CAUSES OF PRESENT DAY AFFLICTIONS, Joana dArc 07/ 04/ 2015.

Theme: Causes of present-day afflictions.

Source: The gospel according to Spiritism, V: 4 and 5.

CAUSES OF PRESENT-DAY AFFLICTIONS

4. The vicissitudes of life are of two kinds, or if you prefer, stem from two different sources which are important to
distinguish. Some have their cause in present-day life, while others arise outside this present life.
On going back to the origins of earthly misfortunes it must be recognized that many are natural consequences of
character and the behavior of those who suffer them.
How many fail through their own fault? How many are the victims of their own thoughtlessness, pride or
ambition?
How many destroy themselves through lack of discipline, misconduct or from not knowing how to limit their
desires!
How many disastrous marriages are due to the fact that they were built on calculated interest or vanity, in which
the heart took no part!
How many disagreements and fatal disputes could have been avoided with the aid of a little moderation and less
susceptibility!
How many illnesses and diseases stem from intemperance and excesses of all kinds?
How many parents are unhappy with their children because they did not combat their bad instincts from an early
age! Either from weakness or indifference, they allowed the germ of pride, selfishness and stupid vanity to grow in
them, so causing their hearts to dry and shrivel. Later on, when reaping what they have sown, they are surprised and
afflicted by the lack of gratitude and the indifference with which they are treated.
We ask each one whose heart has been hurt by vicissitudes or deceptions, to study their own conscience
closely; to go back, step by step, to the origins of each misfortune which is torturing them. Like as not they will be able
to say: if I had done, or not done, such and such a thing, I would not be where I am now. Who then is responsible for
Man's afflictions if not Man himself? So then in a great number of cases he is the cause of his own misfortunes. But
instead of recognizing this fact he finds it easier and less humiliating to his vanity to accuse his bad luck, providence or
even his unlucky star, when in actual fact his unlucky star is his own carelessness.
When reckoning with the misfortunes of life, suffering of this nature undoubtedly forms the greatest part of all
vicissitudes. Only when Man works at bettering himself, both morally and intellectually, will he be able to avoid this
category of suffering.
***
5. Human laws cover various faults and prescribe punishment. In these cases it is possible for the condemned
man to recognize that he is suffering the consequences of the wrong committed.
But the law does not or cannot, reach every wrong; it falls principally upon those who cause damage to society
and not upon those who only cause damage to themselves. God, however, does not allow any detour from the straight
and narrow path to go unpunished. There is no wrong or infraction of His Law, however small, which does not carry
with it the inevitable consequence, which may be more or less deplorable. From this it follows that in small things, as in
great matters, Man is always punished according to the manner in which he has sinned. The suffering which follows is
always a warning that wrong has been done. This offers him experience and makes him feel the difference between
right and wrong, good and bad, so that in the future these sources of bitterness may be avoided, but without which
there would be no motive for betterment. If Man were to be confident of immunity he would only delay his own progress
and therefore his future happiness.
Nevertheless, sometimes experience arrives rather late, when life has already been wasted and become
disordered, when strength is already spent and the person is no longer able to remedy the wrongdoing. Then man will
frequently say: If I had known then what I know now how many false steps would have been avoided! If I had to begin
again I would act differently, but now there is no more time! Like the lazy workman who says, 'I have wasted my day',
he also says, ' I have wasted my life!' As the sun rising on a new day allows the worker the possibility of repaying any
lost time, so it is with Man that after a period of time in the tomb a new life shines forth which will enable advantage to
be taken of past experience, and good resolutions for the future to be put into practice.
**********
CONSIDERATIONS:
The present-day causes of afflictions in this world are in conformity with the spiritual degree of the person,
because on coming into the world has to adapt oneself to the conditions the world offers, being the world still with

