The Law of Equality - The Spirits' Book by Allan Kardec, chap.IX
Greetings and Opening prayer
First: tell the children the beginning of the story called ‘The grains of rice’ from the book Life has taught, written by Maria Ida Bachega Bolçone.
Click here for full story and the part that we chose to tell at this lesson.
Second: tell the children we will do with them the same technique that Peter’s teacher applied with her students.
Ask them to observe the room they are nowfor a few moments.After ask them to close their eyes and answer the questions the Spiritist teacher will ask: (adapt the questions according to the ambient).
How many windows does the roomhave?
Is there a poster in the room?How many?
What colour is the shirt the Spiritist teacher is wearing?
Is there a broom in the room?Where is it?
Have they seen something different that they had not seen before?
Third: ask them to open their eyes and see if the questions were answered correctly.Highlight that even already knowing the room they didn’t answer all questions correctly.Follow by showing a large poster with pictures of people of various ages, nationalities, styles of clothing, race and physical limitations.
Ask them to observe the people and choose one that drew most of their attention.Ask some if not all, according to the number of children and time available, to describe their chosen character, explaining why that image drew their attention.
Fourth: establish a dialogue with the children about the poster:
People have some similar physical features and othersthat are different from one another: some are tall, short, black, white, Indian, yellow and may be from different social classes, with different ages.
Do they live in the same country? Do they have the same skin colour? Are they all similar physically? No.
Morally? Do they have the same degree of spiritual evolution? Probably not.
What makes us all equal to one another? The fact that we are spirits. What does the body represent for the Spirit? It’s the clothing for the Spirit.
Do we always reincarnate in similar bodies? No, we reincarnate in the body with the necessary characteristics for our learning and development in that reincarnation.
Will we always be a man, or a woman? We can reincarnate as a man or a woman, depending on what we have to experience.
What race were we born in other existences? We could have been born into different races, in different locations around the world.
Could we have been born with some physical or mental disability or have it in the future? Yes, depending on our moral commitments and the tests we choose to evolve.
We should not evaluate people by appearance, because the true value is not in appearance, but in the moral qualities we already have.
All people are important and have value, whether they are rich, poor, yellow, Indians, blacks, whites, from this or that religion.We should respect all people.Some people think that others have less value, either because they are beggars, thieves or Indians, not taking into account that we are all brothers, evolving toward perfection.
Read Question 803 from The Spirits' Book by Allan Kardec. Are all men equal in the sight of God?
"Yes, all tend towards the same goal; and God has made His laws for the equal good of all. You often say, 'The sun shines for all;' and, in saying this, you enunciate a truth much broader, and of more general application, than you think."
Resources for the Spiritist Teacher: our body is planned in the Spiritual world and many of us help in planning this provess, according to the characteristics that are necessary for our reincarnation: eyes colour, hair, height, skin colour, etc. We also choose the family and the place (country) that we will reincarnate.We don’t remember if we already reincarnated as women or men, whites, blacks, yellows and in various other races.We could have already had physical or mental limitations or have it in the future.Everyone has experienced several existences and we will have many others, always evolving until we become perfect spirits like Jesus. We will then continue to evolve only in the spiritual world.
Fifth: conclude the story.
Click here to see the adaptation of the story's end.
Sixth - sugestões de atividades:
Activitye 1: Distribute photocopies or magazine clippings of different people for each child so they create a single big poster all together.
Activity 2: Bring a poster with a very large circle symbolizing the planet Earth and a sentence written into it. As they colour and glue clippings on it, the sentence will become clearer.
Activity 3: Distribute photocopies of people or magazine clippings and ask them to stick them in the notebook or on a sheet of letter. Ask them to write how they imagine the person to be (physical and spiritual characteristics).If they prepared this on sheets of paper, the Spiritist teacher can placethem on a clothesline and display it in the meeting room.
We can send youseveral pictures of people.Send us an e-mail and we will send it to you.
Suggested phrases for posters:
We are all evolving spirits.We reincarnate to evolve, our destiny is happiness.
Click here to see our poster.
Closing prayer
Class suggested being suitable for: 2nd (9 to 10 years old) and 3rdcycles (11 to 12 years old).
Translation: Carolina von Scharten, London, linked to BUSS - The British Union of Spiritist Societies.
