So, the main objective of this 40-day period is for us to reflect on the life of Jesus, his death and resurrection. Within the Lenten season, there are more significant days, such as the first day of Lent, which we call Ash Wednesday, then Palm Sunday, which is at the very beginning of Holy Week, and Holy Thursday, which is the day when Christians also celebrate the Last Supper, a very special date. After this, we can also understand the entire context in relation to Easter and Jesus' experience during this period.

So, after being baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus went into the desert, where he prayed and fasted for approximately 40 days. During these days, when he was deepening his spirituality and undergoing a more internal study, Jesus was tempted by negative forces, which tried to fascinate him, to divert him from his goal, from divine reconnection, with promises of earthly goods, with materialistic promises. And every attitude of Jesus in the New Testament, every moment of his, every initiation he goes through, we say that they are also cycles of initiation and are events related to our own awakening of consciousness.

Therefore, for us, the path of passion, death and resurrection also takes place within all of us, within each disciple of the light. And Easter is this spiritual season of invitation for greater purification and liberation from our own shadows, from our own negative aspects. It is overseen by the Archangel Raphael, who is the guardian of the Holy Grail.

And on the journey of unveiling consciousness, we understand that there is no reward without renunciation. And the main renunciation is the lower self, fear, pride and stubbornness. It is the triad that every human being carries daily, with which we have to deal, welcome, embrace, transform, integrate.

And during this period of clarity, we pray and meditate in tune with God and Christ, seeking understanding and renunciation of these aspects of our psyche. Now, let us return to the story of Jesus and seek this resonance with our study, with our personal initiations. The first important thing, Jesus' first temptation, was economic.

You remember this one, right? The lower self comes there, the evil, whatever you want to call it, and says to Jesus, right? If you are the son of God, if you are the son of God, then command that this stone become bread. And Jesus answers, not only of bread, and of man, but of every word that comes out of his mouth. Matthew.

Jesus had a clear objective, but evil, the devil, whatever you want to call him, proposes to Jesus that he not make any sacrifices, that he use his power to obtain bread, right? And Jesus says, the bread of life is the spiritual bread, it is the bread of consciousness, it is the Human Son and the Divine Father in union on the altar, in the heart. And Jesus shows, then, that we have many real, spiritual needs, with the initial ones, in addition to our earthly needs, right? In fact, our main nourishment, our main need is our connection with the Divine. Jesus' second temptation was politics.

Jesus is on top of the mountain, and then the lower self says, you can take all control of all the nations and bow down before me, and I will give you riches, power, kingdoms, all of this has been given to me and I can give it. You just have to kneel before me. And Jesus answers, you will worship the Lord your God, and you will serve Him alone.

So the lower self tries to fascinate Jesus with the proposal of power and lust, but Jesus says no. He has decided to take the path that he had truly reserved for himself, to reveal the most fundamental truths of life, to contribute to the plan of evolution, to serve as a human and accessible example of the love of truth and conscience for all humanity throughout the centuries. Thus the work of Jesus is still alive today, while the work of many emperors and rulers has simply faded away. The third temptation of Jesus is spiritual.

Jesus was in Jerusalem, in a higher place in the temple, and the lower self said to him, if you are a son of God, throw yourself down from here. And then Jesus answered, we should not tempt the Lord God and his laws. God protects those who follow the right path, but we should not tempt the concrete laws of this reality, of this third dimension.

So, Jesus knew that the way was to reveal the truth, that all this power that was offered by evil, by the devil, whatever you want to call it, by the lower self, and all of this was an illusion, and that true power is conscious love, what you give to life, affection, truth, respect and all of these are the values ​​of the heart, the Christ-like values. Now, regarding the meaning of the days leading up to Easter, this is also very important. Wednesday is the day of betrayal, of the destruction of Judas.

We can meditate on this day on everything that still makes you betray love, betray your heart, betray your divine purposes. So, Wednesday is the day to meditate on the internal places, the non-internal ones that still betray the divine call, the impulse, the divine flow. On Thursday, which is the Last Supper, the mystery of the Eucharist, I think it is the highest alchemical teaching of Jesus.

