Yellow September: Spiritism and suicide prevention

[This article was originally created by the passage of Yellow September 2021, but extends to all possible moments]

In a century of despair, where society experiences materiality in an exaggerated way, perhaps like never before; where ancient dogmas and the imposition of fear no longer have any effect, discredited as they are by the development of science and reason; where, finally, the human being abandons life and its sufferings sweetened by the false conception that, after death, there is only “rest in peace”, Spiritism comes, once again, to show the essence of its doctrine, presenting, to individuals, the reality of life and a new way of facing it, with more determination and austerity. In the prevention of suicide, Spiritism is the most powerful tool in existence..

What is suicide in the understanding of Spiritism

Suicide, in itself, is just the extreme act, almost always desperate, often caused by human passions, led to the thoughtless act of crime against life itself. But it begins earlier, much earlier, with the first urges of giving up in the face of life's difficulties. We are still imperfect Spirits and, without a strong base, without a buoy to hold on to, we easily sink… And it is precisely this base that the Spiritist Doctrine comes to give us, no longer as an article of faith, as something imaginable, only, but by the evidence of the spiritist phenomena and the communications of themselves, the Spirits, already freed from the matter.

Where, then, will we find this lifebuoy, in the midst of the sea of pain?

Nothingness, dogma and reason

The Catholic dogmas of the time stated, on this subject, that the individual who committed suicide would suffer eternally in hell; now, between suffering here and suffering in hell, in the minds of many, the difference would not be great, since many already imagined themselves with a “foot in hell”, because they already believed themselves to be sinners. Taking one's own life wouldn't change much, they thought, but at least it would free them from their present pain. We see that dogma was no longer sufficient to fill the human void.

Materialism, on the other hand, claimed that man was just a biological machine, a slave to the senses and wills. Taking one's own life, then, to end any suffering, often without explanation, would be the best way out, from this point of view – a doctrine of terrible theories and disastrous consequences:

Every man feels the need to live, to enjoy life, to love, to be happy. To a person who knows that he is about to die, let it be said that he will still live, or that his time has been postponed. Tell yourself, above all, that she will be happier than ever, and her heart will flutter with joy. But what good would such aspirations of happiness be if a light breath could undo them?

[…]

Is there anything more desperate than the idea of absolute destruction? Sacred affections, intelligence, progress, knowledge laboriously acquired, all would be undone, all would be lost! What is the need for the effort to become better, to repress passions, to enrich our spirit, if we are not to reap any fruit from it, especially given the idea that tomorrow, perhaps, it will no longer serve us for anything? If that were so, man's lot would be a hundred times worse than that of the savage, who lives entirely in the present, in the satisfaction of his material appetites, without aspirations for the future. A secret intuition tells us that this is not possible.

Allan Kardec, Heaven and Hell

Before Spiritism, the afterlife was just a vague thing. We knew that we “had” a soul (better saying, we are a soul, linked to a body) but the kind of difficulties to be faced by it after death was something totally unknown, being treated only in a dogmatic way and, even when removed from the dogma, was more a philosophical than a factual concept.

The Spiritist Science comes to bring light through the rational study of the facts

With the birth of Spiritism, however, the concept of soul it was complemented and expanded through the study of the phenomena resulting from our relationship with the Spirits, who showed themselves to be human souls, but disconnected from the body.

This was a landmark that, one day, will be in human history, as it is already found, today, in the spiritist history, because it brought to man the certain that life does not really end in the tomb, nor does it begin at conception, but that it transcends the limits of matter, in successive incarnations, with the aim of learning and elevating itself, always, until it no longer needs matter, when the Spirit becomes pure or perfect.

Through communications with the Spirits, mediated by mediums, especially mechanical psychographers (see more about this in The Mediums' Book, in Part Two), Allan Kardec obtained the most valuable teachings about the future of the soul, after disincarnation. And that was how, after some years of studies, he formulated the work O Céu e o Inferno, where he deals in a philosophical way, in the first part, and in a practical way, in the second, about the biggest problem of humanity: who we are, where we came from and where are we going and why and what are we here for.

