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Our freedom of choice is connected to the "Law of Cause and Effect," that is, everything I think, what I desire, what I do determines natural consequences. The experience of human life is circumscribed by free decisions linked to the implications of choices. Divine Laws allow us to make decisions freely, yet the choices generate adequate or unpleasant results, depending on the options.
God never punishes us and His Laws are not and never were of a punitive nature, for the choices we make can bring a natural "harvest" and always proportional to the "planting", according to the greater or less understanding of the acts. God is love, there is nothing outside God; therefore we deduce that there is nothing outside love. What is contrary to the Law of God, in reality, does not exist in an absolute way.
Our choices carry in their essence the right or wrong implications. Our state, happy or flagellant, is intrinsic to our state of moral purity or impurity. Therefore, we should not seek in God the immunity of our difficulties, but we have to summon up the strength necessary to overcome them. In the spiritual spheres, there is no code that punishes or awards; beyond tomb the "Choice of the Tests Law" is in effect and not the coercive laws with punitive attributes. The Spirit will always choose what it will face in the future as a means of its moral and intellectual development.
Let's see that the irrational ones, a dog, for example, acts by automatism, therefore they cannot make choices, except those that are within the spectrum of their instinct. The dog has no free will, so his "wrong acts" cannot bring him negative consequences. However, the irrational being rehearses for a rational life; for this reason, when the irrational enters the human world, conscience and the Law of Freedom gradually unfold enabling it to choose the actions, determining the results at the level of the consciousness reached.
The "Law of Cause and Effect" synchronized with the Laws of "Freedom" and "Responsibility" determines the course of human existence. Therefore, we are free to think and act, but we are responsible for what we do, think or what we do not do.
Reincarnation will never be a punitive process
The Spiritist movement defends the myth that considers that ALL present sufferings are the result of the wrong acts of the past; however, in Chapter V of the book Heaven and Hell, Kardec categorically says that the present suffering is only a result of the imperfection that we have not yet got rid of, and not necessarily does it result from the wrongdoings of the past.
There are Spiritists who preach the law of "Karma" (in Sanskrit meaning the "deliberate act"). In its origins, the word "Karma" meant "strenght" or "movement". Despite this, the post-Vedic literature expresses the evolution of the term to "law" or "order", often being defined as "law of the strength retention". This means that each person will receive the result of their actions. It is a mere fact of cause and consequence. [1]
Undoubtedly the law of "Karma" is a contradictory, vengeful, fatalistic law. Its principle is based on the invasive connection that "if you beat, you will be beaten", "if you betray, you will be betrayed", "if you kill, you will have to die", always an ancestral evocation of the antediluvian retaliation law of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth".
No one suffers just to "pay" for a wrong action of the past. Our pain is not a reaction to anything, but an action, because we necessarily suffer for the cause of freedom and not "because" of it. Allan Kardec makes a slight allusion to the term cause and effect and never mentioned the term "Karma" in any research or to clarify the reasons for pain and affliction. Therefore, "Karma" was not mentioned at any time by Kardec or by the spiritual benefactors. Moreover, reincarnation will never be a punitive process. We are reborn to morally improve ourselves. If we suffer, from time to time, it is due to the cause that we embraced freely and not irrevocably because of some "disobedience" to the divine laws.
Hence, Kardec's good sense whispers that there is no fate marked with detailed events punishing us during reincarnation, as the mystics of partisans of such "Karma" proclaim. Strictly speaking, such "Karma" is an unthinking and incongruous law; in turn the Law of Cause and Effect (contained in the Codification) is a coherent moral law that makes us grow and advance consciously.
Suffering is inherent in our imperfection
In Question 132 of The Book of Spirits, Kardec asks what the purpose of the incarnation would be. The answer is clear: "The law of God imposes the incarnation in order to reach perfection..." At no time do the words bitter, burden, pain or any other term meaning "karma" appear. Through successive existences, through our efforts and desires for improvement on the path of progress, we advance always and reach perfection, which is our final destination". [2]
Suffering is inherent in our imperfection, that is, the proud suffer the consequences of pride and the selfish suffer the effects of selfishness, but let us be very clear: no one reincarnates to pass through the Law of Talion, but to overcome imperfection and evolve through work in the good, up to the limit of each one’s strength.
