"WATER LILY POND" - by CLAUDE MONET
segunda-feira, 20 de agosto de 2018
Adversity and Failures
In the existential moment in which we live, we focus too much on the appearance of failure, be they professional, personal, and social. In accordance with the actualisation of the philosopher’s own words, found in the Spiritist Codification, for such a long time, we have been tied up to the sensible world, to everything that impresses our senses, to the detriment of the real world, the spirituality, the purest sentiments.
According to the dictionary definitions, adversity is an inopportune, inconvenient, unsuitable, inappropriate event. It is a destructive experience, a lack of luck, a misfortune, an unfortunate event. It gives us the opportunity, however, to analyse whether misfortune brings with it the necessity for reflection on the values credited to it. What were the reasons for it? Were they preventable? What were the objectives behind an event that occurred on a personal level? What were the previous commitments and the reasons that they happened? It is still necessary to analyse if the misfortune would not be an invitation to analyse potential necessary changes, such as: ones vision of the world, ones relationships, and ones values.
The Spirit of Joanna de Angelis in a message entitled "Success and succes" defines the Success of material life as a consequence from human achievements, and emphasizes that there is another Success, which comes from the willpower and overcoming of humans tendencies, moral imperfection and everything else that prevents the human being from growing towards the real life.
God manifests Itself in our lives in many ways. His answers to our afflictions arise in ways that benefit us, by keeping us in balance and self-preservation. Jesus of Nazareth, in order to do so, has brought to us the way, revealing the truth so sought after by human philosophies, and the Real Life, which is so clearly consigned by the Spiritist Philosophy, as pure as His message could be. Therefore, following such teachings, even in the days of great disbelief as they are today, seeking the necessary and clear explanations from the Doctrine of Light, Spiritism, will clearly bring the appropriate and coherent answers for the maintenance of inner peace and for the harmony within ones relationships.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Philosopher
(Published and translated by The Journal of Psychological Studies, London, England)
domingo, 3 de setembro de 2017
FREEDOM AND FRATERNITY
Étienne de La Boétie (15301563) was a French humanist and philosopher, contemporary and friend of Michel de Montaigne (15331592). La Boétie translated from Greek into French the works by Xenophon and Plutarch, and also wrote some original works. His most famous work is the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, written after the defeat of the French people against the army and the king's procurators, who established taxes on salt. The book shows itself as almost a hymn to freedom, with questions about the causes of the domination of many by the few, the indignation of oppression, and the ways to overcome it. Already in the title a contradiction of the term appears; voluntary servitude, because how can someone sacrifice his own freedom with spontaneous will? And La Boétie explains this sense of accommodation as a fundamental factor of this loss of conscious freedom, as a gift given on a tray to the oppressive government.
In our daily lives, a similar phenomenon is increasing in all countries and is spreading like a contagious disease - the comfort zone, where people settle, accommodate, enjoy the blessing offered by Technological progress, immerse themselves in their mobile phones and tablets and simply disconnect from the world around them, as if the virtual world is more fascinating and attractive.
Gabriel Delanne (1857-1926), an engineer and one of the first spiritist researchers, says with emphasis, in a message from 2004, by the medium Raul Teixeira, that we live today a ferocious individualism that isolates us from other human beings, taking away the capacity of us to sensitise ourselves to the pain and suffering of others, becoming servants of technology.
The question remains: is it that the collective dramas that we live with today be a way of awakening our dormant consciousness?
The feeling of fraternity so intensely worked on by writers, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, could also be summed up in another feeling, compassion. This can be widely felt and experienced in the way that NGOs like Doctors Without Borders, WWF and many others operate, without the guarantee of the human losses that make us suffer so much.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Philosopher
The Journal of Psychological Studies - Year X l 53rd Issue l July and August l 2017
sábado, 9 de julho de 2016
ALL IN GOD
In modern times, God is "out of fashion": in the academia, God is regarded as an anthropological phenomenon, creation of men, fragile and in need of support and protection; since the European existentialist movement from Kierkegaard, its apex with Nietzsche through his Zarathustra character, "God is dead", the god of the cross did not save himself, according to the philosopher.
The Nietzschenian thought, however, is one of the effects and not the cause of the current human drama, for much of this responsibility fell to religions, which were unable to accept God in Spirit and truth, Jesus of Nazareth, as its greatest representative among us, they were unable to present him and disclose him or to experience him as such because they were lost in mysticism, in the reconstructed myths and dissensions and venality.
It is sad to see the current consequences of distortion - but Spiritism brought Jesus and God back to the hearts and reason, as it has decoded His message and fulfilled his promise in the Gospel of John.
Is God in everything? Yes, God is in Nature and in the beings He created, and today, when human afflictions reach heights, we can say with Jesus: Do not let your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe also in Me...
Jesus fulfilled his promise, returned in Spiritism, and it is with him that we will go through this phase. Therefore let us trust.
(Published in The Journal of Spiritist Psychological Studies, Mar/Apr 2016)
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Bachelor in Philosophy
segunda-feira, 25 de janeiro de 2016
SÃO PAULO CITY FROM THE PAUL OF TARSUS' AND EMMANUEL'S HEARTS
(Fonte: internet - sem autoria)
CONGRATULATIONS, SÃO PAULO CITY !!!
Comemoramos nesta data 462 anos da fundação da nossa cidade.
