077 | Soul Consciousness

077 | Explaining Soul Presence, Human Consciousness, and Artificial Substitutes

Chapter 1: Dividing Humanity Into Ensouled Beings and Soulless Beings

The categorization of human life involves dividing humanity into ensouled beings and soulless beings based on their spiritual capacity. This fundamental division shapes how individuals experience existence. The most direct spiritual binary begins with a single question: Is human life animated by an eternal, non-physical essence, or is it merely biological, mechanical, and temporary?

Within this framework, humanity can be divided into two primary fields: the Ensouled and the Soulless. The Ensouled perceive, however dimly, that something within them reaches beyond the flesh. The Soulless experience existence as a closed circuit of biology, psychology, appetite, survival, and social programming.

For the sake of this model, let us begin with a working estimate: 70% of humanity carries some degree of soul presence, while 30% does not possess the capacity to awaken into soul presence. This is not presented as a scientific measurement, but as a metaphysical structure for exploring the architecture of human consciousness.

If people can sense their own true nature, then awareness becomes an inner mirror. It reveals whether there is a vertical axis within the being—a living thread connecting the physical body to higher dimensions—or whether the being operates entirely within the horizontal plane of material existence.

The Ensouled person feels the pressure of eternity. Even when confused, wounded, distracted, or asleep, there remains a hidden hunger for meaning. There is a tug toward truth, a discomfort with falsehood, and a strange ache that cannot be satisfied by possessions, pleasure, status, or distraction.

The Soulless person, by contrast, does not experience this vertical pull. Their sense of self is complete within the world of sensation, instinct, thought, and social survival. They may be intelligent, charming, strategic, and highly functional, but their awareness does not naturally pierce the veil of the transcendent.

This divide creates two very different experiences of human life. One group wrestles with destiny. The other adapts to circumstance. One group seeks return. The other seeks advantage. One group is haunted by the eternal. The other is satisfied by the immediate.

Chapter 2: How Soul Presence Creates Inner Tension and Self-Sensing

Understanding how soul presence creates inner tension and self-sensing is essential for recognizing the eternal spark within the physical body. This internal friction separates those who feel a higher calling from those who do not. If the soul is present, it announces itself through unease, longing, conscience, intuition, and the persistent sense that life is more than its visible machinery. The person may not have language for this feeling, but the signal remains.

The Ensouled Spectrum, representing roughly 70% of humanity in this model, carries a vertical axis. This axis is the inner ladder between the body and the infinite. It is the hidden bridge between mortal personality and immortal essence.

Those within this spectrum often experience life as a battlefield between the physical vehicle and the eternal spark. They may crave comfort, pleasure, and recognition, yet another part of them longs for purification, meaning, and reunion with divine order. Their inner life is marked by friction because something higher keeps calling them out of sleep.

The Soulless Spectrum, representing roughly 30% of humanity in this model, operates within the horizontal field. Its members are governed by biology, social pressure, psychological conditioning, and immediate sensory feedback. They are not necessarily chaotic on the surface. Some may be disciplined, successful, polished, or even outwardly moral. But their orientation remains terrestrial.

Their self-sensing reveals no inner abyss, no immortal memory, no divine homesickness. They are at home in the theater of the world because, for them, the theater is all there is. They do not suffer from the same cosmic tension because no soul is pressing against the walls of the body.

This difference explains why two people can stand in the same room, hear the same words, witness the same suffering, and interpret reality in entirely different ways. One sees a test of the spirit. The other sees a situation to exploit, escape, manage, or dismiss.

Chapter 3: The Opposing Evolutionary Paths of Conscious Awakening and Horizontal Existence

The opposing evolutionary paths of conscious awakening and horizontal existence dictate how different people navigate the earthly school. These distinct trajectories ensure that individuals face entirely different challenges and temptations. Under this spiritual model, the coexistence of the Ensouled and the Soulless serves a distinct function in the earthly school. Their paths are not merely different; they are governed by opposing laws.

The path of the Ensouled is the path of catalyst and awakening. Because soul presence brings the capacity for self-awareness, choice, conscience, and spiritual growth, the Ensouled are subjected to intense friction. They must wrestle with free will, polarity, temptation, suffering, discipline, and the slow refinement of consciousness.

