Israel and the task to make victory over angels

Adam and Eve could not reach perfection because instead of taking dominion over the world of angels, they were influenced by angels and began to look up to them as if they were God.

It is the task of Adam and Eve to restore themselves to the positions of restored Adam and restored Eve. This can only be accomplished in a process of restoration in which Adam and Eve must win a battle over angels. Adam and Eve through their love for God and their spiritual strength must prove themselves to be stronger than angels. Only after Adam and Eve have done that, they can reach the level that Adam and Eve could not reach.

Because Adam and Eve fell at the top of the second stage of three stages of individual growth to perfection, the restoration of Adam and Eve by being victorious over angels comes also at the top of the growth stage. The completion stage, the third of three stages to individual perfection, only opens after Adam and Eve made this victory. We could call an Adam and Eve who made this victory and who are living in the completion stage: restored Adam and restored Eve.

In the history of God's Providence the name Israel was given to Jacob after he fought with an angel, when Jacob returned to Canaan from his two-decades long exile living with his uncle Laban in Haran. Jacob showed how Canaan should and can be entered in a good way, by first making a victory over the angel.

The nation of Israel grew out of the sons of Jacob or Israel. It was the task of Israel to make a foundation for the Messiah to come. The task to receive the Messiah can only be accomplished by people of Israel, which means people who separated from Satan and who grew to the level of restored Adams and restored Eves and who in their growth to individual perfection surpassed the top of the growth stage.

Jacob who was Israel isn't called Israel anymore. This is because after he lost his position of Israel and had regained it one more time, he lost it again. Still, the 12 tribes of the sons of Jacob grew to a nation over time. In the time of Jesus, most of the tribes had been lost in exile and never returned to Canaan. There were only two remaining tribes, those of Judah and Benjamin in Jesus' time. In addition to that there had remained some factions of the priests, the Levites, who however never had taken the position of one of the 12 original tribes.

We see that people of Israel can lose their qualification to be Israel. The victory of Israel, which is the victory over the world of angels, is one that must be made by each individual, but it can also be inherited from parents. A child who is born from parents who made their victory of Israel, the victory over angels, will be born in a protected environment. Yet, once the child grows up and begins to live a life by him- or herself, that inherited victory must be transformed into a personal one. Each of us, however much we have inherited from our parents, must eventually make such a victory over angels in order to be qualified as a member of Israel. This is important to realize as the first mission of Israel is to make a foundation to receive the Messiah.

When the Messiah comes, he must be received by a people of Israel. This will be a group of people of whom each has been victorious over angels. To be victorious over angels, we must win what is called a spiritual fight. There are many, many types of spiritual fights. This is because angels apply many means and tricks to dominate human beings.

Although the victory of being Israel can be inherited to a certain degree, eventually each individual must qualify by being successful in winning any spiritual fight that is imposed by the angelic world. The first Israel lost their qualification of being Israel because they let evil angels invade their culture. This was the deeper cause of the crucifixion of Jesus. The second Israel, Christianity, has never been a physical Israel. But there is little meaning in the qualification of Israel when there isn't made a victory of Israel in the physical existence. The Messiah must come to bring about an ideal world, not only in the spiritual world but also in the physical world. The foundation to receive the Messiah can only be made by people in the physical world who made their personal victory of Israel.

As long as children are living in the love and under the protection of parents who succeeded to be Israel, these children inherit the same qualification. Still, to inherit a qualification while needing the protection of parents also means that the children are still children. They are not really mature and as soon as they would go out into the world where many evil temptations and attacks will come to them, they might lose in shortest time their qualification of being Israel.

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Some methods to test spirits and angels

Most of us come into contact with expressions from the spiritual world, either directly because spirits or angels come to us, or indirectly because we get information from other people who are mediums to spirit world. The spirit world is always around us and always influences us even we may not notice it.

The methods described here are not to be seen as complete or entirely reliable if practiced. These are only some tips that I want to give based on my own experiences with spirit world.

The most important always is that we can only judge the spirits based on our own connection to God. If someone is greedy for fame or money, if somebody has too much curiosity for the expressions from spirit world, chances are near 100 % that he or she is going to be deceived. There are many badly inspired spirits and angels out to jump upon such people and when someone's motivation isn't pure and intentions aren't right, such spirits will find this person and start to work through him or her.

The main method that always and again and again must be applied to judge the spiritual entities is prayer. Of course, when a person has wrong motivation, he or she might still pray but such prayers are no good. The main search always must be if you or somebody else really desires to God's will, not just God's will as expressed through other people, but God's will that you can know because of your serious desire to do God's will.

The second method that always must be applied is to judge the results of a spirit or angel coming to you or helping you. This method alone is not reliable, but it nevertheless is essential to be very critical of each spiritual phenomenon. Sometimes evil spirits betray themselves because of the bad feelings they give to you. Be self-critical and alert for how spiritual experiences affect you and others. Do they grow in understanding of God's principles? Do they remain humble? Do they try to get honor for themselves? Do they try to make money from their work? Do they put themselves above others and begin to think to be some kind of new messiah? Does there come confusion from the revelations that are given?

All such questions must be asked again and again and if you have any doubt, pray about this, meditate and think until you understand what's going on. The latter is very important. Do never let doubts rest unresolved. Whenever there is a doubt, pray and struggle until you know the reason for your doubt. The doubt can be founded in case evil spirits invaded. The doubt could also be in your own lack of faith, or in your being influenced by negative people who don't understand about spirit world.

The third method that also always must be applied is logical examination of all facts that are given. When spirits or angels give you information, it should be true and in accordance with facts that you know to be true. If there is any contradiction, don't let this rest but find out the cause of the contradiction. Specifially, what is being said should be in accordance with the principles you know to be true. If this isn't the case, you need to find out whether your understanding of these principles need correction or whether the spirit has given wrong information.

If information is given about spirit world, it may be difficult to check it. But even so, that information should be logical in itself. Spirit world is not a world of magic and mystery and miracles. Spirit world is an entirely logical world just like the physical world. Each phenomenon can be explained with logical principles.

There are many more methods of testing the spirits but I want to conclude with this one: Always be very attentive for the details. When spirits come to you, ask them many questions that they should be able to answer. If for example Jesus would come to you, he should be able to tell you many details about his own life. Dare to ask the spirits such questions. Do not submit yourself in so-called humble obedience and respect while possibly the spirit coming to you is entirely fake. Any good spirit or angel will understand that you have to ask such questions.


This is just a short note about a topic that deserves volumes of books. I still wish to add some methods of testing spirits that are not reliable:

- You cannot test spirits with formulas such as asking them something in the name of True Parents or Jesus. If a spirit is really faking he laughs about that.

- You cannot secure that good spirits come to you only by making conditions of fasting or bowing or otherwise. None of these conditions guarantee anything. You cannot chase evil spirits away with Holy Salt or Holy Water or whatever. You cannot prevent evil spirits to come by using incense or carrying a cross or putting a picture of True Parents near to you.


Summaring, I described four main ways to test spirits and angels:
1. Sincere and continued prayer
2. Judge the result of their influences
3. Logically examine all facts and revelations given
4. Be alert for any detail and keep asking questions

Finally, beware of the illusion that spirits or angels would be higher or better or more interesting than people in the physical world. All human spirits are just normal people like you and me. And all the angels together, whether they call themselves evil, fallen or sinless, have never managed to make an ideal world.

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The spiritual relationship between husband and wife

Even though a man and a woman may have developed a harmonious relationship during their lives on earth, it may not always mean that they can easily be together in the spirit world. I shall try to explain about this difficulty in general terms.

The main reason for this problem is the reality of the spiritual fall. The spiritual fall must be overcome in different ways. One result of the spiritual fall was that it led to a physical fall, meaning a sexual and love relationship between a man and a woman who were not centered on God, who were not at all meant to have married each other or who had not yet grown to a level of individual maturity to have such a relationship in a God-centered way. Another result of the fall in general was that people fell out from the original blood lineage under God, and that people came to adopt Satan as their father, partly or wholly.

Even when you are sure that your relationship as husband and wife were meant to be so by God, and you accepted God as your parents, and you fulfilled all the conditions required to have a loving relationship as husband and wife, that still doesn't automatically mean that when you come in spirit world, you will be able to live together as husband and wife.

The main reason for this is that the spiritual world has always been controlled mainly by fallen angels. These are the same fallen angels who brought man to fall, who brought to mankind false ideologies, and who put themselves spiritually in-between God and man. Because of this reality, people always have had difficulty to mature spiritually.

A man and a woman may be adults physically, but in order for them to have a gratifying and fruitful spiritual love relationship, they both must have matured spiritually to a degree that they can cope with all possible difficulties such as spiritual attacks and invasions by evil angels and spirits.

To understand what this may mean think in the following way: Suppose that you are alone in a place and you cannot physically contact your spouse. Are you capable then of making some kind of close spiritual connection to your spouse? If you are able to do this, it will be because of love, but it will also be because of both having the ability to overcome certain spiritual barriers that might be put in-between you. Only when you are able to do this and keep this standard in the physical world, you will also be able to do it in spirit world.

Fundamentally, of course, love for God comes first. Love for God makes the basis for love between husband and wife. And the love for God must have grown to a level of individual maturity for each of the partners in order to overcome the many possible spiritual types of invasion that can cause a separation between two spouses.

