May 9, 1993

• Learning through inequality and imbalance

• Life is for serving others

• Value yourself

• Characteristics of life after death

The God who guides each of you through your earthly lives is surrounding you. God’s light strengthens your light, and the presence of God’s peace is offered through love for the peace that you all seek.

Life in its human form seems to be a search for equilibrium, for balance. You seek peace, you seek the reduction of stress and strife, the reduction of pain and suffering. You seek a life which has been removed from that which is so essential for you to experience.

You are all given human life in order to learn through experiencing imbalance. The balance which you seek you will achieve and experience totally only when you are at one with God. That is not an experience which is part of the school of human life. You learn by being challenged through the recognition of the difference between what is and what can be. You see the imperfection of life and you wish for it total perfection. You see the injustice of human existence and you pray for the justice of equality. You see the tragedies that are issued by one human towards another, and you wish for those to be totally eliminated. You see poverty and you seek an even distribution.

The inequalities of life are the very reasons you are living life. It is through the responses to what is unfair and unequal that your souls grow and deepen. Your souls obtain through their human lives strength which is needed to ultimately reach absolute peace within the presence of God. Without the skills that are achieved in life, the final goal of total peace and love is really unattainable.

Recognizing the inequality of life does not justify accepting it by doing nothing, for in your efforts to eliminate pain and suffering and greed and all that you perceive to be negative, you do, materially, improve and magnify a sense of God's presence in the world. None of you alone can stop the killing and the suffering, but each of you can do something to lessen it. It is what you do to lessen it which gives strength to your soul. It is not important whether you as individuals are successful in stopping inequality and suffering.

There is so much frustration that is expressed as a sense of futility: What can I do to save those people? What can I do to eliminate hatred and hunger and disease? The answer, my friends, is that you can do nothing to eliminate it, but you can do much to alleviate it. Your lives are not lived for the benefit of your own service. They are lived for the benefit of others. It is what you do for others that counts, not what you do for yourself. It is true you must be a good swimmer to save the life of a non-swimmer, but it is more important to save the life of a non-swimmer than to be merely a good swimmer.

The power of love on earth is not fully achieved when you love yourself. It is not fully achieved when you feel you are no longer challenged by life around you and you are content in all ways. That is not what love ultimately brings. But a sense of who you are and a sense of self-respect and a recognition of your value is essential if you are to have respect for others and to place value in others. You cannot value another's life if you sense no value in your own. You cannot have respect for another human being if you feel you are unworthy of such respect. You cannot feel compassion toward another unless you are forgiving of yourself. Your sense of who you are, the recognition of your own value as individuals, a sense of your own belonging as part of God's creation are vital in order for you to respond likewise to those around you. And so peace and the efforts that you expend to achieve peace around you must begin with establishing a sense of peace within yourselves.

We speak of an imbalance in life between people and nations, but you must recognize that there is imbalance in your own lives. There are parts of each of you for which you are proud and which you hold up as worthy and reflecting of God's presence. But there are sides of you that do not reflect God, that are opposed to what the love of God means. You must recognize those differences within yourselves and accept the reality of those differences. You must also recognize that you will never be perfect. Having acknowledged your own imperfections and having accepted the naturalness of those imperfections, you can still be motivated to improve yourself. You can still feel within yourself the urge to make better what needs strengthening. The efforts that you exert to try to improve what needs improvement bring you closer to God.

It is the same attitude that you must reflect as you approach inequality and suffering in the world, recognizing that the world will always be imperfect. There will always be those who have and those who have not. There will always be those who suffer more than others. There will always be those whose suffering is emotional or spiritual rather than physical. There will always be those who are selfish and those who are generous, those who reject God and those who accept God. There will always be an edge between day and night. Nature has contrasts. There are those who are givers; there are those who are takers. There is life and there is death. There is daytime and nighttime. There are those things which are hard and those which are soft.

And depending on where you are situated in life, you may easily judge what you observe to be right according to your perception of God or wrong according to your perception of God. This dichotomy of life is what life entails. It is the content of existence on your earth. You are placed within this environment because you can learn from this dichotomy. You learn by seeking to improve, not by accepting what is.

But you must accept the necessity of these differences if you are to understand the real reason you have been given human life, for on our side there is only love, there is only light, there is no sickness as you know it, there is no time as you know it. All souls are equally valued although not equally developed. There is no hatred on our side. There is no greed on our side. There are those who have developed further and there are those who have developed somewhat less, but there is no jealousy or bitterness or anger. Still for us there is much to learn, but we are able to learn because of what we experienced in human form.

Your lives have great purpose. You are urged by God to reach out and help others. You are urged by God to use your own knowledge for the benefit of others. You are urged by God to use the skills you have developed to strengthen others. That is why you are given human life.

The differences that you all are aware of must never seem insurmountable. They must be approached as challenges and as a means of providing direction for your outreach to others. Without the recognition of need, how could you give? Without the recognition of pain, how could you heal? Without the recognition of hatred, how could you offer love? Your lives are richer because of what you observe. It is what you do with your lives that is of ultimate importance, importance for the development of your souls and for the strengthening of the human condition.

Our love for you is unending. Our desire to guide you never ceases. We are aware that you need guidance and it is because of that awareness that we guide. If you were in no need of guidance, we would not share this loving experience. It is you who motivate us to grow through our guidance of each of you. It is those around you who motivate you to reach out in support and love.

Rejoice that you have the vision to see and the ears to hear! Rejoice that you are aware of your capabilities to give! And rejoice that you are blessed, not only to give, but to receive the power and the loving light of God!

We bless you with that light.

Amen.