Unconditional love is the goal.
March 23, 1986
God joins all of your souls together bonded as they are with God’s light.
When you meet together like this for a brief moment, you are not really separate souls. You are one soul, for you are joined together in a common spiritual bond. Joined together you have the potential for creating wider circles of peace and love. On occasions past, you have seen examples where you have served together and you have felt a magnificent sense of unity—a feeling of common mutual concern, mutual love, mutual acceptance. Unfortunately, such experiences are never permanent, but they serve to underscore the reality of what it means to be truly united. Your lives are different from one another, but you come together with a common goal. Sometimes the feeling of unity is more intense than at other times. God’s bonding of one to another remains consistent, but it is up to each of you to decide whether or not to accept that bonding when it occurs.
The power of love is the essential ingredient for this joining of all of your souls. How wonderful it would be if you would respond to all others in such a nonjudgmental accepting way, for there is much good that could come from that! The benefits which you derive from being together like this can be achieved when only two are together, whether they are spouses, friends, colleagues, associates, adversaries. When two souls are joined in a mutual effort, the possibility of being a successful channel for the working of God is enhanced.
You may come across individuals daily to whom you feel at great odds and cannot effectively work together, but at such times it does not mean that God is somehow vacant and that you are left alone. You must always remember that you individually, and all others, all others, are divine. The criminal is divine just as much as anyone else. We have spoken at some length about this spark of divinity which all human beings share. But it bears repeating for emphasis because it is easy to forget the common relationship.
You are asked by us constantly to reach out, to find ways of serving others, of acting out what you truly believe within. But in truth, too often you fail to act as you believe. You must feel peace certainly to give it. You must feel love to give it, that you know. But it also takes faith to give. Without faith one cannot act upon what has been learned.
As an example, one of you related the desire to share what she believes with the group. The will is there, the desire to share, the knowledge is there—that which she believes—but in order to be successful in meeting her objectives, she must act her faith —faith that she is an instrument of God, faith that what she knows is the truth, and faith to accept the reactions from those who listen as indications of their present spiritual development.
Faith becomes essential in acting out what is believed. By emphasizing the need for faith in putting your belief into action, it is not presumed that such a faith is a blind faith – that whatever will be, will be and that whatever happens has no effect on the doer. Certainly, whatever happens has an effect. But faith is essentially the conviction of the presence of God in the effort being expended. If you have faith in God’s presence, if you believe that what you do is done in God’s view, that does not mean that one cannot fail, if by success or failure one views a measure of agreement or disagreement with objectives. You cannot fail if you recognize that God’s presence is constant. What is there to lose? What is really the risk? In what way would you be less after the act than before? In each case nothing is lost. You are not any less than you were.
You are learning to exercise your beliefs with a conviction of God’s presence, whatever the outcome. In the end the outcome is not so important. It is the growth which has taken place because you have acted with the faith of God’s presence. That is what is really important. The effects of your actions may be more intense—as a result of your having risked, of your having acted through faith—than the specific objective that you had in mind. When you are faced with a dilemma, you must make decisions, be they of worldwide importance or personal significance. You must keep in mind the necessity of the presence of that faith and an honest understanding of what the results of your decision really are.
As you go through your human lives, it is characteristic for you generally to feel protective of yourself. It may be the need for physical security. Perhaps that protectiveness is one of image, how others view you. Perhaps that protectiveness is how you want to view yourself. But much of what is done is done or motivated by need for that protection and is therefore defensive. This can be such a shortsighted view of life. You have not been given human life to be defensive. You have been given human life to learn love. Love cannot be defensive. It cannot be self-protective. It can only be given, offered, and can be graciously received. But love is never offered defensively, for that is conditional. Love which is offered unconditionally is the ultimate goal.
Sometimes love may be offered consciously unconditionally, and that in itself can serve to increase a sense of self-respect, because one is doing it unconditionally. The self-conscious offering of love for whatever reason is not the objective of God. It is the natural outpouring, the unbridled urge to reach out to offer concern or forgiveness, support, encouragement. A spontaneous explosion of emotional giving selflessly is what is implied by unconditional love. That is the goal certainly. It is also natural not to achieve it very often. But when such a goal is reached, it is well to be remembered so that you may have the faith and confidence to again give and then give again and again.
Your lives are organized to try to touch others. You express that commitment often, but we encourage you not to just express it but to live it more often. We experience great joy when we see spontaneous love coming forth from each of you, for we feel at that moment, yes, you have learned, you have grown, your soul is developing, your life is indeed achieving its objective. But how often we observe those missed opportunities when such love was not offered, when such growth did not take place. In those times you have not failed, and we have not failed. We are merely more aware of the need to continue the focus of your minds on the real application of love daily.
If you feel it is not difficult to give love daily, try to find one way each day of enriching the life of another through love until you next meet again. Such an effort can be met of course through prayer, and that is certainly essential. But you are being challenged here to do something about the offering of love, not grudgingly but almost unconsciously, as spontaneously as possible. It takes effort. One does not just naturally give out love. You must look for opportunities. But try serving as a true hand of God in the days ahead, everyday. You will feel your lives will have more focus and you will sense perhaps a change in your daily priorities. Your lives will be more fulfilled. You will find greater peace.
You have been given much love in the past. You are each filled with the love that you have received. We ask only that you make a concerted effort to use what you have been given.
Our love for you is constant, for our love has been given to us by God, and God’s love is constant. Our love therefore is constant with God’s love. You are surrounded with God’s light. Your souls bathe in God’s love, and you are empowered to act out towards your fellow human beings as you have been given directly from God. We pray for your continued growth, for your renewed compassion, for your peace forever.
Amen.