Moreover, not all suffering is atonement. In item 9 of Chapter V, from The Gospel According to Spiritism, Allan Kardec points out: "It is not to be believed, however, that every suffering that we go through in this world is necessarily the sign of a certain fault: it is often a simple proof chosen by the Spirit for its cleansing, to speed up its progress". [3]
As seen, in the light of the Doctrine of Spirits there is only one destiny designed for all creatures; it is the destiny of evolution, of intellectual and moral improvement, aiming at the knowledge of the TRUTH for the acquisition of pure and unfailing happiness. There is no catastrophic fatalism in our destiny. We can never say that "what is written is written" and nothing will change our destiny. Now! If we believe this, we will deny our free will and the Law of Mercy, which induces us to love and that covers the multitude of wrong acts.
We are not a (robotized) machine, even because we know how to decide. We acquire gradual consciousness about the so-called good or evil, and this establishes the scenarios of pleasant experiences or not in our path. God established laws that are registered in our consciences. With the Law of Cause and Effect we can better evaluate the choices and with them we develop the understanding in the face of natural consequences through reincarnations.
We are all in a set of providential forces that determine a certain amount of "interventions" (divine providence) for free will to be operated upon. But all the choices are ours. Therefore, before reincarnation, the flow chart of the new physical experience will never be compulsory, but lovingly suggested by the specialists of the Beyond; because of this we choose the family group, the society, the culture, the socioeconomic conditions, the ethnicity, the gender. All this is part of our choice, suggested or not by the most enlightened Spirits before reincarnation, and such a decision will bring us closer to this or that influence of a social group that may have a relative weight in our choices.
We do not have to be hostages to circumstances
The important thing for those who are here on this Earth to have the due spiritual advance, is not to fail because of regret, rebellion, because "the great trials are almost always a sign of an end of suffering and of the progress of the Spirit, provided that they are accepted as the love for God". [4]
Freedom is proportional to our stage of moral evolution, so we are relatively free for certain decisions, but we do not need to be hostage to circumstances and social factors, family structures, ethnic, spiritual, "astrological", numerological, and so on. All of this may even influence us, but it does not determine our resolutions from our choices. Surely such influences can propel us to the best or the worst choices, but we will inevitably have opportunities to learn from life.
It is quite true that there are works in the classical Spiritist literature that demonstrate the relative influences of the social, political, economic and cultural scenario in which we are placed and which, at some level, may be related in a relative way to a previous life scenario, but without relentless "karmic" determinisms. We emphasize that in the divine laws there is no punishment or reward. The Creator has established wise and just laws that determine natural effects before our choices.
We emphasize that those who generalize and claim that all suffering is the result of mistakes made in the past are not correct. The development of potentialities, the evolutionary advancement, requires work, effort, as well as to overcome challenges. In this case it is probation, not atonement, that is, they are the tasks to which the Spirit submits, at its own request, with the purpose of its progress, to conquer a better future.
We take our lives and determine our existence with freedom within evolution. Therefore, we take responsibility for our existences, going through our life in accordance with what we do of ourselves. This self-appropriation of existence through the self-responsibility of everything that happens to us gives us a certain sense of mastery in the relativity of our existence over affliction, tenderness, joy, and misery. Naturally, everything that happens to us concerns us, therefore we cannot impute to anyone the victory or the misfortune in what happens to us, because what happens to us is, in relativity, a mirror of the recent or remote past and what we can harvest tomorrow will result relatively from our sowing in the present.
The purpose of God's Law is the perfection of the Spirit
The function of pain is to expand horizons, to truly see the real harmonic paths of balance. Therefore, in the face of the "Karmic" commitments, in collective or individual atonement, let us always remember that the purpose of God's Law is the perfection of the Spirit, and that we are each day walking in that destination, in which our personal effort and the pursuit of peace will be acting in our favor, minimizing to the maximum the weight of the consequences of the mistakes of the past.
We are the masters and those responsible for life, so when we make mistakes, we can retrace the journey through new choices, considering that we often make the wrong choices and sip the natural effects of them; however, as we broaden our awareness of wrongdoing, we are even lessening the effects of choices, because we will make more appropriate choices.
We were bred for HAPPINESS! Therefore, even in the face of all pain and suffering, we must face them with LOVE.
References:
[1] Available in meaning of karma – accessed on December 2, 2018
[2] KARDEC, Allan. The Book of Spirits, 50thedition, Rio de Janeiro: Publisher: FEB, 1980, question 132.
[3] KARDEC, Allan. The Gospel According to Spiritism. Rio de Janeiro: Publisher: FEB, 2001, item 9, Chapter V.
[4] Idem, Chapter 14. |
