Reincarnation and our spiritual evolution

[Astir]

I do not assume that everybody needs to,i know i need to.Whether you re a soul or whateever you need some sort of ID no??Otherwise how s it different from not existing ??

I tend to think we have some sort of ID that is more profound than with human life. But that it is unfathomable when we try to imagine it now.

[iNNERvOYAGER]

(Novice, thanks for sharing, very inspiring.)

James wrote: "I agree though that reincarnation has nothing to do with bloodlines or other physical factors. It is purely soul level stuff. And our soul, as an entity in its own right, is far more vast in its awareness and its connection to other souls that we can imagine."

As Saddam Hussein has recently enjoyed earthly justice, I'm sure many of us wonder what kind of justice will follow him. I wonder what kind of ID, color, or feeling he has?

It also makes you wonder about this vast highly connected "soul" or higher self. How many times does the "higher self" have to experience being a total psychopath super preditor to finnaly get it and say, "OK, that's what it's like, it was a mistake, let's move on now."

As we can plainly see, that's not the case. Within the context of connected "higher self", the experience of bringing hell to earth is continually repeated, the lesson is never learned, there fore the "higher self" is truley stupid and retarded. (with-in this contex example, please be patient with me  )

The perpectual emergence of evil characters in this world really supports the idea of more individual entities engaged in building their own individual collection of experiences, starting out at a lower level of conscousness, then eventually progressing or "graduating" from the desire for physical existance and this obsession with taking pleasure in controlling, inflicting pain on, and devouring the bodies of others.

I believe that the earth is a school where new students are always joining, and mature students are always leaving, however, the earth remains as it is, a school.

Back to the point about Saddam Hussein. It's really a coincidence that he looked like Stalin, and acted just like him, and that Hussein's life followed closely after Stalin. It's almost as if he cheated the system, quickly reincarnated, and picked up where he left off.

[Nay]

Back to the point about Saddam Hussein. It's really a coincidence that he looked like Stalin, and acted just like him, and that Hussein's life followed closely after Stalin. It's almost as if he cheated the system, quickly reincarnated, and picked up where he left off.

That is totally fascinating and I too was wondering about Saddam and what level his soul was.  When he died did he at that moment become much more aware of what he had done and feel remorse?  Or does he feel exactly the same way and is living happily right now with his evilness, looking forward to the next go around.... crazy.

I like to think that he is more aware and feeling much pain in what horror he caused and is going to work towards being kind the next time.

[Novice]

As Saddam Hussein has recently enjoyed earthly justice, I'm sure many of us wonder what kind of justice will follow him. I wonder what kind of ID, color, or feeling he has?

I've only seen him on tv - obviously he isn't a close, personal friend of mine    However, when I see him I feel ... not sure how to describe it. A kind of heavy, angry, strong feeling from him. One that makes me very uneasy. Of course, I could simply be projecting my own interpretation of him in there -- which I am sure I'm doing based on what I've read of the man. So this isn't totally correct, but he definately gives off an air about him that turns me off.

It also makes you wonder about this vast highly connected "soul" or higher self. How many times does the "higher self" have to experience being a total psychopath super preditor to finnaly get it and say, "OK, that's what it's like, it was a mistake, let's move on now."

I'm somewhat at a crossroads with these types of situations. On the one hand, I completely agree and am horrified at the loss of life caused by people such as Hussein, Hitler, etc. And yet on the other hand, I see the unbiased compassion, integrity and mercy shown by others in the face of such senseless murder.

Humanity can be so incredibly brutal and merciless at times. But during these times, there are always those who rally and inspire others to heights that equal or surpass the brutality being exhibited. These repeated 'lessons', as you call them, are here for many people to experience and learn from, not just the one doing the actions. I think that is the case in most instances. Anywhere there has been cruelty, death, etc, there are always people willing to stand up and confront it for the good of all. Sometimes its as simple as a high school student standing up for a weaker student being bullied by someone else. And sometimes, like the 1940's, it takes countries to put their foot down and demand an end to the suffering.

I agree that this type of history repeats itself, but I think that for every evil done, somewhere something good also happens to try and stop it. And witnessing not only the horror, but the love, compassion, and sense of justice others show in the face of it, actually inspires more people. If we never experienced these things, or heard about them. Would we truly understand suffering and pain? Would we really understand sacrifice and love?

