Evolution
Our evolution, until very recently, has been as five-sensory humans evolving through the exploration of physical reality. That is the same thing as the pursuit of external power. Now we have crossed the threshold, we're in new territory, a brand new domain. We are now becoming multi-sensory. That means we are no longer confined to the five senses. Now I use these terms because the five senses together form a single sensory system and the object of that sensory system is physical reality. That's what it is designed to detect. As we become multi-sensory, we move beyond the limitations of the five senses and we now are evolving to a different mechanism in the exploration of physical reality. We are evolving through responsible choice of and with the assistance and guidance of non physical guides and teachers.
It is happening now. We are in the most significant evolutionary transition that our species has ever encountered. There is no way to compare what we are now experiencing with anything in our past. This new event has no historical antecedent. The only event in the history of our species that compares with this one is Genesis. And this is a new kind of Genesis, the Genesis of our species into conscious awareness and participation in a larger fabric of life; in non physical reality.
We have always been involved in spiritual evolution. We are spiritual beings, we have always been spiritual beings and we will always be spiritual beings. The difference is that now we are becoming aware of ourselves as spiritual beings and that is making all the difference.
The soul of an individual; your soul and my soul, is that part of us that is immortal. Your personality is that part of you that was born into time, that matures in time, or at least grows older in time and then decays and passes away...
like your body. Your personality, your body, your intuitional structure. These are all tools; energy tools of the soul. Your soul existed before your personality came into being, it will exist after your personality came into being. All of the learning, all of the activities in which you are involved as a being,..
go into the evolution of your soul. It is your soul that is learning, it is your soul that is growing, it is your soul that is moving ever closer toward perfection, if we can use that word.
I do not mean that all five billion of us on this planet are going to be multi-sensory before the end of this century. It may take several generations but not as long as you might think. This is a momentous undertaking that our species has entered and it is affecting everything without exception.
There is no aspect of the world that is not the world of spirit.
Guides and Teachers
Everyone has guides and teachers; non physical guides and non physical teachers. Now a guide is not the same as a teacher. A guide is what you might call a consultant that's called in on a project basis. For example, if you say you want, as you have, to create a television series with a certain quality about it, of integrity, intellectual acuity and spiritual depth, you will draw to yourself, as you have, guides that can provide you with just this assistance. Now teachers are more impersonal, actually in relation to us they appear to be more personal, they appear to be such that we can give them names, or speak to them as though they were other personalities. In fact, they are impersonal energy dynamics. A non physical teacher is like a friend that knows you very well, knows the deepest parts of you, knows all of your struggles, knows all of your aspirations, knows all of the things that you are ashamed of and working on and strives only for your best interest, strives only for the ever increasing alignment of your personality with your soul. Having a non physical teacher and being able to be in conscious communication with this teacher is like being in contact with all of this and at the same time a consummate psychotherapist.
A teacher does not make decisions for you. As you decide to move into a relationship consciously with a non physical teacher, it is not a matter of giving yourself over mindlessly to the control of another. A non physical teacher would not and could not make your decisions for you because no one can assume responsibility for how you choose to use your energy. But a non physical teacher can help you to see the symbolism of everything that happens in your life at each moment. A non physical teacher can help you to see at each point of decision, which means that every moment what probable future will unfold if you take this course of action or that course of action... so that you can see for yourself if these different courses of action will produce consequences for which you are willing to assume responsibility. And if you find a course of action that will produce consequences for which you are not willing to assume responsibility, then don't choose it. And if you find a course of action, and you will, that will produce consequences that will produce a probable future for which you are willing to take responsibility, then move in that direction if that's your choice, That's responsible choice.
Intuition
Your intuition is the voice of the non physical world. So to the five-sensory personality intuition is trivial. In fact, psychology doesn't even recognize it. Psychology is the study of perception, effect and cognition. In other words, it's the study of the personality even though the word means the study of the soul.
We will develop, if we become multi-sensory, a true psychology, and we can call it spiritual psychology in this transitional period to distinguish it from conventional psychology. A multi-sensory human is keenly interested in his or her intuition because his or her intuition is the way that he or she can access experience, wisdom that is more comprehensive than that of the personality. So the development of intuition will be central to spiritual psychology. And it's important to the multi-sensory human. Now there are some ways that this can happen. For example, just as we now have developed new ways to develop prognition - which means to think things through - we will now develop ways to develop intuition which means to ask questions and get answers.
