June 7, 2005

• The relationship between thoughts and prayer

• Thoughts create reality

God joins your souls with a bond that is permanent, that is everlasting. Your connections to one another are the product of your history with one another—the history that precedes your human experience. The connection that links each of you together should serve to provide strength for one another.

It is not enough to acknowledge the equality in the loving Spirit, although that is, of course, fundamental. It is more important, rather, to affirm one another, to provide one another with support that is both personal and spiritual—personal, in terms of encouragement, sympathy when needed, guidance when needed, just a listening presence when needed. But your spiritual support of one another is critical. It may be exercised through prayer—prayer for one’s health, prayer for one’s strength. But such spiritual support goes beyond that. Prayer is essential. It is absolutely fundamental. But you also support one another spiritually through your framing of another with love— framing someone as healthy, as strengthened—for how you envision another has a direct bearing on the condition of that individual.

When you pray for strength to be given, that is, of course, important. But you must also envision that individual in the condition for which you pray. Prayer is essential because it opens more fully the communication between that person and God. But framing another in the condition for which you pray is also important. When you frame another in a condition of strength or health or peace, you are actually helping to create the environment that allows that condition to flourish. Thoughts—your thoughts, the thoughts of all individuals—are very much a part of creating reality. Your thoughts are a manifestation of your prayers. Both the prayer itself (as a way of opening a channel) and your thoughts (providing the reality for the prayer) together are an enormously powerful force.

We have shared with you, from time to time, the analogy of thought as a way of communication, as a way of our understanding one another, our communicating. Just as there is no sense of place in our lives and therefore no distance, the way for you to understand that concept is by considering the activity of thought. Through thought you can be anywhere at anytime instantaneously. Thought has no distance. Thought has no time. Thought allows you to be aware of place simultaneously with another place. Both exist together.

In the same way, your thoughts create your spiritual reality. Thoughts for peace make for peace. Thoughts for war make for discord. Thoughts about love and loving relationships make for love and loving relationships. Thoughts about understanding another make for understanding. If you think positively about another, you cannot hate. You cannot be consumed by what is negative. Thought is a powerful force which serves the spirit. It is another dimension related to but separate from prayer.

We have spoken so often of the application and implications of prayer, but you must allow yourselves the same attention concerning your thoughts. You can exercise your faith by thought, for thought is intentional, and what is intentional becomes action, for it is active—it is never passive. Each of you has the capacity to exercise positive thought, but you also have the capacity for negative thoughts. It is therefore inherent in human life to be faced always with choice. You can choose to think positively; you can choose to think negatively.

On our side, thought is only positive. There are no negative concepts. There are no negative thoughts. There are no negative meanings. There are no negative actions. But human life is given the choice to think and therefore to create what is good, or to think and therefore create what is not. The element of choice for you is always present. That separates your life from our experience.

How do you make this choice? You make this choice through the fundamental action of prayer, and we say “fundamental action”—that is active, not passive. Prayer is always active. It is the exercise of prayer that enables you to create in your thoughts what is positive and good, what is loving and compassionate and uplifting. The mistake that many make is to consider that praying alone ends their connection with what can be good. True, as you pray for what is to be good, good will come. But part of your own spiritual development—strengthening, if you will—is your capacity to create in your thought that for which you pray. Therefore, it is important to be faced with the choices that always accompany thought.

It is common for many to refer to the still voice inside, the “follow your conscience” approach. There is much truth to this because your conscience is a means by which you are connected to your guides. It is your conscience that helps to choose what to create through your thoughts. If a thousand people think of a world at peace, the motion toward peace is undeterred. If a million people think of a condition of peace, the energy that creates that peace is multiplied.

But where is God in the creation of that peace? It is God that provides you with a collective concept of what peace may be, and in your thoughts of peace, you are the actions of God in the world. You may pray for a release from famine or suffering, and God’s response is direct. But in your thoughts, as you conceive of a life for which you pray, you are creating that environment, you are preparing the garden for God’s loving nourishment. Praying that you have patience with another is important, but it must be accompanied by your thoughts of such condition, and that for which you pray will be facilitated.

Negative thoughts multiply just as positive thoughts do. You see this on a personal basis frequently. If one individual feels very competitive toward another, it is not long before the other feels the need to be competitive as well. The product becomes competition in both directions. Certainly the need to be competitive is doubled. This is a simple illustration of a profound truth: Your thoughts create your reality.

Think, therefore, of what benefits another. Think, therefore, of life where another is fulfilled. Think of your own lives in a positive light. When you seek your own health, think of yourself in balance, for health means balance. It does not mean all is perfect…it means what may be negative has a counterweight with what is positive. If you lose an awareness of the positive, there is only the bleakness of the negative that remains and there is no health. By thinking of the positive, the negative is neutralized. There is balance, there is health.

When you feel supported in life, it does not mean that all is perfect, for no life consists of only positive. There is no growth without the struggle for balance. You are aware of suffering, but if your thoughts turn to the alleviation of that suffering, the balance that is so essential is created, for what is health but a sense of balance between what is good and what is not?

There is a choice. You can dwell on what is negative in life, or you can offset that by your thoughts about what is positive. When you are discouraged, that which causes the discouragement may not fully disappear, but the effect is no longer there when your thoughts turn to what is affirming and confidence-building and loving. There is no sting to the discouragement. You cannot in your lives eliminate difficulties, frustrations, fears, anxieties, but a life dominated by those is a life that is reduced in its bloom. Acknowledging the reality of those, you are still empowered through prayer to direct your thoughts towards what is good, what is godly, and the effect of all that is negative is canceled out. Your lives are in balance and you are in a condition of health.

You can be at peace when there is war all about. We do not deny the existence, the presence, proximity of the strife, but you are able to find balance that allows you to move forward toward the light of God.

Your thoughts are the means by which you create the reality that brings your prayers to fulfillment. It is your prayers that are the beginning, and it is your thoughts that are the nourishment. Life is to be embraced with prayer, with imaging, with thoughts that abound with all that is positive. Make the choice to think of what can be, and you will be doing all that you can do to make it a reality.

If you have difficulty with another, think of what that relationship can be with no difficulty. Think of what that relationship can be when there is a recognition of your common spiritual source. Doing so, the relationship is changed. That relationship may be with another; it may be with yourself.

The experience of guilt is the avoidance of thoughts of what can be. You can be unburdened from guilt if your thoughts are centered on your potential for growth, your spiritual value, all that is positive about you. That for which one feels guilt may continue to be a part of one’s life, but you are no longer governed by guilt or regret or fear. You are governed by your thoughtful vision of what can be.

Create your reality through your thoughts. Allow those thoughts to nourish and support all for which you pray. It brings you closer to a full knowledge of God.

We communicate with you through thought. We may get attention from you by a sense of touch or light or aroma, but we still communicate what is good through thought. Allow yourselves the luxury and blessing of thoughts that are centered in what is good, what is whole, what is uplifting, what is loving, what is peaceful, what is compassionate, what increases understanding. In so doing, you create a vision of God speaking to you directly and speaking to all who surround you.

You are blessed in your prayers. You are blessed in your choice to create God’s reality in your lives. Rejoice in that opportunity! We are with you…we are with you.

Amen.