February 8, 1987

• Achieving inner peace

• Being aware of one’s soul

• Guilt and conscience

God greets all of you this evening with peace. It is a peace that the world does not know much of. It is inner peace. Life is so full of struggles which are motivated by a need to achieve a kind of equilibrium: a balance between one's goals, one's limitations, one's sense of self-respect and self-love, and one's desires to be a meaningful presence in the lives of others. There is much that plies on your energies and commitments, but in the end what all of you seek is peace. That inner peace that God surrounds this group with is a temporal experience for each of you. It is something you seek but don’t always find. But it controls the directions of each of your lives.

When one feels frustrated and unable to meet specific objectives in life, there is little peace. There is a sense of urgency of direction, but peace is lacking. Inner peace is not the acceptance of the status quo. One who is at inner peace does not feel that life is in complete order and control. Life will never be in complete control for any of you.

Inner peace is really the faith one has that one is in some way in tune or in rhythm with the presence of God in the world. For you to achieve a sense of inner peace which is not fleeting but long lasting, you must first be aware of God's eternal presence. Without that awareness, you cannot sufficiently align yourselves with a life direction in keeping with God’s presence. One who has inner peace believes fully in God's presence and in the harmony of one’s own life with that presence.

Your lives move in many directions. At times it is in conjunction with God, but at times it is in opposition to God. You often wonder when you proceed through life whether this is what God would wish. If you feel turmoil within, then you know you are not proceeding with God, but rather opposed to God. The test of your life and its direction being in harmony with God is whether you feel peace, whether you feel God's presence a part of what is happening. You may feel pressure. You may feel a restless drive to achieve something, whether it is peace within the community or compassion with one's neighbors. You may be searching for means of realizing world peace. All of these goals contain a sense of restlessness. But with this restless feeling it is possible to recognize that God has a hand in the outcome and that your hand is within God's. When you recognize that, you will feel an inner peace, a confidence in God’s presence.

Often many make the mistake in their search for peace of somehow eliminating an awareness of the difficulties of those around them. Many who meditate take great pride in blocking out the ills of the world for a moment in order to achieve what they call inner peace. But what they are actually achieving is a kind of spiritual isolation. It is not God's will that humans become isolated from one another. The individual who meditates when surrounded by war, be it actual or figurative, is not really achieving peace. That person is achieving isolation. Isolation does not provide benefit to another person, and therefore it is not the will of God. There are those who meditate in order to achieve peace, but the nature of that meditation is one of coming into a communion with God, of acquiring a sense of God’s presence while remaining aware of the difficulties which are a part of life. That is the kind of peace which each should seek, for when one seeks God's presence, one is able to respond to others lit by that presence. Those who achieve what they call inner peace by isolation do not serve others. They serve themselves. There is no love in that kind of activity.

How often it is that we exhort you with the concept that you are surrounded by God's peace. That does not mean that you are all fully relaxed and carefree. It means only that you have become acutely aware that you are in God's presence. It is that awareness which provides the potential for compassionate service to another.

Yes, even in moments of personal anguish one can achieve peace. When one prays for another to be given peace, one is really praying that another will be given a glimpse of God's presence. How much there is that can be achieved with this kind of peace!

If all the nations in the world were to define peace as isolation, as withdrawal from conflict—emotional or otherwise—no peace would really be achieved because everything would be motivated by self-serving. Imagine, if you will, a world that is dominated by the firm conviction that God is at hand. There could really be no room for selfish strife because one would be overcome by the power of that presence. When you pray for world peace, you cannot pray that one country will simply ignore another. You must pray that one country will be joined with another in the recognition of God's presence throughout the world. There are nations that are formed by governments supposedly centered upon a single concept of God's presence, and yet despite such orientation there is much hatred, much jealousy, much defensiveness, much fear. How could these exist if a nation were truly cognizant of God's hand in the lives of its people?

Certainly there are many ways of responding to a recognition of God's guidance, and those responses will not be the same from people to people, nation to nation. Despite their varying responses, they would however not cause conflict. Therefore, the means of ultimately achieving peace, both locally and worldwide, is through the achievement of recognition that God is indeed involved in life and not just a theological concept.

Peace is an elusive goal. Our sense of peace in our spiritual sphere is different from yours. It is more intense, more personal, but it is by no means complete, for there is much that needs to be revealed to us as we develop our capacity to receive that revelation. As our capacity increases, we move on to higher levels of development.

Your stage of life in human form is but one stage of many. We all share the common bond of seeking inner peace. We pray that you will receive inner peace, but our guides also pray that we will receive greater inner peace. It is a continuous linking of many spheres of spiritual growth. Your sense of individuality in human life is not so fundamentally different from ours. Just as you are not all the same, we too have our differences. Our life is a conscious life. Our perceptions are as intense as yours.

Much of your sense of participation in life is really your spiritual selves participating in life. You can be in touch with your soul. While it has its own rhythm of development enhanced through your help, the connection between your souls and your physical bodies is very close. You can be aware of your souls. They are not somehow abstract in their reality. They are very real. They are very concrete. Though not visible or measurable by any means in human life, they are as real and as vital and as individual as your own life is.

It is easy as a result of our previous message to feel that somehow there is a major separation between your physical and spiritual entities. You are indeed caretakers for your souls, but in the same way you are caretakers for your physical beings as well. Consider but for a moment how much influence you have on your physical bodies. Although you are caretakers for your physical bodies, you do not feel a kind of separation. The same holds true for your spiritual selves. There is no separation. The soul is not something which you can be unaware of and must just somehow take on faith that it exists. You can be aware of it.

So many times you have been told that your conscience is your soul in action. It is a very concrete feeling. You have all experienced it. At times however one's conscience can be mixed up with the emotions associated with guilt. Guilt is not a part of your spiritual self. There is no corner of your soul that responds with guilt. There is no function of your soul serving as a response for guilt. Guilt is a human condition. It is learned and practiced and reinforced. When you are motivated because of guilt, that is not your conscience for the soul is totally guilt free.

When you are motivated by your conscience toward compassion, of which we have spoken, that is your soul. You are fully aware then of that within you which is divine. It can be a glorious experience because it brings God from the abstract to the concrete. God does not wish your spiritual development to remain abstract. What is the benefit of being abstract, of being somehow beyond any comprehension? There is nothing gained, for humans indeed advance in proportion to their awareness of their soul and of God.

If you are unaware of the reality of the spirit, much that you would do in your lives would inhibit the growth and progress of your spiritual core. So it is understandable that God wishes you to become aware of your soul. True, you will not achieve complete awareness. There is much to be learned, as you know. But when you experience personally the reality of your own spirit, your own spark of divinity, you can no longer deny God's presence as a reality also. When that happens, you feel inner peace.

Much of what we convey to you is geared toward the achievement of that peace. As you consider the compilation of much of what you have received, it should become apparent to you that the central theme must be peace and its application. We urge you to focus your individual and mutual attention on peace because it includes all that is essential to living a life guided by God's presence.

We pray for your peace. We pray for the ability of your extending that peace to another. We pray for the widespread accumulation of peace. That is what is essential in life. That is crucial to our own development. God's peace can be your peace, and at this moment it is your peace, and for that we rejoice with you in being in the presence of that heavenly light.

We bless all of you with God’s peace and the love which comes forth out of that peace.

Amen.