It is time for us to meditate on the transmutation of vices, the transmutation of materialism into spiritualism. And on Friday, then, the crucifixion, where we learn to carry our cross, to assume self-responsibility for our choices, for our positive and negative creations, since we are all responsible for what we create. Then, on Saturday, we dedicate ourselves to reflection, to connecting with baptism, which is an act that liberates and illuminates the energetic structure of people who consciously place themselves at the service of the channel and mission of Christ, of Christ's plan of salvation.

And on Sunday, then, from darkness to light, all this work within the most exalted ceremony of the critical ray. So, the day of divine celebration, dedicated to the one who has worked on himself, who has risen above the lower self and given greater expression to the true Christ energy within himself. In short, I think that is what I could say to you today.

Okay? A blessed Lent to all of us and a bright Easter to all humanity. A kiss on the heart.

Courage to look at the world and even more courage to look at ourselves. And today I want to talk about eternal, universal and divine principles that go deeply through human experience. I will start with an old, simple and perhaps more urgent word than ever, which is the truth.

Not a personal truth, mine against yours, for example. Not a convenient truth to a group, to an ideology or to a religion or to someone's personal desires. Here we are talking about the truth as a universal principle.

The eternal, divine truth. That which remains true even when it contradicts me. That which remains true even when it hurts my pride, when it dismantles the narrative of my mind or when it demands that I change my view of reality.

Because perhaps this is one of the greatest crises of our time. The lie has always existed. The most sophisticated problem that we go through today may be the dissolution of the borders between truth and lie, good and evil, virtue and distortion.

Welcome and permissiveness. Compassion and connivence. We live in a time when almost everything can receive a very beautiful and easy narrative to distort.

Almost all distortion finds elegant words to justify itself. And perhaps it is precisely there that evil has found one of its most efficient vests to continue to dominate this third-dimensional plane. Not to appear as evil, but to learn to speak the language of good.

Because there is something more dangerous than shadows. It is when shadows learn to dress and seduce you with something that seems to be light. When that which is distorted almost does not fight the light.

It is almost as if the shadow could imitate the light, speak of love, speak of freedom, speak of justice, of welcoming, of compassion, of rights and even of truth. This is one of the most sophisticated masks of the involutive forces in this plane. Of the dark forces.

When evil disguises itself as good. And this is where a teaching by Pathwork about half-truth becomes extraordinarily current. A rude lie is usually easier to recognize because it is far enough from the light.

Half-truth is much more dangerous. Because it carries a certain disguise of light to win our trust. It is as if the shadow were seductive enough to divert us from it.

Above it, a certain image of something virtuous. And in that sense, the shadow does not need to invent something. It just needs to select, move, omit.

Use a truth over a lie. A virtue to justify an addiction. A true wound to legitimize a destructive attitude.

Or a pseudo love to abolish all limits. Or a freedom to deny self-responsibility. A compassion to prevent justice from being done.

Or a justice to feed revenge. And finally, even a spirituality to escape reality. That is why in this Lent of Saint Michael, a phrase has returned many times in my heart.

Moderation in the defense of truth is a service given to lies. I will say it again. Moderation in the defense of truth is a service given to lies.

And this is not an authorization for fanaticism. It does not mean to believe that we have an absolute truth. Going around the world distributing sentences and judgments.

On the contrary. The deeper we seek the truth with a capital V. The more we need to be able to question our own certainties. And there is a huge difference between us recognizing the limits of our perception.

And conclude that nothing can be recognized as true. Humility before the truth is not moral relativism. I can recognize that I do not see everything.

And still see something with total clarity. I can admit my shadows and still say this is wrong. I can love someone and say what you are doing is not good.

I can understand a wound without turning it into a license to hurt others. I can have compassion for the human being without making an alliance with what is hurtful and clearly distorted in it. We need to relearn this.

To welcome is not to agree. To understand does not mean to justify. To forgive does not mean to abolish consequences.

To love does not mean to lose the ability to discern. Jesus offered us a simple and extraordinary criterion. By the fruits you will know them.

