Be loved or be loving.

You are given gifts which endow your life with meaning. You may choose to use those gifts or to ignore them. The choice is yours, but the gift is there. In a manner of speaking, God’s gift to the eternal part of you is the potential for love. God is trying to shape your sense of direction so that you may choose continually to exercise your potential for love. All therefore are equal because of that spark: the spark of the divine which is the potential for love. Everything else is a result of that. All knowledge and all feelings are a response to the potential for love.

You may find it difficult to relate your perceptions of knowledge to the potential for love. It is a difficult connection to make. Even one whose knowledge is limited in a formal sense, in a very human sense still has the need to be loved. It is God’s desire that eventually the need to be loved is elevated to a need to be loving. That is the knowledge referred to—the basic needs for loving.

When one is consumed by the need to be loved, one’s life becomes self-serving. One surrounds oneself with all that is needed to obtain praise and recognition. That lifestyle is a matter of choice and has many expressions. If one is consumed by the honest desire to be loving, activities will be engaged in which serve to bring meaning to life through service to others. The difference in character between these two orientations of life is obvious, but they are centered on one’s development of knowledge, centered first of all on an orientation around love. That center, that central orientation, is from the soul. It is you who choose to respond to the potential for love. It is not your soul. But it is your recognition of the importance of your soul which helps you govern your own life in a more meaningful fashion.

The choices that you make, therefore, directly influence the nature of your soul’s development. If you choose to ignore the potential for love, your soul’s development upon completion of your earthly lives will be greatly diminished. There will be much more that your soul shall need before progressing further. God allows your soul, in such conditions, a long period of rest and reflection, and frequently a decision is made to reincarnate.