What is needed, centered on God, is a certain level of spiritual maturity of both husband and wife. Spiritual maturity is not identical to knowledge of God's principles. It is also not always the same as having strong love for each other, because sometimes love is too much physical or too much in being dependent on each other. It is important to understand God's principles and it is necessary to have strong love for God and for each other, but it is also important to be able to deal with the countless of types of spiritual difficulties that are caused by fallen angels and that may split two loving people apart in certain difficult situations.

Spiritual maturity is maturity of the spirit. Even though a child may be pure, it is still a child and can therefore not cope with spiritual attacks brought forth by adult and clever evil spirits and angels. Therefore children need the protection and guidance of their parents and their friends or people in archangel's position, living in a good family in a close and loving relationship.

Original spiritual maturity is always reached in a loving relationship to God. Some people have advanced spiritual abilities but they got it by learning from evil angels. Some of these people in spirit world even manage to have a close relationship to a spouse. That is of course not what we should be aiming for. Love for God comes first.

The main sign of matured spirituality is good intuition and the ability to keep it under all circumstances. Not everyone who matures spiritually needs to be able to see or hear spirits. Most important is to have spiritual intuition for what is good and evil, so that one can always stay on the path of true love centering on God.

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Testimony of Home Church in a school environment

I believe Home Church to be a magical tool, a divine inspiration that being practiced can totally transform our own lives and those of others.

Although Home Church traditionally is done in an environment of 360 homes, because the principles are universal, Home Church can be applied in many situations. This story is about some of my experiences with a school where some of my children went.

The school itself was a kind of private school but under rather much government control. The school was based on principles such as teaching children to be creative and free.

Because I wanted to have some influence over how my children were educated at the school, I decided to make the school situation to a kind of Home Church project. This testimony is about seven years of involvement in which I spent about 20 hours weekly to serve the school, its teachers and students and their parents.

My first activity was to volunteer for work in the school garden. The school had a nice garden that had been rather much neglected for a few years. When i first got to meet the school, a group of parents had just formed to clean up the mess. I decided to participate. Already there was a leader of this parents group and the first day that I helped, I was not allowed to enter the school's premises. Instead i was told to clean up the streets around the school. After I had performed well the task to broom the streets, I was asked to get rid of all the weeds that had filled the school's garden. I graduated also from that task and then was permitted to plant flowers.

As time passed, I gradually was accepted to more inner and supposedly more sacred spaces of the school.

It was one of the principles of the school that children would need to be educated in how to grow vegetables. But alas, there was no teacher available for this particular course. So I came up with a plan that parents would help the teachers to give these classes. Several parents volunteered and teachers became enthusiast. For several years it then became my task to teach children and teachers alike how to grow a nice vegetable and flower garden.

Parents, children and teachers participating in this garden work met several times a week. Because I invested more than others, I was asked to become the leader of the parents' group that took care of the garden. Over the years, my work as a volunteer developed. Together with parents, teachers and children we made a nice playground, we gave a new paint to the inside and outside of the school building, we repaired the leaking roof, etc...

After several years I was asked to become the president of the school board. At that stage something interesting happened. I had come to know all the teachers of the school and many of the parents and the children. But becoming the president of the school board meant that I now had to deal with the government who was supervising and controlling the school's activities.

Over several years of time, the school had become an attraction for more parents to have their children educated. The local government felt they were losing control. National-level government officials were sent in to check and they put on the brake, forcing teachers to do things according to official government rules. This kind of government influence frustrated the parents and teachers who had done their volunteering work with so much zeal. Another group of parents and teachers who supported the government, gradually took over the school.

The level of the situation had clearly advanced from one of a local school to a national-level affair. At that time I decided to focus my efforts on other areas of life and I took my children out of that school. Externally, seen from the viewpoint of how the school ended, this project seemed a failure.

But what I have kept from all this is close friendship to a group of parents and teachers. I also had gotten deeper insight in the schooling system in the western world. I gained very much more from this experience. What I came to learn most of all is how Home Church principles can give us direction and courage to learn and grow in many ways. Home Church is a method that gives us the guidance how to develop our love and friendship. It should be done in prayer and love for God.

When you have made similar experiences in doing Home Church, please comment and tell about it!

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Balanced development of spiritual abilities

The level of spiritual awareness that we reached during our lives on earth is what we are going to take with us to spirit world after death of the body. If our spiritual senses haven't developed much during physical life, these senses are not suddenly going to work in the afterlife.

True love is the most important in our existence. True love is also what reigns the spiritual world and it is what binds and unites the spiritual reality with the physical world. Ideally, the development of our spiritual abilities and of our good love go hand in hand. There needs to be balance between our growth as a religious person, as a child of God, and the development of our spirituality, our ability to live as a spiritual being.

Because of the fall, Adam and Eve lost not only their good connection to God, they also lost many of their spiritual abilities. It is of paramount importance that in the course of individual restoration each person restores the spiritual abilities, the awareness of the spiritual world. As completed individuals we are to dominate the world with God's love. The world as a whole, that is not only the physical world but also the spiritual world.

Most people are aware of the dangers of relating to the spirit world. When we browse the internet in these days, we can find countless of sites with information that was said to have been channeled from spirit world. The alleged or true sources of these channelings are many, they range from Jesus to the angel Michael, from angels of light to intergalactic rulers, from ancient deities to common ancestors. How are we going to find our way in all this? What should we believe and not believe to be real and valuable?

Eventually this is going to be an individual decision. Even if we trust, for example, True Parents' judgment, it is still our personal decision to do so. How can we learn to rely on our personal good judgment? All these questions are interrelated.

We must develop our spirituality, we also must learn to have good judgment of what goes on around us. More important than anything else is that the development of our spiritual abilities occurs in a balanced way.

There is to be balance in more than one way. Most importantly, our ability to observe and affect the spiritual world should always be centered on God. To be centered on God means to be living in God's love. It means that all that we do serves God and fellow man and all of creation. Also our spiritual abilities should serve God. If the greed to know about the spiritual world surpasses the desire to do good, there is going to be a problem.

In this context it is important to know that when a person has developed certain spiritual abilities, for example if he or she is able to receive messages from the spiritual world, these abilities are connected to the level of society that this person is serving. Some messages from spirit world only have a personal meaning. If a person receiving such revelations thinks that he or she is very special and therefore should take a central position in a group or church, there could come a problem.

Imagine that a spiritual person, for example a medicine man in a native American tribe, would want to offer his abilities to serve the entire nation of America. There doesn't need to be something wrong with this, but it is clear that when you serve a tribe you have to deal with fewer spirits than when you are serving a large nation. At the moment that a person begins to operate on a larger level, becomes some kind of central figure in a greater group, he or she has to deal with the difficulties on that larger level. In other words, more indemnity must be paid when a larger whole is served.

Often people over-estimate their spiritual abilities and they become arrogant in relation to other people. This is an example of unbalanced development of spiritual abilities.

Another field in which balance must be maintained is spiritual life in relation to physical life. Some people get so focused on being spiritual that they forget the importance of physical existence. Also in such a case, the spiritual person tends to become proud and arrogant and thinks that his or her contributions are more important than those of others.

It is important that the development of abilities in the physical world go along with developments in spiritual matters.

Finally, although knowledge about the spiritual world is essential, for example by study of the Divine Principle, knowledge alone won't do. And it also isn't right when a person tries to have contact to the spiritual world without understanding God's principles.

To summarize: Our spiritual development should be balanced in a number of ways. First of all, any development of spiritual abilities that is not centered on God or under God is very dangerous. True spirituality can only be acquired through a good relationship to God. It was because of the fall that man lost the spiritual awareness. It is by overcoming the fall that good spirituality can be gained back.

Second, there needs to be balance between the development of our spiritual and our physical life.

Third, spiritual experiences need to be accompanied by principled understanding, and principled understanding of the spiritual reality needs to be deepened by real spiritual experiences.


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Angels above or below us

It's a common phenomenon in the present time to hear about people who draw attention by their extraordinary knowledge of what they call spirituality and by their perceived working for a future of light and peace for all mankind.

When the lives of these people are studied further, they often testify of meaningful spiritual events at the beginning of their missions. Sometimes such people tell of how a medium to spirit world told them about their special missions, or they had experiences in which angels took them out of their bodies and showed them the spiritual world. Furthermore, they often feel to be guided or even commanded by angels of light.

What's happening in our time of New Age? Are all these people workers of light and do they all cooperate to bring about a new age supposedly to start in the 12th month of 2012?

When we look around in today's world we can see countless organizations and individuals who are all working hard for an upcoming world of peace and light and many of them tell us how they are guided by the spiritual world, by angels or aliens or otherwise.

Let me put a little perspective on this all. Whether angels are white or black, allegedly good or evil, it is the position of man to be centered on God, united with God and then to have loving control over the spiritual world, which includes angels and 'aliens' of all sorts.

Fallen history of mankind began with something that is called 'spiritual fall,' meaning a sinful relationship between Eve and then Adam with an evil angel. The correct order in God's world of the Ideal is that man learns to have loving dominion over the angels. The history of Israel began with Jacob making a victory over an angel, based on the training he had acquired during the 20-year period that he served his uncle Laban, who in Jacob's course represented the archangel.

