June 22, 2005

• Prayer is listening

• Transforming evil

• Be compassionate

God is with each of you in your crying, in your laughter, in your fears and sadness, in your joy and your gratitude. You have expressed together many needs that relate, in the end, to positives and negatives—the good and the bad, what creates pleasure and what creates agony—and how to respond through prayer to these many challenges. We have emphasized prayer as being so central to your connection to God, but because it is so important, we frequently return to its role.

You ask about how to pray. It is perhaps the most important question that anyone can pose, for in asking, you are really searching for the best way to connect to God. As you have observed and as we have mentioned, it is not for you to place God into action, but rather for you to place yourselves in that position. That is what prayer really is. No matter what is prayed, what is really being asked is, “What can I do to reflect God?” The mechanics of prayer are very simple: you simply listen. When you listen with a quiet heart and a quiet mind, you will know what it is to pray.

The subject of prayer does not just come out of intense experiences, moments of fear or bereavement or anger. While such times may lead to prayer, most of the time you are not facing great life-changing experiences. When such experiences are encountered, it is most important to ask for wisdom, to ask for a vision of light that can illuminate God’s path for you or for another. How you ask for that vision, how you ask for that wisdom takes many forms. The form that is best is the form that has meaning for you.

Prayers do not have to end with set phrases, regardless of religious practice or teaching. There is no one way to pray, but there is only one way to approach prayer and that is to pursue a sense of inner peace. If you are ill, praying from the perspective of panic may help you to feel you are connecting to God, but that prayer can only be felt as answered when you are at peace within, for that peace allows you to be receptive to God’s response that waits at the door.

Prayers, in the end, are not requests. They are a kind of facilitation. Prayers open you or others for whom you pray to a recognition of the response that is always present. You can pray under pressure, you can pray when you are relaxed, you can pray when you are angry, you can pray when you are desperate, you can pray when you rejoice, but that is only half the process of prayer. The most beneficial component is listening. It is the insight that comes only when you are at peace. Sometimes that insight is a kind of “aha” experience, a light illuminates, so to speak, and suddenly you have a new perspective. You have a new vantage point which leads to totally new conclusions and insights.

Such growth, such insight, such new wisdom occurs only within the framework of inner peace. If you are consumed by worry, it is of course appropriate and necessary to express that. But then you must have faith that what is right will be forthcoming, and you must listen to hear the quiet steps of God.

Prayer is the way you deal with the variety of what life offers. It is the means by which you make the life choices of which we have spoken. Following that prayer comes the silence, and then the thoughts emerge. Those incoming thoughts are part of God’s loving response.

You are given choice always in life. Without choice you lose a dimension of what is essential in your human experience. You must welcome those choices. You must welcome what life provides, whether or not it is positive or negative, good or bad, strengthening and affirming, or threatening and intimidating.

We speak to you from a place of peace. It is not a different place from what you occupy. It is a different form of energy but we are with you completely, next to you. There is nothing that can be closer to you than we, your guides, and God’s loving light. As close to you as you can imagine another to be, we are still closer. Your space and ours are virtually the same. There is no distance.

You have wondered about issues regarding evil as well as the forces of good, of love. Human life is subject to the energies of human thought. We spoke to you of the importance of positive thought as it relates to life, human relationships, health, relationships between nations. But there is a darker side of energy. It is an energy that you may think of as evil, but the energy of evil does not emanate from God, nor does it emerge from the presence of any single entity. What is good comes directly from God. What is evil comes from the human experience. It comes from the physical life as experienced by all of creation. Animals outside the human chain also are the subjects of what is good. They create in their own way what is good for them. But animals also suffer what is negative. All that has been created by God and exists physically exists in a form that you as human beings can observe, exists in a dual world, a world that supports and a world that destructs or destroys.

For human beings the negative, destructive side of life grows through the proliferation of negative thoughts. Thoughts are a kind of energy. It is a form that is difficult to measure, but it nevertheless exists. It has great potential. The result of thought can be quite clear. You may not see the wind, but you see the effects of wind. You may not see the cold, but you are aware of its effects. You may not see love, but you are aware of its effects. Energy is everywhere and there are many forms. On our side, the energy is love. For us, energy of love can be seen as light. For you, the energy of love is only evident by its effect, not by its mere presence.

In the same way that love exists as an energy form, hate, greed, jealousy, anger, judgment also have their own energy fields. As human beings, although you share a common divinity, you share common failings that are part of life as you experience it. These failings, these perceptions that are negative, create their own impact. Each of you is sensitive to that impact. We have no vision of it whatsoever, for greed, selfishness, hatred, jealousy, etc., although they are an energy, do not emit the light that is love. We know that evil exists, for it diminishes the brilliance of the light that we respond to, but it has no light of its own.

One of the important lessons for all human beings to pass, be champion over, is the ability to recognize what is negative and transform it into the loving light. When you are the recipient of negative energy from another and you accept that energy in its potential for transformation, you have grown spiritually beyond measure. Human life is for spiritual growth. Without the opportunity for transformation, there is no growth…there is only stasis. Experiencing evil and responding with your understanding of God is action of the Spirit made tangible through human life. That is your highest calling.

You’re asked to be compassionate, and you’re asked because there is such lack of compassion. You’re asked to be compassionate, not because everyone else is compassionate, but because so many are not compassionate, and through your act of compassion you transform a life that may fail to be compassionate into a life that recognizes compassion, and in that recognition can itself become compassionate. When you are deprived of the experience of love and you are offered love, you are transformed and become loving. It is the transformation, therefore, from what is negative into that light, to becoming an entity that transmits and strengthens light, which is the root of why you are given human life at all.

You are asked to be transformed. You are asked to be transforming. When you pray, you are allowing yourselves to be transformed and enabling yourselves to become transforming. The continuum of receiving and then giving what you have received is ensured through the prayers that you experience. We say you “experience” a prayer— you don’t merely offer a prayer, for the transformation comes through the experience and not just the offering.

The contrasts that you experience in life are essential to this spiritual transformation. The potential for this transformation is found in your spirit, in your soul. When you deny that spirit, you deny the opportunity for transformation. Live your lives, therefore, in the true belief that you may be transformed. Be open to that transformation by the silence of prayer, and allow yourselves to become an agent for transformation directed outward as your thoughts give nourishment to what you have experienced in prayer.

We offer you, each one of you, the opportunity to be transformed. Each of you has a guide and your guide is ever present to help, to provide you with direction as you encounter the choices of life, and in the process become transformed. God blesses your undertakings to become the radiant light, the loving presence that is the potential for all human beings. Be joyous in this blessed state!

Amen.