The Crunch

TUES., OCT. 18, 1983, 5:31 AM
FARM, STUDY

All is well with you now, o son, in matters financial. You have achieved a modicum of security, and you have no major bills unpaid (though you know that Lenore’s business has such). This could be the beginning of a “golden age” for you, where even your customary frugalities would not be necessary. Or it could be that calm before the storm… or that peaceful eye of the hurricane… a temporary respite from buffeting.

You remember that I do not come to you with guaranteed prophetic messages. These Teachings do not, generally, tell what the future will be, specifically. This is no exception. It shall not tell you when and exactly how extensive an economic crunch will come and be, but it will offer some insights on a state of the world which deserves the title “the crunch”. I do not speak as an economist. I remain the Holy Spirit, with a view of the entire phenomenon of life which you cannot even approximate. First and foremost I am interested in spiritual growth, and this can occur in a great variety of social and economic conditions.

In your life you never have been rich, but you also have never experienced being without income and the poverty that develops therefrom. You have been part of the comfortable American middle class, and you realize, as few of those like you do, that this makes you part of an “elite”, when you consider all of those alive and functioning in the world today. You don’t feel rich and affluent, but you know you are, in world terms. During most of your married life you have felt “strapped”, but you know that your poverty has been averted by the money you have been able to earn, along with what I have provided for you in a variety of ways.

A crunch is imminent, partly because of resources that have been utilized for military weapons and for luxuries of various kinds and partly because there has been an attempt to help countries with much poverty. Attempts to help are not always immediately successful… may even appear to produce disaster. But I tell you that, in spiritual terms, every attempt at help for the poor is rewarded. Every willingness to give, what could provide for your own extra comfort, to those in true need comes back to you in spiritual wealth. You accept this intellectually, but you rarely feel and act as though it were eternal truth.

If the crunch takes away your income and assets you shall have a maximum test of spirit. To be in real need at a time when you expected relative comfort… this would be a mighty test. Consider it and its consequences. Be realistic about your feelings. Consider a wide range of actions, those for which you are prepared, and those for which you are not.

If the crunch bypasses you directly, leaving you still working and earning… still being paid something you would have the other dilemmas of how much to spend on self and how much to provide to others… and who should these others be. That all would be a hard and persistent spiritual test.

Loss of life there would be, an unfortunate necessity. On this theme I repeat My admonition that you must help avert death in individual cases, and mourn the deaths of those who have not had a long or fair chance at life, but know that deaths must come in order that the earth might continue as a place for life incarnate. Death is a passing on to other opportunities. Any period of life in the earth is worthwhile. Everyone shall not have long life and serenity of being.