Nothing ideal will ever come from people who are controlled by angels, not even when these angels are calling themselves angels of light or divine angels or whatever. It can't be ideal when people are controlled by angels because it isn't the correct order when angels dominate man. The order needs to be reversed. People with good heart and good love need to go a course in which they learn to have control over the spiritual world including all angels.

Good angels are supposed to serve man. Good angels can give us reports that are useful, they can give us teaching from that we can learn, but no good angel would ever take the position to tell man what to do and what to think.

So what about the idea that in 2012 a New Age will come? Think about it... If it is God's plan to start a new world, wouldn't all those in spirit world who separated from God know about it? And wouldn't they try to build a false ideal copying God's Ideal? This is what the evil side has always attempted to do.

We need to make good distinction between what really comes from God and what is intended to deceive us. Copies of God's ideal do very much resemble the original ideal, yet there are some differences. One of the main differences is that in God's world man is supposed to have loving dominion over angels. It should never be the other way around.

Spiritual awareness and our relationship to the Earth

All that exists is connected through invisible threads. The connections are maintained through love. All creations make part of this. All of creation can be seen as the body of God and so all people, all living beings and also the stars and the planets and the moons are part of God's body of love.

When a soldier engaged in war and rampage tramples a bed of beautiful flowers, he does not only destroy the beauty of these flowers, but he also causes pain in the heart of the person who cultivated them and he causes pain in the heart of God who is the origin of the love that brought forth such beauty.

The earth is the organism largest and closest to us. Many people see the earth as a dead thing, but how could the earth be dead knowing that the earth produces the mountains and the seas, the trees and the flowers and all the beauty of life that lives on and in its surface.

What is the relationship between Heaven and Earth? Heaven means the world of spirit, the world of God in spirit and the world of angels and of our ancestors. Heaven also is the place of our eternal home. Earth is the environment where we grow up. Since oldest times cultures have known the principle that we must keep to friends Heaven and Earth. We are situated between Heaven and Earth and to live a good life we need to maintain a good relationship to either one of these.

Making out our physical environment, the Earth nourishes us and gives life to our physical bodies. No day passes by without us being in total dependency of the Earth and all it gives us. But the Earth also is our main spiritual environment. Our ancestors who are with us in the spiritual world live on the spiritual Earth.

When we maltreat the physical Earth, it cannot but respond to the inflictions brought upon it. When we deplete the soil of the Earth of its fertility, one day the Earth will refuse to give us bread. We are connected with the Earth through invisible connections of love as the Earth and all other creations of God are one body. If one of the organs of the body are ill, the entire body suffers. We cannot speak about love for fellow man if we cannot love the Earth and all living creatures and things on it.

This is not only an external or a physical concept. This idea has deep spiritual meaning. When we mistreat the Earth, it cannot but be in pain because its harmony and beauty are being destroyed. It may sound strange to some to speak about the pain of the Earth, but why would it be abnormal to speak of pain in what makes out part of God's body? It is God who suffers when our Earth is mistreated because God made the Earth for all of us to have good life. Without a healthy and prospering earth there cannot be good life for all people. Because we are children of God, God suffers when God's love as expressed through the Earth is not well understood.

Because the Earth also is our main spiritual habitat, we cannot have a good life in the afterlife when we made a bad relationship to the Earth. When love is missing for the Earth, love is missing for all people who are dependent on the Earth. When love is missing, also true spiritual life will fail.

This is why in our lives of faith we should not be out for power in the world of man, but we should learn to cultivate the Earth well. A profession such as that of farmer can become a deeply religious and spiritual experience. This is when the farmer learns how to relate well to the Earth, if he replenishes the fertility of the Earth, if he comes to understand about how everything is interconnected, if he discovers about the energetic qualities of the Earth and its rivers and mountains, the air and the birds. If however the goal of a person is to acquire power and wealth, whatever his intended religious goals may be, he will fail in the end because he separates himself from the love and beauty and spirituality that God has created in our home that we call Earth.

What to do when there comes disunity in a heavenly organization?

There are individuals who have gotten central responsibilities in order to make this a better world. These individuals are the center of faith of families and tribes or organizations with a similar responsibility. Because these central individuals, families and tribes are taking responsibility to solve large and historical problems, they get to deal with evils that have been stored in the spiritual world.

How does it work? Angels and human spirits who made mistakes and who instigated evil in the past have gotten control over societies on earth to a certain degree. God picks and raises central figures of faith whose task it is to start a better world. In order to do this externally, in the visible physical world, they must first fight and win a personal battle against such evil spirits.

On the basis of having won such battles, God can give them the Word. Such people get inspirations and guidance on the foundation of having won the spiritual fight. From that moment on these people can pass on what they learned to others around them. At that moment, there is not only a central individual but also a central family of faith and there may come into being a central tribe, organization or nation.

Now, on a family, tribal or national level, the same order applies. That family, tribe, organization or nation must win a spiritual battle on the family, tribal, organizational or national level. Each time that this battle is won at a certain level, new truth will emerge which then must be expressed into the good societies that are being built.

What does it mean when a Cain-Abel problem emerges in such a family, tribe, organization or nation? It simply means that the first stage of spiritual battle has not or not yet been won by that heavenly group. There has been invasion of evil spirits to a certain degree and these spirits have inspired some people with words that aren't true, with feelings that aren't right, and to actions that better aren't performed.

When such a Cain-Abel problem emerges, it isn't always so that the one side is right and the other side is wrong. It could be so, but it can also be that both sides are under influence from evil spirits, to differing degrees and possibly also from different groups as they have formed in the spiritual world. The dividing line between Cain and Abel is not always that between evil and good spirits. In many cases, evil invaded both groups, but in different ways.

Whenever such divisions occur inside heavenly families, tribes, organizations or nations, one thing is clear, and that is that there wasn't made a decisive victory over the evil spiritual world. There may or may not still be central individuals unaffected by that evil and who can still stand in the central heavenly position. Yet, their task will become increasingly difficult as the ones following in their footsteps are not united with them centered on God. This is not a good expansion of the heavenly center, but it is problematic and the problems need to be solved.

It doesn't really matter how great those heavenly figures are in the center. The problems in their connected families and groups, when they occur, still must be solved. Jacob became Israel and as such became the central figure of faith for a tribe and nation that was to be established under God. But Jacob and his descendants had to deal with the historical problems as these had been stored in the spiritual world. The tribe and nation of Israel were attacked by such evil spirits and they had to overcome the difficulties.

What can those people do who are not in the most central positions when problems of disunity occur in the center of their group? Of course, the most obvious is to pray, but more can be done. The evil from spirit world always tries to invade using the outer shells to penetrate into the inner shells. When the central family of such a group is affected in a negative way, it therefore automatically means that the problems are not only in the center but more pervasively in the people that form these outer shells.

It is therefore possible for all people in such a group and organization to engage in deep self-reflection and prayer and to discover what has gone wrong in or around them. In that way, causes of the evil invasion can be found and overcome and the attacks on the center will become less severe and less difficult to handle by those who are in the center.


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Three Stages of Spiritual Abilities

As we grow in learning to have good dominion over the spiritual world, we go through three stages. These stages are not exactly the same as the stages of growth to individual maturity in God's love. They specifically refer to spiritual abilities, which we need to develop in some kind of way, but which by themselves are not a guarantee to be on the good side.

There are parallel paths to go for each of us for different facets of our development. For example, if we want to write truth, we go through stages of growth in our command over language, but not all those who write great literature are on God's side and not all those who advanced in growth under God have great language skills.

I am regularly writing about the dangers that can come to us when we explore the spiritual world and are learning to deal with it. Having said this, here are three stages of development of spiritual development. This also reads as a scanty listing of what is possible for us in terms of spiritual experiences. The overview is not complete and I also do not assume that each person will go through exactly these stages. There are individual differences. Some people develop specialist spiritual abilities to a high degree while others may learn to master all of these traits together.

In the stage of awakening of spiritual abilities, the first stage of growth in this field, we begin to develop a better intuition for the meaning of what takes place in the world around. That intuition is our guiding rod and will remain so for however far we advance. This intuition should be connected to God, it should be original and can then safeguard us against many dangers. In this stage people begin to dream dreams with meaningful content. People sometimes are conscious of being inspired by good spirit world and these inspirations enhance their creativity. People develop a beginning awareness of the existence of spirit world and will sometimes see, hear, smell or feel spirits. What also often develops in this stage is to have premonitions of future events and sensitivity to what other people feel and think. A good example is that people think of a person and then the telephone rings and this person is on the line.

In the second stage of spiritual development, people begin to receive revelations from spirit world. Sometimes this takes the form of automatic writing in which a spirit controls the content of what is written.These kinds of revelations can be given in different fields of life, such as religion, art. music or any creative undertaking. People can now develop the ability to consciously converse with spirits and some people learn to be a medium for spirits to a degree that their bodies or voices are used to express information from spirit world. Some people in this stage begin to have occasional visons and the number of meaningful dreams increases. As people develop conscious relations with spirits, there also is an enhanced danger to be fooled by angels. One has to make a victory over these angels and distinguish right from wrong in order to enter the third stage successfully. Some people enter the third stage of spiritual development in a false way, by cooperating with evil spirits.