inclinations more towards evil than good, influences can prejudice the spirit to progress far more than one wishes,
because he will be in conflicts against concepts, preconcepts, superstitions, moral difficulties or ideals. Difficulties in
education for lack of money, difficulties against preconcepts of the society in education or poverty and even in the
health, hence he in conformity with the environment which he may live, he will be influenced to become an egoist
person or kind, tolerant or intolerant, workable or lazy, gladly or sad, happy or suffering; since the world influences yes
the spirit in its formation, within that the person who wished to be a teacher and did not achieve it suffers intimately for
not having realized oneself, and it is so with other professional gifts that one might have had the wish and did not come
to pass, hence the necessity of the Christian to be the salt and the light of the world, bringing faith and truth of the true
durable things and acceptable by God Loving ones neighbor as oneself, if one can aid someone do help, if one can
teach do teach, if one has the gift of loving do by all means love, for in the spiritual life nothing is lost, but multiplies
itself and love is eternal.
In the last paragraph of item five Allan Kardec more than 150 years ago had written that which is still up dated,
one still says: If I had known then what I know now how many false steps would have been avoided! ! If I had to begin
again I would act differently, but now there is no more time!
Normally when someone is more mature in life and more pondered thinks like so and ones desire is born
strongly in ones heart wanting to rectify ones errors that one repents to have committed, it is the experience talking
loudly, it is the guilt wanting itself to get free, a person feels tied up to invisible strings in anxiety tied up on the web
which consciously or not had prepared for oneself, of wrong decisions unthoughtful impulses, foolishness, ingenuously
etc. Then fact is the person knows and hides herself intimately keeping for oneself the wishes to do better. To know
better, to learn to err no more for ignorance or spontaneous foolishness, it is born in ones heart desires of every
species and that is natural of the spirits evolution and God knows and had proclaimed previously the Law of
incarnation and one is born intuitively knowing how to live one knows where to place ones stepping or not, it is as
many say: he was born already made, (J nasceu feito) but only God knows of how many experiences and sufferings
one has gone through up to the Born already made.
Many in a new life come to become saints, genius. Wise men, scientists, moralists, teachers, the cream of the
societies, men of well faring who elevates the world to miraculous transformations, men who are exemplars and make
us wish to be as them, dignified men, men of a word we can trust, hero men etc. These men would be in the beyond
possible stagnated would it not be for the Law of reincarnation, had it not be for that what future would theirs be?
It is therein that Allan Kardec speaks the words:
As the sun rising on a new day allows the worker the possibility of repaying any lost time, so it is with Man that
after a period of time in the tomb a new life shines forth which will enable advantage to be taken of past experience,
and good resolutions for the future to be put into practice.
Allan Kardec speaks of the opportunity in a new incarnation by the Grace of God which in His mercy comes to
our aid with the Law of reincarnation.
Be it understood that many a religious person does not accept reincarnation, because they do not understand it
and come to say: with that Law people live in the comfort of leaving for some other life the todays responsibilities, but
they are wrong because the Spiritist Doctrine constantly reminds us the duty to make every effort to conquer our
inferiorities, that the leaving up to the future carries profits and correction due, this is the Law of Causes and effects
seeking out correction and when we do not rescue ourselves through love it will become through pain, more
reincarnations which might be hurtful or suffering ones.
The Spiritist Doctrine is not a Doctrine which brings fears, but comfort, hope and faith, because it does explain
the spiritual truth of the Laws of God, be them the physic ones or the moral ones, (The moral of Spiritism is the one of Jesus )
hence as the spiritist is absent from fears he is more prepared to live and does the possible of in everything to consider
God, his neighbor and himself with the responsibility whicht love asks or demands or at least lives less egoistically,
much more tolerant respecting God in everything as much as his neighbor or the very Nature.
****

Let us study in the Allan Kardecs Book Heaven and Hell chapter III the items ns 8 to 13:
8. Incarnation is necessary to the double progress, intellectual and moral, that has to be accomplished by a
spirit; it ensures his intellectual progress by compelling him to employ his activity in the various pursuits of the earthly
life, and it ensures his moral progress by making him feel the need which men have for one another. Social life is the
touchstone that reveals the good or bad qualities of a spirit. Kindness, malevolence, gentleness, violence, charity,
selfishness, generosity, avarice, humility, pride, sincerity, hypocrisy, loyalty, and treachery in a word, all that
constitutes human goodness and human badness find their motive, aim, and stimulus, in the relations of each man
with his fellows. If it were possible for a man to live alone, he would have neither vices nor virtues; for, though isolation
may preserve from evil, it also annuls the possibility of goodness.
***
9. A single corporeal existence is manifestly insufficient to enable a spirit to acquire all the goodness he lacks,
and rid himself of all the evil that is in him. Would it be possible, for an instant, for a savage to attain, in a single
incarnation, to the intellectual and moral level of the most advanced European? It is physically impossible for him to do
so. Must he, then, remain eternally in ignorance and barbarism, deprived of the enjoyments that can only be reached

