November 29, 2007

• Spiritual peace

• Be vulnerable rather than defensive

• Why the soul attaches to human life

• Seek understanding more than knowledge

You are given peace in these moments of seeking. Actually the purpose of seeking is the peace that you can experience. Peace and love go hand in hand, for if you feel an internal peace, you are more open to experiencing love and filling your chambers to overflowing so that you may offer that to others. When you do not feel peace within, it is a kind of barrier, such as we have spoken of, a barrier that prevents or inhibits your capacity to feel the loving light that surrounds your lives.

The peace that we speak of is not a peace described by sleep or fatigue or a state of rest, although these may accompany that peace. The peace we speak of is a spiritual peace, the feeling of being connected to each other, to God, a belief in the presence of spirit, for in that state of awareness, you are most receptive. You are most able to be guided, as you pray for.

If you feel detached from yourself or from others, the peace that is necessary is not present. If you have no respect for yourself, you are less able to receive a sense of confidence that you are indeed being guided. Certainly you should question. Part of your seeking is questioning the reality of what it is you seek. That is part of the human experience—you pursue what you also doubt, or you pursue that which you are insecure about. It is the pursuit that is important. But being at peace within means you are receptive.

If you feel consumed by doubt and your position is one of “prove it”—prove that we exist, prove that God exists, prove that God is a part of everything—you are in a sense placing yourself in a defensive rather than vulnerable place. To be receptive to God, you must be vulnerable. You must be willing to accept that your understanding of things spiritual will at best be limited. Peace eliminates that defensiveness and allows you to be filled with a spiritual presence that you all seek.

Loving the self and accepting the self are essential for experiencing the peace you seek. If you doubt your capabilities, if you question your own self-worth, then you are questioning the worth of all that you experience, and that position serves as a mighty barrier that must be torn down.

The human experience is filled with many justifications to be defensive— defensive personally, defensive within community, whether that community is family, another person, a nation, or generalized to humankind. Part of your challenge in human terms is to find a way forward without those defensive walls, for you are walling out and walling in.

There is no human being who has existed who has never experienced fear. Fear is a real part of everyone’s life, but what is fear precisely? Fear is a defensive response. Even when it is fearful about another, there is a defensive component to that fear, for you identify with another even when you fear for another. You are in your fear placing yourself with another, and that becomes in its way defensive. You cannot live your life fearing what may happen, for in the end you become immobilized. You can only live your life through confidence, confidence in the reality of God, confidence in the presence of God. As that confidence grows, the fear is lessened, the defenses are broken down, and you become receptive. Every human being is capable of being guided, but too many live with the barriers of fear, judgment, disbelief around them, and those barriers then repel what is within, what is beyond.

Fences, alas, do not make good neighbors. The barriers you construct in your life do not provide peace. There are military barriers, there are political barriers, there are barriers of interaction between individuals and groups, all of which serve to cloud the presence of real internally felt peace.

You seek knowledge. You seek an understanding of guidance. You seek an understanding of life. You seek an understanding of God. You seek an understanding of the ways that reflect God in your interactions with others. This seeking is what you are asked to do. In that seeking you do gain insight, the growth of understanding, but no understanding can possibly be complete.

Why is it that seeking is so important? Of course you know the soul benefits through its attachment to your lives, but why? What is it that the soul does not have that is making human attachment so essential? The soul learns what it means to seek. In the spiritual realm, devoid of the physical life that you know, there is much that is evident. There is much to be learned, as well. There is a seeking that takes place among all spirits, but that seeking is learned because what you perceive as human beings is so significantly limited that by the very absence of knowledge, you are drawn to seek it. If all is available to you in your vision, there is nothing to search for. There is nothing to reach for. All is there already. But the spirit grows in the search, in the seeking, and that human involvement becomes a skill of sorts that carries the spirit to higher understandings.

You might understandably say that if the spirit is so important, why do we need the physical realm? Can it not merely be eliminated and allow the soul to grow within a purely spiritual realm? It is a logical question but the answer is also simple. The soul is attached to human life because of the search. Human beings have a choice to accept the challenge to take up the opportunity to seek, or to ignore it and to live with no curiosity about life after life, the purpose of life, the presence of God. That is your choice. Some of that choice is conscious. Some of that choice is determined by your community, the environment in which you live. If the soul’s experience with the human being does not enrich an understanding of what it means to seek truth, to seek knowledge, to seek love, that soul will be given another opportunity. But for souls attached to human lives characterized and enhanced to give purpose through the seeking, that soul has learned, has learned how to search for love and in that searching becomes love ultimately.

What you actually seek in human life is an understanding of what love means, the unconditional acceptance, valuation, of all that has been created. That search is always difficult. No human beings come to the end of their physical lives with a full understanding of that search. But being engaged as you are to the process, your souls grow significantly and that growth enhances your relationships with others.

You cannot know the answers to all questions, but you can learn that there are answers to your questions, and that those answers come from beyond the normal reasoning faculties of human life. Those answers come from beyond human life. Those answers come from the realm of spirit, the realm of love. You are directed because of that.

Each of you has an inkling of knowledge which can provide meaning and context to your lives. You have been given much and will continue to be given much through your efforts to understand, to grasp what it means to be human beings. Attending that understanding is the need for response. You must always live as a response to what you understand. Note we say “what you understand,” not “what you know,” because knowledge carries with it a certainty. Understanding includes the concept of future growth. You live through your understanding, not through your knowledge.

What you learn from these experiences of being together and seeking guidance has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with understanding. The goals you seek must always be goals of understanding, whether those goals are spiritual or temporal, physical. You are living so that your understanding expands, but you can understand much and yet have little knowledge. That is a good thing. Never be complacent in what you believe to be true. Never be assured that you have full knowledge of anything, but your lives can be filled with peace when they are characterized by an understanding and a willingness to be open to further growth.

God speaks.

God moves.

God warms.

God strengthens.

God affirms.

God loves.

As your understanding evolves, you are able to connect more successfully to these strengths. Craft your lives into seeking understanding, and the understanding that you achieve will lead to gifts, will lead to actions that are directed outward. That is the nature of understanding, for understanding is always directed elsewhere. Knowledge remains static.

Be blessed in your understandings. Be blessed in your awareness of the restlessness of spiritual understanding. There is always more to seek. There is more to learn. There is more to guide. There is more faith. There is more love.

Feel you can rest in the peace of your understandings. Allow them to form the core of who you are as you continue the journey of life…life…life.

Amen.