Names for the Spirit Center.
July 24, 2017
The love which is God embraces, comforts, and guides each of you and all human beings. You are indeed surrounded by the Light that is God.
We speak so often of the Light. We speak so often of God or Spirit Center or the Creator. Our reference to God is independent of any particular belief system that is directed toward an understanding of a higher being or higher power or ultimate creator. We refer to that Spirit Center, that presence of love, as God, for that is the way you refer to that presence. Names of course are not important. There is nothing special about the concept of a single over-riding God as opposed to other beliefs that try to understand a greater presence in multiple terms or very different names. The Spirit Center we could use constantly. We could also use descriptors such as the Centers of Spirit and all that that encompasses.
There was a discussion that you had recently regarding the use of the term “god” and concerns about whether it should be capitalized or not. Such concerns actually have no relevance to the reality of truth. Names are names, labels are labels, but they are not really the truth. They’re merely your efforts and the efforts of all human beings to establish a connection of understanding about what it means to live in a world that is organized in a particular fashion. What is that organization? What is your place within that structure? Those are the truths that are important.
There are those who read these meditations, these messages if you wish to call them that, who may be in full agreement with the use of the word God, but there are others who may wish to identify that Spirit Center or those Spirit Centers by another term or terms, and that is of no importance, for ultimately you all seek an understanding of your connection to the force of creation, the presence of love, the unity of all. You may use any term that suits your objectives to establish a sense of unity that is bound together permanently by the force of love.
Love as we speak of it is akin to a force of gravity. It is a kind of attraction, an energy that draws one entity toward another. It is what links all together. The planets that rotate around the sun retain their positions because of gravity. They respond to that presence despite their size, despite their distance, despite the fact that such forces, although invisible, are recognized clearly to exist through evidence, not through what is seen. A scientist can observe the force of gravity because of the behavior of entities in the interactions that exist, but gravity as a force is not something you see with your eyes. Nevertheless, you know it exists.
This gravitational force that we refer to as love is also a reality that is not seen with the eyes. It is, rather, observed through the heart. It is observed through reflection. It is recognized because of evidence of its existence. You cannot see love between two individuals, but you see evidence of it. You cannot see the love between two strangers, but you can recognize it by seeing the impact of that relationship upon the behavior of both. When you reach out to a stranger whom you do not know, you can reach out with a loving presence, loving not in the way of popular culture, but loving as a way of one spirit reaching out to another spirit. That connection exists only within the framework of spirit. You can observe that easily.
You can feel it when you are the recipient of love from someone you cannot know. That love can be experienced through each of your senses except through what you see. You can feel that relationship. You can feel the kindness. You can see evidence of a loving outreach even with your eyes, but you don’t see the love as an entity of its own.
This recognition of what it means to be loved and to be loving in its many manifestations is what we mean by seeing with the eyes of the heart, seeing with the heart. When we speak of heart, of course we are not speaking specifically of the physical attributes of the heart as tissue, but there is a connection of that organ to the vision that we speak of. There is an energy, an electrical energy if you will, that is a part of the heart’s function, just as there is an electrical energy that belongs to the function of the brain.
These two centers, the brain and the heart, work together to perceive, in one way or another, the view of what love is. Together they see the love. We speak more of the heart center than the brain center, because in a way, the heart functions independently from much of what occupies the energy of the brain. They are both interdependent, but the heart is connected to the spirit in ways beyond medical description, as love is received as well as given.
It is important to understand what is meant by seeing with the heart or using the eyes of the heart, for we are speaking of the openness that you provide for the loving energy around you. Even when the brain is limited drastically in its ability to function normally, the heart still senses what it means to be loved. The heart still sees the expression of love offered by another.
You are, of course, fully aware of the issues often faced by those whose brains are no longer functioning fully, and yet you believe at some level there is an awareness of your presence. When you take the hand of one who is transitioning to our side, the heart knows, the heart feels, and the heart is aware of the loving expression of unity. This is the sight of the heart.