COMPARTILHE, DIVULGUE !
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CONGRATULATIONS, SÃO PAULO CITY !!!
Comemoramos nesta data 462 anos da fundação da nossa cidade.
E voltando atrás no tempo, lembramo-nos das palavras de Emmanuel, em A Caminho da Luz, dizendo que o acaso inexiste, quando mencionamos as fundações de cidades e Estados. Aliás, acaso, segundo Téophile Gautier, é o pseudônimo de Deus quando Ele não quer assinar a sua obra. Há uma união de intenções entre “terra” e “céu”, como se todos se reunissem para fazer cumprir propósitos superiores, preparando a primeira para o advento das populações que lá habitarão, com vistas ao desenvolvimento das leis de sociedade e progresso. É muito interessante esta análise, para a qual convidamos os nossos caros internautas. Vejamos a Lyon de Rivail e a Lugdunum de Ireneu, a Roma antiga e a atual, a Nova York de 200 anos atrás e a de agora, e assim sucessivamente. Há um planejamento realizado em outras esferas de existência e que muitas vezes escapa à nossa compreensão.
O mesmo livro citado, A Caminho da Luz, relata os bastidores da história, sob a análise crítica e lúcida de Emmanuel.
Mas vejamos a nossa querida São Paulo de Piratininga, inaugurada a partir de uma pequena vila onde índios, padres e sentenciados portugueses constituíam a sua população. Ainda hoje, na região da Sé, no Pátio do Colégio, a igreja de Anchieta guarda um museu de peças e imagens sacras dos séculos XVI a XVIII, seus objetos de uso pessoal bem como sua batina e terço, e a arquitetura da época também preservada e restaurada, onde é interessante notar uma parede do templo, antiquíssima, construída de barro, palha, areia, pedra e excremento de gado para dar a liga, preservada até os nossos dias, e resguardada entre duas outras paredes de vidro.
Contudo, o que nos chama a atenção, da dupla Nóbrega-Anchieta, é a posição do primeiro como educador, que à época se caracterizava como um misto de professor e catequizador - lembremos que a Educação naqueles tempos estava a cargo da igreja católica, que enviava seus representantes às terras recém-descobertas. Muito criticado por seus meios rígidos e ortodoxos, mas que na verdade compunham normalmente o procedimento dos membros do clero, e mais do que isso, dos homens e mulheres do século em que viveram, Nóbrega, que não poderia fugir às circunstâncias evolutivas, culturais, religiosas, antropológicas e psicológicas de sua época, não deixou de cumprir a sua missão. A maior delas, a efetiva fundação de São Paulo de Piratininga. E aí é que analisamos as circunstâncias.
Nóbrega é considerado uma das reencarnações de Emmanuel, também Públio Lentulus Sura e posteriormente Públio Lentulus, o escravo grego Nestório (veja-se as obras Há Dois Mil Anos e 50 Anos Depois do autor espiritual) e ainda o padre Damiano, em Ávila (veja-se o romance Renúncia), além de sua vida como o pensador e escravo cristão Eusébio (não confundir com Eusébio de Cesaréa). Por que Nóbrega deu o nome do querido Apóstolo à cidade?
Uma mensagem íntima de Emmanuel recebida por Francisco Cândido Xavier, em Pedro Leopoldo, a 13 de março de 1940, nos relata um encontro do senador Lêntulus com Paulo em Roma. A mensagem é a seguinte:
“Lede as cartas de Paulo e meditai. O convertido de Damasco foi o agricultor humano que conseguiu aclimatar a flor divina do Evangelho sobre o mundo. Muitas vezes foi áspero. A terra não estava preparada e se em alguns pontos oferecia leiras brandas e férteis, na maioria, era regiões em espinheiro e pedregulho.
Paulo foi o lidador de sol a sol. Seu fervoroso amor foi a sua bússola divina. Sua paixão no mundo, iluminada pela sua dedicação ao Cristo, transformou-se na base onde deveria brilhar para sempre a claridade do Cristianismo. Conheci-o, em Roma, nos seus dias de trabalho mais rude e de provações mais acerbas. Vi-o uma vez unicamente, quando um carro de Estado transportava o senador Públio Lentulus, ao longo da Porta Ápia, mas foi o bastante para nunca mais esquecê-lo. Um incidente fortuito levara os cavalos a uma disparada perigosa, mas um jovem cristão, atirando-se ao caminho largo, conseguiu conjurar todas as ameaças. Avistamos, então, um pequeno grupo, onde se encontrava a sua figura inesquecível. Trocamos algumas palavras que me deram a conhecer a sua inteireza de caráter e a grandeza da sua fé. O fato ocorria pouco depois da trágica desencarnação de Lívia e eu trazia o espírito atormentado. As palavras de Paulo eram firmes e consoladoras. O grande convertido não conhecia a úlcera que me sangrava no coração, todavia as suas expressões indiretas foram, imediatamente, ao fundo de minha alma, provocando um dilúvio de emoções e esclarecimentos.
Luzeiro da fé viva, Paulo não pode ser esquecido em tempo algum. Seu vulto humano é o de todo homem sincero que se toque de amor divino por Jesus. Lede-o sempre e não vos arrependereis”. (O grifo é nosso)
Tudo se assemelha ao coração imenso da cidade de São Paulo - a cidade de Paulo.