In a third stage of development, people develop advanced intuition. They will propably have foresight and foreknowledge of more events. Some people in this stage learn to have spiritual communication with other physical people living on earth. This kind of communication can take the form of a conversation that is entirely spiritual but the physical people do not meet. See this as a kind of spiritual telephone communication. In this stage one can develop advanced meaningful dreams and visions and the own creativity becomes gradually more and more immersed with revelations received from spirit world. It is also possible for some people that their spirit leaves their physical body and enters the spiritual world and after this returns to the body.

The third stage of spiritual development is near-endless in its possiblities for further growth. Some people and also angels have abilities of which existence most people have no idea.

Note that the path of spiritual development doesn't automatically mean that people develop several other abilities, such as spiritual healing or the command over seeing energies of chakras and the ability to use spiritual energies in other ways. All this needs additional training based on having inherited more or less talent for this.

Please be again aware that being spiritually developed in the above ways does not automatically mean that this is done under God's dominion. Some people develop spiritual abilities because they are helped to do so by evil angels. There is therefore great danger in seeking spiritual development as a goal in itself. Spiritual abilities should always only serve God and be offered to God.


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Before you believe that every angel is good...

Before you believe that every angel is good, consider that there are angels of darkness posing as angels of light and they may have applied one of the following tricks...

One of the schemes used by them is equivalent to a king secretly sending out a troop of crooks to kidnap a nice lady. When the lady is brought to a prison, the king comes to that prison and liberates the lady and wins her heart. Sometimes dark angels may put spiritual prison situations upon you only to later appear as your liberators.

What about this one? Give revelations about upcoming disasters and that few people are going to be saved. At the same time make sure that the predictions come true. Cause those disasters and tempt a few people on earth to believe in a secret and sacred way that is given to them. Cause other groups of people to become evil so the disasters brought upon mankind seem justified, and tempt the elect to believe they are better than the people who don't know about spirituality. Because the prophecies turn out to be true by the own making of these angels, the elect really believe that they are the saved and chosen ones and will accept their angel-heroes without questioning.

Here is another often used temptation. Make a central figure of faith believe that he is very great. Make him also believe that for some reason or another,he made you discover the truth about God's love and about how terrible it is to be evil and that you determined to repent and to stop being evil. Make this central figure believe that he is the only one capable of helping you. In that way he will accept you to come closer to him and you can invade his relatives and followers and make a lot of trouble.

Another often applied trick by evil angels is the following. Organize the spiritual world to give help in all possible ways to a certain person on earth. Make money and power come to him. Give visions and revelations to people that this person is the most special one and make him believe that all the blessings bestowed upon him are the work of God. Chances are that he never finds out that these blessings did not come from God, that the people sent to him are good-willing but misled at the same time. Once he accepts the blessings as if coming from God, he will see your efforts as being initiated by God. Even if this person on earth has much faith in God, he may lose it as he more and more trusts the angels who played this trick on him.

You want to hear another one? Cause an illness in the body of someone loved by a central person whom you wish to get under you. Let this be succeeded by a miraculous recovery and give revelations and visions to people on earth that this recovery came because of the outstanding faith of the central person. In this way, people on earth will gain faith that this group of angels is working for God and so these angels can dominate.

We need to be sharp in our relationship to spirit world and above all, we need to pray and ask God about each phenomenon taking place. Never assume that the most obvious is automatically true. Not all angels are evil and not all spiritual phenomena are meant to deceive, but in order to distinguish, we need a deep relationship to God and we need to grow in experience on our path of faith.

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Motivating ourselves to live with God

To whatever religion we belong, for most of us it is again and again difficult to motivate ourselves to go our course to live with God. What can be done about it?

First we need to realize that God never wants us to do something unvoluntarily. The reason for this is that we are created to have freedom. The deeper meaning is that God made it such that when we give to God or to others, it also really will be a free gift. Love that is received by demanding it from someone or by tempting someone to give it has no deep meaning. It isn't really love because the person giving that love does it to acquire a certain self-centered benefit.

Therefore, God never asks us to do something that we don't really want to do. How does this relate to our own motivation to live with God? It means that whenever we seriously lack desire to do what we may think we have to do for God, we should not do it. That is my own take on life. Instead, I go in prayer until I found out from where my disliking came. Sometimes in prayer I realize that I did not deeply enough understand God's desire. Sometimes also I realize that what I thought was God's will, wasn't really wanted by God. In the first case, my motivation has deepened and I can do what I know i have to do. In the second case, I was right in not wanting to do it and I can find out what I should do instead.


One big problem can be when God's will is passed on to us by a religious leader. Sometimes a religious leader misunderstands what is God's will. Sometimes a religious leader knows what externally is God's will but he or she does not represent God in terms of love and understanding.

Even when a religious leader knows what is God's will and also has a good relationship to God and love for us, it still is essential that we establish a direct relationship to God about God's will. We all are children of God and God wishes to relate to each of us directly. Furthermore, even if our leader correctly understands God's will, it is not enough for us to blindly follow. We may entirely misunderstand the meaning of what God wants from us and if we have such misunderstanding, it will lead to problems in our life of faith. Even if we can totally trust a central figure, we still need to ask God because we may be lacking in our own comprehension of what he or she tells us.

So we always need to pray to God about all that we do, because it is the right relationship between parents and child and because it is the only way for us to be sure that we have the right understanding of God's will.

Sometimes this can lead to conflicts with the people around us. If a leader or a parental figure has a bad time and isn't connected well to God, we may get problems in our relationship with him or her. If we perceive it to be God's will to do certain things in life, our relatives and friends may have other opinions and find us weird or even openly oppose us.

Also in these cases, the only way to solve it is in prayer. When we pray, God can explain to us the meaning of the problems we have. God always wants to help us with each problem in our lives of faith. We have this assurance because of God's deep love for each of us.


Maybe the most common problem of lacking motivation to do God's will is when we are addicted to a life style that isn't centered on God. It is the nature of sin that it is liked by many people, but sin destroys our heart of love and our desire to do good. Always when our lack of motivation is caused by our own sins, there is only one solution. It is to stop sinning and to go back to God in repentance.


There are still many other ways in which we can motivate ourselves to love God and to live with God. One important method is the study of God's Word. Another gate to God's love is the beauty of creation. Maybe the most effective way to understand God's love and to be motivated in our love for God is by giving out good love ourselves.

But all these roads can be misdirected as well. We could enjoy the beauty of creation in a selfish way. We could be blinded by wrong doctrine to see the real truth in Books of God's Word. We could give love but forget to establish a personal relationship to God and our love may not be the best way of expressing God's love. Therefore, we do absolutely and always need sincere and personal prayer to keep a close relationship to God.


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Levels of individual spiritual growth and realms in spirit world

It is generally thought that our level of individual spiritual growth relates directly to the realm where we come to live in spirit world. Although this relation does exist, there is more to be said about this.

Let me start with a comparison from the physical world. In society people have enjoyed higher or lower degrees of education and many have specialized in certain fields of science or other realms of life. There exists a group in the world that is formed of those who became professors at universities. Another group is made up by teachers at high schools. Yet another group is that of those who became masters in a guild of a certain craft, such as cabinet making.

The members of each of these groups sometimes meet and when they do, they can relate to each other well as long as they speak about topics of interests they share. But each of these people also are members of other groups. For example, they have relatives, or may belong to a certain church or religion.

Now think of the idea that when you reached a certain spiritual level of growth, you will come to live in a realm in spirit world that corresponds to that realm. The principle for this is true, but at the same time the daily reality for spirits may often look very different.

Is there for example a region in spirit world where all faithful Jews reside? Look at the situation of Jews in the physical world. Even though Jews form groups and associations among themselves, it doesn't mean that they all are united, also not when they would have reached the same spiritual level. The same can be said of Christians. On earth, they divide in thousands of smaller denominations. How would they be able to live united in one realm in spirit world?

Just like it is the case on earth, in spirit world there are many, very many groups and regions that correspond to geographical areas on earth. There are spirits who can enter many of these regions and visit many groups, and there are spirits who got stuck in a certain situation and place in the spiritual world, just like there are people in the physical world who got stuck in their interest for only one hobby or who learned much but only much about the one specialism of their profession.

So what is the meaning of the principle that there exist realms in spirit world that correspond to the levels of individual spiritual growth of individuals? The reality as I have seen in spirit world is that this can be understood similarly to saying that when you have reached a certain degree at college, you can move in the circles of those who also have done this. It doesn't mean that you are bound to a place where all the people reside who have reached the same level of education. Similarly, when you have reached a certain level of spiritual maturity, it doesn't mean that you are bound to live together with all others who also did this.

There is one beautiful exception, and that is for what we can call the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Kingdom of Heaven there are living those who are united in love for God and for one another. The Kingdom of Heaven is the place where love reigns. But does this mean that the Kingdom of Heaven is only a place where all people under God come together?

Think of it. If you are a loving person, would you not want to go out in the world and serve and love other people? Is that not the essence of being a person who found the love of God? So where will you be in spirit world most of the time? You won't be living only with your relatives in the love of God, but you will want to spread on God's love to all those who are in need of this.

