April 23, 2002

• Unconditional love defined

• The fear of loss

• The source of evil

God bathes your lives with the incredible presence of unconditional love. It is important that you acknowledge that love, for it is the unconditional, nonjudgmental love that you are being asked to transmit outward from yourselves to the world around you. You all know that God is the totality of all love, but it is important also to recognize that the most important component of that love is its unconditional quality. To love unconditionally means that you must take yourselves out of the benefits that are conscious, that are goals that you seek. You don’t express love because you will benefit by that love. Conditional love imposes conditions on the recipient as well as the giver. Conditional love is not just limitations placed on that recipient, for your experience of conditional love also includes concern for how you might benefit.

We are asking each of you to become consumed by your involvement in unconditional love. It is love for which there are no expectations, either for yourselves or for others. It is in many ways the most difficult love to express, for human beings are always thinking about what the impact will be on any action taken, upon oneself. If you give to another, then you feel good about yourself. If you give to another, you feel affirmed as an individual. Some people give so that they may feel affirmed. Others give because there is a need for what is given, and a byproduct of that gift is self- affirmation, but that affirmation is not part of the plan generating the giving.

It is most difficult to give without an awareness of self. When you give of your prayers, that is perhaps the closest to selfless love that you can experience, for prayers on behalf of another do not usually include how the individual offering that prayer will be enhanced. But when you give to one in need on the street, you may also think you will feel better for having contributed to another. You are actually thereby part of the equation. It is not completely selfless. It is not completely unconditional. When we encourage you to be totally unconditional in your love of others, we are including in that the necessity of your removing any sense of your own benefit by the expression of such love.

The ways that make for peace: there is indeed only one way, and that is unconditional love and the acts that result from such love. If your lives are directed by respect for the value of all human beings and that is your full commitment, you will live in peace with all human beings. If you experience conflict with another and you resolve to love that person unconditionally, the conflict will vanish, for conflict always contains within it concerns about the impact on self as the result of the behavior of others or the behavior toward others. Taking the self out of the equation removes the conflict. The next time you find yourself in considerable disagreement with another, remove all concerns about the effects on yourself and regard the other with an unconditional, nonjudgmental love. There will be no conflict. You may still disagree about specific points, but those disagreements will not feed the presence of conflict. What makes for peace is the removal of self.

You spoke together about the presence of evil in the world. Evil, as you have come to understand it, is really the result of the dominance of self. It is motivated by self-concerns, desires, objectives of self. There is no evil existing between communities who respect one another as equally valid, as equally important. There may be disagreements, but there is no evil. There are no intentional acts which are inflicted upon others for the purpose of creating pain, suffering, agony—any kind of negative experience.

Acts that you consider to be evil are generally defensive. They may be viewed externally as offensive, but they are motivated by defensive concerns. When children fight, the real motivation for fighting is the feeling that one is going to lose something, whether it is a belonging or pride, self-respect. There is a sense of loss that is the cause of an act of defense. Defense is self-protection. Conflict, evil, terrorism do not result simply from the desire or pleasure of inflicting harm on another. Such infliction of harm is committed as a means of protecting the self.

Human beings are essentially good, not evil. You are good because you are divine, and there is no evil in divinity. What then is the motivation for acts of evil? The motivation is fear. All negative actions, all negative attitudes in life emanate from fear. It is not logical to expect one who feels personally fulfilled and is in some way happy, joyous, to be found committing an act that brings pain or suffering, emotionally or physically, to another. It does not happen that way.

When you see an individual committing an act which is not reflecting God, an act which is evil, you are seeing an individual in pain, in fear. That pain is the expression of that fear, and that expression is then transferred outward to action. You will never find a child who feels loved and supported unconditionally committing acts that create pain for others. A child whose behavior is considered evil is a child who is experiencing fear —fear that may be further defined as loss, or the expectation of loss, or the recollection of loss. Fear is always present.

