March 6, 2008

• Purpose of human life is the transformation from being loved to giving love

You are all creatures of God, whether the fish in the tank or human beings in the seas of creation. You’re all touched by the Divine Spirit. There is no pecking order that separates individuals from individuals. There is no pecking order that separates individuals from All That Is. There is a continuity of creation and all that is created is given existence through the loving presence of the light, the love, the compassion, the forgiveness, the affirmation, the strength, the healing that each of you seeks.

Your lives are always surrounded by light, but no human being is aware of that presence “twenty-four/seven,” as you say. There are dark paths that intersect every life, for each of you experiences, at one time or another, bitterness and disappointment, fear, the rejection of others, the rejection of self. All of that belongs to life. All that exists is burnished by what surrounds it. The burnishing may come from heat, from cold, from what is hard, from what is soft. The rocks burnish and so does the wind, so does the air you breathe, so does the ground you walk upon, and it is in the burnishing that character is observed. It is in the burnishing that one experiences brilliance, the brilliance of reflected light, the brilliance of refracted light. From this burnishing, there also comes forth a warmth, for the burnishing of life is an application of energy, and as you know, energy is never lost but rather transformed.

Your lives are lives of transformation. This transformation is essential. Sometimes the process gives pleasure, gives inspiration. Sometimes the process brings fear and pain, but both belong. Both achieve the same outcome together: the production of an entity that is filled with compassion, filled with an energy that radiates outward. Two sticks may be cool to the touch and yet they can produce a fire that consumes them both. It is the interaction, it is the interface one with another that has the potential for creating together what either on its own lacks.

How is it that it can seem the total of anything can be greater than the sum of its parts? If energy cannot be destroyed, can it be created? The energy of interaction is not a created energy but a transformed energy, and that transformed energy takes on very new characteristics.

Two individuals in a relationship contain within them the potential for a new relationship that is deeper and more significant that what either can achieve alone. This you know in principle and some of you have experienced, but the same principle, the same reality also exists between you as you perceive yourself and your own perception of yourself vis-à-vis the world around you. You are asked to be engaged with what surrounds you. You are asked to interact.

Part of God’s rhythm of creation is what you refer to as synchronicity. Life is not random. Life is the product of choices within the framework of opportunity. You are presented with choices. The choices you make do not necessarily result in outcomes you can anticipate, and those unanticipated outcomes may be recognized long after the choices have been forgotten, but the outcomes are undeniably there. What you label as synchronicity in life is actually the outcome of choices that were made beyond your awareness, beyond your memory, but they are a definitive response to who you are and where you are. The choices that led to these outcomes were provided through the environment created by God.

Choices in life are never random. The options for such choices are also never random. The choice your soul makes to accompany your human life can never be interpreted as random. There is a design. The design is always leading to an outcome of healing, of growth, and unity with God.

There are countless events in your lives that can be interpreted as negative, and in terms of your expectations and wishes, are easily felt as negative. But the truth of human existence is that whatever happens, regardless of how it is viewed at the time, leads to healing and wholeness and ultimately to love. The path leading to such healing, such wholeness, such love is unpredictable in terms of your vision as human beings. The outcomes, the events, the experiences that you observe or participate in all have the capacity for growth and goodness. You will be blessed at all times by such encounters with life. You are never lost, you never experience total loss, you only experience growth.

You are aware of great tragedies, locally, personally, nationally. You are always encountering an awareness of all that brings pain and suffering, but out of that awareness there is always a positive outcome. You are not given life to be defeated, to be crushed, to be lost. You are given life to be transformed. The transformation comes in many different forms and the means of being transformed is varied beyond recognition, but transformation is assured and the outcome of that transformation is also assured.

Life is not about comfort. Life is not about certainty. Life is not about predictability. Life is not about a certainty that all that is good is immediately evident. Life is ultimately about transformation. What is being transformed? It is precisely what is central to all of creation, namely the creation of love, the creation of balance, the creation of order, of a moral symmetry that overcomes what is dark, what is evil, what is sinister, what is threatening.

You live to be transformed. You live to be awakened. You live to be shown what love is. You live to learn what it means to be loving. Nothing else matters. All That Is centers around the love of which we speak. You are challenged, each of you, to be patient with yourselves. You are challenged to love yourselves. You are challenged to forgive yourselves. It is correct that to forgive others, you must forgive yourself. To love others, you must love yourself. To love yourself, you must feel worthy of being loved, and to feel worthy of being loved you have to experience being loved. That is always the first step. With the centrality of that love, the transformation that is the purpose of human life is reached with brilliance, warmth, great intensity.

Human life is much like a candle. It is filled with great potential. There is fuel to the light, and once lit, the light can spread. But first in order to function as a candle, it must be lit from something external. Your lives are given meaning, purpose, but they must be ignited from others. For your neighbor, you are the other that provides the light to that individual’s candle. When you reach out with love, you are not merely igniting the candle of another, but you are enabling that candle to spread light far beyond its physical proportions.

Each of you is asked to be loving as you are able to be loving. This transformation from being loved to being loving is not linear. You may need to be loved one moment, and find yourself being loving the next moment, only to need replenishment of that love from others. You cannot continue to give love without receiving it. Allow those seasons in your lives that require receiving love. It is never a moment of weakness—the acquisition, the strength—for you are being replenished, fortified and warmed and supported and affirmed when you are being loved, and it is that store of loving energy that is given to you that you would in turn provide others at another time.

It is easy to feel guilty. It is easy to feel insufficient, incapable, weak, and victimized. Such reactions are common when you need to be loved. But if you recognize that necessity as a means of giving you the strength to again become loving, then you will always be aware of this cycle of renewal and refreshment and its companion of loving service to others. Each of you must allow for this cycle of need and the cycle for giving alternating. You are not strong one moment and weak at another moment. You are being given the gift of love and you are giving that gift of love. One alternates back and forth, and in the process you are transformed, your soul is strengthened, and your vision of the constancy of God is clear. But if you expect yourself only to be giving, then you can only disappoint yourself, for you will always feel you cannot give enough.

Allow your vessel to be filled to overflowing, and then joyfully nourish life around you with all that fills your vessel. Such is the nature of life. Such is its purpose. Such is your relationship to everything around you. You can be nurtured in the presence of the natural world around you, and you can be supportive and in turn nurturing of that very world. It is a two-way street. It is a sharing of the spiritual energy that surrounds each of your lives.

You are given life. Let it fill you. Be willing to enhance and uphold when you can, and when you cannot, that is okay, for when you cannot, that is precisely the time when you are being filled with God’s light and constant love. Be comforted by what you receive and be blessed by what you can offer.

We are comforted in our presence with you, and we are blessed in your acknowledgment of us. It is an eternal love that binds each of you and all that is creation.

You are creation, you are created, and you are creators. Blessed indeed is this trinity.

Amen.