On quite a number of my previous blogs I claim that the soul needs an earthly body to be "giving". Prior to her descent into earthly existence, the soul enjoys the bliss of the spiritual realms in paradise. In these pristine realms there are no opportunities for her to give and no need to either. All souls have their needs taken care of by the Creator Himself, as they are bathed in His nurturing divine light. Souls exchanging gifts in paradise would be like offering copper in the presence of glittering heaps of gold. It would be senseless for souls to give.
Recently, I have questioned my own literary outpourings of this notion in light of passages in Jewish mystical texts which clearly depict souls performing acts of kindness. For example, early on in the Saba D'Mishpatim section of the Zohar there's a discussion about a saintly soul couple, male and female, twining in paradise. Their union frees souls exiled to the "husks", unenlightened realms. They then give birth to them; i.e. they transfer them into a state were they can descend into human bodies. There's another depiction in "The Gate of Reincarnation" of saintly souls saving other souls from the clutches of these unenlightened realms.
Besides, what is documented in mystical texts. There are also stories of souls praying for earthlings or transmitting to them divine knowledge via dreams. All together this builds a picture of souls doing kindness, even as dwellers of the spiritual realms.
These teachings bring up some challenges to my own previous writings:
A) Not every region in the spiritual realms seems like a pleasurable paradise. There are souls that seem to be stuck in the "husks", the unenlightened realms - until they have their opportunity for elevation. So how can I claim that the souls are enjoying paradise and have all their needs cared for before coming down to this realm?
I would say that inhabiting the "husks" is a temporary condition. Souls who find themselves there did not start off there. Such a residence is a temporary consequence for having taken a wrong turn on their journey. Therefore, even these souls were originally plushly pampered in the heights of paradise before their earliest earthly descent.Their original state is still preserved in their core memory. In many, it's an unconscious memory driving their behavior, as they unconsciously attempt to imitate the sweet nurturing of their original state on an earthly stage - attempting to craft earthly life into a "parallel paradise".
For others, doing time in the "husks" might have wrapped this memory in more layers - making for more difficult access. Their selfish behavior is coming from being over cocooned in layers of insensitivity. Still, the original memory is lurking beneath the wrappings. It just needs to be exposed.
(As a side note, I am not convinced that every unenlightened realm is necessarily painful. Some might be regions of spiritual bliss. Their inhabitants might be in a state of deep spiritual pleasure, but, just blocked in some way from further growth and /or awareness. Of course, there are also the painful realms as well, which are ultimately castles built on illusion and will one day vanish.)
B) If souls can have union,birth other souls, rescue other souls, pray for others and transmit messages how can I claim that souls have no opportunity for giving in paradise and need the earthly realm in order to give?
Although there are vivid examples in Jewish mysticism of souls doing acts of giving, it is still not the same as giving on the earthly plane. In paradise, such giving is really "passive channeling". There are purified souls who behave as channels for the Creator's kindness. Their behavior is not their own volition. Whereas, on the earth plane, even though each and every act of kindness is also an act of "channeling the Creator's kindness", still, people can often freely choose whether or not to play that role. Therefore, in a sense, the giving really becomes a person's own act of giving. The giving is credited to the one who chose to continue the chain of kindness.
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