September 4, 1996

• Living and loving in a timeless sense

God who gives light to each of your souls is present and illuminates your spirits with love, warmth, and compassion. We are all joined with you. Although we often remind you of our presence as a group along with you, it is important that you be reminded of that, for it is too easy to go through your lives oblivious of those of us who accompany you. We are here to help focus God’s light on your lives.

The directions you proceed in are to a great extent determined by your awareness of the path that lies at your feet. You may choose to follow that path when you are aware of it, but without vision it is like wandering aimlessly in a dark forest. You may know where you want to go but have no awareness of how to get there. So it is we who help provide the answers, not only of where but most especially how.

There are of course many ways to travel toward God, for ultimately all routes do lead to God. For some, the trip is beset by frustration, anxiety, fear. For others, the trip is achieved with peace and a sense of confidence and rightness. We wish to help you to find that latter means of reaching closer to God. That’s why we are here. It is easy for many to state with complete assurance and honesty that they wish to live a life reflective of God. But there is a big gulf that separates the will from the knowledge. The will of course is important, otherwise the knowledge has no direction. But the knowledge is important, otherwise the will cannot be fulfilled. We help provide you with perspective on life, both the lives that you experience on earth and the life of the soul on our planes.

Your discussion tonight had much to do with perception of life after life, with the frustration of dealing with time as it relates to the transition. You must always keep in mind that there is no such thing as time. Time is a manmade concept, but it serves only to organize human life activities and has no practical use in dealing with the spiritual. The conflict comes when you become acutely aware of the needs of the spirit within the confines of human existence, physical existence, tangible life, life that you see and experience and touch. The frustration and the pain of waiting and not understanding why one must suffer so comes as a result of life existing as a transition to strictly spiritual existence.

We do not sense time in any way, therefore, we do not experience impatience. We do not experience worry because worry implies something in the future. There is no future, there is no real past. There’s only present, there’s only now. It’s difficult for you to fully comprehend because everything in your lives revolves in some manner or another around the construct of time.

Your souls never had a real beginning that can be dated and identified. Likewise your souls really have no end. If there is no beginning and no end, there is no time. Time implies a start and a finish, a beginning and an end.

We feel your lives would be greatly enhanced if you could allow yourselves some corner of your activity that has no relationship with time. That corner may be actually your relationship with another person. Such a relationship is not marked in time. It is marked in love, compassion, understanding, listening, action that reflects love. None of these characteristics contain the element of time. You should seek out opportunities for living and loving in a timeless sense, allowing yourselves to be moved by your feelings and less by the intellect, the clock or watch, the deadline. Certainly you cannot enjoy the challenges of human existence totally void of time, but you can enhance the quality of your life to the degree that you can allow time to become meaningless, irrelevant. Then and only then are you experiencing life at its most significant level.

There is nothing that you do within the framework of time that is at all permanent. Everything that we have shared with you related to the permanent attributes of life—love and compassion, patience—all of those contain not an ounce of time. Everything in your lives that is centered around time is indeed temporary and of questionable significance. When you work for peace, time is not the issue. You don’t say, “I pray for peace as long as it is achieved in the next sixteen months or ten days.” You don’t reach out to someone with compassion, attaching a time element to that expression. Compassion is compassion, love is love, good listening is good listening. Being really present to another means being present. It doesn’t mean being present up to a particular point and then you have no time. That is not really giving to another.

If you want to know what is important in your life, eliminate time and you will know the answers. Those activities that you are engaged in that are the most dependent upon the concept of time are the least important things that you do. Each of you must learn to live, therefore, in some manner or another, timelessly. It is a skill to be worked on, developed and nurtured, and ultimately it is possible to avoid the ravages of concern related to time—the impatience that one experiences, the frustrations of not doing something within a given frame of time. All of that can be greatly reduced in its importance in your lives.

When you accept the uselessness of time, the agony that you experience when another is drifting back and forth between human and spiritual life becomes insignificant, for all is really but a moment’s length—the suffering, the pain, the discomfort is so brief. Focus your attention therefore on what is really essential in your lives, namely your relationships with others. It is those relationships that provide the proving ground for establishing greater compassion, greater love.

We see all of you groping at times with a sense of impatience, with a feeling of urgency, of immanence, dealing with deadlines, being disappointed when deadlines are not made. Your lives can be so much more fulfilling when you are freed from many of these experiences. You can and should be concerned by issues such as injustice, whether in your country or in another. What is important is the injustice; it is not the time it takes to correct it. Devote your energies to righting the wrong, but suspend your expectations of a timetable for such progress.

What you do that is significant in life is important because it is significant. It is not significant because it’s done within a specified amount of time. When you love another, there are no restrictions on that love. When you feel compassion, there are no restrictions on that compassion. If you pray for the health of another, what is important is the health, the healing. It isn’t that such healing be done tomorrow or next week. It is only important that healing take place.

We have said on numerous occasions that your spiritual development is not a race, there are no winners, there are only finishers. What is important is your growth, not how fast, how quick, how intense. It is the direction of your development that is important. When you are growing in your concept of the meaning of a godly life, you are doing all that you can do. You are not more godly if you achieve your objectives quicker than another, for all progress at their own pace. Every life has its own rhythm and intensity. There is no rhythm that is more valid or god-like than another. Those who devote their lives to God and fail in their own eyes on occasion are no less godly than those who devote their lives to God and believe they are always on course. The two are proceeding in their development according to different rhythms and that is okay.

There are no groups or religions that have all the right answers and are therefore “chosen.” Likewise there are no religious groups who are identified as heading in the wrong direction, for there really is no wrong direction. There are merely different routes, and which direction one chooses may seem the best for that individual but cannot be assumed to be the best for another. Allow for those differences of rhythm. Allow for the opportunity to grow as you are to grow.

You must never compare yourself with others, for that is always a losing view of oneself. For those who feel they are progressing faster than another, if they are honest with themselves, they will become aware of those whose progress seems to be still faster than their own. The result is guilt and self-doubt and sometimes anger, and it is caused because one believes one is not on the quickest path. Speed and rightness do not go together. They are entirely separate entities.

Your lives therefore cannot be compared to another. They can only be appreciated for what they are. If you accept your lives as they are for you, you are then able to accept others’ lives as being appropriate for them. With such acceptance it is easier to express and experience compassion, for there is a recognition of the equality of all.

Eliminate time and you see equality. Recognize equality and the expression of love comes naturally. It is this expression, this recognition of unity that is the best route toward God. It may not be the shortest or the quickest, but it is ultimately the route that all eventually follow as they join the spiritual union of God’s brilliance.

We are pleased when you recognize our presence in your lives, and we are pleased by your prayers for us. They strengthen us indeed, as we have said, and we are always grateful for that expression of love. We are with you at all times. There is no moment when you are alone. There is not a second of time, as you would define it, when you are somehow in the shadow, away from God’s light. Suspend therefore your reliance on time and joyously celebrate the light that enters your lives.

We bless you with God’s light, that it enters your lives as it does our own. We bless you with God’s peace which is our peace and yours.

Amen.