Why Are You On Earth?

An Address from Brother Bernard

Recorded in the Banbury Spiritualist Church, England. March 2nd, 1987

Good evening friends.

It is with joy that we come into your midst once again to speak with you for a while as you take your journey along earth's pathway. We want to ask you to stop and think for a moment, why are you here? What are you doing in a body of matter, where have you come from and where are you going? What is your pathway going to be?

Each one of you man, woman or child. Everything that has life also has Spirit. A Spirit that is your Soul, a Spirit that is eternal.

Have you ever stopped to think what eternal means? It means that you were in existence before you came to Earth even as you will be when you leave the earth plane. You came from the Spirit realm, the Spirit World. You give it many names upon Earth. You call it the Summerland, Heaven, Paradise, the Next World and so on. But it is intangible to you in your body of matter. The best simile that we can give you is to ask you to think about your radio waves, your television, your radio telephones and so on. You know that there are waves coming all the time and at the end you have to have an instrument to pick them up. When you pick them up you are in contact with the source. Without a receiver they are invisible to you so you are not aware of them. Yet you know that they exist all around you; so it is with Spirit. It is because you have a body, because you have taken something of matter and shaped it and inhabited it that you can see, touch, feel, taste and smell. But all these things are of the Earth, these things are matter and your body is like an overall, if you like, that you put on in order that you can do a certain job. Your task when you come to the earth plane is to learn, to develop, to grow.

You have chosen the path that you lead upon Earth. Not the details of it, but the broad outlines. You were inhabiting the Spirit world before you came to Earth and you chose a set of circumstances, you chose your parents, you chose the time at which you would come to the earth plane taking into account what you could tell of the circumstances around that particular life that would give you the opportunities that were necessary for you, opportunities during which you can, if you like, rub off some of the corners that you have. Opportunities that would make you grow Spiritually, that would give you a deeper understanding, that would give you lessons that would add to your Spirit so that when you leave the earth plane, when your task is done, you will come back to our side of life, to the Spirit world. You will not bring with you the material things that you have acquired while you are on the Earth. You will bring the lessons that you have learned, the character that you have developed and the love that you have been able to show to others. All the things that make up your life upon Earth are the things that will produce the final result. A Spirit that is a little wiser, a little more developed, a little further along the road that eventually will lead towards God.

Often you will say why is it that these things should happen to me? Why should I have more difficulties than someone else? Why should it be so easy for some people to go through life seeming to have everything that they wish, whereas I have to struggle? Why is it that I should have ill health and why are some people born deformed, born mentally deficient, born lacking in this or that or the other? Why should some souls only stay on the earth plane for a very short while and then come to Spirit and others seem to go on long after their bodies appear to have worn out? It is because it is necessary.

There are some lessons which have to be learned through Earth that cannot be learned in Spirit. There are some things that are necessary for other people to learn through a particular life. They often think that if they lose a child, whether it is born or never even enters the world. They wonder why, what was the purpose of that soul starting and not developing. Some of these things are because those who care for them, the parents perhaps, the doctors, the nurses, those who tend the sick, it is because they need it. They need the experience of having something to look after, something to cherish, something that they cannot save in an earthly sense.

You cannot tell while you are in the body what the purpose of your lives are. All you can do is take your circumstances, to make the best of them, to realise that if you do have a path to tread that is more difficult than someone else's, it is, perhaps, because you are a little bit further advanced spiritually than they are. You have the strength to overcome the obstacles that are in your pathway. You have the opportunity to choose between one sort of action and another. You can always find within your own lives something that will be of help to you spiritually.

You are fortunate in this day and age because you can worship in the way that you feel is right. There is no law that compels you to go to orthodox churches, to follow orthodox religions. Admittedly, if you become a Spiritualist and come into a Spiritualist church, you can expect a certain amount of ridicule. You can come up against people who will say that you are on the road to the devil, who will be sorry for you because you are condemned to eternal damnation.

Every Soul upon Earth is here for the same purpose. The purpose of learning. It doesn't matter what religion a person has followed, they all lead, in the end, to Spirit; to God.

One of the things that is often said in your churches is to judge not that ye be not judged. It is to understand that each of you is an individual, each of you is unique. You look at things from a different standpoint than anyone else. No two people on the earth plane are exactly identical in their physical make up. So they are not identical in their Spiritual progress, in the stage that they are, in what they have to attain. Each one of you is individual and as an individual you have to make your own pathway, you have to learn your own lessons. You cannot follow other people blindly. You can listen to what is said. What comes to you that you feel to be true, what appeals to your reason, to what you can say, yes that makes sense, then that is the pathway for you. Someone else will see things differently from you.

We often think that you people on the earth plane with all your differences, if only you could see yourselves Spiritually you would see, yes, you are different, and yet you are similar in that you are a manifestation of Spirit.

You can acquire the things of Earth. We do not think that anyone on the earth plane should renounce everything. You cannot give up your material lives because it is through your material lives that you do learn. Keep your Spirituality, keep your links with Spirit, keep your periods of meditation, keep your love for your Guides and helpers, keep your thoughts of love for those that have passed on to the other side of life.

Always remember while you are on the earth plane the conditions of Earth are the most important for you. Give yourself time in which to achieve your earthly ambitions, but keep a certain amount of time for thinking about Spirit, a certain amount of time for meditation and prayer, a certain amount of time for sending out thoughts of love and healing for those with whom you come into contact.

You do not make contact with people accidentally. Everyone that you meet you have an effect on whether you realise it or not. As you go through life you will meet so many people, people of different nationalities, different races, different creeds and different colours.

If you will send each one of them a little piece of your love, if you will give a smile when you meet strangers, if you will go out of your way to be of help to others then you will be achieving something that will help to develop your own Souls.

You cannot lead another person's life for them, you cannot dictate to someone else what they should do or what they should not. All you can do is to try to show those you come into contact with that there is something more to life than the physical. Try to show them what being a Spiritualist means. One of the things is to be more normal, in an earthly sense than other people. Keep your feet firmly on the ground. Do what comes to your hand in service to others. In doing so you will be of service to yourselves. As we said earlier, you are very blessed in knowing something about Spirit. You will be equally blessed when you can pass that message on to others who are seeking in the darkness.

If someone is true in their own religion, if they are satisfied spiritually with what they are getting, whether it be from an Orthodox Church of England, a Chapel, the Salvation Army; whether they be a Muslim or Buddhist, a Hindu or a Sikh it does not matter. The important thing is that they are true to what they believe and, at the end, they worship God.

Your modern world is so complicated today. There is so much knowledge about and yet there is so much still to learn. You have got to remember that as well as being citizens of this country, citizens of your town or your village, that you are citizens of the world and your Earth needs every spark of love that you can give it.

Often you feel despondent at the state of your world. You read on every side the dreadful things that are happening and you find yourself saying, Is there a God? If there is how can he allow these things to happen? It is because Earth does belong to God. It is because it is part of the "Great Spiritual Plan" that there will be tragedies, that there will be disasters. But, at the same time, there is hope; there is love in your world.

If you could see into the hearts of all the people then you would find that there is so much good there. You have got to send your love out, not only to those that are close to you, those with whom you feel sympathy, those whose ideas you agree with, but you have got to learn to send your love out to all of God's creatures, to the whole of mankind, the evil as well as the good, to the animals, to the plants, to the birds, to the trees, to the fish and to the insects.

Remember everything that has a part of life has a part of Spirit and, eventually, will join you on the way to God.

Goodnight and God bless you all.

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