November 30, 1994

• Applying what you know is challenging

• Being vulnerable and receptive is a strength

God joins each of you together as well as your guides as you are gathered at this moment. God joins you by a loving concern for one another, a mutual interest in one another's well-being and strength and growth. This joining together of your souls and each of us is accomplished through an incredible brilliance which we feel as warmth and see as a magnificent radiance. You are sometimes aware of that radiance by experiencing joy, by a sense of peace, by a recognition of your oneness with all. We are blessed in our present state of life to recognize God's presence constantly, but you are blessed also by a recognition from time to time. There are many who are not yet aware of the reality of God's radiance.

In your awareness, in your knowledge, you are given at the same time a challenge. This challenge is to internalize and to make your own that knowledge that has been shared with you, and then you are to take that knowledge and apply it, as we mentioned previously, to the enhancement of others. This challenge, at its best, is difficult. It requires conscious effort on your part. It is easy not to apply what one already knows, for the tendency is to believe that if you know, then all else falls into place.

The reality of life is a recognition of the gap between knowledge and execution, between knowing and acting, between knowing and applying that knowledge. You recognize the oneness of humanity, but you do not always apply that knowledge in your daily lives. You understand the importance of peace, and yet so seldom do you experience it. You recognize the need and value of loving, of reaching out, but too infrequently are you actually loving.

Being loving and supportive does not mean being weak. Being loving is one of the most difficult challenges to human life. Everyone wishes to be loved. Everyone wishes to be valued. Everyone wishes, as you say, a piece of the action. Everyone wants to be included, but only a few take those wishes, those needs and reflect them outward. It is easier to be loved than to love. It is easier to be included than it is to include.

In your spiritual development, a difficult but important step is in taking what you are offered and passing it onward.

It is easier to be accepted than it is to be accepting.

One of you is faced with a difficult meeting. He wishes for the meeting to be peaceful as he wishes for relationships to be peaceful, but it is equally difficult to be approaching this meeting with peace in his heart. It is understandable the dilemma he feels between what he wishes and what he feels. The essential ingredient for successful encounters with others is acting upon what you wish, making what you wish be what you feel, making the needs that you recognize become the parameters for your outreach to others. One can be as convincing by how one expresses oneself as in what one expresses. In many ways the "how" is more important than the "what.” It is always human contact which has greater impact than written communications.

An individual can be convincing because one becomes what one believes. If one believes in peace and becomes peaceful, that person is totally convincing. If one speaks of peace and is not peaceful, the words are empty. If one speaks of the value of another and yet has no feeling for that value, what are expressed are just words. This is true whether one is dealing with meetings or conversations with others, whether one is addressing a large group or speaking most intimately with another. Genuineness, sincerity mean being what it is you seek.

If you wish to spread peace, you must be peaceful. All of the knowledge attained about the value of peace is of no assistance in speaking to another about peace if it is not expressed from a position of peace. You recognize the value of loving all of humanity, but if you speak to a thousand people about the importance of love and are not loving, your words will fall on deaf ears. You can only communicate what it is that defines you, what you are. If you speak of compassion, you must be compassionate. If you speak of friendship, you must feel that friendship, not just recognize its value.

In earlier gatherings we have emphasized this point. You must experience love before you can offer it. That is why the family unit holds such great potential in affecting the lives of the younger generations. Children learn what it means to love by experiencing what it means to be loved. If they are loved, they experience love. If they have experienced love, they can be in turn loving. The chain is really a complete circle.

You enhance the life of another by being who you are, by offering something that you have, not just something that you know about. If you wish to offer faith to another, you must be faithful. You can only help another in terms of what it is and who it is you are.

Our last message to you spoke of the need to enhance the lives of others, but you must also allow your own lives to be enhanced by others. This enhancement requires that you be receptive. You must be receptive to what everyone has to offer. You can learn something from everyone. We would add to that and say that you can receive from everyone. Even those who offend you have within them the potential to give to you something that you need.

This interrelationship of others to you is extremely important. If others offer you something of value and you are not receptive, the gift is lost and you are lesser as a result of that rejection. Your lives are enhanced by others only when you are willing to be receptive. Receptivity is not a weakness; it is a strength. It does not imply being passive all the time. Receptivity can be an active participation. You can look for opportunities to be receptive. You can look for opportunities for sharing.

You are essentially doing that in this very group. Each of you is willing to share something of who you are. Each of you is willing to receive insight, to receive guidance through the reflection of another. This willingness to receive therefore is an active effort for each of you, for you could choose not to gather at times like this to explore your own development and to explore the presence of God in the lives of others, but you choose to make time for this exploration. That is an active participatory thing. You are willing to be vulnerable and you are also willing to be giving. That is the real beauty of this group, and that is what lies as a potential for every human being.

There is no one created by God from whom you can learn nothing. All that has been created by God is good, essentially good. There are people whose actions you disapprove of. There are people who create devastation and pain and suffering, but they, too, have much to offer, and you must be willing to learn from them. In a sense, you are all students and you are all teachers. You are learning life. You are learning through your own experiences, and you are learning through the experiences of others.

That complete picture of learning can only take place when you are completely open to what others share. Remember, however, that others can learn only when you share—when you share who you are and what you are, when you share where you are in your journey. That sharing implies a trust, a trust that you will not be rejected, that you will not be sent away. Even your sharing of problems is an act of loving sent outward toward another, for by expressing your concerns you are expressing who you are at this moment. You are being vulnerable. You are allowing another to glimpse perceptively part of what makes you an individual.

Society is too full of barriers—personal barriers, political barriers, economic, social barriers. Barriers are a part of human life, but they are not important in human life. They exist through fear—fear of loss of position or a loss of status, a loss of power, a loss of influence. Barriers are not the result of honest, open and loving relationships, but since not all relationships are honest and open, those barriers exist. It is up to you to have the courage to break through those barriers, to be vulnerable in your acts of

It is in the vulnerability that you indeed enhance the spiritual love toward others. development of another human being. It is a beautiful relationship built on trust, not defense.

Your relationships with humans are constantly changing, and as you pass through your life they evolve and develop and mature and become colorful and begin to radiate according to your vision of God's radiance. That is what happens in human life. Your radiance can only be as the radiance you see. When there is no vision of radiance, there is no radiance offered.

Open your eyes in your lives together. Open your awareness of God's radiance. Open your awareness to the radiance of another individual. Accept it, make it your own, and reflect it onward. This is God working in the world. God's work is not just for do- gooders who are busy doing what they think they should be doing. God's work is accomplished by those who are doing what they are doing because that is who they are. They are active from a position of enlightenment.

Our responsibilities are to enlighten your souls. As your souls recognize God's enlightenment, you are then empowered to enlighten all that is around you. We provide the light; your soul provides the reflection. First comes the light, then comes the reflection. Therefore, seek the light. Keep your eyes glued to the light. Allow that light to become you, and becoming that light you will illuminate the world.

Our prayers are for your enlightenment. Our prayers are that you may feel the warmth that is God's warmth, that you may feel the love that is God's love, that you may feel the peace that is God's peace. Then take what you are and offer it to the world.

We bless your souls for that wonderful light.

Amen.