Reincarnation

[lunaticheathen]

Well, as always, I'm the monkey wrench in the works.

 

I've remembered past lives. Dozens of them. Few of them are complete, but I've recalled enough to be pretty damn convinced of reincarnation. I don't know exactly how it works, or why, but I've experienced it, so it would be pretty damn tough to convince me otherwise at this point. Also had two of my friends positively confirm my memories with their own, from their perspectives, because they were there in a past life as well.

 

And no, I have never been Cleopatra or Napoelon, or anyone terribly famous or important. Most of the time, I was quite poor. There are exceptions, of course.

 

I know one of my friends says she recalls a past life as a hyena, so if I'm to believe her memories of the lives I was in, I suppose I'll trust her on this one, and say souls can travel between humans and other animals. As far as aliens, or Otherkin, I've never really experienced that, so I hold a very skeptical agnostic stance. I mean, maybe, but honestly, what I believe and live with every day is weird enough.

[Margee]

Well, as always, I'm the monkey wrench in the works.

 

I've remembered past lives. Dozens of them. Few of them are complete, but I've recalled enough to be pretty damn convinced of reincarnation. I don't know exactly how it works, or why, but I've experienced it, so it would be pretty damn tough to convince me otherwise at this point. Also had two of my friends positively confirm my memories with their own, from their perspectives, because they were there in a past life as well.

 

And no, I have never been Cleopatra or Napoelon, or anyone terribly famous or important. Most of the time, I was quite poor. There are exceptions, of course.

 

I know one of my friends says she recalls a past life as a hyena, so if I'm to believe her memories of the lives I was in, I suppose I'll trust her on this one, and say souls can travel between humans and other animals. As far as aliens, or Otherkin, I've never really experienced that, so I hold a very skeptical agnostic stance. I mean, maybe, but honestly, what I believe and live with every day is weird enough.

 

lunaticheathen, Why do you think that some people have the ability to remember and most don't? Shit, I can't remember what I did yesterday?? It's almost like you got 'blessed' with something that I didn't and I find myself to be a little jealous, but I'll pretend I'm not..............

[mcdaddy]

People in the bible thought reincarnation happened so it must be true right? Thought John the Baptist was Elijah reincarnated, thought Jesus was JTB reincarnated, theres other cases i cant remember off hand...it must be true!

[lunaticheathen]

Margee, that's one of those things I don't have an answer to. I don't know if you can't, or unconsciously won't, or if something entirely different is happening. If it's your first life? I honestly have no idea.

 

I have little understanding of how I remembered this myself. I didn't go for any regression hypnosis, I didn't even think much about past lives until I started dreaming about them - then spacing out in class, seeing and feeling myself elsewhere and when, then waking up and realizing I wasn't thinking in english.

 

Also, it's not as much of a blessing as it is this weird shit that happens to me that maybe 2 people in the whole world that I know understand, and is at best a way to learn about myself, even if it can be a nuisance, and at worst, a replay of horrible, violent, painful and sad memories. It's not like I dream about my "soul mate" every night and look for him in the daylight - last past life dream I had, I woke up, barely able to move, because I was still sore from the beating my husband gave me. I even checked to see if I still had all my teeth, it was so much like I had just re-lived it.

 

Some parts of the spiritual life are not for the faint of heart.

[Margee]

Margee, that's one of those things I don't have an answer to. I don't know if you can't, or unconsciously won't, or if something entirely different is happening. If it's your first life? I honestly have no idea.

 

I have little understanding of how I remembered this myself. I didn't go for any regression hypnosis, I didn't even think much about past lives until I started dreaming about them - then spacing out in class, seeing and feeling myself elsewhere and when, then waking up and realizing I wasn't thinking in english.

 

Also, it's not as much of a blessing as it is this weird shit that happens to me that maybe 2 people in the whole world that I know understand, and is at best a way to learn about myself, even if it can be a nuisance, and at worst, a replay of horrible, violent, painful and sad memories. It's not like I dream about my "soul mate" every night and look for him in the daylight - last past life dream I had, I woke up, barely able to move, because I was still sore from the beating my husband gave me. I even checked to see if I still had all my teeth, it was so much like I had just re-lived it.

 

Some parts of the spiritual life are not for the faint of heart.

I understand. Thank you luna. Do you feel that you know what you have to learn right now in this incarnation, because you can remember those other lives?

[Voice]

Well, as always, I'm the monkey wrench in the works.