The same principles related to individual behavior apply at a broader level—a level of family, of community, of nation. When there is fear, there are acts that are engaged in to the detriment of others. Fear breeds acts that are interpreted as being defensive, as being protective. Your relationships between you and others must be guided by a lack of fear.

It is easy for all human beings to experience fear. There will always be for you losses of one kind or another—losses in income, losses in health, losses in friendships, losses of family members. How do you live your lives in the absence of fear when you cannot remove the losses? That is a central question that you must learn to understand.

Life will not remove from you your losses. They will happen. They have happened in the past and they will continue. All you can do is change your approach to those losses. When you change your approach, you eliminate fear. With fear being eliminated, you relate to others unconditionally. To eliminate fear, you must first accept that losses occur to everyone. You are not singled out. You are not in some way enduring great losses while others have none. Your losses may differ from another, but you must acknowledge that all human beings experience loss. It is part of living human life. It is to be expected to occur.

So just as you all experience losses, you are all endowed with the strength to go beyond those losses, to see those losses as part of a much greater picture that is actually positive, that is truly affirming. The expression “you can lose a battle and win the war” applies beautifully to your own lives. You may experience losses, but you will win life. The losses do not take away what is most important. You can lose family, you can lose possessions, be they large or small, but you may keep your dignity. You may keep that part of you that recognizes your own worth, your own value. When you do not lose sight of your value, the losses become essentially unimportant.

It is always painful to lose a family member in death, but when you recognize that all that has died is the physical appearance of that family member, and that what is permanent about that family member can still be experienced by you, the loss takes on a different perspective in your life. You are not denying the existence of a loss; rather, you are denying the impact of that loss. You must keep your attention centered on what is important in life. That which is important is that which is permanent. There is only one component in your life that is permanent—your soul, your spirit. That is never destroyed. Because it is permanent, it is enormously powerful. It holds with it the capacity to persevere. It contains the strength necessary to keep going, to be faithful to what you believe in, to be faithful to the value of all human beings, to be faithful to the Light which is God’s presence. The losses are not so important after all.

If you lose something which is not permanent and you grieve over it, clearly you are placing your values in an inappropriate container. Losing something that is temporary, that is temporal, provides each of you with an opportunity of searching your own lives to know what really is important. All that you have lost in the past and may lose in the future must be let go. You must consider such items to be decorations to your life, but they are not your life. You are much greater than that which you can possibly lose.

When you lose something that is important to you, be grateful for the stewardship that you had with it. If it is a family member, rejoice in the relationship that was positive. If it is an object, you may rejoice in the pleasure that such object gave you. If it is land which is taken away, you can rejoice for having the opportunity for working with the land. If it is a relationship that is destroyed, you can rejoice about what was good in that relationship. You may always find something positive to recall in something you may lose. Losing parents is difficult for all, regardless of the relationship, but such a loss takes on less significance when you experience true gratitude for what that relationship was in a positive connection to your lives. You haven’t lost; you are only given an opportunity to appreciate what has been.

By reducing your sense of loss, you reduce the presence of fear. By reducing fear, you take the self out of your relationships in life, and you are able to more adequately focus on others. That kind of relationship without the self in the middle is unconditionally loving and is precisely what makes for peace. You pray for peace but in praying for peace, allow yourselves the blessing of letting go of that which is not permanent and focusing your attention on what is permanent. The permanence of your soul provides your foundation, provides your stability. It is the rock upon which you stand and there can be no firmer foundation for each of you.

Evil is defensive. Evil is the assertion of self. Remove the self, remove the defensiveness…there is no more evil. This you can control in your own lives without waiting for some moment created by others in which evil is finally gotten rid of. The evil that exists, exists within man. It is not a force of the devil. It is not the result of a power in opposition to God. Evil ultimately begins with the self. So be selfless in your lives. Be selfless in your relationships with others. Be selfless in the way you view your own individual lives and keep your center of energy based on what is permanent. Your soul is your rock. It is where you may stand, fully confident, fully loving.

We bless you as we stand upon that rock, and we surround you with the love you need to share that rock with us.

Amen.