Love is like water.
June 22, 2004
God speaks to everyone at all times. The voice of God is unceasingly present. The wisdom of God penetrates your souls. The love of God cradles each of your lives, and your guides surround you with God’s unending, all-encompassing love.
As you know, when you gather in such a group, all guides for each of you are united in this effort to share God’s presence in a way that meets your needs—the needs of your physical lives and your spiritual centers. We often address the needs of the spirit, the opportunity that human life provides for the growth of spirit. But we wish to focus our energies upon your souls on the subject of your physical needs as ministered by God.
If physical life were not vital you would not be experiencing that life. Because it is vital, it falls within the view of God’s loving care. Therefore, your physical lives, your tangible lives, the visible lives that you experience are equally important to our concerns to support you, to give you direction, to provide meaning and relevance in all ways. The physical life has needs that are shared by all: comfort, freedom of pain, emotional peace. You all share the need to be loved. You all share the capacity, the potential to be loving. Not all human beings are loving toward one another, but all human beings need to be loved. It is a basic component to human life. You cannot long survive without love just as you cannot long survive without water. Love is as essential to human life as that water.
But how is that love received, how is it experienced? It is experienced in the concrete, not in the theoretical. As was mentioned in your last gathering, love needs to be experienced, not merely talked about. There is no way to know love other than to receive it. There is no way to live with love other than to be loving. When there is an interruption to your receptivity of love offered, you are less able to be loving. Being loving in the true sense of the word is being God. It is not some kind of heresy to claim that you all are God, for you all share godly qualities. You all share the potential to be as God would wish you to be. No individual exists incapable of being loving, although many exist who choose not to be. Being loving is a matter of choice.
Being loved by God contains no choice. It is automatic, it is complete, it does not need to be earned or deserved. There is no one who has sacrificed so that you may be loved by God. The Christian belief that Jesus died for your sins so that you may be saved is in fact not the whole truth. In the Christian sense of being saved, you were saved before you were born, because each of you is eternal. Each of you has a spirit that is sacred. Because that spirit is sacred, there is no need to be saved. You may feel that being saved means accepting that spirit, but we tell you that even those who deny their souls are saved. We tell you all human beings, regardless of their religious orientation, are saved. All souls have a future with God. There is no soul that exists that must do something to deserve that salvation that is sought. You are all eternal beings. If it were not so, if you would need to be saved, if you would need to have an intercessor to give your life value, that would imply that not all souls are equal at birth. Quite the contrary, every soul is equal and therefore every soul has the same potential for growth. Every soul will grow.
How does this affect the physical being that each of you experiences, that each of you occupies? A soul that is aware of its source with God is a soul that easily uplifts the body. When you are aware of God’s presence, your attitude toward life changes and you acknowledge the beauty of life despite its injustice, despite its pain, despite its turmoil. That is not to say you ignore the injustice, the pain, the turmoil, but you do see God in all. Seeing God in all that you experience, seeing God in all that takes place on your earth means that there is not only the potential but the absolute future of resolution, of peace, of harmony, of a united presence that is loving and compassionate. When you work toward such an objective, you are working to bring about the very reality that exists for all.
So often we speak of the absence of time, and yet you govern your lives on that basis. By removing the urgency of time, you become more aware of the movement of spirit within the realm of physical life. Acknowledging spirit means affirming all that life provides. It does not mean acknowledging a corner of life, for all life belongs to God. Everything you do physically is as much a part of God as that which is directed toward the inner journey, toward the soul. Human life, although not permanent, is of equal value. It is your human lives that help provide character to your spiritual beings, but it is your spiritual awareness that provides relevance for your human existence. Both are necessary.
You voice concerns for many who work for peace. You voice concerns for others who work in what seems to be a lonely field. But that work is nevertheless important, not only for those individuals who are so motivated, but for everyone because the purpose of that work is affirmation. The purpose of that work is commitment to equality, commitment to justice, a recognition of what peace can bring.