Maybe we need to return to this simplicity. It is not enough to ask how something presents itself. Let's ask, what are the fruits of this? Does it produce truth or lie? Does it produce responsibility or more victimization? Does it produce freedom or dependence? Dignity or degradation? Consciousness or alienation? Because words can be manipulated.

But the fruits are very difficult to make up. There is a spiritual courage that we need to recover. The courage to call things by name.

Without foolish moralism, without pride, without cruelty. But also without makeup and without relativization. Maybe that's why St. Michael touches me so deeply right now.

The sword of St. Michael is not a symbol of violence. It is a symbol of discernment. It separates what confusion has mixed.

And confusion is one of the three principles of evil. According to the very methodology of Pefug. This is true, this is false.

This is virtue, this is distortion. This is love, this is dependence. This is freedom, this is irresponsibility disguised as freedom.

This is compassion, this is cowardice disguised as compassion. This is justice, and this is a vengeance disguised as justice. The sword itself of St. Michael does not need to hate what it separates.

It just needs to bring clarity. Discernment itself is not condemnation. Discernment is objective vision.

And here we come to another eternal principle linked to truth, which was the first. Which is justice. Justice is not hatred.

Justice is not revenge. It is not pleasure to punish. Justice is the sense of proportion.

If someone commits an evil, there must be a proportional consequence to the gravity of that evil. If the answer exceeds the act too much, we can enter the territory of revenge. It is a fact.

But if someone produces an immense damage and receives an irreversible consequence, there is also an injustice. That's why I always say, punishing too much can be cruelty. Punish less, relativization of evil.

True justice considers the intention, the responsibility, the damage, the circumstances, the protection of society, of life, of bonds, and a possibility of reparation. It does not exist to reproduce evil. It exists to affirm a fundamental truth.

Choices have consequences. The very law of cause and effect points to this. Actions and consequences are linked.

When a society repeatedly breaks this relationship, does it run the risk of teaching you silently to the collective unconscious? Look, maybe evil pays off. And that's why we are facing extreme crimes. We need to have the courage to ask difficult questions.

I'll bring one. If someone deliberately takes a life, what consequence is truly proportional? Would the death penalty be justice or retribution? If we reject the death penalty, what penalty adequately expresses the gravity of an intentionally destroyed life? What is the penalty that adequately expresses a murder? I want to provoke your consciousness to reflect. Because proportionality does not necessarily mean doing to the aggressor what he did to the victim.

But it also cannot mean treating huge evils with small answers. Because then the law will become morally smaller than the crime. And here we find a fundamental tension with the theme of justice.

Love without justice becomes complicity. Justice without love can also become cruelty. There are times when compassion can be the remedy.

But there are times when the limit and the price is the remedy. And there are times when justice is exactly the way that love needs to assume. Jesus did not need to deny the mistake to continue loving the one who was wrong.

True love does not need to call evil good to preserve the dignity of those who practiced evil. And we need to learn just that. To love without being conniving with evil.

To discern without directly condemning. To understand without justifying. To forgive without eliminating the responsibility for the acts.

To be firm without being cruel. To be compassionate without being blind. And then there is a decisive point.

This sword of St. Michael, the symbolism of this sword, of this force, must first cross our own consciousness. It would be very comfortable to use St. Michael just to point out the darkness of the world. Much more difficult is to allow this sword to illuminate our lives.

Where am I lying to myself? Where do I build a sophisticated narrative so as not to admit a simple and objective truth? Where do I call fear of prudence? Where do I call dependence on love? Where do I call aggressiveness of authenticity? Escapism of spirituality? Where do I call cowardice of peace? Where do I call selfishness of self-care? Here begins a true spiritual work. Because the half-truth does not live only in governments, institutions, religions, ideologies, or in our, so to speak, adversaries. The half-truth also lives within us.

Our ego is an extraordinary lawyer. When he wants something, he quickly finds arguments to innocent our desire, our action. I remember a simple conversation I had with a friend these days.

He asked me if I used rapé. I said no. Then he told me that he uses it three times a day, sometimes a little more, about six.

I replied to him, so maybe you're not using it, maybe you're being used. And then he laughed and told me, worse than it's true. But I don't assume, I call it consecration of rapé.

