March 23, 2000

• Function of guides

• Praying is being vulnerable

• Immortal strength granted through prayer

• How to pray for others

• Prayer does not influence God

• God Is!

Your God, your spiritual center, the illumination of your souls, unites each of you at this time and brings light and peace for all. We are together because you are together. We communicate with one another because you choose to communicate. We don’t live in a kind of emotional construct that is based on convenience. We live very real lives. It makes no difference that you cannot see us. It is not important whether you feel our presence or just believe in our presence. We are here, and that’s what matters.

It is our loving duty to guide you, to help give you meaning in your lives. It is our loving duty to provide protection, to provide strength, to uplift your souls when you feel burdened. We give you strength. We give you the choice to continue and to move forward and to grow. We provide you with a roadmap, as it were, to lead you through those events that your lives present to you. The events themselves do not come from us, but the events are by-products of human life. We are, in part, assistants to help you grow through the events that occur around you.

You can choose to grow, or you can choose to stay as you are. If you are aware of your guides, you will never choose to stay at your current location of growth, for your acknowledgement of spiritual guidance, of God’s presence, or spiritual unity will give you the commitment necessary to grow. We are here to facilitate that growth through your response to a spiritual center. You may identify that center as God; you may identify that center with another name. It really is not important. What is important to acknowledge is that there is a center to all spiritual life—human life and life beyond the human condition. The center is the unifying force, a kind of gravitational pull which brings you closer.

You are connected to all souls. You are all related to one another spiritually. You all share the divine spark. You are all of equal value. No individual, no group of individuals, no country, no race, no religion is more special, more valuable, more worthwhile than another. All are different manifestations of the same spiritual presence.

Your discussion centered around relationships and the vulnerability that is required in order for those relationships to grow. There is more to be said about the issue of vulnerability. We have talked about an emotional vulnerability, the ability to erase fear from your lives in order to be open and loving. But there is another side to this vulnerability which is very important, and that is spiritual vulnerability. When you pray, you are allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Remember, the sense of vulnerability means being open.

Your prayers in the end are not instructions. Your prayers ultimately allow for openness to occur, so that spiritual inspiration may take place. You are welcoming the Spirit within. You are breathing in the Spirit. You are allowing the Spirit to become a part of who you are.

It is not a sign of weakness—it is a sign of strength. It is indeed the strong who pray. It is not the weak, for it requires strength to recognize that you cannot control all in your life through your own powers. The strongest individuals are the ones who recognize that in the end they have not strength of their own. Their strength must be God’s strength. It is people who are weak who say and believe “I can do it all,” for their empowerment is greatly limited. Those persons may believe they can do it all, but their view of possibilities is nearsighted.

Recognizing that you cannot do it all based on your own personal strength opens up the gates to receive a strength of spirit that vastly overshadows the strengths of mortal conviction. This becomes immortal strength. It becomes total strength. It becomes permanent strength. It is strength from the Spirit and it is strength to the spirit. It is from the Spirit God to the spirit, your spirit. There is no greater strength, but that only can be received when one is open to prayer.

What is it you really pray for? You pray for God’s presence. That presence will guide your souls. It will direct your human lives towards objectives worthy of God. You are therefore indeed vulnerable when you pray, but at the same time as you exercise your vulnerability, you are receiving the greatest strength. You can therefore say that an individual who is spiritually vulnerable is spiritually a great strength. There’s not a dichotomy of logic. You all know of people who sincerely direct their lives based on prayer. Those lives are remarkably strong. They’re not asking for direction because they don’t know; they’re asking for direction because they do know the Source. They are asking for direction because they are committed to the knowledge that spiritual strength is all that really matters in the end. There is no weakness in that.

You pray for the benefit of others, and we have explained that that prayer is not an instruction to God to do something that God would otherwise not do. What you are praying for when you pray for others is that they may be open to the strength from God that is already there. You are praying that one’s eyes may be open, that the brilliance may be seen, the way may be illuminated and the path followed. Such is the benefit of praying for another.

God does not make choices of who to help based on the number of prayers that may be offered on someone’s behalf, for that would not be a just God. That would be a God swayed by the supplications of believers. The Spirit-Center, the God-Center, the Godhead is a power that is there constantly, and your prayers influence not God but those for whom you pray.

You are influenced, you are affected, by the prayers that are offered for your benefit. That is how a soul responds. When a prayer is directed toward a soul, the soul becomes brighter. The brighter the soul, the clearer conduit for receiving God’s strength. You affect the souls of others through your prayers. You do not affect God by your prayers. They may be voiced in such a way, and that is okay, but it is important to recognize that God is not waiting to respond until someone asks. That is not the nature of God.

You respond when people ask you for help. That’s a human response. Your soul responds when another’s soul asks for help. That is a spiritual response. That is very much unlike God’s response, for God’s response does not ebb and flow. It simply is. There is no simpler way to express God’s presence, God’s power, God’s strength than to simply assert that God Is. When you connect to that absolute reality, you draw upon that strength. You connect to it through your prayers. You connect to it through the prayers of others that are offered for your benefit.

If you choose not to be vulnerable spiritually, you shut off the influence that others may have upon your soul. You deny the opportunity of others to act in a way that enhances your own spiritual growth. You make it much more difficult for us, your guides, to keep you open to God Is. You have the choice to block or to welcome.

All human beings have that choice, but as we mentioned, once you know of your guides and believe in your guides, you cannot deny our existence. You cannot deny the potential we hold to bring beauty into your life, for you cannot deny what you know to be true. It is for that reason that we are always filled with the light of great joy when you are assembled in your acknowledgment of the presence of God Is and our presence in your lives.

Be willing to explore more opportunities for openness—spiritual openness, emotional openness—this vulnerability of which we speak. It can only strengthen each of you. Proceeding through your lives with such strength, you become a source of greater light for others, and in serving as a source, you in turn expand your own brilliance. You in turn create more opportunities for listening, for support, for compassion, for caring, for loving, for giving.

These are the benefits of serving as a source of light for others who are eager to deny the existence of that light. Many cannot see God’s light. Many do not acknowledge the existence of guides, but they cannot deny the goodness that you can display, for that is tangible. They recognize it, and it can serve as an example for them to seek out more ways of bathing in the light of God.

We continue to always pray for your souls. That has special meaning at this point. We pray for that openness, we pray for your vulnerability, we pray for your receptivity, we pray for your continued strengthening that you may be serving as lights, as spiritual inspiration for others.

We bless you with our prayers. We bless you with our love. We bless you with our compassion, and we bless you with that great intense light of God that we all share together.

Amen.