My sense is that we all experience these things to greater or lesser degrees depending upon where we are in our development and what we had intended to do while incarnate. I don't know, I could also just be way off-base with all of this --- wouldn't be the first time! 

[Goober]

Going by your logic.The person that lives now and wrote that message(YOU) will no longer exist in the afterlife,since you will be your soul again-that had many incarnations.

  My physical body won't exist. I will keep my personality, my interests, my thoughts and my way of thinking them. That's what really makes who a person is, anyway.

[WANDERLEI]

  My physical body won't exist. I will keep my personality, my interests, my thoughts and my way of thinking them. That's what really makes who a person is, anyway.

Of which Life/incarnation will this personality,interests,thoughts be??Unless your talking about multiple personalitty:))

[Hannah b]

Hello all!

I'm recently working on clearing up personal traits (tendencies/fears/ilnesses) that have orgin in past lifetimes. That brings me to a theory that our DNA is closely linked to our "soul", therefore, eachtime we reincarnate, we reincarnate with all the information from the "past" that is written in our every cell.
The practise I do is quite simillar to past life regressions where people heal their ilnesses by healing their past lifetime.
Any inputs on that? 

All the best

[Nay]

I've had this belief for at least ten years now.  

Our cells remember injuries from pastlives and then act accordingly.  For instance, if I was shot in the chest in a past life, this life time I might have a birthmark on said spot or I'll have phantom pains that cannot be diagnosed by doctors.  Then there are phobias that happen because pastlife cell memories.   

A few years ago I became terrified of....don't laugh, of opening the canned biscuit dough.. you know the ones where you have to peel the paper off and then it pops open.  I swear I had anxiety before opening it.. the whole rapid heart beat, shaking and breathing thing.  I thought perhaps it was because I was either killed or wounded by some kind of explosive that went off in my face or very near me.   I have just now gotten over it.  I still have a moment of inner flinching before I open one, but I now can open them by myself again.  I can't be sure if this is a fear memory, but it is interesting.

I also believe age plays a part in the cell memory belief and that things happen around the same time.

Great topic.

[Astir]

  My physical body won't exist. I will keep my personality, my interests, my thoughts and my way of thinking them. That's what really makes who a person is, anyway.

I don't think I'll retain any of these, I don't think they really are important. They are attached to the self. The self always thinks it is special, even though there are billions more just like it 

I too have feared the canned rolls and biscuits. I'm not too sure if I still do, I can't eat them anymore. I do vaguely remember...handing the last one I bought over to someone else to open.

[Goober]

I don't think I'll retain any of these, I don't think they really are important. They are attached to the self. The self always thinks it is special, even though there are billions more just like it 

  If you have no personality, no interests, and all of your thoughts are thought in the exact same way as everyone else, then you would be a robot.

  Are you looking forward to an afterlife of that? 

[Astir]

I'm looking forward to an afterlife of peace and rest. When I imagine it, in my own opinion, retaining this personality in the afterlife qualifies as a form of hell. I can only imagine it of course...but it would seem a great torture to lose everyone I know and love (through death) and realize this...for they are parts of me that mean more than anything else. If I kept this personality, which is already entirely too sentimental, than I would be certain to lament the afterlife.

Could be the mystery behind my souls reasons for reincarnating.

This is the greatest issue...with a human personality can eternity even be handled? I don't believe it can. I think we must shed personality, I don't think we can keep it. I do like who I have become so far, but this persona couldn't handle moving on. I know it could not.

The more I think about it, personality seems formed more by exposure to the physical...life on earth (individual treatment, events, locations, bonds with others or a lack thereof).

[Novice]

I don't think you loose your personality, nor do I think you keep the one you have. On a smaller scale, its more like life. You start with a personality as a baby, and as you grow it develops and changes and evolves. It keeps doing this throughout life.

Its possible that we are each individual personalities, but with each incarnation it/we grow and evolve a bit. So that when we die, the personality we had doesn't die and doesn't remain 'in-full' so to speak, but we take the experiences and we evolve a bit further.

