March 8, 1995

• What guides learn

• Uncertainty promotes faith development

Your guides are indeed assembled as a group. This assembly is spiritual and not physical, as you know. The physical assembly implies proximity, but a spiritual assembly implies a common spiritual center or presence. You can feel close to others though they are many miles away. That is a spiritual closeness. You are united as closely as your thoughts. That is essentially the way we are united with one another.

We share concerns for each of you: your spiritual growth and your capacity to flourish in human form. These are widely divergent focal points in your existence, but both are essential. You cannot completely withdraw from all that is human, for you are given human life in order to share human experiences, human feelings, be they joyous or sad, whether they encompass love or rivalry...whatever. That is what it means to be human. That is why you are human beings at this point in your development and not entirely spiritual beings.

There is much that we learn when we are no longer bound by human limitations. We learn the meaning of love. We learn the beauty of timelessness. We learn to see the brilliance of spiritual strength. We learn to communicate with one another on meaningful levels. We learn what is important from past evolution. It is not a time issue, but it is encompassing events that occur. We learn that the universe as you know it is only one small bit of dust in the totality of what God creates. We sense that creation. Recognizing that, it is easier for us to place what is important separately from what is superfluous.

None of this we can learn in human form. We can hear about it in human form. When we were physical entities, we read about much that we now experience and we wondered, "Is it really possible or is it the imagination running unrestricted through the pathways of thought?" There is much that we doubted. There is much that we questioned, but we have learned that those doubts and those questions really had no foundation in truth. Nevertheless they were a part of the human experience and cannot be negated or ignored.

When we challenge you to examine life outside the confines of time, we know you cannot ignore time completely, but this challenge carries with it a view of eternity. It is a view that reflects what is really true. The difficulties you experience living life and equating that life to your growing understanding of eternity is a perfectly natural difficulty. You cannot be expected to live a human life strictly from a spiritual perspective, but having a sense of the spiritual perspective helps you to balance what it is you experience in human life so that your lives will take on deeper significance and will reflect that knowledge to some degree or another.

You live with uncertainty about the future. You live with uncertainty about tomorrow and uncertainty about what you will experience hundreds of years, as you measure them, in the future. You live with uncertainty about what you experienced before your current lives. This uncertainty is a part of your life in all of its expression. You will never be given the gift of total vision, total knowledge while in human form. Having such vision or knowledge would make the human experience in itself trivial and without meaning. That would eliminate the necessity for human life.

You live human life because you must experience uncertainty. This uncertainty forces you to exercise faith. When you dive into a pool of water, you have an uncertainty: how deep will you actually go? How will you hit the water? Will you strike something at the bottom? But you also have faith that such a dive will not create injury, that arriving at the lowest point, you will again rise. Without the uncertainty present in the dive, you have no opportunity to exercise the use of faith.

When you take a trip, you do not have complete certainty of all that will take place, but you have faith that the purpose of your trip will be accomplished, that you will safely return. Life then is a balance between the recognition of uncertainty and the exercise of faith.

When you live only at the spiritual level, uncertainty diminishes and with it the opportunity for growth through faith. Faith is a great teacher, but it is most effective through the school of human life. When you live a spiritual life, by that we mean in spiritual form with no physical attributes, your vision is extended and there is much less uncertainty and therefore less opportunity to live by faith.

We become stronger through the acquisition of knowledge, the exercising of love, the exercising of spiritual communication among all souls. We become more aware of the vastness and strength of the spiritual presence, so our learning takes

faith. Our teachers are place in our doing and not so much in our exercising of different—yours is faith, ours is experience—but both sides engage in the process of learning and both sides grow spiritually. It is only the teacher that is different. The actual process of growth is continuous.

Some of you are more capable of learning with uncertainty than others, and that is normal, for some of you have developed a stronger capacity for faith. If your faith is absolutely unshakable, you are able to live with uncertainty. If your faith goes through cycles of strength and weakness, of acceptance and questioning, then your capacity to deal with uncertainty will also waver. One is not better than another. The wavering of strength and the wavering of capacity to accept life with uncertainty is a step all souls pass through. For those of you who find uncertainty a difficult teacher, a difficult learning environment, you must believe that these difficulties will be resolved, and you will ultimately be more reliant on your sense of faith than upon any feelings of inadequacy.

Uncertainty is experienced by all. What differs is the response, and that difference is a function of faith. For those souls that experienced more than one human life, and there are many, faith in the presence of uncertainty is frequently stronger. For those souls who are embarking upon human life, the skill of faith is only just being formulated. When you cross over to our form of life, you will notice that some souls are more capable of exercising faith than others. That is the result of the human experience, but as we have said, there is less need to live by faith alone here.

Of course, we do not see all. We do not know all. Ultimately we will see all because we will be a part of all, but we can still relate to one another at a level that is so much more profound.

Your lives are enriched as you experience uncertainty—uncertainty of what may happen in the future as you view it, uncertainty about your own capabilities, uncertainty about the actions of others. This uncertainty is important because it signifies a recognition of where you are and a sense of something greater, something lying outside your control or your awareness. That knowledge of a greater existence is what draws the soul ever steadily toward God. Without the recognition of something greater and the uncertainty that accompanies that recognition, there is no magnet, so to speak, which leads a soul forward. Therefore accept your uncertainties, recognize what it is that creates your fears and frustrations, and recognize when it is that you actually express faith, rejoicing in that recognition.

We are always aware of your growth in faith. As we have said on numerous occasions in the past, your faith is like a light of many colors. We are aware of your faith because we are aware of the colors that come forth as you learn to exercise it. Your faith development is why we are your guides, for ultimately it is for your spiritual growth that we serve, and it is through your strengthening application of faith that such growth takes place. The vehicle for growth is the exercising of faith.

Human life is beautiful. It is valuable—all human life is valuable. There is no justification for one curtailing the life of another. Respect the life of another however it may be expressed. Respect your own life, allowing it expression according to your awareness of the greater reality, that which causes uncertainty. Belief in us, belief in your abilities require you to be vulnerable, to be sensitive, to be forgiving, to be receptive and finally to be giving.

We see each of you developing in your capacity to learn from others. We see you growing in your ability to reflect outward your understanding of life, of love, of God. The growth that we see is steady and true. It, too, emits a great light and we, your guides, find warmth and beauty from your brilliance.

Amen.