Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/4402

4402 Overcoming matter in free will....

August 10, 1948: Book 51

Whether you allow yourselves to be dominated by matter or free yourselves from it is entirely your own free will. Even if matter is taken from you through My will this does not yet signify your detachment from it, it can only lead to it. For you must relinquish all desire of the heart for it, you must remain completely untouched or make an effort to no longer feel the thoughts of matter painfully but to also be able to think of lost possessions with equanimity, only then will you have overcome matter. But you must also not seek to regain what you have lost full of zeal and forget your actual purpose in life. Admittedly, you are not denied to create earthly and to exploit your earthly work, you should be active and utilize matter for useful things, thus help it and the spiritual in it to ascend, yet your striving for this should never put spiritual striving on the back burner or make it completely impossible. For then you will still be under the spell of matter, then it will control you and you will not be able to get away from it in eternity. For it will also pursue you into eternity, even after the death of the body you will still desire it with all your senses and have to live an agonizing life in the beyond, because the desire for matter constantly fills you and you are now dominated by sham goods, which signifies a state of torment for you; you will never see the desire fulfilled and will not lose the state of torment until you yourselves withdraw from the desire to possess earthly goods. Becoming free from matter on earth is so desirable as it allows you to enter the spiritual kingdom completely carefree, for to the same extent as you give up earthly goods, thus detaching yourselves from them in your heart, you receive spiritual goods which are far more valuable and make your entry into the kingdom of the beyond a state of bliss.... And I want to help you achieve this by taking from you what you would hardly want to voluntarily relinquish, I want to liberate you from matter, yet it is always your free will, and you can always misuse it and eagerly strive again to increase or regain what you have lost. Then My help will have been in vain and matter will control you. But what you don't achieve on earth will cause you far greater difficulties in the spiritual kingdom, yet one day you will have to overcome them if you want to become blissfully happy, only this can take an infinitely long time, for in the spiritual kingdom you don't have such aids at your disposal as on earth, and it requires a particularly strong will which you will rarely muster in the spiritual kingdom, which is why you don't control matter but matter controls you and makes you incapable of ascent development if you are not granted help through prayer from a loving heart....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers