God’s blessing like a sun.

October 26, 1980

God sends strength and calming love and surrounds you with care and faith. 

There are many issues which face your lives creating questions, implanting doubt, causing grief, jealousy, and sickness of your sense of eternity. They block your vision of your soul as immortal. All of us here, your guides, serve to lift that curtain, that blockage, so that you come to know God in a very personal, a very real sense. You live on earth to know God. That is the purpose of life. Through that knowledge you draw closer. It is our loving responsibility to transmit some of God’s knowledge to you, and although we speak through one guide, the generation, the inspiration, the reflecting of God’s presence is accomplished by each of your guides. 

It is for this reason that each of you may draw from the same fountain according to your own needs. These messages serve each of you. They are not meant for one. As any of you receive God’s word, you must always believe that its purpose is to be shared. There is no sense of elite position. There is no room in God’s creation for a select few. All are equal, all have needs, and all receive God’s response to their prayers. You share in an event which may be called a phenomenon only because it cannot be fully explained, but it is as real as any event which you experience through your normal senses. 

Your concern for the proper response to grief is shared by all. You feel a reluctance to express grief in the fear that it will weigh down the soul who has been freed. That feeling is not altogether correct, for it is necessary to keep one’s attention both on the one who has died and on those who remain. 

Experiencing another’s feeling is love. It is God working among people. Grieving cannot be viewed as happening to another, nor can it be viewed as being experienced by oneself alone. We have said that you grow through suffering, that you gain perspective. You must accept the fact that each of you has the potential to grow not only through your own difficulties but through those of others. 

What is this growth? How is it achieved? You know that it is important in the development of your souls, that growth, that progress can only be achieved collectively. You do not win a race. There are no winners, no losers, only finishers. Your soul develops in its awareness of God and draws ever closer, not alone but through cooperation and joint effort, collective growth. When another suffers and reaches out to grasp God’s hand in sadness and faith, you grow as you share that reaching. When you experience tragedy, pain, or spiritual anguish, your soul receives strength. It grows as it is accompanied by others. In a family when one experiences grief, the others share and support. You are all a family. You are biological families, but most important of all, you are a worthwhile spiritual family. 

Your progress toward God is measured in terms of the progress of all toward God. You therefore have a responsibility toward all people. When you complete your earthly life, your responsibilities continue. Our responsibility is helping you to grow. Many times we have spoken of our growth in terms of your progress. You, in turn, grow as we progress. The responsibility of one soul for the growth of another is eternal. It is God. The responsibility you feel is the power of God. What you do with your responsibility is the presence of God. Therefore, as you share in the grief of others, you are God and you are working with God’s power. You are drawn closer to God. 

The service for your loved one had a great warmth and depth, and God’s power and presence were like a blinding light to us. Each of you was part of that light. We saw it and he saw it. His eyes have been opened more widely to the reality of God, and although he has much to learn, his soul is strong. He will contribute much to the spiritual development of others. You must feel blessed by experiencing the closeness of that service. You need not fear an anchor effect on your loved one’s soul and his new-found freedom. Such an effect occurs when the dominating feeling is one of wanting an individual back. When it is a selfish grief, such mourning is damaging. When it is a sharing, an acceptance of the burden of another, it is a great strengthening. It is a strengthening to one who has passed on through death to life, and it is a strengthening of each individual soul viewed collectively as well. 

Grief is a part of every life. It is an opportunity and not just an experience. Accept another’s feelings. Become a part of that person. Pray for that person as you would pray for yourself. Lift that person’s spirit to God’s hand as you would lift your own. Give strength to another as you would desire strength, and listen to God’s response as strongly as you would pray for it. 

You are all united as souls. You and we who have completed our earthly life are virtually one. All of us collectively, as souls, are God. We are God as much as a drop of water in the ocean is the ocean. All that the ocean contains is found in the drop. All that is God is in each of you. Recognize God in others. Continue to emphasize your brotherhood. Share in the growth of others and rejoice in being bathed in God’s eternal light. 

God blesses each of you and illuminates your soul with radiance as a sun surrounds a plant in a field. Grow towards that radiance, receive it and give beauty to the world. 

Amen.