April 4, 2000

• The true nature of loss

• Reconciling with departed souls

God is with each of you, individually and collectively. Your guides and your own spirits are a part of an enormous spiritual network that allows everyone who wishes to be in contact with everyone else. All of us—your guides, your own spirits—belong to a single entity incorporated in God’s loving and all-powerful light. Because you are all a part of God’s reality, God’s love, there is essentially nothing of significance that separates you. This statement applies to everyone, not just those who gather in groups like yours around the world, and indeed there are many. You really are a single entity. You really are connected. There is nothing that divides you, one from another. You know of the statement that nothing can separate you from the love of God, but it is also true that nothing can separate you from one another.

Your prayers and thoughts relate to the subject of loss—loss of friends, loss in relationships, loss within the family. It is on understanding the nature of these losses that we wish to focus your thoughts at this time.

You cannot avoid loss. You cannot separate yourselves from the reality that loss occurs. There is pain, agony, anger, frustration, sadness, a questioning of God’s presence within the connection that seems lost. If you understand and fully accept the reality that you are all connected and that we who exist in spirit are equally connected to you as we are to each other, then the nature of losses undergoes a transformation. Because all spiritual life is united and because the spirit is never extinguished, there is in fact no loss of the spirit. The only loss is a loss sensed by one’s eyes, one’s touch, one’s heart. The manifestation of that spirit may have been transformed, but the spirit remains. What’s more, the spirit remains with each of you.

You think back to losses you have experienced—family, friends—you are quick to acknowledge that a loss has taken place. But we assure you that no loss has taken place. Losing a child means the child’s life has been transformed, but that child’s consciousness, that child’s sense of identity, sense of self, sense of joy, the ability to love—all that is retained and all that remains with you. Losing someone close is a physical, visible loss but is in truth merely a change. Relationships remain.

When relationships have been difficult in life, they can still be resolved between your spiritual plane and ours. When death precedes reconciliation, there is still the need for reconciliation. What’s more, that need involves both spirits. It is not reconciliation when only one side acknowledges such a resolution. The acknowledgment is two-sided, so no relationships need to be left hanging. How does one reconcile relationships when one party now lives on our plane? One reconciles that relationship through prayer, because you pray to be open to reconciliation. That’s a prayer from one soul to another. When that prayer is offered, reconciliation is the only response. There is no denial. There is no silent voice on the other end of the phone. That which you pray for is offered. That is true of all relationships between souls on either side of the cycle of life, human life.

Loss, you see, is an emotion of the human experience. It is never a statement of fact. No one is lost. No one is really left alone. An individual may surround himself or herself with anger, but that serves as a barrier to the reconnection of souls. Eliminate the anger and the union is whole.

Grief is a natural response to the recognition of physical loss. It is absolutely normal. It is to be expected. It is to be acknowledged. By acknowledging your grief and sadness, you are beginning the process of re-establishing the connection in a positive frame of reference, in a positive mindset. Real reconciliation of loss, whatever the loss, is accomplished through the recognition of a change of state but a constancy nevertheless.

Individuals do not lose friendships. Relationships change. Misunderstandings are a part of human life, but a real friendship ultimately endures those rocky moments that threaten to tear it asunder. A real friendship is not a fair-weather relationship. It is constant. A genuine love cannot be destroyed. It can be changed. It may take on different characteristics but is never fully lost.

When individuals grieve in the process of loss, there is a spiritual and emotional vulnerability which is important to experience, for out of that vulnerability comes the cry for help, and it is you who are not in grief who are empowered to help. You are empowered to reflect God’s light. That reflection is then recognized by another. There is much you are empowered to do in response to loss—your own loss and losses experienced by others. But your actions, whether they be dramatic in scope or merely prayerful and in quiet peace, are all motivated by a conviction that nothing is lost.

Relationships change, but nothing is lost. How you respond to that change has everything to do with your acknowledgement of being spiritually guided. Without that acknowledgment, the response to loss is negative. It is filled with resentment, great sadness, a questioning of God’s presence. But that relationship to loss need not be the only relationship.

From the perspective of chemistry and physics, nothing is created or destroyed, only transformed, and that holds true magnificently to all things spiritual as well as physical. Since nothing is changed, there is a constancy. The constancy that concerns all of us is the Divine Spark, that entity within each of you that reflects God’s light, God’s love, God’s compassion—all share in that.

It is difficult, despite the understandings, to accept the changes that take place which you refer to as loss. One can say that grieving is a selfish response. We don’t mean that it is inappropriate, but it is a response centered on the self, the overwhelming feeling that something is lacking, something is missing in one’s own life. How comforting it would be to all if humans could transform their sense of selfish loss into a greater acknowledgement of permanence in relationships, changing in state but nevertheless permanent in substance.

There is a big difference physically between an individual who is seven years old and that same individual at the age of 70. The difference is so great that often the image of one is unidentifiable as the same individual in the opposite state of age. But despite the difference in appearance, the individual is the same. What has taken place over the years is a transformation. The child is no longer a child. The reality of being a child could be said to have been lost, but that is only the manifestation of that child, for the child exists in a different manifestation, that being one of full maturity. They are the same person, though different at times, but in a very real sense that everyone acknowledges, they are the same individual.

And so it is when individuals join our plane of existence, they are the same individual. The manifestation is different, and just as the child is no longer present, the human is no longer present. But just as the child and the individual of advanced years is the same person, those who join us are the same people. You have a connection to them. Your communication can continue. It is a different communication—it is a spiritual communication not characterized by human speech, but the communication is there. Those who have joined us are very aware of the thoughts and prayers of those left in human form. The difficulty is for humans to fully accept the reality that the individuals who have joined us are still with them as they are with us. You can pray for them—you can pray for their peace, for their growth, for their light, for their comfort. But they also pray for you—your peace, your growth, your light, your comfort. You can be open to receive the benefit of those prayers if you will believe. If you deny their existence, they cannot get through. If you welcome their life, you are both beneficiaries, one of the other.

So life continues. Relationships continue, changed but still there. You should welcome those relationships. You should pray for your own openness to sensing those relationships, for they are a source of comfort, a source of great strength and incredible joy. They eliminate guilt. They eliminate much of the pain that individuals feel when they believe they are being left behind. No one is left behind alone, just as no one is thrust ahead alone. Relationships have a purpose, for they bind people together, they bind souls together, and that union remains for both sides to acknowledge.

That is one of the great benefits of true friendship. True friendship does not exist as a kind of accoutrement, a kind of decoration to enhance human life. True friendship is a permanent commitment. Family relationships are permanent commitments. Your families retain that sense of connection, regardless on which side of the spiritual plane they may exist.

Continue to pray for those who have meaning in your lives. Continue to be open to their entry into your lives. Be willing to acknowledge that all are part of this same spiritual union. Nothing is severed. Nothing is lost. Nothing is destroyed.

We pray for your openness. We pray for your willingness to accept the permanence of our relationships. We pray for the peace that comes with that acceptance, and we continue to pray for those who have joined us that they may be receptive to your spiritual offerings, now and always. Light does not travel in one direction. Light emanates in all directions. So it is with the communication between all spiritual entities.

We bless you with that vast brilliance that is God’s brilliance. We bless you with a sense of communion with those who have gone on before you. We bless you as you seek peace, as you seek and offer comfort. And we bless you in your yearnings to be loving and to be loved.

Amen.