He who fulfils his duty according to his ability, with honesty and sincerity of purpose, and with a single desire to discharge it well, earns his legitimate reward in happiness and progress.

Mating Ritual – James's Flamingo – Pedros Szekely (CC-by-2.0)

Without these no spirit soars

Honesty and fearlessness are pre-requisites for finding truth.

Blue Jay in Algonquin Provincial Park, Canada – Mdf (CC-by-SA-3.0)

The way to know God is open and free

The way to know God is open and free.

Evelyn Nesbit Thaw – George Grantham Bain Collection – Library of Congress

The immortality of man – this is the key-note of the religion of the future

The immortality of man – this is the key-note of the religion of the future. We never die and in that great truth rests the key to the future.

 

Different slant on Orion – NASA, ESA

The mist of human ignorance

Theology is still the arena in which our basest passions vaunt themselves, stalking with head erect and brazen front over all that dares to separate itself from the stereotyped rule. In its stifling atmosphere free thought gasps and man becomes an unreasoning puppet.

Each must see the truth in his neighbour's belief and wipe away the sectarian jealousy and theological bitterness, the anger and ill-will, the rancour and Pharisaic pride which have disgraced the name of religion. 

Each system of religion is a ray of truth from the Central Sun – dimmed by our ignorance but having within it a germ of vital truth.

Iraqi militiaman at Sabaa Nissan – Christiaan Briggs (CC-vy-SA-3.0)

Pray for enlightenment and patience; for power to see and for grace to follow the truth

Pray for enlightenment and patience; for power to see and for grace to follow the truth. 

 

Remembrance Poppy, WW2 section - Australian War Memorial, Canberra – Fir0002 flagstaffotos.com.au (CC-by-NC)

Perpetual prayer is angels' food

Perpetual prayer is angels' food.

Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and Amy Reines, University of Virginia

It is not there, it is risen

 Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and Juan M. Uson, NRAO

It is not there, it is risen.

Rich spiritual gifts come to the spiritual soul

Image courtesy – NRAO / AUI; A. C. Boley; L. van Zee, Indiana University; D. Schade and S. Côté, Herzberg Institute for Astrop

Rich spiritual gifts come to the spiritual soul.

Angel messengers hover round ready to help the spirit that cries to its God

Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and Zoltan G. Levay (STScI) and Juan M. Uson (NRAO)

 

Angel messengers hover round ready to help the spirit that cries to its God.

Pray more – prayer brings rich spiritual blessings

Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and S. Croft; W. van Breugel; W. de Vries; 
J. van Gorkom; H. Morganti; T. Osterloo; M. Dopita; M. Gregg

Pray more – prayer brings rich spiritual blessings.

Our affinity for good draws around us influences for good

Our affinity for good draws around us influences for good.

Contest performance on Brno dam of Macedo's Pirotecnia (Portugal) – Jiří Nedorost (CC-by-SA-3.0)

To attribute human infirmities and passions to the Supreme is do dishonour Him

To attribute human infirmities and passions to the Supreme is to dishonour Him.

Rows of bodies fill the yard of the Boelcke-Kaserne (Boelcke Barracks) located in the south-east of the town of Nordhausen. The barracks was a sub-camp of the Mittelbau-Dora Nazi concentration camp. Used as an overflow camp for sick and dying inmates from January 1945, numbers rose from a few hundred to over 6,000 and the conditions saw up to 100 inmates die every day. Around 1,300 inmates died on 3 and 4 April when British bombing raids destroyed substantial parts of the barracks during raids that destroyed three-quarters of the town a week before the US Army liberated it.

Happiness is the outcome of right reason

Happiness is the outcome of right reason, as surely as misery is the result of conscious violation of reasonable laws, whether corporeal or spiritual.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – Jürgen Stroop Report to Heinrich Himmler from May 1943

The hell within the soul

We know of no hell except that within the soul – a hell which is fraught with the pangs that spring unbidden from the results of past misdeeds and from which the only escape lies in retracing the steps and in cultivating the qualities which will bear fruit in love and knowledge of God.

Comet P1 McNaught – fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au (CC-by-NC)

Good deeds advance the spirit

Immutable laws govern the results of deeds. Good deeds advance the spirit, while evil deeds degrade and retard it. 

Old lady at San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico – Tomas Castelazo (CC-by-3.0)

Such is our heaven

Happiness is found in progress and in gradual assimilation to the God-like and the perfect. The spirit of divine love animates the acts and in mutual blessing the spirits find their happiness. For them there is no craving for sluggish idleness; no cessation of desire for progressive advancement in knowledge. Human passions and human needs and wishes are gone with the body and the spirit lives a spirit life of purity, progress, and love. Such is its heaven.

Round hay bale at dawn – fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au (CC-by-NC)

No fabled dreamy heaven of eternal inactivity awaits us

No fabled dreamy heaven of eternal inactivity awaits us but a sphere of progressive usefulness and growth to higher perfection.

Moonset – Image composed of 63 images with various exposure times (between 30 seconds and 13 seconds) taken 2 minutes apart – Thomas Bresson (CC-by-2.0)

Immutable laws govern the results of deeds

We are spirits placed for a while in a garb of flesh to get training for an advanced spirit-life, where the seeds sown in the past bear their fruit and the spirit reaps the crop which it has prepared.

Moonset – Thomas Bresson (CC-by-3.0)

Life is one and indivisible

Life is one and indivisible – progressive and eternal.

Sanderlings at Ocean Beach (San Francisco) – Brocken Inaglory (CC-by-SA-3.0)