May 6, 2002

• The continuum of life

• Being open to guidance

God gives life to your lives. It is indeed God’s life that you share. You are illuminated by God’s light, but it is God’s life that you experience. Your life, its character, its direction, its personality, may be on the surface far different from your perception of what God really is. And yet, the very act of being alive is an act that mirrors in some small way the eternal life that is God. You live, we live, God lives.

The love of which we have so often spoken does not exist apart from life. You are not in a sense loving if you have no life, for loving is the purpose of life. We live to love. You must live to love. God loves because God is alive. You are given life directly by God. Your lives are not existing in a kind of vacuum that continues in an isolated manner separate from that which is eternal. You are given life so that your life as a spirit has meaning, has experience, has knowledge.

We who have entered this life form experienced life as you experience it. Without such an experience our life would be a huge question: how can it be relevant to anything? Our lives are relevant because they are a continuation of our former human lives, and there is yet further continuation beyond our own plane of life, and we are aware of that as well. You do not see that continuum, but we in our life see it in its totality.

Your experiences in life may be seen from your perspective to be a continuum. You recall life as a child and you are aware of life as an adult. You are not two separate people, one a child and then suddenly an adult. That continuity of life remains unbroken for eternity. You will always have life. You have always had life. Even though you are not necessarily aware of all that transpired in an earlier life form, you can be fully confident that your current life is the continuation of what came before.

James relates his experiences as a child sensing a voice trying to be expressed. His understanding of the efforts of his soul to become a more prominent presence in his life is correct. His experiences being open to the life of guides is not unique. All human beings have that potential. But each guide communicates with each human life- form in a way which is most appropriate for that individual. The techniques, the means of communication, are fluid. They can change according to the needs of the individual.

As a child, James’ needs, although he was not fully aware of them, were for a greater connection with the life of the spirit from which he came and from which all of you came. It was a kind of looking back, a recognition of an echo, one might say, of an earlier ability to communicate on a spiritual level. Such experiences of children who have a sense, although not identified as such, of an earlier form of life, of experiences from somewhere in the past, is common and yet not always remembered. Each of you began your human lives having experienced life on a spiritual plane. For some, a recognition of such prior experience is more intense than others. Children are not able to fully understand the spiritual echo that they may encounter. But all children are close in time, as you measure it, to their spiritual ancestry. Each of you shares that same common ancestry. You all existed in purely spiritual form and you will all later exist in such form. It is part of the continuum of life of which we speak.

When you have need to develop a particular means of connecting with your guides, of being in touch with your soul, you will be given the opportunity to develop those connections. It is not a unique gift. It is a gift which is meant for everyone. Each of you has particular gifts that you recognize even now. Those gifts are directed, they are given a sense of purpose and place, as we have spoken of. But just as your lives are fluid, the interaction that you have with the world around you is changeable. So it is that your needs may also change.

We want each one of you to firmly accept and believe in your individual abilities to be guided in a very direct and clear manner. If you wish to be guided in a verbal sense, it is true you must allow yourselves the opportunity to be surrounded by silence. In time, if it is your need, you will be capable of being open to your guides in a verbal sense. There is no mystery attached. All human beings have the capability, but not all human beings have the need. You need to be guided, but the means for that guidance is determined by your individual needs. It is not determined by special gifts or unusual abilities.

Being connected to your guides means you are committed to being open to the possibility of being led. How you respond to being led is determined by those needs of which we speak. For some, being led results in verbal guidance; for others, it may be in healing, it may be in writing. One who is gifted as a preacher is being guided. There are those whose guidance is manifest in the sciences. There are those whose guidance is manifest in efforts toward peace and mutual understanding, taking leadership to those who need it the most.

Such needs as you may have to be guided are always temporal. If you are feeling guided and this affirms your recognition of God’s presence in your life and if your life is a reflection of God’s presence in the greater world, you will feel spiritually fulfilled. But just as each individual has a different personality, what provides that feeling of fulfillment, that acknowledgement of connection, is also individual. When you are young you have different needs than when you are older. Someone who is young may experience God’s presence in a very different way than one who is older. Age itself is not the issue. There are many who are guided throughout their lives in a particular manner which is best suited for their lives. A great composer who is inspired at a young age may be guided through that music well into old age. The needs do not necessarily have to change. It is important however to recognize that they may change.

If you seek to reflect guidance in a manner that is not your current experience, you may indeed find the means to achieve that new expression. To change your interaction with your guides is a conscious decision for many. You change because you want to change. You broaden because you want to broaden. You become more specific because you want to become more specific. The guidance is always there. The potential is always there.

If you seek the opportunity of hearing your guides in a verbal capacity, arrange your life so that that is possible. So often we admonish you, “If you wish to hear God, you must first find silence.” God speaks when you are silent. God speaks and you hear when you are receptive. You cannot be receptive and active at the same time. There must be a window of rest, a window of repose, removal from activities. Connecting with your guides verbally begins very simply. You must first fully accept its possibility, for if you question, then you are not ready. It requires faith and quiet and patience. All who receive guidance in this manner begin simply. When the faith is strong, the channel is open. That is true of all who connect to their sense of God’s presence intuitively.

Your lives are constantly changing, but life itself is constant. You did not begin life. You will not reach its end. The character of your life may change in human form, and it will change when you make the glorious transition to spirit form. These are only changes. They are not a substantive ending and beginning. If you accept the fluidity of your life in its constancy as well as its change, you will be more in tune with what your real needs spiritually are. Recognizing your spiritual needs, you will be drawn always to the most appropriate way of communicating with your guides and receiving the guidance you pray for. There is no specific text that one must study, but there are many sources of information that one can draw upon as one prepares to launch in a new direction.

Yes, your lives are filled with change and they are also constant. But your participation in that constancy and change is never passive. It is your life challenge for each of you to be fully present in that constancy and change, becoming fully aware of your purpose in human life at any given moment with recognition that that purpose can change.

Be in touch with your lives. Don’t let your lives determine who you think you are. Don’t let your lives determine what you believe you must be. Your lives are a series of options, but it is you who ultimately bring shape and purpose to those lives. Be active in your awareness of what life can provide. If you believe in it and you pursue it, you will reach the goals that are most appropriate. Sometimes you may seek goals that you fully believe in that are nevertheless inappropriate. Being open to being guided assures that you will recognize the appropriateness of that which you achieve as a result of your beliefs.

Life is a full choice for each of you. You must look at yourselves with honesty, with love, with patience, with faith, and you will find yourselves seeking what is noble. You will find yourselves seeking what affirms all life, and you will find yourselves acknowledging in the end the God-directed shape, value, and significance, its overwhelming beauty that will be your legacy as human beings for other human beings to benefit from.

Live the life you have. Recognize its fluidity, recognize its constancy, and be joyful in that recognition. Far too few allow themselves that recognition. As a result, so many feel as if they are victims of their own life’s experiences. There are in the end no victims. Your lives are there for you to do as you wish. Our lives, as a continuation of yours, are dedicated to directing your experience to be one of love, the pursuit of truth, and the acknowledgement of the sacred in all things.

You are blessed in that sacred participation. You are blessed in your growing awareness of life and its entirety. Rest in God’s loving care.

Amen.