Also living in the Kingdom of Heaven are all the children of the parents who love God. These children may sometimes be very young and therefore cannot yet have reached a higher spiritual level of maturity. Still, they also make part of the Kingdom of Heaven, not because of what they have learned in their lives but because of the love they inherited from God and their ancestors and parents.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the place where all people are living who really love God. It is a magical place where we can meet our first and True Parents as well as all the angels under God. We can live there in harmony with our ancestors who lived thousands of years ago and we hear their stories how they lived, across the earth in all cultures. Yet at the same time, it isn't a place where we are going to lock ourselves up. The Kingdom of Heaven could not survive if its inhabitants would do that. The Kingdom of Heaven, by the nature of God's love, will always be expanding and the residents will always be outgoing into all other parts of the spiritual and physical world. Alone for that reason, we should not imagine it to be a place where we can enjoy all imaginable blessings. We receive God's blessings when we are giving out love. Anyone would lose membership of the Kingdom of Heaen who would stop sharing God's love with those who need God's love most, who are living in some kind of dark and miserable hell.


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Breathing truth like the fragrance of a flower

We can rely on the truth to lead us to our safe destination. The truth is like the fragrance of a flower. We know that the flower is beautiful when we smell its perfume. Our nose tells us that a flower is graceful and our eyes confirm that realization.

The fragrance of a flower is like the truth of God and the visible flower shows us the love of God expressed in beauty.

Sometimes we are so busy with the occupations of our daily lives that while we speed to our work we don't notice the sweet smell and the beauty of all that is around us. We may miss to see the shining eyes of a child and we may not detect the colors of the dawning of this day's sun. The truth and beauty and love of God are all around us. It is given to us as a free present. We do not need to wait for God's love to come to us. It is already there and all we need to do is to embrace it.

How is it that our senses often become so closed that we miss the greatest gifts around us? There are these disturbing influences everywhere. There is pollution in the world of creation and there is pollution in the world of our hearts and minds. Something has come into our world that we don't like and yet we are destined to live with it and bound to overcome it.

We call it Satan or the work of the devil. We give it a name and then go on with our perceived daily duties.
The truth is given to us on a foundation of our own effort. The truth doesn't just come to us cheap. The truth has a price. That price is first of all that we make a condition to liberate us from what's wrong. It's called separation from Satan or separation from evil. We cannot make a Foundation of Faith without making a separation from what's not of God.

We can study the truth but that could be like a scientist studies the properties of a plant. He may be able to write books about it but at the same time may have missed the experience of the love that God expresses through the flowers. When we only study the truth we can become like those scientists that even though they study God's creation do not really believe in God.

The truth may be learned through study but we cannot experience its beauty and be uplifted by its fragrance unless we live the truth. To live the truth is, in technical terms, called the Foundation of Faith. We make our Foundation of Faith all the time, by each act that we do, by each task we fulfill, as long as we're doing what God is asking us.

In order for us to know what God is asking us, we need to push aside all that attracted us and that now controls us that didn't come from God. We need to see the pure reality through what we may perceive as reality but which is nothing else than the empty entertaining in our worldly daily lives.

And when we liberated ourselves from all the distractions and we simply live the way we have to live, then there are these moments, sudden and unexpected, in which we are intoxicated by the beauty and the fragrance of those beautiful flowers of truth that God has given us.



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Dedicating our daily lives to God

To whichever good religion we adhere, the ultimate purpose is to realize our divine potential. Whether we see ourselves as children or servants of God, we do desire to be like God and to live sacred lives of love for God and others.

Each religion has traditions and routines that help us to fulfill the highest goal. There is nothing higher than to love and to be like God in our giving out love, yet how can we translate this into our daily and common activities? There is such a thing as selfish love too. For example, people sometimes love their car more than they love their own family. There exists a lot of evil in this world and when people have fallen to evil habits they sometimes like doing evil.

Religious life means to live centered on God. God wants us to give love to those around us and to have dominion over animals and plants and all things with love. Also to be included in this love is the spiritual world, the world of angels and ancestors.

To say that we can dedicate our lives to God by the love of God expressing through us is a true statement, but it doesn't yet answer the many questions that we have how to do this in daily life. For example, how can we do the dishes in a good way? How can we furnish our houses in a heavenly way? How shall we relate to those collegues who are in the habit of advancing their own career by trying to pull down ours? For what shall we spend our money? How should we earn our money?

It may be possible to give principled answers to each of these questions, but even when we know God's Principles very well, we still often don't know how to apply them. For example, somebody approaches us and asks a question. Out from our habit to give love we might tend be friendly and answer but suppose that this person is part of a gang and while you answer the question another gang member picks your purse from your pocket?

Principles of how to live are very necessary to know, yet cannot help us always in our daily business. Life is far too complex to always immediately know how to apply these principles. Let me give another example. You must vote for a political party. Which one are you going to choose? Should you vote at all and if you do, which candidate is the one wanted by God? We continually bump into these kinds of difficult questions.

So what is the solution? One way chosen by religious people is to simplify their lives. Someone could try to solve the problems by joining a monastery, giving up ownership of personal property, eating simple meals, praying at regular times, etc. That seems to solve some of the problems, but we are people and our lives remain complex however much we would try to simplify. It may help us for a certain period of time to live according to monastery rules but it will not bring us to the ultimate fulfillment of our lives, which at a certain level also includes having a loving family.

There is no other way than to solve these problems in a personal relationship to and communion with God. We need to advance in our religious lives to a point that we continually receive God's guidance for how to do all our daily and even petty things. In my own experience, this means that there are cases that God lets us rely on our good intuition, and there are other cases where we need and can get very concrete instructions from God.

Does this seem a high-reachable goal? I am convinced that God as our Heavenly Parents wants to help us with all that we need. For this God gives us parents or even Original Parents to teach us, teachers to guide us, but as we mature, we cannot anymore rely only on daily instructions of our parents representing God. Maturity means that we have learned to handle our own affairs in good ways. It remains our ultimate goal to keep growing to reach that individual maturity and beyond that, maturity of our relationships with spouse and children, and so forth...



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Breaking through in prayer

Prayer is not easy, most of the time. Through prayer we wish to connect to the Creator in a direct relationship. The reality of our lives is such that we usually need to overcome hindrances before we can reach a level of deeper prayer.

When we pray we don't want it to be a one-way communication. We strive to get answers from God. It is easy enough to pray and to not expect an answer from God. If, however, we seriously are awaiting God's response, our prayers very often become a kind of struggle and fight. What are some of the difficulties that can affect our prayers?

First of all, we all live in a spiritual environment. Because the world around us isn't heaven in most cases, our spiritual environment also is not the most ideal. There can be many reasons why not-so-heavenly spirits are around us and make it difficult to break through in prayer. One reason can be the place where we are praying. If that place isn't claimed by God and heavenly spirits, it is more difficult to pray. Even if we pray on a sacred place, a dedicated prayer room, it is possible that we encounter difficulties for example because someone was there before us and offered impure prayers.

Another reason can be that because of our spiritual inheritance from ancestors or friends we are surrounded by lower spirits. Also mistakes we have made in our own lives can cause this. Another description for these causes of a difficult spiritual environment is 'original, ancestral, collective and personal sins.'

Almost always when we pray, we need to break through less than favorable spiritual circumstances. We may get strange feelings against God or against prayer itself. Such feelings can come to us from the spiritual world. In order to break through these, we need to discover what is wrong with such feelings. That makes our prayer to a process that frequently can resemble a spiritual fight.

A second barrier may be formed by our own thoughts and feelings and our own mental condition. We cannot see this separated from the spiritual reality because our desires, thoughts and feelings are influenced by the spiritual world. Yet, I treat our mental state, and even deeper our condition of heart, as a separate factor. When we have done something that isn't pleasing to God, our heart and mind will make us want to run away from God. We may have feelings of shame, fear and guilt when we enter into deeper prayer. It is essential that we overcome such feelings, on the one hand by trusting in God's love and goodness and on the other hand by determining ourselves to repent for what has been wrong and to do what is right from now on.

When we prayed in the past and God gave us a clear answer telling us to do something, and we haven't done that, our future prayers will get more difficult. We cannot expect answers from God that God already has given us before but to that we haven't responded in the right way. Prayer and action go together. If we pray and don't act from what God tells us, our prayer life will suffer very much or even dy out entirely.

A fourth problem that can occur in our prayer life is when we don't realize that it is up to God when and how to answer. We cannot expect that God will answer our prayers whenever we desire for this or in the way that we expect it. Prayer is an offering of faith and therefore needs fulfillment of our good investment over a certain time period. Depending on what questions we are asking to God, it may take longer time before we can get an answer. Answers can come in many ways. God can speak to us directly, through dreams, through inspiration and revelations, through nature, and of course through what other people say and do to us.

What I described above is not meant to be a complete overview of all difficulties that can toughen our prayer lives. The truth is that we can pray to God and we shall get answers from God if we are serious in our love for God and in our effort to live a life under God. It's our faith in God's love that makes us desire to pray in a close relationship to God.


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Egypt, the wilderness and Canaan in our own lives

We all go through stages in our lives that are comparable to the course of the Israelites who after they left slavery in Egypt went through the wilderness to eventually enter the promised land of Canaan. Personally I find the account of this part of the history of the Jewish people one of the most meaningful of the Bible. The deeper we understand this story, the more we can recognize the stages of this course in our own lives.

