June 22, 2009

• Building and tearing down walls

• Humans create their experiences

• Share all messages

God, as you identify that presence, is with you always. It is just that at some times, but not at others, all human beings present a wall that separates your awareness of the loving presence. Human behavior is frequently that of building walls. These walls may be physical walls, but most importantly they become personal walls.

The walls that you build serve two functions: they seemingly protect you from what you perceive to be beyond those walls, and they serve to isolate, to give privacy. The experience of human life must be neither one of fear nor the seeking of isolation. You’re challenged daily to become beings of faith, and you’re challenged equally to interact openly, freely, and always lovingly to others. The wall is a construct of the heart. It belongs never to the spirit.

How often you each live with fear—fear of rejection, fear of what others may do that diminishes your own presence. A sense of rejection is always self-generated. You can be criticized by others, but not rejected, for rejection implies being ignored. It does not mean being criticized. To accept criticism is to accept potential for growth, but human beings spend much energy avoiding that very stepping stone to growth. The rejection that is feared, the criticism, is seen as devaluing, as a form of dismissal, but those feelings of dismissal and devaluation are entirely your own.

You cannot eliminate being questioned. You cannot eliminate being challenged. But what is it that you do with these questions? What is it you do when you lose employment? What is it you do when you are criticized by a colleague? What is it you do when you are criticized by one whom you love?

Your lives are for the growth of faith, for it is in the growth of that faith that you reach the very purpose of life, the strengthening, the deepening, the broadening of your capacity to be loving. But when you take these challenges and rather than learn and reach upward and outward with them, you find ways to avoid them, you are in effect closing the shutters and reducing the light that is the energy of growth.

Each of you has a wall. That wall is built by your own hands, but that wall is given its reality by your thoughts. When you retreat behind the wall, you give the wall power and that wall becomes even more impenetrable. The reality of that wall is that also in your own hands is the opportunity of dissolving its presence. You can live lives that are free. You can live lives that are free of fear. It does not mean you ignore the daily challenges that are facing you, but it does mean that you choose consciously not to give those challenges power over your lives, preventing you from growth, preventing you from moving forward.

There are many in the world who are suffering especially as a consequence of the financial crisis at hand. For some, the solution is to build a wall and pretend the crisis is kept away. For others, the crisis is acknowledged and energy is expended as part of the process of overcoming, of moving beyond.

You can, each of you, eliminate the walls that you see around you. You can, each of you, find ways of allowing your spirit to soar. It is essential not to be overwhelmed so much by what is present that you lose sight of what is permanent. A life devoted to what is permanent is never want for true peace, for such a life is experienced through an awareness of its goals and not just what happens on a daily basis.

No life trajectory is perfect. There is no human being whose life trajectory is fundamentally more perfect than the trajectory of another. You grow as you are intended to grow. You experience opportunities as they belong to that growth, but it is not God who determines those opportunities. It is you as individuals, for you create the experiences that shape your growth in faith. You create the experiences; you do not create the events. You create how you experience what events occur in your lives. In that sense you do create your reality because ultimately the true reality is how you interact with the life that you are given, and it is your interaction with life that helps shape your spirit. It is how you interact that impacts upon the lives of others. If you feel put upon, if you feel taken advantage of and yet this leads to no action, then your experience is limited to your own sphere, and in effect, you build the walls even higher.

There is no other reason to be given human life than that which surrounds your interaction with others, your interaction with the natural environment, your interaction with your spiritual environment. The fact that you are aware of your guides is in itself an important component of the growth of what it is that’s permanent. So often we speak of the importance of your lives as they impact the lives of others, but if there were no reason for your spiritual growth, these events, these gatherings, these opportunities for spiritual understanding would not be present. So your growth is on many levels, both individually, collectively, and spiritually.

Part of the integration of this growth on all of these levels is the question raised about how to share with others your own spiritual journey. We have said that the means for sharing would be made clear, and at a particular level such means is already clear. You are aware of the potential for sharing electronically with others. This development has a far greater potential now than it did only a few years ago. You wonder what to share. It is our advice that you share all, for each individual who encounters what you experience together will take from the well whatever it is which is needed. You understand the difficulties of categorizing, for what appears to one person material of one category, is read by another entirely differently. What we share is a view of God, and that view is offered to all who wish further understanding of their own lives within the creation of God.

Each of you is asked to integrate what you know with who you are. There is, as was noted, a difference between knowing and being. When you listen to your collection of assembled guides, you are learning, but this learning has no context by itself, any more than the human life has ultimate context behind the wall that has been erected. You are asked to tear down the walls for a purpose. It is that same principle that is offered as encouragement, to take what you know and allow it to become what you are. We share ultimate and absolute truths, but those truths have no meaning unless they are applied. You can learn a truth in a moment, and yet it takes a lifetime to apply, but you are given your lives for that very purpose.

You are fortunate, each to be open to your own guides in your own way. There are many who have built walls around them preventing much of such knowledge. But with your understanding you are also being supported in your efforts to reach out, to apply what you know to be true. Your efforts may be returned with a sense of accomplishment. They may be returned as a sense of failure, but those are your evaluations. Those are the choices you make. If you refuse to accept failure, then you have the faith to keep on trying to apply. There is no wall, but if you interpret external evidence to indicate failure, you are taking the interpretation of what you know and building that wall. The truth is you don’t know the effects of what you do.

You have shared this evening some examples of unexpected affirmation. The fact that such evidence was not in your awareness didn’t mean that the effects have not taken place. It was just your own perceptions that led to the surprises. And so it is with all that you do in an attempt to apply and to become what it is that you know.

We say you must have faith. You must have faith that whatever is offered in goodness and love will add to goodness and love, just as whatever is offered in fear will add to fear. Each day find an opportunity to put into your own lives that which you know. You know what it means to be compassionate. Perhaps in the day that comes you will have an opportunity to exercise that compassion. You know what it means to be loving. Maybe in the coming day you will find opportunity to express that. You know the importance of listening. Maybe in the next day you will deeply, humbly and lovingly listen.

Each day you are given a chance to tear down the wall you have erected. Each day you are given an opportunity to become what you believe. Seek out what is God in your lives. Believe what you know of God and become what you know of God. There is no higher calling in human life. That goal is reachable by everyone. Every human being can listen. Every human being can be loving in some form. All humans are given an opportunity to become something more. For some the journey is difficult and painful, but the opportunity is there.

All persons have their own capability. The capabilities of all are not the same. The gifts that you bring to your lives differ one from another. There is no reason to equate one gift as greater than another. You are who you are, and each of you can become what you are to become within the opportunity that God presents through human life.

Be glad for your ability to tear down walls. Open your eyes to God’s light and allow that light to penetrate and radiate outward through your own beings, and in so doing, you will provide that context of what you know to become who you are.

You are each blessed in that glorious transition.

Amen.