January 17, 2011

• How to find what you seek

• The unity of all that exists and all that is sought

• Human life is a process of becoming unconditionally loving

• Humans are not an image of God but rather a manifestation of God

God, who is the Creator, the Preserver, the Guardian, the Source of all love, of all that is good, is present together with the spiritual multitude that constitutes your guides and the guides of all human beings.

Since the time you were last together as a group, each of you has deepened considerably in your spiritual awareness. This time serves as a school of spirit, not because it’s unique, but because each of you has been in your own way increasingly aware of the spirit presence. Each of you has felt touched at some moment by the spirit presence, the Spirit Center. Your awareness of suffering, your awareness of the need for hope, your awareness of the need to exercise faith has expanded exponentially.

How is it that the growth, the spiritual growth of human beings, is really accomplished? It is not accomplished by will. It is accomplished by peace. It is not so much accomplished by action but rather more by listening.

Each of you seeks depth, seeks understanding, seeks strength of compassion, seeks spiritual growth. Each of you seeks love—you seek to be loving, you seek to be loved. In your seeking, it is essential that you recognize that there is nothing that needs to be found, for all that you look for is already there. If you look for the keys to a successful life, those keys are in your pocket. You are already in touch with them. You seek understanding, but that understanding is there. You seek strength, but that strength is already there. You seek peace, but it is there. When you seek something, you assume that it is somewhere other than where you currently are. You look for it elsewhere, but that which you seek that reflects God is not elsewhere. You are exactly where all is that you seek.

So how do you find what it is you look for in life? You find what you are looking for merely by opening the heart. You find what you are looking for by opening your soul. You find all that you are looking for when you recognize that where you are is a place surrounded by the loving Spirit Center of God. Where God is, all else is. You and what you seek are as much one as you are with your neighbor. The recognition of you and your neighbor being part of a single unity is but the first step in your recognition that who you are and precisely what it is you seek are also the same.

When you look for peace, you often make the assumption that you are somewhere, somehow separated from that peace. When you pray for peace in the world, you presume that there is no peace in sight, and you wish to conjure it up, to elicit this magic quality of peace. When you seek love, you assume that where you are, love is not found. Anything you seek presumes you are in a place where that very quality, that very capacity is somehow missing. Those assumptions that humankind makes are clearly incorrect. You are not separated from the love, from the compassion, from the peace that you are looking for. They are all around you, for in the sense of unity that you all experience, that which you look for is also present.

We see you often frustrated by an inability to achieve a level of spiritual development that you feel is essential, but that is also based on an assumption that you are incapable of growing as you would wish to grow. The truth is, as we have said so often, you are where you need to be. Human life is a process—it is not a product.

Human life in its purest sense is a state of becoming. It is a state of being open. It is not a state of imperfection, of failing, of being somehow behind a wished goal. Your human lives are given to you to accept being part of this process of growth. It is not for you to be perfect. It is not expected that human beings will be perfect. It is not expected that you will only make correct decisions. It is not expected that you will remain in balance at all times. You are merely expected to grow, to evolve, to learn, to be engaged in process.

Since you as individuals cannot achieve perfection, you can likewise not expect others to achieve such a state. It is for that reason that unconditional love is asked for. The operative word is really unconditional, for you are becoming loving as you grow in your ability to be unconditional in that love. As long as there are conditions, there is no pure love. The evolution of pure love is the dissolution of condition. It is the dissolution of standards which must be met in order to get what one supposedly deserves.

There is no condition to God’s love. There is no condition to our love for you and for ourselves. We love because that is what we are. You work toward love because that is who you are. You are beings that work toward a goal. You are becoming. You are developing. You are the process. Part of that process is accepting your own seeming shortcomings and accepting the seeming shortcomings of another. In accepting those shortcomings, you are stripping away the conditional requirements that you often place on another. Of course there are expectations in terms of how one functions within your own society, but those expectations have nothing to do with condition as we describe it.

We emphasize the process of unconditional love because it is totally separate from what you do and is rather connected to who you are. You are not what you do. You are who you are. You are a creation of God, and therefore you are in part God. That is who you are. What you do may have conditions within society, but never who you are.

As you evolve in your spiritual growth, you become more convinced of the reality of focusing on who others are and place less emphasis on what another does. What someone does is unrelated to profession. What someone does is related to one’s actions. If you are loving, you say someone is loving, not someone does loving. You are not loving as a career—you are loving as a human being. You are loving as a neighbor, as a family member. You are loving as a mentor or counselor, teacher, physician, leader, whatever. You can be loving in those ways. It is not a matter of what you do specifically but who you are and what you bring to what you do.

You seek to grow. You seek to deepen in your understanding of God. You seek to deepen in your understanding of our place in your lives. Open the heart. Open the soul. Acknowledge all in a loving manner. Acknowledge all as you would imagine God would acknowledge. Acknowledge all void of judgment. Acknowledge all independent of expectations. Look at yourselves in the mirror and acknowledge yourselves for who you are: a manifestation of the Central Power of Love, the Spirit Center. You’re not an image of God, but you are indeed a manifestation of God. There is a big difference, for God is not in human shape with human characteristics. That is not what you are, but you are a manifestation. You are a part of what God is. You are part of the hand of God. You are part of the vision of God, the outreach of God, the love of God, and how you express that outreach, how you express that love, is the manifestation of God.

Some religious sects teach that human beings are made in the image of God, but that is not to be interpreted literally. It is much more accurate to say that humankind is a manifestation of God. That is its intent, and that is who you are. Being a manifestation of God, all things are available—love, compassion, support. All that you consider to be godly are at your individual disposal.

You can be what you perceive God to represent because of your direct connection to God. You should therefore never feel somehow insignificant or insufficient in some central way. You are neither. By opening the heart, by acknowledging your soulness, you will see at hand all that you seek.

When you seek love, it may not be evident in a flash, but you will come to understand its presence. When you seek peace, you may not see all armies putting down their weapons, but you will see manifestations of what peace means and its reality. You then focus your spiritual energies on that which you see, that which you feel, and in so doing, you are finding precisely that which you seek.

You look for love, and it is we who love you. If you choose to deny us, then you close your eyes to the love that is already in your lives. We function as a part of that process of becoming more loving. When you seek balance, that balance exists. It is a part of your lives already. Merely open your hearts to see the evidence of balance. You may wish there were more balance. You may wish there were broader balance between people and nations, but that’s part of the process to which you belong.

You are not separated. You are a part of that which you seek. You are a part of all who seek. It’s not by accident that you meet others who share the same process because you are all together. You are all a single entity, and being a single entity, there is no separation. Because there is no separation, you encounter one another.

It is not by accident that you meet here in this group, but it is also not something preordained. You are drawn to others who share the same passion for understanding. By being open in your hearts, you are aware of those who share similar passions. Such people exist far beyond your vision. Opening your eyes broadens the vision, then broadening the vision brings others close to you. Their paths intersect yours and there is a closeness, a commonality, in your spiritual search that binds you toward another. There are many groups such as this, and yet such assemblies often exist surrounded by barriers that block the vision. Opening the heart, opening the soul demolishes those barriers, and brings all of you still closer.

We, your guides, pray for your vision. We pray that you will recognize the necessity of tearing down such barriers. We pray that you will continue to strengthen in your capacity to embrace. Celebrate your unity! Celebrate the life of all, and celebrate the common bond of love that unites virtually all of God’s creation. We celebrate your lives. We celebrate your love.

Amen.