June 14, 2021

• The ebbs and flows of belief in God

It is God who provides peace. It is God who provides balance. It is also God who provides opportunities for greater understanding, greater depth, more refined abilities to reach out.

As was so evident in your discussions at this time, the journeys of spirit for each take on different character, different personalities as it were, for every person. The journey of understanding the presence, the reality of God is never a straight line. There are for everyone times of doubt, perhaps times of disbelief, all with times of questioning the true meaning of God. Does God exist, and if God exists, what evidence is there which is irrefutable? What proof can I experience that indicates without question the existence of a God that at the very least can be defined as a creative force?

There is no absolute truth which when encountered is proof to all that God exists. Were there such proof, then there would be a clear sense of what that existence means. If there were such complete understanding, there would be no need for many different belief systems as they relate to concepts of God, for it would be self-evident that God is this and not that. There are, of course, many who wish to affirm that they know God with a sense of certainty about the accuracy and completeness of that knowledge. There is no one whose understanding is that complete, for any understanding about the existence of God, as we have discussed before, is going to be riddled with human-like characteristics.

The understandings that you have, the understandings that all organized religions have, contain within them a measure of truth, but to rely on those understandings as complete would be much like observing a fingernail and claiming to know all about the individual attached to that nail. The fingernail is the fingernail. One’s understanding of that nail may be relatively accurate, but it is in no way a true picture of the totality.

One’s belief in God is therefore often based on singular evidence. For one person that evidence takes on a particular character. For another, there is different evidence and therefore difference perceptions. Those perceptions may lead either to a blind sense of full understanding or to a conviction that there is nothing there. The evidence is so sketchy that one cannot affirm anything is certain.

You experience your lives through the lens of your own understandings, your own wishes, your own beliefs, your own fears. For that reason, every individual approaches all issues of importance through their own particular lens. Life, one could say, can be seen for many much like the changing of a prescription, of getting a different lens, of refining the lens that’s there. For some, the vision that results seems clear. For others, such refinement is actually no refinement at all, regardless of the effort. Your vision with the eyes is no different than the vision with your heart. Both visions change. Both visions evolve. Both visions impact your concepts of the world around you.

It has often been said that one of the things that is most certain about human life is that there is always change. There is in fact nothing about human life that remains static, and that is part of the purpose for experiencing human life. It is to experience the changes. The changes in your pathways are not regular. They don’t occur at predictable intervals. The directions of those changes never remain the same. Some changes are more abrupt; others, more gradual. But it is absolutely a certainty, as you have observed, that all paths ultimately wind up together with the Spirit Center that you identify as God. That center is not a specific point of arrival in physical terms. It is a condition of arrival in spiritual terms.

You grow in your understanding of life around you. Do you ever fully know all there is to know about the life that is even in close proximity to you? Of course not, but growth nevertheless takes place, and an essential part of that growth must be change, for without change you remain static, and there is no growth.

It is difficult at times to observe those changes as they occur in your own lives and in the lives of others, but just as your vision of the heart evolves, so evolves the heart vision of all human beings. That evolution is what we refer to when we speak so often of your individual pathways.

Life is a journey, that you know, but it is a journey of spirit. It is not just a journey of experiences, and on that journey, there are times of ebb and flow. There are times of feeling as if you are moving forward and times when you feel you are moving backward. You can observe what you perceive to be the ebb and flow in the lives of others, but that change of condition is what it means to be alive. It’s what it means to grow spiritually. When you consider your own spiritual evolution, you can think back to times when you felt you were going forward steadily, and then you experienced times of great concern and questioning, doubting, even rejecting. That ebbing and flowing of spiritual growth is essential as you experience your individual pathways.

Think of the change in the tides of the oceans around the world. The oceans have great power. They can also be so calm and soothing. They can be nourishing, for they provide in their cycle of existence for the water that allows you to live. But those same oceans can become enormously destructive and cause fear and unimaginable suffering. The changes in the character of the ocean belong to what the ocean is. The ebbing and flowing of tides, and the contrast between calm seas and utter destruction exist. They belong to all that is part of being the ocean.

For some people, their view of the ocean is dominated by its destructive nature, and so there is a built-in fear of what the ocean means. For others, the ocean is seen as a means of supporting life, supporting nourishment, supporting the rivers, streams, the fields that bring about the foods that are essential for life.

So it is with the concept of God. For some who live with great challenges and scant views of goodness, the concept of God seems meaningless. For others whose experience of life brings opportunities for gratitude, for giving and sharing, life has different meaning. God has different meaning. But just as the oceans contain within them much that affirms life, so we can say that God contains much that affirms life, and for those who reject the life-giving qualities of the ocean or reject the life-giving reality of God, such rejections do not negate the reality of what exists beneath the oceans’ surface or within the grand Spirit Center that is God. What you experience today that may negate God’s presence may be countered tomorrow by what affirms that reality.

The question has been dealt with frequently in the writings of many who have grappled with the existence of God by asking the question: Why do bad things happen to good people? If there were a God, such bad things would not happen if God were all- powerful, and if God is all-loving how could God permit this or that to occur?

This dilemma of rejecting the existence of God or accepting that existence is fluid in all ways. There are many who have accepted God and then experienced the need to reject that reality, and there are others, of course, who have come through a period of total rejection and found evidence that is given meaning and affirms God’s existence. It is the rare person that goes through a full human life in either absolute rejection or total acceptance. Even those who accept the reality of God are often motivated not by being convinced of God’s acceptance but by being governed by the hope that God exists. Is that a rejection? No. Can that questioning be received by others as doubting? Yes. For many, if one is questioning the existence of God, such questioning can be interpreted as rejection. For those who openly reject God, what lies behind the rejection may actually be questioning, and therefore a statement of rejection is asserted in the absence of full affirmation.

When you claim to have faith in God, part of that is hope, part of that is belief, but all of that is put on the table for further investigation when faced with serious dilemmas in one’s life. We as your guides work to help you through those times of questioning. We are present to help you experience the inner joy of particular moments in your lives. We are here to help you respond to others as a reflection of God even without providing such a label. Labels ultimately are unimportant. It is how you live that matters.

The individual who claims to be a firm believer in God’s presence may respond to life around them very differently than what is claimed as being believed. The opposite is true for those who claim to reject the value, the reality, the presence of a God and yet live lives filled with love, care, with the desire to support others, to give of themselves, to make a positive difference in life around them. Labels and statements of belief ultimately are of little meaning. It is how you live your lives, and if you reach out to embrace others and yet question the reality of God, there is no crime. The life has purpose. Learning is taking place at the level of spirit even without external acknowledgment.

Each of you is on a journey, that you know. Allow yourself to swing back and forth in what you believe to be the Truth with a capital T. That ebb and flow, that give and take, are all part of the changes that belong to your spiritual growth. Embrace that necessity for change. You may not enjoy every moment of it but accept that that is part of growing. The believing, the questioning, the doubting, the behaving, the loving, the giving, the joy, the sadness, the sense of fulfillment, the sense of loss—all are part of your process, your pathway. Know that it is the correct pathway for you. Know that it will lead to what is best for you, and in terms of your spiritual evolution what is ultimately best for all.

Allow the ebbs and flows. Accept their necessity. Be open to our presence as we help provide the rudder in the storm and the sail in the gentle breeze.

Amen.