We speak of balance—balance in life that is physical balance, balance in life that is spiritual. When there is insufficient balance in physical life, then it is seen as a lack of health, for we have often said that health requires balance. But that balance is a balance within the physical properties of life and balance between the physical and spiritual properties of life. When there is balance, there is health, and where there is no balance, health is not found. Health therefore involves both the spiritual and the physical, but for the physical to be brought into balance, there needs to be an awareness of God’s presence throughout all that is experienced.
When you pray for those who work tirelessly for the benefit of others, your prayers are actually offered with the hope that those individuals will find the balance between the physical and the spiritual. This balance applies to each of you, for you all experience phases of being in balance and out of balance. Each of you experiences frustration, but isn’t frustration the product of not seeing the realization of that which you imagine to be proper?
What is an appropriate goal? An appropriate goal is one that acknowledges where the world is, where your life is, and in acknowledging where that may be, you also acknowledge that it is there that you should be. You are where you should be. Human life is where it should be. There is suffering, there is injustice, but at the moment that you experience it, it is but a brief instant in a progression that leads from what you observe to the fulfillment of that highest ideal for which you pray. When you take a long journey in an automobile, if you constantly focus your attention on the fact that you have not arrived at your destination, your journey will seem endless and infinitely frustrating. But if you recognize that in addition to not being where you wish to be, you are all the time progressing toward that objective, you will then also recognize that where you are now is an important step in reaching where you wish to be. You cannot get to your goal without being where you are. Unless you experience where you are, there is no journey, there is only stasis, there is only non-motion, no progress. Everything remains the same.
Life is not like that. All life is on a journey, and therefore every milepost on that journey belongs to that journey. And although you may only see that particular marker, you can be assured that you are on the path that you are meant to be. You must therefore keep your objectives in view with the full confidence that you are moving toward that objective.
When you seek healing, every step along the way is essential to that healing. Your friend is aware of many steps in the process. To achieve the healing that is best for him, he must experience each step. He is where he needs to be. He is a very alert, perceptive traveler on his journey and he wonders about the appropriateness of various healing technologies. None of these creative technologies are effective unless one believes in their purposes, for one’s belief has everything to do with one’s progress in healing. For some individuals, the corporate worship experience is the most immediate way to achieve healing, but for others that experience carries less significance. For them, there are other means of receiving healing energy. Ultimately each individual creates his or her own means of being healed. Healing is internalized. We have spoken of what healing means in terms of the permanence of your relationship to God. Acknowledging and witnessing that permanence allows for true healing, but how that acknowledgment, how that witness is achieved for each of you is your own choice. What your friend seeks as a means toward healing will be effective for him because he chooses the reality of his own healing.
Many have said we choose our own reality. There is great truth to that concept. There are certainly events that occur in your lives that you do not choose. You do not choose to be sick, you do not choose to be injured, but your reality is basically your response to what happens around you, and that response is your own choice. That response can be your means of healing. That response becomes your way of responding positively or negatively to life around you. It is your decision how you react to the physical life that you are given. Your relationships, your relationships with your own bodies, your relationships with your soul are determined by your conscious choice. The soul does not dominate the body. The body does not act in obedience to the soul, but the body can react because of an awareness of that spiritual center. The behavior of the physical then becomes a servant to the awareness of the spiritual, but it is the body’s awareness of the spirit that is all important.
Each of you therefore is given the choice of how to grow, how to relate, how to heal. It is a blessing given by God: the blessing of choice. With prayer you may be assured you will always make the appropriate choice. That choice may lead to a different goal than you had anticipated, but then such difference is only evidence of God stepping in and giving light to your travels. Therefore welcome what the physical life presents you. Welcome the blessing of choice. Welcome your ability to listen to God in making those choices.
We are blessed when you take time to ponder our presence in your lives. You and we are blessed when we ponder God’s presence in our lives. Go forth in your human physical lives with the full confidence that you will be shown the light, the light that leads to the eternal oneness for all with God.
Amen.