September 21, 2009

• Illumination

• God creates the context of life

• Seek ways of being loving

God lights your lives with a presence that illuminates your paths, that illuminates your meetings, that illuminates your comings and goings. We wish to speak about illumination, for you all pray for it, you all seek it, you all try to reflect it. But what is this illumination? Where does it come from? How can you relate to it?

Illumination originates with the Spirit Center that each of you belongs to. The illumination from God is not like a single source illumination, a light bulb or a spark or a fire. The illumination that guides and corrects and clarifies is rather illumination from an acknowledgment of All That Is. If you want to find yourselves in the Light, in God’s illumination, you must find yourselves in the presence of the totality that is creation. If you wish to be illuminated, you must acknowledge the presence of every human being as a part of your life. You must acknowledge the presence of everything animate and inanimate. You must acknowledge the reality of the spirit, the beauty of a grain of sand, the intricacies of a snowflake, the energy of the universe, the beauty of human beings whom you know and those you will never know. Rather than being a single source of energy, illumination is better felt as a context.

You can say your path is illuminated, but is it illuminated because you are convinced you know the right direction of that path, or is it illuminated because you’re convinced the path is an integral part of all that is created? It is, in fact, this latter concept that is so crucial for your lives. When someone faces illness of a serious nature, that person and others close desperately seek illumination, a way to resolve what it is that causes the suffering. But when one realizes that the illnesses of others are not isolating others from life around but rather integrating those lives to All That Is, one develops a sense of the challenge being an important component of belonging to All That Is. We say there is nothing that separates you from God, but we can also say that there is nothing that separates you from all that is creation. You are individuals but you are never so unique that you suffer, that you agonize, that you grieve, that you hurt alone.

By the same context, there is nothing in creation that elevates you to a place that is solitary. Whatever you achieve is never completed solely on the basis of the merits of your own effort. You succeed because of the context of that success, for the success is never out of context. The context is created through the completeness of All That Is. The context of success involves the involvement of many, the participation of many. The challenge of imbalance, whether war or illness, carries with it its own context, a context shared by All That Is. You do not live on an island and there is nothing you can do to place yourselves on an island. There is nothing that can happen to you that puts you on an island, separated from others. Your illumination is therefore an acknowledgment of your own context, whatever the path that you traverse.

The path that you have chosen is a path that can change. What changes that path is the consequence of the context of that path. If your lives are moving down a path that is self-destructive, that path is not changed because of an acknowledgment, a flash of awareness that a change is needed. A change is effected because of what is gained from the context of the current path. This context can be insight. The context can be through prayer, meditation. The context may be what is gained by listening, by learning, by internalizing. The context may be one of apology. The context may be one of praise. There are innumerable opportunities for this illumination.

Where does God fit into this process? It is God that creates the contexts of your lives. It is your choice to interact, to learn, to engage in, or not to do so. There is nothing in your lives that you are truly required to do other than to be loving. That is the ultimate context. That is the ultimate illumination, but how you achieve the goal of that path differs for every human being.

Your goal is to open yourselves to that context in your life, recognizing that you will change. You will change as your needs change. Yes, your contexts are related to your needs. Yes, you have influence over these contexts. You have influence over the kind of illumination you need. You make choices in your lives. Those choices are not predetermined, but the contexts that exist become apparent because of your choices.

Two individuals living in the same community in the same society can have very different views of what their paths are. They seek very different forms of illumination. Depending on what they seek, the illumination for their lives will depend on and be solely connected to what is sought. If you seek power and influence, the context of your lives will be centered upon what it is you perceive to be necessary to achieve that power and influence. You may traverse that path and yet simultaneously understand that what you are seeking is, in truth, not what you need and so you change, and when you change, the experience that you have in life becomes different. If you are afflicted by a particular ailment, you will often be amazed to know of others who share the same challenges, and yet prior to your realization you had no sensitivity in that direction.

The illumination that guides and directs you is in response to your current perceptions—perceptions of life, perceptions of self, perceptions of others. You know the expression that you choose your reality. There is great truth for you are choosing your context. You are choosing what it is you are aware of that becomes your illumination.

Your responsibilities in human life are to seek ways of being loving. It is that straightforward. If you are committed to finding ways of being loving, then you will become aware of precisely what it is you may do that is reflecting your desires. If you seek peace, you will become aware of what it is in life around you that may assist that pursuit. You become more focused in what it is that appears to be essential. Just as your activities and goals in life change, that which illuminates your path changes accordingly. But all that is available as illumination has been created by God. If your goals are dishonorable, you seek illumination to achieve those dishonorable goals, but in your seeking, God provides a context which you can choose if you wish and thereby change those goals. You can equally deny God’s context, God’s illumination. You can insist that your own objectives are more important. You always have choice.

You may live in a dark house, but that does not change the reality of light on the outside of that structure. If living in a darkened house is momentarily important to you, that darkness affirms what it is you seek. But in that seeking of darkness, you will become aware of the need for light, and with that growing awareness comes an understanding of where the windows are located, and when you know the location of those windows, you can choose to push open the shutters and welcome the light. That choice is there. God allows you to choose to live in darkness for in experiencing darkness, one ultimately seeks the light, and when finding that light, is overwhelmed and warmed by its illumination.

What does this mean on a daily basis for each of you? You pray that your paths may be illuminated. What you are actually praying for is the ability to see the illumination that is there from God. If you pray for peace, believe in peace. If you pray for reconciliation, believe in reconciliation. If you pray for patience, believe in patience. If you pray for compassion, believe in compassion. It is this set of beliefs that creates the context that allows your lives to be illuminated as you wish them to be.

Each of you is blessed with an understanding of the potential that exists for God’s illumination, but each of you must have faith that that illumination, that light upon your paths, does exist. It is not something merely to be wished for, but something you believe to your innermost core. Your Spirit Center, your own spirit, responds to God’s illumination being discovered. Your soul is strengthened by your acknowledgment of what is fair. Your soul is empowered as you embrace the reality that surrounds you day by day.

Rejoice in your understandings! Rejoice in your seekings! And be blessed in the illumination of your paths.

Amen.