THE GREATER WORLD CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALIST CHURCH

THE ZODIAC MESSAGES

"ISOLATION"

An address by the celestial messenger 'Zodiac' (the unnamed scribe of the Bible and a teacher in the Temple of Jerusalem at the time of Christ), through the mediumship of Miss Winifred Moyes in the earlier part of the twentieth century.

1. "OUR Father, look down upon Thy children gathered here tonight; and grant that they, by faith, may be able to step out of the world of sense into that vast range of the Spirit. Give to them all, the desire and the determination to extricate themselves from the things of the earth; and to pass over the threshold, out of the twilight into the Light, out of sorrow into joy, out of the hardness of the world into Thy wonderful enveloping Love.

2. "Saviour, in Thy Hands we leave everything that tortures the mind; that causes pain to the heart; and all that which tries, ever and ever again, to come in between Thy children and that perfect confidence which the spirit within has in its Father, in its Director - has in Thee - Lord God Almighty, Creator of all things that have been or shall be.

3. "Yet we come back to this: to the reliance on Thy understanding; to the promises that Thou hast made to restore, to lift us up, to recharge us with power; so that we may disregard the roughness of the road and go on our way, not only rejoicing but dragging others up as well.

4. "In the hearts and minds of each, this desire holds prior place; though indeed that which is of darkness would have them believe otherwise. So tonight, O Father, we ask that the Veil may be rent in twain; and that they may see themselves as they are - see the quest of the spirit, its enthusiasm and its determination to continue upward and onward for ever and for ever.

5. "We know that Thy Love is here; we know that we are surrounded by those from the Bright Realms; we know also that it is Thy Will that these precious hours should be used not only to comfort and uplift in the present time, but also as a beacon of Light in the days to come - that Light, because it is of Thy Love, and by Thy Love, drawing the children of the earth away from their toys and turning them indeed into Thy disciples.

6. "This belongs to the by and by, yet we must build now for the future; and so, most tender Saviour, use us in the measure that Thou art able - in the measure that we have prepared ourselves - use us for Thy Divine purpose. Amen.

7. "WELL, my children, it seemed a pity just at first to block out so much brightness, to veil from your eyes the radiance of the sun and the beauty which nature presents in such a delightful form at this season of the year. Yet, dear children, I must tell you that in this little room there is a loveliness which surpasses anything that nature can show. There is a Light - the Light of the Spirit - before which the sun, even in its zenith, would seem but as a candle shining against the light of day. In this room has been gathered, by those who love to assemble here, that which no tongue can tell - treasures from the Heavenly climes where all walk softly because Holiness is all around.

8. "Think then to yourselves, my little ones, that you have not lost by forbidding the light of the physical world to shine upon you; for you are centred in that which knows no night, in that which indeed is an emanation of The Divine, of The Beloved, of the One you not only wish to serve, but the One whom you adore with all the force of which the spirit within is capable.

9. "Yes! it has seemed otherwise to some; it has seemed sometimes that the world, with its many irksome duties, with the toll taken on the physical body, has come in between; nay, more than that, has killed much of the love that they wish could still be there.

10. "Well, my children, you know that I always face things squarely, and so tonight I am going to speak to you, just for a little, in regard to the plain of isolation over which every pilgrim must pass if they would reach the Promised Land.

11. "I want you to look at things in a practical way: On the one hand, to forbid those bitter self-reproaches, that intense remorse, that personal loathing of self, because it fails so ignominiously to rise above its environment. Yes, to extricate yourself from that; and, also, to disown the notion which the shadows have tried, with great persistency, to force upon the minds of some of my children: That the distance between them and The Christ is so great that it can never be bridged; that it is no use continuing the task, no use trying to accomplish what is foreshadowed to failure.