I've met beings in the astral that were quite serious. And have met some that had very dry sense of humor. I joke around a lot and have, on multiple occasionas, had my guides just laughing at me when trying to explain something to me, because I would take one thing they said and start going off on a tangent --  in jest.

There are definately unique personalities and those personalities correspond to, are created to/from or are linked with the unique feeling each entity has.

Again, this has been my experience, so I can only speak to that.

[James S]

I think this is where we need to look at the difference between "ego - personality" and "soul - counsciousness".

Your ego-personality is a part of your physical human self - the body your soul incarnates into. It's your ego-personality that provides  "colour and shape" to your soul-consciousness's perspectives and experience while on earth.

But that ego-personality is never lost. It will always be remembered by the soul-consciousness, which can be described as the ultimate recording device - your soul never forgets anything in any of the lifetimes you've lived. This is part of how the soul grows and evolves through experiences of lifetime after lifetime.

There is absolutely no doubt for me, from all the past life work I've done on myself and with many other people, that our souls do remember everything that's happened to us in previous lives. One reason we don't have immediate access to all these memories is the sheer ammount of information our souls have recorded could not be contained within our physical form. Occasionally though we'll find that some of these memories will leak through from time to time, and certainly past life regression can give you access to a lot of it.   

I also agree completely with what Hannah b said about the effect past lives have on your present DNA. Part of my work at my spiritual institute as a past life regression healer is to help people re-experience past lives to find the root cause of issues that are affecting their current lives, then recreate that past life to allow them to experience that lifetime again but without the major problems that have affected them so much. The resulting healing is often profound. The entirely new understandings and perspectives that come from these healings actually provide "reprogramming" for their DNA. They literally recieve healing on a cellular level.

Blessings,
James.

[WANDERLEI]

So James S you basically saying that "us" who we are right now,our personallity etc will be stored in a souls memory just like a computer stores files??.Hmm that means that i am gonna be  simply a "file" amongst other "files"  put away like old books are put on a shelf??Not too happy with that idea.If i cannot exist and be unique have my own character,thoughts ,fellings etc, then that means to "i do not exist"!!If your theory is true then what is the soul's personallity/character /identity etc because without it how does it exist and is a self thinking/unique being?

[DH]

SS_Patrick,
You've brought up some interesting points.  About karma -- the philosophical systems I've read necessarily link karma and reincarnation -- that is, it's the karma that leads to the incarnations.  If there is no karma, what causes the many incarnations?  DH

[James S]

Hi Wanderlei,

Sorry for taking so long to reply to your question.

I think you've missed the point of what I was saying.
All that you are doesn't just become some bit of information stored in a great cosmic file somewhere.

What I was trying to point out is the soul remembers EVERYTHING! Every thought, every feeling, every experience, everything about your personality makeup, attitudes, the lot, and from every lifetime you've lived.

All those memories, all those experiences go towards making you who you are now.

If we bring it down to a smaller scale.

A lot of who we are right now - our perspectives, personality, rections to situations are all a result of what we have learned and experienced since our birth. Our brain's "wiring" is all done through association. We associate some situations with happiness, while we associate other situations with fear, based on what we've experienced throughout our lives. These associations go a long way to determining our personality and attitudes.

Now that's just within our current lifetime.
Consider this to also be true throughout many lifetimes, with all these associations being registered with our soul. Your soul has a personality. In fact your soul IS a personality based upon what it has experienced. So often this can be seen in little children. You look at the way they do something and think that they can't have learned to react in the way they have. They do so not because of experiences from this lifetime, but because of their soul's memory of past lifetimes which does certainly "leak" a little into our present. lifetime.

To look at your question another way...
How concerned are you about the fact that the personality you had five years ago no longer exists and is now nothing more than a memory within your present personality?

You only ever exist right now. the past is no longer and the future hasn't come. There is only now.

Blessings,
James.

[Golden Light]

I went through hypnotic regression at the Edgar Cayce Ctr in Va. Beach Va. I imagined/remembered three different persons that I was. I don't know how to verify these images. One was in the 40's or 50's I think and I was marrying and then driving wiht my husband along a rocky cliff over-looking a large body of water. Our car went over that cliff and we both died.

Another was in biblical times (?) and I wandered through a marketplace. The next image I had was of being hung. They believed I was a thief. I recall thinking I didn't steal anything.

