When we come into contact with the Doctrine of Spirits, we almost always seek immediate solutions to our problems, be they moral or material. We almost always hope that it will perform a miracle in giving us the solution to our afflictions and needs. We hope to obtain material goods, solve love problems and achieve peace without having to strive to achieve all this. This is certainly one of the most curious aspects of those seeking Spiritism.

However, another one also exists and it is just as interesting as the first, because it shows us how we are still stuck with mysticisms and divinations of all kinds. Every time we ask for what it can’t give us, we run the risk of getting involved with charlatans of all hues and gauges.

As a rule, we always find someone who knows someone who can tell us about our present, our past and our future. Usually charges us, openly or veiled, saying that you providing not for him, but for some social assistance.

If we stop to analyze these three possibilities, we will see that regarding the present, no one needs to tell us anything, because we are living in the present now. But, from the moment we operate through an act, a word or thought we will be experiencing another reality, because the consequences of our attitudes will already take us into action, bringing to us the debts or credits of what we choose to do. And what was something distant - the future - and was only in our imagination, comes true, present in our lives.

So let's see our future. If it is the moment following everything we do, whether in deeds, words or thoughts, then we need to pay more attention to our attitudes, as we are at every moment determining our future. In other words, this very moment we are planting (watch what everyone is thinking now) what we are going to reap next, either now or later. Everything will depend on how we are living in the present.

Scholars say that doing this we create a rescue framework that we built ourselves, since we are determining now how our future will be: a future of a good harvest or a bad harvest, of sweet or bitter fruits, of fragrant flowers or of thorns – what we sow, we will have to reap. And we don't need to go back too far to find out what kind of sowing we did back in the past. If we spend a lot, today we will certainly live with difficulty; if we do not teach our children or those beings who have been placed in our care to evolve, the value of friendship, gratitude, fraternity, and if we do not pull out – in the same way we do with weeds – their first signs of pride, selfishness and vanity, for example, we cannot complain if today they cause us sadness and loneliness.

So far, it seems to us that only we are in charge of building our future. Thus, there is nothing determining that we are obliged to suffer in order to be better and happier creatures, other than our own decisions. The Creator Father did not create us for suffering, but for light and happiness. But, as each one wants to reach these achievements differently, it is natural that many deviate to less secure but more tempting paths. Most of the time, we seek amenities to solve our desires because we believe that we are smarter than others, more intelligent or have greater financial resources and greater social prestige. Anyway, the reasons are varied, but they are crops that we carry out on our walk, often spreading pains and tears wherever we go, far from imagining that we will be forced to harvest their final product. When we build such a picture, is it not easy to understand our current afflictions?

We have already talked about the present and the future and our theme is about the consequences of the past. This is another very interesting aspect of those who seek Spiritism to find out who they were in other lives, since they are not satisfied with their current existence. Thus, they resort to “experts” who can tell them what they would like to have been, more as a way of escaping reality than wanting to be better today than they were yesterday. What calls our attention in these cases is the constant repetition of characters, as we find different people saying that they were the same queen, the same king, the same sage and many other historical highlights, without realizing that the Spirit is one, modifying only the body in which he will live. One Spirit for each body. That is the law.

Thus, it is difficult to understand how many of us could have been, for example, Queen Cleopatra or King Louis XV, or a famous painter and so on, and almost never were we homicidal, suicidal, beggars, muggers, simple people, an unknown teacher, loving parents, unknown priests, not to mention morally abominable activities. We always need to be outstanding people. If we are not today, why not in the past?

And there is our big mistake! Nobody needs to tell us who we were and we don't care about that, because if we return to the flesh, it is because we still have a lot to learn. We still have a lot to change in our hearts, in our feelings, in our way of understanding life as a source of growth and not suffering; as a way to achieve peace and balance and not as a form of strife with our neighbor, because he is different from us, he does not think like us and does not deserve to be happy as we deserve.

It is essential that we stop to check our tendencies, our tastes, our difficulties. It is important to examine what really bothers us, but above all with which feeling we have the greatest difficulties in working: it is pride, vanity, impatience, prejudice, non-conformity with financial problems, difficulties in affective relationships of any kind, or is it anger? And when we are with someone, what bothers us most about that person? Because what bothers us is certainly what we do not accept in ourselves. It is in fact the speck in the other's eye that becomes the beam in ours, which we avoid looking at.

We need to answer these questions so that we can better prepare for the construction of our future. If today we encounter difficulties in our existence, we certainly have not made good choices in the past. Thus, it is not necessary to seek to know who we were, but to find out how we were so that we can be better tomorrow. And we will only know how we went if we honestly examine our current trends, since we have changed little, even though we have already changed a lot.

The past is only important for us to understand how much we still need to walk, and how far we are from the teachings of Jesus that call us to practice the virtues He came to teach us.

The Spirit is immortal and to progress it needs to go through several material experiences - physical - to learn and this it will only achieve if it has a way to manifest itself. And how can this be done? It is through the physical body. This body becomes, therefore, a sacred vessel for its experience in matter. Taking care of it is a sacred duty of everyone who already understands the responsibility he has regarding the health and balance of this vessel that carries something so precious. Anything that can lead him to imbalance, whether material or through an unhealthy mind - causing damage to this instrument lent to us so that, as Spirits that we are, we can grow - will respond to divine laws and will certainly reap all the consequences of this misuse.

We are placing here the imbalances caused by the different addictions, be they through the ingestion of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs; over-eating that overloads all organs; unbridled sex; by misfit minds that lead to imbalances in the functioning of the liver, stomach, heart, muscles throughout the body when they abandon themselves to anger, resentment, lack of charity, arrogance or minds that cultivate unhappy thoughts of suicide or who remain in vengeance, in remorse without doing anything to change these pictures. We speak of minds that, being able to use art in any of its manifestations and, being able to help, end up diverting other creatures from the straight path.

While we are concerned with knowing who we were, we are forgetting to check who we are so that, starting from our present, we can effectively initiate the changes so necessary for a future of more peace and more happiness.

Certainly, many will say that they are happy with their life today and this is slowly becoming a common situation. This is very good, as we must verify that we are already putting into practice the evangelical teachings. We are simply showing others that Jesus' words are only fulfilled when we do our part, as His co-workers, in building a better world.

When the Master of Nazareth told us that blessed are the meek and peacemakers because they will inherit the land, he did not speak of any land other than our planet. And if today we are already able to accept the difficulties with greater resignation - and that means not to rebel with divine laws, since we are the very cause of our suffering - it is because we are already enjoying His promise that we would inherit the Earth, that we are transformed in a land of love and brotherhood, where evil, little by little, is being removed, so that the Good will definitely prevail in the heart of all creatures.

We will not fail to do what must be done because in the past we encountered difficulties, and because we are afraid of failing in the future. Our time is today! Our future is now when at this moment we are choosing to be better people.