May 8, 2023

• Life is about fulfillment through exercising love

It is indeed the loving, creating Spirit that surrounds and fulfills your very existence. Life is in significant ways one of fulfillment. We speak of your knowing something of God’s presence and our presence, of knowing what it means to be more loving, but a life of fulfillment goes beyond just the knowing. A life that is fulfilling is, at its very core, a life exercising the reality of love on the pathway upon which all must travel.

You know what it means, what it feels like when you provide some gift to another that has great meaning to that person. One feels at a conscious level that somehow there is a component to that relationship that is being fulfilled. Such fulfillment as that is part of what it means to be involved in a fulfilling life, for fulfillment is really a source of comfort when it is being directed outward.

Certainly, there are ways in which you can be fulfilled when something is directed toward you, but that sense of completeness, of fulfillment, is temporary, for the human condition is such that there is always a hunger for more of something. Fulfillment when it is directed outward, in whatever manifestation is appropriate, may be achieved, but there is not the sense of obligation to give again and again and again, for such giving is not out of duty. When there is giving that is offered multiple times, it is through a sense of connection. It is offered by love. There is no sense of personal benefit achieved. It is that act of reaching outward that becomes its own fulfillment. The consequence of that kind of fulfilling life is not a temporary satisfaction which then needs to be repeated as in what one feels when fulfillment is directed inward towards self.

The example of an actor on stage may help illustrate the point. When people are engaged in some kind of repeating activity on the stage in drama or music, there is, along with the desire to express through the arts, a need for affirmation by others. The applause at the end of a play can be very affirming, but the next night the same actors are equally engaged in their parts, in their characters, with a desire to communicate those characters to others. The public response then serves as a kind of affirmation of whether they were successful in that effort or not. When they interpret the response as being affirming, they feel fulfilled, but that fulfillment is not something which constantly remains with them.

When you give of yourself to others, there is a spiritual fulfillment recognized through the giving. You don’t necessarily feel you must repeat that same action over and over again. Fulfillment, then, is its own reward. The fulfillment of spirit is the fulfillment of love directed outward. Certainly, you can experience a sense of personal fulfillment when you become more accepting of who you are void of any guilt or deep personal regrets. There is, of course, a sense of empowerment of relieving a burden. To that extent, there is a kind of fulfillment that is taking place, but ten years later one doesn’t reflect back and say I learned to love who I was ten years ago, and therefore I cease to be judgmental of self. That does not happen. It is a goal which one seeks, and there are times when one can look back and see that there was a kind of fulfillment of self, but there is equal recognition of those moments in life when that affirmation, that feeling of completeness is lacking.

We speak of fulfillment of the soul, therefore, as a fulfillment that lasts. You reach outward as you can in a loving manner to one person. Later on, you reach out to another with a loving acceptance. Later, you find others that you embrace with your acceptance. Each of those is an affirmation of spirit, is a fulfillment of life. As you reflect back on your lives, you can direct your thoughts to the kind of loving embrace you have provided to others.

We speak often of the various kinds of love being offered. Whether that is something visible or whether it exists solely in the form of prayer, that is still a reaching out. The prayers you offer for the benefit of others serve to fulfill the needs of your souls. The portion of God that belongs in all human beings is made evident by your outreach in concrete or prayerful matters. That is fulfillment of spirit. It is a bringing of potential into a direct and purposeful act. There is no requirement that others be aware of your intentional acts of being loving, for merely being loving is in itself what is important and permanent. It is in embracing all that you are fulfilling the potential of spirit.

When you pray for peace, you may not be stopping conflict, but you are adding your presence to the total energy of what is good, loving, understanding, and tolerant. That is why each, all human beings, have a spirit, have a soul. If there were no spirit, no soul within, there would be little awareness of oneness. There would be little identity of yourselves with others. There would be no embrace of what is truly meant by being loving.

We speak so often of your pathways, the pathways of all lives, never parallel, often in conflict, but always sacred. We can say the same about the pathways of strictly the spirit itself. The spirit that is part of your lives is engaged in a journey of expanding the ability to be loving, and of course as you know, ultimately becoming love itself in all of its meanings.

The souls that are with you on your journey have always been present. The journey has always taken place, and the journey actually is never completed, not because the soul never becomes all love, but rather when the soul does become all love, the journey becomes even more of an outreach to other souls. You do not simply arrive at being love, and the journey is complete.

The nature of love is an outreach of the spirit. It is an outreach of the energy of creation. It is an outreach of the guides who accompany you on your life journeys. It is an outreach that accompanies other knowing life-forms fully unrelated to human life. The outreach continues. For those souls who have become all love, there is not a sense of duty that souls are expected to behave in one way or another, for the souls know what it means to embrace all that is. One could say that a soul becomes fully committed to the fulfillment of all that lies beyond its own awareness of love.

Yes, you are on your human journeys. Your souls are on their spiritual journeys. Your souls will always be on a journey. Fulfillment does not mean completion. Fulfillment implies a direction of energies. There are, of course, times when your own energies need to be strengthened. You have prayed for that strength this evening. That kind of fulfillment is a way of accumulating the loving energy that is necessary to be directed outward.

We feel fulfilled when you are open to our reality. That fulfillment for us is a way of opening the lanes so that the expressions of being loving are more clearly received. When you acknowledge our presence, that acknowledgment opens the pathway for our loving engagement with you, to embrace each of you more fully and profoundly. That is our spiritual fulfillment, and for human beings, that desire to be lovingly present is true to the fulfillment of spirit.

You, as is true for all, are growing in your abilities to be loving, your abilities to allow that love that is a part of each of you to reach out, to embrace, to strengthen, to affirm, to give dignity to all life, to give dignity to the process of living.

Your lives are blessed as all lives are blessed. The light that you feel may be more intense than the light that some others may feel, but the light that is part of your journey is the same light that is part of all journeys.

Find peace in that light. Find fulfillment as you experience and share that sacred presence.

Amen.