August 30, 1992

• Be a rock in the stream of life

• Make time to just be

God joins all of you together as a single body. When you are collected in such an assembly you really become for a moment a single soul. While you're all different, you share the same focus. It is an important time for you to devote your thoughts and your prayers toward God and to a reflection of where you fit into the whole of creation.

When you are together, your collective soul is brilliant to us who are with you. There is enormous strength because each of you brings your own history to this moment, the history of your human life and the history of the development of your souls to this point. There is a kind of collective wisdom which is most prominently expressed in the form of acceptance and tolerance and the ability to listen, the potential to love.

You have few opportunities on a daily basis or within a larger framework of time to gather together and be still. You are all busy doing, and you give yourselves precious little opportunity for being. It is at times like these that you are occupied by the need just to be. Your souls individually require time to be. Of course there are many demands that require you to be active, participatory, making decisions, responding, or whatever, but you do not give yourselves nearly enough opportunity to just be, to exist, to be part of the flow of life.

There is too much effort trying to change the direction of a stream and little effort exerted in allowing yourselves to be a rock within that stream. Giving yourselves an opportunity to be a rock allows you to be more observant of life and all that life possesses as it flows by and alongside you.

There is much to be learned still for you within your human lives but much of that is to be learned through the observation of others. A rock receives its shape because of the motion of the water in the stream. It is what it is because of what happens to it, not because of what it does.

This is very much akin to what happens to your souls. Your souls develop because of what happens in your lives more than just the result of what you do within your life. We do not suggest being totally passive and not taking responsibility for your spiritual growth, but we are suggesting that you allow your souls the opportunity to experience life as life comes alongside you rather than trying to control all that surrounds you.

When you are in control, when you try to manipulate a situation according to your own desires, you are limiting the opportunities for growth in the most meaningful sense. You grow through your interaction with others, not through your manipulation of others. This interaction is enhanced in terms of variety of interaction when you allow yourselves more time to be an observer rather than a doer.

When you are assembled in a group such as this, you are not doing, you are observing. You are allowing the spiritual presence to become closer to who you really are. You are not dictating that presence—you are receiving that presence. When you allow yourselves the opportunity of being more of an observer, you are therefore allowing the presence of life to come into your own and allowing yourselves to be enriched by that presence.

There is far too much emphasis on doing and controlling and deciding and acting and wishing. All of these limit your opportunities for development. They provide of course an opportunity for growth, but the most substantial opportunities are when you allow life to come around you and allow yourselves to be shaped spiritually by your recognition of the common spiritual bond of all that surrounds you.

Life in a way could be thought of as an island. It is an opportunity to allow all that is to become closer to you. You must spend less effort building walls and barriers, trying to divert the water, trying to control what shape you ultimately wish to become.

You talk about the issue of deadlines, of goals, of specific objectives which may be reached and which are worth seeking in life. Our admonition that life is not a race does not mean that it is not worthy to have goals. It is meant to explain that there is no race in competition with another soul. It is of course important to have a sense of where you would like to be spiritually, but beyond that there is little gained by trying to manipulate life in order to reach that objective. It is important rather to allow yourselves to be quiet enough to experience life which in turn can lead you to those objectives.

If you want to experience loving, you must first receive it and then you may express it. If you are preoccupied solely by the need to try to be loving, you lose sight of the loving which is offered to you first. This is what we mean by allowing yourself to be more passive. You must be more receptive.

The goals which each of you has for spiritual development are valid as they apply to you as individuals, but they should not be goals which provide you an excuse for controlling all that occurs in your lives, for such an orientation can only bring frustration and disappointment, indeed impatience.

Patience is a gift which you all seek and need, but such a gift can only be received through experience. You can try to be patient, but in trying to be patient, you can be frustrated by your impatience. Allow yourselves moments of impatience, recognizing that that is part of being human. Allowing yourself to experience impatience as events occur also allows you the opportunity of recognizing when you are becoming patient. You cannot set out upon the world determined to be patient no matter what. It will only lead to frustration.

The goals that you set for yourselves must be flexible. If you recognize that they are appropriate at a given moment but maybe inappropriate at another moment, you are allowing yourselves the opportunity of recognizing when a period of inappropriateness is at hand. If you set a goal and consider that to be inviolate, you deny yourself the chance of recognizing the need to change those goals. Being receptive therefore means being flexible.

The religions of the world are too often caught up in the need for stoicism rather than receptivity. If you approach your lives with the desire to be receptive to what life offers you, you will find yourselves much more aware of what life really has to offer and your growth spiritually will be well-grounded.

The spiritual unity that we observe as you are gathered has with it an enormous potential for benefit to others, for as you know, prayer is a kind of communication with other souls, and when you are united the communication with which you reach outward beyond your circle is enhanced far beyond your awareness.

Growth for each of you will be always present but never steady. It is constant but variable. It is there but changeable. There are times when you don't sense your growth and there are other times when you feel an intense spark or glow illuminating your lives. That is of course as it should be. It is the remembrance of those moments of intensity that gives you hope in times of seeming inactivity. Do not despair when you feel no growth is taking place. Do not despair when days go by and you think little about growth, but rejoice in those moments of recognition, of challenge. Rejoice in the strength which you feel and in the opportunities that do come by you that provide growth in some form or another.

The challenges of the future are of course great and unpredictable. But since you cannot control the future totally, you must have faith in your ability to grow with the future, with whatever the future may bring. You never need to feel defeated by what may happen. You don't need to feel defeated by what has happened or is occurring. Allow yourselves the luxury, the blessing of being an observer, of being a receiver of life.

Depart from time to time of trying to do, to control, and seek out a corner in your life on a regular basis to just be. Allow yourself a few moments if that is all that you can give yourselves. Being is what life is about, for being provides the foundation for ultimate growth. Yes, you are responsible for your growth. Yes, you do need to make choices of what is important and what is not. Yes, you do need to make moral choices, but that does not eliminate the importance of finding time to be.

You are more receptive to your guides when you are quiet than when you are actively pursuing a goal. If you wish to increase your receptivity to God's guidance in your lives, you must find more quiet. Allow yourselves to be that rock in the stream that is given shape and character by what passes by. You are in the stream for a purpose. You are there to grow. You are there to experience. You are there to interact. You are not there ultimately to direct or control or manipulate. Allowing those moments for peace and quiet and receptivity, your soul expands enormously.

The energy that you radiate is much stronger when you are reflective than when you are active. It is part of the dichotomy of physical life and spiritual life. Take care of your physical life but nurture those opportunities which are so important for your spiritual growth.

When you are together your guides are collected. They are not above you or below you or next to you. They are absolutely within you. They are a part of you. There is no separation to this union. It is a magnificent moment for us when you become receivers.

God blesses each of your lives with the potential for becoming more sensitive to life around you. God blesses you through the water that passes around you, providing you with character and form and meaning. Rejoice in this river! It is what life is about.

We rejoice when you are receptive to us. We rejoice in the opportunities we have to communicate God's presence through us directly to your souls. All of us, you in human form and we in spiritual form, rejoice and are united within the loving light of God.

Amen.