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Never be ashamed of serving, or regret doing it.
Enhancing your professional work, acquiring new knowledge, is simply your duty.
Cooperate with your bosses through the straightly performed obligation, without employing means of flattery.
Never diminish or imply less value to the efforts of colleagues.
Never pretend sickness or accidents, specially intending to benefit from laws of protection or the help of insurance institutions, for life usually demands that the consequences of such lies are suffered.
Never attribute only to yourself the success of some task, understanding that on every work the team spirit must be considered.
Sabotaging work will always mean deterioration of our own interest.
Accepting disorder or stimulating it is sponsoring our own lack of balance.
You possess countless resources to promote yourself or bettering your own area of action, without recurring to disrespect, disturbance, bitterness or rebellion.
Salary wise, remember this: whoever works must receive payment, but, on the same note, whoever is being paid must work.
André Luiz/Chico Xavier
From the book “Sinal Verde” (green light) – Comunhão Espírita Cristã Publishing, Brazil.
386. Could two beings, who have already known and loved each other, meet again and recognise one another, in another corporeal existence?
“They could not recognise one another; but they might be attracted to each other. The attraction resulting from the ties of a former existence is often the cause of the most intimate affectional unions of a subsequent existence. It often happens in your world that two persons are drawn together by circumstances which appear to be merely fortuitous, but which are really due to the attraction exercised upon one another by two spirits who are unconsciously seeking each other amidst the crowds by whom they are surrounded.”
-Would it not be more agreeable for them to recognise each other?
“Not always; the remembrance of past existences would be attended with greater disadvantages than you suppose. After death they would recognise one another, and would then remember the periods they had passed together.” (392.)
387. Is sympathy always the result of anterior acquaintanceship?
“No; two spirits who are in harmony naturally seek one another, without their having been previously acquainted with each other as men.”
388. May it not be that the meetings which sometimes take place between two persons, and which are attributed to chance, are really due to the action of some sort of sympathetic relationship?
“There are, among thinking beings, orders of relationship with ‘which you are not yet acquainted. Magnetism is the pilot of the science that will enable you to understand them at a future period.”
389. What is the cause of the instinctive repulsion sometimes excited in us by persons whom we see for the first time?
“The latent antipathy of two spirits who divine each other’s nature, and recognise one another, without the need of speaking together.”
390. Is instinctive antipathy allays the sign of an evil nature on the part of one or both of the parties who feel it?
“Two spirits are not necessarily evil because the)’ are not sympathetic; for antipathy may spring from a want of similarity in their way of thinking. But in proportion as they ascend, these shades of difference are effaced, and their antipathy disappears.”
391. Does the antipathy of two persons take its first beginning on the part of the better or the worse one of the two?
“It may begin simultaneously on the part of both; but, in such a case, its causes and effects are different. A bad spirit feels antipathy against whoever is able to judge and to unmask him. On seeing such a person for the first time, he knows that he will be disapproved by him; his repulsion changes into hatred or jealousy, and inspires him with the desire of doing harm to the object of his antipathy. A good spirit feels repulsion for a had one, because he knows that he will not be understood by him, and that they do not share the same sentiments; but, strong in his own superiority, he feels neither hatred nor jealousy towards him, and contents himself with avoiding and pitying him.”
Excerpt from Allan Kardec‘s “The Spirit’s Book”, translated by Anna Blackwell, LAKE (Livraria Allan Kardec Editora), Printed in Brazil. Version found at Public Domain.
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For more information, please check out these links:
- Our Spiritist Studies section – published on Tuesdays
- Questions & Answers section
- The version of “The Spirit’s Book” (that is in public domain) is available for free download here (.pdf format)
- Get to know the other basic books of Christian Spiritist Doctrine by clicking here.
- Download the other basic books of Spiritism here (.pdf format). All of the books are on public domain.
Chico, we are deeply grateful for your example of faith, charity and obedience to Jesus’ teachings. Thank you!
