

All people as part of their human lives must experience what it means to reach out to be loving when the first reaction is to recoil, to pull away. Your glimpses of what you might call the presence of the divine are merely serving to provide evidence of what it feels like when you are truly in the flow of the river. You feel its energy. You feel its power. You sense its sureness, its almost inevitability, and that is a reminder when you face challenges in which becoming more loving toward others feels an enormous burden to achieve. Challenges make you stronger, and we acknowledge also that challenges can too often lead to a feeling of failure. Being challenged in your daily lives to become more loving when you are not feeling viscerally connected to a previous experience is a way of strengthening that commitment to being a reflection of God’s nonjudgmental, fully loving presence.

You are given life not to have all the answers but to grow. You are not given life so that you feel you have arrived in some spiritual sense but rather that you are committed to the search. You are committed to the value, the human value of exercising your concept of God’s presence. It is a process. It is a process built on faith, not just one hundred percent knowledge. You may feel it would be much easier if you had all the knowledge and could immediately apply it. Yes, it would be much easier, but achieving a greater depth of understanding acknowledgment.

Experiencing moments of true connection with others becomes the evidence pointing to a new reality and a resulting greater commitment to growing in that direction. Again, we assert that it is not just acknowledging the goals of human life that are important, but rather in welcoming those opportunities to strengthen your understanding of the meaning of these responses of a godly nature in daily situations. Your growth depends not on having the answers but on being committed to the journey.

We alluded a bit to this in our last message. We can be aware of God’s presence in a way that is far more complete, more comprehensive than yours, but we do not as guides have full unobstructed views of understanding and knowledge. We grow in our pursuit of understanding God, and it is what we have learned in our pursuit that we are most able to share with you.

Do we have total knowledge of all things spiritual? No, and yet it would be perfectly easy if our system of life provided us with all the necessary understandings. But being provided those understandings results in a more shallow experience of that reality than if you pursue through commitment to growth. Your deeper reality will provide you with more opportunities to serve as God’s hands and heart.

Always give thanks for the moments in your life when you sense God is here, when you feel a total acceptance of that presence, because it is in experiencing that presence even momentarily that you are able to build upon that, given the challenges you face in life to those ultimate truths that we speak of. A good teacher does not provide students the answers to the questions. A good teacher gives the tools that are necessary for each student to pursue what is sought after. What one takes away from that pursuit is far greater than what one would carry with them if all knowledge were granted immediately.

We deepen because of the pursuit. You deepen your understanding of life through the challenges and differing perspectives you encounter. That makes your life so much more impactful, for you bring that personal understanding, those personal experiences to the fore, and in doing that, your understanding of the true meaning of God’s presence is enriched and given greater depth.

Human life is a life of pursuits. Whether you are pursuing relationships, professional careers, or whatever, it is through these pursuits that you are strengthened. Embrace those pursuits. Be aware, of course, of the glimpses of the divine however brief those glimpses may be, but let those glimpses provide a motivation to continue the search, to continue the growth, the deepening of your true understanding of what God’s presence really means.

Your life is blessed when it is opened to your guides. The more you allow yourself to see what is there, your pursuit becomes stronger and more fully planted in the commitment to find ways of serving God’s presence in a meaningful and particularly loving frame.

You are blessed in your pursuit. You are blessed in your understanding. Remove from your life an insistence on fully grasping anything. Open your life to opportunities to pursue, to experience in that pursuit, so that the growth that results enhances your spirit vision, your heart vision, and you are more effective in serving as a heart vision, as an outreached hand of God’s presence.

Amen.