Conta-nos o Espírito Cneio Lucius (50 Anos Depois), que Paulo, no plano espiritual, sempre se dedicou a auxiliar “as grandes inteligências afastadas do Cristo, compreendendo-lhes as íntimas aflições e o menosprezo de que se sentem objeto no mundo, ante os religiosos de todos os matizes, quase sempre especializados em regras de intolerância”. E foi com esse sentimento de compreensão e bondade que fez com que o grande Apóstolo da gentilidade estendesse as suas preces e auxílio ao culto senador romano, quando de sua desencarnação na tragédia de Pompéia, continuando a ampará-lo espiritualmente em suas posteriores existências terrenas.
Emmanuel nunca mais o esqueceu, e na personalidade de Nóbrega, adia a inauguração do Colégio de Piratininga, a que dá o nome de São Paulo, para o dia da comemoração da conversão do Apóstolo, fixada em 25 de janeiro. Essa afirmação não é somente de Cneio Lucio. É mencionada pelos biógrafos do padre Nóbrega, entre eles Serafim Leite, José Mariz de Morais, e Melo Pimenta.
Em outro momento, já como o grande pensador cristão encarregado das diretrizes ético-morais do Espiritismo em terras brasileiras, como continuidade ao trabalho que ajudou a realizar há centenas de anos, surge, através da psicografia do não menos ilustre missionário da Bondade e da Humildade, Chico Xavier, a grandiosa obra “Paulo e Estêvão”.
E compreendemos a grande destinação desta que é considerada a maior cidade da América Latina. Hoje, no século 21, uma megalópole que abriga em seu coração, centenas de “gentios” oriundos de todas as terras, brasileiras ou estrangeiras. Tal como Paulo, que abrigou em seu imenso coração amoroso, os corações da gentilidade em sua época. Foi através deles que o cristianismo do Cristo cresceu e se espalhou pelo mundo.
E é em São Paulo hoje, que brasileiros e estrangeiros tomam um primeiro contato com a Doutrina da Paz, da Concórdia, do Conhecimento Transcendente e a levam em suas atitudes e consciências tornadas espíritas.
Cumpriu-se a grande missão compartilhada.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
(texto revisado pela autora - 25 de janeiro de 2016). COMPARTILHE, DIVULGUE !
www.filosofiaespirita.org
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http://spiritistphilosophy.blogspot.com
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AVISO :
PREZADOS AMIGOS BRASILEIROS E NATIVOS RESIDENTES EM OUTROS PAÍSES E QUE CONSULTAM NOSSO PORTAL DE ESTUDOS E SITES, SEJAM BEM VINDOS!
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quinta-feira, 24 de dezembro de 2015
Confidence in Life

The Portuguese word confidence comes from the Latin
CONFIDENTIA of CONFIDERE, "to fully and firmly believe," formed by
COM that intensifies, plus FIDERE, "believe, trow," which derives
from FIDES, "faith". The same etymology is found in English,
CONFIDENCE, which also derives from Latin; in French, CONFIANCE; in Italian,
FIDUCIA of FIDERE, same translation as above; CONFIANZA in Spanish, and so on.
This way we can understand that the word reminds us of the universal posture of
certainty, conviction, determination, strength, safety, and more, hope, faith,
optimism, and still, liveliness and resilience. There is no doubt that the
words have influence on our lives and serve as a stimulus to our behaviour in
the face of adversity. However,
words and the stimuli raised by words should not be taken only as pills of optimism,
as if they were miracle drugs that give us the solution to our problems. Words
are the result of the elaboration of thought and, as such, should express the
good feelings that we bring with us. When we say this, we do not claim that
self-help would be effective as an immediate therapy because, as such, it only
leads to analgesia, not curing the diseases of the soul.
In the documentary Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness, based on
the book The Consolations of Philosophy, by the Swiss philosopher Alain de
Botton, he highlights six great thinkers on important topics of our daily
lives, and highlights the confidence with Socrates: "Socrates walked
through the market addressing people and questioning about the meaning of life
in a very interesting way, but also in a very annoying way. If you ask for the
explanations of people's beliefs, they often react aggressively. Socrates had
no such inhibitions. He would rather be considered forceful than to allow his
compatriots to carry on their lives without thinking. His intention was to make
everyone reevaluate their beliefs, he believed that everyone had the duty to
reflect on their lives, and that we all have the capacity to do it." Socrates paid a high price for
helping people to think, to assess the inconsistency of their existences, and
for encouraging the change of their poor goals (when they had them), poor
because they focused only on the here and now.
Confidence comes at the moment when we know, through
philosophical deduction, who we are, what we are doing here and where we will
go. When we deepen these deductions with the help of the Spiritist Philosophy,
this universe expands. We are not only citizens of a country, we are citizens
of the Universe. Our lives are not confined to the present moment; we discover
that we are heirs of the conquests of past reincarnations on route to a future
full of achievable promises; we learn that everything is temporary in the words
of the Spirit Emmanuel (even the missed opportunities). So we know that
personal dramas have their duration and the achievements, in turn, should
expand in the proportion that we conduct ourselves with absolute moral
tranquillity.
