What is the soul's pilgrimage?

The soul's pilgrimage represents the sum of incarnations through which it must journey for its purification.

When this forced exile ends, the soul is offered a choice—

It may remain in whatever level of the astral plane its evolutionary work has prepared it for, or it may return to the material world of its choice, as either a guide or protector of one of its inhabitants.

In certain cases, the soul may choose to become the guide to the collective soul of a race. 

It may do so as valour, love, peace, faith, hope, compassion, or any of the many virtues that help material beings overcome their baser instincts. 

A soul may always choose to accept or reject a mission when offered by its guides, as this is part of its free will. 

All new souls are innocent. 

They arrive on the material plane with no concept of what life and living are all about. 

Their mission is to learn the lessons of the material world—to exist in matter, striving always to purify matter without allowing themselves to be contaminated by its powerful emanations. 

This is not an easy task, and very few souls are able to accomplish their missions in their first incarnations. 

The material world is dense, and its vibrations can be overwhelming. 

Most incarnated souls are strongly influenced by matter and wind up losing contact with the higher realms to which they really belong. 

This is often inevitable because all souls must go through the physical experience, which, in turn, obliterates the astral echoes, making it difficult for the young soul to remember its mission and true origin. 

At the end of each material existence, the soul has learned new lessons. 

If it has allowed itself to be overpowered by the material world, and, in consequence, broken the cosmic laws, it must repeat the same experience repeatedly until it has learned its lessons without breaking the laws.

The first lesson all souls must learn is pain. 

 

The soul is immune to pain because it is perfect.

Pain is an expression of the imperfection of the material world. 

The soul knows this, but the body does not. 

It may suspect the truth, but the power of matter, and the apparent evidence of the senses, fill it with confusion. 

The body believes only what it sees—what it perceives to be reality, which is why it suffers pain, whether moral, or physical.

All souls are required to undergo many lives, or incarnations, in their quest for spiritual purification. 

This does not mean that they share the same number of experiences, or, for that matter, an equal amount of time in the material plane. 

Certain souls may require more time and incarnations than others to complete their cycle of learning. 

Failure to learn any one lesson may require the soul to relive similar existences many times until that particular lesson has been completely assimilated.