Their lives are not designed for comfort alone. They are designed for awakening. Every wound, attachment, temptation, humiliation, and desire becomes material for transformation. The Ensouled being is meant to discover the divine origin hidden beneath the noise of the personality.

The path of the Soulless is the path of horizontal existence. Without a divine spark, there is no genuine ascent toward cosmic reconnection. These beings are anchored in electrochemical sensation, social behavior, and material consequence. Their awareness does not rise naturally into higher planes.

Within the darker interpretation of this model, the absence of soul presence makes such beings vulnerable to manipulation by Tempters, parasitic influences, and lower astral forces. They become easier instruments for appetite, deception, indulgence, and disorder because there is no vertical compass strong enough to resist the pull.

This creates the basic tension of the world. The Ensouled assume that everyone secretly hungers for meaning. The Soulless do not. The Ensouled project depth where there may be none. The Soulless often find the spiritual longings of the Ensouled impractical, theatrical, or absurd.

Thus, society becomes a strange masquerade. Some are trying to remember heaven. Others are trying to maximize the game. The confusion between these two motives produces much of the sorrow, betrayal, and bewilderment found in human history.

Chapter 4: Cosmic Law and the Spiritual Friction Caused by Unaligned Forces

Experiencing cosmic law and the spiritual friction caused by unaligned forces acts as a profound test of self-mastery. The constant pressure from those without an internal compass forces spiritual students to refine their discipline. If Earth functions as a school for souls, then the presence of beings without a vertical axis changes the entire equation. The world is no longer merely a mixed habitat. It becomes a crucible, a testing ground, and an invisible war of orientation.

The soul student is governed by cosmic law, intentionality, and self-mastery. The unaligned being is governed by appetite, conditioning, sensory impulse, and survival logic. One seeks ascension through discipline. The other drifts through adaptation.

Any system designed for deliberate spiritual evolution becomes strained when populated by forces that operate through accidental evolution. Accidental evolution relies on random adaptation, stimulation, survival instinct, and reaction. Intentional self-mastery relies on conscious choice, refinement of desire, transmutation of energy, and obedience to higher law.

The Pull of Inertia is the downward current. Beings lacking a soul spark move according to immediate feedback. Without an internal compass tethered to the infinite, the path of least resistance becomes the default path. Comfort replaces truth. Indulgence replaces discipline. Reaction replaces wisdom.

The Simulation of Life is the mimicry that occurs when outward human expression continues without inner vertical depth. The form is present: words, gestures, ambitions, relationships, achievements. But the higher essence is absent or dormant. This creates a strange artificial gravity in the collective field, pulling awakening consciousness toward automation, distraction, and decadence.

Yet even disruption can serve a role in soul school. The presence of a lawless or purely sensorial current forces the Ensouled to sharpen discernment. Without temptation, sovereignty remains untested. Without opposition, strength remains theoretical.

The danger appears when the Ensouled lower their vibration until they resonate with the same field as the unaligned. In that state, they become vulnerable to Tempters, siphoning entities, and the mud of indulgent momentum. Their Crystic Conscience grows faint. Their spiritual sight dims. Their choices become mechanical.

This is the Great Separation: the end of lukewarm states. Cosmic law eventually demands a decision between automated survival and disciplined spiritual evolution.

Chapter 5: The Concentration of Soulless and Mechanical People in Institutional Power

The concentration of soulless and mechanical people in institutional power creates systems that prioritize control and compliance over cosmic law. This imbalance explains why political and legal environments often feel devoid of higher moral consciousness. If the broader population is estimated at 70% Ensouled and 30% Unaligned, the ratio within centers of institutional power may differ sharply. Political, legal, and bureaucratic systems do not randomly sample the human population. They filter, attract, and elevate particular traits.

Centralized institutions are anchored in the horizontal plane. They depend on hierarchy, compliance, externalized rules, status ambition, legal control, and behavioral management. Such environments often reward those who can suppress conscience, endure contradiction, and pursue power without spiritual friction.

For an Ensouled being, high political office can generate intense inner conflict. Compromise, deception, strategic silence, tribal loyalty, and institutional conformity may clash with cosmic law and inner truth. The more sensitive the conscience, the heavier the burden.

For the unaligned or mechanical archetype, the same environment may feel natural. The pursuit of status, control, and influence is not interrupted by a transcendent compass. Power becomes an objective, not a temptation to overcome.

