Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/6924

6924 Soul work: transforming self-love into neighbourly love....

September 20, 1957: Book 74

Nothing can release you from doing soul work on yourselves if you want to acquire eternal life. The transformation of your being is a work of free will. It is the transformation from self-love to unselfish neighbourly love, for the latter alone is divine love, a love as it corresponds to the original being of God.... a love which works itself out as strength and which is the principle of divine order. But at the beginning of his embodiment the human being is filled with self-love as an inheritance from the one who is devoid of all love and to whom you owe your existence as a human being. For once you were divine beings filled with light and strength, you came forth from God's love and thus were also filled with love as His creations. But it was a pure, selfless, divine love which only ever sought to please, which pushed back towards the eternal love and stood in intimate union with it. But this love changed through the influence of the one who turned away from God in self-conceit and who also transferred his will and his attitude to you. And the turning away from God resulted in His love also encountering resistance, that you rejected it and thus it could no longer take effect on you, because all resistance nullifies the effectiveness of love. But the fact that God does not abandon His creations which emerged from His strength of love.... that He constantly seeks to regain their love and that He therefore found a way to enable their return to Him again is based on His infinite love. However, the return to Him can only take place when the being accepts His strength of love again, which means that it gives up its resistance, that it changes, that it reshapes itself into what it was in the beginning.... that the wrong love, ego love, thus changes into divine love again.... But this transformation of the being also requires conscious work on oneself.... At the beginning of his embodiment, the human being is always only concerned to care for himself and his physical well-being, and to strive.... He will always think more of himself than of his neighbour, he will first look after his body than perform works of love for his fellow human being, because he is still dominated by self-love as a result of his former apostasy from God. But if he now carries out conscious soul work, then he will also make an effort to displace all selfish love from himself and replace it with unselfish neighbourly love.... And that means a transformation of his nature, for gentleness, humility, peaceableness, justice, mercy and patience will always have a beneficial effect on fellow human beings, but they also require a putting aside of the 'I' and physical desires, a fighting against weaknesses and faults.... thus ego love will slowly change into pure selfless love which always wants to make happy. You must irrevocably accomplish this work of the soul, and no-one can take this work from you, it is the purpose of your earthly life, it is the sure path of return to God and to eternal beatitude. And there is nothing that releases you from this conscious work on your soul, there are no other means which give you beatitude by circumventing this work on yourselves. You are all afflicted with faults and weaknesses because you have given up your former perfection by falling away from God, by rejecting His love.... But you can attain perfection again, you can become full of light and strength again, yet you first have to align yourselves with God's original nature again, otherwise the divine flow of love cannot flow through you. And this is also possible for you in the human stage if only you have the serious will to do so and therefore consciously work on yourselves. The strength also comes to you as soon as you ask God for it. And what you initially feel to be difficult work will always become easier for you, because then you yourselves will feel an unknown happiness which only pure, divine, self-surrendering love can provide. But as long as the human being still puts his own well-being first, this inner feeling of happiness is also alien to him, even if his body creates well-being for itself.... But it is about the soul.... For this is your actual self, which should take the path back to God if it wants to expect an eternal life in bliss and be received by God as His child into the father's house again....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers