October 3, 2019

• Service to self and others

• Understanding God’s response to prayer

• The circle of love includes God, guides, and humans

God, who is the Creator of all that is and simultaneously the Presence of all that has been created, embraces and enlightens the souls of each of you.

You spoke among yourselves of service, of an understanding of the balance between service to others, needs of self, the presence of organizing principles, and the reality of feeling. In many significant ways, your conversations encompass and embrace all that it means to be human. We would also extend that further by saying it encompasses and embraces all that is involved in being spirit.

We, who are the assembly of your collected guides, experience many of the emotions that you describe and relate. We know of these stories that you speak of. We know of the dilemma of reason and heart. We know of the conflicts that can arise between commitment and obligation, for our service to you comes out of our having experienced all about which you speak. A teacher cannot teach without understanding what it means to learn. Guides cannot provide comfort if at some point they have not experienced pain. In our particular life-form, we no longer experience that pain. We no longer experience the anguish, but we do bring our experience with all issues that are part of human life to our service on your behalf. It is our wish always to touch each of you in a way that provides meaning and light and understanding.

All of your guides who work directly with you have experienced human life. Many have also experienced other knowing life-forms to which we have alluded. We do not serve you through principle. We serve you through love, and that love is the result in great measure of our experience in human form as well as other knowing forms. Our dedication to each of you is one of service. There is no obligation. There is only commitment, and that commitment is offered based on our love.

In some ways you can apply your understanding of our service to you in ways that form your service to others. What does it really mean to serve another? Does it mean providing what is asked for merely on the basis of that which is asked? That is not the real purpose of service. Service is a response to need. Sometimes those needs are asked for, but too often what is asked for is not what is needed.

When you make specific requests to God, and we speak of “you” collectively as all human beings, God’s response is not specifically to what you ask for but rather to what is needed. Out of a sense of need comes the desire to ask, but there is often a great gulf that exists between each of those.

Part of your understanding of service to others is to make a distinction between what is said and what is needed. We often assure that God always responds to your prayers, and that is an absolute truth. But as God’s response is through love, so it is that you can learn through your experience to respond to others out of love and not specifically to what is asked for.

It is true that humans will often say that I prayed for this and it never came, but if those who question the response of God were to rethink what it was they prayed for, they would have a greater understanding of what specifically generated those prayers. In so doing, it would be more evident to them that God indeed had responded. That response, as you know, is not because God, the Spirit Center, has been called into action, but rather that those who express their needs have become open to that response that is present. We can say that God responds to others in so far as others can be open to that response.

You may find yourself serving what you feel to be the true needs of another, and yet those responses that you offer are not recognized for what they truly are, and another can walk away saying you failed to respond as it was asked. There is truth to your thinking that part of your service to others is a desire to be appreciated for that response. There is nothing wrong with that. If you respond to others because you perceive a need that you feel empowered to respond to, that is what is most important. It can be gratifying to see the results of your service, but even when those results do not appear, you can be certain that what you have done will have an impact. It is not essential that you see the results of your efforts, for no efforts that you offer in service of others are lost. All efforts offered out of love reach their targets. There is no wasted energy when it is expended for the benefit of another. If you see the impact of your efforts of service, that is fine, and seeing a positive consequence to your acts of love has grounds for bringing satisfaction and pride. But you are not offering service to another for the sole purpose of making yourself feel somehow affirmed. You don’t perform for the sole purpose of someone applauding. You perform to share what you feel most deeply, and the applause can provide affirmation. It is not the purpose specifically for what you do.

Service to others, as our services to you, is only to be seen as an act of love. Human beings don’t often define love to another in terms of service, and yet that is the most profound love of all. It is the love of service. It is the love of giving. It is not a love of getting, of being congratulated, of being thanked, of doing what needs to be done to find affirmation. Love ultimately is directed outward.

