Interdependence.
January 22, 2007
You are each washed and purified with the light that is God’s presence.
We know of your questions. We know of your anguish. We know of your rejoicings. We know your prayers before they are uttered. There is, in fact, nothing about you that we do not know, for all that is to be known exists within the totality of God’s creation. Because you are a part of that creation, you are a part of all knowledge. Because we are part of that creation, we are a part of that knowledge. You share in your experience of your vision with one another, and we share our vision with all souls—your guides, your souls, and the souls of other life-forms of which we have spoken.
You ultimately seek an understanding of two things: the nature of God and the purpose of your own lives. Those are the two principles of understanding that inform all questions and that provide a context for everything that has been created. To understand your own lives, you must continue to expand your understanding of God. Without an understanding of God, there is really no context for your understanding where you are, where you have been, and where you are to go. There is no purpose to human life without an acknowledgment of the importance and presence of God.
In the imperfect state that is the human condition, you are still reflective of some integral part of what God has made. At your worst moments, even when your behavior may not be in keeping with God’s wishes, you are still an important component of that creation. You know you cannot separate yourself from God’s love, but you cannot separate yourself either from what God has made. So to understand yourselves, you must come to understand God.
God is infinite and your reasoning selves are not. God encompasses everything that exists, but human beings can barely understand why they exist. Our gift to you, what all guides do, is to gradually unfold a view of God that you can bring into your own creative lives, lives marked by everyday experiences and peak experiences. This view, this vision, can only unfold gradually as your own understanding evolves.
It is easy for us to say, and difficult for humans to comprehend, when we declare with absolute certainty that God Is. The very existence of God is repeatedly debated and questioned, but God Is, whether humans recognize that fact or not. That ultimate reality that God Is remains.
You also know that the condition of God being in existence, that fact that God Is, includes the realization that all that is love is God. It is so commonly asserted and it is true that God is love, but that sounds so empty because there are many ways that human beings characterize love. Humans can characterize love as always positive, always patient, but there are many who believe strongly that God can be vengeful, that God punishes—punishes through pain, punishes through other difficulties that you might characterize as being negative. There are those who believe that God can be jealous, jealous of those who presume to limit God through their own sense of presence, and that God out of jealousy then punishes. There are those who believe that God is nature, that God exists in each flower and bird, and that by respecting nature, one is giving God what God deserves. Saying therefore, that God is love can have many meanings for many individuals, and yet no meaning is fully correct or fully incorrect.
Human beings have always tried to surround God with an explanation that is seen as being human. For some, such explanations of God are appropriate. For others, they may seek a different perspective. For some individuals, believing that God is vengeful encourages lives that are seen by others as giving and sacrificing, as being supportive, as being nonjudgmental. The perception of God is entirely dependent upon the perspective of the person holding that perception.
God is more than each of those perspectives, and for that reason, the one common denominator, if you will, is to recognize that God Is, and because God Is, You Are. Because You Are, Others Are. Because Others Are, All That You See Is. Every particle belongs to the total creation. Each Particle Is. The fact that Everything Is, everything exists, means that you are all related. You are related to all human beings. You are related to all forms of energy, all part of that grand creation, and because You All Are, everyone, everything, is equal. There is no species on earth that is more important than another. There is only interdependence.
You wonder about the presence of spirit in the life-forms that are not human. Part of what we have said in the past about spirit is that spirit is energy and there are many forms of energy. We referred to this in the past and recently. One of those forms of energy is the spirit that you have within, but that energy form, that spirit, is different from an energy form found in other animals. It is different from other energy forms found in plants. It is different from energy forms found in the rock beneath your feet. God created these energy forms and they are equal in value, but they are of differing contexts.
Has your spirit center, your soul, inhabited another animal, or will it inhabit another animal? The answer is no, but all animals have a kind of energy that reflects God, and that energy is of equal importance to your own spirit source. When you receive what you describe as love from another animal, or you see the behavior of one animal toward another, either within its species or beyond its own species, you are observing another form of energy. Since the central capacity, the central energetic force, if you will, that is God is love, the energy forms that emanate from that loving energy also can be loving. It is a different style. The energy is a different frequency. It is characterized in different ways.
Those animals that you observe do not merely exist. They do have an energy that comes from God, but it is a form vastly different from the human spirit. You may spend a lifetime understanding or trying to understand the nature of spirit. Even in its pursuit your understanding is limited, for the energy form that animals share is vastly different from your own but equally valid, equally important.