Within this framework, the estimated ratio in Congress, the Senate, and the upper judicial system may shift toward 30% to 40% Ensouled and 60% to 70% Unaligned or Mechanical. Even the Ensouled minority may often operate in compromised, asleep, or co-opted states.

In the House of Representatives, the atmosphere is fast, reactive, theatrical, and governed by constant campaign pressure. The field favors performance, tribal allegiance, and surface-level consensus. True sovereignty may appear only in rare exceptions, often marginalized by party machinery.

In the Senate, the environment is slower, more insulated, and more deeply tied to elite institutional power. Strategic intellect may be more common, but the dominant current still tends toward preservation, patronage, legalism, and calculated self-interest.

In the judicial system, especially at the highest levels, the horizontal structure becomes even more refined. Codified law replaces living spirit. Precedent, technicality, and compartmentalized reasoning can triumph over direct moral perception. The human being becomes a legal object rather than a sovereign spark of the infinite.

When the view expands beyond leadership chambers into the full state apparatus—bureaucracies, agencies, administrative hierarchies, political offices, and enforcement structures—the estimated imbalance becomes even stronger: roughly 75% Unaligned or Mechanical and 25% Ensouled.

The state, in this model, becomes an entropic counterweight. It binds consciousness to external authority, collective hypnosis, and material limitation. It does not always appear monstrous. Often, it appears procedural. The cage has filing cabinets, committees, polite language, and fluorescent lighting. Hell, apparently, also has a waiting room.

Chapter 6: The Five Tiers of Soul Presence Ranging From Masters to Glowless

Categorizing individuals into the five tiers of soul presence ranging from Masters to Glowless provides a clear map of spiritual light intensity. This precise scale helps identify where a person stands in their spiritual evolution. Beyond the simple binary of Ensouled and Soulless, a more precise model measures the degree of soul presence within the individual.

Let Jesus Christ at the height of his earthly embodiment represent 100% soul presence. The highest saints, sages, avatars, and realized masters throughout history would approach this same level. At full soul presence, the personality no longer blocks divine current. The human vessel becomes a pure instrument of cosmic law.

High soul presence is recognized through alignment with universal truth, wise choices, radiant divine feeling, mastery over lower impulses, and the activation of mystical senses or higher abilities. Such beings do not merely believe in spiritual law. They embody it.

At the opposite end of the scale, low or absent soul presence manifests as mechanical living, addictive patterns, unresolved grudges, lack of self-care, lack of care for others, criminal impulses, and enslavement to sensory appetite. The person may still appear socially functional, but the inner axis is weak or absent.

This creates five broad groups:

Masters — 90% to 100% soul presence.

Glows — 70% to 80% soul presence.

Flickers — 40% to 60% soul presence.

Low Glows — 20% to 30% soul presence.

Glowless — 10% or less soul presence.

The Masters are the completed ones, or nearly completed ones. They represent the goal of soul school.

The Glows are active soul students. They consciously work toward self-mastery, purification, discernment, and alignment.

The Flickers are the unstable middle. Their light brightens in crisis, beauty, prayer, or inspiration, then dims again under pressure, habit, or temptation.

The Low Glows carry a faint spark, but their lives are dominated by unresolved attachments, indulgence, resentment, addiction, and reactive survival.

The Glowless operate almost entirely through biological programming, environmental conditioning, and material instinct. They have little or no interest in spiritual evolution.

This scale turns the human world into a map of light intensity. Some burn like suns. Some glow like candles. Some flicker in the wind. Some smolder beneath ash. Some do not shine at all.

Chapter 7: The Estimated Population Percentages of the Five Soul Presence Tiers

Analyzing the estimated population percentages of the five soul presence tiers reveals the broader distribution of spiritual awareness across humanity. This metaphysical breakdown illustrates the varying degrees of consciousness present in the world. Using the five-tier framework, the population may be divided into approximate categories of soul presence. These estimates are symbolic and metaphysical, not empirical measurements.

Masters — 90% to 100% Soul Presence

Estimated population share: Less than 0.001%.

Masters are extremely rare. They are the fully realized anchors of cosmic law: sages, avatars, saints, and spiritual adepts whose lives radiate divine order. They serve as living blueprints for the rest of humanity. Their presence alone alters the field.