We live today in a world full of conflicts that reproduce
individual psychopathologies. Of course it is difficult to trust on this
construction, however, we have eternity ahead of us and the present moment to
build, as best as we can, knowing we can count on the support and encouragement
of the Spirits who love us.
Sonia Theodoro da
Silva - Bachelor in Philosophy
The Journal of
Psychological Studies - Year
VII l Issue N° 37 l November and December l 2014 Maria Novelli - English Translation ; Cricieli Zanesco - English Translation
Self -denial
In our vocabulary self-denial has some meanings, but among
all, one stands out and was similarly applied by a French philosopher, Jean
Grenier: we must deny the world in order to understand. Born amid the
industrial revolution and having experienced two world wars, Grenier was able
to distance himself mentally and spiritually from his time in order to analyze
and understand it in its tragic issues, cry for justice and the mistakes of its
actions.
In our time there is also the need for emotional detachment
so that reason may occupy the space necessary to the understanding and to the
analysis without thoughtless impulses, and this reasoning shall be directed not
only to the global issues that affect us and interfere directly in the economy
of the country in which we live in, but mainly to personal and individual
issues. To deny implies carrying
over into a mental sphere different from the majority, leaving behind
immediacies grown by the pragmatic view of life and seeking eternal existential
values that lie dormant in our consciousness obscured by the frantic search for
momentary pleasures - to deny a banal existence in order to exist in full life,
although this implies revaluating behaviours, thoughts and choices.
The Gospel of Jesus revisited by Spiritism assures us of this
process - the difference between it and the proposals that life offers us is
that we can walk safely and with elevated feelings, towards a more lasting
feeling of happiness.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva - Bachelor in Philosophy
The Journal of
Psychological Studies - Year VII l Issue N° 36 l September and
October l 2014
Maria Novelli - English Translation Cricieli Zanesco - English Translation
The Science of Faith
Sonia Theodoro da Silva - Bachelor in Philosophy
Since the emergence of science, or more precisely the
sciences, beginning with Aristotle and later with René Descartes, religiosity
was separated from the development of scientific research. Aristotle's
philosophy dominated European thought from the twelfth century but the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries changes this situation, inserting changes in the scientific methods.
No doubt that Science is one of the voices of human culture however, in not
admitting the strength of faith, especially in the medical field and
specifically in treatments for restoring human health, science fails to partake
in one of the most beautiful forms of integration of man with life. In the U.S.,
researchers in Neurobiology say they have located at the brain's limbic system
the triggering of religious experiences. This brain region links experiences in
our emotional world, and the tests performed on Buddhist monks and Catholic
nuns showed intense brain activity when in a state of meditation and
prayer.
In Brazil, the neuroscientist Ricardo Leme, MD, associated to
the Spiritist Medical Association of Brazil, calls for the development of
feelings of gratitude to life, what he calls the ultimate gift (of God), he calls
for love exemplified by Jesus, for the physical, emotional and spiritual
well-being, because these states of mind act on neurotransmitters and
endorphins facilitating the maintenance of health and even the cure of
diseases. According to him, the study of the neurobiology of faith might be the
extra tool when searching for something lacking in humanity for its more
harmonious functioning as a whole.
Jesus of Nazareth in his journey of peace on Earth used to
say to the sick healed by his love, "your faith has healed you".
However he added: "but do not sin again" as a warning to the great
responsibility we have towards the gift of Life and the opportunity of
reincarnating, granted to us by the immense love of God. Let us work to deserve
them - today and forever.
The Journal of
Psychological Studies - Year VII l Issue N° 35 l July and August l
2014
Maria Novelli - English Translation Cricieli Zanesco - English Translation
The Autonomy of the Awakened Consciousness
Sonia Theodoro da Silva - Bachelor in Philosophy (São Paulo - SP)
The word autonomy comes from the Greek autonomous, from autos, "himself", and nomos, "law", "who governs itself by its own laws." The philosopher Immanuel Kant says that autonomy is to be "citizen and legislator" simultaneously.
Autonomy is the self determinat ion ability. Any agent can only be considered autonomous when one’s actions are truly one’s and not motivated by external influences or factors. Kant then found that the will also have the ability to put itself in accordance with its own law, which is the law of reason. In this sense, the opposite of autonomy is heteronomy, in which the will is dictated by the objects of desire and no longer by reason.
According to the Spirit’s Book, the Spirit, created simple and ignorant, the infinite traveller according to Plotinus, experiences evolutionary stages in which it goes assimilating impressions and developing all the elements that make up its nature. The consciousness will bloom over time positioning itself according to the divine laws that lie in the depths of its Being. The journey of the Spirit, therefore, is in this development with the natural conquest of the responsibilities that belong to the Spirit. Will and free are the drivers of this process.
Reincarnation and life in realms of physical and extra physical dimensions (physical here means the molecular consistency of dense matter) will provide the necessary experience that is needed for the definitive acquisition of the Spirit’s own development.
Having yet to consider the freedom inherent to the individual, manifested according to the individual’s integration into the societies in which the being is conducted to live: the sociological freedom, related to the individual’s autonomy before society, with guarantees of civil or political liberty; the psychological freedom, in which the individual feels like "ones own master"; and the moral freedom, as the capacity that the individual has of deciding to act according to reason without being dominated by the impulses and the spontaneous inclinations of sensitivity.
