1-21. People have Souls. Material things do not. Do not cherish material things, as they cannot cherish you back.
The lure of illusionary satisfaction that is generally perceived to accompany the ever increasing desire for possession of material objects is without limit. It is very commonly believed that the acquisition of any particular material item will inevitably lead to an increase in joy or happiness on the part of the possessor. This is based on an error of perception. The item possessed does not have the power or ability to actually increase the happiness of its owner. Rather it is the experience of the acquisition and the subsequent beliefs that accompany the new state of ownership that give rise to feelings of completion or value in the mind of the possessor. You may believe that you wish to have things. You may believe that when you are able to add any particular item to your possessions, you have in some way gained something that has inherent value. But in truth, you have not. It is not the item that you actually cherish. It is the act of its acquisition and the subsequent belief system that you utilize that temporarily increases your general sense of worthiness and value. It is a paradoxical proposition to posit that having any particular conglomeration of atoms arranged in a specific pattern will somehow have the ability to influence your mental state, which is forever intangible and utterly immaterial. But when you finally achieve your goal of buying that shiny new “thing” that you’ve coveted for any particular amount of time, a process of belief is set in motion, one that generally involves the supposition that because you were able to buy or otherwise acquire that “thing” then you must be in some way worthy of being in possession of it. As so many minds are nearly intractably obsessed with deeply held beliefs of unworthiness and insufficiency, it is not difficult to imagine how the gaining of a new possession might temporarily work to counteract the ego’s constant narrative of fear, one that consistently and nearly constantly seeks to diminish and even eliminate any ideas that arise that might run counter to its self-justifying but utterly illusionary story. Because the ego’s imaginary life is fully dependent on lying to you, you can be certain of but one aspect of all the ego will forever hold forth as being true. The ego will never accept that you can ever be worthy of Love in any form. The ego believes you to be unworthy of true happiness, joy or peace as it knows nothing of these concepts. They are as unreal to the ego as the ego is unreal to Truth. You do not need anything. You do not have requirements within this material world. You can be at Peace, fully cognizant of your permanent connection to all that ever was, is now or will ever be, at any and all moments while you are incarnate in a physical body. Your mind transcends all of these limits. Nothing prevents the Peace of God from being remembered by you in every fragmentary instant of time. But to the ego, these concepts are anathema. They cannot be considered by the ego, not accepted, not even given a momentary consideration for within their simple Truths are the ego’s permanent undoing. Being so utterly and permanently unwilling to accept Truth in any form, the ego forever looks outwards, demanding more and more, requesting ever increasing sacrifices to feed its hollow core, detesting all that might reveal its nature as being the illusionary and baseless idea that it is. So the ego demands, constantly requesting, momentarily feeling sated at the acquisition of yet another possession, only to find itself hungry once more, demanding more experiences of gain in a feeble attempt to fill a void that it created by itself. Matter is but matter. Useful, yes. Valuable in its utility, certainly. But possessed of intrinsic value? Eternal beauty? Unlimited possibility? Absolutely not, not now and never will any material item be able to fulfill such a role in your life or in the life of any other person. The growth, change and expansion that you truly do seek is not of this world of form and function. It is part of a much grander scheme of re-harmonization, a process spanning all of time itself and extending far beyond its limits, functionally infinite in its scope as within its completion comes the end of time itself. What you truly desire is not aggregations of atoms but rather the all-consuming Joy of Experiencing the Truth of Love. These Experiences occur within your mind but they are not ruled by physical matter. They are Experiences of the Soul, transformations of consciousness to ever higher levels of alignment with all that is Real, a great shedding of misperceptions and a remembering of the universal connection that you share with all that lives, and in its final culmination, with Life Itself. Other Souls can assist in a great many ways with your personal journey back to a state of fully complacent acceptance of all that is forever Real. Other Souls can function as guides, signposts, pathways, companions and allies as you walk your own Path back to God. Because they are forever connected to you, and you to them, you are not complete without them. In this, their infinite value and necessity, you can take great comfort and you should rejoice in their existence. They are all necessary, just as you are equally and infinitely necessary. Each and every Soul has a Path. Each Path is a journey that they must take in their own time and in their own way, so that they might remember that which they forgot before time dawned in this material universe. Cherish them for this journey, this fantastic process of unfolding and expansion, this immeasurably important pattern of Awakening to the Truth of Love. You cannot be separate from them. Bodies are not barriers. All minds share a connection within their deepest recesses that cannot be severed or changed by any Soul. God is the framework that forever joins, supports and Unites all that lives, now and forever. Those Souls with the most to offer to you will arrive in your life at the time that is most appropriate for them to be known to you. You do not need to know why. It is not necessary for you to be given all of the steps you are to take in advance, so that you might plan your route accordingly. Just have Faith. Know that you cannot fail. It is not possible to be separate from God, for God is Life, eternally. So many other Souls have great need of what you can teach them. You have great need of what they can teach you. In this chain of connection, this permanent fabric of healing that we all weave together, the only gifts that have any true value are constantly available for you to accept. All Souls are sanctified as you accept your immeasurable value both to God and to all that God has Created. Cherish your own unique value. Do not accept that you can be anything less that absolutely Perfect, just as you were Created. In this acceptance, you will find yourself arriving at a place in your mind from which it is impossible to regard another person as anything other than the perfectly Created being that they are. Their unwillingness to accept this Truth for themselves changes nothing. Accept it for them, until they are willing to know themselves as the perfect Child of God that they have always been.