Hi Dennis,
Nice to see a face with your last post. Makes our communications more personal than they already are.
Reading the posts and words of welcome that people have written in response to your introduction and various questions I am with a thought that I would like to share, namely, in many ways you are a gift to us here, Dennis -- at least you are to me. Allow me to try to explain why I feel this thought came to visit me.
When I read the replies written by people like Zara and Al and Jeanne and Elizabeth and Geoff, I felt that they were writing with such deep love and honesty, and that they were also writing to me and to all people new to the way of Divine Love. I learned something new about the writers and about the initial progress of a soul as it comes into the awareness of the existence of the Divine Love. There is a unique thread of humility woven into each response that added to my gratitude for your presence that prompted the writers to write the way that they did. Indeed, we are brothers and sisters of our loving Heavenly Father, and I am very happy to be one among many, and very happy to meet a new brother!
Having said this, I now want to share my experience with the prayer for the Divine Love that Jesus gave to James Padgett, and to Leslie Stone who was in the room with James when he recorded the prayer. I love the prayer, and some years ago, after much difficulty, I committed it to memory, Yet I do not use it as a ritual or merely say it by rote without deep feeling and sometimes with a great deal of emotion. I smiled when you wrote, Dennis, how that at first you recited it as the good Catholic that you once were. I was a Protestant minister, and perhaps this is why I was so attracted to the Jesus Prayer (as I like to call it), and finally committed it to memory. I found as I continued to read the Padgett messages, as Elizabeth suggested, that this prayer pretty much contains the basic truths given to mankind by Celestial spirits through Padgett's writings. And, having committed it to memory, I am now able throughout the day to meditate and pray about certain aspects within the prayer. I combine the truths within the prayer with mediation and my soul seems to soar with each and every new inflowing of the Father's Love. And at night or in the morning upon my bed I am able to focus my attention on things that truly matter.
Recently I found a new way to express the words of the prayer. I usually take a daily walk, and the last 2 weeks I have strolled about a mile and a half to a nearby cemetery, the Prescott National Cemetery. I am there near sunset and I am usually the only person present. The cemetery is neatly kept, and it is situated on a hillside. I walk to the highest part, where I sit on a bench and rest awhile before I return on my walk to my home. While I am sitting on the bench I pray the prayer aloud, sometimes quite loudly; and while I am doing this I feel a company of spirits present. Some of these spirits are bright spirits of the Celestial Heaven, who are present helping me to pray, but I know that there are also mortal spirits present who come to listen to the prayer, and to be influenced and helped by the presence of lovely Divine Love angels.
I share this incident from my life only to encourage you not to walk too quickly away from the use of the prayer for the Divine Love given to us by Jesus through Padgett. Yes, I realize that the prayer is not necessary, as suggested by others who have written here. Jesus himself taught James Padgett that formal prayers are not necessary, nor are any words necessary. We can and do eventually learn to pray with the soul, quietly and very effectively. I do this, but I also still love to use the words of the prayer.
The main thing we learn walking the way of Divine Love is the essential place of prayer. With faith and prayer the possibilities of the progression of our soul are without limit, both here on earth and in the spirit realms when we transition.
With much love my brother Dennis,
Joseph
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