Spiritism emphasizes the powers of the third freedom, mentioned above, as the driver of the gradual awakening of consciousness, which gives the Spirit the right conditions for the necessary, essential and eternal ascent to
even higher evolutionary patterns.
When the Spirit stagnates in the illusions of matter, the mechanisms of this awakening start to appear, and then the pains, the sufferings of greater or lesser intensity will take care of making the Spirit resume its walk.
If our model is Jesus of Nazareth, as confirmed by the higher spirits to Allan Kardec, let us follow his examples, his teachings, his virtues, his life.
There is no other way – we live moments of moral transition; we bring within ourselves the atavisms of the ancient past with the predominance of the stored conflicts that require a revision. Therefore there is nothing to complain about as the current dramas have been planted by society in 6,000 years of civilization, with less than 100 years of peace. It is for us today to live the spiritual-Christian life, as hundreds already do, planting new seeds of compassion and brotherhood so that our near or distant future brings us the so desired kingdom of heaven in our consciousness.
Published in The Journal of Psychological Studies - Year VII l Issue N° 34 l May and June l 2014
Translation: M. Novelli/ C. Zanesco
Revision: Sonia Theodoro da Silva
sexta-feira, 1 de maio de 2015
Spirit´s Book and Education
“An education,
based on an exact concept of life, would transform the world. Suppose each
family initiated in spiritualists beliefs corroborated by facts and having
these spiritualists beliefs taught to children (...): a rapid social
transformation would happen under the strength of this double influence.”
(Here
and Hereafter, Leon Dennis, chapter 54)
The eminent spiritist thinker, educator by excellence,
faithful follower of the teachings of the Superior Spirits and participator of
a profound social reform, resumes, in few words, the ideal of a whole
generation: experience and applicability of Jesus’ teachings with coherence
and logic of a doctrine which would make men, not mere followers of yet another
religious dissident sect, or adepts of another philosophic system based on
existentialist fundaments, but bearers of a real and lived knowledge that has
brought them enlightenment and consolation. In another book (Socialism and
Spiritism, chapter I), Dennis affirms: “To us socialism is the study, the
research and application of the laws and susceptible means to improve the
material, intellectual and moral situation of Humanity.”
Yet the purpose of Spiritist Doctrine is not another:
its thesis, the philosophy which proposes, clarifies, elucidates, as it is
intrinsically united to proven facts by its investigative method in scientific
basis; its antithesis, the apparent impossibility of reconciling its ethical
and moral contents, without slipping into sentimentalism or into the dogmatism
of the religions; its synthesis, Jesus, as He, complete Spirit in basis
unimaginable by the human beings, comes to the evolutionary levels of Earth,
and brings to men, personally, His message, through metaphors and parables,
absolutely comprehensible by all cultures and races of all times. He becomes
man, and close to men he suffers with and as them, leaving a legacy of
consolation through knowledge of the causes of human sufferings; he elucidates
that true religiosity does not take place at the expense of material goods or
of sacrifice of human lives, but through donation of oneself, in a constant
exercise of fraternity and of peace, representation of the Divine Laws,
presence of God in ourselves. And, on leaving, he leaves on testi-mony his
inheritance: the coming of a Comforter, which will accompany already matured
men through time, in the transition of their moral scale.
Exactly 158 years ago, one of the faithful servants of
His Cause retakes the carnal clothing, and, participator of the Phalanx of the
Spirit of Truth comes to support the teachings of Jesus, in this phase of human
evolution. However this time with the direct attendance of several Spirits,
reincarnated or not, but all of them conductors of the completion of an
educational project. The very self, Rivail or Allan Kardec, educator, who would
elucidate in firm and unquestionable basis, the aspects of human existence
relegated to the mystical-religious approach of all times, and absolutely
separated from the scientific development executed by man, in his eternal
search for knowledge.
Themes as God, nature, immortality of the soul, life
after death, the reason for human existence, of sufferings and pains, the
inequality of the distribution of material goods, punishment and the
existential emptiness, and, in today’s times, the religious fundamentalism that
stimulates wars in the name of a vindictive god that thinks in making up the
intrinsic need of fair justice in human relations, inducing to suicide as an
alternative of solution of these questions, spectacular escapes through means
of slow self-destruction through alcohol and drugs which benumbs reasoning and
emotion, were always segmented and divided into departments themes by the
religions and philosophies, in an attempt to answering or guide human being to
conceivable answers. However, religions closed themselves to teaching which
they most know how to do: religion. They do no guide the human being to his
spirituality, but to the repetitive and exhaustive perpetuity of sects or
rituals that, meaningless, silence reasoning, creating obstacles to the
fulfilment of the human longings. On the other hand, the philosophies closed
themselves into the existentialist nihilism and the sciences into the
materialist positivism.
But then arises, according to Arnold Toynbee’s saying,
the creative mino-rity, and, the Spiritism which elucidates, proclaiming them
prepared for the advent of the New Education with basis in the knowledge of the
real identity of the Spirit, immortal and inter-existent in apparently opposite
dimensions, but, which complement each other, as both are part of the School of
the Spirit. These minorities are spread around the planet, and illuminate
Science with the necessary dose of ethics and spirituality, the Philosophy for
the elucidation of questions referent to the inter-existent metaphysical being,
the Religion which guides the Being to love of oneself and of his neighbour,
through the Love of God which is latent in both and in Nature.