Always you will receive. No prayer is unanswered. Every question is answered...
Intuition is like a radio receiver and it can receive different stations. This radio receiver serves different functions. It serves your spirituality which is the development of your soul. It serves your physical survival. For example, hunches about when to fix the brakes, what street not to walk down, all help to keep you in physical form. It serves your creativity, hunches about what guest to invite, which book to buy, which conference to go to. One of the radio stations that you can tune into is your own soul. This happens through the higher self experience. Personality soul communication is the higher self experience.
Authentic Power
You can look at your higher self as being the template of the fully empowered personality, of an authentically empowered personality. When a personality is completely aligned with its soul, it is authentically empowered. And this is how our species is evolving now by the way. Not at the pursuit of external power but in the pursuit of authentic power.
We are all here to learn just this power. A personality is complex. It is comprised of many parts. Each of these parts has its own volition. For example, there is a part of you that suffers with the homeless, and a part of you that wants a larger house, a part of you that wants to feed the hungry, and a part of you that wants a second VCR. And when you satisfy one part of you, you dissatisfy another and you are torn. This is the experience of the splintered personality. So as you look at any of us, you can see in our personalities, both those parts of the soul that need healing, and those parts of the soul that the soul has given to the individual in this incarnation, and the grace that that soul has earned, and these are the loving and the giving.
If you are fully aligned with your soul it will be your pleasure, your joy, to always move toward cooperation, toward sharing, toward reverence for life. You will not be torn...
Not a splintered personality...
It will not be a painful decision.
The key is responsible choice. That is the mechanism, so no matter what you choose when you are confronted with a decision, it is not possible to make a bad decision. The universe does not judge you. It is only cause and effect. You make a decision, you create consequences and you experience those consequences and therefore you learn to create responsibly.
Responsible Choice
This is truly a perfect world in spite of the suffering...
In every moment in every way the universe is serving the needs of your soul: these are not necessarily the same as the ones of your personality.
With each of the choices that we make, we create consequences, and we ourselves experience those consequences. If you harm another soul, if you cause pain or trauma in another soul, you yourself will experience that trauma.. (This is)
karma. Here in the west we call it the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is not a moral dictum. It is loving guidance about how to live and how to create in a world that is governed by the universal law of cause and effect...
So if you harm another person you will learn from that experience and they will learn from that experience. By your choice you will have created pain or suffering in another person, so why not choose to create differently because as you create for this other person you create also for yourself.
Our entire species, all five billion of us, are becoming multi-sensory. The human species is no longer evolving through the exploration of physical reality, through the pursuit of external power; the ability to manipulate and control. We are now evolving through responsible choice with the assistance and guidance of non physical guides and teachers. We are seeking not external power but authentic power and that means the alignment of the personality with the soul. Now you don't have to be a metaphysical person to understand this. You can look at it behaviorally. Your soul is that part of you that always strives for harmony, toward cooperation, toward sharing, toward reverence for life. And as you choose, in each moment, to align yourself with harmony, or at least not to create more disharmony in the situation you're in, then you are consciously choosing to align yourself with your soul. You are consciously moving toward authentic power. So for example, when you're on the freeway and you are late for an appointment, and someone cuts right in front of you, and they drive 45 miles per hour, and you can't pass them, and you feel anger rise up inside of you, now the question becomes "what shall I do with this anger?" How shall you respond to it. Shall you let it carry you away? What will you create if you do that? So you challenge it.
Now I'm not suggesting that you suppress it or repress it. In order to become authentically empowered it is necessary to experience everything that you are feeling. You must experience everything that you are feeling. This is what will lead you to the splintered parts of your personality.
Everything touches the face of God and science will begin to expand in a beautiful way like a flower blooming. As our species becomes multi sensory, everything that our species produces, all of our economic, social and political structures will begin to reflect the energy of the soul and not the energy of the personality. All of our endeavors, individual and collective will reflect the soul and the perceptions of multi-sensory humanity.
we are seeing the emergence of multi sensory humanity everywhere. In other words the basis of science as well as the basis of economics, and
politics and government and every human endeavor will be the same. And that spirit is real and we are spirits, we are immortal spirits that are evolving in what our Native American brothers and sisters call earth suits.
Now we are finding this treasure, this secret, the treasure is not new, but our discovery of it is new. We are creators: to live is to create, to be is to create. We cannot be without creating. Every choice that we makes creates consequences, consequences in the lives of others and we experience them in ourselves, those same consequences, every choice that we make. And by the way the choices that you might think are the most important are not always the most important...
Most of us think that decisions such as where shall I live, with whom shall I partner, what shall I pick as a career for my life are the most important decisions that we make. But from the point of view of the universe these decisions are not that important. Within you, you have already made decisions about who you are, what the universe is and how you will relate to other people and how you will relate to the universe and these decisions are creating consequences in your life moment by moment...
Look around you: that is the reflection of the decisions that you have made, that you have made currently and that you have made in the past. Perhaps not in this lifetime, perhaps in lifetimes that preceded this one but in external reality the choices that you have made are always obvious. That is how the learning environment of the five senses work. It's like a movie, three dimensional, full color, Dolby sound, never stopping, always reflecting who we are and always, at every moment, serving the needs of our soul. Now think about that, if four people come together, it is never the case that three of those people are serving as props while the fourth one learns. Every situation serves everyone involved equally. Isn't that remarkable?
No one lives an identical life to someone else. There is no end to the richness of this universe. There is no end to the richness of who we are. The parents that you have chosen, the souls with whom you have agreements to interact and are interacting. The struggles that you have in relating to your parents, and relating to your past, in altering the currents we call emotions, energy currents that run through us. A lot of these are unique to you, they're complex; almost beyond description...
And so is the path of everyone. There is not one soul on this planet..
whose life is not as complex and as rich as your own.
Spiritual Energy
Energy is always flowing through us. It comes in roughly through here(touches top of head)
and runs through our body...
That's what we're talking about when we talk about emotion. Let us talk about it in terms of physical light and the examples. Let's use physical light as a metaphor. There is low frequency light which has very little energy and there's high frequency light that has a great deal of energy. When you feel an emotion such as despair or in a depression, that is a low frequency current of energy. It has very little energy. And someone who is in despair or in a depression soaks up energy. We don't like to be around them: we say "they soak up my energy, they are black holes." Anger is another current of energy that can flow through you. This is also a low frequency current of energy. There is a lot of energy in anger. You're exhausted after you feel anger. A high frequency current of energy would be contentment. Someone who is content has plenty of energy. If you are doing one thing in your life, and you are content, and someone interrupts you and says, "stop this, I have something very important to tell you." You don't mind, you stop and listen to them because you are content.
Joy is a very high frequency current of energy with a great deal of energy content. Somebody who is joyful has a lot of energy.
They are non physical energies...
The highest frequency energy is love. So if somebody is feeling loved, they are craved. People like to be around them because they are emitting something that is quite beautiful...
What I'm talking about now is becoming aware of the energy currents that are running through you so that you can make responsible choices. So that when you feel anger, you will begin to know what it feels like, what it feels like in your heart area, which is your fourth chakra... what it feels like here(touches head)
..does it constrict your throat? Does it constrict your sexuality? You have seven chakras, and as you become aware of the energy currents moving through you, you will become aware of how it affects each of these, or at least the majorly affected areas of your body and then you can choose. Do you like this feeling? If not you can challenge it and as you challenge it again and again and again, it loses power over you and you gain power over it.
Energy flows through us continually and as we become aware of it we can choose. We can choose to challenge an energy current that we recognize as anger or jealousy or anxiety, or a sense of vulnerability. And this doesn't mean that the first time you challenge your anger, it disappears just like that. Do you think authentic power can be had so easily?..
I am not suggesting repression in any way, or suppression. I am suggesting that you become aware of what you feel, that you set your sights to do that. That you set the intention to become aware of these energy currents so that when you are driving on the freeway, for example, you can become aware of when you have a negative thought, when you have an angry thought, when you're interacting, when you become insecure. And as you become aware of these, you become aware of them as energy currents moving through you. This allows you to detach a bit from them, to watch them in action, and as you do this you can begin to recognize these different parts of your personality. This is how you find the splintered parts of your personality: the force field, the force field of your soul, the force field you can only encounter through emotions.
