May 10, 2018

• Embrace the mysteries

• Change is constant

You are with God, and God is with you. It is a mystery how you are with God, and it is a mystery to you how God is with you. It is a mystery how you and all that is are entwined in that spiritual creation. Life, whether animate or inanimate, is all about mystery.

We spoke of mystery the last time, but accepting mystery is not the same as being passive, being resigned to what cannot be known. It is actually mystery that motivates growth. In human terms, you seek greater understanding because there is a gap between what you know and what you want to know. That gap is the mystery. There is a mystery that belongs to relationships, to health, to science. There is a mystery of understanding. There is a mystery surrounding the universe.

Consider for a moment the enormous advances that have taken place in the field of astronomy and astrophysics, the advances that have taken place in the ability to understand something of the nature of the universe. Why did those advances occur? It is because many stand at the precipice separating what is known from what is unknown and wish to engage that mystery. You gather together expressly for the purpose of engaging the mystery of spirit and all that is included therein. If you were confident that you had full understanding of the meaning of God, the meaning of human life, the meaning of the natural world, you would not be present joined in prayer, in openness, in spiritual receptivity.

Each of you in this group and countless others far beyond engage in their own mysteries. For some it is a mystery of art, scientific quest, philosophical understandings, the meaning of life itself, or the reality of the universe. Science speaks of the Big Bang that began the universe, that began time, space, and reality, but what was there before the Big Bang? There was also reality. There was also an existence. There was also energy. How far back in your concept of time does that energy go, and what existed prior to that form of energy? What created that energy?

There will always be mystery. There will always be a seeking of understanding. That mystery is not a condition of resignation. It is not a belief or an assertion that beyond a given point nothing can be known. We speak of the mystery of God, the mystery of love, the mystery of creation, the mystery of interpersonal relationships, the mystery of knowing what is truly essential and what is mere entertainment. You are all in some manner or another confronted with mystery, and we say to each of you that mystery is not only to be acknowledged but more importantly to be embraced, and there is a difference. If you acknowledge the mystery, you may believe that there is a limit to what you can know. If you embrace the mystery, then that which is unknown becomes a part of the life you experience. It isn’t just a corner of darkness or irrelevance. The mystery is embraced, and when you embrace, you engage, for that embrace is spiritual and emotional. You feel compelled to expand and to grow.

The mystery of God is that God is more than love but that God is all love. All the love that exists belongs to God. Therefore, God is all love, but saying God is love is not sufficient, for one cannot say that God is only love. Consider for a moment the many forms of love that you understand. Each of those forms of love requires engagement through an energy that reaches out or reaches in. What is essential is that love reaches.

Love is an active word. Love can be expressed through prayer, and that is an action. Love can be engaged through concern for another. It can be an engagement with concerns related to one’s own needs, but that love is an engagement. It is a reaching out that is an expanding of an awareness. You can reach out, and where you are reaching is to the core, the spiritual core, of who you are. We are reaching out in terms of expansion of spiritual understanding.

When you seek further understanding of the mystery of who you are, that is an expansion, that is a reaching out, and yet you are appropriately considering your own spiritual essence as well as the spiritual essence of others. To engage the mystery it must be embraced. It is the reaching. What is important here is not what you learn. What is most important is what you seek, because in the seeking there is growth. You grow by what you seek. You don’t grow as measured by what you know.

Several of you deal with physical challenges, and you know for a muscle to strengthen, it must be used, and it is the strengthening process that is important. It is not reaching a goal of lifting a certain weight or exerting a specific amount of pressure or enduring a given stress. No effort to strengthen has an achievable goal. You may have intermediate goals, but the real goal is becoming stronger.

It is that way with the spirit, with your understanding of God. You will not be in a position where you say with honesty and authority, “I know God.” That cannot happen. You can say, “I am learning to know God. I am learning to strengthen my spirit. I am learning how to be more loving towards others. I am learning how to be more accepting of the love offered by others.” It is in the learning, the growing, it is the process, not the product, and it is this process which is enhanced through the embracing of mystery.

Mystery is not something to be avoided for fear of feeling inadequate. It is vital that you recognize the mysteries in your life, the personal relationships that seem so difficult to reconcile, the gaps that you feel between who you believe you are and what you seek to become. There is that mystery. Embrace it. Find ways of being motivated by that mystery.

We speak of the mystery of God’s love that extends beyond the human experience. God is more than an anthropomorphic sense of what love is, what love can be, what love is being sought. God creates; God transforms. That creation, that transformation requires and is defined by change—change in energy, change in form, change in impact. God’s love is a love that embraces change. It is not merely a love of who you are, and therefore no matter who you are you are loved as one would love another. That love is far more encompassing. That love requires change. If you wish to feel God’s love, you must allow yourself to change, for love does not require a static acceptance. When one says to another, “You are loved by God,” it does not imply that you stay the way you are or otherwise you will not be loved by God. It means most significantly that you are loved by God through the changes that take place.

Some changes are intentional; some are not. Some are initiated by the self; some are initiated by others. All changes can ultimately be seen as changes in energy. You referred to our statement that we see you by your colors. We see you by the energy that you emit. That energy is not about who you are but rather the changes that take place, the dynamics of life. Life as you observe it is not static, whether we are talking about human life or nonhuman life. All life incorporates change. There is some change that is going on constantly, and you are loved because you are changing, you are evolving, and you are growing.

Certainly, there are some aspects of your lives that are the same. That is obvious, but you are engaged willingly or not with change. The child becomes an adult. That’s a change. The child does not just remain a child in all ways for eternity. You change spiritually in your human lives. Your awareness of spirituality can be part of that change. When you exist solely in spiritual form, you are engaged in change. That change is fed by the energy that is you, the energy that is God. God loves you through the relationship of change that is shared by you with God.

God is more than love, for God is the energy of change, the energy of growth, the energy of discovery. God is the energy of mystery. God is the energy that pushes the boundaries of understanding to ever greater heights. As you know, God is the energy that creates human and nonhuman life. God is the energy that creates all kinds of life forms that you cannot imagine.

So God has created the mystery, the gap, between what you know and what you do not know. That mystery is evolving. That mystery is a dynamic force. That mystery belongs to God just as much as your sense of God’s love. It is God’s will that you as human beings can grow, and what is growth but change?

All changes that you experience, whether seemingly beneficial or otherwise, occur with God’s presence and affirmation, a sense that those changes belong. They are a part of being human. Nature changes. The environment around you changes. The core of the earth changes, and you have seen evidence of that so recently. Attitudes change. The balance between war and peace changes. Relationships between people change. Those changes cannot be fully predicted in human terms and therefore are a kind of mystery because they cannot be necessarily planned for. Your connection to God changes. It is not that God varies the love which is sent out, but rather that human beings change in their sensitivity to an awareness of that love.

Nothing is static. Your lives are not static. The earth is not static. The planets are not static. The stars are not static. The universe is not static. The many forms of existence beyond the universe as you know it to be are not static. That capacity to be altered is a significant component of God’s relationship to all that is. That is a part of “God is more than love, but God is love.”

You are what people perceive you as being, but you are also more than that perception. Your neighbor may be very generous or maybe selfish, maybe peace-loving or not. Those components that characterize your neighbor may be in fact true. You are not incorrect in what you observe, but God is far more than what you observe. It is the same as the story of those who are blind perceiving an elephant. What they perceive is absolutely accurate, but in reality, there is far more than what is perceived.

So we say God is love, and that is absolutely a statement of fact. But God is more than love, for love is a term that finds its definition in human relationships, and God is so much more than that. There is the mystery. You might say God is love. You might also say God is the mystery. God is all that you cannot know. For us in spiritual form, God is also the mystery. We know God’s love in anthropomorphic terms. We see evidence of it constantly and we share in that love, and we serve with that same love to you and others. But the more we grow in our own spiritual awareness, the more aware we are of the presence, the sacredness of mystery, and we embrace it, and in embracing that mystery, it becomes a part of who we are. Likewise, if you embrace the mystery that is God, then you are accepting all that God is. If you embrace the mystery that is your neighbor, you are accepting all that your neighbor is, not just what you know.

We ask each of you to take time to acknowledge the mystery and to embrace it, to put your spiritual arms around what you don’t understand and give it value. Be challenged by it, be motivated to enter that unknown. Be motivated to experience God’s light, for you cannot experience all of it as human beings. We, your guides, cannot experience all of God’s light, but we experience it far more intensely than you, and we know of its absolute presence. Knowing that presence, we allow that mysterious light and love of God to be inside us that we can radiate outward to you the energy, the beauty, the light, the love, the changes that belong to that mystery.

Embrace your lives. Embrace all lives. Embrace creation, and allow that mystery to energize and illuminate your spirit.

Amen.