Good morning. Before I begin, I'd like to express My joy at your meeting last Sunday night with Mrs. [name], because it is such meetings as that that weave the world together like a beautiful fabric. It was not a meeting of the mind or a meeting to compare with one another in an outer sense. It was a meeting of the heart, of the heart that has opened and learned the importance and the vastness of the communication that you share with Me and that we share together. So when you came together you could just "melt," and, believe Me, if there weren't external time constraints, you could have gone on talking for ten years because the world of heart is limitless.

When that world has been opened by your experiences (and both of you have had profound experiences), then you don't want to say good-bye. And I don't either. When there is that kind of sharing, do you think I am watching the clock and wondering when it's going to be over? No. It's all too rare in the modern world that such sharing occurs and that I am truly included by way of your hearts, so I want to go nowhere. And that's the nature of the Kingdom that we've spoken of so many times, the nature where the passion to be with Me and with one another, and for Me to be with you, is so great that you never want it to end.

That is the power of the Kingdom. That is the eternality of the Kingdom. And that is the door that has yet to be opened on a large level in your world. You can get little glimpses of that Kingdom, almost like a child opening the door a crack on a Christmas morning to look at the beautiful tree with all the gifts underneath. There is no other place that is so magical for the child. And so for you, too, in experiences like that sharing with Mrs. [name], or in other cases you will experience, it's the same. So the question is how to bring everyone to see and experience that wonderful "Christmas room." The birth of Christ is ultimately to be celebrated each and every moment in each and every heart.

The first thing I would like to share with you is something more about prayer, in light of your meditation experience this past weekend. Prayer and meditation are said to be two different things, but from My point of view I beg to differ with that, though the form of prayer and meditation is different externally.

As people have been taught to pray in the West (in the popular notion of prayer), there is not a long preparation period or a step-by-step ritual for going into prayer. Many Western people bow their heads each day, perhaps at the beginning of the day or before a meal, and just express their words of prayer, their thanks and gratitude, their request for this or that help, and then finish.

But for those who have really plumbed the depth of prayer, because of oftentimes rich, deep, or even tragic personal experience where they have deeply needed to reach out to Me, then prayer becomes a far more precious thing. It is not any longer a tradition learned in church or just something that you've done from childhood, but it becomes a profound relationship.

It's like having known someone all your life--let's say your uncle--and you've visited with him many times because he lived down the street, and always the visits were: "How are you?" "Oh, everything's fine; how are you?" "How's your wife?" "She's fine. Would you like to stay for dinner?" And it's been going on like that for many years. But then one day you have something very tragic happen in your life, and there's no one to go to but your uncle. You go without that usual how-are-you attitude, and you're broken, crushed by your circumstance, and you knock on his door.

He opens it and immediately you find yourself in his arms, and he's holding you and crying tears with you. And suddenly you realize that all this time there's been a depth there that you never knew about. This uncle opens his life and his home to you. And suddenly you find that what you thought was a limited traditional relationship became something entirely different. You begin to see the depth of that uncle, and let us say that aunt also, and there's no condition in their hearts. They're not limited to serving you dinner as they always did, but they want to help you in every way they can. And you wonder, "Well, why didn't they do it before?" And the answer comes back, "You never expected it." Perhaps it was the state of your own heart and your expectation that had something to do with really discovering who they are. Do you understand Me?

So many people come to Me with limited expectations... I'm sorry; I cry because it's very painful to Me... they come to Me with very limited expectations, like that young person going to the uncle down the street, expecting to be fed dinner on Sunday afternoon and share as they always did, then say good-bye and walk out. And so you realize that you have many things to share. Speaking of Myself, I have many things to share, but that young person doesn't expect it. And as you know, in matters of the heart that uncle or Myself can't say, "Hey, stupid! Don't you realize how profoundly I want to share with you?"

Because that child, if he's not expecting it and if he only thinks of the good chicken dinner that Auntie prepares, well, that might only scare the child away. "Don't you know how deeply important our truly profound sharing is?" The child will wonder, "Oh, my gosh, what's going on here?" I tell you if I really opened My heart to many of the people who pray to Me out of their external traditions, they might think they had been attacked by the Devil and say, "Wait a minute. What's all that?" Isn't that a surprise?