12. "Children, some of you who have read and studied the experiences of those whom you call 'saints' have seen, with great dismay, that each one in turn passed over the desert-land; yes! and that many were, as it were, bound and fettered for long periods of time to that condition which was as a wilderness indeed. Yet, dear children, in contemplating this you cannot ignore the fact that, in the end, the golden glory of revelation was made their own. It is impossible to attain to so much in the way of spiritual progress without paying the price and, in some cases, the price is heavy indeed. Yet others have trod the self same path, and those whom you admire and revere so much - these too, my little ones, were forced again and again to ask themselves if love for The Master was dead for ever. These too became so isolated from the joys of life, and from those greater joys of communion with The Divine, that not only in a physical sense, but mentally and spiritually as well, the land was barren indeed.

13. "I remind you of these incidents in the lives of others both as a warning and as a reassurance to you who also would take the steep, short road to God. Yet, dear children, you must admit that in one particular you are more favourably placed. You have those around you who can remind you that the bleakness, that the sunlessness of life's aspect is but a passing phase; is but a test - a most necessary test - to see if the physical will is indeed bound to that which is Divine within.

14. "So long as the world goes on these battles between the physical and spiritual will continue and, in many cases, long after this world has ceased to be; yes, under other conditions the battle will be waged until the enemy is overcome. But tonight, dear children, I want you, if you will, to listen to my words of love - yes, to that love and understanding which escapes your comprehension altogether; I must say 'altogether', because the realisation which has penetrated into your minds is so infinitesimal, to me so unworthy of the name of love, that I say - perhaps with sadness - that your comprehension of my love and understanding, practically, does not exist. Yet, dear children, one of these fine days I am going, in part, to force through some conception of the love I have for my own, and when that happy time comes, then - and then only - will you be able to grasp just a fragment of the love which the Saviour has for each one. At present that, too, is a closed book to you; but never mind, books were made to be opened, and you have all Eternity before you in which to turn the pages; each page - nay, each word being a definite, vivid expression of the Love the Father has for His children.

15. "But let me get back. I would speak to you, dear children, about that very natural shrinking which you feel in regard to others going through the same experience of that loneliness and, as it seems to you, isolation from the Divine Presence.

16. "Well, dear children, it is something like this: You will remember when the children of Israel were on the point of leaving the wilderness, that messengers were sent in front to report on that which had been promised to be the possession of the faithful. You will recollect as well that there was one who came back with a good report. That did not mean that Joshua had not suffered, it did not mean that the way he had taken had been freer from dangers, or that the view presented to him had been merely that of a sheltered corner, while the enemy lay hidden on either side.

17. "Children, prospecting in that way would have had no value at all; and Joshua, having been trained, prepared and chosen as a suitable messenger, indeed went through as much or more than the others during his visit into the unknown land which lay beyond the confines of the wilderness.

18. "I think you can see that this applies, without stretching any point at all, to the work which you have undertaken in the Name of the Saviour of mankind. Children, Joshua saw that before the Land of Promise could be made their own a struggle must take place; but he knew this also - the long sojourn in the wilderness, the gathering together of spiritual resources, the training, the discipline and the organisation - all in preparation for that great day when God should say: 'Go forth and take that which I have given into your hand'.

19. "Children, I want you all to be as Joshua: I want you, in going on in front, not to allow the remembrance of your own suffering to be used by the shadows to keep back the spiritual progress of others - those others who, perhaps, if they knew all might hesitate to advance. I want you to reason thus with yourselves: To say: 'Hard though the road may have been, numerous the enemies, many, many the disappointments, yet here and now I can say I am safe and sound, because the protection was complete!' I want you to come back with a good report, dear children, weariness is so soon forgotten, and the pains of the body, and the vexations of the soul - why! when they are passed, they are past; they are gone, and all the advantages lie in your own hands - the experience gained is a possession which no one can take from you...

