REINCARNATION
[Please see the Introduction posted March 2013]
Regardless of whether we believe in any teachings
that we have received or not, our reasons for life (ie what life is for)
whether considered or not, sit in the unconscious and affect our attitudes to
life and hence all we do; ie they are ‘making’ our life, so you might as well
find out what they are. They may appear to come from your parents or your
environment, but in general they are coming from past lives; (although some
‘funny’ things do seem to come down the DNA). Even the concept that there is
no reason for life is still a belief, in that we do not actually know.
But really, these ‘believe-ins’ are taught as just
that; a belief. We don’t know and have to be told what to believe by
‘those who know’, as a child has to be taught by an adult. However, the trouble
with believing anything that you don’t actually know, is that dis-belief has to
be repressed or buried, by definition.
We get an awful lot of ‘If you believe in God and
Love hard enough or sufficiently, everything will be alright for you’. Hence,
if bad things happen, you haven’t believed enough. Hence, lots of people try
very hard ‘to believe’. But, this is patently fear-driven, and fear is not
love.
So, the choice in teachings about ‘why life’, is
believe in 1 life or lots (reincarnation). Half the world believes in one life
and the other half in lots of lives.
One life only.
A single life makes no sense at all to me (as you may
have guessed). It becomes a lottery and fate, the results of which you must
endure (because suffering is ‘good’ etc, etc,) and God loves you and don’t ask
any questions. Yes, well. You are also expected to believe because there will
be awful repercussions (hell and no heaven) if you don’t. This is a fear-based
teaching. All of this is an external authority maintaining your dependence upon
its power (of whatever religion) to tell you what to do and decide how you have
done. You get to stay as a child here; you are not going to know for your self
or find self-power or self-direction here, and will remain powerless and/or try
to compensate by becoming an authority yourself. (see next chapter)
But, if there is fear, there is no love here.
Love gives free will and choice to the other at every
level. It has to; by definition.
Multiple lives allow for Explore, and this is the
primary drive (expression is close behind). They also allow choice and free
will.
It can also take many more than just one life to
learn or understand important issues or develop abilities to skills. A single
life teaching can allow no concept of such things.
We need the time and the Explore because we have
enormous internal potential we ‘wot not of’.
We have a very large mostly unknown potential inside
us.
We are a very small sub-set of God, so to speak.
We all have a little world inside us (that seems
pretty big to us) within the very much bigger world out there.
It’s also true that the world out there is indeed
larger than we are, but we are also much larger internally and externally than
we suppose. We are meant to use the world ‘out there’ to learn about the world
that we carry inside us.
That world out there includes such an enormous number
of ways of being that it boggles the mind really; (‘7 billion and still
counting’). We are exploring being; male and female; rich and poor; powerful
and powerless; loving and unloving; build and destroy; different cultures and
different religions and ideas; and on and on. All of it as ways of finding who
we are, what’s important to us and what we want.
[A change of gender can take at least 2-3 lives to
get used to ‘the hang of it’ if most of the previous lives have been the other.
We do change gender. How/Who would you be if you were the other gender?]
I find a useful metaphor for ourselves is that of a
rough diamond. Apart from the fact that diamonds are simply carbon formed under
great pressure with the potential to become something spectacular, it takes
skill for a jeweller to make any particular diamond. It needs to be recognized
in the rough for what it is; it takes skill to cut and it takes skill to polish
each of the 52 surfaces of a single brilliant cut diamond. If each of our lives
is spent polishing just a few of the surfaces or views of our diamond as we
address the issues in our lives, it is going to take quite a few lives to get
that diamond to perfection, and then we may find that there is another one to
discover and work from the rough, and so on. There are an awful lot of ways of
being out there and an awful lot of issues belonging to these different ways of
being. All of us are working on polishing our diamonds.
But then we make decisions about life through the
experiences we’ve had, and we bring them along with us; otherwise what’s the point?
We have a pack of Expectations and Assumptions from
our Past Lives.
We carry our decisions about life, useful and
useless, with us, as we build on our experiences, and,of course, they impact on
this life. Useless decisions can be very painful and frustrating. All of this
became clearer to me as I continued with the use of Tad James’ TimeLine
Therapy™ hypnosis script which I had learned as part of an NLP course. It was
in this way that I found that I really liked the understanding that there were
circumstances in a past life where I formed a decision that was not useful for
me in this current life, such as, nobody loves me, or I am unlovable, and so
on, and I would be able to change that useless decision (bloody marvellous!).
The unconscious is able to go back to the root cause and re-visit the decision
with the greater understanding of later experience and its consequences. I
found most of my useless decisions sitting in past lives, and have absolutely
adored the results of clearing them – hence this writing.
