May 10, 2000

• Divine direction and the gift of choice

• Recognizing God’s guidance

• God Is—You Are

God is with each one of you. God’s light provides warmth, comfort, love and direction for you. God’s direction is an important component of the blessings that all humans receive. We would like to address for awhile the matter of divine direction.

We have spoken of the path, illuminating the path, showing the way many times in the past, but it is important for you to know in more specific terms what is meant by direction given from God. All of you know that you are given the gift of choice. You can choose to follow your conscience. You can choose to follow the advice of others. You can choose to do what you know is right without a sense of being guided. You can choose to ignore what you know is right. You can choose to ignore the advice of others. You can choose to ignore your own inner hunches.

Choice is a part, an important part, of experiencing life as human beings. Even when you appear on the outside to have no choices, you do indeed retain that gift. There is no event in your lives that is void of choice. At its very core, choice is really the recognition of God. You may be desperate emotionally, physically, yet you have a choice of acknowledging that God is present or rejecting that belief. The prisoner who appears to have really no choices is filled with opportunity for choice. There is no condition in life that exists in the absence of choice.

Where does this concept of direction, of guidance, fit into the reality of a life with so many choices? God’s gift to humankind is the capacity to choose. It is the ability to exercise the will of choice or to reject it. God provides a perspective through which choices are made. There is no one who expects life to be easy and without challenges. As a result, all humans must approach their lives as a series of choices. It is through these choices that you grow, that your soul develops to full flower and spreads its influence on the surrounding countryside. It is a gift you all share. No one has more opportunity for choice than another, yet individuals differ in the choices that are available to them. It is for you to begin the inward search to identify those choices that are most beneficial to you. When you identify those choices, you are able to recognize God’s direction. Without such identification there is little to provide the direction.

Individuals who are lost do not ask whether there is a solution. They know there is a solution. They know there is a way and will ask for it. But individuals who have no knowledge of being lost will not be motivated to ask for directions. Those who feel the most comfortable about where they are in their lives experience that comfort with a degree of peril. It is always fine to be grateful, but it is of no benefit to believe that there is no other direction to be followed, that there are no other challenges worth pursuing. For such individuals, life ceases its vibrancy.

Those who seem to be tormented by dissatisfaction with where they are in their lives are the very same people who are given the capacity to ask God for direction. You cry out for help only when you recognize there is need. With no sense of need, there is no feeling of the necessity of being aided. We, your guides, serve to respond to your acknowledgment of needs. When that acknowledgment is not forthcoming, our response is more difficult—more difficult for you to recognize and to take into your lives. God’s direction therefore assumes that there are those who request it, who pray for it, who yearn for it.

What is it that God presents? What is it that we as your guides do in the exercise of that presentation? If you listen quietly within, you will always hear God’s direction. It is we as guides who open your souls to recognize God’s direction, but that divine guidance occurs only in periods of quietness, in moments of reflection. The guidance of which we speak is not shouted at you in the midst of a great din of commotion. On the contrary, God’s guidance comes to you when you are quiet. Think for a moment of those events in your life that have provided insight and comfort. For many, those events are insights that you have achieved as you awake in the morning or as you are just about to enter sleep. It is when the clatter around you subsides and suddenly you see in your mind a direction. You sense some motivation; you find a solution; you feel inner peace; you are confirmed in a life experience of pure faith.

The guidance that you pray for must therefore be allowed to enter your souls. It cannot be shouted at you. It cannot compete with lots of external confusion. If you wish to be shown God’s direction, withdraw from your concerns. Withdraw from the environment that creates anxiety. Allow yourselves to be penetrated spiritually by God’s direction. We opened your souls, but the direction of that guidance is sent to you from God. It is divine guidance. It is a divinely inspired belief in the rightness of a particular action.

God works through us, your guides, but God also works through you on behalf of others. If you are quiet, you will know the direction to be followed. Then it is up to you as creatures of choice to follow what you know or to follow what sometimes seems the most enjoyable, the most rewarding, the quickest, the easiest solution. The choice is yours, but the fact that there is a choice is the result of God’s presence in your life.

