August 20, 2018

• The value of making choices

• Nothing is preordained

• Live free of fear of failure

The great spirit presence that each of you seeks joins you in your search for what is true and lasting, what is of great meaning and value. Human lives, as you know, are filled with choices after choices after choices. You flounder around in a desire to make the best choices but also with a fear of not making the best choices. In a sense, all human beings want clear answers to what is of seeming great importance.

There is a clear understanding of the necessity for making changes in life. No human being experiences life that remains in all ways and at all times static. You don’t have to be weighed down with responsibility to experience the need to choose. You choose a lifestyle, personal relationships, financial, political—all arenas. Your days are filled with the need to choose. There is no value or purpose in life that would be without such demands, and yet far too many feel overwhelmed with the choices that are necessary hour by hour, day by day, year by year.

The challenge, therefore, of how to approach life choices is shared by all. Some people absolve themselves from the need to make such choices by turning to God and asking in one form or another for a sign that would dictate the right choice to make. But there are others who encounter the need to choose with the belief that with a thoughtful approach and much consideration they will choose, among the many options, which for them is best. The choices are shared by all, but the approach differs widely from one person to another, from one society to another.

How then can one feel guided to select what is best? It is that we wish to address. The subject is broad-based and complex and will need to be looked at frequently from different angles.

The first point of great importance is to realize that there is a good choice to be made. You often hear of people being upset because there seems to be no good choice. The truth is there is always a good choice. The second reality is that there is not just one good choice. You are never confronted with alternatives which are all bad. You are never presented with situations in which there is only one proper and appropriate response.

You are given choices because part of the process is reaching more deeply into an understanding of who you are and what is really important. As you explore a greater understanding of who you are personally, you become more aware of the validity and sanctity of all others, for you begin to sense common ground in your own exploration of who you are and what makes you tick. Becoming more accepting of others means first of all being respectful of and accepting yourselves.

How do you gain that greater insight into who you are? You gain that by making decisions, remembering that it is not so much what happens to you that is important but rather your response. That response requires you to choose, and as you observe the collection of those responses, you become more aware of who you are, and you begin to accept that others are not really any different. Everyone is confronted by similar if not identical choices.

Understand that you are approaching numerous options for choice. Essentially every choice has a trace within it that is good. Equally, every choice and option available to you includes something that you may not identify as serving your best interests. You are given many options, and therefore you can easily look back and begin to understand more of who you are because of decisions that you made.

If those decisions are political, they’re often made not through thought but as a consequence to reacting to something. Nevertheless, the pattern that emerges tells you much about who you are, and you begin to realize that no one is all good or all bad, and therefore no one belongs on a pedestal or must be prone to the earth. All are equal, and all are different. What you perceive as being a good decision may not be perceived equally by another, and you may observe the decisions of others and say, “I would never do that. That is wrong.” But that kind of division between people doing what is right and others doing what is wrong is not a clear cut, clearly defined barrier. No one is all good; no one is all bad. No one has just good options; no one has just bad options.

All of your decisions come with many possibilities. Nothing is preordained in your lives. You’re not held to a standard where if you make a decision in one direction, you are blessed with eternal life. If you make another decision, you are cursed with a spiritual death. There is no choice that has those two alternatives. All human beings benefit ultimately by the act of having faith in the decisions they make more than they benefit by the specifics of a particular decision.

You engage in the possibility of approaching many doors. It is your engagement with which doors you choose that is more important than the door itself. Your growth as human beings is not determined primarily by the choices you make but rather by the fact that you make the choices. It is a growth through action; it is not a growth through answers.

When you pray to God to tell you which way to turn, you are asking for answers. If you pray that you are open to an understanding of the many alternatives available, then you do grow spiritually. You begin to see that there is something good that is part of every action. That goodness may not be the action itself but the consequences of that action. It may be the consequences that provide you a greater awareness of God’s presence.

There are many whose faith in the presence of God is the result of unspeakable agony. It is not that all must agonize and suffer in order to grow, but rather that in the agony and in the suffering, there is growth. There is also growth in whatever causes rejoicing, whatever lifts the spirit in gratitude. We say you become more aware of the light when you experience darkness, but the growth that occurs, occurs only in the light, and it is the getting to that light, it is in the evolution towards light, that the light itself illuminates the past and provides the nourishment.

You may make a decision which others feel clearly to be wrong, but you make a decision, you make a choice, you choose an alternative because it seems right to you, and it will provide a path that leads to light just as much, just as effectively as making a decision which seems so obviously right to so many. It is not the outcome of your choices that is important. It is the choosing, the being open, the affirmation that some of the future is in your hands.

Whatever you choose in life, there, too, sits God. We could say in all truthfulness there are no bad choices. There are choices that seem more expedient. There are choices that may provide more immediate gratification. But those are not in themselves the kind of definition of good choice or bad choice.

You are given life in part so that you may approach many doors, and you can learn to have faith that whatever door you choose, there will be a path toward the Light. Your lives are blessed not because of what you do but because of who you are. You are creatures of God’s creation. You are creatures that seek meaning. You are creatures that seek significance. You are creatures that wonder whether you turn right, left, or continue straight ahead. You are creatures who are blessed by being required to choose alternatives, to evaluate what is important, to evaluate what is reflective of your current understanding of God. That effort to reflect God’s presence in whatever challenging circumstance you may find yourselves in is in itself a pathway towards spiritual enlightenment, spiritual growth, and is part of the process of becoming the Light.

No human being is bad, intrinsically bad—that you know. But if you can accept that reality, then you should find it more comforting to realize that no choice is a bad choice. What you choose, the direction you select, has its own results and set of impacts, and it is not those impacts or resonances that are significant but rather how you work with them. How you meet with what you perceive to be failure is more important than failing or succeeding. It is the old adage “it is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game,” for there is no absolute win or loss. Yes, you play hard. Yes, you confront your lives as best you can, but achieving an internal peace is about freeing yourselves from the fear of making a wrong choice. It is about accepting the consequences, growing with them, becoming changed by them, always accepting that what is changed belongs on your own path to becoming the Spirit Center, to becoming the Source of all Love.

Live your lives free of the fear of failure. Live your lives with the confidence that you will grow in the ways that are of great significance through whatever choices that may be made. It could be those choices have impact on others. That impact may be beneficial or destructive, but you will still learn, and others will learn as a result of your choices. That emphasizes the truth that you will learn by the choices that others make.

Accepting both of these truths serves well in helping each of you to reduce and ultimately eliminate judgment of the worthiness of another. It eliminates judgment of the worthiness of self. In eliminating both judgments, you are on the path to illuminating the beauty, the value, and the sacredness of all you encounter.

Be freed as you diminish your judgment of self and others. Be freed as you lessen your fear of making wrong decisions. Be free to acknowledge the growth that is contained in all choices you make and in the choices that are made by all others.

You are blessed as all are blessed. You walk in God’s Light as all walk in God’s Light. You will always find growth as all will find growth. Be comforted in the light that you draw from your own life and from the lives of all. We bless you in your sacredness.

Amen.