Do you see? The point is not to condemn rapé or whoever uses it. The point is the truth. Each person is free even to develop a dependence and a vice.

But freedom does not turn dependence into virtue. Let's not confuse things. This is what this moment is about.

If there is compulsion and loss of freedom, giving a sacred name to a behavior will not change its distorted nature. This applies to substances, money, sex, power, relationships, work, social networks, approval and even spirituality. So the question is simple but brutal.

Do I still choose this or do I already need it? Integrity does not need a beautiful word to make up what the truth has already revealed. Maybe this is the most dangerous half-truth of all. The one we tell ourselves.

And in that sense, it is not enough to ask, Does this make me feel good? Ask. Is this true? Does this produce good fruits? Does this increase my responsibility, my conscience, my inner freedom, my ability to love and serve the world with more power? And maybe an even more uncomfortable question. And if everyone acted that way, what world would we build? There is a very beautiful spiritual teaching, according to which truth, beauty and goodness meet as we approach the divine.

It is not enough for something to seem beautiful, loving or produce a spiritual feeling. The true needs to walk towards what is good, to what adds. Perhaps that is why Jesus has taught that truth frees.

Notice, Jesus did not say that truth would always comfort us. He said that it would set us free. And sometimes what sets us free first embarrasses us.

Because it destroys facets of the idealized self. Facets of a lie that protected us. And that is exactly what I ask in this Lent.

May the blue light pass through my conscience. May the sword of St. Michael cut justifiable illusions, vainness, illusory needs to be right. May we have the courage to see the truth when it favors us and especially when it embarrasses us.

Because we are not here to be perfect. We are not here looking for a performatic holiness. We all carry wounds, shadows and contradictions.

The question was never to have shadows. The question is, when the shadow appears, can I recognize it as a shadow? Or do I need to paint it in gold to continue living comfortably with myself? And still want to convince others that my shadow painted in gold is gold. Being angry is human.

But calling my anger love is a journey. Being afraid is human. But creating an entire philosophy to prove that my cowardice is wisdom is already half-truth working.

Having a shadow is human. But calling the shadow of light will prevent you from transforming it. Because the most primitive evil, he says, I am evil.

But the sophisticated evil learned another phrase. I am good. He wears virtues.

Speaks in the name of love, freedom, justice, spirituality. He does not even need to destroy the light. He just needs to imitate it.

That is why we need to learn to look at the fruits. An injustice remains an injustice when it is practiced by someone we admire. A lie remains a lie when it benefits a cause of ours.

And a truth remains a truth even when it is pronounced by someone you do not like. And this may be one of the greatest proofs of integrity. Recognize that the truth can come, in quotes, from the adversary.

And recognize sometimes that the lie can come from an ally. This is integrity. And here I return to the north of my Lent in São Miguel.

The moderation in the defense of truth is a service to the lie. But defending the truth is not defending my opinion to the end. Sometimes it is even the opposite.

The true lover of the truth needs to be able to abandon his opinion when he realizes that he was wrong. Because he is not faithful to his own narrative. He is faithful to the truth.

And in that sense, one of the most difficult prayers we can make may be God does not allow me to need my beliefs to be true. Allow me to want to know what is true. Breathe.

In that sense, I can be wrong, you can be wrong, a group can be wrong, a religion, an ideology. Masters, teachers, mentors can also be wrong. Science can be wrong and can correct its conclusions in the face of new evidence.

Recognizing this does not weaken the truth. It purifies our relationship with it. Because the truth does not need to give its arrogance to exist.

It needs our availability to find it. And all this will lead us to the next step, which is order as a universal principle. We speak of truth, we speak of justice as a sense of proportion.

And order, not as authoritarianism, control or rigidity. We are talking about order as an eternal and divine principle. Order is when each thing occupies the place that corresponds to it.

When truth does not bend to convenience. When freedom remains linked to responsibility. When choices find consequences.

When compassion does not eliminate justice. When justice does not abandon love. And when love does not need to lie to continue loving.

And this is one of the deepest functions of the symbolism of the sword of St. Michael. Re-establishing the order where distortion produced confusion and half-truth. I will say this again.

