February 10, 1998

• Find time for contemplation, passive prayer, listening

• Intercessory prayer

• Affirm the divinity and dignity of everyone

Your guides are assembled with you. They join in your sense of being in the presence of God. Our vision of God, our understanding of God, our experience of God is not, in a sense, of another world. We are indeed an extension of your own lives, your own world. Our view of God is clearer, but it is not totally different.

When you are at peace, you are much more capable of sensing the warm presence of God. You feel a connection somehow to the greater truth, the greater love that is God. But when you are active and otherwise occupied, it is difficult for you to see God in your lives. There is real value in the contemplative experience of life, not to the exclusion of activity, but rather to supplement that activity. Your understanding and application of the presence of God is clearly visible, not only to others but to each of you individually when you allow for that peace.

Frequently we have suggested that you find moments of quiet for passive prayer, as we have called it, a state of receptivity, contemplation, with no specific objective in mind other than a listening attitude. You listen to your heart, you listen to what it tells you, you listen to your understanding of who you are at the moment. You listen for evidence that God’s activities directly affect your lives. Your sense of nearness to God is more intensely experienced when you are listening rather than asking.

It is natural to ask God for things, for it is your way of expressing the recognition of need. If there is sickness, you ask for help. If there is spiritual turmoil, you ask for peace, you pray for that peace, you ask that God give you that peace. It is not incorrect to ask, but what you are really doing in asking is recognizing need. But your sense of closeness to God will be firmly confirmed, not in the asking but in the listening. You cannot expect to have words thrown at you or brilliant visions displayed before you relate to your needs.

One of you speaks of writing. You have an urge to put into words what comes into your mind. For others, it is insight drawn that applies to actions that are to be taken. Listening can provide you with something far less specific but nevertheless essential, that being a sense of peace and well-being in the midst of turmoil. When these experiences are felt, you sense God’s presence.

None of these experiences that have been described can be felt, seen, heard when you are intensely involved in some other activity. And yet these experiences can become a part of your life when you allow yourself to listen daily for a brief moment. It does not have to be an hour, it does not have to be a half-hour. It may be two or three minutes, but you allow yourself the blessing of listening, and that listening will always be rewarding. You will always emerge from that period of reflection different than when you entered it. You may not be aware immediately of the change, but the change is there. The evolution of your spiritual presence will have taken place. You must learn to rely more on those moments of contemplation. There is no day that goes by that does not have within it an opportunity to withdraw, however briefly.

Your prayers on behalf of others are motivated by your compassion for others, for you are concerned about the need for the best to occur on behalf of another. Such a wish for the best to occur is narrow in scope, for you are defining in your own mind what you feel is the best. That which you label desirable and most beneficial may not in the end be so desirable or so beneficial. Nevertheless, God’s response to your concerns about another is direct, immediate, and unfailing. You may not see God’s response. You may not observe the intervention of God’s presence in the life of another, but there is no doubt that God’s loving presence has been brought into the experience of another, and you must have full faith in this.

There are several in your group who are not currently present. Your prayers for them are loving prayers, prayers of hope, of support, some prayers out of anxiety and worry. But all prayers are focused on the need for God’s presence to enhance the life of another, even to enhance one’s own life, and that is entirely appropriate. Your prayers are extremely powerful. Your prayers are what initiate the action of God’s will. God does not have to be asked to do something, but in praying for another, you are opening that other to be receptive to God’s continuing presence. We have affirmed this on previous times together, but it is especially appropriate at this time.

There is much concern about the breakdown in world peace, a movement toward violence. We are not going to say there will or will not be conflict in the Middle East in the immediate future, but what we can say is that as long as there is a world inhabited by humans, there will be conflict. As painful as it is and as much tragedy as it creates, there will always be those individuals who are motivated to succeed, reaching their own goals at the expense of others.

The more you understand about living a life that allows for your spiritual development, the more you understand and accept the reality that, in truth, you can achieve your goals only with the help of others. There is no worthy achievement that is reached alone. Such achievement is empty and serves no benefit, least of all to the individual who held that goal. You must rely on others.

You understand the wisdom of acknowledging the divinity of others. Worthy goals are achieved on the shoulders of a divine relationship. Nations and individuals who fight one another do so in the absence of an affirmation of the necessity for mutual support, mutual love, mutual respect. If you live what is referred to as a godly life, you do not accept only one group of people—you accept all. The goal that is godly accepts the godliness of everyone, and includes that godliness within the goal. As you set your priorities, determining what is important in your lives and what is merely short-sighted in its impact, focus on those activities and those goals that affirm the dignity of everyone, for those are the goals that bring the spirit closer to God.

Praying on behalf of another is an appropriate goal because you are affirming another, you are recognizing the value of another and the importance of another’s vision of God. Even the most menial job that one can accept is a valid job and a valued job if it serves to support others in the process.

We spoke to you last about relationships. The nature of those relationships is strengthened beyond measure when it is offered and experienced in a sense of spiritual union. Affirm that union with all, and you will be assured that your efforts and activities will serve to bring all closer to God’s presence.

We bless you with that presence and with the affirmation of your divinity, the divinity of all human beings. Bathe in the light of that affirmation and go forward in the recognition that all are equal, that all share in the divinity of God, that all have been created by God, that all are cared for by God, that all are cared for through their guides. It is comforting thought and it brings your vision much greater clarity as you begin to experience a view of God that is in the same world as ours. You are blessed by your vision, and we are blessed by your prayers.

Amen.