My last image was of an elderly woman lying in bed. Dying. The window by her bed was open and the curtains  were blowing inside. She was peaceful and I think a family member was with her.  Essentially she'd lived a full life but was waiting to die.

Some interesting notes: I have always been afraid of water and crossing bridges. I don't like crossing bridges as I'm afraid of going over the edge and ending up in the water. I don't like things around my neck - like turtlenecks. Feels constricting. I've been fascinated with Biblical times and I despise lying. Always have.

Anyone have any suggestions for confirming this in my own mind? How does one KNOW if these experiences/images are real?

Golden Light

[AndrewTheSinger]

Only maybe if you could identify specific places, people, dates and events...

[James S]

That's the best way to verify your experience.

After conducting regressions we'll often jump on to Google and do a search for the place / time / event, and far more often than not we'll get some historical info that supports the experience.

I experienced a lifetime as a Roman senator  - I got the time as being around 60AD, and got some quite detailed info about the events of the time particularly in relation to the activities of the Emperor of that time.  When I searched for this I found out about Emperor Titus Flavius Domitianius, and the details of his reign, and the things he did very accurately confirmed what I'd experienced in my regression.

The more freaky regressions I've read about have been about PARALLEL lifetimes, where the person's soul is linked to another person living in their current lifetime. The details from the regression were so accurate they were able to find this other person in real life.


On the flip side you may encounter a lifetime that is so completely alien that you have no possible way to confirm it. When this happens it's a matter of trusting your experience on a heart level and not try to over-analyse it.

Blessings,
James.

[Golden Light]

Thanks James and Andew:

Unfortunately for me, I don't have anything to confirm. Perhaps another regression would give me that but it felt too contrived to me. Like my mind was giving the hypnotherapist something because she asked it of me. Do you know what I mean? And it all felt like my imagination which I have a vivid one!   

Although I've read that imagination is the most important part of most of these type of experiences. (reincarnation remembrance, APing, pyschic abilities...) I've read that the imagination is the part of us that allows our minds to connect on those particular levels.

So, it would seem that those that have a more "active" imagination would have  far greater opportunity for encountering some of these experiences.  Hence why my husband (the accountant, economist) has never experienced such things and doesn't believe they exist AT ALL!   

Golden Light

[AndrewTheSinger]

James S, based on your researches, besides those cases of parallel existences, what is the average time span between lives?

I understand that consciousness is not bound by time like bodies are, but is there a way to have a perspective?


Golden Light, I liked that one of the old woman dying in bed and the wind blowing on the curtains, it's a very suggestive scenario. I think I have been given hints of a past life through AP, but it took me a long while to notice them, and now instead of clarifying things I have even more questions.

[James S]

Hi Andrew,

I don't think there's any way to tell, at least none that I've encountered.
From what I've experienced of my own past lives our souls can tend to jump around a lot in time (and space). My belief here is that our souls will look for a particular situation to help gain a particular experience, and that could place them almost anywhere in time and space.

[Golden Light]

instead of clarifying things I have even more questions. quote from Andrewthesinger

Andrew:

Isn't that the TRUTH! After this regression I just had to wonder, am I making this stuff up? Or did I somehow tap into some memory and maybe I have more in there that if I dig I can get some sort of information that I can cooberate?

That's what I'd hope for as someone suggested earlier. I know I had one name: Anna. But how many Annas are there in this world - millions probably. So, it doesn't really help.

I bought a book called, Past Life Regression for Dummies, and another that is deemed the Last Reincarnation book you'll ever need.  Haven't really sat down to "read" either of them in depth.

But what AP glimpses did you have, Andrew?  IF you can remember.

Golden Light

[Nay]

All the books by Brian Weiss, M.D. are fantastic and I recommend them!

A few years ago after having a very vivid experience as a Roman Soldier, I kept questioning if I really was a soldier.  Some time later I got an answer and it was yes, but in the end I've found I don't care if I'm making it up or not, it's changed my life and has made me who I am today and for that I'm thankful. 

[Golden Light]

TalaNay:

You know, I think I've read a book or two by Weiss. Yeah, I wish I had that attitude about most things - not to worry about it so much.  Like my dreams etc.  But for whatever reason my make-up wants to "know".   

Golden Light