February 3, 2011

• Concern for a critically ill loved one

• All benefit from prayer

• Be a manifestation of God’s compassion

God speaks to your hearts. God speaks to the core of who you are, to your spirit centers. God speaks as The Spirit Center. Your guides facilitate your ability to hear as God speaks, in a way that you can understand. There is no single language of God, just as there is no single term that identifies or describes God. There are those for whom God is so revered that there is no name for God. There are only names for what God creates.

When you hear God speak, each of you hears in a language that you can understand. Every human being is being guided. That guidance is sometimes in words, sometimes in thoughts, feelings, touch, visions, sounds, nudges, hunches. The level of communication always depends on who is in the process of connecting with God. You may be guided and yet are unable to identify that guidance.

All of you are concerned about the critically ill member of your group. We can affirm to you that he is being guided. He is being shown the way. His life is in the process of being transformed—transformed through love into Love. The language that he and all of you ultimately understand is only through love. You enter human life through love. You engage most beneficially in your lives through love. You transition to our plane of life through love. All that you experience that speaks to spirit is experienced within the framework of love. There is nothing of value that is beyond the reach of love.

What does this mean? Nothing exists that is permanent other than that which lives solely through love and as love. When you pray, you are functioning through love. When you pray that suffering be relieved, you’re praying out of the condition of love. You’re manifesting that love. You cannot pray in a void. Real prayer is not a duty—it is a natural act. Prayer is the action of spirit. When you pray for those who suffer, it is spirit that is reaching out through your prayer to those for whom you pray.

Why is it that human beings pray when they fear a loss and yet fail to pray when there is no perceived loss, no perceived change of state? So often you pray in supplication. You ask God to intervene, to step in, to become active, to exert power, to produce what it is you perceive as needed. But when do you pray for a part of the world that you seldom think of? When do you pray for the nameless and wait only until they are named?

You have the opportunity throughout your lives to exercise your awareness of unity, of singleness, of completeness with all. When you walk outside, do you often pray for the sun? Do you pray for the trees? Do you pray for copper in the ground? Do you pray for the iron? Do you pray for the clouds? Do you pray to the rain? Do you pray for your neighbor whom you may not know? Do you pray for relatives you have never seen? Do you pray for all associates with whom you work? Human beings too often pray only for the wheel that squeaks loudly. When you feel strongly compelled to pray for another out of your love for another, that is the time to remind yourselves that the power of prayer can be directed everywhere.

When you pray for your friend, you are really praying for all who suffer. When you pray for his loved ones, you pray for all who care and feel a loss. When you pray for those who are victims of war, you are praying for all who are victims of injustice, for all who are victims of imbalance—physical imbalance, emotional imbalance, social imbalance, economic imbalance. Because you are all one, all benefit when prayer is offered. You pray for your friend—all benefit. When you pray for those who are injured in current uprisings, you are praying for all in pain. You are praying for all in fear. You are praying for all who experience anger. You are praying for all who are the victims of anger. When you pray for the beauty that you are surrounded with, you are praying for the beauty that belongs to the right of all human beings.

You feel a loss, but everyone feels a loss. You feel hope—everyone experiences hope. So it is at times like this, when you are moved to reach out with your hands and embrace God, that you are reminded of the unity of human life, and therefore you reach out with your arms to embrace everyone. Because you are all a single entity, there is no one who is more special than another. But just as you are God’s manifestation, so are your prayers specifically directed, a manifestation of your spiritual ability to embrace all.

You are concerned about your dear friend—the prognosis, his future. It is at times like this that you are given an opportunity to consider the prognosis, the future of all people. You are being reminded, not only of your own personal vulnerability, but of your mutually shared life on this planet. You pray not out of anger—you pray out of love. Anytime you pray with such love, you are creating that very energy that drifts away from you and nourishes creation.

In a well-made mattress, a disturbance of motion in one area is somehow radiated outwards. Each fiber of that mattress is connected to a fiber elsewhere in that mattress. There is no part of that entity that exists unconnected. So it is in your relationship to others. All that you pray for, all that you do that supports and uplifts and affirms provides precisely those same energies everywhere.

If you surround yourselves with positive energy, you are increasing that energy throughout creation. Likewise, if you surround yourself with negative thoughts, negative desires, negative influences, you are at the same time increasing that presence elsewhere. That presence is not an energy that grows by itself, for you know the darkness has no energy of its own. Only light has energy, so although you may increase the darkness by converting your own energies to darkness, you have likewise the opportunity of creating the energy of life, of light, of love, because those energies can expand on their own. You reflect light; you create light. As you create light, light expands. Light expands on its own just as warm air expands on its own. Darkness has no power of its own other than what you give it. Praying, therefore, for those in need expands what is godly, expands what is good, expands what benefits all.

Your concerns about friends, family, and acquaintances who are in need provide a kind of paradigm for you to feel an engagement with all life, not just those for whom you pray. You seek balance in your lives. You seek balance for your critically ill friend. You seek balance for his loved ones. You seek balance for your neighbors, friends, family. That effort that you exert to provide such balance is in its own sense serving as God’s response for which you pray. You act lovingly toward another, and you are increasing God’s presence in love. You reach out to another with compassion—you are exercising God’s compassionate presence. You reach out to another with hope—you are manifesting God’s hope.

It is you, each of you, it is all human beings who serve to give the presence of God meaning, relevance, immediacy to life. You’re being asked always to be compassionate, not because it is your duty, not because you should be cajoled into being compassionate, but rather you’re asked to be compassionate because you are a manifestation of God’s compassion. That is the natural state of love. You are asked to be loving because that is God’s way of being loving.

Each of you provides an opportunity for being the voice, the eyes, the ears, the hands, the shoulders, the heart, the breath of God. Rejoice therefore when you find yourselves in a condition of wanting to call out to God to step in and act on your behalf. You are really being asked to step in on God’s behalf. That is an opportunity for each of you to grow, to broaden, to become deeper. Your growth is limited by your awareness. If you go through life not being motivated to pray, a manifestation of love, then you are less able to become precisely the quality that you are praying to God to exercise.

Human life is not an experience void of challenges, but those challenges are a way of growing, of heightening your awareness of God. Through that awareness you then exercise God’s qualities at all times. Seek therefore opportunities to be reminded of God. Use those opportunities to reinforce your connection with all of creation. Reverence for another means reverence for all. Love for another means love for all. Care for another means care for all.

Your beloved friend feels your presence. He knows of your love, but he is aware not only of your love, but the love of all that exists. He is experiencing peace. He is experiencing Light, and his vision of God is clear. Rejoice in his vision that it may become yours!

You are blessed in that sacred sight. You are blessed by each other. You are blessed in the presence and spreading of all that is love.

Amen.