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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Franchezzo

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she said she would wait as long as necessary, all of her life, to be with me

Had it not been for my one star of hope, my angel of light, and the hopes she had given me through her love, I must have sunk into the apathy of despair. But when I thought of her waiting, as she had vowed she would do all her life for me, when I recalled her sweet and tender smile and the loving words she had spoken to me my heart and my courage revived again and I strove to endure, to be patient, to be strong.

and now the real suffering begins

And I had need of all to help me, for from now began a period of suffering and conflict I shall in vain seek to make anyone fully realise.

like a huge prison, with open doors; but it's even worse out there on your own, so don't even think about it

This place where I was now I could barely see in all its details. It was like a huge prison—dim and misty in its outlines. Later on I saw it was a great building of dark grey stone (as solid to my eyes as earthly stone) with many long passages, some long large halls or rooms, but mostly composed of innumerable little cells with scarcely any light and only the barest of furniture. Each spirit had only what he had earned by his earthly life, and some had nothing but the little couch whereon they lay and suffered.

all education, no punishment: each with foot planted on the lowest rung of development, but, with fortitude and diligence, possessing a hope and promise of surmounting hightest heaven in due time

For all suffered there. It was as the House of Sorrow, yet it was also a House of Hope, for all there were striving upwards to the light, and for each had begun the time of hope. Each had his foot planted upon the lowest rung of the ladder of hope by which he should in time mount even to Heaven itself.

In my own little cell there was but my bed, a table and a chair—nothing more. I spent my time in resting or meditating in my cell, and going with those who, like myself, soon grew strong enough to hear the lectures which were delivered to us in the great hall.

Very impressive those lectures were; told in the form of a story, but always so as to bring home to the mind of each of us those things wherein we had done wrong.

no victims allowed here, but only those who will assume full responsibility for what one has done

Great pains were taken to make us understand, from the point of view of an impartial spectator, the full consequences to ourselves and others of each of our actions, and where we had for our own selfish gratifications wronged or dragged down another soul.

'everybody's doing it' - and this means that everybody will suffer

So many things which we had done because all men did them, or because we thought that we as men had a right to do them, were now shown to us from the other side of the picture—from that of those who had in a measure been our victims, or, where we personally were not directly responsible for their fall, the victims of a social system invented and upheld to gratify us and our selfish passions.

all the masks come down now, no more hiding in 'the games people play'

I cannot more fully describe these lectures, but those amongst you who know what are the corruptions of the great cities of earth will easily supply for yourselves the subjects. From such lectures, such pictures of ourselves as we were, stripped of all the social disguises of earth life, we could but return in shame and sorrow of heart to our cells, to reflect over our past and to strive to atone for it in our future.

And in this there was great help given to us, for with the error and its consequences we were always shown the way to correct and overcome the evil desire in ourselves, and how we might atone for our own sins by timely efforts to save another from the evil into which we had fallen—these lessons being all intended to fit us for the next stage of our progression, in which we would be sent back to earth to help, unseen and unknown, mortals who were struggling with earth's temptations.

When we were not attending the lectures we were free to go where we might wish—that is, such of us as were strong enough to move about freely. Some who had left dear friends on earth would go to visit them, that, unseen themselves, they might yet see those they loved. We were always warned, however, not to linger in the temptations of the earth plane, since many of us would find it difficult to resist them...

like a hospital or rehab, not a penitentiary

It were impossible for me to give you a very clear picture of this place and those in it, for although the resemblance to an earthly hospital was very great, there were many little points in which it resembled nothing which you have yet on earth, though as knowledge on earth advances the resemblance will become closer. All was so dark in this place, because the unfortunate spirits who dwelt there had none of the brightness of happy spirits to give into the atmosphere, and it is the state of the spirit itself in the spiritual world that makes the lightness or darkness of its surroundings.

The sense of darkness was also due to the almost total blindness of these poor spirits, whose spiritual senses never having been developed on earth made them alike insensible to all around them, just as those born on earth in a state of blindness and deafness and dumbness would be unconscious of the things which were apparent to those fully endowed with senses.