And yet there comes a time in your life (and in many lives) when you are deeply in pain and seriously, seriously in need to share everything with Me. Too, I have been holding so much in My heart to share with you. And in that moment I am so happy, because whatever it took to get you there, however painful the experience, at least now we can share seriously, deeply. I can share seriously with you, not just on an intellectual level but truly let you know who you are and who I am.

And if we go now to the East and think about meditation--there is no different God in the East or in the Orient. In the West the treasure of having found the personal Divine Parents was first and most profoundly expressed by Jesus Christ--although there have been other expressions that are not so well known--and was a great gift. And this indeed, if anything, was what he was chosen to do, to bring that message to you so that your relationship with Me could open up fully. Unfortunately (and I don't want to go into this at length because it's not My purpose this morning), people tended to worship the messenger too much and forgot the message that is, ultimately, in each and every heart.

And so prayer in the mainstream had hardened into tradition, and now it's even written in the song books in the churches. Yet many times that true and deep encounter between you and Me is not understood by My children. You might think of Me as that sad uncle down the street who is just waiting for that moment, that knock, and that day when the child comes to the door in a very different state. That is the opportunity.

Now let us speak a bit about meditation. Last weekend you had a special experience in that realm of meditation. What made it special for you? W [wife] or H [husband], is there anything you want to say about that?

W says: "I feel it only partially. What made it special for me is that it affirmed who I am in Your life, and it helped me be in touch with that part of me that is not just ending with me but is going out to all human beings, all in the same situation. So I think it simply made me realize there is much more depth to it if I allow myself to seek it, discipline it, train it, and get there." H says: "For me the most important thing was coming to a place in myself of peace and calm beyond the jabbering of my mind, the intellectualizing or constant thinking that goes on oftentimes without control, to really coming to that place of meeting together with You in a very real sense and to encounter at the same time that truer self that I really am. But I have to say that the center of it was indeed that recognition and affirmation of the divinity within and that meeting place with You. For me that was the most important thing."

Yes, what you have said is true. Ultimately the very center of the meditation experience is that coming to the most silent and inner part of one's self and yet recognizing that it is not the silence of the graveyard or death--but we might say death of the ego, death of the outer self that you have learned in order to be in a world that is so unreal. In the West too many people don't even bother to go to that part of themselves before they open their mouths in traditional prayers. That's why in essence there aren't very many people who really enjoy prayer. The East has much to teach the West with regard to coming into that place of prayer.

When you go to the very holy place in the church--let us imagine that there is a special room in the church where something very special happened. Let's use our imaginations like you were urged to do last weekend in those meditation classes. Let's imagine that in that room many times there was the apparition of Christ, or people said they saw Me in that room many times. Well, if you are going to that room and you'd never been allowed to go there before, don't you think you'd feel something rather special?

You might want to change from your blue jeans into your suit, and you might be reflective before passing through that entrance to go in there. You might be in expectation that somehow maybe you, too, were going to experience something in there that was very special. And so the daily thoughts, all the concerns about groceries and trips here and there, and what you have to do tomorrow and the next day, those would all be passing away. Your mind would probably be more silent and with a deeper feeling of spiritual gravity as you approached that door. Well, let Me say that meditation is simply taking the steps to go to that room within yourself.

For those who have already discovered that room within themselves, it can be very simple. But for those who have not even come to the awareness of the existence of that room, then just closing the eyes and saying, "Heavenly Father" has very little meaning.

Remember I spoke to you several talks ago about how someone might make a list of things to do in a day, and number four on that list was "Meet with Heavenly Father." Qualitatively it's a very different thing from "Go to the grocery store" or "Pick up the children at school." But if you don't see that in the true light, then it becomes simply another thing on your list of things to do.

There is that meeting place within yourself, and the steps of meditation have been designed by enlightened souls to help you come to that special "garden" inside of yourself before you enter into that Divine communication. Before taking a shower you take off your clothing, don't you? Before you wash your body and cleanse yourself you have to remove your clothes. So it is with meditation: The steps into that garden, that place of communion with your own true self and with Me, are very much like taking off the daily clothes of the world that are full of stains and dust and so on. This is fully understood in the Orient, and I want to bring this understanding of the encounter with the Divine more and more into the West. There are religious people in the West who think that meditation is some kind of strange thing or something that these "Antichrist gurus" in the Orient do, and maybe it would be something like giving up your religious tradition if you tried to meditate.