20. "Then hearken to the spirit within, and do not think: 'I hope they will not suffer as I have suffered'; or 'I pray they will not be tested as severely as I have been tested!' Say to yourselves instead: 'In spite of everything I am still captain of my soul, still following my great Leader on and on!' - and because that is the case with you so it shall be with them; and would you deny the brave pioneer spirit that which will mean to it more than words can express - that which will be shown in most marvellous detail when the body is laid aside; that which will arm them with power, with joy and with a peace which nothing can destroy? For the sake of suffering a little while on earth would you debar them from the great, immeasurable gain that is waiting for them just a span in front?

21. "Children, do not think that I cannot enter into that shrinking, which is growing in you, in seeing others suffer. It is, in the main, a Christ attribute, and it could be made solely an expression of the Christ Mind if only, if only you could take the broader view: not to stem your compassion but, instead of praying so often and so fervently that they may be spared, to turn your prayer into a strong spiritual force, voicing it thus: 'God give them strength to go on and conquer!' You see the contrast? The unwise parent, wishing to save her child everything that appertains to discomfort, prevents that child from following out the purpose for which the spirit entered into the body - a loss so gigantic, so terrible that it takes much, much time and suffering to work out. Then there is the wise mother, who talks to her children and reasons with them; who tries to show them that by learning, by doing the little things which go against the grain, so they will grow up; and when they can prove that they are grown up, then liberty of action will be their own, and the restraining voice, the guiding hand will not be required, because they have entered into that condition when, uninstructed, they do that which is wise and follow that which is true.

22. "I want you, dear children, to be brave for others. As you have found within yourselves sufficient courage to pursue the path with determination, is it quite kind to assume that others will not also be able to draw upon their spiritual resources in like manner? Of course, you don't think of it like that; you only feel - your own wounds being unforgettable, at this stage - you only feel that you don't want them to go through what you have gone through; you want them to be happy; that their memories shall be sweeter and that joy shall not pass by on the other side . . . Yes, dear children, I know your thoughts through and through and I know you better than you know yourselves. I know it is easier for you to suffer pain than to witness others going through the same experience, and because that is so with you, cannot you expand the borders of your thought sufficiently to get a faint idea of the Father's feeling towards His little ones?

23. "You forget so often what it means to be the Source of Love, what it means to be the Father-Parent, from whom all parents draw their capacity to love; you forget that closest of all ties between you and the Father - far closer than physical parenthood could be - that you are of Him, that something of Himself is within each one.

24. "Oh, my children, try and understand, try to look at things a little more from the Creator's point of view; try and understand how He feels when memories are too acute, how His Love suffers when you allow the darts of physical life to become embedded in your heart...Yes, try and put yourselves in the Father's place!

25. "This great work of ours is going forward; it is going to spread in a way you cannot grasp at this stage, and tonight I appeal to the strength in you - I appeal to you to be strong for others; because, if you are weak, then you are inflicting upon them the greatest injury that could be conceived.

26. "They too must pass over dry places; they too must find within themselves the will to go on, even though the consciousness of the Divine Presence may be absent. That is the greatest test of all - to feel that you have lost your Saviour; and yet, dear children, the mere fact that it has come should hearten you by the realisation that the next stage is the Land of Revelation, where the sun never sets, where the most perfect companionship can be found, where loneliness has no meaning, where Love rules, dominates and permeates everything and everyone who is there.

27. "The dry places then suggest hope, not despair; their very dryness is a prophecy of the Living Water that is just in front; their barrenness simply indicates that the flowers which never fade lie just beyond the border. Out of the wilderness you step into the Land of Promise, into the fulfilment of that which you undertook away back in the dim and distant past, when from God you set out to find God - through experience - to find that which was your own, to link up the Divine within with the All-Divine; to for ever demonstrate your sonship and your daughtership with the Most High.

28. "Yes, as on a circle so the journey goes, but God is not at the beginning and at the end only. As you have been told, God is the Centre of your existence, and though you travel - it seems to you - far, far from Him, yet at no time are you farther from Him than another, because God is the Centre of your life, and you cannot get away - you cannot separate yourselves from That from which you came.