Heaven and Hell: the fate of the Spirit after the death of the body

In this work, impossible to be summarized, in the second part, we find some depositions of Spirits of various evolutionary shades - among them, that of some suicides. And reading, although difficult, is very important, because we learn from them about the effects of their actions. In Revista Espírita, from 1858 to 1869, we also find several reports of evocations of suicides, which tell us about their difficulties and the effects of their actions. From them we take the following extract:

Each situation is one, because each Spirit is one, with its intelligence, its evolution, its understanding, its conceptions and its moment. There are suicides who claim to suffer physical pain after death (which, in fact, is an externalized moral suffering, since the Spirit does not suffer materially); there are spirits who say they find themselves in a hellish situation, which can be just a mental picture as it can also be a “reality” lived with other suffering spirits, who are grouped by their mental state; there are spirits who realize that they made a mistake by taking their own life, in an unthinking act; and there are even, although they are rare, those who, at first, are content with having left life, only to later understand that this has been of no use to them and that they will have to reincarnate again, in the same kind of incarnation, in order to to continue their tests.

There is, therefore, this correlation that many make, that the suicidal person will suffer feeling the worms gnawing at his body or that in the next life they will be reincarnated in deformed bodies, nor that everyone will go to the famous “suicide valley”, which is nothing more. than one of the infinite groupings of Spirits in suffering and that, due to their disturbed mentality, create true infernal regions. Each case is different. The only certainty, I repeat, is that suicide will only prolong the state of suffering that is being imperfect and having to deal with these imperfections through reincarnations in gross matter and among Spirits as imperfect as we are, or more.

More than that, however, it is very important to understand the Spiritist Doctrine in its essence, from which we take the following:

In life, we have two kinds of suffering: those caused by ourselves, by our carelessness, by our impatience, by our addictions, and those that we do not cause in this life. The first can be avoided by an interior reform, by correcting our imperfections. The second, however, compose the types of difficulties that are part of a reincarnation planning, carried out by ourselves, with a view to making us learn, in difficult tests and, thus, to correct our imperfections, helping us to make less mistakes and to advance. more quickly.

So, so far, we have three very important points:

1. Killing the body does not kill the Spirit, nor does it eliminate pain. moral that make us suffer. It often increases it and always prolongs it.
2. Faced with the difficulties caused by ourselves, by our imperfections, only an internal correction will make us stop creating these difficulties that often bring us so much suffering.
3. Faced with the difficulties brought by life and which are not the result of our current actions, we need to understand that it is a very great opportunity for our learning, planned by ourselves, as Spirit, and that we need to get something good out of it, taking advantage of the opportunity sore to look inside ourselves and change ourselves with even more energy and persistence.

Life, after all, is not a punishment. We are not here to pay anything, but to develop ourselves., and it is only through the exercise of this development, of getting rid of our imperfections and of conquering virtues, that we will reach a real state of happiness, each time greater.

Suicide and our relationships with Spirits

We know, however, that we are not always ready to deal with the difficulties that come our way, so it is very easy to allow ourselves to get depressed. It is at this moment that we need to be very attentive, because, let us remember, this despondency does not usually come only from within us, but often – almost always – is fed and augmented by Spirits who do not wish our good.

We know that Spirits are around us all the time, and that they are attracted to us as we are in our raw, inner reality. So, because of our imperfections, which we often we like to cultivate, we start to attract inferior spirits who start to get attached to us and feed the cultivation of these imperfections. Over time, this relationship can become obsessive, to the point where we find ourselves subjugated by the will of one or more inferior spirits, who start to command our actions. This is a dangerous state that also leads us to have suicidal thoughts and, in extreme cases, can inactivate our ability to act on our own will, and a firm will is the main tool to overcome spiritual obsessions.

In these cases, it is important to seek external support, as we often find ourselves in a state of subjugation that takes away our ability to reason and have a firm will. This help can be found in several ways – see, at the end, the section “Tools for overcoming depression and thoughts of giving up“.

the passions

Here another important aspect arises in this matter: the question of passions, which Kardec always cited in his time, and which today can be understood as “feelings”.

By definition, passion is a term that designates a very strong feeling of attraction to a person, object or topic. Passion is intense, enveloping, an enthusiasm or a strong desire for something. The term is also often applied to designate a lively interest or admiration for an ideal, cause, or activity.

In the state of experiencing the passions, the individual is blind to rationality and, in this state, how many cases of suicide have been committed without thought? How many communications were there, with which we have already had contact, from the Spirit who, soon after performing the act, deeply regretted the thoughtlessness of what he had done? Taming the passions, therefore, is something of paramount importance. Kardec defines it like this, in A Genesis:

Instinct annihilates itself; passions can only be tamed by the effort of the will.

And today, finally, with access to the Spiritist Doctrine, we can strengthen the will through reason, that is, we can develop more firmness and calmness to go through the trials of life, knowing that our future happiness depends on it, and that interrupting our life before time will not end any moral suffering, but will only prolong it.