through the development of the intellectual and moral faculties? The simplest common sense suffices to show us that
such a supposition would be the negation, both of the justice and goodness of God and of the law of progress, which is
the law of nature. And it is for this reason that God, being supremely just and good, grants to the spirit of each man as
many successive existences as he needs for attaining to the perfection which is the aim of his being. In each new
existence, a spirit brings with him, under the form of natural aptitudes, of intuitive knowledge, of intelligence, and of
morality, all the gains that have been made by him in his previous existences.
Thus each new existence takes him on a step further upon the road of progress.4 Incarnation is inherent to the
condition of the inferiority of the Spirit. It is no longer necessary when inferiority is overcome and there is continued
progress in the spiritual state or in the physical existences of more advanced worlds that do not maintain earthly
materialization.
***
10. In the intervals between his successive incarnations, a spirit return, for a longer or shorter time, into the
spirit-world, where he is happy, or unhappy, according to the good, or the evil, he has done in his previous lives. The
life of the spirit-world is the normal state of the spirit, the definitive state towards which he is tending; for it is his spirit
that is undying, while the state of incarnation is one of transition and of passage. It is especially in the spirit-state that
he reaps the fruit of the progress accomplished by him during incarnation; it is also in that state that he prepares for a
new struggle with ignorance and evil, and forms the resolutions which he will strive to put into practice in his next return
to the discipline of human life.
The spirit progresses also in erraticity,5 in which state he acquires special knowledge that he could not acquire
upon the earth, and modifies the ideas acquired by him through his subjection to the actions of matter.
The state of incarnation and the spirit-state are for him the source of two kinds of progress, each of which is
equally necessary to his advancement; and it is in order that he may reap the special benefits of each that he is made
to alternate between these two modes of existence.
***
11. A spirit may be reincarnated upon the earth or in other material worlds. Among the latter, there are some
which are further advanced than others, and in which the conditions of existence, both physical and moral, are less
painful than upon the earth; but, into those happier worlds, only such spirits are admitted as have arrived at a degree of
advancement in harmony with that of those worlds.

(3Vide The Spirits Book, p. 100, et seq. 4 See footnote, Chap. I., no. 3. 5 Vide The Spirits Book, p. 103.)

Incarnation in worlds of higher degree is, of itself, a reward for the spirits whose efforts have fitted them to share
the life of those worlds, the inhabitants of which are exempted from the ills and the vicissitudes to which we are
exposed upon the earth. Their bodies, being more fluidic, are free from the grossness of earthly flesh, and are not
subject to diseases, infirmities, or even to the needs, of our present bodily state. Spirits of low degree being excluded
from those worlds, their people live together in peace, with no other care than that of effecting the advancement by
their intellectual activity. True fraternity reigns in those worlds, because in them selfishness has no existence; true
equality reigns in them, because no proud or vain-glorious spirit could obtain admission into them; and true liberty
reigns in them, because, in those worlds, there are no disorders to be repressed, no ambitious tyrants seeking to
oppress their weaker brethren. In comparison with the earth, such worlds are paradises, although they are but the
temporary resting-places of the spirit, on the road of progress that is leading him up to the attainment of yet higher
mode of existence that constitutes the true, definitive life of the soul. The earth, being as yet a world of low degree, and
destined to serve as a place of purification for imperfect spirits, evil necessarily predominates in it, and will continue to
do so until the Divine ordering shall make it the abode of spirits of greater advancement than those who are now
incarnated in it.
It is thus that each spirit, progressing gradually in proportion as he accomplishes his development, arrives at
length at the apogee of felicity; but, before attaining to the highest point of perfection, he enjoys increasing degrees of
happiness, proportioned to each successive degree of his advancement. It is with the spirit, in this respect, as with a
child; in his infancy, he shares the pleasures of childhood, in his youth, those that belong to adolescence, and, when he
has attained to mans estate, the riper satisfactions of manhood.
***
12. The felicity of the perfected spirits is not a state of idle contemplation, which would be, as has frequently
been pointed out, merely a state of eternal and wearisome uselessness. Spirit-life, at every degree, is, on the contrary,
a state of constant activity, though an activity exempt from fatigue. The most perfect felicity of that life consists in the
enjoyment of all the splendors of the creation, which human language is incapable of describing, and of which the most
exuberant human imagination would fail to form the remotest conception; in the knowledge and comprehension of
all things; in the absence of every sort of suffering, physical and moral, in an interior satisfaction, a serenity of soul that
nothing can disturb; in the pure and perfect affection which unites all the beings who through the absence of evil and
inferior spirits, are beyond the reach of disappointment or annoyance; and, above all, in the vision of God and in the
understanding of the sublime mysteries of existence that are unveiled only to those who have rendered themselves
worthy of such initiation. The happiness of the fully purified spirits consists also in the exercise of the functions with
which they rejoice to be charged.

