All share spiritual elements.
February 2, 2000
Your God and your guides are a part of your lives at all times. It seems obvious to say this, but it becomes necessary to repeat, because you often live your lives without acknowledging these two presences: God and your guides. Too often you reach out to God and your guides at moments of great concern or incredible joy, but lives are not made up of only extremes: the sad and the joyful. For the most part, your lives are comprised of events that are located very much in the middle of these extremes, and it is at these times that you lose the sense of God’s presence and our presence. We do not criticize you for this, for it is only natural, but you are urged to remind yourselves of this great spiritual presence that is constant at all times. There is no moment in your lives when you are not in the presence of your guides and God’s loving sight and knowledge.
You have spoken tonight about issues relating to compassion, to loss, to the frustrations of encounters with others. All of these experiences should be brought to God’s presence, not just the matters of death and loss, but all other items of concern. There is a sense of loss that lurks behind much of what was said this evening. We would like to speak to you about the position of loss in life—not just loss of life, for that is never loss—loss as it is experienced within the space we call life.
First of all, you must be convinced that there is no such component of life as total, complete loss. There are changes in life, but there is really nothing lost. You may think about relationships between individuals and say there are relationships that are lost, but acknowledging or believing in such loss is giving away the power of belief, denying belief, denying hope, denying perspective. That’s what happens when you view an event as a loss. You are denying the potential of a relationship ever being reconciled. You are denying the importance of a relationship to life. You are denying your participation in the change of that relationship.
Nothing is lost! There are changes of state. You may say you have lost a loved one, but if that one you refer to is loved, then that person is never lost. That person remains in your heart, in your memory. You see that person in others who are nearby. You are reminded of that person through the acts of others, perhaps even through your own actions. What is lost? The physical viewing of that individual—of course, that is no longer possible. But the physical appearance of a person is not the person. It is only an external manifestation of the person.
The reason why someone is important to you is not because of what they look like. It is because of who they are, what they stand for, what they believe in. Those principles for which they stand or in which they believe remain, and their stance, their belief, remains, for it is that which you loved and that which you can continue to love.
There are relationships that are, quote, “lost” between individuals who remain very much alive. If you acknowledge a relationship that has been lost, you are stating it can never be rebuilt, and that is a statement that involves the other person equally as it involves you. You may not be able to influence another’s behavior, but you certainly can control your own. If you feel a relationship has been lost, then you can take it upon yourself to rebuild your portion of that relationship. It then is never lost. It may be different, it may be changed in some way, but it is not lost.
Losing hope means an acknowledgment, an affirmation, of despair, and that is not the nature of your souls. You do not live to despair; you live to hope. Hope is strength-giving; despair depletes that strength. Despair is never positive or constructive, and never leads to improvement or nurtures growth. There is no point in losing hope.
Hope is its own affirmation. Hope has its own strength-giving qualities. When you hope for something, you hope because you do not have firm evidence that something you wish for will indeed happen. You can only hope. That hope is strengthened through prayer. If you despair and, in your desperation, cry out to God, that is not an act of desperation. That is an act of hope, faith, and love.
So you see, hope is never lost. Individuals are never lost. Relationships are never lost. Certainly, you can give up. You can turn your back on the potential of reconciliation. You can turn your back on the potential for a new relationship. You can turn your back on anything that moves you forward in a direction that is constructive and mutually beneficial. That then becomes your choice, but that potential remains and therefore is not lost.
Your lives should be characterized by what you find, not what you lose. Your lives move forward because you reach forward, not because you turn away and look backward. Hope really is eternal. The potential for hope is always there. When you pray for others, you pray for what may benefit others personally, spiritually, and in every other way. Such prayers are acts of hope and love, and it is your duty, it is your gift to respond in your life to all with hopeful prayer.
Life does not deal all individuals the same adversities, but all individuals have the gift of hope. All individuals have the capacity to acknowledge the impossibility of loss. No individuals are lost from society. There are elements of society who turn their backs on individuals, but those individuals are not lost because the relationship of those individuals to society can be reconciled. There is hope!
When individuals join our plane of life, having completed their human journey for the moment or for eternity, those individuals are never lost. They do remain—what is important about them remains, their spiritual impact remains. Even after those who have known those individuals are no longer in their human plane of life, their impact spiritually is not reduced. That positive impact may not always be obvious or as readily visible as it had been when there were personal relationships, but nevertheless, the world viewed spiritually benefits through the lives of everyone who has lived. Your lives are enhanced by those who lived, by your measure, thousands or millions of years ago. Even those souls from many thousands of years ago have an impact on your souls.
You have as part of your spiritual being, elements—one could almost say spiritual particles—belonging to everyone who has shared life as living human beings. You are not one soul on an island totally independent of everything that is going around you or has gone around this world. Everything is interdependent. There is no separation really between your spiritual essence and those of all who have lived. You all share spiritual power and spiritual love together. There is no distinct differentiation. But even in this sense there is nothing lost. Souls who have experienced human life are not cast away into some distant realm with no influence on human life. That simply does not happen. You are all connected, and since you are connected, no one is lost.
We suggest that you proceed through your lives with a strong commitment to the belief in the impossibility of loss. It makes everything meaningful. It makes everyone meaningful. It makes every relationship meaningful at whatever level it exists. This is an important concept for you to embrace. It is so different from what many cultures teach, but it is an absolute truth, undeniable, strengthened and clarified through God’s loving presence in your life and in the lives of everyone.
If you believe that no one is lost, that no relationship is lost in the eyes of God, how can you expect anything less from yourself, for God’s reality is your reality. God’s sense of relationship, even to those who deny God, is constant. Despite the denial, the relationship is there. Despite denials that you experience, let the relationship continue. It may be different than you expected, but allow it to grow in its own way. Be a party to that growth. Empower that relationship through your hope and prayers.
We bless you now with that hopeful loving relationship of God toward all human beings, and we bless your efforts to reflect that same relationship to all with whom you come in contact.
Amen.