October 14, 2013

• Past life experiences

• Welcome disagreements

• Struggles of the United States

God who is the Creator of All and God who is All That Has Been Created surrounds you with the loving energy and a divine presence that is always available, that is always with you, that is always responsible and responsive. It is God who sets on the path your individual and collective experience as human beings.

Each of you has experienced life prior to your human life. That previous experience, and for some “those previous experiences,” serve in great measure to characterizing your life as it is woven together day by day and from person to person. You are products of your own personal, spiritual, social history. Each component plays its part. The human being who has suffered enormously at the hands of others will often find it difficult to trust, to believe, to accept. The baggage that is brought with that person becomes in its own way part of that person. The baggage, the experience that each of you brings to this moment, helps to impact how it is you experience all life.

When you have received much love, you are more fully aware of its power than if you had grown up without such an experience. You cannot in fact give what you don’t have. You cannot give love to another if you have not experienced love. Even when you know that God is love, that God is all that exists which is positive, even knowing that without the experience of love, you cannot love.

What you experience shapes who you are without exception, but it’s also important to realize that what others experience around you will have an impact on them. If you create an environment that is positive and supportive and loving, then those who are near you will also experience that same environment, and just as you grow, they, too, grow. But the converse is also true, for when you are filled with anger, when you are filled with negative thoughts, when you are filled with jealousy, when you are filled with “I-ness” rather than “we-ness,” then those who are with you are equally impacted.

You are influenced by all that you experience, those experiences that you recall and those experiences that are beyond your memory and yet exist in very real ways. Your lives are impacted in very significant ways by events that you have no recollection of encountering, whether those events were experienced in your current life or as some other kind of life-form. Nothing that exists survives alone or flourishes in a vacuum. You thrive, you grow, you evolve precisely through your interactions with your world as you see it, as you experience it. If you could look back to your own lives prior to human life, you would see a smooth transition from what you perceive to be as you were to what you perceive to be as you are.

We frequently explain, declare, and encourage you to understand that time itself does not exist independent of any other aspect of life. Time, space, light and darkness all exist together. All are interdependent. Your lives before your current human life are no less important to you than what you currently perceive. Life is to be lived, but life is also a continuum. The experience of life is a continuum, and because it is a continuum, there is really no beginning. Most importantly, because it is a continuum, there is no end. Life as you know it is merely an expression of what unites each of you with All That Exists.

You reach for the stars with your thoughts and with your eyes, but those stars are already within reach. Their light has come to you. Many of the stars you are aware of are so far distant in space that they are perceived as distant in time, but space and time really are descriptions of the same presence.

You are in every fundamental way no different as adults than you were as children. Yes, of course you grow, you mature, you take on more responsibilities, you seek out more sophisticated experiences, but if we look at you from our perspective, age has virtually nothing to do with who you are or what you do or what others do or what gives you pleasure or pain.

You are who you are. You are a set of experiences. You are the expressions of love you have benefitted from. You are also the opportunities you missed. It isn’t missing them that means who you are; it is the opportunities themselves that are who you are.

When you turn your back on others, you are turning your back on yourself. You are denying who you are and therefore denying who another is. If you wish for peace, you have one obligation, and that is to become the peace that you wish for. If you wish for love to prevail, you must be willing to become the kind of love that you wish to prevail. If you seek compassion in the world, the mere seeking is in itself simply a response. If you wish compassion, you must experience that which you wish for, for compassion is reaching out, and you must have experienced the reaching out towards you by others. You will then know the full measure of compassion, of love.

You are influenced by baggage you bring to this very moment. The years you were born are not appreciably different from the current years. The impact of those years is evident, but they are in no significant way any different.

For those who pray, they pray for an understanding, they pray for an insight, they pray for an answer, they pray to ask the right questions. Those prayers can be offered through the acknowledgment that God Is, but those prayers may also be offered as a way of challenging the reality of God, for if you feel that God is to be benevolent and you are aware of much suffering, you might reasonably ask, “Is there really a God that allows something to happen which creates suffering?” But these dilemmas are part of a larger issue that was brought to attention at this time. It is the seeming split between what you perceive to be good and what you perceive to be bad. That is in effect a kind of catalyst that brings many to a greater understanding of the presence of spirit.

There are those whose opinions you do not share, but whether or not you are in agreement is not in itself important. What is important is that all people can express concerns, hopes, dreams, pain, exhilaration. It is the expressing that brings about the viewed need of understanding. If you are not aware of disagreements, you become unaware of the reason to understand one another. When those disagreements are presented in a harsh light, the need for such understanding becomes undeniable.

You should not welcome suffering on any other human being, but when there is suffering, you should always ask yourselves, where do you belong within your observations? What can you do? What is your response, knowing that your response ultimately becomes “what is God’s response?” It is the examination of where one is spiritually that is at the core of your recognition of one perspective being in complete opposition to the perspectives of another.

Disagreements should be welcomed, because it is through disagreement that you build an understanding of what it is that for you is essential. Part of your lives is to distill what is essential, what is the core of your existence from what is in reality simply noise. The distillation of spirit is the accommodation of conflict and perspectives. You and your neighbor may have a strong disagreement, but when you converse about the disagreement and you listen, you will understand much more about another’s perspective. Without disagreement, there is deception. We’re not saying you must argue constantly, but we are saying you must feel free to share with another where you are on your path, recognizing that the other may or may not be accompanying you on your own chosen path for the moment. Disagreement does not imply disrespect. The disagreement can serve as a broader indication of what is in fact reasonable, what is in fact to be sought after.

No one is given total wisdom. Wisdom comes through disagreement. Wisdom comes from challenging perspectives. Wisdom comes from listening to what others must say. You grow spiritually as you grow in your capacity to listen. You grow spiritually as you experience disagreement, as you experience any means of conflict. You cannot go through life rejecting another perspective, and therefore you cannot get through life feeling that only you have the understanding and it is for you to be patient with another in a condescending way.

You are always asked to listen, but the listening is not a matter of being convinced of another perspective but rather in knowing of that other perspective. You are asked to embrace all others, whether you agree or disagree with the stance some may take. Their perspective is equally valid to them as yours is to you, and because those views may be honestly held, they deserve to be heard, and in hearing, you grow.

Your interaction with human beings is not about prevailing or giving up territory or giving up rights. It is about being in the shoes of others. It is about sensing your unities —your unities of purpose, your unities of identity, your unities of value, of equality. When there are disagreements, whether personal or political, embrace them and be convinced that such differences of purpose are in their most significant way only differences in the means to an end that is really the common objective of everyone. You all seek fairness. You seek love. You seek respect. You seek understanding. You seek being considered of equal value. You consider the equality of spirit. That is what is important.

Your nation continues to struggle with itself, not only as it relates to issues from within but in its position within the larger framework of humanity. The struggles you see are not limited to those issues of which you are aware. They go far beyond, but they have much contained within them that can be a source for greater knowledge, for greater respect, and ultimately for wider expression of love. Accept those challenges, realizing they do not merely bring out the worst, but invite the exercise of what is best. They are not barriers being built between peoples, but rather items that encourage their being removed as barriers and being used to construct a common ground that is the basis of human unity.

A choir has many voices, and those voices may seem to sing different melodies at the same time, but together they can be a glorious chorus. Embrace that music! Celebrate the independence of line, and welcome the chorus of beloved spirit.

Amen.