March 4, 2001

• What God is and is not

• Energy is logical and organizational

• Reverence for all that exists

God is indeed a guide for you, all of you. The power of God extends far beyond your vision, your understanding, even your concepts that become almost human in nature. There are relationships between you and God that have no corollary with human relationships.

The concept of God has always been guided by concepts of human relations. At times, God has been described as loving, filled with wrath, to be feared, to be welcomed, as a figure that judges, as a figure of compassion, pure love, patience, peace. All of these adjectives throughout human history are words that can be directed toward other human beings or that can be used to describe what others may lack. Nevertheless, these attributes are human attributes. Only when you ultimately exist in purely spiritual forms will you recognize that there is a set of characteristics that cannot be enumerated in human terms. Your relationships with other human beings, even at their best, are limited to a finite set of descriptions. But your soul’s relationship with God moves far beyond those adjectives.

It is impossible for us to completely describe the essence of God to you because the contacts that are part of that description—how one relates to God, how God relates to human beings—have no human equivalent. Without a human equivalent, there is really no chance for complete understanding. Nevertheless, there is much we can say about God’s relationship to human life. We can also say much about what is not a part of that relationship. For example, God is not filled with wrath. God does not act in anger, God does not punish. God does not judge you, sending you to heaven or hell based on divine criteria. God is not jealous, God is not competitive. God does not sense anger in some kind of context, vis-à-vis the devil or some evil spirit of another name. None of these qualities are reflective of God. There is no impatience, for there is no time and therefore no deadline.

You know that God is love. You have heard that since childhood. It may be difficult at times to see that love or to feel that love, but it is nevertheless undeniable. God is compassion, but God is also life. God provides beauty—beauty of the world. God is beauty within—the good that lies within all individuals is God. God is communication—the communication achieved through thought, through prayer, also through words. God is warmth. God is also cold. God consists of everything you can feel, see, hear, touch, smell, but you know that there is more to life than what the senses provide.

There are molecular sciences. There is a reality at the subatomic level. You are slowly learning some of that reality, but there are many, many more layers of reality that humankind neither perceives of theoretically nor is aware of at any level of thought. Consider for a moment that God not only is the creator and sustainer of all things, but that all things are a part of what God is. It is felt that God created humans in God’s own image, but the truth is that all of creativity is a part of the image of God. There is nothing that exists that is not in some way sacred. The trees, flowers, the mountains, skies, everything, everything is sacred. All that is on earth, all planets, all solar systems, all stars, all clusters of stars, all space, all is sacred, all is a part of God.

The ancients believed that God was nature, and they were not far off in their belief. Modern religions often shy away from that concept. They feel that humans are a part of God, but they fail to recognize that everything is a part of God. Whether they are alive in terms of exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide or whether they seem to be inanimate, there is nothing that is truly inanimate. At the lowest level, examining the smallest particles comprising the building blocks of life, there is motion. Why is there motion? Because there is energy. What is that energy? That energy is a part of God. That motion occurs in human and plant life. It also occurs in the smallest piece of stone. There is energy everywhere. There are levels of energy beyond your awareness, and then there are levels of energy beyond that—layer after layer after layer. All of this energy and all that that energy produces belongs to the being we recognize as God.

How can energy be loving or compassionate? You are correct in your belief in a loving and compassionate God. There is a distinct connection between energy and love, between energy and compassion. Energy is always, always present. There is no place in the entirety of creation that is devoid of energy. If you want a bottom line that can describe God in a form that you might understand, it would be to say that God is the totality of energy. All emanates outward from energy. Light, heat, colors, physical attributes of all descriptions, evolve through energy.

This is not a random energy, however. There is an organizational process to energy. There is a logic to energy. How does this logic become formed? Where does it come from? That comes from God. If you recognize that all creativity shares a common bond of energy, you may find this concept, limited as it is, to be helpful in acknowledging the unity of virtually everything. There is no boundary beyond which one finds nothing. These are very difficult concepts for anyone, but they are absolutely true.

When you pray to be open to God’s influence, you are asking to be open to receiving the benefit of this all-pervasive energy at all levels. One could say it is a cosmic question of sorts to ask, “Who, what is God?” You cannot define God, as we have said before, without acknowledging that there is in existence something outside the definition of God. Any clear definition of God becomes limiting by the very act of defining. There is in truth no limit to God. God is all that exists. God is all that is positive. God’s creation includes that which is negative, painful, anxiety producing, but even these characteristics have a place and a reason in the grand totality of existence.

