Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 I find it quite alarming that the way some people interpret the Bible alienates us from it. More than ever we need a way to crack the code so to speak and get into the Bible and see how it is relevant for our modern lives. Otherwise the Bible is just a relic. It is certainly not a tool to moralise as some people point out, it is a tool for personal development. Not the kind of personal development based on a skewed interpretation of sin, but the kind that helps us personally develop our own conscious awareness of truth.

One aspect of truth that can assist us to make much more sense of the Bible is to have an understanding of reincarnation. This beatitude makes a lot more sense if we can apply the idea of reincarnation to it. I know that many people find the concept of repeated lives on earth difficult to understand. However, we have reached a point in the development of our conscious awareness that we can begin to remember snippets of past lives. I think these are the déjà vu moments. Déjà vu, according to Wikipedia, is a French phrase meaning “already seen”, and it refers to the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously.

For those unfamiliar with the basic concept of reincarnation let me briefly explain. Our actions in previous lives cause consequences in future lives – we can call this karma. So if we looked down on others in a past life, in this life we might be short so that people physically look down on us. If we didn’t take in what we heard in a past life, now we may be deaf. So this gives us the idea of having to embrace our experiences and be in harmony with them. This is what this beatitude is saying.

The ‘ones having been persecuted’, dediogmenoi in Greek, indicates the ones who are driven away. Who are we inclined to drive away from us? The ones we have karma with. We have incarnated so many times now that most of the people we come into contact with have a karmic connection to us. This karma needs balancing.

Place this in the context of righteousness, dikaiosune, which means justice; being just, balanced and in harmony. In this sense, justice is a continual series of adjustments to restore balance and harmony. It means that we have the ability to judge when things are ‘just right’. If we can apply these ideas then we will spiritualise our being and be at home in the spiritual worlds.