This morning you’ve been speaking about the reality of your family growing up, and I want to make a point in regard to what you have said.

It is through your experience as parents to your children that you can come to know who I am. It’s funny, H [husband], you were a so-called minister or preacher for many years, and maybe you learned something about My experience through that profession. But isn’t it true that in your roll as parents, you have many more intense and powerful opportunities to learn My own heart than as a minister or a counselor?

Would you say that’s true, W [wife]? Relationships with the people you counsel or those to whom you minister are definitely not as intense, as confronting, or as challenging as your relationship with your children. That relationship is very, very close; they are flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone, spirit of your spirit. And that’s why everything they do and say has far more impact than someone from down the street who comes to you for help. In your relation-ship with your children, you will learn a lot about My relationship with you.

One point that you brought up this morning, W, was very important. You said that while your growing children begin to face the reality of the outer world beyond your home, they sometimes face disillusionment, and they feel, "Wait a minute, this wasn’t supposed to happen; I thought that things would be different." But you as parents may feel that you’re happy to see them awakening to the reality around them. And even if that reality is not good and jolts them like a shock, still you recognize as parents that that shock can help them get more in touch with what they need to bring forth from themselves in order to deal with that reality.

In every human being there is a part that wants to go back to the comfort of that first baby blanket. You remember how one of your sons loved his blanket so much. Well, as you’ll notice, many little children have a security blanket, and it’s something that covers them at night to protect them, perhaps from the monsters or the cold in the room. It may get dirty and even foul smelling, but they hold on to it because it has that meaning of security; it gives them something. And yet as a child grows up and abandons that blanket externally, there still is a need for security and the home becomes, in a sense, a blanket -- especially if it has been a comfortable and loving home.

As parents, you know that the children are going to have to face that moment when they will discover that the world at large is not as loving as Mom and Dad, that the world at large will not cook them a nice chicken dinner on Sunday afternoon. The world at large, in some sense, doesn’t even seem to care whether they succeed or fail, whether they are happy or unhappy, whether their lives are fulfilled or not. They’ll find many people who are wrapped up in their own struggles, who don’t have any time to sit down with them and say, "Can I help you?" No. As I said before, not every home is like yours, especially in today’s modern world. Some homes are very cruel and cold places, and it’s as if the babies were already thrust into a cold world. I have seen, however, in your case and many others, that there are still homes that are filled with a wonderful atmosphere of love and familyship.

Coming back to My point: As parents, you almost feel a sense of joy to see the children challenged and confronted at times. You know they will have to dig more deeply within themselves to bring out the maturity needed to accept and deal with those conditions beyond your home. Though perhaps inconvenient, those conditions will make them grow, and you know that it’s good for them. And so in the circumstances you have discussed this morning, W, you feel a great deal of emotion, knowing that in one way, it’s not going to be easy, but, in another way, it’s going to be good. You don’t want to see your children just seeking for the comfort of home and trying to rearrange the world so the world will be like a big home.

Well, this is the same way I look at you. This is how I feel as I see you having to face, in your lives, those situations that are uncomfortable, or confronting, or even desperate. I know that those situations will bring you more and more to the point where you have to bring out your real self in order to meet and deal with your challenges. In bringing out that real self, sooner or later you come closer to Me, because the place within yourself that truly is the seed of your being, is the place where I dwell. As you get in touch with that part of yourself, you come closer and closer to being in touch with Me.

Do you recognize that sometimes I have to wait until a person is eighty or eighty-five years old for them to touch that moment? And it may be on their deathbed, when they are in the throes of a debilitating sickness, that they open their eyes and recognize what I would have wanted them to have seen years and years before when they were young. Still I have to say that, in that moment, I am overjoyed to see them pick up that seed and recognize that that, indeed, is the source of their life.

Of course, it doesn’t always mean that then people come into a wonderful religious relationship with Me. They may not even think of Me in that moment. But they may simply awaken to their own true self and what will truly bring them joy. Then, sometime later on in the spiritual realm as they continue to pursue that true path, they will come to know Me, and there will be a place where we can commune fully, deeply.

Again I want to say to you that when I speak of people coming to know Me, it is never intended to mean on a level of power or like a kingship where this subject of mine in My Kingdom didn’t know Me yet, didn’t recognize My authority, so I’m waiting for him to do that. No. This is a matter of the heart. And in the realm of the heart, it’s that knowledge of one another between two beings that gives life its ultimate meaning, because within it is the knowledge of the whole, truly the knowledge of the entire creation. Self-knowledge does not end with the self. True self-knowledge puts you in contact with the entire creation, with all those around you and, ultimately, with the Source of the creation -- and that’s Me. And in that moment I am infinitely happy, as you are, and as is the creation.

