September 8, 2011

• How guides relate to and communicate with humans

• Reflections on the tenth anniversary of 9/11

Your lives are illuminated. They are given warmth. They are given strength through God’s presence and through our loving assistance. We wish to say more about our presence in your lives and your response to that presence.

We know what you experience. We know much of what it means to live a human life. We know of your concerns. We know of your worries, fears. We know of your rejoicings. We know when you feel successful. We know when you feel a sense of failure. We know your pride in those moments when you feel yourselves elevated to be the best you can be as loving human beings. We know your sense of disappointment when you become aware of those events that do not reflect your true faith.

But we know these because of our having had experience in human form. There are many spirits who have experienced other life-forms, but your guides have one thing in common, and that is to have existed at some point as human beings. Because of that experience, it is our understanding that you experience emotions, personal feelings that are in common with all human beings. There is no emotion, there is no sense of joy or sadness, that any of you encounter that is unique to you.

All human beings have a story. All human beings have a set of life experiences. Those stories, those life experiences, differ in detail but not in substance. The substance we speak of is the need to be loved, the need to be cared for, the need to somehow at some level be responsive to others. Those needs are shared by every human being. How those needs are played out differs for each person, but the basic needs that we enumerate are a part of every human being.

Because we have also experienced them, we are in a position to respond to what is really important in your lives. Our response to those needs is through loving instruction. This instruction may be by words. It may be by a kind of sixth sense, an intuitive feeling. It may be experienced in a very physical capacity. But our engagement with your lives is facilitated by having shared in what it is you experience. The day to day details of your lives are very different from what many of us have experienced, but those details are actually insignificant.

We love you because you exist, because you are sacred. It is the sacred bond that allows us to share a reality, a consciousness with you. Part of our responsibilities, our loving activity, is to challenge your perceptions of what it means to be alive. You’re asked to think beyond your own lives. You’re asked to see beyond your vision. You’re asked to touch beyond your reach. You’re asked to dream beyond your knowledge. You’re asked to love beyond your vision, beyond what you see to be valuable, beyond what you see to be meaningful or relevant to your individual lives. These are the challenges that contribute to your growth as spiritual beings.

If we had no experience living the essential lives that you live, it would be most difficult to communicate with you in a manner that is recognizable by you. Our function within your lives is to be a constant presence. It is our wish to provide relevance that connects your daily experience with a more profound spiritual reality. By making this connection, your lives take on more meaning, and as that meaning is increased, you become more sensitized to all of life around you, all that has been created that surrounds your presence.

But what does this mean for you? What is your response to our presence? Your response continually varies, and that is to be expected. Sometimes you respond to our presence without a conscious acknowledgment of our existence. Sometimes that response is directed clearly to us or to God. In those moments when you have the clarity of mind to acknowledge that you are indeed being guided, you are establishing a context in your life. When you see there is evidence of God, you are providing a context, you are giving meaning to all you experience and endure.

It is not God’s anticipation or our expectation that you are constantly aware of your guides. We are with you. We support you. We uplift you. We guide you. We protect you. We acknowledge you, whether or not we are acknowledged by you. What we do for all human beings is initiated out of love. There is no other motivation.

You have heard God described as love. That is certainly an important part of God as a reality, but love is not a passive presence. It is active. It is creative. It is through the presence of the Spirit Center, Love, that all is created. But you are not asked to fully understand the nature of that creativity, for that is an issue that is of God’s making. Not understanding all there is to creation is considered okay. It is not a requirement. You are not in some way failing when you acknowledge the difficulty of grasping what the totality of God’s creation really means and your place within that.

Despite the impossibility of full knowledge of all related to creation, you are nevertheless asked to find ways of interacting through your own understanding. Some individuals have a greater understanding, and therefore their interaction will be different from those whose understanding is limited. But such differences in this understanding cannot be the subject of judgment. You learn as you learn. You learn as you are conscious to learn. Your perspective is grounded upon what you have learned, and as your understanding changes, the perspective changes, and your vision of creation will in turn evolve.

These messages that are shared with you are always given with our understanding that they may at one point have less relevance and yet at another moment greater relevance. But they are a glimpse of what is true. They are our means of communicating in a very discrete, clear manner that which is important ultimately to take within you and make a part of you. Your response to what we share is always appropriate, for you can only respond as you hear and see and feel and know. But despite the variety of responses, the truth remains.

As you are aware of your guides, always seek an understanding of what that presence means. You don’t need to hear words, but you do need to feel something within. There are moments in your lives when feeling something within that is spiritual is far from your chief concerns, and there are other moments when there is great clarity and great understanding. That difference in your response is understandable, for each of you has your own set of concerns, your own set of close family and friends for whom you have a vested interest based on love. Just as each of you has a different history, each of you has a different response to what is there.

Your lives understandably must interact with whatever surrounds you, but you must each seek those opportunities for drawing away from your daily demands to just listen. Even if what you hear is the falling rain or the crackling of a candle, in hearing, you may be brought to the hands of God. Your hearing can be one of greater understanding, understanding of what it means to be loving. Hearing may involve an awareness of the needs of those around you. Hearing may be a conscious identity with events that have had great impact on your lives.

You approach an important anniversary of a great tragedy that your nation has experienced, a great tragedy that families still wrestle with, a great tragedy that questions where do you go from here? What can be learned from what was experienced? These are a kind of crossroads affecting many people, many different perspectives, many different contexts, many different histories.

Where do you go when you contemplate an awareness of events that you see in the past? It is important always to remind yourself that it is not something in the past any more than it is something in the future. It remains in the now. There is no past. What you experienced is really what you continue to experience. The suffering that was endured is the suffering that is endured. Events that you see from the past are events that affect you at this moment. There is no real separation. There is only a change in perspective, a change in context. But what your nation recalls as a great recent tragedy is part of a chain of countless tragedies that have encased the lives of countless people.

What do you take from experiencing such profound grief and loss? You must look upon such events as an expression or an acknowledgment of the need each of you has for one another. You can take away from such suffering a commitment to the sacredness of human life. You can take from such events a commitment to find ways of being more effective listeners, listeners who direct attention to where there is deep human need.

You do not live on a series of islands. You happen to live sharing a common place within the limitless heavens of God’s creation. You are all in the same place. Each of you shares a common relationship, a need to be loved, and the capacity of knowing what it means to be loving, however that may be expressed. You take from such tragedies an increased valuation of the importance of all that is created, whether human or not. You can take from this place a respect and a love for all things—human, inhuman—a respect for all that seems positive, and an acknowledgment of the negative forces that you experience in your lives, belonging to your lives, for purposes that are known to God but must be acknowledged by human beings.

Losses always create pain, but such pain can drive human beings to great acts of compassion. The real power of loss is the development of a context for love. Initially loss produces anger, but ultimately that anger leads to a sense that somehow God is not only present but necessary, that God is ultimately inevitable, that love ultimately is victorious, that out of pain, out of that hatred must come love and reconciliation.

Look upon losses that you have experienced and seek evidence of reconciliation, seek grounds that provide comfort, seek opportunities that demonstrate the presence of love within the context of loss. In so doing, you will clearly see God’s presence, and your response to our efforts to clarify God will be strong and true. None of this happens in the blink of an eye but rather belongs to your spiritual growth, belongs to your response to guidance, and ultimately is guidance itself, for in your response you become a kind of spiritual guide for those whom you love. Love all, and your guidance will embrace all.

We embrace you with our love, and with God’s great warmth and light. God Is! You Are! Rejoice!

Amen.