You cannot find your soul with your mind: you must use your heart. You must use your heart. You must know what you are feeling. If you don't know what you are feeling, you will create unconsciously. If you are unconscious of an aspect of yourself, if it operates outside your field of awareness, that aspect has power over you. And we create at each moment. The question is not shall we create consciously or unconsciously. We have been creating unconsciously. Our evolution has been very slow. An angry person, for example, will encounter other angry people and at first she might say, well that's just his fault, he's had a bad day today. And then she encounters another angry person and she says to herself, he's off balance, he's not emotionally well and then continues to make excuses for all the angry people that she encounters in her life until eventually she realizes that the source of all this unpleasantness is not these other people but the dynamic of anger that she herself carries. And when she realizes that, she will change completely and thoroughly. That time will come when her life becomes so painful that she says, enough, enough, I will not have this anymore. And when she changes in this way, her life will change because her creations will no longer carry the energy of anger. She will still experience all that she has created up to that moment. Energy is energy, karma is karma, but yet she will create it differently. And because of the law of attraction, which means simply that birds of a feather do flock together, not only in metaphorical terms but in terms of real energy dynamics, angry people attract angry people and live in an angry world, and this validates their opinion that the world is angry.
We are learning to become aware of ourselves as immortal souls. We still have the ability to choose to be angry. We still have the ability to choose, to indulge in that old familiar pattern in this case of anger, and to create with anger. But we are being given the opportunity to choose again, to choose differently.
A five-sensory human can envision the consequences of action, although a five-sensory human thinks that those consequences only reach out into the physical world. In fact, they reach far beyond the physical world. We are souls. That means that the majority of us live in non physical reality, interact in non physical reality, affect non physical reality, and are affected by non physical reality.
Non physical reality is our home. We came from non physical reality and we will return to non physical reality when we die. When this personality, body and intuitional structure, which perfectly suit the evolution of our soul for this time in the earth school, passes, we will return home. We will come back into the waiting arms and loving arms of our non physical guides and teachers. There we can look back on all of the things that we have done, we will see our lives in detail, minute detail, all of the things that we experienced. Most of which we have forgotten. We will see it. How these things affected us and how they affected others. We will see the exquisite pattern of interaction with which we met other souls. We will see how our actions influenced them and how their actions influenced us. We will see how we learned together. We will see those lessons that we have yet to learn. We will see the consequences that we created but we have yet to experience and these will form the basis of yet another journey into the earth school.
Physical light is a small spectrum. By physical I mean visible light that runs from red to violet, and this defines, in terms of our physical lives, our earth school. But physical light is part of a much larger spectrum and above and below this spectrum so to speak, to the right, to the left of it, extending indefinitely is the same continual. A continual means something that has no end. So above violet lights is ultra violet light, and above that is high frequency radiation, and above that is very high frequency radiation and above that is microwave radiation and on and on out to infinity. And below red light is infra red light and then low frequency radiation, very low frequency radiation, extremely low radiation and so on out to infinity. All of that is the life spectrum and a small part of it that makes up visible light is the part in which we live, in which we gain our experience as souls. Now while we are here in this studio, where is microwave radiation, where is infra red radiation and all of the other radiations?..
They are here right now, at the same time and in the same place. It's that way with physical reality and non physical reality. Our teachers are impersonal energy dynamics that live, so to speak, in a spectrum of awareness that includes ours and goes far beyond it. So they are not elsewhere, your guide, your teacher is not elsewhere, it is here with us now, mine also. This room is full.
Crossing the Threshold
Your soul evolves in eternity. Time exists in five-sensory experience. It is a part of the earth school. When you return home, when you reenter in your awareness, the fullness of who you are, you will not be limited in the way that you are now. Your soul is timeless and so from the perspective of your soul, from your perspective and my perspective, past, present and future are all simultaneous. And this means that actions that you take now in the present can affect not only the future, in fact do affect not only the future but also the past.
All of these things are puzzling to the mind. This is why science has gone as far as it can go as it is currently structured and that is also why we have gone as far as our species can go and will go through the pursuit of external power. The pursuit of external power now causes, produces, only violence and destruction. From the perception of the heart, these things are not puzzling. It is not puzzling to your heart to know that you live in a universe that is living, that is intelligent, that is compassionate, that serves in each moment the needs of your soul. It is not puzzling to your heart to know that what you do has profound impact on others, others beyond what the eyes can see. Such as our Native American brothers and sisters celebrate nature's spirits and the Rock people and the Tree People. It is not puzzling to the heart that the natural way of relating between people is one of love, of kindness, of consideration, of harmony, of naturally reaching out to help. These things are not puzzling to who we are. They are who we are. And as we align our personalities with our soul, we acquire authentic power and this is what we become. This is what an authentically empowered personality is. It is a personality that lives in the fullness of its own life, that lives in the joy of the present moment, in a very deep and rich sense. There is no other place to live.
