In search of Truth with a capital ‘T’, let us look at religions. Some religious movements have billions of followers. They are convinced that their faith is the true Faith. But within each religion there is division, and you see sub-streams. How can someone who has lived within one religion for a lifetime argue that only his or her religion is the right one? Let me make the perspective even bigger: Imagine that you were born on another planet, let’s say on the planet Serabe in the star system Sirius-B… Which religion would then be yours? Or… would they have no religion there at all?
Seen this way, it makes sense to incarnate several times on Earth. In the course of your incarnations you will experience many religions from the inside. Maybe you will learn that every religion in essence reflects a piece of Truth. Maybe we have been on other planets before and who knows… somewhere in the future, our souls will explore the universe even further, using a body that is conceived on that planet. However, just here on Earth, there is still so much to learn.
If I had been in their shoes…
I have often heard people say, “If I had been in their shoes, I would never have done that.” So, they would never make the same choice(s) as the other person; but what does it mean to stand in someone’s shoes and then do something that other people later say: “I would never have done that!”?
Image: youth photo of Wim (± 1964), unmistakebly shot in the Netherlands:-).
It is not the same as putting on that person’s shoes and trying to walk in them. They probably don’t even fit. It means that you must put yourself in the shoes of that person in order to take and understand their perspective. If you want to do that properly, you should be born as a soul in the same body as that other person, with the same genes that make one person a beautiful woman and the other an ugly man, or vice versa of course. Some people have congenital defects, so you must live with that. You are born in the same country, whether it is a totalitarian state or a rich country without poverty. You are given the same parents who may live in a ghetto where violence is the common method of settling disputes; then that will be your example of how to settle quarrels. Maybe you were abused as a child and will be afraid of men for life. Maybe your parents love you very much even though you only seek trouble because you really dislike the shoes that you were born in this time.
All these factors play a role in the choice you are about to make. These are the shoes that you will take your place in, all your life, until the moment you say, “I would never have done that if I had been in those shoes.”
If you, the soul that you are, have had many incarnations, you are probably better able to break free from the straitjacket that you were born into and raised in. That is what is meant by ‘consciousness’. If you are a more ‘conscious soul’, you will probably become more aware of all those factors that try to determine you. If you recognise those influences, because as a soul you have had to deal with them many times in previous incarnations, you may be able to free yourself from them, so that you are not directed by the circumstances. Then you take control and consciously choose to go along with something or not. Younger souls with less experience are probably not even aware that their choices are usually determined by the above factors.
Then again, the same question: What would you have done if you had been in Linda’s shoes?
School in Love
You were also crazy enough 🙂to want to be born here. That took courage.
A more conscious soul will remember that there were times when she looked up like a mountain to the same problem that she sees others struggling with now. She might then become a teacher. Good teachers do not dictate to their pupils what choice they ‘must’ make in order to solve a specific problem. Instead, good teachers guide their pupils through the process of getting to the bottom of the problem and then let them discover the solution for themselves, which of course, is much more work for a teacher than giving the solution on a piece of paper.
Our guides are our teachers and they guide us with endless patience. They may give us warning signals when our choices get us into trouble, but they also guard our Freedom of Choice. Any mistakes we make are our own. But even if we make very big mistakes, they keep helping us, knowing that one day there will be a moment when we have understood the material. Then you talk about Love.
In my own life, writing this, I am now reminded of the fact that I used to be bullied a lot in primary school. I sometimes wonder if I could have prevented it if I had just punched one of the biggest bullies in the beginning. That might not have been the ideal solution, but it would probably have earned me more respect and I would not have been bullied as much afterwards. And so I would have had more fun at school.
On the other hand, maybe I would have ‘belonged’ and been included in ‘the group’. But then I would probably also have been guided more by what the group thought was the right thing to do, in order to prevent myself from falling out of the group. I might also have been more obedient in society than I am now 🙂. So, who knows, maybe my stubbornness now can only be explained by the fact that I didn’t used to have enough guts to stand up for myself at a time when it was justified.