We all go through a similar course as the Israelites once went. Also families, tribes and nations and even the whole world go through courses that are parallel to that of the Israelites long ago. I absolutely believe that God inspired Moses to write down the details of this history in order that we can all benefit from it.

Why would it be that our lives are resembling that of the old Israelites? We can understand this when we learn more about the background of that old tale.

What does the period in Egypt stand for? It stands for a time in slavery. The Israelites who believed in the one God the Creator had come under the dominion of Egyptian pharaohs who put themselves as gods and who worshipped evil deities in the spiritual world. The 430 biblical years of slavery in Egypt signify a period in which the Israelites were living in a realm spiritually controlled by evil. It doesn't mean that all Egyptians were evil, but it means that the culture was largely controlled by spirits who did not believe in the one God of Israel.

What was the meaning of the wilderness? Geographically it was a region in-between Egypt and Canaan. Also spiritually it could be seen as a kind of wilderness. There was no established culture there and therefore neither evil nor good angels and spirits were very interested in that region. No solid spiritual foundations are erected in a desert land. There are living few people and those staying there are travelling through. Therefore, a wilderness in a spiritual sense is an area where you can kind of escape evil attacks from spirit world by just moving to a new spot.

For the Israelites the wilderness period had two main meanings. The first was that they had to leave behind the traditions of Egypt. The Israelites had to separate from all that bound them to Egyptian culture and religion. The second meaning was that they had to prepare for entering the new land of Canaan. They had to make themselves ready to set up a culture and tradition centered on God.

Canaan is the land where God wants those who have received this responsibility to set up a people under God. Unfortunately, Canaan was inhabited mostly by evil tribes. The Bible mentions seven evil tribes, yet I am sure there have lived more. Canaan was the land where also could be found the oldest known city of human history, Jericho. We can imagine that many evil traditions had set foot in and gotten hold over this land. Yet, Canaan also was a land where no single civilization ever managed to get permanent control. It was located between the major antique empires such as that of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria.

Canaan is called the land of milk and honey, yet a fierce battle had to be fought in that land before the Israelites could hope to settle there and establish God's traditions. In fact, the old Israelites never really have managed to do so, but they have also never lost completely as there always have lived descendants of their father Israel who was Jacob.


How can we recognize the pattern 'Egypt-wilderness-Canaan' in our own lives? There are connected meaningful mathematical periods to this kind of course. We can find back these periods in our own lives or in the history of any culture that strives for goodness. Yet, when we or a group or nation fails to fulfill what is necessary, the time periods could get extended over very long time. For example, if you are in a kind of slavery by having a job for an employer who doesn't believe in God and who misuses your love and energy for his own benefit, then if you don't manage to get free from him spiritually, your time period in Egypt might be extended from, for example, 40 months, to 40 years or even 400 or 4,000 years. In the latter two cases, you will end up at the end of your life in a spiritual realm controlled by the spirits connected to that employer and you likely will never realize that you are in 'Egypt' during your physical life.

It is when we make victory by doing God's will that we can come to recognize the periods in our lives that are parallel to Egypt, the wilderness and Canaan. When you pay attention to this, you will see that many of the events that happened to the Israelites are also taking place in your life. In this way you can understand better where you are standing in your spiritual course. It also helps when you keep a diary because otherwise you might forget many meaningful details.

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Internal and spiritual aspects of sacred ceremonies

In our religious life we sometimes go through ceremonies that have deep meaning. Each religion has its own rituals and when we study the sacraments of religions, we realize that there always is this deeper meaning. A problem that often occurs in organized religions is that the ceremonies are performed but not understood deeply. Many believers think that by doing these rituals, they are going to be helped or saved just like that.

Always there is deeper meaning in each ceremony. Unless we do such a ritual with the right heart and understanding, the procedures may lose their meaning altogether. In some cases, people doing rituals with an empty heart will think they have received great benefit while in reality, if they haven't performed the ceremony with a good heart, they may be worse off than those who were not involved in the sacrament. Rituals that aren't performed right by the participants may make them blind for what they still need to accomplish and make them arrogant in thinking that they have reached a spiritual level that is not in accordance with their real performance.

I won't focus here on any particular ceremony. There are so many in each religion. What I am writing here applies to each of the rituals that have original meaning under God. I am not referring here to ceremonies performed in worship of evil. I am speaking about rituals of religions that are truely centered on God.

I want to emphasize two aspects of ceremonies that we need to consider. The first is the internal attitude that we need to have in going through the ritual. The second is the spiritual reality that is attached to the sacrament.

There is no meaning in any performed ceremony unless it is done by the participants having a good relationship to the Creator. Even though a ritual may have a profound meaning, it never is independent from our own connection to God. It is not solely through the ritual as such that we restore our relationship to God. The following example may illustrate this. Suppose that an evil person decided to invade a religion. He may have gotten the task from an atheist group to infiltrate a good religion in order to disturb and destroy that religion. Because of his task, he will have to participate in all rituals, and unless this person would come to a conversion, his performing in these ceremonies will not have the same effect on him as on the sincere believers.

In order for any ceremony to have the desired effect, a participant needs to have good desire, good thoughts and feelings and then also still perform the ritual in the required way. For example, when a Christian takes part in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion and shares bread and wine, this has little or no meaning if the person doesn't realize that the bread and wine stand for the body and blood of Christ. Even if the person knows it but if he or she would have a strong resentment against God and against Jesus, there would not be the desired effect from the ceremony. For example, in an extreme case, a person could think that by drinking Jesus' blood, he satisfies a desire to kill Jesus.

The second aspect of each ritual is spiritual. Each ceremony is attended by spirits. Presuming that we speak about a holy ritual, there should be present heavenly spirits. But is this always automatically the case? This is dependent on how the ritual has been prepared, who is allowed or not allowed to participate in the happening, etc. There is no automatism here. It isn't so that because a group of people performs a holy sacrament, therefore automatically only good spirits would be present. The more precious and sacred a ritual is, the more meaningful it is, the more that evil spirits will also try to invade and disturb the event.

This is why especially those who prepare such an occasion need to be prayerful and united among each other, so that all preparations can be made in good spirit and good order. Also each participant should prepare well for taking part in the event. The room where a holy sacrament is performed is to be seen as a temple of God, a place that is protected against evil spirits and a space of holy worship. When offerings are brought to this place, these offerings need to be purified. For example, if money offerings are required for the ceremony, that money should not be stolen because always evil spirits attach to all that is stolen and offering stolen money makes a condition for invasion of evil spirits.

Summarizing, it is good advice that when we take part in a holy sacrament, we make effort in advance to be purified and to have deepest understanding of the significance of the ceremony. This is done by prayer and by reflecting on the meaning of the ritual. In addition to this we need to make effort so that God and only heavenly spirits can be present at the meeting. It is important to be alert for a possible invasion of evil spirits during the ceremony.


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A plea to include the spiritual reality as a field of science

There are many definitions of what science is. Here I want to plea for the installment of a science of the spiritual reality. I do believe that it is possible to gain knowledge of the spiritual world in a scientific way, but first we need to think about what science exactly means, or has come to mean.

According to the Wikipedia article with the title "science," in its broadest sense science refers to "any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome."

Common sense, at least my common sense, tells me that science is the methodical quest for knowledge about the reality. As such it doesn't deal with matters of mere belief, but it does study all phenomena that show up in our reality, such as art, music, history, the natural world, etc. In a very general sense, science then means the methodical search for knowledge about the world that we are living in.

We wish to understand the world in that we live. We wish to understand the principles and laws behind the reality that we experience. In a more specific sense, science has come to be associated with the scientific method, which involves a few steps. The first step is to gather data that are observable and measurable. Usually good science requires the method of experimentation under strictly controlled conditions in order to gain new data in an empirical process. One current defition of 'empirical' is: 'derived from or guided by experience or experiment.' The second step is to apply principles of reasoning to these data that lead to testable hypotheses. These hypotheses can be formulated as predictions, which are then tested in new experiments or through new observations. When these hypotheses are confirmed again and again, that what is called a 'scientific theory' is formulated, which generally is regarded as truth so long until a better theory comes up that falsifies or annuls the former one.

The bottomline of all this is that we want to know the truth. We wish to have correct knowledge about the world around us.

Generally speaking, knowledge about the spiritual reality has always been seen as belonging to what is called 'metaphysics.' There are many definitions of what metaphysical means, but the following is one that I think most scientists would agree with: 'A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.'

But is it indeed impossible for us to gain exact knowledge about the spiritual world? Are spiritual phenomena really not scientifically observable? Could we really not analyze data from the spiritual realms? Is it impossible to conduct spiritual experiments?

It seems that most of the problems are constituted by the fact that all spiritual phenomena can only be observed by humans and not by scientific instruments. But is the difference that big? Who is reading the data that a simple thermometer gives us? Is it not always people whose observations eventually are needed in order to acquire scientific data? As such, I would say that because it needs humans to gather data that alone could not be the decisive factor to conclude that spiritual data are not reliable.

I think that we need a change of thinking. Many people know the spiritual world to be a reality just as substantial be it not as easily observable as the physical world. Psychology is considered to be science yet it deals with the human mind, which may actually be more invisible than the spiritual world. The science of psychology conducts experiments not by observing the mind directly, but by letting people tell about what goes on in their mind, or by looking at people's behavior. The observations made in psychological experiments usually are based on indirect observations, just the same as we could need to conduct experiments to detail the observations of what certain people can tell us about the spiritual world.