 

I've remembered past lives. Dozens of them. Few of them are complete, but I've recalled enough to be pretty damn convinced of reincarnation. I don't know exactly how it works, or why, but I've experienced it, so it would be pretty damn tough to convince me otherwise at this point. Also had two of my friends positively confirm my memories with their own, from their perspectives, because they were there in a past life as well.

 

And no, I have never been Cleopatra or Napoelon, or anyone terribly famous or important. Most of the time, I was quite poor. There are exceptions, of course.

 

I know one of my friends says she recalls a past life as a hyena, so if I'm to believe her memories of the lives I was in, I suppose I'll trust her on this one, and say souls can travel between humans and other animals. As far as aliens, or Otherkin, I've never really experienced that, so I hold a very skeptical agnostic stance. I mean, maybe, but honestly, what I believe and live with every day is weird enough.

 

lol

I like that you're the 'monkey wrench in the works' as the one person so far on a reincarnation thread who believes in reincarnation.

 

I was just joking about the alien thing, but it's really fun to think about. If you look at it like that, and i was once an alien, i would havestepped down to something like an animal (my present form) from the point of view of an alien.

Aren't Hindu's the ones who believe cattle are sacred because they were once people? It's an Arabic faith that believes this right?

 

 

 

I had a section up in that first long post about our energy dispersing at our deaths. I'll bring back just this short bit now...

The fact that energy we embody right now disperses when we die is measurable, observable. What isn't measurable or observable is spirit energy which is why people either believe it or not.

Suppose a trans-dimensional energy, an intelligent energy intersects with our biological/biochemical energies, and that when we die and our life energy disperses, this intelligent energy retains a memory and persists.

[lunaticheathen]

Some days, I feel like I have everything to learn. I don't have any feeling of certainty when it comes to "what I have to learn." Maybe I'm here to learn how to see what I need to learn, hah!

If I had to guess, patience and self-control would be high on the list.

[Noggy]

Margee, that's one of those things I don't have an answer to. I don't know if you can't, or unconsciously won't, or if something entirely different is happening. If it's your first life? I honestly have no idea.

 

I have little understanding of how I remembered this myself. I didn't go for any regression hypnosis, I didn't even think much about past lives until I started dreaming about them - then spacing out in class, seeing and feeling myself elsewhere and when, then waking up and realizing I wasn't thinking in english.

 

Also, it's not as much of a blessing as it is this weird shit that happens to me that maybe 2 people in the whole world that I know understand, and is at best a way to learn about myself, even if it can be a nuisance, and at worst, a replay of horrible, violent, painful and sad memories. It's not like I dream about my "soul mate" every night and look for him in the daylight - last past life dream I had, I woke up, barely able to move, because I was still sore from the beating my husband gave me. I even checked to see if I still had all my teeth, it was so much like I had just re-lived it.

 

Some parts of the spiritual life are not for the faint of heart.

 

Why do you think these are past lives and not just really vivid dreams? I have stuff like this from time to time, but a lot of the things that happen arent even physically possible. (Entire movies playing out with me being on the moon is not a past life), even though when I am IN the scenario, I am absolutely sure it is real. I'll even look around and try to figure out if its a dream or not. If I can figure out its a dream, it usually becomes a fairly lucid one, and sometimes completely so.

[Foxy Methoxy]

I used to date a kinky yoga instructor who told me I was a Roman centurian who raped and murdered her in a previous life.

 

She liked to be choked during coitus.

[Noggy]

What do you mean noggy? Can you explain that a little more?

 

It seems to me that life and death are two sides of the same coin. You look at someone who is dying, for instance, one moment they are there, the next moment they aren't. What changed? Hardly anything, if anything at all, but in one moment someone is full of "life" and in another they are not. You didn't get a brand new coin, it just flipped over for awhile, giving you a different perspective on the same thing.

[Deva]

People in the bible thought reincarnation happened so it must be true right? Thought John the Baptist was Elijah reincarnated, thought Jesus was JTB reincarnated, theres other cases i cant remember off hand...it must be true!

 

I think I am pretty safe in saying that most of us here at Ex-C do not accept the Bible as an authority.

 

Certainly I have heard that reincarnation was accepted by some early Christian churches but since the Catholic Church condemned it as heresy centuries ago, you will hardly find any church that supports it.

 

Aside from the Bible, do you think there is any validity to reincarnation, why or why not?

[Deva]

I used to date a kinky yoga instructor who told me I was a Roman centurian who raped and murdered her in a previous life.

 

She liked to be choked during coitus.

 

Foxy, could we please not have the graphic sexual detail?