29. "Yes, I know there are many who, it seems, indeed get far away from Love; but children, they may turn from that which is Light and Security and Peace, but the Father never turns from them; and, if they would, if they had the strength, by one effort of will they could make the contact between themselves and The Divine complete.

30. "You little know it, but a thought of Christ, nay, a thought which in any degree reflects The Christ - such as pity or understanding or the wish to help others - these thoughts, tiny though they may be, make the connection between you and the Father-Spirit complete. Could you but see things as they are, you would know that in that second - or minute - of thought there is nothing which stands between you and the Father; and I want you to apply this to those many who have passed out of physical life who never knew the Saviour, who indeed never knew God - yes, never knew God so far as the mind of the body was concerned. I tell you that not one thought of compassion, of kindliness or of the wish to serve others which passed through their minds did not make the contact between them and the Father-Spirit complete. Their ignorance of the existence of The Beloved made no difference at all. God knows who are His own; He knows the thoughts which belong to Him, and because He has the Father-Heart He is able to push aside the barriers of the physical and claim that which rightly belongs to Him.

31. "When you come here, dear children, it will be a revelation to you to see God's attitude towards the so-called 'heathen'; towards those of primitive races, those who understood but little, who were guided entirely by instinct...Yes, it will astonish you to see how these, passing through their physical experiences in an environment very detrimental to spiritual progress - so it would seem to you - to over-look what their lives worked out, what their sufferings, what their little acts of kindness did for the spirit within; their love for their children; their care of the sick and the old; yes, and more than that: their helplessness, their inability to protect themselves from the fiercer kinds of nature, from the diseases of the body, from those deep anguishes of the heart which they did not understand, but dumbly endured.

32. "Ah! dear children, all these things the Father has gathered up; all those unheeded, unnoted incidents which are taken as a matter of course in the lives of the so-called lower races. These are indeed turned by Love into good grain which shall feed the mill of the spirit; and those which the world might mark off as 'useless', well! when they come here they shall see that much, much has been harvested for them. They were sowing all the time but they knew it not, so Another reaped for them and put it all by so that when they were free they might have resources upon which to draw, and the power which those resources bring as a natural result.

33. "Oh, dear children, more and more do I urge you to try and take the bigger view; to look beyond brief, shadowy today, and to be certain that the Promised Land is fair indeed; that it is worth a struggle; that it is worth the journey in order to reach it. Yes, it is worth many pangs and that is why there are those who, having finished their own earthly experience, are so anxious to come back and tread the path again - or perhaps a little different one - with another. And you, little children of my heart, you will want to do the same; you will say: 'Oh I remember how hard that seemed, how steep that climb; let me help because I have been through it and I understand!'

34. "And that brings me to this: That in work of this kind - indeed in any work that matters - it is absolutely necessary that certain ones should go in front; that they should blaze the trail for others, which means that the fiercest hardship must be their own because they go forward not knowing where the dangers lie; while others, seeing the warning posts here and there, can take care, can be on their guard, can walk warily until the dangerous place is passed. Yes, it is absolutely necessary that certain ones should go in front. Has not your heart burned with love and admiration for the hardened travellers on earth - for those who, guided by the Spirit, went forward into the unknown and opened up vast tracts whose existence had been unimagined before?

35. "Children, when I speak to you thus all the entanglements of the physical mind fall from you. It seems so clear; so plain the meaning of God's purpose in regard to your lives. And there is another thing you are apt to forget: The pioneers - those who go into unexplored continents on earth - they receive the first impression, they also reach the goal first, and perhaps months, or years, pass before others are able to attain to that same point. You see, dear children, that going in front has its advantages and discomforts. Right down the ages there have been some who have sought to penetrate into the Unknown, and they reached, anyhow, the borders of the Land of Promise, thus saving themselves much time when the body was laid aside. Yes, right down the ages this has been so, although often it was done in secret because those who were content with the valley objected to others climbing the hill. So you see, dear children, that not only in the present but in the past and in the future, there has been, and will be, the hardy ones who, by their spiritual endeavours, will reach the land of Light before those others who, as yet, have not awakened to the necessity of going forward.