They are the Messiahs, the Messengers of God, for the transmission and the execution of His volitions; they
accomplish great missions, preside over the formation of worlds and the maintenance of the general harmony of the
universe, glorious posts at which spirits only arrive as the direct result of their perfection. Those only who have reached
the highest grade of perfectibility are admitted to have knowledge of the secrets of God, and receive the direct
inspiration of His thought, of which they are the immediate representatives.
***
13. The employments of spirits are proportioned to their advancement, to the knowledge they possess, to their
capacities, to their experience, and to the degree of confidence reposed in them by the sovereign Master.
In the spirit-world, there is no privilege, no favor that is not the consequence of personal merit; all the
arrangements of that higher world are weighed in the scales of absolute justice. The most important missions are
confided only to those who are known by God to be, at once, able to fulfill them worthily, and incapable of betraying
them or of failing in the accomplishment of the tasks committed to them. While, under the very eye of God, the most
worthy that compose the Supreme Council of the Universe are charged with the direction of the various solar systems,
and others are charged with the direction of a single planet. After these, in the order of their personal advancement and
hierarchical rank, are the spirits who are entrusted with the direction of a single nation, of a single family, of a single
individual, are charged to push forward some special branch of progress, or to superintend the various operations of
nature, all of which, to the minutest details of the work of creation. In the vast and harmonious unity of creation, there
are occupations for all varieties and degrees of capacity, of aptitude, of devotion; occupations that are solicited with
ardent desire and accepted with joy and gratitude, because devotion and service are means of advancement for the
spirits who aspire to the ineffable felicity of the supreme degree.
**********

Heaven and hell I Chapter I, item 3 footnote 2:

We knew a young man of eighteen, who was attacked by a disease of the heart, pronounced by the faculty to be incurable.
His physicians had declared that he might die in a week, or might live on for a couple of years, but that his life could not possibly
be prolonged beyond that period. The young man, on becoming aware of the fate that awaited him, immediately broke off his
studies and gave himself up to every sort of debauchery. To the remonstrance addressed to him upon the dangers of such a life of
disorder to no one in his state of health, he invariably replied: What does it matter, seeing that I have only two years to live?
Where would be the use of fatiguing myself with study? I am making the most of the remnant of life that is left to me, and am
determined to enjoy myself while it lasts. Such is the logical consequence of a belief in annihilation.
If this young man had been a Spiritist, he would have said to himself: Death will only destroy my body, which I shall throw
aside like a worn-out garment; but my spirit will live forever. I shall be, in my next phase of existence, just what I shall have made
of myself by my present life. Nothing that I shall have acquired, in morality or in knowledge, will be lost to me, for every new
acquisition I shall have made will be so much added to my advancement. The cure of every imperfection, of which I may have
been able to rid myself during my present existence, which will take me a step further on my road to felicity; my future happiness
or unhappiness will be the result of good or bad use I shall have made of the life which I am now living. It is, therefore, of the
utmost importance for me to make the most of the short time still remaining to me, and to avoid whatever would tend to diminish
my strength.
Which of the two doctrines we are comparing is the preferable one?
**********
REFLECTIONS:
The lad of 18 years old in his reflection if he were spiritist would have thought: my future happiness or unhappiness
will be the result of good or bad use I shall have made of the life which I am now living. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance
for me to make the most of the short time still remaining to me, and to avoid whatever would tend to diminish my strength.
It would be a wise decision and it is the one we should make, since it is of our own interest to live conscious of
the future life and not what is left at the end of life, Nature does not jump let us walk with Jesus in His Gospel let us be
what we are, if we are poor let us accept our condition let us not fall in egotism of demanding from God more and more
making pretentious bargains giving to God with interest Type of business.
It is true that our physic demands causes us easily to fall in pitfalls of materialism being important only the
immediatism, little thinking in the spiritual future which is more real than the material one, then we are in time of
pondering, and allowing To fall in the reality as one may say, we are spirits and not just material body, we are immortal
and not only for this world, Jesus mentioned that: In my Fathers House there are many mansions, He certainly said it
so we might have notion of the spiritual future, it was not with intentions to throw us into immediatism, but the spiritual
future.
Jesus did not have where to lay down his head, but that did not worry him; let us then accept to have confidence
in God and in Jesus, since each day has its evil, being that Part of life. There are cases that teaches us patience,
cases that teaches us tolerance, cases which teaches us to understand our neighbor, cases that teaches us to work,
discover, to have progress without prejudicing anyone, trusting in God, having rational faith, cases which teaches us to
be honest dignified and trustful as much as responsible, for sure the world is a school which prepares us for more
advanced worlds, let us have faith and more confidence in God giving Him thanks for that and continue being confident
in God having due rational faith, knowing who we are and that we have forwarding a future more and more happy.

May God be with us as formerly, today and forever?

Bem, que Deus seja conosco, assim como outrora, hoje e sempre.