Our species has crossed a threshold, it will never be the same. The things that supported us in our activities in the past no longer support us in our activities in the present. That was the pursuit of external power. What supports us now, what the universe now supports, are entirely different things. What the universe now supports is cooperation, harmony, sharing and reverence for life. And the world that we will build, as we become authentically empowered humans, will reflect the energy of the soul, and not the energy of the personality. It is a struggle, in that when you feel jealousy, when you feel anger, when you feel rage inside yourself, then you must challenge it. If you do not challenge it, you will create with that energy. You will experience pain in your life. Why do that? Why not choose differently? Why not create differently? This is a struggle in my experience that has a lot of worth, it's worth it continuously, every day.
The old patterns remain. We still have an economics that is based upon the perception of scarcity and exploitation. But already the emergent new form can be felt. A new economy is coming that will be based on the perception of abundance and contribution. We are spiritual beings, the universe has always supported us, is supporting us, and will always support us. Now this is a powerful thing to keep in mind. Because if the universe is supporting us in every moment, if the universe is compassionate, and in every way, at each instance meets the needs of our soul, why is there cancer? Why is there sexual abuse? Why is there AIDS? In other words, why is there suffering? Because we have created it. Now it's easy to say I'm the creator of my experience when you're talking about a common cold. When you're talking about leukemia; that's something else. Yet if you keep in mind that the universe, in every way, at each instance, is serving the needs of your soul, then that thought form, like a lighthouse or a polestar, will bring you into a very deep understanding of what you are, and the powerful creative potential that you have and exercise at each moment as a spirit.
One always uses sensitivity. The idea is not to harm another or to impress another person with your insight. The idea is to help each other grow in awareness in a gentle way. That's a natural way, a natural way to want to help people. People often create, always create, circumstances if they are unaware which are eventually non gentle. What seems dangerous to me is creating unconsciously. Dangerous in the sense that unconscious creation is the creation of pain. Why create more pain? It's not dangerous to your soul, your soul cannot be threatened, Your soul is immortal. You are immortal. But why create unconsciously? And the fact is that we create our experiences, each and every one of us. There is no such thing as a victim.
Eventually we will be totally conscious. Every one of us. I don't know how long it will take. You and I will probably not be alive when this happens, but I say it with complete confidence because that is the direction that the universe moves and is always moving.
Addictions
Addictions are your greatest inadequacies. When you work on an addiction, you are doing the work of your soul. This is the work which you are born to do. When you strive to heal your deepest insecurities, then you are reaching simultaneously for your highest goal. All that we have experienced is the result of powerlessness. You could say that the entire history of humanity is the history of an insecure species. But this is just the obvious. When somebody feels a sense of powerlessness and they reach outward to satisfy that pain, they attempt to manipulate another person, or to build an empire, or to buy a bigger car, or to take a drug. All of that is the pursuit of external power. Now the species is pursuing authentic power. If you choose to look inward and to fill the hole that way, rather than reaching outward, then you are moving toward authentic power; real power. Look at your addictions, whether it is to drugs, alcohol, sex, anger, and you begin to work with them, first by recognizing that you have an addition, secondly by going in to what it has produced in your life, walking yourself through your reality as you indulge your addictions. If you have something in your life that has power over you and you feel that you have no power to meet it, then that is an addiction. Something that you crave, something that you must have more of: that is an addiction...
Those inadequacies and those weaknesses over which you feel you have no control are your greatest inadequacies, and these are your addictions.
Souls are evolving. That is what we are doing here, we are learning in earth school. And many of the experiences that we have in five-sensory reality do not exist once we leave this domain of experience: fear, anger, jealousy, despair, rage, all of these things are experiences of the personality but they do not exist in the realm of the spirit.
Everything is spirit, everything, including this physical reality, this solid chair. This chair is matter, it's what you might call the lowest frequency, the densest form of spirit, but it is spirit and so it must be honored. Your body must be honored. Our physical reality must be honored. What the eastern psychologies or religions call Maya, is illusion to the extent that .. the soul does not feel fear, the soul does not feel anger. The personality may feel fear. The soul will experience this as being distant from life. So the illusion is an illusion to the extent that it blocks us from seeing that we are immortal souls. We are beginning to see through the illusion now as we become multi sensory. Yet we honor the illusion. We are here by choice in this earth school.