Life Design and contracts.
Various New Age writings teach that we design the
general outline of our current lives off earth, in between lives. The design is
formulated with a higher awareness of the need to address various issues for
our own higher good.
Thus, when we are off-earth we choose our life
circumstances and the general lessons we wish to learn.
Even the definition of ‘lessons’ is fraught. It’s not
like school, as in, being told this is what you have to learn. We want
to know ourselves. It is delightful. It is called Insight. These things we
learn out of our experiences can be hard, but it is all worthwhile and we
treasure these insights about ourselves and we can carry them with us into the
next lifetime and the next, as we try out all sorts of things and explore and
express.
Neither do we ‘come in’ by ourselves. We form
‘contracts’ with significant others in our lives; eg. ‘you can do this and then
I’ll do that’, and so on. The design seems to be a broad outline of structure
and events with choices at various stages and alternatives based on those
choices. This is the basis of various teachings that we are the writer,
producer and director of our own plays, as well as choosing all the actors and
telling them what we want them to do. The most interesting bit is that somehow
it is ultimately all for everybody’s good which boggles the mind really!
We design and then forget.
Well, why? What’s the point of forgetting it all?
The point is the difference between theory and
practice. Do all of us have people in our lives who know all the answers and
their lives are a mess or they are really unhappy or unpleasant and so is
everyone around them? The question is what answers do they really know? What
questions were they asking in the first place? We all have issues; that’s why
we are here.
Past lives and/or genetic memories are basically one
hypnotic script away if that is what you would like, but the point is that your
unconscious knows even if you don’t. (PS. Hypnotic scripts are simply a method
of talking to your unconscious.)
How many previous lives?
Osho says hundreds without any details given. Mann
(A&R) implies 11 plus this current one as working on a particular set of
themes. These themes tend to be the big ones of sex, power, and money,
status/authority and religion/death. My own experience fits in with Mann’s
observations. All our lives are enthralling and absorbing, (you can’t say
you’re not involved in it!) and there’s always more.
Coming back as an animal.
Since we are made in the image of God, it makes no
sense to me to come back as an animal, however much you think your cat has an
easy time of it. We are being challenged to find what we truly want and given
the most interesting and enthralling circumstances in which to do so. Eternity
is a very long time.
But, as I discuss further on, animals serve us in
many ways, and that service must not be taken for granted.
So, what about karma and dharma and punishment and
reward?
The problem with the word ‘Karma’ is that is used as
a form of judgement and also blame, as in, this is being done to you for your
own good, without your consent, basically. If you are having a ‘good’ life, it
must be from good karma, as a reward, and a ‘bad’ life, then ‘bad’ karma as a
punishment. But this is all judging, and consequently a way of thinking
that is no use to you, because it leaves us powerless in terms of being ‘pushed
around’ by God etc.
Many of the usual reincarnation concepts or ideas in
our Western society are not really much use to us if there is still blame and
judgement.
Spiritual systems that teach us to put up with what
we’ve got are not that useful in terms of finding ways to change ‘bad’ things
or proposing better ways to be.
This UUS argues that you have chosen the general
outline of this life as a means to learn about the consequences of your own
treatment of others. The faster you learn, the less you have to bother with
that, and can go on to the next realization. “Nothing is good or bad, but
thinking makes it so” is as true as it ever was. Shakespeare worked it out long
ago.
We get rid of karma by identifying decisions that we
made about ourselves or others or our life during previous lives and deciding
again in this life. See later chapter.
Consider an example.
A wealthy person brought up in great privilege has
learned to treat others less fortunate than he with disdain and disrespect.
This is basically inadvertent in that this man has no idea that he is doing
this because that is how he has been brought up in a family that has had money
and status for generations. He loses the woman he loves in this particular life
because she doesn’t like his arrogant personality. Eventually (at a higher
level) he may decide that he needs to experience some of what he has dished
out, because he has no idea what she was talking about.
So he does in the next life and it’s a ripper; really
terrible, and he dies rebelling against the poverty and degradation. The next
one he’s so angry, he lasts a very short time. The next one he joins a gang of
thieves and becomes a leader and organizes them quite well. He manages to rob
and kill quite a few of the wealthy before he is caught and punished. The next
ones are similar.
OK, this current life of now; he experiences another
dose of difficulty and manipulation by the powerful, but he is now
intrinsically much more aware of what he is up against, and becomes a union
boss using his brains to help others fight for better conditions. Not to
mention his wife is the love he lost in that wealthy life. He makes sure his
children have all the education he can muster for them.
One of the children is given a trumpet and lessons
and his dad thinks this is wonderful and starts to learn from his son and is
quite good at it……and so on. Write your own plot here.
