February 5, 2024

• The importance of being in community

• A brain is not required for consciousness

• Nonhuman, knowing life-forms

• Thoughts are energy-forms

It is the loving God that you address your prayers of love and concern to. It is the loving God that creates the environment through which your prayers are answered, for the answers that you seek are in the hearts and spirits of all.

You pray for a greater understanding of God’s presence, and that understanding is given life and light by those around you. The role that you play in becoming open to God’s presence is a role of interaction. It is a role of communication.

If you close yourself in a room away from all other human beings, even those humans who are close to you cannot reach you. If you live on an island, and you are fully alone, you cannot feel the loving presence of others. If you are hungry and choose not to eat, nearby nourishment cannot fulfill you. You must always first be open to the presence of others if you are to fully embrace the presence of God.

It is how you engage with others that determines in great measure the heart vision that you seek in knowing God’s presence. First comes the engagement, and it is followed by that knowledge. You don’t just suddenly discover, “Ahhh, there is God! I had no idea.” That kind of recognition of God is not what we speak of when we talk of heart vision, when we speak of being knowing.

We frequently use the term “knowing beings.” That implies knowledge, a belief, that there is some form of creative energy that lies beyond your vision and that is ultimately responsible for all that is. To be a knowing being requires first that you be engaged in meaningful and accepting ways with all that surrounds you. The person who lives totally isolated from others is in isolation not just from other human beings but in isolation from communication, from recognition. There is isolation from being vulnerable in meaningful ways, in deeply felt ways to the presence and the loving giving of others.

To know God, you must know your neighbor. You must know your family and friends. You must know those with whom you work. You must know those with whom you deeply disagree. You must know much about what surrounds you. It is through that awareness, that knowing, which is not necessarily complete, but you are at least aware, that you see and feel the presence of God.

One can feel very isolated in a relationship, almost like living alone, but even when living with someone with whom one has profound differences, the heart vision can still be opened. That opportunity for growth would be denied if you were truly alone. Of course, there are times when you feel a need to pull back, to reflect, and to shut out the noise of life around you, but that is not the isolation we speak of. We speak of people who for one reason or another feel they must permanently shut out the light of life beyond where they are and who they are. In such circumstances, it is difficult to know God’s presence, to recognize it. One can think about it. One can intellectualize about it. But feeling it to the core is infinitely more intense, more deeply felt when it is experienced while in community with others.

We talk about knowing life-forms and life-forms that are not knowing. The boulder on a property does not contemplate the reality of God, but the boulder is made up of elements that are a part of God’s creation, and therefore it belongs with equal worth as all that you bring to that “table of awareness,” that knowing.

As we’ve said, it is not necessary that all forms of life know of the presence of a Spirit Center, and that is okay. We can say that human beings have within them the potential to know of that loving presence. There are many human beings who travel their own life pathways oblivious to any conscious recognition of God, but they are still knowing beings because they have the potential. They have within them a spark of knowledge. They do have within them the possibility of seeking to understand, and whether they engage in that potential or not, they are still knowing beings, and they are still an important part of what God has created.

This may sound very clear and understandable, but in practice it is anything but. Individuals you know who are opposed to what you believe reflect a knowing or a believing or a searching for God’s presence on their part, yet they are no different from you. Their pathways are different. They have different challenges. They have different experiences in their lives. But those challenges and experiences have no bearing on the potentials that are part of their existence, and because of that, we are always urging you to accept everyone, not to agree with everyone, but to accept their validity.

They are imperfect, and you are imperfect. They have their feelings, but you also have your feelings. They deal with personal demons, as you call them. You have your own demons to encounter. You just aren’t aware of what another’s demons may be. You are unaware of their impact on the lives of others. Therefore, you cannot judge, and you can and must affirm that they are equally valued knowing life-forms.

As was inquired in your gathering, what of knowing life-forms that are not human? What are they? How do they exist? What form do they take? What are their pathways of growth?

As science has demonstrated over so many years, there are seemingly unending varieties of new forms of energy being discovered. Some of these energies are manifested in concrete, physical ways. They are energy-forms that you can touch, but there are other energy-forms that have been uncovered whose manifestations are characterized by the kinds of light they emit. The field of science is gradually becoming more adept at recognizing those new light energies. So, we can say in a general way that there are many kinds of energy that exist but have yet to be observed. Some of those energy-forms are knowing life-forms, but their way of knowing is not through some biological structure you refer to as a brain. Yet there is a consciousness.

