The Joy Of Relationship

FRI., OCT. 12, 1984, 5:54 AM
WM. PENN, PITTSBURGH

This time of convention is nearly through, and, as expected, it has been a time of renewing and maintaining, even of commencing, relationships. Some of this has been strictly human interaction, but most has had a good spiritual dimension to it. You feel love and concern for many of these colleagues, mostly young, and this is a time for affirming and enhancing this love. Yesterday was a better day in terms of exchanging more important and more spirit-related observations with friends, but you just must prepare more consciously and conscientiously for the meeting next month.

Joy should be one of the products of relationship. In any social relationship that encourages a positive emotional response there should be some exchange of spirit. Each person is essentially spirit, of course, but this may be more or less developed… or more or less overshadowed and dominated by the physical, intellectual, and emotional dimensions that come with an earth incarnation. Any sort of relationship can be satisfying, but the ones that contain an exchange of spirit are those that can produce moments of joy.

Joy is the fullness of health, for a moment of joy is one in which all the aspects of your being are beautifully balanced by your spirit, and when this spirit is feeling a closeness to Me, even when it is not consciously recognized and affirmed. For the feeling of joy in relationship with other people is just a preview (and even a review) of relationship with Me and other spirits in the life everlasting. Other realms are realms of more joy, but relationships are one of the best means of experiencing that marvelous sense here in the earth.

No, the earth is a realm of limited joy. It is a realm of struggle, of challenge… a realm where spirit must grow in adversity. The earth is a realm where war is frequent, as one group seeks to dominate another. Though there are moments of joy even in the midst of war, there is much more misery and suffering. The potential for suffering increases with the power of modern weapons, and therefore there is a call for spirit to prevail and prevent the interchanges that could literally destroy this unique realm of being.

Your culture must have a complex economic structure, and the results, for most, are not frequently full of joy. If spirit were strong and dominate in all humans there would be no need for such a system, for there would simply be an unselfish exchange of goods and services, with a minimum of greed and selfish striving to have more. But here there is a need for it, and the joys of “economic life” are rather wide spaced. You, for instance, are paid well, and you have much, but your finances do not often bring forth feelings of joy. As you balance your checks for this month you shall feel more apprehension than joy.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to be conscious of ways in which money and relationship converge? You must spend money to be here, in order to have this renewal of relationship of which we speak this morning. Money has helped retain a relationship with Peter and Helen on La Gonave. What if you used the enhancement of relationship as your primary criterion for spending money? Would that make the economics of life more joyful. It would be a challenge to your spirit, certainly.