The Spirits’ Books is the Philosophy which brings
re-meaning for human existence, placing the Spirit in its true importance, as
the Being that, in the timeline, educates itself, develops its latent
potentialities, learns with Life and with sufferings, which are instruments of
awakening for the fulfilment of that desideratum.
The Spirits’ Books is the Science that decodes the
phenomena under the light of reasoning, of the intellectual effort which looks
for the origin of all things, and discovers, the Intelligent Principle of the
Universe, present behind a material veil that cloisters it in the prison of the
senses.
The Spirits’ Books is the Religion in spirit and
truth, which demystifies and demystifies Jesus as divinity of an unachievable
mythological pantheon because it is inexistent, and it reflects him as the
greatest example of Life and Love. It introduces him to those who will follow
His steps, for our living experience, for our reasoning and for our feelings,
granting us the kind of faith that thinks, that reasons, that is indestructible,
because it is built on wisdom.
The Spirits’ Books, therefore, is the Education par
excellence, because it re-conducts the Being to the self-knowledge, without
meta-languages, without systems, remoulding according to the light of
discernment, making us aware of the great responsibility It has before Life, of
his own existence, of someo-ne else’s existence, of his fellow neighbour, and
his brother.
Sonia
Theodoro da Silva is executive director of
CEFE-Centro de Estudos Filosóficos Espíritas (Center of Spiritist Philosophical
Studies) in São Paulo, Brasil (www.filosofiaespirita.org ), translator and graduated in Philosophy. She
lives in São Paulo, Brazil, collaborates in Centro Espírita Noso Lar Casas
Andre Luis and writes articles for spiritist magazines and newspapers.
quarta-feira, 5 de novembro de 2014
Confidence in Life
The Portuguese word confidence comes from the Latin CONFIDENTIA of CONFIDERE, "to fully and firmly believe," formed by COM that intensifies, plus FIDERE, "believe, trow," which derives from FIDES, "faith". The same etymology is found in English, CONFIDENCE, which also derives from Latin; in French, CONFIANCE; in Italian, FIDUCIA of FIDERE, same translation as above; CONFIANZA in Spanish, and so on. This way we can understand that the word reminds us of the universal posture of certainty, conviction, dete-mination, strength, safety, and more, hope, faith, optimism, and still, liveliness and resilience. There is no doubt that the words have influence on our lives and serve as a stimulus to our behav-iour in the face of adversity.
However, words and the stimuli raised by words should not be taken only as pills of optimism, as if they were miracle drugs that give us the solution to our prob-lems. Words are the result of the elaboration of thought and, as such, should express the good feelings that we bring with us. When we say this, we do not claim that self-help would be effective as an immediate therapy because, as such, it only leads to analgesia, not curing the diseases of the soul.
In the documentary Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness, based on the book The Consolations of Philosophy, by the Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton, he highlights six great thinkers on important topics of our daily lives, and high-lights the confidence with Socra-tes: "Socrates walked through the market addressing people and questioning about the meaning of life in a very interesting way, but also in a very annoying way. If you ask for the explanations of people's beliefs, they often react ag-gressively. Socrates had no such inhibitions. He would rather be considered forceful than to allow his compatriots to carry on their lives without thinking. His intention was to make everyone reevaluate their beliefs, he believed that everyone had the duty to reflect on their lives, and that we all have the capacity to do it."
Socrates paid a high price for helping people to think, to assess the inconsistency of their existences, and for en-couraging the change of their poor goals (when they had them), poor because they focused only on the here and now.
Confidence comes at the moment when we know, through philosophical deduction, who we are, what we are doing here and where we will go. When we deepen these deductions with the help of the Spiritist Philosophy, this universe expands. We are not only citizens of a country, we are citizens of the Universe. Our lives are not con-fined to the present moment; we discover that we are heirs of the conquests of past reincarnations on route to a future full of achieva-ble promises; we learn that every-thing is temporary in the words of the Spirit Emmanuel (even the missed opportunities).
So we know that personal dramas have their duration and the achievements, in turn, should expand in the proportion that we conduct ourselves with absolute moral tranquillity.
We live today in a world full of conflicts that reproduce individual psychopathologies. Of course it is
difficult to trust on this construction, however, we have eternity ahead of us and the present moment to build, as best as we can, knowing we can count on the support and encouragement of the Spirits who love us.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Bachelor in Philosophy
sábado, 23 de agosto de 2014
quinta-feira, 1 de maio de 2014
The Autonomy of the Awakened Consciousness
The word autonomy comes from the Greek autonomous, from autos, "himself", and nomos, "law", "who governs itself by its own laws." The philosopher Immanuel Kant says that autonomy is to be "citizen and legislator" simultaneously.
Autonomy is the self-determination ability. Any agent can only be considered auton-mous when one’s actions are truly one’s and not motivated by external influences or factors. Kant then found that the will also have the ability to put itself in accordance with its own law, which is the law of reason. In this sense, the opposite of autono-my is heteronomy, in which the will is dictated by the objects of desire and no longer by reason.
Created simple and ignorant, the Spirit, the infinite traveller according to Plotinus, experiences evolutionary stages in which it goes assimilating impressions and developing all the elements that make up its nature. The consciousness will bloom over time positioning itself according to the divine laws that lie in the depths of its Being.
