A Natural Process and the Growth of the human soul

17 Nur 164 BE – Thursday, June 21, 2007

Sometimes the processes of nature shed light on how the human soul grows and develops spiritual attributes.

Snakes can’t grow unless they shed their skin. The old has to come off before the reptile can increase in size and abilities. The human soul, on the other hand, has to develop spiritual attributes to be prepared for life in the next world. Tests and difficulties reveal spiritual attributes the individual soul needs to develop in order to function in the next world. I didn’t realize how similar a snake shedding its skin is to the soul developing spiritual attributes until someone in my yahoo journal writing group pointed it out.

The similarity between these processes is stress. It’s stressful for a snake to shed it’s skin. It’s stressful for the human soul to gain the knowledge of the attributes necessary for its survival and success in the world of the spirit. The only place we (human) have to develop these attributes is in the material world. We must acquire these attributes before the soul sheds the physical body and passes to the next world.

The spiritual attribute I’ve been having problems with lately is patience. Until recently I thought I was patient and I am in specific cases and in dealing with other under certain conditions. However, this patience doesn’t extend to all process or to myself. When I realized patience was the problem (possibly waiting in traffic during road construction on a hot Las Vegas day), I looked up patience in my Microsoft Word Thesaurus. I found that patience has several facets endurance, staying power, tolerance, lack of complaint, persistence, fortitude, and serenity.

I looked at the ingredients to patience and realized that it’s only specific aspects of patience I have a problem with. One of those aspects is the “lack of complaint”, when I realized this I used it as a journal entry and posted it to the group. That’s when one of the members pointed out the similarities between a snake shedding its skin and the process of growth. In order for the human soul (spirit) to grow, it must shed the certain material attributes and develop spiritual attributes; I suspect this is what’s going on in my life at the moment. My spirit is growing and I have to shed certain aspect of the ego self for the spirit to grow and develop.