A spiritual journey often begins just by looking for some relief to the angst of living. But often we find that what we learn is completely life-changing. We realise that a serious renovation, renewal, is needed, because we get an insight into how human beings should really be – beautiful, gentle, noble, generous hearted, appreciating the beauty of life and expressing that.
Human beings are made up of body and soul. We begin to understand that the soul is a living energy of different frequencies, or vibrations and the soul can be in its highest form of vibrating energy or in its lowest form of vibration. So, how do we change from low to high? We begin the massive re-construction of the soul.
The soul has been deeply damaged, through the passage of time. The soul goes through profound experiences, lifetime after lifetime, and has passed through many storms of negative and destructive energy that can undermine the foundations of the soul. Imagine the effects of just one relationship of discord and unhappiness. All the sorrow and pain of that leaves a scar, that we try to carry on living with, try to ignore, but it is not possible. The scar remains, and it is very easily re-opened when any further hurts occur. Imagine that multiplied through many lifetimes.
The wounds that the soul has suffered have come from things like anger, greed, and selfish and destructive desires. However, we have a deep memory of our original beautiful state of being. When we understand that it is possible to renovate the soul, there is a desire to do so and then we need to surround the ‘building site’ with signs, to let people know what is happening. We initially need to create a safe space around us; a group of friends, or a meditation centre, as we begin the work.
There are three stages in this reconstruction
1. The foundation
2. The main structure
3. The finishing touches
The foundation is the most important thing. It is going to be hidden and no one will see it, but if the foundation is weak, the whole construction is going to fall. The foundation is the strength of understanding, combined with experiences. Very often these two elements are not in balance. Either we have great understanding of the self, but no experience, or we have many beautiful experiences without very deep understanding. In Rajyoga, these two elements are understanding the knowledge, and experiences of meditation. These two are the foundation of the whole construction. We go deeply into understanding what I am, who I am, what happened to me, what needs to be fixed. Because, just like in a building, there needs to be engineering knowledge of all kinds, in the same way, we need to learn and explore very different kinds of knowledge of the soul to build a good foundation. We keep on learning as we go along but it has to be matched with experience, otherwise it is all in the head, like building castles in the air. The experience, the meditation, is like polishing the wisdom we gain through knowledge. Spiritual reconstruction requires constant attention until the soul is complete.
In the meantime, we work on the main structure. This concerns a very long list of virtues and powers. All the qualities of the soul, which are happiness, love, respect, self-esteem, and more. These virtues alone will not be enough. These qualities, values and virtues of the soul take a lot of energy and time to cultivate, and they need to become powerful. For example, you can say you have peace, but you need the power of peace. The structure has to be strong and needs power to be injected in the virtues.
The finishing touches then, is what my personality eventually becomes, which is my unique way of expressing the virtues and powers, filled with the understanding and experiences. Making a virtue personal, is expressing the virtue in my own unique way. For example, pure love is the raw material, but how am I going to use and express it? I have the power to love, but how will I do that? There are a million possibilities. Just as in a new 20-apartment building, all the apartments are exactly the same but as soon as people move in, they become 20 different planets. Why? Because of the unique personality of each one. There will never be two identical souls. The decoration of the soul is very different for each one. Each one can reconstruct their perfect, unique, beautiful, and luminous self.
Eric Le Reste is a journalist and producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and coordinates the activities of Brahma Kumaris centres in Canada.
