Snow Melt

Sacrifices

19 Nur 164 BE – Saturday, June 23, 2007 10:03:07 AM PDT

It’s the little sacrifices that stress the ego and stretches the soul. Giving your mother the majority of the ice cubs and putting water in her glass before taking what is left for yourself.

The little daily sacrifices prepare us for the big ones; prepares us for obedience to the laws of God and to his Mirror. We make daily sacrifices without thinking or we choose not to make the sacrifices without thinking, without considering the consequences.

What are the consequences of sacrifice? It cleans the mirror of our souls, prepares us to reflect the beloved to the world. The ego fears the sacrifices, but the soul endures and is happy. Happy because sacrifice is its bath, its cleansing ritual, and the soul knows why the sacrifices are necessary, but it doesn’t always tell the ego.

Soul and ego dwell in the same body, but don’t speak to each other. Even if the soul does speak to the ego, then the ego doesn’t listen. The ego wants what it wants without consideration of whether or not its desires are good for it and the body. The soul knows what is good for the body, the ego and the spirit.

We make daily sacrifices for the Beloved. The sacrifices keeps the soul in shape just as regular exercise and a proper diet keeps the body in shape. The sacrifices keeps the soul clean and sharp, just as mental exercises and proper diet keep the mind in sharp. Living is a continues sacrifice giving up the immediate for the long range. Accepting the pain of lose and knowing that in the end love always returns more than what it gave.

We willingly make sacrifices for the Beloved and for our families. Often no one but the individual making the sacrifice know what it is, because what may be a sacrifice for one individual won’t be a sacrifice for another. It works with ordinary human beings this way and, despite what our egos tell us, we are all ordinary human beings.

Another interesting aspect of sacrifice is that the longer one lives the more sacrifices he or she asked to make. It’s as if the universe is preparing the soul for the greatest sacrifice it will ever make. Leaving the body it became a part of at conception to go into the next world. The soul, despite all that is written in religious literature about paradise (the next world), doesn’t always know what to expect. This is because paradise can’t be described in material terms. Humans can use material terms as metaphors or similes for life after death and living in paradise, but it can’t describe the experience precisely as the soul will encounter it when the time comes.

“…Nor shall the seeker reach his goal unless he sacrifice all things. …”
Baha'u'llah, The Seven Valleys, p. 7