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Voluntary trials
Theme: VOLUNTARY TRIALS. THE TRUE HAIR SHIRT
Source: The Gospel according to Spiritism, V: 26. -

VOLUNTARY TRIALS. THE TRUE HAIR SHIRT

26. You ask me if it is licit for a man to lessen his own probation? This is equal to other questions such
as: is it licit for a drowning man to save himself? Should he take a thorn from his hand? Should he call a doctor
when he is ill? The reason behind our trials is to help us to use our intelligence, patience and resignation. It may
happen that a man is born into a difficult and painful situation precisely to make him look for the means of
alleviating these problems. The merit is in suffering the consequences that cannot be avoided without
complaining, in persevering with the fight and in not allowing oneself to become desperate when one is not
successful. It is never to be found in negligence, which is more laziness than virtue.
This quite naturally leads to another question: if Jesus said 'Blessed are the afflicted,' can merit be
gained by seeking afflictions which could aggravate our trials by means of voluntary suffering? To this we can
reply very decidedly: yes, there is great merit in this, provided the suffering and privation are of benefit to others;
this is charity through suffering. But not when the suffering and privations are of benefit to the inflictor; this
would only be fanatical selfishness.
It is necessary to make a clear distinction in this matter. Regarding yourself personally, be
content with the trials and problems which God sends. Do not seek to increase this volume, as it alone
may at times be extremely heavy to bear. Accept it without murmuring but with faith; that is all that God asks.
Do not weaken your body with useless privations and mortifications that have no objective, because you will
need all your strength if you are to fulfill your work here on Earth. To torture and martyr the body voluntarily is to
go against God's Law. He has given Man the means to sustain life, so to weaken the body needlessly is true
suicide. Use it, but do not abuse it; that is the law. The abuse of the best thing God has given you will bring
inevitable consequences as a punishment.
But quite the contrary occurs when Man imposes suffering upon himself in order to alleviate that of
others. If you support cold and hunger with the object of offering heat and sustenance to another, thereby
causing your body to be affected, you are making a sacrifice which God will bless.
When you leave your perfumed homes to go to an infected hovel so as to console, or dirty your hands
to treat wounds, or lose sleep so as to hold vigil at the bedside of the sick, who after all are your brothers and
sisters in God, or put your health in jeopardy for the purpose of practicing good, then it is here that you find your
hair shirt, the true and blessed hair shirt. You have not allowed the delights of this world to shrivel your heart,
nor have you slept upon the voluptuous breast of riches.
Rather you have become a consoling angel to the sadly deserted.
Therefore, what utility is served by those who retire from the world so as to avoid its seductions and live
in isolation? Where is the courage to face their problems? They have merely run away from the fight and
deserted the combat. If you wish to make a sacrifice, then apply it to your soul and not to your body. Mortify
your Spirit and not your flesh; whip your pride, receive humiliations without murmur, scourge yourself of self-
love, harden yourself against the pain of insult and slander which is more pungent than physical pain. It is in
these things that you find your true hair shirt, whose wounds will be taken into account because they will testify
to your courage and submission to God's Will. - GUARDIAN ANGEL (Paris, 1863).

CONSIDERATIONS:
The Spiritist Doctrine is very often interpreted mistakenly, there are those who think it to be a Doctrine of
posteriori, that is, to leave for tomorrow or for the future the present, for it being a Doctrine, which accepts
reincarnation, there are those who think, that conveniently the Spiritist annuls his vicissitudes for another
incarnation, what is not true, because the Doctrine does not belong to men, but God and its morals is the one of
Christ, therefore the Doctrine teaches much on the contrary, that we should strive to improve ourselves, thence
saving future sufferings, because reincarnation is only for "as many times is necessary" 2 and not for an infinite
litany.

1
Estudo feito no Centro Espírita Joana d’Arc a 07/ 08/ 2007
2
The Gospel according to Spiritism, 5: 19. - The spirits’ Book, Q. 166.