The journey of the Spirit, therefore, is in this development with the natural conquest of the responsibilities that belong to the Spirit. Will and free will are the drivers of this process.
Reincarnation and life in realms of physical and extra physical dimensions (physical here means the molecu-lar consistency of dense matter) will provide the necessary experience that is needed for the definitive acquisition of the Spirit’s own development.
Having yet to consider the freedom inherent to the individual, manifested according to the individual’s integration into the societies in which the being is conducted to live: the sociological freedom, related to the individual’s autonomy before society, with guarantees of civil or political liberty; the psychological freedom, in which the individual feels like "ones own master"; and the moral freedom, as the capacity that the individual has of deciding to act according to reason without being dominated by the impulses and the spontaneous inclinations of sensitivity.
Spiritism emphasizes the powers of the third freedom, mentioned above, as the driver of the gradual awakening of consciousness, which gives the Spirit the right conditions for the necessary, essential and eternal ascento to even higher evolutionary patterns.
When the Spirit stagnates in the illusions of matter, the mechanisms of this awakening start to appear, and then the pains, the sufferings of greater or lesser intensity will take care of making the Spirit resume its walk.
If our model is Jesus of Nazareth, as confirmed by the higher spirits to Allan Kardec, let us follow his examples, his teachings, his virtues, his life.
There is no other way – we live moments of moral transition; we bring within ourselves the atavisms of the ancient past with the predominance of the stored conflicts that require a revision. Therefore there is nothing to complain about as the current dramas have been planted by society in 6,000 years of civilization, with less than 100 years of peace. It is for us today to live the spiritual-Christian life, as hundreds already do, planting new seeds of compassion and brotherhood so that our near or distant future brings us the so desired kingdom of heaven in our consciousness.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Bachelor in Philosophy
(The Spiritist Psychological Society, May-June 2014)
quarta-feira, 1 de janeiro de 2014
The Beyond and the Survival of the Being
There is the pioneer case of Duke University in the United States, where the paranor-mal is serious business. In Brazil, there are pertaining studies of the near-death experiences by re-searchers from the Federal Univer-sity of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. Also in the U.S., Doctor Raymond Moody Jr. investigates the possible relationships between the "dead" and their living relatives. His work has demonstrated, from research about the oracles in ancient Greece, where communications were constant and real, that intra-worlds contacts have always been part of our civilization.
Without a shadow of doubt that Spiritism, with its mystical and mythical stripping, brought us another scenario of life after death: we continue to exist and compose (composed here are all the files of our past experiences recorded in our unconscious), we continue to draw the course of our destinations and we continue to exercise free will increasingly more freely as we become directly re-sponsible for Life. And our greatest example that life continues after death still is, and will always be, Jesus, stripped of the mythology established around him which has been consumed for centuries be-cause of the mixed Greek hero with the Jewish prophet. And He who is back in all its fullness, to demonstrate that there is no death, it is a mere human inven-tion, a product of existential emp-tiness that inhabits this moral plane of existence, back through the Spiritist vision that is not religious in the ritulistic sense, liturgical and theological, but liberating, awareness waken-ing, revealing.
Léon Denis, the consolidator of Spiritism in France after the death of Allan Kardec, brings extremely current reflections on his extensive work of which we highlight the great little book bearing the title of our article, which features a list of evidence to confirm the opinion of anyone who wants to investigate the supposed afterlife. And to finish our thoughts in his words, leaving a question up in the air: would human relations change to a better state should we identify ourselves as immortal beings?
"Isn’t it a touching sight to see those that accompany a funeral? To those I would say: the beyond is just what our senses do not reach. "
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
sábado, 21 de dezembro de 2013
FELIZ NATAL!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
JESUS WAS BORN AMONG US... SINCE THEN THE WORLD WAS NOT THE SAME... THE MEN WERE NOT THE SAME ... HE HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING, HE HAS CHANGED EVERYONE... JESUS IS IN OUR SOUL AS THE BREATH IN OUR LIFE - PAY ATTENTION ON HIM, ON HIS PRESENCE, HIS WORDS, HIS LOOK IS UPON US - SEE AND FEEL HIM, HE HAS JUST ARRIVED AGAIN !!
KING S COLLEGE
SÃO PAULO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
quarta-feira, 20 de novembro de 2013
domingo, 7 de julho de 2013
Joy of living
The
present moment hardly leads us to believe in optimism in face of the challenges
that the world presents us. To consider life only by its favourable outcomes
would be to desire the Utopia by Morus to our daily lives: sweet dreams, since
the dream of civilization from the author was a mere neologism to define
unattainable goals – it would not be reasonable for us to fixate in such world
views, since the big and small dramas that take place guarantee our feet on the
ground.
If in
the Americas, formal religion is still an alternative form of console (or would
it be escape?) for most of its inhabitants, in Europe and Asia the atheist
existen-tialism opens dangerous loopholes in the mind and the hearts, creating
obstacles to its spiritualization. The Middle East with its constant wars and
Africa with its ethnical conflicts demonstrate in a forceful manner what is a
planet of trials and expiations in infinite degrees of manifestation, as the
Spirits demonstrated to Allan Kardec.