As we become multi sensory we leave behind certain limitations, and we become more able to see other opportunities. Opportunities, for example, to appreciate the fact that the entire universe is alive. It is not a dead, barren, sterile world. There's no such thing as dead. There's no such thing as barren, there is only life, there's nothing but life. So when we say everything is spirit, or everything is life, or everything is love, it is the same thing and this is the world in which we live.
So the question is, since this is a universe of love, of spirit, of perfection, why is that we have inadequacies? Why is it that we have addictions? We have addictions because addictions in five-sensory experience are aspects of the soul that need to be healed. There are areas in which consciousness needs to be applied. And so what we experience as addictions are real in the sense that if we are addicted to alcohol, that is a powerful craving. It is a particular form of the experience, of powerlessness, and that experience has taken a particular outreach. The pursuit of external power has flown through a particular channel, and that channel and the challenging of that channel successfully provides the type of experience that the soul is looking for. It is the personality that provides that challenge, that fills that inadequacy.
Temptation
Let us look at a temptation. A temptation is not a pitfall. A temptation is the universe's gracious way of allowing a soul to evolve without creating negative karma. In other words, a temptation is like a magnet that draws to awareness negativity, that would otherwise create negative karma, if it remained unconscious. A temptation is a dress rehearsal for a negative karmic act. As you identify the temptation and heal it within yourself before that energy spills out into the collective and affects other souls, you heal yourself without creating negative karma.
You challenge(the temptation).
You recognize your inadequacy, you decide whether or not you want to continue it in your life. You do that by looking honestly and with courage, at what it has created in your life, and asking yourself if you want to continue to create that...
You can do that by detaching yourself from your experiences, enough to be able to see them, just as we talked about detaching yourself from your emotions, by considering them as energy currents that are running through you. When you do that you can see every interaction you have. For example, an impolite clerk: you can say to yourself "this is my learning environment." The person that you are with is always the person that you should be with at that moment. It is a temptation to say "I am the customer here, I deserve to be right, I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to you because this is a nicer clerk". But yet it is the first clerk that has challenged you. Here is where the rubber meets the road. We choose to align ourselves with our souls - to strive toward authentic power - not by determining how the Soviet Union is going to respond to its economic collapse, but by choosing how we are going to respond, moment by moment, to the experience that we find ourselves in in our lives. And if you look at your life as your learning environment, offering you, at each moment, maximal, optimal opportunities to learn, give yourself permission at each moment to choose the most positive behavior. This is how you align your personality with your soul. This is how you acquire authentic power. As you again and again work with your inadequacies, challenge it - as your temptations come up again and again. If you decide not to drink and twelve times that day you are tempted to have a drink, do not look at these temptations as a pitfall. Look at each one of these temptations for what each one is: an opportunity to challenge your greatest addictions. And I tell you that there is no one on this earth who is not more powerful than his or her addictions. There is no addiction that is more powerful than who you want to become.
Assistance
If you open yourself up to it there's always help, it's always there. There is always encouragement for every soul to move into light, even those who are insisting upon living in darkness - and eventually every soul does. What is new in our experience, as we become multi sensory, is that we are becoming aware of this insistence. Our species has had guides and teachers ever since its origin. Every human on this planet has a non physical teacher or teachers. Not everyone has the same number of teachers. Some people have more and some have less. The number of teachers that you have depends upon what you have chosen in your life. As you choose endeavors that allow you to come into contact with, and to influence in a positive way, larger numbers of people - as your circle of influence expands, the radius of this circle of influence increases - you draw unto yourself the assistance that you need. Whether you are aware of it or not, this is the case. It has always been the case. That's quite comforting, don't you think?
You always have to make responsible choices. Assistance does not mean having your choices made by someone else. That is not assistance. Assistance means having friends...
Teachers are like that but they have much more capability than you and I have. I cannot make your decisions for you. I can give you the benefit of my perceptions. And then perhaps that will help you. A non physical teacher can do the same thing and it will help you if you listen, but the choices are always yours to make, the karma is always yours to live. And the beautiful world to build is always your choice. That's the magnificent thing about us. Why don't we build this now? In fact we are.
see also: spiritual evolution