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 As for suffering the Spiritist Doctrine is for the use of reason and of logic and not for fanaticism, if the
patient has a curable disease it is logical that he has to seek out a cure for himself, the Spiritist Doctrine, is not
dogmatic nor fanatic, as for the Doctrine to recommend “resignation" 3 it is in the sense of accepting the will of
God without revolting oneself nor to mutter. It is logical that the vicissitudes of life although sometimes suffering
develops the intelligence and moralizes the person, but the Spiritist doctrine does not advise to seek out suffering
deliberately to gain merits, because the very life itself in this world of tests and atonements and the law of "causes
and effects", 4 brings us the sufficiently difficulties for the development of ourselves.
The Doctrine is not the fanatic case of saying, no, do not get well, you have to suffer, it is nothing of the
kind, it is not the case of the Priests of Jesus' time, who said to Jesus: “Saturday is sacred, you cannot cure in day
of Saturday",5 Spiritism does not say: Suffering is sacred, one should not be cured, nothing of that, Spiritism acts
like Jesus; if there is something to be done, there are no Saturdays nor Sundays, those restrictions are men who
make them. The Spiritist is free; he is not tied up to dogmas.
If Spiritism had dogmas it would do demands, but Spiritism does not demand anything, but it recommends
us to live a simple life, because we are spiritual, it asks us for us to make the possible to be men of well, "To
make efforts to overcome our inferiorities",6 and to try not to get ourselves addicted in the things of the world, but
also does not forbid us to live in our freedom, because each one develops and has progress according to his own
understanding and his made efforts; the Doctrine as well as Jesus did encourages: “Judge not that ye be not
judged", 7 which means quite a lot of things; it means: not to censure, not to have prejudices, not to demand from
the neighbor what we cannot demand from ourselves.
By the use of reason the Doctrine has persuasion, recommendation, explanation, instruction,
exemplification, knowledge, information and learning. Etc. instead of dogmas of the type:. Believe in this dogma or
else. Spiritism doesn't have that.
Well then, Spiritism gives the knowledge of the Decalogue, 8 and it explains that the Spiritist Morals are
the ones of Jesus and indicates Jesus as the perfect model which God gives to the Humanity. 9

************
Let us see the Spirits’ Book, question, 647 and 648:
647. Is the whole of the law of God contained in the rule of love of the neighbour laid dawn by
Jesus?
"That rule certainly contains all the duties of men to one another; but it is necessary to show them its
various applications, or they will continue to neglect them, as they do at the present day. Besides, natural law
embraces all the circumstances of life, and the rule you have cited is only a part of it. Men need precise directions;
general precepts are too vague, and leave too many doors open to human interpretations."

648. What do you think of the division of natural law into ten parts, vie., the Ian's of adoration, labour,
reproduction, preservation, society, equality, liberty, justice, love, and charity?
"The division of the law of God into ten parts is that of Moses, and may be made to include all the
circumstances of life, which is the essential point. You may therefore adopt it, without its being held to have any
absolute value, any more than the various other systems of classification which depend on the aspect under
which the subject is considered. The last of those parts is the most important; because the law of charity includes
all the others, and it is therefore through the observance of this law that mankind advances most rapidly in
spiritual life."

*************
The Spirits recommend the last law because it summarizes all the other ones, they refer to Jesus'
commandment which summarizes all the laws in: “to love God above all things and the neighbor as ourselves", 10

3
The Gospel according to Spiritism, 9: 8
4
the Gospel according to Spiritism, 5: 4-10.
5
John, 5: 18 - Matthew, 12: 2.
6
The Gospel according to Spiritism, 7:4
7
Matthew, 7: 1.
8
Exodus, 20.
9
The Spirits’ Book, Q. 625.
10
Matthew, 22: 37-40 - luke, 10: 22.

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and for speaking in classification system which Moses gave us, Spiritism in “The Spirits’ Book”, in the third part,
starting from the subjects, 614 to 919, in a more concise and more explanatory way develops the laws as:
1) - Divine or natural law. - 2) - Adoration law. - 3) - law of work. - 4) - reproduction law. - 5) - conservation
law. - 6) - destruction law. - 7) - society law. - 8) - law of progress. - 9) - law of equality. - 10) - law of freedom. -
11) - law of justice, of love and of charity. - 12) - finally explains about the moral perfection.
And it is in the last subject, 919, that Saint August recommends": know yourself" and he adds: “Do what I
did of my life on the theme at the end of the day, or I interrogated my conscience, I passed in review what I had
done, and wondered if had not lacked some duty, if nobody had anything to complain of me. It was so that I got to
know myself and see what there was to be reformed in me...”

