The change follows the acquisition of belief  

We read in January issue of the newspaper O Imortal (The Immortal) the following text, which we not only support but we also publish it as our editorial of this week:

"Whenever we are a target of an act of ingratitude or of any animosity, difficulty accepting the fact increases a lot when we see the person on the other side of someone who knows the spiritual doctrine and says as a follower.

We wonder, then, with some frequency: - Why is it so difficult for an individual to assimilate the Spiritist principles and incorporate them into the ordinary acts of his life?

This difficulty had been the subject of the works of Kardec an appropriate explanation given by a spiritual guide who served with a medium to help a Spirit named Xumène.

Here are the words that the spiritual preceptor addressed the medium:

‘My child, you will have a hard job with this case-hardened Spirit, but the greatest merit does not come from saving the non-lost. Courage, perseverance, and you will triumph ultimately. There is no blamed who cannot regenerate himself by persuasion and example, seen as Spirits, however perverse, correct himself over time eventually. The fact that a lot of times could be impossible to regenerate them promptly, no matter futility of such efforts. Even grudgingly, ideas suggested to those Spirits make us reflect. It is like seeds, which sooner or later had to bear fruit. It does not smash stone with the first sledgehammer.

‘This is what I say can also apply to incarnated and you must understand why Spiritism does not make immediately perfect men, even among the most faithful supporters. Belief is the first step, followed by faith and the turn on its time, but furthermore, force is that many will be re-energized in the spirit world. Among the hardened spirits, there is not only wicked and evil. Great is the number of people without doing evil, stagnate because of pride, indifference or apathy. These, not really, are less unhappy, because the more the inertia afflicts them more they are deprived of worldly compensation. Intolerable, certainly, makes to them the prospect of infinity, but they have neither the strength nor the will to break with this situation.´(Heaven and Hell, Chap. VII, hardened spirits - Xumène.)

The words above can help us to understand the question first proposed.

The belief - spiritual teacher says - is the first step. Faith will come later. But the transformation, this fact that will characterize the true spirit, could come much later, and perhaps it may be that, before that, the individual will 're-energize in the spirit world', this is having to go through the process of disembodiment and the inherent balance in this primordial stage in the life of us all.

The difficulty of transformation is not, therefore, inherent in the spiritual doctrine or its inability to renew the creatures, but it concerns merely the evolutive level of people that at one moment of existence encounter with the truth.

The facts show that the transforming action of Spiritism can take place along the same existence, with no necessity that the person to turn himself has to cross the threshold of death.

Hilario Silva tells us about a very curious case, which he entitled The janitor's confession, which the reader can read it in the book Souls on Parade, second part, chap. 21, psychographed by Francisco Candido Xavier.

The story involves a man that had been seeking the peace in the Spiritism that he lost since, five years before, had found the corpse of a friend - Fulgencio de Abreu - in the corner of a bar which both used to frequent. The body was on its back on the floor. The boy was asphyxiated by a thin rope after having received a strong blow to the skull.

Charged with the crime that he did not commit, he suffered heavy humiliation at the prison, but even in freedom, the mind could not take the picture of the friend’s dead. Everywhere, he saw the forehead, lips, bulging eyes, the blood collar... Later it was discovered that the homicide involved a woman, but his life remained a mess, because he did not eat, not sleep and remained attached to the printing of the unfortunate episode.

Led by a friend to a spirit Centre, things were slowly returning to normal. The study meetings, lectures, passes, helping others had restored peace and made him a new person, a changed man, dedicated to work and convinced spiritist.

As for the author's Fulgencio death, the Spiritism knowledge also played an important role that we will not going to report here for not take the delicious pleasure of the reader to know this outcome by going directly to the source."