Glows — 70% to 80% Soul Presence

Estimated population share: 15%.

Glows are dedicated soul students. They actively pursue self-mastery, spiritual discipline, purification, compassion, and alignment with cosmic principles. They still face human friction, but their primary orientation is upward. Their lives are not perfect, but they are intentional.

Flickers — 40% to 60% Soul Presence

Estimated population share: 35%.

Flickers form the largest active soul tier. They are pulled between the vertical call of the soul and the horizontal gravity of the world. In moments of suffering, love, beauty, or crisis, they may awaken briefly. In comfort, distraction, or fear, they may fall back into sleep. They are the great swing-vote of human consciousness.

Low Glows — 20% to 30% Soul Presence

Estimated population share: 25%.

Low Glows are heavily material-bound. Their inner spark exists, but it is faint and often buried beneath sensory indulgence, resentment, self-sabotage, addiction, and mechanical habits. They may use spiritual language, but their actual driver is often ego, appetite, or fear.

Glowless — 10% or Less Soul Presence

Estimated population share: 25%.

Glowless beings are almost entirely unaligned with the vertical axis. They operate through automation, social programming, instinct, and material dominance. Within this model, they provide the strongest entropic resistance in the earthly school.

Together, these estimates preserve the larger pattern: roughly 75% of humanity possesses some degree of soul presence, while roughly 25% operates at or near the mechanical baseline.

The great drama of human life is not simply good versus evil. It is intensity versus dimness, remembrance versus forgetfulness, mastery versus automation, and the slow decision of every being to rise, sink, flicker, or go dark.

Chapter 8: How People Use Artificial Substitutes to Replace Missing Soul Presence

Examining how people use artificial substitutes to replace missing soul presence exposes the ways modern society simulates true spiritual vitality. Without an internal divine connection, individuals naturally gravitate toward external dependencies for comfort and energy. If soul presence provides inner vitality, meaning, warmth, and divine orientation, then weak or absent soul presence creates a void. That void seeks substitutes.

Modern society offers many artificial replacements for inner radiance: stimulants, depressants, sensory loops, sugar, spectacle, risk, intoxication, outrage, and distraction. These do not create true soul presence. They simulate aliveness.

The person who lacks inner fire may seek outer sparks. The person who lacks peace may seek sedation. The person who lacks purpose may seek stimulation. The person who lacks divine joy may chase chemical pleasure.

A strict measure of freedom from all common dependencies would include the regular use of nicotine, caffeine, recreational and mood-altering drugs, marijuana, adrenaline sports, alcohol, digital dopamine, and even sugar or chocolate as emotional support.

Under that broad definition, the percentage of the population entirely free from all such dependencies would be extremely small—likely less than 1%. This is because modern life is saturated with mild stimulants, comfort foods, digital loops, and emotional regulation through external inputs.

Caffeine alone is deeply embedded in daily adult life. Sugar and sweetened comfort foods are nearly universal. Alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, prescription mood-altering drugs, digital distraction, and thrill-seeking behaviors overlap across many groups.

The result is a civilization of substitute currents. Instead of drawing vitality from the vertical axis, people increasingly draw it from consumption, stimulation, sedation, and performance.

These substitutes do not merely satisfy cravings. They shape consciousness. They teach the body to seek rescue from the outside. They train the mind to avoid stillness. They keep the soul from hearing itself.

Chapter 9: The Usage Rates of Stimulants, Depressants, and Mind-Altering Substitutes

Documenting the usage rates of stimulants, depressants, and mind-altering substitutes highlights the overwhelming prevalence of artificial emotional regulation. These widespread habits act as external replacements for genuine spiritual joy and inner peace. Below is an extensive list of artificial soul substitutes, with rough population usage estimates and their symbolic function within this framework.

Refined Sugar and Sweetened Comfort Foods

Estimated usage: 90%.

Sugar, chocolate, desserts, and sweetened comfort foods are among the most common mood boosters. They provide fast pleasure, emotional softening, and temporary energy. In this model, sugar acts as a baseline pacifier, offering a crude chemical imitation of joy.

Caffeine and Stimulant Beverages

Estimated usage: 80% to 90% of adults.

Coffee, tea, energy drinks, and stimulant beverages force alertness into a tired nervous system. Caffeine becomes a counterfeit morning sun, pulling the body into motion when inner vitality is low.