*********
Spiritism teaches us that we are perfectible, and Jesus incites us: “Be perfect", 11 Saint August tried to get
better, to reform himself, and he teaches us a way for us to improve ourselves which is doing as he did; it is the
case of the spiritist teaching: “Help yourself and Heaven will help you”, 12 and the efforts which we do are to our
own advantage.
*********
Allan Kardec, suggests that if there is a purgatory it should be here in Earth, because here we purge our
faults. 13
Thence we got, that although the Earth is called of Tests and Atonements, we can also call her of
Purgatory.
**************
Let us see in the book ‘Heaven and Hell’, chapter, V: items 4, 6 e 9:14
Item, 4)- “Each successive existence affords the soul an opportunity of advancing a step on the road of
progress; the length of the step accomplished depends on its own will, for it may make a considerable advance, or
it may remain stationary, in the latter case, its sufferings will have been sterile, and, as each soul must pay its
debt sooner or later, it will have to begin a new existence under conditions still more painful, because, to the stain
of its previous lives, which it has failed to efface, it has added a new stain.
It is therefore, by means of its successive incarnations that the soul gradually works itself clear of its
imperfections, that it purges itself from them, so to say, until it is sufficiently purified to have acquired the right to
quit the world of expiation and to incarnate itself in worlds of a happier nature, which it will subsequently quit, in
their turn, to enter the regions of supreme felicity.
Purgatory, when thus explained, is no longer a vague and uncertain hypothesis; it is a physical reality
which we see, and touch, and to which we are, even now, subjected; for purgatory is nothing else than the worlds
of expiation, and the earth, as yet, is one those worlds, worlds in which men expiate their past and their present,
for the advancement of their future happiness. But, contrary to the idea usually entertained in regard to Purgatory,
each man can abridge or prolong his stay in it, according to the degree of progress and purification to which he
has attained as the result of his efforts at self-improvement, and he comes out of it, not because he has finished
his time or through the merits of somebody else, but as the reward of his own individual deserts, in virtue of the
principle set forth in the declaration of Christ:- “To each according to his works”, a declaration which sums up the
entire code of the divine justice.
*****
Item, 6)- The guilty spirit suffers, first, in the spirit-life in proportion to the degree of his imperfections,
and, next, in the return to terrestrial life which is granted to him as a means of repairing his past wrongdoing; and
it is to this end that he finds himself thrown into the society of those whom he has wronged, or placed in the midst
of surroundings similar to those in which he did the wrongdoing that he has to expiate, or in a situation which is its
opposite; as, in a humble position, if he has been proud.
As previously remarked, the spirit’s expiation of wrongdoing is effected both in the spirit-world and also
upon the earth; the expiation of the earthly life is only the continuation and complement of the expiation which has
been previously begun by him in the spirit-world, and is imposed on him in order to help forward his improvement,
by giving him the opportunity of putting into practice the lessons he has learned; it is for him to profit by the

11
Matthew, 5: 48.
12
The gospel according to Spiritism, 25: 1-5
13
Heaven and Hell, 5: 13.
14
Allan Kardec ‘Heaven and Hell,’ LAKE -Livraria Allan Kardec Editora - São Paulo Brasil.

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opportunity thus afforded him. Is it not better for him to come back to earth, with the possibility of eventually
winning the Heaven, than to be condemned to everlasting misery, on quitting the earthly life?
The new opportunity thus given him is a proof of the wisdom, the goodness, and the justice of God, who
wills that each human being should owe everything in his own efforts, and should be the artificer of his future.
If he be unhappy, for a longer or shorter period, he has only himself to blame for it, and, whatever may be
the intensity or duration of the suffering he may have brought upon himself, the door of repentance, amendment,
and rehabilitation is always open for him.

