To live with love and joy

It seems to me that I take the current situation in Russia and the world too much to heart. Yes, there are tendencies toward degeneration. But there are also paths of revival.

After all, there is never only bad or only good.

Still, my heightened anxiety about the future is a result of lingering dependence on it.

When you begin to live by the soul — that is, with opposites — then sorrow at the sight of decay is accompanied by the joy of understanding that revival will follow.

Even if all humanity perishes, the world soul, of which all life on Earth is a part, will continue to evolve. In other conditions, on other planets.

The soul of humanity, of all living things on Earth, can be reborn on some other planet in an entirely new form.

An absolute end, a complete stop, cessation, or death applies only to the surface, physical level. For the soul, it is merely one stage of development.

Any death can be seen as the end of one phase and the beginning of the next.

When you feel this, constant joy arises in the soul. You can experience and sympathize, but against a backdrop of constant love and joy, these feelings transform into a desire to help, to change the situation.

Without love, however, compassion turns into unbearable pain. Then, to save themselves, people retreat into complete indifference.

And the indescribable pain from the collapse of ideals turns into betrayal.

The more a person worships well-being and material prosperity, the more they ultimately worship the future, because the roots of the material lie in the spiritual.

When only one model of the future exists, its collapse leads to indescribable suffering.

The more capable, talented, or spiritual a person is, the more static their ideals, and the more suffering they will endure at the collapse of the future. This intensifies the tendency toward betrayal and cruelty in their soul.

Those who live by the soul do not fear the future. This model was given through Christ.

Later, the apostles described this state in one phrase: "Perfect love casts out fear."

For a person who lives by the soul, the future is multivariate. If one model collapses, another is easily created.

For someone who lives by soul and love, emotions such as fear, superiority, judgment, and despair become a forgotten past.

Instead of fearing the loss of the future, they continuously create it.

Instead of judging an imperfect person, they feel a desire to help, to change, to nurture them.

Feelings of superiority or inferiority arise when a person has little energy. By emphasizing their superiority over others, a person tries to show everyone that they have more energy.

Those who live by soul and love have no need to demonstrate energy. They simply create it every fraction of a second.

One person holds an apple in their hands and boasts that it is larger than others’, while another plants an apple tree and gathers a harvest, smiling as they watch the first.

It seems so easy to shift the focus from consciousness and the future to the soul and love. In reality, it is a rather painful process. For many, it ended in death.

History knows well who was one of the first on this path. For him, the attempt to overcome the future ended tragically.

That was Judas. Like the other apostles, Christ endowed him with the ability to heal people. For three years, he lived side by side with the Teacher, listening to every word.

He was the most intelligent and disciplined among the apostles, which is why Jesus appointed him the chief administrator. The donation box was kept with Judas; he purchased clothing and provisions for the small community.

Why, then, was the transition so incredibly difficult?

The secret is that for something new to be born, the old must be completely lost. To overcome dependence on the future, one must lose it entirely or be absolutely ready to lose it.

Total loss is, in principle, death. That is why in all religions and esoteric schools, the rite of initiation represented a real experience of one’s own death.

In secret schools, it was to unlock superhuman abilities and gain power over the future.

In religions, it was to feel that a human being is primarily a soul, and only then spirit and body.

Judas believed absolutely in Christ — or rather, in the ideal Judas had formed. When this ideal collapsed, betrayal followed, and then suicide.

For two thousand years, Christianity has existed, yet greed, irritability, judgment, envy, and despair still reside in people.

These emotions prevent full acceptance of the collapse of the future, which may manifest on a physical level as illness and death. Other options, it seems, are not given.

Suddenly, my soul feels lighter. Crying and worrying are pointless.

You must try to survive, to help yourself and others. And for this, you must learn to live with love and joy.

Striving for God must become the main meaning of existence.

You need to feel that love for God is the highest pleasure, incomparable to anything else.

S. N. Lazarev, «The Man of the Future: Raising Parents, Part 4»