That’s why the Bible contains the parable of the shepherd who goes out to find the one lost sheep, even though the other ninety-nine are in the pen and are safe. He searches to find even one lost sheep, because that moment of coming together is a moment of infinite joy for the shepherd as well as the sheep. In that coming together lies the key to the Kingdom, and not merely an outer joy at finding someone who was lost but the powerful inner joy of reunion.

Now I want to say to you that human society has formed a parallel for allowing people to strive toward that fulfillment we’ve just spoken about. But this parallel is a very dim and poor reflection of the means toward true fulfillment. For example, in your prosperous United States, when a person leaves home, there are colleges and universities to help him get the education he needs in order to obtain financial security.

Meaningful friendships and social organizations offer fulfillment in terms of the larger social or community family. People today are very aware of that. Furthermore, there are churches and other organizations that have been formed to provide spiritual fellowship for individuals and, ostensibly, put them in touch with their spiritual roots. But again I say to you that in terms of fulfilling the individual on the deepest level, these fall very far short. And that is why these things alone will not ultimately satisfy a person. They will not even satisfy a person who is simply trying to recreate, on a larger level, the comfort, let’s say, of that nice home they came out of.

If you see your kids go out and make good money, have comfortable friendships and relationships, and take their home experience with them into the outer world, yet somehow never awaken in a deeper sense, you can’t feel totally comfortable as parents. In this same sense, as I look at you and long for your fulfillment, it’s not enough to see you simply being able to pay the bills, earning enough money to be financially comfortable, and being involved with a church or spiritual organization that makes you happy because you practice this or that belief.

For Me it’s not enough. It’s not enough, because the Kingdom requires a very direct, direct, DIRECT relationship between you and Me. It means that you must ultimately go to the point in yourself that is beyond the desire for spiritual or material comfort alone. You must find that point, that extremity within yourself and your experience where comfort and security don’t matter anymore, because your singular desire is to connect absolutely with Me and with your own true self. Once you reach that point and open to the realm beyond it, you will have found the doorway to the place of <true> fulfillment, your own true home within. There will always be a light burning in the window there for you, to guide your way back to that inner home whenever you wish.

Now in your case, the two of you were put in a position in which you certainly had no comfort. Four and a half years ago, W, you were the last person in the world I could think of as comfortable. You were in an extremely, <extremely> uncomfortable situation and state of affairs. Physically you had no idea what the future would bring. And you had no money except those donations that were given to you.

Several months before, everything was going nicely. You had your plans made for your family to move to your hometown. You had a financial plan. You had a nice family atmosphere. Everything was going fine, and you would think, "God must be very happy to see us making this progress." But you know what? You weren’t in touch with Me. And, therefore, after the accident, everything was completely turned upside down.

It’s like all your suitcases were emptied out on the highway, the suitcases that you had prepared for going back to your hometown. All your money was blown away to the winds. Your spiritual comfort was totally upended to the point where you had nothing, and you were just sitting by the side of the road watching all of these things blow away. In addition, W, you were racked with pain. And so the two of you cried out, "FAaaaaTHERrrrrr!" And then, in those nights of prayer and desperation after your world had been turned upside down, that was when we came to know each other.

That’s why I say to you as your Divine Parent, as the parent of your lives, I am not happy to see a person, a family, a people, a nation, or a world that just gets comfortable and makes its own comfort on its own terms.

Unfortunately, with the human Fall long ago in the beginning of history, you lost My terms for your lives. You lost the relationship and the connection with Me. And no matter what you build on that foundation, it will not stand if the connection is not there. Finally you will have to come back to make the connection. That is the only thing that will truly fulfill you, and it is the only thing that will truly fulfill us together.

Just like you before the accident, many other people mistakenly see their comfortable lives as a sign that they must be on the right track in relation to Me. But they feel abandoned by Me when suddenly everything is turned upside down. They feel it was a cruel joke, and they don’t even want to face Me anymore. They want to say, "There is no God. God is cruel. This is a joke. Everything was going fine and now everything is destroyed."

And yet I tell you, that moment [tearfully] could be the moment of their greatest step forward, where they can truly see that everything they made, all the security, all the satisfaction that had been there a moment before was of <their> creation and was not of our creation together. And so I’m brokenhearted when I see someone walk away from Me just because he couldn’t have what he wanted. I’m not angry at him, and I feel the greatest desire for him to have everything he could ever want, but I want that to come to him on the true foundation of our relationship. That is point one.

There have been many religions in history that, collectively, have built great spiritual empires, but which, from the top on down, did not come to that moment with Me. They may have even tasted that experience of having their world turned upside down with chaos and the destruction of everything they thought was good. But then, instead of allowing that experience to be the tide rushing them onto the shores of a deeper encounter with Me, they just withdrew into themselves, and their fortunes began to dissipate.

