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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Franchezzo

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Elenchus. I just learned something - something I’d wondered about for many years.

Kairissi. It’s always exciting when that happens.

E. For a long time, as I’d read the channeled testimonies from the other side, I would come across statements like, “There are certain lessons for your eternal life that are best learned on the Earth, and not in Summerland.” And this always stopped me – what are those lessons and why can’t I learn them in Summerland, too?”

K. Summerland is a place where it seems everything we want is available, so why can’t we learn all lessons there?

E. Well, it’s interesting you say this because maybe your own words give us a clue.

K. Do they?

E. If Summerland is where we can have whatever we want, then, it would seem, we can experience whatever we want there – except what it’s like not to have everything.

K. That’s an interesting thought. And it raises the question, are certain fundamental lessons for our eternal life best learned in an environment of lack and scarcity?

E. Well, I think your question is related to Franchezzo’s comment, “the lust for evil ground out of the soul.” I’m still reeling a little from its wisdom.

K. We said that its meaning refers to entering into evil, experiencing it fully, and thereby gaining an aversion to it.

E. The poisoned candy will make you sick.

K. Now I suppose it’s fair to say that in Summerland we don’t see a lot of people running around sick from poisoned candy.

E. Things are so good there that the results of evil are not as apparent. They’re much easier to see here on the Earth.

K. Sometimes we see little else.

E. But over there you can go about your life for a long time and remain somewhat oblivious to the deleterious effects of egoism – because most people there have given up selfish living; at least, in the most obvious ways.

K. And so, if someone were to grow up in Summerland, it wouldn’t be so clear cut that God’s way of love and service is the best way.

E. In other words, it’s much harder to “grind the lust for evil out of the soul” in the pleasant atmosphere of Summerland. And I think this is what the testimonies are getting at when they say that certain lessons of wisdom are more easily learned on the Earth.

K. Not everyone who visits the Earth learns how to “grind” the soul clean of evil, and this means they’ll have some overdue homework to hand-in during a “detention time” in the Dark Realms.

E. But for those who guard against a victimhood attitude and maintain an “open channel” to God’s instruction, it’s not so hard to get one’s fill, and even to vomit at the sight, of the poisoned candy.

K. As I listen to you explain these things, I’m agreeing with you; however, I feel my heart filling with sadness.

E. What are you seeing, Kriss?

K. It’s strange, really. All this talk about “grinding evil out of the soul” – it’s easy to imagine some criminal activity that we’re not part of… but… the truth of the matter is… each human being has much “evil to be ground out.” And I’m thinking of us, in those early years, so long ago now, but… how egocentric we were, how unwilling to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and how easily we stomped off, rejected each other, and settled into an attitude of anger toward each other, and toward life itself.

E. John-and-Mary have their own "grinding of evil" to do.

K. And I think about us, how we were apart for those long years; suffering, missing each other, entering fully into the misery of wayward lovers. Oftentimes, late at night, I ask myself, “Did we really need to go through those decades of grief, living apart from each other?” I’ve been over this and over this in my mind, and I have to reluctantly agree that the program of “grinding evil from the soul” also applies to us. We were too head-strong, too unkind, too unthinking. What was needed to make us more sentient, more caring, more mindful? And I have to conclude that the great suffering we endured during our time apart was an experience carefully designed, by ourselves, to bring us to a better level of godly awareness.

E. I sometimes wonder, what would it have been like for us to have come together early on? – but I don’t like the answer. If I’m very honest, I have to admit that, given our selfishness at that time, we would have made each other miserable. We would have messed up ourselves just as any egocentric John and Mary.

K. That’s really something, isn’t it. Even though we’re Twin Souls with a cosmic destiny, if evil still reigns in the heart, none of that future promise will help. We’ll drift into a lower level of consciousness and just use each other for a private agenda of “make me happy” – and then we become as unhappy as any couple on the street.

E. It’s very disturbing to see these things.

'the desolation of our lives'

K. Franchezzo used the phrase "the desolation of our lives" as he looked at all the joy he had lost with his beloved as a result of his selfishness.

E. And I have stated how often I felt so terrible with you far away; and yet, as I consider how we would have grated against each other's spirit back then, I have to admit that what happened – all that we sorrowed about – was actually the “shortest route home” for us. What God and the Guides allowed – our own personalized program of “grinding evil from the soul” -- was our best option for long-term joy.

K. What you say just now has taken me many years to accept, but I believe it is correct.

E. We both needed to be apart for a while, exploring life without each other, learning what it’s like to be without the “light and life of one’s heart and soul.”

K. It’s not easy to live life without one’s heart and soul. I think that’s what they call death; it's a state of mind and being which has no "reason to stay alive for."

E. But this kind of death is good for one thing… it “grinds evil" out of the proud heart and soul faster, and more completely, than any other remedy.

K. Faster, more completely, and, I would say, on a permanent basis. Once you experience the death of having "no reason to stay alive for," you've reached the abyss of existential terror and crisis. After that, you're never tempted by the poisoned candy again.