Maybe this is one of the deepest functions of the sword of St. Michael, this symbolism in my perception. Re-establishing the order where distortion produced confusion and half-truth. Because the shadow mixes what should be distinguished.

The shadow reverses values, shifts responsibilities, breaks the proportions. And the sword enters right there. Not just to cut, but to order.

It returns the objective name to things. It returns consequences to choices. Responsibility to freedom.

Proportion to justice. And truth to love. When truth, justice and love find their rightful relationship.

Something greater will emerge. The divine order. The truth reveals what it is.

Justice returns to each thing its fair measure. Love prevents this measure from losing humanity. And the order puts everything in its proper place.

Maybe we can then understand the blue ray of St. Michael just like that. Not just as a force that fights, but as a force that re-establishes. First in me.

Then in my relationships. Then in what is under my responsibility. And then in the world.

Because this type of sword that only points outwards is dangerous. It easily turns into judgment, vanity, fanaticism, ideology. The sword must first cross our consciousness.

After cutting in us lies, illusions, convenience. It becomes sharper to recognize what is outside. Because true discernment is not born of condemning the world.

It is born first of not lying to yourself. And then of looking at the objective truth in the world. Without relativism.

Without lies. In this Lent of St. Michael, my prayer is simple. May the sword of discernment shine.

First inside me. And then through me. May the blue ray illuminate what my eyes still cannot distinguish.

May it cut lies without cutting love. May it cut naivety without destroying compassion. May it cut permissiveness without producing rigidity.

May it cut fanaticism without producing relativism. May it cut my certainties when they are false. And my illusions when they are comfortable.

May the truth begin in me. May justice begin in me. May love mature in me.

And may the divine order be reestablished in me. May I not demand the responsibility of others while I build excuses for myself. May I not use justice to hide and resent myself.

The compassion to escape the limits necessary to life. Nor the order to feed my need to control. Because maybe that is exactly where the sword of St. Michael finds its highest expression.

When it cuts in us what still tries to dress in light. And then we can distinguish. Truth of lie.

Compassion of connivence. Justice of revenge. Mercy of impunity.

Love of childish sentimentalism. Order of control. Truth without love can become a weapon.

But love without truth can become a lie. Justice without proportion can be revenge. And the order without conscience can be oppression.

That is why these eternal principles are interdependent and need to walk together. And in this sense the sword is an extraordinary symbol. It does not exist just to cut.

It exists to separate, distribute, replace everything in its proper place. Truth is to recognize what it is. Discernment is to separate what confusion has mixed.

Justice is to return to each thing its fair proportion. Love is the force that prevents truth and justice from losing proportion and humanity. And the order is when all this finds its proper place.

It's beautiful, but it's too deep. So that we can love more fully and maturely. We need to abandon the childish idealizations of love.

Loving is not just welcoming, understanding, forgiving, allowing everything to exist. Loving is also to discern, establish limits and do justice when necessary. There are moments when love embraces.

There are moments when, precisely because you love, you need to say no. Reveal the truth and allow each thing, each choice, to receive its fair ticket. Because love without truth becomes an illusion.

Love without justice becomes connivence. Freedom without responsibility produces disorder. And this is the synthesis.

The blue light, it brings me this reflection. The truth reveals. The discernment separates.

Justice provides. Love integrates and balances. And the order harmonizes everything in its place.

And this, for me, has been one of the deepest ways of serving the light. Not allowing what is not light to convince us to call it light. And to finish, vibrating from my heart, tuned to this ray of St. Michael that touched me through these words.

May these forces find their fair proportion within us. May the divine order cease to be just a spiritual idea and become a living reality. In our consciousness, in our choices, in our relationship, in our work.

And in the world in which we are helping to build with our choices, in the twelve areas of life. This, for me, is one of the deepest calls of the energy of the sword of St. Michael. Not only to fight the internal and external shadows, but to reestablish the order of light.

Because when truth, justice, love and order walk together. We are getting closer to what, with all reverence, we can call God. A hug of light to all of you.

Blessings.
Satyam Shiva Dharam.