January 9, 2006

• Reflecting God and living in faith

• The soul/human relationship

God, your Mother, Father, ever-loving and affirming presence, surrounds each of you with a brilliance and a love that is complete and fulfilling, uplifting, comforting, strengthening, peace-giving.

You have been told much about God and how to become more aware of that loving presence, but in many ways, each of you finds it difficult to become consistently aware of what that presence means in your lives. You know that to reflect God means for each of you to become more loving. You know that reflecting God means spreading peace between individuals, families, communities and nations. But reflecting God also connects most profoundly to questions that you have brought up at this time—questions of how to live that life that you are given, how to make decisions, how to filter what is important and what is not important, how to become more sensitive to the soul center that each of you is given.

Reflecting God is more than just being compassionate towards others. Reflecting God allows you to live your lives in a faithful environment. We don’t so much recommend a particular belief system or religion over another, but rather that you live your lives with a confidence that you are where you should be, you are doing what you should be doing, you are empowered to decide as decisions must be made, you are empowered to “let go,” as you say, of what needs to be let go. Living in faith incorporates all of this.

It is easy to say you are faithful when you mean you believe in God. It is much more difficult to say you are faithful when the application, the meaning of that faith, goes far beyond. When you live faithful lives, you are committed to the belief that God is a part of everything that you do and everything that happens to you. God is a part of every thought as well as every deed. If you are surrounded by thoughts which are not loving, although God did not create those thoughts, God provides a perspective for dealing with that. When you act unlovingly toward another, God is not a part of an unloving act, but God’s love is a part of your growth, your reflection that results and follows an unloving act.

There is no requirement for anyone to become perfect. You are not asked always to make the most loving, God-reflecting decision. You are not required to live a life void of mistakes. You are not required to live a life that denies self in the pursuit of benefit to others. It is not God’s desire that you live such lives, for that is not the nature of the human experience.

Human life experiences consist of three parts whose importance varies from moment to moment: 1) you may anticipate an action; 2) you take a particular action; 3) you reflect on that action. When you bring your thoughts to your spirit center, your anticipation of an action can lead to a decision in which that action is godly, but as human beings you do not always consult your spirit center and act accordingly. Some consult their spirit center, their soul, and then choose to ignore what they know is best. Others do not consult the presence of spirit; they merely act.

Where God is particularly helpful to your soul is in the third stage, that of reflection. Human beings learn most effectively through experience. There is, of course, a learning that takes place, not based on one’s experience, but on the experience described by another. But ultimately, the most powerful teacher you have is your own experience, and therefore it is often true that it is through the reflection of action that one learns the most, because in reflecting on what you have done—the decisions you have made, the actions you have taken, the feelings you have felt, the sentiments you have expressed—you sense most poignantly what is godly. You then take what you learn through reflection and continue to apply that learning as your road unfolds beneath your feet.

When you understand this fully, you will then understand why we assure you that God is indeed a part of everything you do and every decision you make. It does not imply that everything you do is perfect or every decision is correct, but that you are guided by God through your guides as you learn from your experiences, and it is that learning that then assists you in the future in terms of actions, attitudes, your thoughts, your interaction with others, your acceptance of what life provides.

You are not victims of life, but creators of life. To be a victim, your approach to the human experience is passive, but you are ultimately not passive. Each of you experiences and expresses strong impressions. Each of you has a strong will. Each of you is sensitive. Each of you experiences joy. Each of you experiences fear. However those experiences are manifest, they are always a part of the totality of God’s presence.

You make decisions, but no decision is really final. A decision is only part of the process. One must always look at the result of the decision on others, the result on oneself. Bring the act of reflection, that is so beneficial, to all that you experience. It is there that you are often the freest to see the hand of God.

You must accept your own imperfections, your own failings. You also must accept them when viewed in others. You cannot judge others…you know that…but you also cannot judge yourselves. Such judgment directed without as well as within is harmful. It injures the value of self, whether that self is another individual or you personally. Being judgmental robs an individual of the affirmation that is so important.

You are given choices, but you must allow yourselves the ability to accept those choices that are made, not to be afraid of them. You grow through choice. You grow through your interactions. That growth is essential. Taking away the choice, taking away the interaction prevents you from experiencing the learning that takes place through reflection.

When you are faced with illness, the illness is not created by God, but your response to that illness, the exercise of reflection, is your own personal opportunity to acknowledge God in the entire process at hand.

Your souls choose you to accompany the human life experience, for each of you has a unique set of potentials, and it is in the exercising of these potentials that your soul is strengthened and given wisdom. When you are faced with challenges of great significance, it may be difficult rationally to accommodate those challenges, but it is your reflection upon those challenges in your responses that gives great strength to your spirit center. There is always a gain to everything that you experience. There is nothing that life can present you with that is in itself intrinsically defeating. You grow, you become stronger, you become more loving, you become more sensitive to the loving of others through every experience, and it is that potential that you have individually that draws your soul to experience human life intimately with you.

The question of whether a soul remains with you your entire lives is an important one that has not been specifically addressed. Your souls choose to experience life with you and they remain with you. If there is a radical change in your potential, then there may be indeed a change in your spirit center, but such changes are not made as a result of challenges that accompany your lives as children and adults, for your lives are not predetermined. They do change direction. There are times in your lives when you have great reason for rejoicing. There are times in your lives when you experience great pain, great sadness, great fear. Those changes are always accompanied by the same soul, for those experiences belong to the totality of what it means to live a human life.

But if there are changes that are radical, that totally alter the potential for life, a decision may be made for a particular soul to join with that human life as long as that individual lives. Human potential, as we refer to it, relates to the potential for growth, the potential for interaction, the potential for reflection. If an individual loses the mental capacity to continue with normal human development, the soul center, the spirit, will not leave but will be joined by another spirit, a kind of guide that enables the spirit center to bring the strengths of what has been experienced to date into the realization of the potential for the future.

We can say to each of you that your spirit center, your soul, is the same soul that accompanied you with your first breath, and that soul will remain constant, ever-present, loving through your final breath. At that time, the soul is released and is brought into a new consciousness, which is the consciousness we share with you and all that is created. There is no need to question or to fear that when the going is difficult for you, that your soul will decide to switch, to leave. On the contrary, the soul becomes more intensely associated with each of you at those times when you are facing the greatest challenges.

Your conscience is your soul. You are aware of your conscience. A child is aware of conscience, not with a label attached, but nevertheless, there is a small voice within, and that voice belongs to every human being. That voice is constantly there, unchanging, ever-present, ever-loving, ever-clarifying, always illuminating, always guiding, always nurturing, always teaching. The connection you have with your soul is permanent.

There is some concern about the differentiation between soul and who you are as human beings. As your lives become enriched spiritually, they become more enmeshed with the spirit center. This spiritual entanglement, this sharing of space, this sharing of presence, intensifies throughout your lives. A ten-year-old feels less commitment to spirit than an eighty-year-old, and that is what is expected. That is a product of living the human life. This connection, this entwinement between human and soul, ultimately leads to an identification of self as soul. The distinction we make is the distinction between spiritual and physical, between permanent and temporal, between love and loving. There is a difference, but your consciousness of us and your consciousness of your soul bring you much closer to feeling totally at one with us. That is a beauty of the experience of human life.

Each of you is blessed as this connection between soul and self strengthens and becomes warmer, more loving, more confident. You are blessed as your lives take on a more faithful character. You are blessed as your faith grows through your awareness of soul.

You are all on a grand journey, one filled with enormous light, one filled with loving acts given and loving acts received. Rejoice in that dance of love! Peace!

Amen.