Searching for souls

Jasmin picked up the book she had been recommended to read and took a look at the back cover. For the last few years she had become taken with the idea of the world more as energy and humans as electromagnetic beings, and if anybody recommended or spoke about a certain subject to her then she had felt she was hearing it for a reason. Her philosophy lately had very much been everything happens for a reason. Very easy to agree with this idea when things are going well, a lot harder to want to believe it when something bad happens. Though when her knee blew up on her, she had latched onto this mind set as she knew she had to believe it to get through the devastation of having to give up her favourite sports, and to back off from running, another big part of her life.. a therapy really.

The title of the book, The Celestine Prophecy, seemed to speak to her. The person who had mentioned the book hadn't directly recommended it to her, it had been a general comment in a group situation, but she had thought to herself at the time, I need to read this book. She wasn't one to pass up on these opportunities which presented themselves so she had ordered a copy and now here it was in her hands. She suspected she was about to read something at the right time of her life. After all, her 'live in the moment' philosophy had waned the last few years and she felt like she had lost herself somewhat. This book would perhaps be the way to bring herself back to that feeling a few years ago, where she had really felt she was living the now, and everything had fallen into place because she had let it.

Jasmin mused on how things had changed in her outlook on life, and her way of thinking about God. She had been brought up a Muslim. Her father was Turkish and her mother Irish. Her Mum had semi converted to Islam when marrying her Dad. Jasmin said semi because she had adopted some of the ways but Jasmin believed she was still a Catholic at heart. It is very hard to let go of something which has been drilled into you from an early age. Jasmin and her siblings were all brought up Muslim, though not strict. To other Muslims they would be considered pretty lax. They had spent their life in the Western world and had never worn a headscarf or burqa, but had avoided any pork products, drank very little, and they prayed regularly. Jasmin had probably started praying more seriously in her teen years. It was funny to think of herself back in childhood, surrounded by Christian kids at school and wondering how come these kids didn't realise they were all wrong about God? Didn't they care they might not get to Heaven? It was amusing how confused her thoughts had been. For much of her teen years Jasmin very much believed in the concept of God as portrayed in the Qu'ran, and even in her early twenties she had a strong view of herself as a Muslim. Yet she had struggled a lot with the hypocritical nature of religion. It was very evident in her own father, who was very much a 'do as I say not as I do' type. Which bugged her a lot. She often felt most people seemed to pick and choose what rules they liked to follow along with, and everybody would interpret the book differently depending on what suited them. It didn't seem right to her. Also on her mind was the concept of Heaven and Hell, and the idea anybody who sinned could end up in Hell. To her there was quite a difference between stealing something small for example, and mass murder. Was she to believe these two offences would warrant the same punishment for eternity? And if there was no God or punishment for sins in this world, did she have to believe people would just get away with terrible crimes here on Earth scot free?

She started to realise she needed something more than just believe in God and follow these rules and this will make you a good person. She knew many people who lived this way and they were not particularly good people. The most basic idea she held above all others was 'treat others as you would have them treat you' and she did her best to uphold this in her daily life.

In the last few years she had allowed her rigid belief in Islam to become a more spiritual experience, which if nothing else, made life more exciting! If she saw everything as energy, and any interaction she had with people as something that was meant to be, then it gave her life more meaning and enhanced the whole experience. She could see any message she received from somebody else as important and something to be followed up. She allowed herself to be led along certain paths to see where they would take her and often her life would make a change she would never have thought possible. When she gazed into the past she could see how far she had come, and what opportunities had presented themselves which she had seized upon. She didn't want to fear any knowledge or any experience, for that was not living. Why should she hold so strongly to the religion of Islam when she had never explored any other religion at all? How could she claim, like many did, her religion to be superior when she was ignorant to all other knowledge? To know the path to truth she must know all she could about the religions that were out there and to take away the most important messages from all of them.

So, now she had this book in her hands, and she was excited to delve deeper into the idea of energy, and human beings as energy, all interconnected in a beautiful way. She had also lately come to understand reincarnation on another level. An idea she used to dismiss as ridiculous, but which now made a lot of sense and answered the questions she had regarding sin and karma. If Jasmin lived a terrible life, treating people badly and making no attempt to better herself she would return again, perhaps as someone in hard circumstances and she would have to start all over again. However if she did her best in each lifetime to be a good, kind, gentle person then she would come back again and make better progress to restore herself to her soul. Well, something along these lines anyway. It meant people who were murderers, or tight fisted and mean spirited would suffer the punishment of having chosen this kind of life and it slowed down their return to the spirit world, keeping them enslaved to the Earth life.

Jasmin often wondered if most people went through thoughts such as these, it was always hard to find like minded people to discuss these ideas with. But surely most humans pondered about all of this? Was it just the majority of people were too afraid to talk about it for fear of seeming ridiculous? Or were they afraid of the thoughts in general so preferred to live a more superficial life. Jasmin didn't know. She just knew what road she preferred to go down. After all, even if it was all wrong what would she rather choose, a life of adventure and bliss at the end of it? Or a life of slave like misery facing an abyss of nothing when she reached the end of that existence?

She settled herself down in the sofa and began to read her book, knowing she was back on the adventure of searching for her soul. She couldn't wait to see where it would lead this time.