The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1860

Allan Kardec

Back to the menu
Human Misery

(Received or read in sessions of the Society)


Human misery is not in the uncertainty of the events that sometimes cheer you up and sometimes knock you down. It is entirely in the greedy and insatiable heart that always wants to receive, complaining of others aridness and never noticing its own drought. That unhappiness, always aspiring above one’s head, is never satisfied by the dearest joys. That unhappiness, I tell you, is what constitutes human misery. Why bother with the brain, with its most brilliant faculties, if it is always overshadowed by the insatiable and bitter desire for things that are always beyond reach? Just as a shadow floats close to the body then happiness floats close to the soul, always unachievable. You must not, however, be sorry or smear your fate for that shadow, that wave-like fleeing and moving happiness by the intensity and anguish confined in your heart as it gives us the proof of divinity imprisoned with humanity. Thus love likes pain and its vivifying poetry that vibrates your spirit through the memory of the eternal homeland. The human heart is a cup full of tears; but the breaking dawn shall drink the water from your hearts; it shall be the amazing life to your eyes, blinded by the darkness of the corporeal prison. Courage! Each day is liberation. March the painful path; march and keep your eyes on the mysterious star of hope.

George, a familiar spirit

Related articles

Show related items