Soul grows as you accept life.

Your soul does not need refreshment, but it responds to being strengthened. Your soul grows as it experiences love. Your soul grows as you demonstrate that love toward others. Your soul grows as you learn to accept life, to embrace and welcome it—all of it. That provides a new dimension for the soul, and it is for such experiences that your soul accompanies human life on its brief journey.

Your lives are given character and strength. They are given all the characteristics that you associate with a loving, forgiving, compassionate God through the experience of human life. When you are discouraged, fearful, or angry, when you feel alone even in the company of others, direct energies beyond you to encompass humanity, life, nature, and all that surrounds you.

It is akin to breathing. When you exhale, the lungs contract, and the natural reaction is to expand, to reach out. One cannot continually contract or withdraw, for life requires the balance of expansion, of reaching outward emotionally, spiritually, and physically. It is that alternating between contracting and expanding, contracting and expanding, that provides a healing balance.

You cannot continually reach out to all around you. It is essential to the cycle of life as it is to the process of breathing, but you must contract from time to time. One action provides a balance for the other. This is a characteristic of all human life. There is joy and celebration; there is fear and worry and sadness. Both are important. Both must be welcomed and given value. But throughout that process of expanding and contracting, all of it occurs within a bright light. None of it is in a permanent shadow.