What prevents our evolution? — Spotify from the CEC Library

Moisés, in your opinion, what most hinders our evolution? I was talking about the issue of neediness, but there are several things that hinder our real growth and evolution. These things are our emotional processes, the difficulties in our relationship with ourselves. What are these difficulties? They are quite easy to perceive, if we want to see them. For example, are you a passive person? Aggressive? Do you have mood swings? Are you jealous? Do you harbor anger, resentment, bitterness? I am talking about the negative part of our emotional complex, because the positive part comes down to euphoria. This negative part involving depression and bad moods is not euphoria; it is precisely the opposite.

In euphoria, you go to a soccer stadium, shout, jump; when your team scores a goal, you reach the maximum spinning rate of the chakras, throw energy in every direction, and the people with you do the same. You will think it is fantastic. That is euphoria. You say, "wow, I was so joyful." No, you were euphoric. Joy is another matter: joy has continuity. Euphoria consists of bursts of high-speed spinning, of intense emotion. But both your emotional difficulties and euphorias are things in the same group, the same block; they are emotional characteristics that need to be reviewed because they take away discernment and therefore compromise the capacity for growth and evolution.

We need motivation; so you do something you enjoy in order to motivate yourself. Why do something that pleases you? Because it increases the spinning rate of your chakras, your emotional chakras. Want an example? If you like chocolate, it increases the spinning rate of your chakra and you feel pleasure. If you like drinking, alcohol will also increase the spinning rate of your chakras, and you will feel better. The only thing you are doing is creating a state of euphoria that counteracts your emotional problems.

Does that hinder evolution? It certainly does. We need to follow a path along which we can have emotional stability, face reality directly, and make our lives have the meaning of growth, maturity, health, and balance. All of this is work. You cannot achieve it simply by taking medication. You can take medication and say, "Wow, I am feeling better." No, you are feeling better at that moment because you remain what you have always been. Therefore, reviewing ourselves is a good idea. I always think a person should seek help from a professional who is interested in helping and healing, so that the person can follow the best path in their life. The emotional side really hinders us greatly because it involves attachments and dependencies.

Have you ever imagined that, in order to evolve, we need to become independent? This is a simple matter. All the figures who were highly evolved had no dependence. They did not care about some factors to which we give greater importance; they simply gave up everything and became free because they possessed this competence internally. They did not do so by decree, but because that was how they were. Therefore, if someone says, "I am going to donate everything I own," that is not a good idea. I know of a person who did this, regretted it, went back on the decision, and tried to recover everything.

The person went to places where they were told, "No, get rid of everything and you will be independent." That is not how it works. Our emotional independence first has to occur within us. And it only happens when you are able to explain to yourself everything around you and everything within you. It is a matter of self-facing, self-revision, of leaving behind the self-deceit and self-corruption that we create at every moment. We are prolific in taking paths that often lead us nowhere. Someone only has to come to us and say, "Look, do this here and it will work," to spare us the work of questioning, researching, and everything else; then we do it. Result? No, it is not a good idea.

You do not evolve that way; you evolve if you conduct a sincere search, question everything, and begin by questioning yourself, because that is fundamental. My life's path involved searching through every kind of religion, sect, institution, society, and everywhere else. I realized that I could not find answers for what I saw in spiritual experiences. I founded the Center for Consciousness Studies (CEC). The intention is for each person to review themselves, for each person to become better, and for each person to leave dependencies behind.

Why do human beings suffer? I see people all over the world experiencing hunger, wars, illness, poverty, and misery. Where does all this destruction and misfortune come from? What can spirituality do for us? I would say that the sentence is inverted: what can spirituality do for us or, better yet, what can we do with spirituality? We need to understand, first of all, that we are not merely a physical body, and then we will have a broader view. What happens is that we learn, through religions, the spiritual work that we carry out.

I am included in this; we are not here only in this life. We have already done all sorts of extraordinary things, though I do not know whether the saying refers to the old woman's bow or her ark. We have developed explanations that reach only a limit, one that does not clarify but merely numbs.

So you go along in your little life doing a whole lot of things in this life and think that, when you die, God will be by your side; that Christ, Buddha—no matter whom you believe in—will be helping you. Thus, you can do everything that is wrong and, on the last day, ask for forgiveness, right? Everyone forgives you and then you go to the other side happy, surfing on a beautiful white cloud. That is what we learn about life. We learn that, if we go somewhere once a week to pray or dedicate our lives to spirituality, then we are already practicing spirituality. No, that is not practicing spirituality. Practicing spirituality means living with it every day.

And to do this, we will have to have a great deal of courage. In fact, evolving requires a great deal of courage. You will have to change much of what you are. You cannot evolve with a talisman in your hand, saying prayers that are not addressed to anyone. Prayers need to be directed to someone. When I speak of prayer, I mean, for example, a spiritual helper, a consciousness that is more or less at our level, so that it can give you intuition. So it has to be more coherent work. Why do human beings suffer? I can answer with one word: ignorance. That is what makes us suffer. We are ignorant. If we observe all the people who suffer greatly, they are ignorant. You may say, "Gosh, but you are insulting people."

I am not insulting anyone; I am saying that all of us are very ignorant and need to improve as human beings. We need to work; that is what I am doing, trying to improve and follow a path that is worthwhile for me too. I cannot be dishonest by saying that I will help everyone become a saint. I am helping myself as much as I can, learning more, working very hard, and it is obvious that everyone around me will benefit from this as well. I want everyone to be happy. I believe that, as long as the last person on this planet is not well, the world will not be very well. There is no use killing someone while thinking that this solves things. For example, things will not become all right if I kill myself; death is not the end.

It is better for us to be aware that, for everything we do here, there is no one on the other side with a black book, waiting and saying, "Look, you did this, this, and that." No. You are the book; you are the person who will settle accounts with yourself. You act according to the level you are at. Thus, if you harm people—whether by ordering someone killed, stealing, or committing incoherent acts—that reveals who you truly are. What you are determines the level at which you will remain, and that will be the level you encounter when you leave the body.

Where, then, do all this destruction and misfortune come from? A large part of Earth's population is in an unfavorable condition, emotionally full of doubts, suffering, and excuses. You get angry and then say that everyone gets angry. There are people who do not get angry. Some recognize that a person who is angry is not well. Is that not true? A person who attacks others is not well. The person reviews themselves.

You know those people who drive in traffic, overtake others while shouting insults, uttering countless profanities, releasing all the dysfunctional emotional charge they have inside themselves, while the other person is not even at fault? Imagine: a person is driving slowly in front of you, you keep honking, and if you look at the speed limit sign, you will see that the person is simply obeying the law, staying within the limit, while you are not. You are emotionally agitated and want the other person to become agitated too. So you insult them, swear at them, use every profanity, make obscene gestures, and blame the other person. Pay attention to yourself, so that we can evolve.

Ignorance causes us to hinder our own path. When people talk about what spirituality can do for us—serious spirituality, with true discernment—it is everything we have to become better, because that is where we end and where we begin.

No one—not you or me—is born as a body and then obtains a spirit somewhere. You do not buy a spirit to place inside this body. In fact, you are a spirit that has traveled a long reincarnatory path. Thus, you have physical experiences because the physical world allows something very important: becoming ill, dying, being a body that can be destroyed. This is fundamental so that we can review our lives. When you are in the spiritual body, you experience suffering because of what you are, but you remain in a condition that is not so dangerous—unless you have committed many wrong things, which can lead to a difficult situation.