August 17, 2005

• Recognizing guidance

• The relationship of peace and love as process and product

You all are a part of an experience in the full presence and light of God. This experience is greater than just your gathering together, as important as it is. Your experience before the eyes of God is most importantly your interaction with other human beings and your connection with your guides. There is no one who is perfect. There is no one who has absolute clear vision of direction of what is right or wrong, of what must be done one hundred percent of the time, but your approach, the sincerity in the intention that you bring in your spiritual search, is what remains particularly right in the view of God.

There is no individual who generates a brilliance greater than another. There is no individual who is favored more than another. There is no individual who is more gifted than another. There is no individual who is more deserving or entitled than another. When you conduct your lives with these concepts in mind, you are in a sense providing direction to your daily lives that are consonant with the rhythm of all creation of which we have spoken. You then live your lives with reduced conflict and enhanced inner peace. We say this not to eliminate the possibility of pain, but to affirm your capacity to overcome by way of your own growth.

Your discussion this evening centered in a significant way on your awareness of guidance—not its possibility, but its action in reality, for you know of its possibility, you know of its potential. You know of this gift but you still seek affirmation. You still seek an understanding of when and how that guidance is manifested in your lives. The perspectives you shared go far in clarifying what it is to know the guidance that you seek. You know on occasion you are being guided, and you know on occasion that others are guided. It is natural to find yourselves searching for concrete evidence of the process of guidance. It is not always an easy matter to recognize your own guidance, and it is often difficult to recognize the guidance that is supplied to the lives of others, but both in fact are necessary. It may be easier for you to acknowledge guidance from a distance than it is to witness such blessing when it is directed toward yourselves. When you experience passages in your lives that seem bereft of guidance, and you wonder perhaps whether there is in fact any guidance or whether it is merely a wish for guidance, it is most helpful to turn your attention to events that to you are clearly demonstrating guidance in the lives of others, for in such recognition you may find yourselves more open to the vision of guidance in your own lives.

The guidance of which we speak is not merely a sense of knowing what to do, where to go, how to behave. It can also be an experience of receiving the love of others when it is not asked for. Guidance can be experienced through the compassion of another, through the presence of another. Therefore, be open to evidence of godliness experienced by someone toward another. Maybe it’s self-sufficient for you to fully embrace the reality of your own guidance. It is in witnessing something concrete that you are more enabled to accept what is less easy to observe. If you see guidance demonstrated by another toward someone else, it is impossible to conceive of yourselves outside that same feasibility.

It is true, as we have said before, that to be loving you need to be loved, but it is also true that to be aware that you are being loved, it is often helpful to observe loving humans. Both concepts work hand in hand with each other. We can say to you with absolute authority and truth that there is no compartment of your lives that is incapable of being guided. There is no activity in your lives that is so menial as to be beyond the loving guidance and care of God. Whatever you do, whatever you think, whatever your beliefs are, whatever your reactions to life around you are, can be influenced and given meaning through guidance. There is nothing in your lives that can be interpreted as totally irrelevant.

If you are in an accident, for example, although the accident itself is not the work of God, the elements that led to the accident belong to the reality of God, and your reaction to the mishap can be the direct result of God’s guidance. Who provides this guidance? Is it your guides specifically? Is it God? The answer is that God guides all of creation, but your guides, as you know them, serve to focus God’s guidance upon your lives. We, your guides, enable you to be open, clear receivers of guidance that comes from God. We do not initiate truth…we communicate the truth. There is a great difference. We do not determinate the paths of your lives. We do not determine the reaction to your own lives, but we communicate God’s presence to your abilities to deal with and accommodate, to endure, to become stronger. We are, as it were, messengers, not the message. All therefore, are guided by God.

Yes, we have our own guides, as you have acknowledged, but they serve to help us to open to God’s guidance. They help us to be open to the wisdom of the Center of All Love. They are not the providers of love. All comes directly from God. Your lives are given meaning and relevance through your awareness of us, but that meaning and relevance are not based on what we say, what we want you to know, rather they are based on the truth that is God, the truth of the Spirit Center that unites each of you permanently with one another.

Guidance, at times, is indeed knowing what to do, how to act, what to say, what to believe, but more importantly, true guidance results in the establishment of inner peace. That peace is both the process and the product. Through peace within, those moments of personal calm, comes insight to the truth that is God, but it is from that insight that you finally accept God is a loving peace that resides within. It is through peace that you achieve peace. It is in peaceful seeking that you find the peace you seek. It is both the product and process. It is a kind of noun that you can identify, but it is also a verb to exercise. You practice peace in order to achieve peace. You relate to another peacefully in order to see peace in the relationship. That is the true foundation of guidance…the ability to seek peacefully so that you can find peace.

The great spiritual difference between your life-form and ours is the presence of peace. You seek peace; we exercise peace in order to understand peace. God’s love is, in reality, God’s peace. If you interact with another lovingly, that relationship is peaceful. You cannot be filled with antagonism if you are peaceful. There is no room for anger, there is no room for anxiety, impatience, if the space is occupied by peace. If the space is occupied by peace, it is totally loving. Peace and love are really parts of the same. God is the Spirit Center of all. That Spirit Center is total love. It is total peace. There is no fundamental difference.

Just as you feel you may be loving toward another but not always love another, you can be peaceful toward another and yet that relationship is not absolute peace. Peaceful is temporary; peace is total and therefore permanent. Loving is temporary; love is total and permanent. Your lives and ours are the process of moving from being loving to becoming love, from being peaceful to being peace. Our loving relationship with you is one that is characterized by great love, but we too learn, we too grow. When we are totally only love and not just loving, we are in fact God—not a part of God, but God. You have the expression, “God is love.” You don’t say, “God is loving,” for God is the totality of love, and as you continue to evolve in becoming love, you move closer to that Spirit Center. That is your journey; that is our journey. The goal is love, the goal is peace…they are the same.

We serve you in the spirit of love. We serve you in the spirit of peace. We ask you to serve others in the spirit of love and in the spirit of peace. In the process of serving in the spirit, you ultimately become the full embodiment of that. Serving in the spirit of love, you become love. Serving in the spirit of God, you become ultimately God.

The growth is continuous. Both you and we travel the same path. That path has only one destination, the destination of love, the destination of peace. You are blessed in your travels, just as we are blessed in that same journey. You share with one another the experience of life in human form. We share with one another the experience of life in spiritual form. We are all bound together in a permanent union toward such a glorious and noble destination.

In our joint travels, we are united. We support one another. We support you with our loving. You support us with your loving. Together all of creation lives in that glorious light. Be warmed by the journey, be warmed by the destination. Be warmed by the guidance that you recognize as we are warmed by the same recognition.

God’s loving presence is a part of your life and our life. We are all united in that brilliance. Rejoice in the path to Love!

Amen.