Many years ago there was no understanding about plant life of one species being impacted by plant life of a very different species. The plants do impact one another in ways that are slowly being revealed. The reality has not changed, only your recognition of that reality. We are not suggesting that plants, trees for example, are searching out an understanding of God, but there is an awareness of the other. There is an awareness of a reality that is beyond the physical characteristics of a given species.

The tiger is not thinking about the reality of a squirrel that it will never see, but that lack of recognition does not mean that that other life-form is non-existent. It is difficult for human beings to perceive of life-forms that do have an understanding of a center of creation that is beyond their immediate grasp. We can say in full truth that there are energy-forms that might appear to some in the future as kinds of light, and yet that energy which you cannot see with your own senses is just as real as you, and those energies, those life-forms that are a kind of light, are fully aware of a creative source on which all exists.

We can also say that there are nonhuman, knowing life-forms whose perceptions of a Spirit Center are clearer than those perceptions belonging to human existence. Human beings are not the most perceptive entities that exist. You are evolving in your perceptions, of course, and over many thousands of years, that vision, that perception, that commitment to the search for knowing has evolved. That evolution has not stopped. It will continue, and many thousands of years, as you measure them, in the future, as you identify it, human beings will have ways of perceiving a reality that even the most imaginative of human beings has not yet imagined.

Growth and perception is part of the growth of spirit. It belongs to the expansion of the reality of what God is. When one looks forward to a time even further ahead, there will be much more understanding of the reality of nonhuman, knowing life-forms, for your perception of reality will be expanded because of the increasing capabilities that have been created.

Yes, there are nonhuman life-forms that we could describe as a kind of light. This light, like all light, all colors, is a form of energy. Light is energy. The light you see is the nature of the energy that is only a small particle of the totality of energy that surrounds you that exists elsewhere in your universe, that exists in other universes that are not physical universes.

Your perception of your guides is not a physical perception. It is spirit to spirit. You cannot identify a particular location of your human energies that permits you to be open to the presence of your guides, to the light of God, but nevertheless that presence is real. That light is real. It cannot be defined through tools of your current understanding, but that lack of definition in no way negates the reality of what is. What is limited is perception.

As you grow in your perception of God, you grow through your understanding and perception and love of others. That commitment to reaching out, to understanding, to heart vision is not something you could put underneath a microscope and identify, and yet it is a very present form of energy. All that you do in your concerns for others, whether it is through physical participation or prayer, all of that is a form of energy that cannot be seen. The electrical activity of the human brain has been measured and analyzed and filtered through many layers of understanding, but nevertheless such investigation does not fully reveal the energy you expend in your loving efforts to listen, your loving efforts to be present. When you reach out with an open heart to be open to God’s presence, that energy toward the totality of God cannot be measured, and yet it does exist.

Consider always that your relationships to others, your relationships to life around you, are in a sense an invisible and yet powerful energy that is a knowing life- form of its own. You are a knowing life-form as a human being, but the energies you are committed toward for the benefit of others and for the benefit of your planet are also kinds of nonhuman, knowing energies.

We often say that thoughts are energy. Loving thoughts are positive, but there are many kinds of thoughts that are a kind of negative energy. Why is it that thoughts have impact? Because they are energy-forms that exist not only in the brain but flourish between people. That energy is real. You can see the impact of that energy although you cannot measure it. The energy of love is perhaps the most immediate nonhuman, knowing life-form that you can identify. You identify that energy, not by being able to see it but by feeling its impact.

The concept of nonhuman, knowing life-forms is, therefore, not such an alien idea. It is not limited to life-forms only found in other universes or on other planets in your physical universe. That energy of being loving exists absolutely as an attachment to who you are as a human being. For the individuals we spoke of who live alone and who rebuff any association with others, deprive themselves of cultivating that energy, that nonhuman, knowing life-form energy of being loving and extending that love outward.

You have moments in your life when that knowing life-form of energy that is love is active, is vibrant, and expands. But you have experienced moments when that energy is being contained. It is not being fed. It is not being nurtured. It does not expand. It still exists and will expand, reach out, and embrace. You shouldn’t be critical of yourself when you find yourself in a place of temporary isolation. That is part of the experience of human life. But when you experience those times, be willing to look beyond the moment and recognize that the loving energy that is within you can move outward. It can embrace. It can listen. It can be active. It can be compassionate. It can seek an understanding even when such understanding may seem so remote. The loving energy that is a part of your life is that nonhuman, knowing life-form that belongs to everyone.

Be guided by your vision of energies that are unseen. Be guided by your perceptions of love being offered. Be responsive to those moments in your life when you are strongly motivated to offer God’s loving presence, God’s nonhuman, knowing life-form of love. Rest and be nourished in that love.

Amen.