I tell you, though, in that moment of chaos or destruction or whatever, some will reach out, and they will truly find that inner Source in themselves that all of their experience with religion never brought them, all of their experience in life never brought them. And in that moment I, too, am happy. Even if all the temples are destroyed, all the altars are smashed, all the gold is stolen, and all the precious religious robes are burned, still that moment of our coming together in a real and authentic way is so sweet to taste.

Even sitting in the middle of a swamp with no temple, no religious robe, no gold, no altar, nothing -- THAT IS THE MOMENT I’M WAITING FOR! And that moment, once it is there, can never be burned, can never be stolen from you. It is not a temple that can be destroyed by war or smashed by thieves. It becomes the beginning of a whole new life. And that is the source point of the Kingdom.

I know that among many who are reading these talks there is a question: "How can I come to that moment? Do I have to have a terrible tragic accident or chaos and destruction in my life to come to that moment?" No, it’s not necessary. What it does take is a necessary time of seeing and honestly, honestly, HONESTLY questioning.

Are you really happy where you stand with what you have? In terms of your relationships? In terms of your material and spiritual life? You have to be deadly honest, truly honest. And if you will be honest, sit down and really call out for Me. I am here. I come from nowhere else. I have always been right here. But so many of you are trying to build a comfortable and good life on your terms, even in your spiritual life. You’re trying to make something that is of your production but is not of our production, because you are not starting from that most basic point of our own true relationship together.

As I said at the beginning of this talk, you, who are parents, long for those moments when your children can awaken and start to realize what challenges they will have to face. You long to see them beginning to accept those challenges, not just yearning for comfort or surrounding themselves in physical, spiritual, or religious comfort zones, but really taking that time to be alone and face their challenges on a very deep internal level. I look at you in the same way.

That’s why, for Me, so many of the things that humanity has built are just vanity, empty vanity, and I don’t mind if the temples fall down. They may be beautifully made, lovely, but to Me they’re not the main point. The temples can fall down, the altars can rust, the gold can be stolen, but I continue to look very intensely at the life of each person and wait for that moment of encounter.

I cannot give you a formula for each and every person. This has to do with really encountering yourself, what you really want and what you honestly see as you look at your own life and the world around you -- the immediate world of your family, your spiritual life, your whole world that you live in. Honestly look at everything, and ask yourself if that is truly what brings you happiness.

It also takes a willingness to be insecure. Security is something all people search for, as I said, the security of home, that first blanket. Many people subconsciously carry that blanket around with them their whole lives, like Linus in the "Peanuts" cartoon. But I tell you, in the moment where you would encounter Me, you have to let go of that security. Again, I have to recall your own situation, H and W, when you had that severe accident.

It was a very insecure moment, when there was nothing to hold on to, and facing that insecurity meant you had to give up holding on to all those things that you learned how to hold on to for your own satisfaction. All those things were blown apart. That’s why I say it doesn’t bother Me if the temple burns down. It doesn’t bother Me if the gold is stolen or the altars are smashed, because all those things that you built to make yourselves secure are not the means to true security. That is why you will face a great insecurity, and yet it is the moment of your deliverance, because then you can find the real meaning of security.

And, again, it lies in our relationship, in our constant daily living communion. So that’s the moment I live for. And when a person has had a moment like that in their lives, it becomes a genesis point, a point of beginning. But, then again, the next day comes, and the next day comes, and you must allow yourself to be in the moment, day by day, without starting to build a temple around that first moment.

This, unfortunately, is what so many spiritual or religious movements have done with the lives of their founders. That wonderful moment of honesty with God that was the life of a great or inspired man or woman becomes the site where all of the followers build their temple, bring their gold, build the altars, and make robes for the elders. And the beauty of that moment is lost until such time as another person, whoever he may be, someone from among that group, suddenly realizes that this is wrong. Or perhaps someone else has his own encounter with Me, a tremendously transforming moment, and then it all begins again.

The key is how that moment can go on day by day by day. You don’t have to build a temple around that moment. Let it go, because the moments come by the millions every day, don’t they? You don’t have to build an altar to one moment; that is idolatry. If you want to condemn the so-called savages or ancient people for having idols, I tell you in this sophisticated world there is so much idolatry. In your own religious organizations, you have fallen into that as well.

I will leave you with this, this morning, and I encourage you to stay closely with your children this year -- it’s an important year for all of them -- and to be there for them. As you said, W, it’s not easy to share your heart with them if they’re not ready for that. As you know, too, we could not really share our hearts together until you were ready. Sometimes the moment when they become ready is a very upsetting moment indeed, but you need to be there for them. So learn from our experience together when you look at them.