Yes, it is also important to love oneself, but even in loving oneself you are giving to the self. You are not taking. Love of self is a gift to self, not what is asked for but what is needed. When you pray for an inner peace, you are praying of course for the benefit of self, but that in reality is an opening of self to the peace that exists. It is not a selfish act. It is a nurturing act, and when you serve yourself in a nurturing capacity, that is a form of self-love that originates with spirit and is received by spirit.

Love, therefore, is giving. Love is serving. It is never getting for the purpose of getting.

We talk about service as being motivated by obligation. That is not to be confused with service motivated by commitment. Certainly, commitment may grow from a sense of obligation, but the commitment we speak of that is true service is that service motivated out of love. You feel a commitment to give, a commitment to reach out because that is the natural expression of love. There is no duty to expressing love. There is no scorekeeping of expressing love. It is not a matter of paying back in some way for what you have been given. Real service through love can be described as a kind of altruistic endeavor where it is centered on other. It is not centered on self.

You live ultimately to find the other in life. The other may be an individual. It may be many. It may be principle. It may be a sense of unity. It may be self because of that sense of giving love to the self. It is about the other. It is not about the me.

We speak in these terms not because they are easy to exercise and to give life to. They are goals, and when you experience moments in your life when you are fearful, worried, somehow feel taken advantage of, or somehow feel victimized, it is okay. It is part of being human to act according to those needs, but those are moments within a lifetime. They do not define life. For each of you and all human beings, the definition of life is the discovery of other. It is the embracing of another. It is the desire to serve another through selfless love.

You cannot reach outward without the need for replenishment. You cannot give and give and give and give without allowing time to be receptive. There is a rhythm of sorts. It is the filling of the resources that you have within you, your spirit’s energy, that then radiates outward and discovers and embraces the other in life. Just as you serve others, you in turn need to be served by others. Allow yourself, therefore, the blessing of being vulnerable, for God’s blessings are not that you always can give and give more and give more. An important part of the blessings of God is the ability to be vulnerable, to be sensitive, to be receptive, to feel that there are inadequacies. There are empty spaces within which need to be filled, and in the filling of those spaces, that cup overflows. There is no other option. That love that you receive by its very nature can only move outward and discover and embrace the other.

Our service to you is through love, but how are we fulfilled in order that we may offer that love to you? We are fulfilled through the light that surrounds all of us. We are fulfilled by the love that we share with one another. We are fulfilled by our hearts’ view, our hearts’ vision, of the enormous loving presence of the Spirit Center, of God, of All That Exists.

This source of the love that we have is constant. It is never depleted. It continues to expand. The love that we offer is a consequence of that expanding love and light that surrounds each of us. It is a continuum. We receive the love from light from the Spirit Center, and it reaches you, and it reaches through you to others, and that resulting light of love increases the energy of the light that we see. It is from that that we say that the love that nurtures us continues to expand.

You are a part of that. You are a part of that light energy. You are a part of the love energy. Because you help serve to increase the light, you are in turn strengthening the presence of God. It is for that reason that we say you exist because God exists, and God exists because you exist. Your gift to God, therefore, is your gift to others, and it is the gift you give to others that is all that you receive from God. The circle really is unbroken. It is a circle of service. It is a service of giving all within the confines of love.

You are loved. You are loved by us. You are loved by us because you are with us and we are with you. You are loved by God because we are all loved by God, and the love that you pour out from your cup is a love that strengthens God. The reality is that God’s love is increased by yours. God’s light becomes stronger because your light becomes stronger. Your light becomes stronger because of the presence of God’s light.

The service we speak of is a complete circle, a circle of true love. There is no space, therefore, for judgment. There is no reason to feel a difference in the merit of one person or another. You are the same, all of you, because you have within you the light of God, and that light from God is the consequence of the love with which you serve the other.

Be blessed in this love. Be blessed in your service that is generated only by love. Be reinforced, be affirmed, through your expression of love. Be strengthened through your service to others. We are blessed because of you. May it always be that others are equally blessed.

Amen.