April 30, 2018

• Feeling God’s presence

• The sacredness of all creation

Each of you has been pursuing in your own ways an understanding of God’s presence. We always assure you of that presence, and yet it is right to step back and ask yourselves how you have observed that presence.

We have spoken of hearing God’s voice, we have spoken of seeing God, of knowing God, but we would like to speak at this time about what it means to feel that presence. Hearing a voice, seeing evidence of God is vital for each of you, but part of the knowing of God is the feeling that takes place inside each of your lives.

You all spoke of the sacredness of the earth as recognized by earlier cultures and some current cultures, and yet you acknowledged how difficult it is to see that kind of recognition of God in nature play itself out in your own lives. Many earlier cultures saw, heard, knew, and felt God in a very personal, intense way, but that is not the experience that many people currently understand as an essential part of their lives.

The question was raised: how have you unlearned what was known, felt, seen, or heard? Part of the human condition is to be occupied by the present. When there is such concern for the present, it may be difficult to maintain a clearer view of what is really important in life and to life. There is much that competes these days with your attention. There is much that competes with what you perceive as available time. There is much that you perceive to be too demanding for the energy that you have. In its simplest terms, what is important for each of you, for all people, is to find ways to reduce that competition for attention, to simplify, to identify in your lives what is essential, and separate what is essential from merely what entertains.

Your lives cannot of course be reduced to the act of gathering physical nourishment, for there is more than just feeding oneself or feeding others. The religions of the world have accomplished a lot in sensitizing their believers to a picture beyond the frames of their own individual lives, and that is good. But reaching beyond your own individual needs still has some limits that are necessary. When one is suffering emotionally, it is easy to say, “Do something that just gives you fun and pleasure.” But there is more to the issue than the seeking of fun and pleasure, for such seeking really has no limits. How much is too much fun, too much pleasure? Every individual has what they feel is a limit for others to follow, but there is a natural tendency for all, an addictive tendency to seek more of what results in fun and pleasure. What is it that has been lost? Essentially, what has been lost is the sacred valuation of the earth and what surrounds the earth that gives and supports what God has created.

God has not just created the earth and the sea and the sky. God has created each of you. And because of that, one must look to the sacredness of all human beings and not just think of the sacredness of land or water, the air that you breathe, the food that you eat. You are human beings for a reason. It is the interaction with others that nurtures the spirit. Food nurtures the body, as do the water and air. But having enough food to eat does not in itself nurture the spirit. Having what creates fun and entertainment does not in itself contribute to the growth of spirit, but when that fun or entertainment is experienced because you are being nurtured through your interaction with others, then important nourishment takes place, and it is in the recognition of the nourishment of others that you begin to feel God’s presence more intensely.

We say if you want to see God, turn to your neighbor or look to nature, but that may become merely observational. Yes, you may feel an emotional connection to the beauty of nature, but the growth that is most evident of the feeling of God within comes from the way you work with others and nature. You cannot work with others without being nourished by the land, but being nourished by the land does not in itself provide the nourishment that is needed by the spirit.

To feel God you must connect to others. That connection can be active or prayerful, it could be in your concerns for others, but that connection is essential. Being connected to your neighbor does not imply that you are responsible for your neighbor. You are not specifically responsible for the neighbor’s health and well-being. You are not specifically responsible for the neighbor’s actions or attitudes, and when those actions and attitudes are counter to your own, it is not your specific responsibility to change them to match your own. Rather, your responsibility comes in acknowledging that those actions and attitudes, while not your own, are still held in trust by someone else. Those differing values in no way signify someone being of lesser value. You are equal in value, but you can still respond to another in some way that reflects a loving acceptance of that person, the humanity of that person, not the actions, not the attitudes, but the humanity. It is by accepting others in this way that you begin to see the validity of efforts by others to respond to your actions and attitudes.

No one has a monopoly in what is right. All are searching. All are seeking a sense of purpose in life, whether that purpose is “getting even,” being more understanding, being supportive, being “correctional,” whatever that purpose may be, it is still part of what it is to be human.

In your lives you are challenged to respond in ways you feel reflect God and God’s actions. You are urged to be patient, not judgmental. You are urged to listen and not dictate. You are urged to accept your own vulnerabilities so that you may accept the vulnerabilities of everyone. In accepting those vulnerabilities, you are beginning to feel what it means to be loving in a godly way, for you are then expressing your acceptance as God would express that acceptance. You are then loving as God is loving. You are then feeling inside what God is feeling.

We speak of God in anthropomorphic terms because those are the parameters human beings understand. If we speak about the emotions of the plant world, you are stymied. If we try to use scientific explanations to describe the response of a plant to light, we are saying something superficial and yet important about the plant, but we are not relating to the plant in a more significant way. Your lives are lives of seeking and observing and acting whether prayerfully or in another appropriate way. But you are also asked by us to relate to all that God has created in a loving way, without trying to place human behavior onto inanimate objects.

The rock does not feel love, but the rock responds to all that is around it. The rock does not exist in a kind of relational vacuum. The rock is interacting; it is interacting with light, with heat, with friction. It interacts with water and air. Rocks interact with one another in very substantive ways. Science is only beginning to understand that, but of course we don’t place human reactions upon the experience of rocks or grass or flowers or air or water.

There are clear reactions which are valuable and supportive, affirming God’s presence in all that has been created. And because of the totality of creation being much of what God is, we can say that God experiences your lives, the lives of all, and the existence of all in ways far different than merely human ways. God’s presence is an energy. It is an organizing force and a presence that provides balance, balance of many descriptions. We say you are loved by God, for that statement is as close as we can get for you to understand, and which affirms a direct and beneficial connection between you and all of creation.

One views the earth from space and realizes all that humans have experienced personally throughout history have been experienced on that one isolated globe. That globe viewed from a distance contains all that has ever existed on earth. And yet that globe, the earth, is not the only expression of God. The universe is not the only expression of that spiritual center, for there is far more to God’s creation than the universe which you understand.

For human beings to feel God inside, it is important to embrace the mystery, the mystery of what you cannot easily comprehend in human terms. God is love, but love is far beyond the variations that have been experienced in human life. We say love because that is a part of God’s connection to all, and it is a part that has meaning for each of you. Yes, God is love, but God is far more than love.

As we evolve in the various planes of our spiritual development, we gain a clearer view of this expanded reality that is referred to in human terms as love. The comment of your loved one who has transitioned is not a comment of leaving; it is a comment of evolving, a change of spiritual awareness rather than a change of location. It is leaving one view and taking on another perspective. That is not a departure but an expansion. Each of you has left the life of a child and become adults, but you haven’t really left childhood. You have embraced that experience and built beyond it.

That is what our experience as your guides is. We evolve, we grow, we expand, we become more than we were, we become more love, we become what is beyond the human concept of love. It is for us a magnificent life, and it is for each of you to experience. You, we, all the guides and all the spiritual entities belong to what is called God. As you understand more of our lives, you will become more at ease feeling inside more of what God truly is.

All human beings are on a great journey, and it is a journey of incredible beauty despite the hardships, pain, agony, losses, sadness, beyond even the rejoicings. But we ask each of you to find ways of rejoicing. Embrace the God that you see and hear, embrace the God that you know, and allow all of them to become the God that you feel.

Amen.