This is the incredible ignorance to which so many people are limited. But I am conscious that in the West there is a great poverty of spirit, and part of that poverty of spirit is that people simply don't know how to enter into communion with Me. That is why I want to initiate deeply these classes that can show people clearly how to do this in a very systematic way. Yes. Not everybody is spiritually intuitive. Not everybody can find the path on their own. So in one way I want to teach it very simply, very clearly, and then when someone can finally come to that room, that garden within themselves, they will know how to make the journey day by day to that place. It's so very important.

You have a nation that is dying for lack of its own roots, and so many people in your country who have a religious mind are worried about the loss of their traditions. But I look at it in a different way. It is not merely a loss of traditions in the external sense that is killing modern culture. It is the loss of consciousness, the loss of consciousness of Me, loss of knowledge of how to find that garden within.

Tradition is one way that a people or a person can be kept together. But there is a need also for evolution. And with the loss of many of your old traditions and the throwing off of the religious framework, then even religious people or those who want to keep that framework must deeply reflect on what is truly needed.

Can you be certain that those traditions alone were enough? And what is the reason people are throwing those traditions away in modern culture? Well, you can say it's just evil or the Devil, but don't you see how in human history, even at times when those traditions were very strong, there was still much evil and oftentimes by the very people who professed those traditions? So when you speak about "the good old days" you have to be honest with yourselves. What I see is not a return to the old traditions, but truly a human spiritual evolution to come back to the very center of yourselves.

I told you I don't worry about the burning of temples, the loss of altars, or the stealing of the gold. But what I truly seek is the Divine moment of our communion. And that is the destiny that your nation has, that each of you has, that the world has. It's a slow and painful process because it's each person, one by one, as they awaken, just like the child coming to the uncle's door with a terrible emergency and then finding that the uncle is more than what they thought he was. And so as a person (or as a people) this kind of thing may have to happen for you to find Me (this Divine Uncle) in a new way.

I want to help you because the emergencies that lie ahead in the coming century in the world could be too devastating, far more than being shot with a gun as an individual, or being devastated in some way that brings you finally to our meeting point. If we talk about the decimation of whole populations of people and the migration of those devastated souls into the realm of spirit, this is not good news. For Me or for you. That is why prior to those kinds of serious tragedies I want to help those who are open, those who are ready, to be able to make those steps toward that communion with Me. And as more and more will find that garden within, then perhaps those serious situations can be averted. So once again I have to say: Those who have an eye to see, let them see. Those who have an ear to hear, let them hear. I am asking so many to go beyond and to really take steps beyond the traditions that they have learned.

I want to continue this talk in the coming week. I want to relate what I have said about conditionality and unconditionally. I'll give you a short preview now:

When people come to Me without truly taking the steps toward that true garden within themselves--for example, when people pray to Me with a concept that has been given them by their church or spiritual leadership but have not developed their own inner path--then they come to Me almost automatically with the idea of a very conditional God. They see Me through the filter of the conditions set by their own religious tradition or institution. Do you understand? And, therefore, their prayer is very limited.

But when someone has truly encountered Me in themselves through whatever situation, when they've come to that point and discovered Me as I truly am, even in a small part, they recognize an unconditional quality within Me and within themselves that will take them far beyond the institution. This is what all religious institutions should be, that "uncle," so to speak, who can take your hand in his own and try to help you take that inner path. But many religious institutions have failed to recognize themselves in that capacity and have rather become an end in themselves. Therefore, the path has a stone wall at the end, and there is no door.

Sometimes one has to break through that stone wall, and, of course, this is a very challenging thing that demands courage from those who would go beyond the blindness that has so often characterized religious institutions. Yet when you can do that, when you have broken through, then you will see a very different God, a very different Divine encounter. And prayer, meditation, whatever you call it, will take on a very different and also a vital meaning in your lives. Your lives will flow out of that meeting, rather than having a life where you just feel pressed to pray or pressed to communicate with Me. To pray out of guilt, out of fear of being sinful for not having done so, or simply out of the unconscious traditional sense of duty is not enough. That's no foundation for a really good relationship. As I said, that's why I look very conditional to you.

We're going to speak more about this in the coming week. I've already given you a sort of profile of what I want to say. We'll open up that world more fully, so please be ready. You don't have to wait a week. You can do this within another day or two if you like. That may be better because of your own memories and your own impression of what we've shared this morning.

Let's close for now.