Find something every day to be thankful for.

July 26, 2023

The creating spirit of God infuses the souls of each of you and of all others with a strength that can enable everyone to become more loving. 

Each of you in your own ways has had recent experiences with celebrating the life of someone to whom you are close as they embark on a transition to living purely in spirit. It is both fitting and interesting that more and more people prefer to approach these losses not only with a recognition of the loss, but even more importantly, the celebration of a life. It is in those celebrations that you become more aware of and sensitive to what is indeed a positive presence of all people. You can certainly imagine that even for those whom you have found most challenging to work with, to work beside, to know, there will be others who look upon the lives you reflect on and find evidence of goodness. 

You traditionally have a celebration of life when someone is entering the spiritual energy form of life, but consider for a moment that you are referring to such celebrations as a celebration of life. In its truest sense, it is not a celebration of a life. Certainly, you are recognizing the legacy of another that you may cherish and hold close to the heart, but in doing so, you are also being invited to celebrate the process of being alive. You are celebrating Life, Life with a capital L. You are not just celebrating a life. You may mention only one person, of course, but what you refer to in such a celebration are the qualities that you hold most dear as being essential to life. 

Celebrating the life of one person reflects upon what is important for all people. You can celebrate the life of one who may have caused great distress. The point to be made here is that all people have as part of their experience of being alive something to be celebrated, something to be singled out as being meaningful in life. You can celebrate the life of someone whose human life is very brief. In that context, you are indeed celebrating. You are giving meaning and value to this simple process of being alive. 

What we do as guides could be thought of as a celebration of life. It is not rejecting what is negative about anyone, but it is affirming what you feel is a gift of life. We are with each of you constantly because we celebrate the pathways of living. We celebrate the meaning of human life. We celebrate the sacredness of all forms of life. We celebrate not just your lives but all lives. 

We celebrate the lives of those who are knowing beings and yet do not exist in human form. So often we refer to such entities as knowing beings who are not human, but we acknowledge and support with our spiritual presence the validity of those lives. 

The celebration that we speak of here is an active embrace. We actively embrace all life, not just human life. We serve as guides of spirit. It just happens to be that your souls accompany a physical life. As we have explained on occasion in the past, you, to whom we are attached as guides, are not alone in whom we guide. We are not assigned to one specific individual, one who is mentoring being assigned to the one being mentored. That is not the way of spirit. We help to focus the reality of God’s presence on your life, but we focus God’s presence on all life, whether human or not, whether knowing or not knowing. 

We say to you that those who are not visibly growing in spirit, because of their actions and attitudes, are still growing. They are growing not by their actions and attitudes, but they are growing because of our presence. One can fully reject the reality of God and yet continue to grow in spirit. Human acknowledgment of God is not a passport to heaven. 

Your pathways to heaven exist because we are a part of them, and your journey takes place because we are a part of them. You grow because you are part of God’s creation. Nothing is static. 

You wonder whether nonhuman, knowing life-forms are aware of human, knowing life-forms, and the answer is yes, but not all knowing life-forms are aware of all other knowing life-forms anymore than your knowing life-form is aware of others. 

Your journey through life is a journey of discovery. It is not a journey of acquiring full knowledge. You grow because you’re alive. You grow in spite of what you believe to be true. You grow in spite of your actions. You grow for the simple reason that you are, and being alive includes in that reality some kind of interaction with other life-forms. Sure, you interact with human beings, but you interact with other forms of nature, both knowing and unknowing forms, and that interaction will by its very nature reflect God in some way, for all reflect the reality of creation whether or not it is acknowledged. When you acknowledge that connection, when you acknowledge the reality of life, you are celebrating life. 

We could say you are celebrating life by turning to us for understanding. You are celebrating life when you acknowledge what you hold dear in another human being. You celebrate the life of an individual, and that is, of course, appropriate, but in your celebrations, discover ways of celebrating the sacredness, the sanctity of the mere fact of being alive. 

We ask you to find something every day of your life to be thankful for, to be grateful for. When you feel thanksgiving, when you feel gratitude, you are celebrating life. When you recall the warmth, the generosity, perhaps the humor, or the sacrifices that another has made, you are placing importance on those aspects of human life. You’re celebrating the essential reality that they occupy in your life. By taking what you celebrate and using those characteristics to help shape your day-to-day life, you are strengthening your spirit. You are strengthening your soul. 

When you acknowledge our existence in your life, you are celebrating something of the meaning you give to this interaction. The mere acknowledgment of meaning can itself be a cherished teacher of how to live. 

We ask you, therefore, to look for grounds upon which you can celebrate the lives of all people, all you know, those you know about, and those for whom you are totally unknowing. Life is to be cherished. Life is a gift of opportunity. Life is a means of discovering bonds that unite. Your life takes on greater significance when you can discover the unity that you have with someone else. 

Try, for example, to think of those who have caused you personal grief and agony and pain. Place them in a light, and find something in your understanding that affirms, that uplifts, that asserts the value of another. It is easy to celebrate the life of someone you love. It is far more challenging to celebrate the life, to find an element in another’s life that you can lock onto and identify with when it is associated with someone with whom you deeply disagree. 

You are all sacred. You all share that spark of God within. Sometimes that spark ignites in a fire of love, compassion, and understanding, but sometimes that spark only ignites small brush fires. They are not necessarily all conflagrations, but whether that spark creates a fire of loving intensity or just a few more isolated sparks, the essence of that energy is still there, and it is what is fully sacred. No spark you have within you is stronger or more worthy than the spark of God that is a part of all other people. You are all equal. You are all to be united in love. You all have within you parts of your life that are valued by others and are truly celebrated with love. 

It is, of course, difficult to lose those you love, but it is our hope that as you celebrate the life of another, you will in that process recognize in a profound way what is truly important for the growth of your own spirit. You grow in your depths through your interactions with all life around you, human and nonhuman. 

Embrace the environment to which you belong. 

Embrace all of nature. 

Embrace the heavens. 

Embrace the mountains and sea. 

Embrace the air you breathe. 

Embrace those who are easy to love. 

Embrace those who provide severe challenges for that love. 

We celebrate your life. We are both the energies that provide mentorship and the entities that are being mentored. There is no hierarchy, as you refer to it, between the one who provides inspiration and the one who is inspired. We do not belong to a higher form of existence; we are a different form of life. You learn from us, and we learn from our interaction with you. We have guides who provide us with strength and light, but they are in no way more powerful, more influential, more important than we are. They continue to evolve, and we continue to evolve. As your guides, our evolvement is not unique, for you evolve. We grow together. We grow at the same time. We grow closer to one another. All lives are equal whether physical or spiritual. 

All forms of love are equal. There is no one form that is purely perfect and the only valid form of love, for love exists on many levels and serves many purposes. Love can be giving when giving is appropriate. Love can be receiving when receiving is appropriate. There is no significant difference between the giver and the receiver. That acknowledgment can be affirmed in how you live your life among others. That acknowledgment can be affirmed in all that you observe in others that represents the highest calling you perceive in human life. It is those events of recognizing what is indeed loving, what is indeed of real value in the life of another that you celebrate your bond with another. You cannot be asked for more than the true embrace of that bond. 

We embrace you as you embrace us. We give value to your life as you give value to ours. We recognize all that is within you that reflects God’s presence. That is seeing the bond. It is the ultimate celebration of life. 

Amen.