The brilliance of your soul.
July 2, 2001
God lifts each of you upward with the strength of spiritual light. If you close your eyes and open your souls, you will sense the brilliance that surrounds you. When you are most connected to the spiritual essence of all life, you will feel the warmth. You may very possibly see brilliance, feeling that you are in light. This is meant for all of you, for in the deepest stage of spiritual meditation, the presence of light is felt by so many. Your connection to God is not through darkness. There is a light which can be seen most clearly when the eyes are closed. This is not merely a metaphor.
We have mentioned on previous occasions that all have the capacity to be receptive to the presence of their own guides. How that presence is expressed varies from individual to individual, but you will be most successful if you try to reach a stage where you feel nearly weightless and as if you are under a great light. You may be aware of your surroundings but somehow your consciousness is removed to another plane. Many feel after such meditative experience, when they open their eyes, that they are heavier. The sense of floating stops and you are again firmly grounded. The experience of being open to the loving power that is already present is enhanced when you attempt to feel weightless, when you attempt to see the light.
It is, as you know, difficult to hear God’s calling when you are active or preoccupied. The same difficulty exists when your senses are preoccupied by your physical surroundings. You may find that placing yourself in a different surrounding than that with which you associate your daily activities provides you with the space which you need to be truly connected to the guidance from your guides. For some it is being in the presence of nature. For others it may be removing shoes, feeling the earth. Still for others it is simply being quiet and lying down. But each of you needs to find your own space that can be reserved for being especially receptive to God’s presence through the actions of your own guides.
You were instructed to find ways of supporting the world rather than accepting and expecting the world to be supportive of you. We would like to pursue that further at this time.
The world of which we speak is both physical and spiritual. You are the home for your soul. Your soul grows through the human experience as you render it. Your soul is not passive but it is enormously receptive. As a result, your means of interaction with the world around you in terms of physical growth has a very direct impact on the development of your spiritual self. The two are unmistakably and indelibly intertwined, one with the other.
What are your opportunities for supporting physical growth? Certainly they involve your supporting of the natural environment, but also included are your efforts in supporting other individuals, personally and in terms of the lives that they and you share.
You are essentially, each of you, centers of energy. You have the potential capacity to reach outward, to influence life around you. You can influence that life in a positive way or in a negative manner, but your influence is there. There is no one who passes through the experience of human life who has no impact on life around him or her. Some have a negative impact, others are a positive influence, but no one remains neutral. There is no one who is completely ignored. There is no one who has no relationship with another. Even considering certain religious practices that encourage isolation and thought, those individuals by their very presence and devotion to isolation and contemplation are influencing others. As a result, the energy center that is at the core of each of you is enormously powerful.
Of course there are times when you feel more energized and times when you feel there is nothing that you can give. The swings between these two extremes are natural and experienced by all. But at those times in your life when you feel fully spent and unable to give, you are still having an impact. If you are ill, the sense of peace that you can achieve in your illness has an enormously positive impact on others. You do not have to do in order to have an impact. Just being has its own impact because in being you are also exhibiting so many qualities: patience, faith, acceptance, peace, fear, joy, sadness. All of these and many other attributes are part of the interaction between you and the life around you.
How many times have you experienced a gathering that has a certain emotional tone to it which is abruptly changed when another enters? Even when there is no intention of changing the emotional energy, the tone, it can take place. You are all receptive to the presence of others. No one who is positive and loving is unaware of the presence of another individual who does not reflect those characteristics. By the same token, there is no one who is negative and resentful and bitter or discouraged or fearful who is not influenced by someone who brings with them positive energy. Each of you then is actually an active presence in the world, and it is precisely how that presence is committed that has a direct effect on the soul that lives within each of you.
You as human beings are greatly responsible for the growth of your soul. It is not simply that you benefit by the presence of your soul. The soul’s presence does not in itself control the character and quality of life experienced by a human being. Knowledge of the presence of that soul has enormous impact, but recognizing that presence of the spiritual core that is in each of you is something that you do, it is an opening that you create, it is the result of an attitude that you assume. It is not because it has been imposed upon you by the very presence of that spirit. You initiate the opening. The soul is there. If you choose to be open to the presence of your soul, your life will be influenced in a very positive manner. The result of that influence is the interaction that takes place between you and all that has been created that surrounds you, and that interaction has the ultimate effect on your soul’s development. It is why the soul occupies human form. There are lessons the soul can learn only when occupying humanity. Those lessons cannot be learned fully on the spiritual plane.
Your lives then are enhanced by your awareness of your own spiritual selves. They are not enhanced by the presence itself of the spirit. Of course there are countless instances in which a soul occupies a body that ceases any effort at openness. The soul grows nevertheless, but most incompletely. The greatest gift to the soul is the body’s awareness of it. Your lives therefore are enormously influential to the world around you. The bottom line, if you wish to call it that, is the soul’s growth, but the means of achieving that growth are through the interactions that you initiate to the world around you.
Your relationship to the nonhuman world is just as important. When you recognize the sacredness of stones, you cannot deny the beauty of another’s human life, for recognizing the sacredness of the stone requires your acknowledgment of the sacredness of absolutely all that has been created, of which you are aware. When you acknowledge that sacredness, you will automatically treat all that exists with respect. You respect the stones, you respect the weather, you respect the earth, you respect all animals, you respect minerals, you respect thought.
By thought we intend that you acknowledge the validity of the opinions of everyone. No one has an opinion that carries no validity. For the individual having that opinion, it is in itself valid. Were it not so, that opinion would not be held. You must respect individuals whose ideas are completely opposed to your own. You’re not asked to agree with those opinions, and certainly you can enter into dialog and have disagreements. But if you are to fully comprehend and enact the love of which we have spoken, you must be willing to acknowledge even the thoughts of others as being valid for those who hold those thoughts closely.
Being respectful of all others whose opinions may be opposed to yours is of course most difficult, and yet a logical continuation of the sense of respect and love for all that has been created. Acceptance of all others means that you are ultimately nonjudgmental of them. You may not agree with what others hold to be the truth, but you avoid judging them as fellow human beings. There is no justification for judgment. Punishment is aimed at behavior, at inappropriate actions, but one must make the distinction between punishing actions and not judging the value of another human being.
There is so much discussion in your society at this time about the value, the place of capital punishment. We must urge you to recognize that punishment may indeed be necessary, but no one has the right to determine who lives and who dies. That is a judgment on the value of life. That is not an evaluation of appropriateness of action. It is God who has given you life. It is not for you to remove that.
Life is as sacred as the stone, as the thought, as the mountains, as the smallest creature, as the rain, the sunshine. There is a natural cycle to life and death, but it must remain a natural cycle. The soul exists within the human form to learn from the human being. If the human being creates actions which must be punished, the soul learns through the actions of the human who is receiving the punishment. Ending that human’s life stops the learning of the soul.
There is much here for thought, but it is our hope that you understand more completely your opportunities, your responsibilities to the world, to supporting the world, to affirming the world, to respecting the world. You are filled with light, you are filled with compassion, you are filled with primordial love. Open yourselves so that you may draw upon that which is yours, and let your lives reflect that which has been so freely given to each of you by God.
We bless you with God’s light and we bless you with God’s total love.
Amen.