Listening To Another

WEDNESDAY, APR. 5, 1989, 6:10 AM
FARM, STUDY

Yesterday’s professional time closed out with a long time of listening to another. This is not something you particularly like to do, but I have told you repeatedly that you must take those opportunities that come your way… you must listen when someone seeks your counsel. You need be no more of a counselor than your spirit directs. Your chances of doing harm are slight if you follow the leading of your spirit, linked to Mine.

Listening to another is one of the great privileges of earth life. There are many people who feel genuinely that they have problems that are burdens that hamper their functioning as full humans. Some of these actually have such problems, some of their own making and some actually forced upon them by circumstances. Others perceive problems that truly don’t exist, but such they do appear to these folk. I tell you to just follow your spirit in deciding what to say, however you discern your counselee to be.

All problems are ultimately matters of spirit. This is not to say that some circumstances are not truly threatening to a person’s well-being or even life. It is to say that any and all circumstances and happenings provide means for spiritual growth, particularly those that are threatening. Even the death of the body is just a happening for the spirit, of only more or less consequence for the continuing life of that spirit. In the view of life I urge upon you what some would call problems I call challenges and opportunities for your spirit.

And thus it ultimately is for each human, though the views and feelings about this vary tremendously. Only occasionally does the affirmation of this truth truly help in a counseling situation. There is some small potential for harm, good potential for not being helpful, and some small potential for being just what a troubled person needs to hear. The risk is not great, so I encourage you to be more lavish with such an affirmation.

You still are not particularly good at discerning who will respond positively to your spiritual “messages.” I tell you there are many more than you recognize, and yet I still accept your reticence to reveal this source of knowledge that I am to you. Yes, I do want you to remain a respected professional, so continue to be conservative of that reputation. And yet I say that you could be aware of many more who would be receptive to thoughts about spirit.

Yesterday Shelley indicated that she had listened to you and heard just an honest affirmation: I have a good life… and I am blessed. You then listened as she told of repeating that thought to herself. In listening to another you may hear that something you have said or done has been accepted as a wisdom pertinent to self. This can be rewarding, naturally, but can also be a good to your awareness and to your boldness in affirming that life is good, mainly because you accept the blessing I give to it.

Let Me remind you that you also had a balancing experience to this satisfying one of listening to another. You were making quite an animated, spirit-filled presentation, and a very obvious student slept through it all, taking not a note. The best that you could say was not sufficient to rouse him. You were not listened to. This, too, is a spiritual lesson. I would still have you continue in this Survival… course, for some in those great numbers do listen and do hear that spirit is a natural dimension of what you present as health. Focus on those who do hear rather than on those who do not.