August 18, 1991

• Internalize acquired knowledge

• Asking “why me” results in self-pity

• How guides serve humans

God shines light upon your gathering and upon the assembly of guides who watch over your lives. Our relationships between spiritual and physical planes are precious indeed. These relationships cannot be taken lightly. We urge that you do not consider them only on an occasional basis, but that you seek to become aware of these relationships regularly and allow them to permeate the way you live your lives.

Knowledge has no purpose unless it is used. Your awareness of the connection between the spiritual and the physical holds within it the potential for entirely altering and illuminating the way you live your lives.

You have been entrusted with insight. With this trust comes the need for change. You are growing, each of you, but you must still change. Growth occurs only through change. One does not respond in life in a single fashion once due to an insight received. The response is continual and the insight progresses steadily.

There is much you know, but still little that you have taken within yourselves and become a part of. It is important of course to be exposed to God's truths, but that is only the beginning. You must live them and that is the hard part. We see each of you living according to the knowledge you have received, but only occasionally. It is our prayer and our wish that your lives reflect continually your level of understanding.

What God sends to each of your souls through our presence in your lives is essential—essential to your development, your growth, your strength, your love, your compassion, your response to life. As you grow in your internalizing of the knowledge given you, your response to life will become more secure.

You have had much discussion this evening about the relationship between your response to what occurs and the desire to know why things occur. It is to be expected that you will of course weigh back and forth the meanings of everything which is sent to your souls from God. But sometimes we feel you are too eager to read between the lines, as it were, to split hairs.

What is important to glean from our last communion with you is that how you respond in life is ultimately more important than much of what you would wish to ask "why" about. When you ask "why" and the issue is concerned with personal relationships, that is a part of your response because the insight into "why" forms the basis for how you choose to respond in the future, and this is entirely appropriate.

There are many examples you can find upon examination in which the search for why something is happening has a direct bearing on how you respond. But there are many issues, there are many events which occur which are not of your own direct doing or control. They impact your lives but they were not directed by you, nor were they directed specifically toward you. They merely happened. In such situations it is more productive to sort out how best to respond to that which has happened rather than worry about why something has occurred, what the hidden purposes were for that event.

If one becomes ill, it is important to know the cause of the illness so that it may be treated. But it is pointless to pursue questioning of why the illness happened to you rather than someone else. Asking the cause of the illness is a positive response. Asking why the illness occurs to you and not to someone else, resulting therefore in self-pity as you mentioned, has little significance. It is not important to know all the circumstances why an illness struck you and not someone else. That kind of questioning eventually leads to a dead end, and one becomes wrapped in self-pity, motivated by a desire for sympathy, rather than motivated by a desire for growth.

So you see, there can be justification for searching for causes, but it depends wholly on the type of events which confront you. It would not seem worthwhile to pursue this issue much further, but rather to urge you to focus your attention on constructive response rather than passive self-pity. That is all that is really meant.

Your lives continue to be strengthened through the help of your guides, and we want you to be aware that your guides receive considerable strength from your reflection of their work. Your growth leads to their growth. When you experience joy, your guides' souls are elevated. You and your guides are tightly connected with one another. We know each of you extremely well. We know your fears. We know what gives you pleasure, what gives you pain. We know your goals, and we know in a sense what lies before each of you. Your lives are not predetermined to the minutest detail, but there are patterns to your responses to life with which we can understand and anticipate future directions.

You may choose to change your patterns, for that power has been given you by God. You can decide to alter the way you look at life. You can decide to change your response to what life brings you, thereby giving us a different sense of the direction that lies before you.

What is meant by this is that to a degree we are able to guide you around obstacles that we see coming toward you that we know can bring anxiety or pain or worry. We are also able to strengthen your resolve, to strengthen your faith to take what life offers you. We know your needs because we know where you are, and we have a view of your current heading. As a result, we are not only guides who communicate with you at times like this, but we can also serve to protect you and to strengthen you or prepare you.

Our function in your lives therefore is multifaceted. We hope that you will draw upon this relationship with all of its potential to give you strength, to help you find a new course or direction, to help you become even more aware of God's presence in your lives.

God's light bathes your souls with warmth and brilliance and cleanses your souls, preparing your souls for even greater growth and fulfillment. We share in the light of God which passes through each of your souls, and we joyfully commit ourselves to serve you with love, to guide you with God's light, and to surround you with God’s peace.

Amen.