Prayer is a compass.
May 26, 2003
God carries each of you in safe-keeping on the sea of life. It is really a sea, for you are being supported by the lives of many others. Each of you travels through life resting on the shoulders of those who have preceded you. You are the culmination, at this point, of the souls of countless others. Your soul grows because of the contributions and efforts and loving guidance of all souls.
There is a buoyancy to life that results when each of you recognizes that you are not experiencing the first stage of your own life, but rather part of a continuing series of stages in life. The surface of the sea rises and falls, but the consistency of its support is constant. The surface of the sea exists because of all that comprises the sea. Each of you is on the surface, and it is important to acknowledge that you are where you are because of what you are doing and because of the efforts of all souls, the presence of all souls, current and in the past. Your experience of life is like being indeed on the leading edge. Just as you may not be aware of all that comprises the sea, so you cannot be fully aware of all of the spiritual support and presence that gives buoyancy to your own lives.
Much that happens during human life results from humanmade events that are not designed nor ordained by God. If your lives consisted only of the temporal and did not contain the spark of the eternal, you would be easily consumed by the events around you. The fact that there are challenges in life merely brings to your awareness your abilities to withstand, to become strengthened, to proliferate, to expand physically, spiritually, to proliferate in numbers but also in concept.
When you become aware of the we which has been referred to, you are proliferating. You are a part of something far greater. You can never be totally overwhelmed by what happens in your lives. This is the buoyancy that you are given because of your spiritual entity, your soul that resides within and that responds to the support of the spiritual presence that is like the sea itself.
You may wonder why the analogy of the sea. We’ve expressed often the similarity of all souls to the drop of water in the ocean. Each drop is an equal part of the totality of the ocean. Were it not for those drops, there would be no ocean. There would be nothing to provide the buoyancy that is needed. So you are part of the totality of that ocean, and you ride upon its surface supported by its very presence, supported by the nature of its totality. You are, in a way, no different from that which comprises the sea. Your lives change in character, they change in perspective, they change in temperature, figuratively. But they are always a part of the totality, which is the sea.
You have become aware of much that comprises the sea through these messages. It is your view beneath the surface, as it were. You may not have explored to the very center of the earth, but your experiences take you far enough beneath the surface that you have learned and will continue to learn much of what it means to be a part of the sea, what it means to be a part of the ocean of spiritual entities that comprise the totality of God.
With the information that you have received and will continue to receive, there is much you wish to share. It is as natural for you to share as it is for scientists to share their findings through research. You are all engaged in research, you all seek answers, you seek a greater understanding, you seek a sense of “why life.” As a consequence, we feel it is entirely appropriate that you begin the process of assembling your view of the sea so that others may see beneath the surface.
There are many books that are available that discuss this sea. Some books investigate the animal life of the sea. Others, different forms of existence—shapes, textures, transparencies. There are any number of ways that one may describe the sea. It is likewise the situation in describing the spiritual life. The fact that others have shared their understanding should in no way hamper your desires to do the same. Your experiences, the material that you receive, although describing the same ocean, provide yet another view and we urge you to pursue that.
You wonder what form this pursuit should take, how best to move forward. The answer is that you move forward just as you proceed with this process of understanding the nature of God. It is to be approached always with prayer, and you can be fully assured that the right path when pursued prayerfully will become clear. The nature of what you present is to be a series of books. You should proceed with a sense not of the totality, but of where you wish to move at this stage. It is not easy to complete such a project, for in fact it is never completed. You will continue to receive more guidance, so it is important rather to identify where you wish to place your efforts without any conception of it being in some way complete. The vehicle is definitely as a book. The nature of that book and how its contents are shared will be quite clear as you proceed with these efforts.
The captain of the ship knows it is necessary to proceed from one point to another, but that direction is never a straight line. It depends on the currents, it depends on the weather. There are many considerations that must be examined to ensure that the ship moves from one place to another in the most appropriate manner. Those decisions are made as the situation requires. And so it will be with your efforts. You will make the right decisions when they must be made. You are beginning the process in the most effective manner, and you can be assured of that. It is important to be in contact with many others who may be interested in this project who know the way the wind blows, others who know the nature of the currents and what lies beneath. Any project such as this is the culmination of the efforts of many, many who are dedicated to its value, to its relevance.
It is in a way a kind of microcosm for how you live your own lives. You do not know everything about what tomorrow may bring, but tomorrow ultimately becomes today and soon becomes yesterday, and you have traversed the span of time, as you refer to it. You live successful lives, not by planning every turn, but by being aware of opportunities as they arise. You know where you are headed, but you are also aware of the opportunity to make decisions that will bring you to your own destination. Characteristic of your lives is faith. Faith is not knowing what the next turn must be. Faith is the conviction of knowing that when a turn must be made, you will know the proper turn to take. A life of faith is a life of awareness, a life of openness, a life characterized by being flexible.