What does this mean for you when you function normally? Where does the heart fit in? Where does your presence fit into the lives of others? The connection that is made between you and someone else with spirit as the energy is made through the heart. You offer kindness to someone else. That person may not consciously think, “Oh, I am being treated with kindness.” That person may not be the least bit aware in a conscious way of your kindness, but your kindness is not lost. Although you see no evidence of it being received, it is being received. It is strengthening, affirming, comforting, and loving. It does provide the Light. The eyes don’t see it. The brain does not perceive the Light, but the Light is there, and it provides the warmth, the comfort.
We speak to you first through the heart. When you are in distress, it is we, working through others, who provide strength, comfort, and love. Even when you see someone smile toward you, you may be aware of the smile, you may recognize the smile, you may know the person who is smiling, but the impact of that smile goes beyond what is perceived directly through the senses, and that impact is through the heart.
The love that you experience when it is truly a love emanating from and reflecting the presence of God is the love that is received and acknowledged by the heart. Each of you must recognize that you have within you God’s power to respond always in a mode of giving, of love, of affirmation. All of you have that capability. There is no magic. There is no special blessing that means that you among others are uniquely qualified to offer love. All human beings have the ability to be loving. All human beings have an ability to reflect what love is in its simplest, most direct manner.
The young child, the baby, looking into the eyes of the parent may say nothing, but the parent knows that gaze, and it is a gaze of love. The parent can be sensitive to that expression of love. The eyes of the parent see the eyes of the child, but it is the heart that senses the real love that is being expressed without words, without action, only with a gaze.
Your relationships with one another, therefore, can always be loving. We can say of course that no human is one hundred percent loving, one hundred percent of the time, to one hundred percent of the people and life around them. But that does not change the capacity, the potential, the ability that each of you has to be loving. It is a worthy goal of all human life.
You know we do not say that human beings become all love. That is the ultimate direction that all human lives follow, but it is a goal. You do not have to be all love in order to acknowledge the potential each of you has to be loving at any moment in your lives. When you feel threatened, you can be loving. When you feel affirmed and valued, it is much easier to be loving. But in that state of being threatened, despite its difficulty, the capacity remains. The potential is still there.
You have many opportunities for contacts with those who create much tension in your lives, and when you recoil from those encounters, it is difficult to step back and say to yourself, “I’m going to respond in a loving way.” You respond negatively. You respond defensively. You respond in ways that are healthy, in ways that are unhealthy, in ways that are self-directed as well as other-directed. There are many responses.
It is not for us to cast judgment in any way for the responses you choose, for God does not judge, and therefore we do not judge. But we can still say that some responses are more reflective of the love that is God than are other responses. When you respond in a way that is not in keeping with your perception of a godly response, you are being human. You are experiencing the difference between human life and spiritual life. That is okay, but acknowledging that it is part of human life to respond as you may respond, it is still appropriate to say, despite responses you may have, that you still have within you the strength, the direction, the guidance to respond through love, to respond through the heart, to respond to the heart of another. That is always an option.
No human makes all the right choices, for if you did, you would not be human. You learn through choices you make. You learn to be affirmed when those choices reflect your understanding of God, but you also learn when those choices are not in keeping with your understanding of God. You learn both ways, and it is because of the growth, the learning of the spirit, that you are given human life.
Accept your own blindness of the heart. Accept those times when you do not feel with your heart’s eye the expression of love offered by another. Accept those failings, for they in truth are not really failings. They are opportunities you are given, and you grow with them.
The eyes of the heart are part of who you are. All human beings have eyes of the heart. All human beings have the potential, the capability, of seeing with the eyes of the heart. All human beings can experience the gravitational pull that binds all that is together into a single unit. Therefore, all human beings can perceive the evidence of love, yet that power, that force cannot be seen on its own. It is seen through its evidence.
You learn of God’s love by the evidence that you observe of that love being present. You exercise God’s love toward another, not because you see the love of God and therefore know that you have it. It is because the love of God belongs to the core of who you are, and it is the energy that is brought to bear through the eyes of the heart that you can fully direct to life all around you, whether human life or inanimate life or life of other forms.
You are God. You are containers of the love of God. You have the vision of heart. Open those eyes. Be willing to see through the heart the love of God that embraces each of you.
Amen.