If
reincarnation was accepted as a biological law and as a principle of reason and
never fideistic, because to believe implies reasoning in secure foundations of
understanding, beyond the concerning research (such as the ones accom-plished
by Doctor Hernani G. Andrade, in Brazil, Doctor Ian Stevenson in the USA,
Doctor H. Banerjee, in India) we would conclude that there is not “history
repeating itself”, but that we re-peat history through successive
reincarnations, in which the intellectual and moral learning hasn’t been
completed (or it has paused). This would change the current paradigms and would
lead us to a new society, more fair and fraternal.
Someone
has already said that the present humanity, stuck to utilitarianism, refuses to
grow up, remaining in the adolescent stage. No
doubt that the behavioral manifestations demonstrate such idea, it is
noticeable the “intellectual sedentariness”, in which everyone seeks for
pleasures in unbridled and immediate consumption.
However, optimism is a permanent state of soul that
generates joy of living, it is recognized that it rests in small as in great
things and causes: looking others
with compassionate eyes, recognizing the human as the most beautiful form of
divine representation which lies latent in all of us. But also in the simple
things: to observe nature, follow the development of a child, recognize the
miracle of life in a pregnancy process, follow the heartbeats of our own heart,
that keeps us alive, look at the waves that wind provokes in the waters of a
river, stretch out, read a good book, talk, smile, dedicating life to a worthy
cause…
Therefore, to live optimistically does not mean to
wait infinitely for the best, but to understand that we are agents of this
process for everything that surrounds us.
Living is for everyone, but to live well and well
living is for the wise who understood that the reincarnation opportunity is
unique. The ancient philosophers knew this. The current philosophers need to
relearn with those. And Spiritism assure us that, if today we are focused on
serious commitments, nothing prevents us to make of them the necessary means
for achieving our own happiness, which is to Live.
Sonia
Theodoro da Silva
Columnist, The Journal of Psychological Studies,
The Spiritist Psychological Society
(http://www.spiritistps.org/The-Journal-of-Psychological-Studies-29-Ed.-English.pdf)
quarta-feira, 23 de janeiro de 2013
Psychological, Physiological and Spiritual Dreams
The cause of dreams and their meaning have always been a source of great curiosity and concern. In The Mediums’ Book, Allan Kardec emphasizes that the Science of his time never explained the origins of such phenomena. The current explanations, still incomplete, which consider only the psychophysiological reasons – illness, psychological disorders, professional and economical life conditions, influences relating to modern life habits, such as the use of licit and illicit drugs, sexuality as a disposable product, anxieties and stress generated by this whole process, plus the political and worldwide conditions that bring us expectations about the future – actually generate symptoms, the most diverse, reflecting in the quality of sleep.
However, what Science insists on ignoring are the spiritual reasons – compelling experiences related to past lifetimes that interfere with relationships and behaviour of the actual experience, the influences of the minds and feelings of discarnate spirits on individuals, whether or not they are directly related to their past actions, besides intimate conflicts relating to one’s own genetic inheritance.
With The Book of Spirits, questions 400 to 412, we conclude: we are heirs of ourselves, in other words, our history repeats itself because we insist on playing the same charac-ters. The current time is for reflection and changes in the way of acting and thinking and, without fear, to develop values and virtues. This is the way.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Translation SPS
(Published in nov/dec 2012: The Journal of Psychological Studies - Science, Philosophy and Religion;Journal Psychologischer Studien - Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion; Periódico de Estudios Psicológicos - Ciencia, Filosofía y Religión; Giornale di Studi Psicologici - Scienza, Filosofia e Religione; Journal d´études psychologiques - Science, philosophie et religion).
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Extrasensory Faculty
History records the actions of those who dared to transgress existing systems, whether it was of a political, religious or academic nature. Carl Gustav Jung was one of those divine transgressors; for him, life was not restricted to the period from the cradle to the grave, “the human, rational being, was endowed with extrasensory faculties that allowed one to exceed the ordinary limits of space and time, uncovering the distant past and having premonitions of the future”. (Bulletin SEI, No. 1963/2005).
The extrasensory faculties were present in the Greek and Babylonian oracles (the most famous of all was the oracle of Apollo, in Delphi), in the Jewish world with the college of mediums chaired by Moses, and before, in Egypt, where the leader of the He-brew nation learned, with the wise and initiated of his time, to prophesy, and other extrasensory modalities which were combined to his effective mediumship. More recently, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Swedish clairvoyant, was investigated and studied by the eminent philosopher Immanuel Kant, impressed by the accuracy of the information about a fire seen by him at a distance, in a nearby town.
Although the traditional philosophy, nowadays, has little interest in the paranormal, it is reserved for Science, to prove what Spiritism has judiciously studied, through Allan Kardec and supported by facts, the greatest discovery of all times: the human Spirit survives death. Such evidence certainly entails serious consequences to the nihilistic materialism.
Sonia Theodoro da Silva
Translation SPS
(Published in sept/oct 2012: The Journal of Psychological Studies - Science, Philosophy and Religion;Journal Psychologischer Studien - Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion; Periódico de Estudios Psicológicos - Ciencia, Filosofía y Religión; Giornale di Studi Psicologici - Scienza, Filosofia e Religione; Journal d´études psychologiques - Science, philosophie et religion).
HAVE YOU ALREADY VISITED YOUR NEW SITE? PLEASE CONTACT www.filosofiaespirita.org
segunda-feira, 17 de dezembro de 2012
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