When we die, we don’t take anything with us — except the level of spiritual consciousness we’ve achieved through experience over the course of our lives.
We all know that we can’t take our house, our car, or even our academic degrees with us when we die.
But many people fail to realize that they also won’t take their religion, nationality, or culture with them into the world beyond this one, even though these are the things they identify with so deeply.
Yes.
Our passport doesn’t come with us when we die.
Neither do our religious symbols or our cultural customs.
So how did such a deep forgetfulness fall upon all of humanity — forgetfulness of the fact that we are all human spirits who came here from the same homeland: Paradise, and to which we are meant to return, as conscious spirits?
How did we fall into such forgetfulness and darkness about the truth that our spiritual identity is what truly matters?
The reason is that our intellect and emotions have taken over our spiritual consciousness — the only consciousness we were ever meant to have.
The cold intellect knows only how to label and categorize according to earthly measures: Jews, Christians or Muslims; black or white; rich or poor, and so on.
By contrast, the emotions — which also belong to the material consciousness — seize upon the intellect’s categories and layer on top of them, with excessive fervor, the label: “We are the best!”
Our nation is the best.
Our religion is the best.
Our culture is the best.
And so this “We are the best” mindset has become the cause of all the divisions, conflicts and wars around the world.
That’s why, every time I travel to a country whose culture differs from the one my soul chose to incarnate into during this lifetime, I remind myself that if I truly want to offer a helping hand, I must approach every encounter with only my spiritual consciousness.
And I must keep this firmly in mind, because if I don’t remain vigilant, my intellect and emotions immediately “jump in” and start creating comparisons and preferences of “them” versus “us.”
These are the very same earthly forms of consciousness that have also distorted the meaning of the phrase “the chosen people.”
Originally, the spiritual meaning of this concept was: a people meant and called to serve all of humanity and to help lead it toward a higher level of consciousness.
Instead, “the chosen people” became a concept that promotes arrogance, superiority, and outright racism (and so it’s not surprising that, according to the Laws of Creation, all of this returns to us like a boomerang, in various forms of antisemitism).
That’s why, on all my journeys around the world, I make sure to bring my “spiritual glasses” and to look at everyone I meet only through them.
Spirit sees spirit.
Only in this way can a meeting of true love take place.
About twenty-five years ago, I wrote a book called “The Miracle,” in which an old and wise woman teaches the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes this very idea:
“…I believe that ethnic, religious, and cultural origins have their importance, but I do not tend to define people by where they come from. First and foremost, I see human beings.”