Not each person would be able to make clear observations of the spiritual world. But how many people are capable of giving adequate descriptions of what goes on in their mind?

I cannot see any principled reason why there could not be developed a science of the spiritual reality. It may be difficult to do so and certain people may need to be trained to get more experienced in observing the spiritual reality. Also in physical science, observors often need much training before they can read the instruments well.

Of course, it won't be easy to convince the 'scientific' community of what I wrote above. Many of them have a materialistic leaning and a strong faith that God and the spiritual world would not exist. But why bother too much about them? The main reason that they don't believe in a spiritual reality is either because they have been misinformed or because their spiritual senses, their instruments to detect the spiritual reality, don't work very well. These people should not be our guiding teachers but they should rather be seen as those in need of more education. I am sure that this last line will anger many 'scientists' if they read it, but so be it.

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Realms in spirit world

A spiritual realm is a place or a set of places in the spiritual world that is occupied by spirits who have reached a similar spiritual level and who are bound by common beliefs, traditions and sometimes abilities. This is a definition based on observations I have made in the spiritual world.

It is often thought that the spiritual world looks like a kind of building with floors on top of one another. The cellar of that building would be like hell and coming higher in the building it begins to look more and more like heaven. At the top floor in such a model are residing those of the highest level and with the deepest love and they are controlling the entire building.

Of course, nowhere in the spiritual world can be found a building like that. Just like it is true in the physical world, the spiritual world is divided in many places and each of these spaces are controlled by different angels and/or human spirits.

The image of a several-storey building is of course only used as an analogy, to illustrate significant points about the reality of the spiritual world. This image is not a literal depiction of the spiritual reality.

Most cultures and religions have their own view on the spiritual reality. They commonly have their own names for their 'heaven', their 'hell' and often there also is a kind of purgatory or waiting room. When you look in the spiritual world, all these realms can be found. They all exist. Even the spiritual realms that were believed to exist by oldest cultures can usually still be found in the spiritual world.

When a specific culture lives within certain boundaries of communities and sometimes also physical borders, the people of that culture will often share a common belief and traditions. They share the same spiritual reality. Within that spiritual reality of that particular culture or religion, there are those who reached a higher level and there also those who made offenses against what that culture or religion perceives as being right. The latter category will be destined for the spiritual hell that belongs with that culture or religious practice.

When a person has a strong belief in his or her own religion and restricts human relationships with those in the community, that person has set up his or her own restrictions for whom are loved and whom are being met. That situation already may exist in the physical world and will then continue in the spiritual world. We are setting up our own limitations by whom we love, what we believe and where we are going in the spiritual world.

In the spiritual world there comes into existence a realm that goes with a certain subgroup or level of that particular culture or religion. Sometimes the borders of such a realm are reinforced by angels or human spirits to form real frontiers that cannot be passed easily anymore by most of the spirits who are residing within these boundaries.

But it is also true that people who have reached a higher level of unselfish love, and who therefore also are able to love people of many cultures and backgrounds, can more easily move through different realms in the spiritual world. Some of them can even visit the darkest places because of their love for the spirits living there. Such higher spirits have come to live in a kind of heaven that they themselves are making through their love for God and for other people. These higher spirits make their own heaven wherever they come.

The spiritual realms that are formed by the beliefs and traditions of particular cultures and religions can be found on many different places. Some of these realms may be connected to places in the physical world, for example to churches or shrines or holy places. Others of these realms may have been built in places in spirit world that are not situated in the spiritual world that is directly connected to the earth, but instead are located somewhere else in the cosmos.

Because peoples of different backgrounds have formed such spiritual realms throughout history, the spiritual world has become a very complex and diverse domain. The spiritual world is immense and there exist many places where no human spirit has ever been yet. Many spaces in the spirit world are still open to be explored and inhabited.

It is through the highest love that we have for God and for fellow man that we can take part in abolishing the borders in the spirit world that separate one group from another.


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Different views on reality make or break or lives

I give account here of one story, told in three different versions. One description is neutral, one is negative and the last one is positive. It is to remind us how our view on reality reflects more on ourselves than that it always necessarily is an adequate report. We make our own reality by our choice how we see the world. We can desire to be objective and then there is little meaning in life. We can like to be negative and then we might destroy the happiness that could have been our and others' share. Or we can choose to be positive, not fantasizing that what isn't there, but opening ourselves to what gives hope.

We can make hope or break hope.


The objective report:
A man walked a long road from A to B. He started his stroll at the foot of a large mountain, location A. He went up the mountain and was determined to reach the top, location B. On his way up, he took time each day to fill his water container in streams of fresh mountain brooks. He collected fruits and nuts while he was still lower down, as he figured that higher up the mountain there would not be food available anymore. As the mountain ravines got steeper, he had to learn new skills of climbing. One time he fell off a steep rock and sprained his ankle. After a long journey he finally reached the top.


The negative report:
A man walked a long road from A to B. He was extremely arrogant and wanted to show everyone that he could do what nobody else had done. His arrogance was so strong that he just took all that was around him as if it were his own. He stole from the water that flowed down the mountain rivers and took from the fruits of the trees without ever asking to whom they belonged. One time he fell off a rock and hurt his leg. He did not heed this warning to stop his pursuit for power and glory, but went on and finally reached the top. Now he is the number 1 celebrity of the world and I am sure he is going to misuse his position to inspire many more to climb mountains and waste the beautiful natural environment and to become just as arrogant as he is.


The positive report:
A man walked a long road from A to B. I am sure that he was inspired by God and that he saw his task as a challenge to form his good character and to discipline himself to do God's will. On his way to the top he drank of the clean and life-giving water of the mountain streams and each time he felt revived by the sacred energy in the water. He thanked God for providing him with fruits and vegetables and nuts that grew on the mountain slopes. One time he sprained his ankle and when he prayed about it he realized that it had happened because he had been tempted to give up his course. But he re-determined himself and finally reached the top. There he got the deepest revelations from God Almighty and soon he will come down to us to pass on all that he has learned.


We can choose which version of life we wish for ourselves.


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Dealing with the spiritual fall in our daily lives

The fall of man is not a pleasant topic to deal with, neither when we are confronted with people to whom it happened, nor when we try to understand more about it. It's a bit like it goes with cancer. If you or someone near to you has it, you would rather ignore it altogether, but you also know that you have to take charge of it or you will be dead one day.

I know of people who take the position that because the spiritual fall transpired between Eve and the first archangel in spirit world, Lucifer, therefore it could not happen to them. They imagine that Eve had some kind of magical meeting with Lucifer and she let herself be tempted by him, but because these same people are not aware of having met Lucifer, they think that the spiritual fall would never occur to them.

I do believe that the spiritual fall between Lucifer and Eve took place, but at the same time we should be aware of the fact that Lucifer is not the only angel who has fallen. The term 'Satan' does apply to the identity Lucifer in particular, and to all other angels and even human spirits who came under Lucifer and who are promulgating sins.

As long as people exist who haven't entirely restored themselves, there will be 'evil' spirits in the spiritual world. How many people are dying each day without having found the heart of God? All these people add up to the legion of fallen spirits who still are under the dominion of Satan, to a larger or lesser degree.

Each of these spirits, and also all the angels who haven't been restored yet, could tempt us into the spiritual fall.


So what is the spiritual fall?

Do we need to see the fallen angel who is tempting us in order for the spiritual fall to take place? From the spiritual attacks that I have undergone myself and from the many people whom I have seen fallen spiritually, I know that most of the time it is not determining to see the evil spirit. What is essential is that certain feelings of false love and certain wrong thoughts and feelings can come to us from the spiritual world. To be attacked by such desires, feelings and thoughts is not yet spiritual fall, but it is a difficult reality that we all need to deal with, many times in our lives.

The spiritual fall can happen to men and women alike. It is not the 'prerogative' of Eve. Also men are subjected to these kind of attacks from the spiritual world.

The beginning of each spiritual fall is when our thoughts and feelings begin to change because of the environment in that we are. Have you noticed how your ideas can change after you saw a movie or read a book? Here could be the beginning of spiritual fall. Certain evil spirits could come closer to you because of what you did and whom you met and where you went, and these spirits could attempt to change your thoughts and feelings about God.

Now all this is not yet complete spiritual fall. It rather is the prelude to it, and we need to recognize it as such in order to prevent that we become victims of further attacks from the spiritual world.
I have met men and women who came under the spiritual fall. Actually, they commonly said that they had had a very special love experience with 'God.' But when they said this there was a strange feeling about them. And soon enough, the results of what had happened became clear. They began to complain about their lives and mission, they developed feelings against God and could not anymore overcome their jealousy in many situations in which they had taken a heavenly viewpoint before.

The only way to prevent the spiritual fall to happen to us is when we are always connected to God through prayer and by going our course as wanted by God. Even this does not give us complete protection, because we could stll be attacked in situations of restoration. Yet through our love for God we can hold on to the Creator in such difficult and challenging situations.