Please click here to read messages by Chico Xavier »
Please click here to read Chico Xavier’s biography on Wikipedia »
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“Love one another and do unto others what we wish they would do unto us. All that is religion and moral is contained in these two precepts. If they were observed in this world then everyone would be happy and there would be no more hate or resentment. I go even further: there would be no more poverty because all the poor people would be fed from the superfluity of the rich. Neither would poor women be seen dragging wretched children along the dark and sombre streets where I lived during my last incarnation.
Those among you who are rich, think on this a while! Help to the best of your abilities all those who are less fortunate. Give, in order that one day God may recompense the good you have done; and so, on leaving your terrestrial body behind, you may encounter a host of grateful Spirits who will receive you at the threshold to a happier world. Oh! If you could but know the joy felt when, on reaching the world beyond, I found those whom I had been given to serve!…
Therefore, love your neighbours; love them as you would love yourself, because you now know that by repelling even one wretched person it is always possible that perhaps you are sending away a brother, father or friends from other times. If this happens to be the case, imagine your despair when you recognise them again on reaching the spiritual world!
I wish you to understand exactly what moral charity really is. It is something that all can practise, that costs nothing materially speaking, but which is most difficult to exercise. Moral charity then comprises the giving of support to all our fellow creatures and is least done in this inferior world where you now find yourselves incarnated. Believe me, there is great merit in keeping quiet while another, perhaps less intelligent, is speaking. This is but one kind of moral charity. To play deaf when mocking words escape the lips of one accustomed to deride, or to ignore the disdainful smiles of those who are receiving you, when they quite wrongly suppose themselves to be far above you, constitutes merit. However, in actual fact it will quite often be found that in the spiritual world, the only real life, these same persons are far below us. The merit to be gained in these situations is not due to humility, but to charity, in as much as to ignore bad behaviour is a moral charity.
Nevertheless, this kind of charity must not be allowed to interfere with the other kind already mentioned. Therefore, be specially careful never to despise your fellow beings. Remember everything I have told you, and that if you repel a poor or needy person you may perhaps be repelling a Spirit who was once dear to you, who temporarily finds him or herself in an inferior position to you. I have found here one of the destitute from Earth whom happily I had been able to help several times and from whom, in my turn, I must now implore help.
I remind you that Jesus said we are all brothers and sisters. Always think of this before repelling a beggar or even someone with a contagious disease, like leprosy. Goodbye; think of those who suffer and pray for them. – SISTER ROSALIE (Paris, 1860).
Excerpt from Allan Kardec‘s “The Gospel According to Spiritism”, The Headquarters Publishing Co Ltd (London), 1987. Version found at Public Domain website.
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For more information, please check out these links:
- Our Spiritist Studies section – published on Tuesdays
- The version of “The Gospel According to Spiritism” (that is in public domain) is available for free download here (.pdf format)
- Get to know the other basic books of Christian Spiritist Doctrine clicking here
- Download the other basic books of Spiritism here (.pdf format)
400. Does the incarnated spirit reside willingly in his corporeal envelope?
“You might as well ask whether a prisoner willingly remains locked up in prison. The incarnated spirit aspires incessantly after his deliverance; and the grosser his envelope, the more desirous is be to be rid of it.”
401. Does the soul take rest, like tile body, during sleep?
“No; a spirit is never inactive. The bonds which unite him to the body are relaxed during sleep; and as the body does not then need his presence, he travels through space, and enters into more direct relation with other spirits.”
402. How can we ascertain the fact of a spirit’s liberty during sleep?
“By dreams. Be very sure that, when his body is asleep, a spirit enjoys the use of faculties of which he is unconscious while his body is awake. He remembers the past, and sometimes foresees the future: he acquires more power, and is able to enter into communication with other spirits, either in this world or in some other.
“You often say, ‘I have had a strange dream, a frightful dream, without any likeness to reality’.
You are mistaken in thinking it to be so; for it is often a reminiscence of places and things which you have seen in the past, or a foresight of those which you will see in another existence, or in this one at some future time. The body being torpid, the spirit tries to break his chain, and seeks, in the past or in the future, for the means of doing so.
