Human/Spiritual Interaction II

SAT., SEPT. 26, 1981, 5:32 AM
FARM, STUDY

Greetings, o son, at an earlier hour than you expected on My original Sabbath. There’s no point in your lolling in bed if you’re awake… and you were. You want to get on with this teaching, and you have much to do today, so let Us delay no longer.

We talked yesterday of a range of manifestations of these interactions among humans and spirit, and emphasized that this is not a continuum but more of a cumulative process. So Our first consideration today will be the number of different experiences any individual may have, this being one measure of spiritual growth. Then We shall consider the quality of each, which is another measure.

All human beings have some human interaction during life. This is day-to-day relations with people you know and people you do not… with people individually, in groups, and in institutions. This is the base of the concept We are developing because out of those purely human interchanges comes interaction with a spiritual quality. Your example of yesterday was a good one: you can have an emotional feeling for young children, but when you are cuddling a granddaughter, whose life is possible indirectly because of you there can be a spiritual bond. Real love has a spiritual quality that takes it beyond the mere emotion. Honor encourages you to do what you have promised or protect another from harm, even though the consequences to self may be undesirable, even destructive. This is human interaction with a spiritual quality, which can be added to or mixed in with the strictly human encounters.

Next month you shall go to a convention. At the base level you will be interacting with people by just moving aside, touching in an elevator, making eye contact… then a smile, an Hello. With some you have met before there will be exchanges of pleasantries. But then, in the midst of that human interacting, you will see someone with whom you share a spiritual relationship – Jack, Becky, Ann – and the interaction is one of a different quality. Usually this develops over time, but occasionally it is almost instantaneous. You may meet some folks through your poster session in which a brief encounter commences as human and ends as human-spiritual.

Then there is spirit in the non-human world around. You felt spirit as you watched the western sky after sunset last night. You feel a spiritual kinship with your little dog. There is a spirit to Central Union Church that goes beyond its beauty as a structure. Part of what you feel is a reflection of your own spirit, but part is spirit that inheres and that you discern. The Scriptures tell of holy places, both mountains and temples, for there I was. This still is true. This interaction of human with spirit in a place, object, or animal does not develop, necessarily, from that with humans. It just is of a different nature, and can be added to the human/human experience.