The spiritual fall begins with feelings and thoughts that aren't centered on God. The completion of the spiritual fall is a full union of love between an evil spirit or angel and another spirit, either in spirit world or living in a physical body. The completion of the spiritual fall is extremely destructive. We better cut off the head of the snake when he is still small, because once we let him come nearer he grows and grows and could overpower us.


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Our spiritual level before and after death

When we go to the spiritual world, we take with us all our real accomplishments and also our failures. At the moment of physical death, we enter spirit world with what we are at that moment. Can we live a satisfying life in the spiritual world if we haven't had any experiences with spiritual life during our existence in the physical body?

There are theories that maintain that once we enter the spiritual world we suddenly change. The spiritual afterlife is viewed as a kind of reward for what we did on earth. Usually this kind of thinking is rooted in certain forms of religious teaching maintaining that all we need to do is to believe in a revered religious leader in order to acquire access to heaven.

Although we need the help of God and of central figures of faith in order for us to progress in our spiritual lives, this fact doesn't take away our own responsibility. We can get help from God and God's central figures if we open ourselves for it, but we still need to go our course of restoration and we still need to reach our individual perfection and beyond. Because individual perfection is equal to maturing in God's love and first of all has meaning for our eternal life in the spiritual world, we need to grow spiritually.

What we reached in our life on earth is what we take with us in the spiritual world. If someone had no awareness of the spiritual reality during his or her life on earth, it cannot be expected that such a person could easily have a good life in the spiritual world. We do not suddenly become different people at the moment of death. At the moment of passing, all we do is to shed off our physical bodies and we very much go on living in spirit world as we have lived our physical lives.

Of course there are transformations as soon as we enter the spiritual world. The main change is that we don't have our physical body anymore. Our spirit is kind of released from all that hangs on to the physical body and which to a certain degree could have hampered our spiritual awareness. At the same time, we are what we are. Spiritually we don't suddenly become entirely new people. We shall keep the same kinds of inclinations, weaknesses and strengths that we had in our physical lives.

For example, if someone had a strong desire for something wrong, that desire won't disappear in the spiritual world. But when the desire is physical, it cannot anymore be fulfilled because there is no physical existence anymore for that spirit. Suppose that someone craved much for getting money during his life in the physical world... If he enters spirit world in the afterlife, he will still have that kind of urge. In trying to satisfy that physical yearning, he might try to cooperate with physical people who are working to get much money. Even if such a person believed in the Messiah, he will still have to overcome that kind of physical desires and will therefore be limited in his possibilities for life in the spiritual world.

Before the fall of man, Adam and Eve lived in close relationship to the spiritual world. After the fall, they got confused. They had become more separated from God and therefore lost their guiding voice to tell them which spirits could be trusted and which ones not. One result of the fall is that the spiritual senses of man got more and more closed. Some people on earth have open spiritual senses, but they have a close relationship to evil angels and spirits. That is of course not the way that we should strive to have spiritual experiences. That would lead to a repetition of the spiritual fall.

But we are due to develop our connection to the spiritual world in a heavenly way. Each of us must restore the position of either original Adam or original Eve and we therefore also need to restore our awareness of the spiritual reality. This can only be done well when we continually develop and keep our good relationship to God the Creator. Even though we can be guided by and stand on the foundation of the ones sent by God to be our Father and Mother representing God, we still must fulfill our own course of restoration. This course has both physical and spiritual dimensions.


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Offerings and selling things

Human life well understood is life in relationship to God. All that we do should be connected to God. All that we are should be under God. This is no different for the the activity of selling a product.

Let us assume that you are selling a good product or service and asking a good price. A good product is one that will fulfill a good need that people are having. The product should be good externally and internally. An internal good product is one that carries good energies, energies that are elevating for man. Your product should not be too expensive and not be too cheap. You can sometimes give away things but normally you don't want to sell products for a price under its value, because in that case you would take away the chance for people to offer something to God through their buying the product or service.

There are two moments in the process of selling. The first moment is your selling the product to a customer. The second moment is that of you offering to God the money that you acquired. The first moment is one in that you are functioning as a priest accepting an offering from people. The second moment is that of you as a priest offering your accomplishments to God. Let us study these two moments in more detail.

Your function as a priest accepting the offerings people make through buying things

There are a number of rules to keep in mind for this stage of the selling process.

1. Your selling a product only becomes an offering to God for the people who buy when you really represent God. This rule puts strict demands on you as the intermediary person between the buyer and God. Your heart and mind should be centered on God during the entire process of your selling. This is only possible when you don't deceive the people or try to tempt them with false arguments. You should be honest and fair and friendly to the people. You should really try to love people in a way that God likes. You are selling a product, but that is only an external aspect of your meeting people. Most important is that you engage in a relationship with someone. In this relationship you should try to represent God and you should try to look at the person in the way that God does. In that way, you can overcome when you would have false feelings such as pride, arrogance, jealousy etc. Your main task in the selling process is that you give God's love to the person and that you try to give to the person what the person needs.
2. The buyer of the product should buy in complete freedom. When you understand the money you acquire as an offering to God, you also understand that the buyer should have complete freedom. God can never accept offerings from people who did not really want to bring that offering. An offering is a gift to God. This should be a gift of love. No love can be given if it is forced in some way, through deception, temptation or external pressure. You may attempt to convince the person that your product is good and you may move the person to buy through your love and goodness, but that is not the same as when you try to apply smart sales techniques. After a person bought the product, he or she should have a good feeling about it. The person should really be happy to have given money to you. The person doesn't need to know that you represent God. By your sacred being and pure actions you can make clear to the buyer that you are a good and trustworthy person.
3. Keep the goals that God gave you for a day. At the beginning of the day, before you go out to sell things or deliver services, you can ask God what goals you should fulfill for that day. When you ask for it, usually God gives you an internal goal and an external goal. You should also ask God what to sell and where to sell. The internal goal can be something connected to yourself, something that God wants you to learn for that day, for example. It could also be something connected to the town or people where you are going to sell things. The external goal usually is a certain amount of products to be sold during a specified time period. During the entire day you should try to remain focused on your goals. For example, if you get distracted by having nice conversations with people, it might be that you won't make your goals. When you did not reach the goal at the end of the day, pray to find out what caused it. Sometimes it may have been caused by your own mistakes and then you can learn from that. Sometimes outside factors may have contributed to failing to reach the goals. Also in that case, pray about it to learn more.
4. Consider that offerings from some people cannot be accepted. Some people may offer to buy things or a product of service from you with bad motivation. They may want to hire you as their slave, making profit from you for egoistic purposes. In that case it is better to either put certain conditions for what you want to sell or serve, or you may refrain from selling altogether. God cannot accept offerings that are made by selfish people having evil intentions. For example, God could not accept Cain's offering because Cain had selfish motivation and wanted to get things from God. When you understand yourself to be a priest who must decide whether offerings are acceptable to God, you also know that you need to find out whether people's motivation for buying your product or service is either lofty or clouded by evil intentions.

Your function as a priest to offer to God the results of your sales

1. All offerings need to be split. You can never just throw all your offerings on God's altar. Always there is the need to split the offering. For example, if you got money from someone who wants something back for it in evil motivation, there is a claim on the money. As soon as you use that money, the person who gave you the money will want to check if you do with the money something pleasing to him or her. If you offer that money to God, you also pass on the evil claims to God and this is not how it should be. Therefore, in prayer, you must ask God how to split the offering. You cannot pass on debts to God. If for example you still need part of the money to pay off debts to the world, you cannot offer that money to God because it is claimed by your debtors. Ask God how to split the offering. How much money is acceptable as an offering to God, how much money should get another purpose. Sometimes offerings need to be split in two, sometimes in three or more parts. In that case, only the most sacred portion of the money can be offered to God. In seldom cases, none of the money you acquired will be acceptable as offering to God.
2. Consider to whom to offer. You are the priest who is responsible to bring the offerings of the people, the buyers, to God. You also need to acknowledge the ones who made your product. You need to pay them off before you can offer to God. Appreciate the value of the product made by the producer. If you got a lot of spiritual trouble in selling a product, it might have been caused by bad conditions made by the producer. Sometimes you may feel that you paid too little to the producer as he or she sold you products with higher value than you realized. In that case, consider to offer back to the producer more than you initially paid. He or she can then use that money as offerings to God. Sometimes God wants you to bring offerings to a higher-ranked priest, for example the highpriest of God's nation, or your parents or restoration parents. Be serious in prayer to find out to whom to offer what.
3. In which manner to offer. Each offering is a gift, a present to God and sometimes a gift to a person. In any case, always present your offering in a dignified manner and 'wrapped' in an acceptable way. Sometimes it is enough to just put money in a clean envelope. Never just 'throw' the money on the offering altar, by manner of speaking. Don't let the person who receives your offering do the work of counting. Present money in the form of clean and neat bills and coins. Do not offer money bills that are literally dirty or stained or torn.

Finally, don't forget about the essential nature of offerings to God. Already all things belong to God. You are not really giving anything to God, you are just giving back what belongs to God. In a sense, not even that is true, because all things belong to God, whether they were stolen or not. What you are really offering is yourself. The offering stands in the place of yourself. What you are offering to God is your own work, your money and your heart. Through offering to God you are restoring yourself and gaining the highest value possible out of what most people consider to be something rather low and dirty, the aspect of life commonly called 'business.'