“Poor human beings! how little do you know of the commonest phenomena of your life! You fancy yourselves to be very learned, and you are puzzled by the most ordinary things. To questions that any child might ask, ‘What do we do when we are asleep?’ ‘What are dreams?’ you are incapable of replying.
“Sleep effects a partial freeing of the soul from the body. When you sleep, your spirit is, for the time being, in the state in which you will be after your death. The spirits who at death are promptly freed from matter are those who, during their life, have had what may be called intelligent sleep. Such persons, when they sleep, regain the society of other spirits superior to themselves. They go about with them, conversing with them, and gaining instruction from them; they even work, in the spirit-world, at undertakings which, on dying, they find already begun or completed. From this you see how little death should be dreaded, since, according to the saying of St. Paul, you ‘die daily.’
“What we have just stated refers to spirits of an elevated degree of advancement. As for those of the common mass of men, who, after their death, remain for long hours in the state of confusion and uncertainty of which you have been told by such, they go, during sleep, into worlds of lower rank than the earth, to which they are drawn back by old affections, or by the attraction of pleasures still baser than those to which they are addicted in your world; visits in which they gather ideas still viler, more ignoble, and more mischievous than those which they had professed during their waking hours. And that which engenders sympathy in the earthly life is nothing else than the fact that you feel yourselves, on waking, affectionately attracted towards those with whom you have passed eight or nine hours of happiness or pleasure.
On the other hand, the explanation of the invincible antipathies you sometimes feel for certain persons is also to be found in the intuitive knowledge you have thus acquired of the fact that those persons have another conscience than yours, because you know them without having previously seen them with your bodily eyes. It is this same fact, moreover, that explains the indifference of some people for others; they do not care to make new friends, because they know that they have others by whom they are loved and cherished. In a word, sleep has more influence than you think upon your life.
Excerpt from Allan Kardec‘s “The Spirit’s Book”, translated by Anna Blackwell, LAKE (Livraria Allan Kardec Editora), Printed in Brazil. Version found at Public Domain.
***
For more information, please check out these links:
- Our Spiritist Studies section – published on Tuesdays
- Questions & Answers section
- The version of “The Spirit’s Book” (that is in public domain) is available for free download here (.pdf format)
- Get to know the other basic books of Christian Spiritist Doctrine by clicking here
- Download the other basic books of Spiritism here (.pdf format). All of the books are on public domain.
PREFACE
Every bad thought can have two origins: our own spiritual imperfection or the action of a harmful influence. In the last case we have the indication of a weakness which exposes us to these influences, and it is for this reason that our soul is imperfect. So that the one who foils cannot offer as an excuse the influence of a strange Spirit, seeing that this Spirit would not have led them to wrongdoing if they were inaccessible to seduction.
When we have a bad thought, we can suppose that it was an evil Spirit which suggested the evil, leaving us complete liberty to accede or resist, just as if we were facing a living person. At the same time, we should make a mental picture of our Guardian Angel or protecting Spirit who from his side combats within us the bad influences and anxiously awaits the decision we are going to make. Our hesitation in acting upon the evil suggestions is due to the voice of our good Spirit, who makes himself heard through our conscience.
One recognises a thought is bad when it draws away from charity which is the base of all true morality; or when it comes laden with pride, vanity and selfishness; or when its realization may cause harm to another person: in short, when we are induced by our thoughts to do to others what we would not like someone to do to us (See chapter 28, item 15 & chapter 15 item 10).
PRAYER:
All Powerful Lord, do not let me succumb to the temptation to fall into error! Benevolent Spirits who protect me, turn this bad thought away from me and give me the strength to resist this evil. If I succumb, then I will deserve the expiation of my failing in this same life and in the next, because I have free will to make my choice.
This prayer can be found on “The Gospel According to Spiritism”, which can be downloaded here.
Please pray with us.