*****
Item, 9)- With the chastisement of the guilty takes place in spirit-life or upon the earth, and whatever its
duration, it has always a term, more or less near, more or less distant. There are, therefore for a spirit, only two
alternatives, viz., temporary punishment, proportioned to the degree of culpability, and Reward, proportioned to
merit. Spiritism rejects the third alternative, viz., that of eternal damnation, it regards hell as a symbol of the
severest forms of suffering endured by certain spirits, and of which the termination is unforeseen by them; but it
regards Purgatory as a reality.
The word Purgatory suggests the idea of a circumscribed locality, and it is therefore more appropriately
applied to the earth, considered as a place of expiation, than to the infinity of space in which suffering spirits
undergo the expiations of the disincarnate state, moreover, the earthly life is, by its very nature, a veritable
expiation.
When men shall grow better, they will furnish only good spirits to the invisible world; and these spirits, on
incarnating themselves in the earth, will furnish only improved elements to the human race. The earth will then
cease to be a world of expiation, and the human inhabitants will no longer have to endure the miseries that are
the consequences of their present imperfection. This transformation is being effected at the present day; its
accomplishment will raise the earth to a higher rank in the hierarchy of worlds (vide the Gospel according to
Spiritism, chapter, III).
**************
It is deduced, that this world is an useful world, necessary to our graduation of imperfect Spirits, and that
everyone suffers, where there is always somebody who suffers more than others; nobody can boast of having a
superior position, because one lives in the same world, therefore to the eyes of God, all men are equal, 15 be rich,
be poor, be white, be black and thereabout it goes, here is a reason why we should not have any type of
prejudices, but to love one another and to support each other, help each other, forgive each other, pray one for
another; because we are actually all living together some with others or living in the same world, where it is
demanded from us quite a lot of efforts to be able to conquer the vicissitudes that this world contains.
there it is the true cilice, that is to know how to support the tests so that the Spirit may do well in this
world, which it is not easy for the very Nature already of itself to offer cilice without anybody asking, but we
remind, that it is man who provokes suffering to each other due to their inferiorities, but we know, that if man
moralizes himself, and has a transformation changed for good, the world will treat him well, according to the laws
of causes and effects, that if, one plants good seed one will be picking good seeds, this is worth so much for the
material world as for the moral world.
The effort which a man of well does for his interior transformation, onto the direction of perfection in this
arduous struggle against a lot of cruelty and difficulties of maintaining himself worthy and of a clean conscience, is
in itself already a constant cilice, and it was not for less that Jesus tells us: “Watch and pray", 16 because to
overcome this world we need help from Heaven. And not the one of mistreating the body with whips, delayed
fasting, which sometimes do not improve the Spirit, but simply gives out an outlook to the world and display in the
person's exterior what actually the person is not, for what is really worth is what the person is, did not Jesus say:
“Blessed are the peaceful".17
Yes, life is already difficult in itself, we do not need to punish the body with cilice, because the Spirit
comes to the world to develop and to have progress and one wonders, could the Spirit gain progress if we punish
the flesh!
I personally am convinced that it would not, because I see many who suffer without whipping their bodies
and without having asked for suffering.

15
The Spirits’ Book, Q. 801.
16
Matthew, 26: 41.
17
Matthew, 5: 9.

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 If we are fallen it is request from us: “to get up",18 if we are in fault it is asked from us: “repentance",19 if we
are discouraged, it is asked from us: “Be of good cheer", 20 if we are offended, it is asked from us: “Pardon," 21 and
it is like this that the life of the citizens of the Kingdom of God should live; sometimes to ask pardon to someone
who we offend, hurts us much more than a cilice.
Then, to close this study, let us return to the words of the Spirit, Guardian angel that advises us:
"If you want a cilice apply it to your soul and not to your body; mortify your Spirit and not your flesh, whip
your pride; receive humiliations without complaining, hurt your self esteem, make yourselves insensitive for the
pain of injustice and of slander which is most painful than the physical pain."

*****
May the Lord be with us, as formerly, today and forever!

18
Mark, 11: 9.
19
Luke, 13; 3 - 17: 4. - acts, 2: 38.
20
Matthew, 14: 27. - I Thessalonians, 1: 14.
21
Mark, 11: 25,26.

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 As for suffering the Spiritist Doctrine is for the use of
reason and for logic,
And not for fanaticism,
If the patient has a curable disease, it is logical that he
has to seek out a cure,
The Spiritist Doctrine,
Is not dogmatic nor fanatic,
As for the Doctrine to recommend “resignation",22
It is in the sense of accepting the will of God,
Without revolting oneself nor to mutter.
It is logical that the vicissitudes of life although
sometimes sufferer, they develop the intelligence and
disciplines the person,
But the spiritist doctrine does not advise us to seek out
suffering,
Deliberately to gain merits,
Because the very own life in this world of tests and
atonements,
And the law of “causes and effects", 23
Brings us enough difficulties for our development.
The Doctrine is not the fanatic case of saying,
No, do not get well, you have to suffer, it is not anything
of the kind,
It is not the case of the Priests in Jesus' time,
Who said to Jesus:
"Sabbath is sacred; one cannot cure in Sabbath day",24
Spiritism does not say:
22
The gospel according to Spiritism, 9: 8.
23
The Gospel according to Spiritism, 5: 4-10.
24
John, 5: 18 - Matthew, 12: 2

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 Suffering is sacred, one should not cure, nothing of that,
Spiritism acts as Jesus;
If there is something to be done, there are no Saturdays
or Sundays,
Those restrictions are men who make them.
The spiritist is free; he is not tied up to dogmas.

Extract from the study ‘Provas voluntaries e verdadeiro cilicio’, Given at the Spirit
Center Joana d’Arc,
Situated at Rua Capitão Salustiano, São João de Meriti, RJ. on 07/ 08/ 2007.