36. "Nothing can take the prize from you. You may say to yourselves: 'But I am tired and would rest!' Yet, my little ones, have you not noticed that when a child, resting on the grassy bank, sees another passing her, running along the road - the rest and the grassy bank loses its attractions, her weariness is forgotten; others have gone on in front and she must go as well.

37. "I tell you all - and I know you through and through - that whatever the inducement, that however pleasant the prospect, the weariness of the road would not hold you back now; it would not be sufficient to allow you to witness others forging ahead while you were stranded by the wayside, cut off - except in imagination - from the glories which are in front. My children, that is the beauty of the things of the Spirit. Once you have felt the Hand of God you must go on; you must, anyhow, do the best you can to cover the ground; and though to you it may seem that you have left the toys of the world behind and you don't know how to make use of the gifts of the Spirit which have taken their place, yet, dear children, I am told to remind you that the barren aspect is, in itself, an indication of what lies just in front, though you realise it not. Gifts of the Spirit have been made your own; minds so buoyant will soon readjust themselves to the changed conditions, and once you understand how to make use of those gifts you will realise that indeed you have crossed the border, out of the wilderness into the Promised Land.

38. "We have much to do in the days to come. Even from your standpoint the seeds are coming up in all directions; but the seeds which are hidden from your physical eyes are far, far more numerous, and many gardeners will be needed in order to protect and to train. Therefore, dear children, you see what your part must be: By the very depth and breadth of your own life's experience - and only by that - can you help others, can you be the one to see that the enemy does not draw too close; to take care that the spirit - which can well be represented by the emerging of the green shoot through the earth - to take care when the unfoldment commences that not only shall the rain fall upon it, but the sun: the Sun of God's Love. The rain is sacred: it is symbolical of life's experience; it is that which cleanses, and if sometimes it is over-fierce and beats to the ground, yet without that rain the plant could not grow; and even if it, in its frailty, bends before the storm, so shall the warmth and power of God's Love raise it up, again and again, until matured - yes, I say 'matured' by rain and by light, so it is firmly established for all time.

39. "Remember, dear children, that you are as Joshuas, sent to describe a Land which is waiting for the inhabitation of all those who would show themselves children of The Divine. So forget your wounds, throw aside memories which perhaps are shadowed too much by the earth, and say, with faith, that the Land of Promise is fair indeed; that it is worth a struggle; that you are certain that, by God's grace, both hidden and open enemies can be overcome, and that the encampment can move forward and take possession; pass out of the wilderness into the Land which flows with milk and honey - milk and honey, symbolical of that love and service which not only admits you into the Promised Land, but also allows you to remain in it for ever and for ever.

40. "Be not discouraged over anything. If you could but see it, you would know that you had cause for pure and unlimited rejoicing; and never forget that whatever lies in front of any pilgrim, Christ companions them all the way. Isolation and loneliness are of the physical alone. When you come here you will see that the protection was complete; that surrounding you were a cloud of witnesses - yes, witnessing that they too had taken the uphill path, that they too had entered into the Promised Land; they who, by tribulation, have found that security from tribulation which nothing can take away. These walk with you, protecting, guiding, because your eyes are bound; and these, in close communion with the spirit within, will lead you into the Land of your heart's desire - to the very goal of the quest which you undertook.

41. "And now I leave you. Keep your thoughts steady and your will as closely as possible in touch with Christ because, as always, we have work to do."

GIFT

Instead of having to connect to the Internet to read the wonderfully revealing Zodiac Messages on this site, it is possible to have them on your computer. A setup file installs the Messages in a folder of your choice, and can be given as a gift simply by clicking HERE. Then a message can be read at anytime giving immense inspiration, guidance, reassurance and spiritual renewal.

Other highly recommended reading...

“Life Beyond The Veil”
“Paul and Albert”
“Spiritual Realms”
“The Ministry of Angels”