Coming To The Spiritual

SAT., JAN. 31, 1998, 6:52 AM
FAR, STUDY

This has been another night of pain and little sleep. The pain was less than the night before, so take that as improvement. You were more accepting of the condition, and that helped the night to be less frustrating. Give the medication a few days to “work”. Meanwhile, expect healing and be as positive about the condition as possible… for it is a test of your spirit.

Spirit is your essence. It was “you” before you took bodily form. It is the “you” that will not only survive your bodily death, but will be thus freed from the restrictions of this life. Your general cultural perception of death is quite inaccurate. It sees bodily life as good (which is fine), but is so uncertain about what comes after bodily death that there is an unhealthy tendency to “hang on” to life, no matter what its circumstances. (Yes, the sun of another clear, winter day!)

As your essence spirit can grow and develop when it is embodied, but some testing is necessary, as a measure of any kind of growth. But if there can be growth, there also can be little to no growth or even regression from the state of development with which you begin this earth journey. And, of course, you are not all born equal.

Pain and disability, as I have told you on several occasions, are always tests of spirit, whether I cause these or just allow them to occur as part of natural processes. You have to admit you’ve had few of these, but this one is a “good one”, as tests go.

But My theme is meant to be a help for the presentation to the folks at the Methodist Church tomorrow morning. Naturally I heard your preliminary attempt to translate your notes into spoken words, and so I have some suggestions. Do begin with some of your own history, but be sure and identify your non-dramatic but real born-again experience in 1959 at the Menlo Park Church. That made your faith more “real”, and, I now tell you, this was mutual… you became more “real” to Me.

It was a rather gentle “call” to bring your personal life and its perceptions into active relationship with your professional life, already well begun. You began to see health in a much “larger” way… first, the ecological perspective, coming to see the earth and all of its forms of life as My natural creation. Humans were the last form of life to “be created”, and the last shall be first. But then, when you are first spiritually you are called on to “become last”… to be a cooperative part of ongoing creation, not the domineering, selfish “first”.

It took about 20 years for you to develop this perspective, including the spiritual as an increasingly important dimension. It was an holistic view, and I was leading you to it. Yet it was important for you to be well established and recognized in your field before you began to be an advocate of the spiritual as a dimension… and now the essence… of health.

As Holy Spirit I can work when, where, how, and with whom I choose. I needn’t be democratic or “fair”. As Jesus I chose disciples. Why these? After My bodily death I chose Paul to be the one to begin the organization of My Body, the Church. None of these “deserved” to be chosen, over others who were not. You did not “deserve” to be born, yet again, to this closer teacher-student, friend to friend relationship. All you had to do was respond and then be faithful to the calling. We are now in our 19th year, and you’ve learned quite a lot, and it is in a form that can be shared with others.