In this situation, therefore, let us seek help: let us seek a psychologist, let us seek the spiritist center, let us seek a good friend, let us seek prayer, calm music, reading and the practice of the Gospel, let us seek to visit a nursing home to talk to the elderly, in short, Let's look for something that makes us feel good, but let's look for it with determination and persistence.

But, above all, let us seek something very special and important: to study and practice Spiritism in our homes, together with our family, because while the individual is supposed to be a passive machine, hostage to body chemistry, without soul and, therefore, without free will, he will only respond mechanically to everything and, in the face of pain, he will find the only result that emanates from it, albeit false: the machine is turned off, the pain ends.

To understand Spiritism is to understand life

It is only with the return and development of the understanding of the concept of a soul that survives the death of the body and that it always advances towards perfection, improving and correcting itself through successive trials and opportunities, and away from the old and wrong concepts of sin. and punishment by a vengeful and cruel God, that suicide will cease to exist on the face of the earth.

Life does not end in the tomb and the soul, freed from the body, only finds its reality even more exacerbated. It is precisely this reality, which leads her to give up, that she needs to lean over, without ceasing, in order to strengthen herself; but, I repeat: this will never happen as long as, in the body, one assumes only a machine, a slave to the chemistry of the senses.

And let's not forget. God does not leave us abandoned in the difficulties of life and does not give us greater burdens than we can bear. It is because of our actions or the way we face these difficulties that we often increase the weight of this burden until we fall to the ground, under a weight beyond what was programmed. Still, it is possible to recover and move on if we want to: just ask God for help and it will come, in one form or another, to help us lessen the extra weight we carry. Let's be careful: this help comes through an unexpected contact, a gifted book, content that a friend suggests or even through a persistent thought so that we look for certain content on the Internet. It's the way God answers us, but we need to be open to it.

Finally, of course: if you notice someone by your side with the slightest traces of depression, constant sadness, discouragement, withdrawal, etc., be charitable and talk to her, with all the affection, all the fraternity and all the attention possible. Tell her about your certainty that life doesn't end at the grave. Tell her that she is not alone and that life's difficulties, which we all have, are necessary tests for our own learning, almost always requested by ourselves. This could save a life.

Tools for overcoming depression and thoughts of giving up

Here, we are going to list some tools that will be more or less useful for some and for others, according to the thinking and state of each one. Analyze and stick with what makes you feel good:

• Psychological help: This is substantial and necessary support in these cases. The professional therapist will be able to provide support that almost no one will be able to, helping you to understand content and pain that you don't even realize, but that are there, disturbing you.
• Gospel at Home: it is a practice that has been very prominent, and which aims to reflect, in the light of the Gospel According to Spiritism, on our own faults and imperfections, seeking to change ourselves. In this sense, a content that I really like and that has already helped me is the Gospel of the Spiritist Center Land of Ishmael.
• Study of Spiritism: acquiring knowledge is extremely important for our faith to be unshakable and for us to become more austere and decisive to face difficulties. Study Kardec's works!
• Attending a spiritist center: although the experience of Spiritism must be something internal, having the fraternal support of a spiritist center can be very important. Look for someone close and where you feel good and welcomed.
• Practice activities in order to socialize and disconnect a little from the disturbing thought or environment. Assistance activities, for example, help a lot, because when we do good to others, we do ourselves.
• Practice sports and try to seek a healthier life, as we cannot forget that, while incarnate, we are influenced by the body's ailments.
• Do general exams, verifying that you are not having health problems, including vitamin and hormonal deficiencies, which commonly cause states of shortage and depression.
• don't cover yourself too much, for this causes disappointment and bitterness. We know we need to improve ourselves, but it's no use wanting to become an angel overnight! Evolution is made in decisive and constant steps, but millimeter by millimeter. We will stumble many times in this process: so don't let yourself get discouraged. Recognize yourself as an imperfect Spirit, get up, beat the dust and get back on your way.
• Practice prayer at all times when you feel any anguish. Do not repeat words in a memorized way, however: make this prayer come from the bottom of your heart, connecting it to God, and don't forget that none of us are abandoned in life: on our side, seeking to help us, we always have our Spirits protectors or guardians.
• Be aware of the opportunities that “life” (the good spirits, in fact) present to you: a good book recommended by someone, an invitation to a study group, participation in a spiritist center, in short, the good opportunities that life offers us. presents and that it is up to us not to be resistant to them.