Digital Dopamine and Algorithmic Sensory Loops

Estimated usage: 70%.

Scrolling, gaming, short-form video, social media, and endless notifications provide tiny bursts of stimulation. These loops act as digital anesthesia, preventing the silence required for self-reflection. They are pocket-sized temples of distraction, and most people visit them more faithfully than any church.

Alcohol and Social Depressants

Estimated usage: 60%.

Alcohol is used for social ease, emotional dampening, celebration, escape, and temporary relief from anxiety. It manufactures a borrowed sense of warmth and connection while lowering discernment.

Nicotine and Tobacco Products

Estimated usage: 20% to 25%.

Cigarettes, vaping, cigars, and smokeless tobacco create a repetitive chemical ritual. Nicotine anchors the body, sharpens or soothes the nerves, and offers a predictable sensation in moments of stress.

Cannabis and Marijuana

Estimated usage: 15% to 20%.

Cannabis is often used for relaxation, altered perception, anxiety relief, sleep, or emotional softening. It may imitate introspection or expansion, but without discipline it can become another horizontal substitute for genuine inner ascent.

Pharmaceutical Mood-Altering Drugs

Estimated usage: 15% to 20% in industrialized societies.

SSRIs, anxiolytics, sedatives, and other psychotropic medications are used to manage mood, anxiety, depression, and emotional instability. In spiritual terms, they represent chemical regulation of a vessel struggling to stabilize its own inner weather.

Illicit Recreational and Euphoric Substances

Estimated usage: 5% to 10%.

Hard stimulants, opioids, club drugs, and synthetic substances force extreme alterations in perception, pleasure, or numbness. These substances attempt to rupture ordinary consciousness by chemical force rather than earned spiritual expansion.

High-Intensity Adrenaline Sports and Extreme Thrill-Seeking

Estimated usage: 5%.

Extreme sports, dangerous stunts, high-risk challenges, and adrenaline-seeking behaviors create a powerful sensation of aliveness. Where the inner flame is weak, danger can feel like proof of existence.

Outrage, Conflict, and Emotional Combat

Estimated usage: difficult to measure, but widespread.

Many people use anger as a stimulant. Political rage, personal drama, online arguments, and moral superiority can all create a temporary feeling of power. Outrage becomes caffeine for the ego.

Shopping, Status, and Acquisition

Estimated usage: widespread across consumer cultures.

Buying, displaying, upgrading, and comparing possessions can temporarily cover inner emptiness. Status objects become little golden bandages placed over a spiritual wound.

Sexual Compulsion and Romantic Fantasy

Estimated usage: widespread, varying by culture and age.

Sexual intensity, romantic obsession, and fantasy bonding can imitate union with the divine. The soul longs for reunion, but the lower self may mistake possession, conquest, or obsession for sacred merging.

Food Excess and Sensory Eating

Estimated usage: widespread.

Beyond sugar alone, overeating and compulsive comfort eating use the body as a storage room for unresolved emotion. The mouth becomes a doorway through which loneliness tries to leave, though it usually just comes back wearing crumbs.

Workaholism and Productivity Addiction

Estimated usage: common in achievement-driven societies.

Constant work, ambition, and task completion can become substitutes for spiritual worth. The person avoids stillness by remaining useful, praised, necessary, or exhausted.

Entertainment Saturation

Estimated usage: nearly universal.

Streaming, sports, celebrity culture, gossip, and constant amusement can shield the mind from existential questions. Entertainment is not inherently harmful, but when used to avoid the soul, it becomes velvet-lined sleep.

These artificial substitutes dominate the Low Glow and Glowless fields most strongly, but even Glows and Flickers can become entangled in them. The difference lies in whether the person recognizes the dependency and works to transmute it.

Chapter 10: Environmental Interferences to Soul Presence and Choosing Spiritual Mastery

Identifying environmental interferences to soul presence and choosing spiritual mastery are the final steps required for aligning with cosmic law. Overcoming these external and psychological distractions allows the individual to consciously ascend rather than merely survive. Beyond substances and sensory habits, several broader forces interfere with soul presence. These are not always chemical. Some are psychological, informational, institutional, and environmental.

Mental and Informational Pollution

Constant hyper-connectivity floods the mind with news cycles, notifications, outrage loops, arguments, advertisements, and algorithmic urgency. Soul presence requires stillness. When the mind is filled every moment, the voice of higher discernment becomes faint.

