Wednesdays in Chicago - August 24, 2016

What is my plan?

 

With spiritism, the more we read, the more questions we have.  One of the most significant questions concerns the matter of our own personal destiny.   Why are we here?  What are we supposed to accomplish?  Kardec's theories were simple enough: After death the soul becomes a spirit and seeks reincarnation, which is the destiny of all human souls.  Spirits know the past, present, and future; and sometimes they can materialize and act on matter. We should let ourselves be guided by good spirits, and refuse to listen to bad spirits. 

 

Life on earth is similar to attending school. We have assigned events in our life, and how we react and behave will determine our spiritual progress.  Kardec called life a learning institution that is intended to move us to a higher level.  We can only reach our own individual goal if we are able to accumulate enough credits - and if not, we may be required to repeat.  We would never attend  a school without a specific purpose or without knowing the rules, so how do we find that information for the school that is our life?

 

Our school of life is one that we do not escape until we graduate. Graduation is our return to the spirit world, so on earth, we are always students.  Just as with any other school, our life has classes that we like, and others that we detest or find extremely boring. How do we handle the difficult times? Those class periods of life where nothing seems to work and we cannot find an escape ladder? In the book, Missionaries of Light (by Francisco C. Xavier), Andre Luiz (the spirit author of the book) gives us the answer: “Every plan that is drawn up in the higher spheres has good and ascension as its basic objectives.  Every soul that reincarnates, even the one that finds itself in apparent desperate conditions, has the resources to continue to improve.” In other words, we have the means to successively climb out of whatever problem we find ourselves in.  Our fate is of our own making. The less we have to pay for past errors, the more freedom we gain to make our own choices to improve our souls.  We can pray for help and forgiveness, but we must also maintain a positive outlook - and still extend love and care to others. When we do this, we will have paid our debt, and exceeded the expectations of those who helped to create our plan.

 

How do we build up the required strength to survive future trials?

 

As in school, where there are periods between classes, there are periods between trials. These are the times to learn more about spiritism, or participate in sessions or charity work, and think about why we have gone through the occurrences of our life so far. In the book, Action and Reaction, Andre Luiz learns about a man who committed suicide at age forty.  After years of suffering in the spirit world, the man is reincarnated. Andre is told that as part of the man’s trials he will have an “overwhelming temptation to commit suicide again at the exact age in which he forsook his responsibilities the previous time.”

 

So, think carefully when you have great events in your life. Contemplate about how you must have made the wrong decision in a previous existence, and what steps you can take to improve. Andre asked how this unfortunate man could possibly resist the lure of suicide a second time. He learned that, “If this man has not saved up enough renewing and educational resources through his learning and the practice of fraternity to overcome the inevitable crisis, it will be very hard for him to avoid committing suicide again because, despite being reinforced from the outside, temptations have their starting point within us and they feed on what is already there”.  So continuing with our school example, the suicidal man failed his first test, but he has a chance for a retest. If he has studied harder and learned to live with others as e should, he will pass the test - and so can we.   After we endure and live through it, we can rejoice in the knowledge that we will not need to experience this type of test or event ever again.

 

Our destiny, or the course of study in our school on earth is not supposed to be tranquil.  If it was, we wouldn’t be able to advance. If we are not challenged, we are unable to advance.  We can take some comfort in the things we believe are tough life lessons are nothing compared to what truly failed spirits must experience. Pray for those who are in the middle of such difficult lessons, as we learn to navigate our own tests with a positive outlook. Graduation from the school of life - in which we have fully passed all of our classes - might mean that we are finished with earthly universities.  If not, the reward for our good grades in most classes means an even more fascinating life the next time - or an exciting and fulfilling job in the spirit world before its time to return back to our earthly campus.

 

What Comes Next?

 

Our life has much more meaning and complexity than we realize. There are those levels of the spirit world who help us, and those others who hinder us.  We need to free ourselves from the enslavements of opinions and self-concepts that are merely what we have absorbed from the media, from advertising, from our family, and from our friends. We tend read opinions that already mirror our own, we listen to “experts” who merely confirm what we already believe, and we support politicians who appeal to our own fears and delusions.  Once we stop  following others, we find ourselves.

 

Our life is a very long process to become aware of our own special function - the role that we can play to help the world most effectively. It may or may not mean embracing a cause or a political program. Instead it may involve working quietly as a light shining in the dark corridors of an apparently soulless corporation. It does not matter, if that is our work. As we evolve, and move deeper into our true self,  we can become a powerful force for change - rather than a weak, worried, and anxious consumer.

 

 

Resources
Blackwell, A. (2014, May 10). Kardec Spirit Writings. http://www.spiritwritings.com/kardec.html
Kardec, A. (2008). The Gospel According to Spiritism. Brasilia (DF): International Spiritist Council.
Wikipedia. Allan Kardec. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Kardec
Wikipedia. Chico Xavier. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chico_Xavier
Xavier, F. C. (2009). Missionaries of the Light. Brasilia (DF), Brazil: International Spiritist Council.
Xavier, F. C. (2010). Action and Reaction. Brasilia (DF), Brazil: International Spiritist Council.