November 3, 1997

• About guides and guidance

• Pitfalls with wanting to help another

• How to be a clear lens reflecting God

God is with each of you, and your guides accompany you throughout your journeys. From time to time you have wondered about your guides—how long are they with you, do they change often, where are they in their own spiritual journey, what were their experiences before becoming guides. We, who are your guides collectively, would like to share with you more about who we are.

Our names and nationalities are not important. We shed those identities when we entered the spiritual world. It is not important that we have labels. It is not important specifically to know what we did in prior life forms, but it may perhaps be helpful to you if you are aware of more than just our existence.

Each of us who serves as guides experienced life just as you experience life. The location of that experience differed from one guide to another. The challenges of the experience were also different, but we do know intimately the kinds of concerns that occupy your energies so much of the time. We also understand from our own experiences as humans more about the further stages of life that you have yet to enter.

We were not necessarily religious individuals occupying an activity centered around our awareness of God. For most of us, our awareness of God has grown primarily from our experience of God on this plane of spiritual life. There are those of us who were not aware of guidance in a way that we can label, but we were all guided just as all humans today are guided. For some of you, that guidance is very real and very present. For others, it is a concept, it is a belief in what may be true, but not necessarily a fully committed relationship with us. That is of course fine, for each of you, as was true for each of us, travels the road toward God according to your own pacing, your own desires, led by your own level of understanding.

We are your guides through our own choice. We are not told to serve in this capacity. We want to serve, for we see the beauty of life enhanced through understanding, through wider perceptions. We see the value of human relationships that are carried on as a reflection of understanding, and we recognize the benefit to each of you individually, that we may be an integral part of your spiritual growth.

What we provide you has not been initiated by us. You are provided as God wishes it to be given. You are provided with insight, you are given guidance in many forms because you are open to it, and because it is God’s will that all souls be guided. There is no soul who is left alone unattended, traveling without a map, without road signs. All individuals are being guided according to their wish to be guided. Even when that wish is not present, the guide is with that individual constantly, frequently intervening to protect that person. In a sense then, we serve as a focus for God’s caring presence upon the souls of human beings.

We learn through our guidance, for that which is transmitted to you and its means comes directly from God but is through us, and in our serving as guides, we too grow spiritually by what you receive. As you increase your receptivity to being guided, your guides’ spiritual growth is also being enhanced. When you reject God’s presence, when you’re consumed by the daily temporal concerns, you do not receive the full benefit of guidance nor does your respective guide. In a sense, you and your guides grow through the process of guidance. It is not a passive relationship that we have with you. It is a sharing, participatory relationship. Therefore when you are open to being guided, when you turn yourselves toward God, we can indeed rejoice, for we are being presented with an opportunity for growth. This opportunity comes to us from you. Without you, our growth is less than we would wish. It is only through our work with you that we can develop ourselves most fully.

We stay with you for a long time by your measurement. The character of your guidance, the nature of your guidance may change, but that change is because of a change in need, not in substance. If you have a hunch to take a certain action or to make a certain decision, you are being guided just as much as if you were receiving this information orally or in writing. All of that is guidance. Sometimes the vocabulary or syntax or mood changes in these messages, but that is not because your guide has suddenly moved over and another has taken its place. It is because your needs have changed, and what is shared with you is in response to your needs and your openness.

Guidance is becoming more important for each of you, although there are times, understandably, when you don’t seek this help. We grew enormously spiritually before becoming your guides. It is because of our faith, it is because of our spiritual development that we are able to serve others with a clarity that is necessary to transmit God’s guidance to each of you.

There is much that concerns you about issues in your own lives and we continue to address those issues, but we also urge you to spend more effort rereading, evaluating where you are in relationship to what has been shared in these groups, for there is much for each of you to learn. There is benefit in repetition. Many of the concerns that you have actually have been addressed long before they were concerns. Life-changing decisions regarding careers, concerns about health or travel—these concerns are given responses long before those concerns are felt. We lovingly respond to your concerns when they are voiced, but you may also find solace in reviewing previous communications that we have shared with this group.

We have been speaking of our relationships with you as guides, but this is not merely an empty exercise. It has an immediate application in your relationships with others, for each of you with your insight and experience has an opportunity of serving others as earthly guides. This service is a witness of God’s presence in the world. Your presence with another in need is a function of guidance, for when you are most successful as a guide you are reflecting God to another human being. That is precisely what we do. When you show compassion and concern for the health and well-being of another, you are expressing the goodness of God that is available to another. That compassion is the guidance—you are a guide at that point.

Guidance toward others is an effort to create a transparency that allows God’s love to flow freely through you to another. When you are transparent, God’s love, God’s light bathes the soul of another. When you consciously stand in the presence of another and want to help, want to be of assistance, frequently you serve as a wall that makes God’s influence less easily acceptable. This is part of the meaning of our expression that you do not help another because you want to help another; you help another because another wants to be helped. When you are there because another seeks that help, you are a hand of God. When you are there because you want to help, your will to provide that help can serve as a barrier. You must ultimately be both present and transparent. Your presence can create the atmosphere that makes another receptive to God’s guidance.

Our presence allows you to benefit from God’s guidance, but what you are receiving when you are being guided is something from God—it is not from us. It is only we who are present to enable God to shine through to you. There are certainly many times when taking initiative to help another is entirely appropriate, just as there are times when we have intervened to help you without your awareness. There is no problem in that relationship. The difficulties come when your sense of value is somehow equated with your view of how much you are able to assist another human being. You cannot tie yourself into an evaluation of your relationship with God based on your ability to always reach out and make a difference in someone else’s life. We, your guides, do not measure our value based on whether we’re getting through to you. Our value is in our being here. Your value is in being where you are, nonjudgmentally loving, quietly present and available to be helpful when the need arises and the call goes out.

Your relationships with individuals in your families and communities are enhanced, therefore, by your ability to be present and able to help. They are enhanced by your establishing an environment that encourages another to recognize your presence as a source of help. This can actually be active assistance to others—it is not passive. It is active because you create a receptive environment. That is not being passive. Were that environment not present, no help could possibly be received.

You are essential to God’s work in the community and in your families. By allowing another to be in your presence without being threatened or feeling threatened, without feeling intimidation, without feeling judgment, you are then a clear lens that reflects God. Allow yourselves to be transparent. Allow yourselves the opportunity of being present. Be open to being guided so that you may guide. Be open to what it means to be loved so that you may love. Be open to the compassion that is expressed by others, so that you in turn may express compassion toward others. Be open to God’s light through your guides so that you may illuminate God’s light as a guide.

Love, compassion, presence and all that that implies is yours to be received and it is yours to be given. Indeed the best gift is the gift that is given. The light of God that you give is more valuable than the light that you receive, but were it not for the light that you receive, you would have no light to give.

It is because you are aware of your guides that you are given the capacity to guide. It is part of this great circle that we have referred to in recent communions with you. All of us are in service, for that is the greatest calling of God. It is we who serve you, and it is you who serve one another. Take strength in that relationship of being served and serving, of being loved and loving, and in so doing you will see more vibrantly the brilliance of God’s presence in your world and in ours.

We bless you with that presence, with that light. We bless you with the energy of God, and we share with you the joy of being guided.

Amen.