October 14, 1998

• Sharing

• Focusing on the positive rather than shunning the negative

• How to pray in a positive manner

God does indeed bless you and all those for whom you pray. There is much to be thankful for.

Too often human beings go through life without communicating, without the willingness to be open to sharing—sharing the good and the bad. It is in that very act of sharing that you acknowledge the equality of everyone. It is difficult, nearly impossible for some, to share with another when there is not a feeling of equality, because sharing carries with it a sense of acceptance and absence of judgment. When you express love toward another, you are affirming that equality. Sharing is one form of that expression of love.

You share when there is mutual respect, when there is mutual honor. That sharing that takes place is the most substantial form of communication available to you. Sharing means giving of oneself, not pontificating, not lecturing or dominating. It is a form of openness that permits you to express who you are, what matters to you, what is important to you on your current journey. Listening to someone who is sharing requires complete acceptance that cannot be defensive.

Sharing is a two-way street. It is a gift of the giver, but it is also a gift that must be received. Without a recipient, what is being offered is being offered in a vacuum and alone. When you share, you are acknowledging that the recipient is present. Communicating, therefore, requires an environment that permits sharing. When you communicate with one another, you are expressing a love for one another and affirming your equality.

You have particular concerns related to future events. Those concerns create worry, but they also hold within them the opportunity for great joy—significant, substantial, meaningful, affirming. All of those characteristics are positive. You grow through life as you learn to accept the positives and to de-emphasize the negatives of anxiety and worry. The soul grows and flourishes because of the positives. A relationship develops because of what works, not because of what does not work. Relationships with jobs, with other individuals are all founded eventually on pillars built of success and not the refuse of failure. By focusing on the positive, you are not being unrealistic, but you are centering your attention and energies on what builds rather than what tears down.

You must believe in yourself. In the vernacular, it is the "can do" approach that wins the day. You move forward not by worrying about the problems and the difficulties but by giving your attention to all that has within it the potential for success, for progress, as you may wish to measure it. No one is a real loser, as you would term it. There are only those who have not found a means to win. Those who win are convinced of the importance of the presence of positive energy.

You experience success as a result of positive influences in your lives. You never experience success by eliminating the negatives. There is too much energy expended trying to eliminate, and so much more could be achieved if efforts were centered on affirmation, encouragement, faith in oneself, a sense that you are important and you have much to contribute that brings progress. Relationships are strengthened, not by eliminating problems, but by focusing on what works.

Looking at your lives in such a manner does not require you to ignore that there are difficulties. There are setbacks and discouragements and frustrations for everyone, those whom you see as successful as well as those you view as less than successful. The difference lies not in the amount of difficulties present but in the ability to recognize and capture positive influences. The teacher who is successful succeeds not by telling the students how little they know but by leading the students forward to be excited about the process of learning. Progress is never made by threats, whether it is individual relationships or the process of education or the relationships between communities, regions, countries.

The reason it is important to recognize the unity of which we have spoken is that you are then able to bring your efforts to bear on strengthening what works, strengthening what is good and not merely condemning what is bad. The condemnation of negatives in life leaves a vacuum. The affirmation of positives in life moves everything forward. When you are making decisions affecting your lives in the foreseeable future, you must therefore look for the positive signs that lead you in a direction, not waste your effort on signs that tell you to stay away.

Your relationship with God must be ultimately built on your awareness of God's presence in your daily lives. It can never be based on the shunning of whatever is negative. Such attention to the negative builds frustration and bitterness and discouragement. It is the positive, it is the sense of hope, it is the belief in the presence of God as a part of all decisions that make those goals that you seek become reality.

If you are concerned about the health of another, you don't pray for the absence of illness—you pray for the presence of wholeness. You don't ask God to take something away—you ask God to provide. You pray for health, you pray for healing. You don’t just pray for the absence of sickness. No one has to be taught how to pray in this fashion. It is a natural urging of the soul to pray for the positive, to pray for presence.

And so it is in your relationships with others and your relationships with situations. Focus on the positive. Focus on the need for more that is positive. Focus on the image of being healthy. Focus on the image of someone else being healthy, of someone else being delivered. Focus on the value of strength rather than the absence of weakness. This is how you make a difference in your own life's direction. It is also how you act to positively effect changes in the condition of humankind.

Know there is no value in turning an eye away from things as they are without embracing that which you seek. If you wish to help another, you surround that person with prayers and actions that provide that help, and you do not dwell on the inabilities of someone else. Focusing in this way brings the entire entity, of which we have spoken, forward. It gives strength to the entity and therefore to each of the individual members of that entity. If a community is strengthened, its citizens are strengthened. Your relationships are therefore essentially positive if they are to be beneficial.

Your soul moves forward, not because you have released the anchor but because you have unfurled the sail. The ship moves forward; it does not merely stop moving backward. Keep your attention on the positive. You must have faith in your ability to succeed. That does not mean to dominate, but it does mean to progress.

Focus your efforts on compassion, not merely eliminating hatred. It is important for you to love, not merely to abandon the distraction of hate. It is important to recognize what the future holds, and your lives will be drawn forward by the proper means. Life is, of course, a series of choices, but those choices must be made through a confident belief in God's guiding light and not merely with the conviction that negative influences will be neutralized, for that just allows your lives to remain as they are, when in fact it is the move toward God, toward a godly life, toward a life of service and affirmation and communication that you really seek.

We are here not to take away fear and leave nothing. We are here to infuse your lives, your souls with a sense of rightness, with a sense of direction, of conviction. Our prayers are for that direction to be clear for you and for you to feel empowered to move according to your desires and your understandings. Your souls are a positive source in life. Allow them to become more dominant in shaping your perceptions. Our prayers are for that growth. Our prayers are for your continued ability to communicate, to share, to be open, to be led and guided.

Amen.