Animals can learn from one another. They can learn from other species. Indeed, some animals learn from human beings and vice versa. For many human beings, the first consciously observed experience of being loved is experienced through interaction with another species of animal. Being loved unconditionally by another animal can teach human beings what it means to be unconditionally loving. Becoming unconditionally loving for you means you must be unconditionally loving toward everyone, toward all that belongs to this created universe.
You have many questions about your willingness to affirm and yet not approve. You are slowly recognizing the difference, but you are left with the question of what to do when you are affirmative and yet in disagreement. You cannot be told to immediately correct what is wrong. Likewise, you cannot be instructed to turn your head and ignore. What then can you do?
You are asked by God first to unconditionally accept the place that another has in God’s creation, acknowledging that that place is of no greater or lesser importance than your own. When you disapprove of another’s behavior, it may not actually be the other who is in error. Your own perceptions are guided by your own progress spiritually along your human journey. At any given point on that journey, you can have an opinion about whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, beneficial or destructive. But you can be challenged in those evaluations, for are they right or wrong in the long term but not the short term? Are they right or wrong in the short term but not the long term? Are they right or wrong as viewed being applied to all humanity, or to a certain location or a certain time, as you identify it, or a certain set of moral values with which you identify?
There are too many variables to place absolutes on top of all behavior. If you wish first of all to know if something is essentially good or bad, ask yourself if it is beneficial to others beyond the individual whose action you observe. If it is beneficial to others in your own perspective, then within your own framework of reality it is not difficult to affirm. But if from your perspective it is not beneficial, it may be destructive according to your own reality but not according to others.
There are some guiding principles that reflect God’s desires. We know that God created. We know it is God’s wish that what is created continues because as it was created by God, it has value. How is that continuation achieved? It may seem unchanging to you. It may seem a radical change of form, of energy, appearance. The energy that God creates is never destroyed. It is only transformed. Consequently, you must accept that God wishes what has been created to remain in one form or another. It is God’s wish that energy be retained.
God created human beings and it is not God’s wish that human beings be destroyed. The energy that is a human being is not lost in the destruction…it is changed. It is not God’s wish that human beings fight and kill one another, for it was God who created human beings. But God also created the possibility for humans to make choices, for it is through that selection of choices and acting upon them that much growth takes place.
You recognize the death that is so common and seemingly violent in the animal kingdom and wonder what its purpose is. The animal kingdom must somehow survive. Certain animals feed on others. It is necessary for survival. It is part of how they were created. Animals do not make a decision to avoid attack or to engage in it based on what are considered, in human terms, moral conditions. Animals attack for selfprotection, for protection of families, for the necessity to eat. What is built into their creation is their violence. It seems so to the human perspective, but human beings view violence as something that should be avoided. Animals experience violence because it is part of why and how they were created. It is partly who they are, but animals in their violence toward one another have a direct impact on human life as well, and so belong to your realm of awareness.
To understand the life-cycle of other animals, you must remove yourself from placing a human perspective, a human set of reality as an overlay that applies to all in existence. That simply cannot be done and arrive at an understanding of God’s place in all that you observe.
When there are conflicts that arise between you and others, and you acknowledge the validity of another’s life and yet are unable to accept the behavior, what is your responsibility? When that behavior can be seen as benefiting others on a broad scale, then you cannot intervene. When you view such behavior as destructive, then your intervention can take many forms. You can intervene through prayer. You can intervene by trying to be loving so that another understands how it feels to be loved. You can intervene by being present in the life of another. You can intervene by creating an environment that encourages a mutual exchange of perspectives. At times you can intervene most appropriately by doing what is necessary to stop the behavior. There are many ways to intervene, all of which are appropriate in given circumstances.
By instructing you to be supportive and affirmative, we do not imply that you ignore, for your form of intervention in itself can be an act of love. And if you love unconditionally, your intervention will itself not be destructive and therefore appropriate.
Your lives are filled with many opportunities to be receptive to God, the power of God and self-revelation. Your lives are filled with the opportunities to become fully nonjudgmental, to give, to sacrifice, to listen, to be there, to affirm the value of another. You are given opportunities to learn what it means to be loving when a teacher is another form of God’s energy.
Be open to teachers from all directions. Be willing to be receptive. Be willing to be welcoming. Be willing to embrace all of creation with the love that encompasses everything, everyone. Be willing to embrace the forces of nature and recognize your own place within that grand presence.
You are blessed. You are blessed by your understanding. You are blessed by your willingness to be open. You are blessed in your awareness of us, and you are blessed in your acknowledgment of a God that belongs to each of you.
Amen.