A giant tree withstands a strong wind because it is capable of bending. Bending is not a weakness of the tree. The capacity to bend is precisely what gives the tree its strength. It is so in your own lives. Your ability to bend, to adapt, to be open to change is precisely the ability that gives your lives a constancy—a constancy not of a straight direction but a constancy which takes you to your objective.
Preparing a book, therefore, is one kind of life experience that requires your ability to bend, and by bending you will reach the solution that you seek. It is that experience that gives rise to faith. When you suffer from an illness and you approach that illness with faith, it is the faith that provides the resilience, that provides the strength. But if you approach illness, for example, with only one single outcome in mind, you are not governed by flexibility. You become that rigid structure that has no capacity for bending in the wind and is destroyed. A life of faith, an act of faith of whatever nature, is a belief in the value of being aware of what is happening now with the conviction that whatever decisions or whatever directions will need to be followed, they will be followed in the most appropriate and applicable manner.
You all have personal concerns related to outcome. It may be outcomes that affect you individually. You may be concerned about outcome related to another. If you proceed on the path toward that outcome with prayer and faith, you are assured of the reasonableness of the outcome and the means by which you achieve it. Your lives will constantly be beset with challenges and frustrations, anxieties, fears. But your ability to persevere will only be as strong as your ability to be flexible.
Your lives cannot proceed in a straight line. A project such as you anticipate cannot progress in a straight line either. There is nothing in your lives that is dependent upon human nature that is at the same time predetermined. The only aspect of life that is predetermined is the direction of your soul’s development, for speed is often influenced by the human condition. But you can say with full certainty that your soul will ultimately be fully a part of God. How you get to that oneness with God—that will change many times in the course of human life. But the direction will still lead ultimately to God. The objective is never in question. The general direction is a certainty. The specifics of how you move from where you are to a total embracing of God is determined by decisions you make, the decisions that others make.
You succeed in your spiritual development because you are open. If you are not open to the reality of spiritual guidance, you would not be in this gathering at this moment. If you felt there was no spirit, or if you felt that God had long-since ceased speaking to humankind, there would be no reason for you to be collected together. So your direction of spiritual growth and spiritual understanding is enabled by your openness to the guidance that comes through. You take that information, you take the insight that is reflected from God through us to you, and that molds your life for the moment. As your insights increase, the direction of your development continues to be refined. So you must always keep looking, you must always keep listening, and you must always be willing to take what you see and what you hear and allow those insights to provide guidance for your next step forward.
Preparing a book is in many ways no different than living your human lives. They parallel one another most beautifully. When you complete your project and it is ready, there will be a place for it that is most appropriate. You are not wasting your efforts in such pursuit, just as you are not wasting your lives as you pursue insight into your spiritual growth.
Human life provides such opportunities for you to move forward. That movement is marked by the choices you make. They are the indicators that determine the specific directions that you take. With prayer, your lives continue on the path that is most beneficial. With prayer, you are as you should be and you are where you should be. Without prayer, you are heading off into the sea without a compass, and it is not long before you have little sense of where you are and where you should be headed. Your compass in life, just as your compass in such projects, is prayer.
Continue to pray for vision, continue to pray for insight—Insight as to where you are and where you should be headed. Pray for flexibility that when you know where you should be heading, you have the wisdom to take that step. It is not an act of courage; it is an act of wisdom. Your prayer provides the foundation for faith, for with prayer you have every reason to be faithful about the outcome. With prayer you are certain that you are where you should be and you are heading where you should head. Let your lives be governed, therefore, by prayer just as the captain makes decisions about the ship riding the seas based on information of a compass, of knowing where one is and where one is to go.
We wish each of you would rely more heavily on prayer, for it is the constant checking of the compass that allows you to refine and revise. Your lives are not lived by accident; they are lived through design. Your lives don’t just happen; they are given direction, they are given purpose, they are given character through prayer. When you pray, you are opening the cover of the compass. You are seeing what is being indicated. Without prayer, you can only hope. Faith is not the same as hope. Faith has conviction to it. Faith is a certainty in the outcome. It is not an assurance of preplanning each step.
Live your lives in the full knowledge that the outcome is assured. Open the lid of the compass and allow your lives to be governed, shaped, and directed daily through the openness of prayer. We reach you through your openness. It is your prayer for that openness that provides the clarity that exists between all of us.
Yes, everyone is equally blessed. Everyone has the blessing of prayer. All human beings can pray. All human beings have the capacity of being open to God. It is a great strength and it is a singular blessing that is shared by every human being.
We thank you for your prayers for our development. We pray for your development, for through our prayer, you are open. We are united through prayer.
Amen.