You spoke tonight of living in a corner of time. As you would measure time, that is indeed true. You might also say that you as individuals are a corner of creation. That, too, is true in a sense. But if you accept that the drop in the ocean that can be identified as a drop, formulated as a drop, is really not at all separated from the rest of the ocean, then you as human beings are also in no way separated from other human beings, other items that exist, that simply exist. You’re all part of the same unity. You are really no different yourselves from the drop in the ocean. You have a different function, perhaps, but you are a part of the same creation. The toe is different from the finger, it does different things, it has a different purpose, it looks different, it behaves differently, but it is all a part of the same body. There is no difference between a toe and the smallest molecule in the brain—only different functions, but still a part of a human being. If you consider your lives to be made up of components that are energy—water (you are mostly water), hydrogen, oxygen—that’s all energy. If you recognize that and you recognize that a stone consists of particles that also have energy within them, you realize that you and the stone share something in common, and because of what you share, there is no essential difference between the human being and the stone.

Humans have a soul. There is a permanence attached to human life. Stones do not have a soul, but beyond having a soul or not having a soul, you are still the same. The presence or absence of the soul is only one measuring stick that defines what an object is. You go back far enough, you work deeply enough and you find that beyond the issues of soul, the issues of energy are the same.

This may at times seem overwhelming, but we want you to have a sense of the unimaginable vastness that is a part of God. The essence of God goes beyond the matters of energy, for it is God who created, who began, who organized that energy and many other elements of creation of which humankind has no conception. In the end, it is not important that you define God with total completeness. What is important is that you understand that God is far greater than the human attributes humankind wishes to place on that entity.

Energy has no spatial limits; the soul has no spatial limits. The energy of the soul —yes, not the essence of a physical, defined location, just the energy of the soul —is beyond the energy of the body. Your souls communicate with other souls because you are a part of the same energy. If your souls were indeed separated somehow from other souls, there would be no communication. Your soul has a personality, your soul has characteristics that are different from another soul, but you are still combined. The fingers and toes are some distance apart but they are absolutely connected because they reside on the same body. Your souls are connected because your souls are a part of that body of God that can be described at some level as energy.

The most important concept for each of you to take away from this is the need for total reverence for everything, and the relatively insignificance of concepts that are manmade. Time is manmade. You do exist in a kind of corner of time. Time is so vast that the distance between one moment of time and another moment of time in your lives has absolutely no significance whatsoever. You may organize your experience in a way that identifies time through past, present and future because that is a convenient way of drawing some understanding from your current experiences, but past, present and future really don’t exist. They are too close. Your past is your present. The future is part of the present. The present you can see. The future as part of the present cannot be seen, but it is every bit as real as what you acknowledge through your own senses. God did not establish time, but the human plane of living needs the concept of time, even though it is artificial, in order to function in ways that provide the necessary opportunities for spiritual growth. For that reason only, time exists. It is a convenience; it is not a statement of reality.

Your lives are intertwined in far more intricate ways with one another than you can imagine. It is the same relationship that exists between you and others whom you have never met. You are all truly one in spirit. You are all truly a component of the same creation that is God. Your awareness of this oneness must have an impact on your relationship with other people, with nature, whether it is animate or inanimate, whether you see a direct benefit to you or do not see such a benefit. Your relationship to all that has been created is extremely important for your spiritual growth. You know of this unity, and you therefore have the responsibility of acting with that knowledge.

Human life is a great blessing. It is only a corner of existence but it is important. It is to be nurtured, supported, loved, respected, valued. Your lives must be affirming to others. Your lives must affirm the value of the entirety of creation. Think carefully before something is destroyed, in your terms. Have respect for nature, not just your neighbor. Love the beauty of color, the beauty of aromas, the beauty of sunlight, of moonlight, of rain, soil, stones, water, the stars, the seeming emptiness between stars. All should be loved. All should be given importance. You cannot treat another unjustly, disrespectfully. You cannot treat another outside of love. There is no space for that.

We, your guides, are here to help empower you to respond to All That Is with love, interest, commitment, compassion and thanksgiving. We bless you, each of you, with God’s limitless, loving presence, now and always.

Amen.