Where is the ‘punishment’? I see exploration of self
with more to come. I am also of course, saying that we bring our memories with
us in terms of intrinsic underlying decisions, understandings and drives.
God realizes we are children.
We explore first and think later and we are equipped
to work it out ourselves and can’t be told anyway.
In that exploring we can do terrible things to others
without realizing our affect on them . (In fact, the only way we can understand
this is to experience having things done to us / see Mirror Laws.)
We can only conceive of a ‘father’ who lays down laws
and a set of rules to live whereby we learn which bits of ourselves to cut off
so that we can fit in to what He wants. (This is our great ‘loving’
Christian religion; neither was this what Jesus attempted to teach.) We have
very little concept of a father who understands we are ‘as children’ and allows
for that. We can’t understand in a fit that God ultimately wants to serve us as
the parent serves the child and provides for its welfare.
We are all children learning how to walk. We fall and
get up again, and we grow and try running and we fall and get up again, and so
on.
From Child to Adult.
So, if we are all children wanting to grow up and
actually get to be an adult, what would that be like?
Children need support. Adults can support others.
A definition of a fully adult person could be someone
who can support themselves fully in all domains; physically, mentally, and emotionally
as well as ‘spiritually’. If they can support themselves fully, they will be
able to support others. They are requiring no energy from anyone else because
they can supply their own. ‘Children’ are defined as in need of support from
others in some manner in one or more of the domains PEMS. They need energy from
others because they are unable to supply their own.
The primary difference then between the child and the
adult is that the child needs external support while the Adult can
provide its own internal support. I am using Adult with a capital ‘A’ to
differentiate between the attainment of internal support in all domains for an
Adult, and the attainment of age for the adult human.
Getting from child to Adult is what we find
difficult.
Really, it’s back to this ‘part/apart’ business
again. The child wants to stay a part, and the Adult is able to embrace apart. There
is a part of us that wants to stay a child and be looked after by ‘those
who know’; ie they have power and control (P&C) and are authority or
parent. We look to them for approval as doing the right thing, as in, we are
looking externally and thus can not provide our own authority internally.
Looking externally is a ‘wanting’ of energy from ‘the other’ and in so doing we
are unable to provide our own. Where there is dependence there is control and
control can and will manipulate for its own purposes and attempt to keep you
powerless. Staying as a child means you cannot grow.
The child..
·
Is looked after
by adults or others, who can guess what the child wants/needs (and the child
can have a tizzy if they get it wrong).
·
Can play,
explore, absorb, distract and generally muck around as it pleases.
·
Can just take
other people’s answers to it all.
·
Doesn’t have to
think, be challenged, grow up, till and keep, take responsibility for finding
out about self, and doesn’t need or take the time to do so.
·
Has no
self-direction, autonomy, competence, power for self, or true self-esteem.
·
Has problems
with unaddressed fears and anger.
·
Has difficulty
maintaining or developing meaningful relationships.
While the fully Adult human being…
·
Is
self-sufficient; able to TISP InSelf, and thus can support self PEMS and give
it to others (=Serve) because there’s always more; ie, is able to fill self.
·
Has no gremlins
jumping around in their head at 2-4 am, (the ‘wee’ hours) and can get proper
peace and rest.
·
Is able to play
her own part in life and specify what she wants/needs.
·
Has
self-acceptance and good relationships with others and life ‘out there’.
·
Is powerful for
herself, and able to follow her own path; ie she is free to follow her own
destiny/destination
·
Does not need or
want power over others.
·
Is in
partnership with GLS; ie able to consciously create in a manner that gives life
to ‘the other’ which leads to true self-esteem (TSE).
This part of us that wants to stay a child and have
others look after us is a factor in all of us. There is nothing wrong with this
part per se; it’s the bit about wanting someone else to do it
that’s the problem. What’s actually required here is for you to embrace this
part of you which means….
- turning around and enquiring = spending time and
being interested in -
- what this part of you actually wants and then -
- learning how to provide your own
nurturing/sustaining and safety/protection; all of which = TISP to yourself -
- as in, doing it, for yourself; your InSelf.
This part does feel like a child, and
embracing it and loving it will hep you be kind to yourself and to ‘the child’
within others.
Not every adult human being is an Adult on these
terms.
Being fully Adult doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate or
work in mutual endeavour; far from it. It does tend to make us a maverick
because we can’t be controlled or manipulated by others and are thus free to
follow our own destiny and play our own part in life whatever that may be.
God knows it’s not easy to get from part to apart as
the child grows to Adult and life will actually push us to grow if we begin to
stagnate.
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