[Foxy Methoxy]

People in the bible thought reincarnation happened so it must be true right? Thought John the Baptist was Elijah reincarnated, thought Jesus was JTB reincarnated, theres other cases i cant remember off hand...it must be true!

 

They were all reincarnations of Enoch.

[VacuumFlux]

What most influnces us, our genetics or our experiences? I don't really know.

 

Experiences (speaking personally, not exactly scientifically). Genetics are just the blueprint, and humans even emerge from the womb with environmental differences just from the exact conditions they experienced there. It's like in an art class, you give everyone the same sheet of paper, the same materials, the same subject matter... and every picture comes out different. That's why there's things like the birth order effect on male sexuality (a woman who's had a boy or few already will produce different chemicals in her uterus, so boys with older brothers are slightly more likely to end up gay). I am not defined by my DNA, even though it can have a strong effect on me.

 

As to how that relates to reincarnation, I would say that if it happens, the physical circumstances of my current life, of this body, my DNA, my brain... all of that seems to have a stronger impact on who I am than any experiences I bring in from a past life. I have had no experiences that lead to me to believe I had any existence before this current life. I have often been told that I seem older than I am (though no one has used the term "old soul"), but I did spend most of my childhood around adults instead of peers, so I have no idea if that means anything. I am much more inclined to believe that ghost type experiences are like echoes than a person still being around, that somehow we can imprint on the world around us and leave a mark. That seems a particularly compelling explanation to me since many ghost experiences seem tied to a physical location. Not sure what it is that we'd be imprinting onto, though.

 

Does anyone who believes in reincarnation think that souls can "go along for a ride" in a body instead of being the animating force behind that life? Would that explain why some people have past life memories and others don't?

[Deva]

I agree Vigile. Everything would have to be identical in the next life...same parents......same moments in time, etc.......

 

So that would mean that who you are right now, will not be the same person in the next life. If it is all about matter and energy - then it would only be the 'energy' going back to be reincarnated.......right? One would still have to grieve their own death knowing that you will never know yourself again. I know I'm rambling.....am I on the right track?

 

One of the core questions in this is - what is it that makes "you" a continuity - even while you are alive right now? Certainly we have had many changes since all of us were children but does there not seem to be something holding us as "persons" together? Is it memory alone? Is it a part of the physical body? If it is a part of the physical body - residing in the brain - we know that this goes.

 

I am just throwing out possibilities and questions. Of course to duplicate "me", everything would have to be the same. My thought is that could this reoccur given billions of years and billions of planets? It is really unimaginable how long the universe is going to last.

 

Ultimately, if all reality is just energy changing forms - in what way can we say anything is really born or dies?

 

How can something come into being and just disappear?

[lunaticheathen]

I was just joking about the alien thing, but it's really fun to think about. If you look at it like that, and i was once an alien, i would havestepped down to something like an animal (my present form) from the point of view of an alien.

 

Oh, back in my days when I was trying to run a student pagan society in college, I met some strange people (stranger than me!). One of them claimed he was actually a 1000 year old alien warrior. I was just very "mmk, that's cool" until he brought a battle-ready katana on campus to our meeting. That shit did not fly with me. If it was at his apartment, I honestly would have been "ooooh, sharp and shiny!" but at my meeting, on campus, where he was just all "hurr hurr, I piss on da rules"...no, not shitting on my project like that. I suspect he was just insane.

 

Aren't Hindu's the ones who believe cattle are sacred because they were once people? It's an Arabic faith that believes this right?

 

It is Hindus, and they are not Arabs. Arabs are from the Arabian Peninsula (today, most of it is Saudi Arabia), and are ethnically entirely different.

 

I had a section up in that first long post about our energy dispersing at our deaths. I'll bring back just this short bit now...

The fact that energy we embody right now disperses when we die is measurable, observable. What isn't measurable or observable is spirit energy which is why people either believe it or not.

Suppose a trans-dimensional energy, an intelligent energy intersects with our biological/biochemical energies, and that when we die and our life energy disperses, this intelligent energy retains a memory and persists.

 

Something like that. I have a lot of thoughts about this that are ill-defined, and Kemetic Orthodoxy helps little, since it takes a "not sure/not important" stance on it. Though, in that terminology, the Ka would not pass on to another life, since my present ka is the only "me" ka there is - it's utterly unique. It persists after death, but does not live in another body. The Ba, however, travels to the Duat to be judged, and, it would seem, "travels" more than the Ka - seems like the Ka just sticks around (ghosts?). If any part of the spirit/soul would go to another body, it would be the Ba, I suppose. Yet the Kemetics, ancient and modern, write nothing about reincarnation.