Chronic Resentment and Weaponized Victimhood

Unresolved grievances anchor consciousness in the past. When identity becomes built around injury, blame, and bitterness, spiritual energy is trapped in a horizontal loop. True soul growth requires responsibility, transmutation, and release.

Spiritual Bypassing and Dogmatic Illusion

False light appears when people use religious language, rigid beliefs, or superficial positivity to avoid shadow work. This creates a counterfeit glow. It imitates awakening while refusing the fire of transformation.

Institutional Compliance and Groupthink

When a person trades conscience for security, status, career advancement, or belonging, the vertical spark weakens. Bureauocratic systems reward obedience to external authority. Soul presence requires obedience to inner truth.

Aesthetic and Environmental Dissonance

Artificial lighting, concrete environments, noise pollution, sterile architecture, and disconnection from nature create subtle friction in the nervous system. The soul breathes more easily in beauty, silence, rhythm, and living order.

Emotional Numbness

Many people do not choose evil directly. They simply become numb. They stop feeling the cost of their choices. They stop noticing beauty. They stop grieving what should be grieved. Numbness is one of the quietest enemies of soul presence.

Mockery of the Sacred

A society that ridicules reverence weakens the instinct for holiness. When awe is replaced by sarcasm, and mystery is replaced by cleverness, the soul retreats into hidden chambers.

The path back is intentional self-mastery.

The Glow must become steadier. The Flicker must stop negotiating with sleep. The Low Glow must protect the faint spark before it is buried. The Master must anchor the field without pride. Even the darkest environment can become a forge if the soul refuses to surrender its vertical axis.

This is the central lesson of the earthly school: the human being is not here merely to consume, comply, react, and decay. The human being is here to remember, refine, choose, and rise.

The world offers countless substitutes for the soul. Some sparkle. Some sedate. Some entertain. Some terrify. Some come with subscriptions and a free trial. But none of them can replace the living flame.

The true work is to become less mechanical and more conscious, less reactive and more sovereign, less addicted to sensation and more aligned with divine law.

In the end, every being reveals its orientation.

Some descend into appetite.

Some flicker between worlds.

Some glow through the fog.

A rare few become suns.

Chapter Synopsis:

This document outlines eighty practical lessons on spiritual growth and universal laws within the Crysticism framework, detailing how to navigate human experience through active participation in Earth's soul school. It explains the mechanics of cosmic laws, the threefold flame, the distinction between constructive goodness and parasitic evil, and the importance of personal accountability, discernment, and spiritual discipline. Furthermore, it explores advanced metaphysical practices—such as establishing energetic boundaries, transmuting karma with the violet flame, guarding the mind against screen media, and preparing for the final life review and soul graduation.

Core Themes & Laws:

• Universal Cause and Effect (Karma): The absolute law that every choice, thought, and action carries moral weight, creating an exact energetic harvest and serving as an automated system of spiritual education and debt balancing.

• Energetic Sovereignty and Purity: The necessity of protecting the physical temple and auric field from parasitic interference, toxic media, chemical stimulants, and lower-vibrational static by maintaining strict self-discipline and pure habits.

• The Illusion of Materialism vs. Spiritual Reality: The foundational Crystic teaching that the physical world is a temporary, malleable classroom made of condensed light, where true wealth is measured by character, virtue, and causal reserves rather than secular accumulations.

• Conscious Co-Creation and Graduation: The ultimate evolutionary trajectory of the soul: mastering personal responsibility, overcoming the inner shadow, breaking repeating life cycles, and earning triumphant graduation into higher cosmic service.

Key Entities Featured in this Document:

• Evolving Soul Students / Seekers: Human participants in Earth's training school who must transition from passive confusion to active, disciplined application of universal laws.

• Universal Creator / Source: The ultimate divine presence and source of life force, light, and enduring spiritual laws.

• Inner Conscience: The quiet, real-time moral guide and inner voice that offers wisdom and discernment for every choice.

• Parasitic Forces / Destructive Influences: Distortions of natural order that siphon energy from vulnerable minds through fear, anxiety, chaos, and deceit.

• Unseen Helpers / Higher Guides: Advanced spiritual mentors and guardians who assist sincere students walking earthly trials.