Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/7242

7242 Overcoming the material world....

December 31, 1958: Book 76

You have achieved great spiritual progress if you have succeeded in leaving the material world behind you and striving towards the spiritual world, paying more attention to it.... if you have therefore already turned your gaze towards the spiritual kingdom, which is your true home. As long as the world still holds you in bondage, it is not possible for you to raise your thoughts into the spiritual kingdom, for earthly matter is truly a bondage, it contains spiritual things which are in opposition to Me and pulls the spiritual things in the human being which are still directed towards Me towards itself and wants to prevent them from reconnecting with Me. Matter will always remain a shackle, regardless of whether the spiritual is bound in it or whether the spiritual in the human being longs for it, for this longing is the very shackle which the spiritual in matter places around the human being. All earthly-material works of creation still harbour the spiritual in them which belongs to My adversary, and My adversary does not loosen the fetters he has placed around that spiritual. You therefore don't know how significant it is for you if you overcome the desire for matter during earthly life.... you don't know what spiritual progress this means for your soul.... the spiritual embodied in you.... and you don't know how much closer you move towards Me by renouncing earthly material goods, for this is always connected with an allocation of spiritual good, because the human being who has overcome the earthly world longs for the spiritual kingdom. And thus it will soon become apparent whether you can speak of spiritual progress if you pay attention to the degree of your desire for the world, whether it is still high or already begins to sink behind the spiritual world emerging in front of you.... Yet once you have turned your gaze towards the spiritual kingdom it will happen of its own accord that you will increasingly set this as your aim, that you will gladly and with desire move more into spiritual spheres and the earthly world will increasingly fade into the background. And more and more opportunities will arise for you to take the path into that kingdom from which only blessings can truly flow to you, because it is My kingdom.... the kingdom which you can never find in this world, which is outside the world in which you move. You will soon also feel the blessing, you will receive brightness and clarity, the darkness will depart from you which earthly life nevertheless signifies for you as long as you have not yet taken the step into the spiritual kingdom. And until the end of your earthly life you will still have to fight a battle with the material world, only you can already have become its master, and then it will only serve you but no longer rule you, and then staying in this world will no longer be a danger for you as soon as you have taken the path which leads into the spiritual kingdom.... that your soul moves into spheres where it is at home, and that it also feels it is in its true home. And as soon as it is allowed to leave earth it has arrived at its true home, which it now no longer needs to leave, for it has returned home to Me into the father's house and will now also remain with Me forever....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers