October 30, 1995

• The direct accessibility of God

• Prayer increases the ability to receive

• Wordless prayer

God, your Creator, the Source of all knowledge and inspiration, surrounds and nurtures the souls of each of you in this group.

You have all shared concerns about the lives of others and are becoming more keenly aware of the deep personal needs that many have for spiritual and emotional strength and stability. It is easy for us to say, but hard to really accept, that the source of all that you seek is found in God. God’s example of love, peace and compassion, patience and acceptance, compassion and strength—these examples come from many sources, and it is from those sources that the religions of the world have evolved. But clearly those sources give evidence to the greater reality, the ultimate source which is God.

So many times you hear evangelical preachers claim that all answers can be found in Jesus. That may be true, but it is also true that those same answers can be found in the lives of others, not just biblical figures but in the lives of those who currently experience the human condition of existence. Nevertheless, each of you must continually remind yourselves that the peace and stability for which you pray can be achieved, can be experienced and felt in all of its beauty through your own individual relationship with God.

In a theological sense, there is no need for an intercessor between you and God. There is no middle step. There is no intermediary spiritual entity through whom you must work in order to receive God’s peace, God’s healing, God’s love. The source for each of you, indeed for all humankind, is directly accessible. All that is needed is an open heart and a mind willing to receive the benefits for which you pray.

The act of prayer is your way of freeing the channel between you and God. As we have said on other occasions, you do not set an agenda for God through your prayer. It may be heard as such, for there may be a long litany of requests for God to come into the life of another. But in fact, as you know, what you are praying for really is the increase in the receptivity of each person to God’s presence.

Prayer really is a way of strengthening the bond that connects all to God. When you pray, focus on that connection, focus on your concerns for openness, for being receptive. Then God’s presence will be made known, will be felt, the love will be present, the healing will be present, the wisdom, patience, strength will all come. The form which all of this takes may or may not be exactly as you expect, but God’s response will be direct.

In so many religions of the world and philosophical perspectives, there is that sense of dependence on some figure, some spiritual entity other than God that elicits the response for which you pray. If it is a help to imagine such a middle figure or intermediary, so be it. The trappings of religious and philosophical belief are of less importance than the reality of reaching out and communicating with God and being aware of God’s response to that outreach.

Your lives are to be fully lived, and that means being open to challenges to others who question your beliefs, your sense of connection to God, your sense of connection to all human beings. Such challenges can be expected, but they are not in themselves important. Your beliefs are really what are essential to your lives, for you will continue to move forward in a spiritually guided direction of life through your perception and awareness of God. As that perception grows and deepens and broadens, your lives will also expand.

Your concerns about your loved one are understandable, are wide-spread and well-founded, for indeed he is in need of considerable help. But that help will come according to his capacity to receive it. A child cannot fully partake in a great feast of food. A child will eat as it can, accepting the nourishment to the limit that it can with full recognition that that will be quite different from the nourishment obtained by an adult. And so it is with spiritual nourishment, being in God’s presence and being in the presence of a great spiritual feast. All is available, but not all can be taken in. If you pray for his ability to accept more of God within his life, that prayer can be answered. If one prays for total recognition of the mistakes in life and the need for continuous and professional help to extricate himself from his current situation, such a response will not be immediately forthcoming, for it cannot be.

When you pray for your own clarity and strength, you will be given what is needed according to the level of your ability to receive that help. Your prayers increase your ability to receive. Those who go through life with no willingness to pray, no motivation to pray, in the end will receive less spiritual guidance than those who pray constantly, for those who pray constantly makes themselves totally open to receive what God has to offer.

When you meet together as a group, you are each increasing your ability to be receptive. You are each increasing the strength of the signal, so to speak, that connects God’s response to your prayers. Welcome those times for personal reflection, for quiet contemplation. You do not need to constantly meditate on the presence of God in your life to be receptive. You can be receptive merely by being quiet, allowing yourself to experience the moment in its entire presence without external interruptions, just being, allowing yourself to exist without great concern for even a moment, not even praying, not even asking God for help for you or another, just simply being. It is in such a state that you are fully receptive to God’s response to your needs, even when not prayed for.

It is not necessary to clearly state all needs that you may have, nor all the needs of another. Merely allowing yourself to be quiet, or imagining—Imaging, if you will— another person in a condition that you would hope that they would find in the future, and holding with that vision in itself is a prayer, for prayers do not consist of words, sentences, and paragraphs. Prayers are more rightly considered a state of mind, a state of consciousness. There is no need to verbalize or to formulate concepts. One can do that certainly, but many prayers are totally silent, are totally wordless, are totally nonspecific, and are merely the presence of silence.

When you seek strength, therefore, first seek silence. When you seek knowledge, first empty yourself of ideas. When you seek patience, allow yourself to exist totally separate from anxiety or impatience. Just be. Don’t ask for patience. The patience will come and you will sense a greater connectedness with God, and that sense will provide you with peace and confidence and love and compassion and strength and patience. All will come when you allow yourselves the quietness.

Your relationship, therefore, with God is a quiet one. It is contemplative, not in the form of words, but in the sense of state of being. Even if you can only find a few minutes in a day to be totally quiet, to be meditative without necessarily meditating, you will sense a greater presence and spiritual union with God, and all for which you actually pray will come to you many times over.

You are continually blessed by God’s light, not just now but always. Your prayers are answered even when unspoken, even though not necessarily formulated in thought. Healing takes place with silent steps. Though you cannot hear them, you can still have faith that the healing is sure and steady. You are blessed in the same light and in the same love that we experience. All of us are united by God’s brilliance.

Amen.