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Introduction - A Friendly Universe

You are the spiritual light that cannot fail.

- Emma Curtis Hopkins

As a licensed spiritual counselor, I often get a quizzical response on the rare occasion I choose to explain what I do, when meeting a stranger at a party. “Oh,” one person commented, “I guess Oprah made Spirit popular!” It amuses and saddens me as I acknowledge that despite the proliferation of religions in the world, our everyday reality is most often kept separate from what is considered sacred. It seems the pendulum has swung from blind faith to scientific thinking. To think that logic and rational thought are preferable to religious beliefs is very understandable when we look at the violence that has and still does result from religious fanaticism. But there is a middle ground.

Between measurable facts and organized religion is a very real living Spirit. We recognize this as a force that expresses itself diversely and to varying degrees through each and every living thing. When I speak of my ninety one-year-old mother, I say her spirit is strong even as her body is failing. Spirit is the life force unchanged, despite age or infirmity. Spirit essence can never be lost, damaged, diminished or destroyed. Inventiveness, hope, joy, love, abundance and creativity are to name but a few of its enduring qualities. What Spirit is, we are. Spirit is expansive, but given our free will we have the freedom to constrict its expression through us or to allow it to flow freely and enhance our life experience.

We know we are in the flow of this living Spirit when we feel generous and enthusiastic, or we feel centered and at peace. We sense all manner of possibilities. We also know when we are hindering this source energy if we feel stuck, fearful, critical, resentful or angry.

Available equally to all, Spirit is used differently by each according to his/her beliefs. One person believes the only way he can have wealth is to steal: his view of life is one of scarcity and lack. Another believes she can be wealthy by putting her heart and soul into her work, and she puts love into every math lesson she teaches. Her world is one of satisfaction and purpose. Beliefs have the power to shape our individual realities.

So what about when bad things happen? It is my belief that nothing that happens in our lives is a mistake. We may view events negatively or as disruptions to how we imagined our lives should be progressing, but from the perspective of the soul, things look very different. Unwelcome events can cause us to seek answers, to soul search. It is never a mistake to seek to know who we truly are, who we have always been and always will be, beyond the vehicle of the body. We seek to know what is most real about us.

Mother Teresa saw from the perspective of soul: beyond appearances, beyond ideas of earned value, beyond judgment. In Spirit we are all precious and deserving. In Spirit we are magnificent, whole, and perfect as we are and where we are. If we have work to do, it is to cut away all that says otherwise in our own minds. The beliefs we consciously and unconsciously accept and nurture in a world focused on achievement, wealth, comparison and materialism have limited our ideas of ourselves.

If we can accept the constancy of change in the external circumstances of our lives and sit quietly as the witness, the detached observer, we move closer to communing with the presence of the changeless within us. The moment we choose to do this– not resisting the less pleasant aspects of life and even the mundane everyday chores–it transforms our experience. Allowing things to be as they are, the struggle ceases and we find peace: peace with our lives, with ourselves and peace with the world. Being in the world but not of it, we are now a clearer channel for the Spirit to express itself and to do through us what is ours to do.

So if we are open to it, we can hear Spirit talking to us through every stick and stone and creature, every person, circumstance or task. It is talking to us of wisdom when the trees shed their leaves to survive the cold of winter. Our good friends confirm that we are supported and loved, and make it easy for us to be our best selves. Difficult relationships ask us to grow in love, patience, and understanding. The dawn is Spirit’s reassurance of hope, and the sunset its blanket of rest. Our world is a daily miracle and so are we.

Albert Einstein believed that the most important choice we will ever make is whether we live in a friendly universe or not. The majority of the contributors to this book believe in a supportive, wise presence as the source of all life and that it is always available for conversation, willing to comfort and guide. Inviting the wisdom of Spirit into their living room, their car, their workplace, the belief is, wherever I am, God is. And God, or the Living Spirit, is always an aspect of love. Their faith is constant, active and real, not just practiced inside a church, mosque, or synagogue on a given day. It is not limited by the way the world thinks. It is a connection in consciousness that some choose not to define. In every case it is something personal and mysterious and sacred.

As you read, listen and soften as Spirit speaks to you through these very pages.

I hope whatever your chosen path that you know that you are unique, precious and loved, that you are more powerful than you know, and that you are never alone. You are here for a reason and the world is a better place for it.

The Spirit in me recognizes the Spirit in you,

Joan Doyle