Your soul growth is much more closely associated with your behavior than your beliefs. Your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behavior does.

You will grow as a soul when you try to use love and the Golden Rule to manage how you behave towards God, others and yourself.

Behavior sourced from unconditional love is evidence that you are growing spiritually.

All souls contain a spark of God, so we instinctively know the difference between loving and unloving behavior.

We do not earn our place in the afterlife based on the number of our good deeds. Our place in the afterlife is determined by the love in our heart. The quality of our love matters more than the number of our actions.

Who you are now, as measured by the love in your heart, is important. How you behaved in the past is irrelevant if you have changed your behavior to become more loving.

God asks us to love Him, ourselves and each other. We can all improve on how well we do this. For the vast majority of us, improvement in our ability to love, or soul growth, in the reason why we incarnated.

In addition to our instinct and intuition, God provided us with teachers if we choose to change our behavior and become more loving. The teachers are many and include Jesus, The Buddha and Mohammed. These teachers explain what is expected of us, and they lead by example.

God also provided a tool to learn right from wrong, where right is loving behavior and wrong is unloving behavior. This tool is called karma. Karma reflects back to us the results of our thoughts and behavior, so that we experience the consequences of what we truly think and how we really behave. Karma is cancelled if we recognize our past mistakes and become more loving.

The reward for behaving with unconditional love is an eternal life in which our love is reflected back to us. This may sound ridiculous, “corny” or naïve, but it is true none the less.

A great way to teach ourselves the value of love is to practice loving behavior. While we do this we should understand that our goal is to learn to be motivated by love.

Behavior and good deeds are worthless if they are performed for no reason other than duty, obligation, or trying to “score points” with God! Good deeds are evidence of our spiritual growth only if those deeds are inspired by the love in our heart.

To the extent there is judgment in the afterlife, it is based on whether we made other souls feel loved or unloved. It is very important to understand that the simplest act can create the strongest feelings in others, whether those feelings are of love or pain.

If you do something loving for someone who is ungrateful or unaware, God knows your intent and HE feels your love.

Ultimately, your loving acts are not between you and others but are between you and God. This is because we are all connected and part of the same whole.

We will have moved closer to God when mankind transitions from a belief based society to a behavior based society which uses love as the measure of social interactions.

The teachings and parables of Jesus focused very much on behavior. When Paul of Tarsus (Saint Paul) started writing about Jesus 20 years after His death, the Christian religion moved its focus from behaving as God commands to belief in God. There is still much debate within the Christian religions on this change in focus. St Paul never met Jesus and refers to Him very little.

What have you got to lose by being more loving and kind?

Love cannot remain by itself -- it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service.

Mother Teresa

A tree is known by its fruit a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.

St. Basil

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough Give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God It was never between you and them anyway.

Mother Teresa

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.

St. Francis of Assisi

Make the most of today. Translate your good intentions into actual deeds.

Grenville Kleiser

We do good because it frees the heart. It opens us to a wellspring of happiness.

Sharon Salzberg

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

Benjamin Franklin

By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?

Jesus Christ Matthew 7:16

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

John F. Kennedy

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

Gandhi

One good deed is worth a thousand prayers.

Zarathushtra

When I asked what a person should do while on Earth to make it better for him when he dies, he answered, "All you can do is to develop along the lines of unselfish love. People don't come here because of their good deeds, or because they believe in this or that, but because they fit in and belong. Good deeds are the natural result of being good, and bad deeds are the natural result of being bad. Each carries its own reward and punishment. It's what you are that counts!"

Arthur Yensen

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.

Washington Irving

Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.

Philip G. Zimbardo

I believe that you control your destiny, that you can be what you want to be. You can also stop and say, 'No, I won't do it, I won't behave his way anymore. I'm lonely and I need people around me, maybe I have to change my methods of behaving,' and then you do it.

Leo F. Buscaglia

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

Thomas Carlyle

Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.

George W. Crane

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.

Rene Descartes

Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.

Quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

If you really believe something, you will act in accordance with that belief -- always. If you believe in gravity, you will never attempt to defy it. If you claim to hold a belief but act incongruently, then you don't actually believe it. You're only kidding yourself. Casual faith isn't.

Steve Pavlina

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny. ​

Ghandi

Action expresses priorities.

​Ghandi