but just as the lowest elements of such a soul are raised, the highest are lowered.
Life is, once again, what you make of it. The highest part of your soul will always rise if that is what you want.
Missionary kid. South America for the most part. Helped with my first birth when I was twelve. No doctor, no painkillers, no one to call if things went wrong, just my mom and me to help her. That one went all right. Mother and child survived. Others didn't. I always thought of America as the most wonderful place in the world because women didn't die in childbirth and their kids lived too.
a.cricket
Suppose not ;)
The highest part of your soul will always rise if that is what you want.
Yes and no. A prodigious effort can overcome the effect of a corrupt regime on the individual soul, but by and large prodigious efforts become more rare in our kind of democratic republic simply because of the ease of life. And that ease can enervate the soul so that it won't want to rise.
because women didn't die in childbirth and their kids lived too
It is a lot better on the family, that is for sure.