It is understandable that all pray for guidance. It is understandable when all turn to God to ask, “What shall I do?” You can cry that prayer out in the midst of great commotion, but you will only hear the response in the deepest of silence, for God speaks in silence— not in noise, not in confusion, not in fear. If you are fearful and pray for guidance and help, you are given the capacity to separate yourself briefly from that fear so that you may be quieted to hear God’s direction.

You pray for another and God’s directing light will be experienced by another. But as you pray for another to be comforted, you are also praying that the other spirit may be calmed so that it may be receptive. Just as you cannot hear if you talk without stopping, you cannot receive God’s direction in full measure if you are consumed entirely by the asking for it. It is a great temptation to ask and then ask yet again and yet one more time, thinking that the more you ask, the more help will be given. God does not work that way. God’s direction to your lives is offered immediately, but you must be quiet to hear that direction, to sense it, to know that it is truly there.

The guidance, the direction, that comes from God is never deserved. It is a freely offered gift. No individual merits being shown the way. There is nothing that one does to place oneself in the “good graces of God,” as some prefer to say, for God does not respond to those who are “in good graces.” God responds to those in need. You deserve God’s guidance because you are a part of God. It hasn’t been earned. The deserving is not a result of what you do. It is purely the result of who you are, namely a sacred creation of the almighty power that you call God. Just as you had no hand in that creation, you have no hand in the determination of merit or worth.

We have said in the past that God Is. That is one half of the equation, allowing you to receive God’s direction. The other half of that equation is You Are. God Is is a statement of fact; You Are is a statement of fact. There is nothing that can be done to deny the reality of those two conditions. And it is those two conditions that guarantee your ability to be given direction, to be given guidance, to be protected, to receive love, to give love. The fact that You Are means your spirits live. Your spirits live in a physical body. The body is unimportant. What is essential is that your spirit is alive. Your spirit is receptive.

God’s guidance can come in many forms. It may be inner peace. It may be the strength to serve others. It may be the road toward physical health, emotional health, a spiritual strengthening. There are many manifestations of that great guidance, but it is up to you to be open to recognize that you all benefit by God’s guidance, to acknowledge there is no one without need, there is no one for whom complacency is justified, there is no one for whom comfort is the ultimate benefit and result of prayer.

Strength is what you need—strength to love, strength to be vulnerable. You need strength to be the recipient of love. You need strength to recognize that there is more to life than you are aware of. Strength is needed to acknowledge that there is more for your soul. Strength is needed to be patient. Strength is needed to be faithful. Strength is needed to be courageous in the face of unexplained difficulties. Strength is needed to be on your knees in prayer asking to be guided. That is not a position of weakness. It is the ultimate act of strength.

God’s guidance is strength-giving. We facilitate your openness for that strength- giving. We serve to remind you continually of the choice you have to seek that guidance. You can choose to exercise your strength by asking for guidance or you can choose to deny the strength. You can choose to acknowledge God or to deny God. You can choose to acknowledge your own inadequacies or you may choose to be blinded to them, unable to perceive reasons for growth. We help you in that choice. We provide you with the courage to acknowledge your needs, and it is with that acknowledgment that you become open to the full glory of God’s direction, of God’s guidance.

Allow yourselves to assume the position of greatest strength by opening your heart to God’s guidance. Grow with that strength. Be willing to share it with others. Be willing to acknowledge to others the place of God in your own lives. It is never done boastfully. It must only be done with the deepest of humility. You are then being guided, and you are then being a conduit for guidance that benefits others.

You are blessed by the gift of choice. You are blessed by your strength to acknowledge your own needs. You are blessed by your growing awareness of your guides. We are blessed in turn by your openness, and we are indeed blessed that God chooses to use us to serve your spiritual development. It is a cause of joy and humility for us as well.

Seek God’s guidance in every aspect of your lives. You will never be let down. You will never be disappointed. You will never fail. Perfection cannot fail. Your spiritual connection with God and all that has been created is your “ounce of perfection.” It is your sacred Self. Be willing to rely on that and exercise this greatest of all gifts.

We bless you in the spirit of those gifts.

Amen.