 

While there is nothing in KO that prohibits belief in reincarnation, there is nothing supporting it either. And it has been one of the things I ponder on, how it might fit with the vows I took - and I think it does. Because I can't see a new faith taking away the belief in what I have experienced.

[Foxy Methoxy]

I used to date a kinky yoga instructor who told me I was a Roman centurian who raped and murdered her in a previous life.

 

She liked to be choked during coitus.

 

Foxy, could we please not have the graphic sexual detail?

 

Sorry I offend your politeness standards and sensibilities but it is a true story and illustrates the bizarre fantasy world of some reincarnation mindsets. Some people who believe in reincarnation do so as a part of a greater religious belief system based on the idea that a soul is very powerful and moves from body to body intact. Others believe in reincarnation as an escape mechanism for their private fantasies.

[lunaticheathen]

Why do you think these are past lives and not just really vivid dreams? I have stuff like this from time to time, but a lot of the things that happen arent even physically possible. (Entire movies playing out with me being on the moon is not a past life), even though when I am IN the scenario, I am absolutely sure it is real. I'll even look around and try to figure out if its a dream or not. If I can figure out its a dream, it usually becomes a fairly lucid one, and sometimes completely so.

 

Certainly, not all of my dreams are of past lives, that's not the case. I'm not exactly sure how to explain how past life dreams are different from the "regular" dreams, but I'll try.

 

I know you said you dream vividly, but these dreams are almost beyond vivid. And I have a distinct sensation of being me but not me as I am now. I once even looked at my reflection in a glass table, and it wasn't my present 14 year old face, or even what it might grow into. I was a woman, blonde, in 1940's make-up and dress, and had a husband. I know that's no "proof", but it was clear in my mind that something besides "just a dream" was happening.

[Margee]

What do you mean noggy? Can you explain that a little more?

 

It seems to me that life and death are two sides of the same coin. You look at someone who is dying, for instance, one moment they are there, the next moment they aren't. What changed? Hardly anything, if anything at all, but in one moment someone is full of "life" and in another they are not. You didn't get a brand new coin, it just flipped over for awhile, giving you a different perspective on the same thing.

 

how can you say this noggy, the person is now d-e-a-d !

[Deva]

 

Sorry I offend your politeness standards and sensibilities but it is a true story and illustrates the bizarre fantasy world of some reincarnation mindsets. Some people who believe in reincarnation do so as a part of a greater religious belief system based on the idea that a soul is very powerful and moves from body to body intact. Others believe in reincarnation as an escape mechanism for their private fantasies.

 

If you had gone into detail as you did here with your reason for relating the story, I would have passed it by. I am sure some people do use the belief in reincarnation as an escape, as many other beliefs are used.

[Noggy]

 

Ultimately, if all reality is just energy changing forms - in what way can we say anything is really born or dies?

 

How can something come into being and just disappear?

 

It can't, and it doesn't. Thats why life and death are the same.

[Noggy]

What do you mean noggy? Can you explain that a little more?

 

It seems to me that life and death are two sides of the same coin. You look at someone who is dying, for instance, one moment they are there, the next moment they aren't. What changed? Hardly anything, if anything at all, but in one moment someone is full of "life" and in another they are not. You didn't get a brand new coin, it just flipped over for awhile, giving you a different perspective on the same thing.

 

how can you say this noggy, the person is now d-e-a-d !

 

But physically, nothing has changed. Think, all of the electrons and atoms and stuff are all in one little spot, and then in that exact moment of death, everyone of those is just shifted the most infitisimel distance. Thats the only physical difference. There is no difference between life and death.

[Voice]

Does anyone who believes in reincarnation think that souls can "go along for a ride" in a body instead of being the animating force behind that life? Would that explain why some people have past life memories and others don't?

 

Actually, J talked to me about that too. She called them "walk-in's". She believed that sometimes a person could get to a place in their life where they would just give up. Die inside from defeat. At that time, another soul waiting in the "station" might step in and take over. She used evidence from accounts where someone was of a certain character into their young adult life, then one day after some events or trauma or something, they would change and seem to become someone else.

 

 

Are you suggesting the possibility of 2 individual souls being in one person at the same time? I know people think of demon possession, that would be more than one.

[Deva]

Does anyone who believes in reincarnation think that souls can "go along for a ride" in a body instead of being the animating force behind that life? Would that explain why some people have past life memories and others don't?

 

Actually, J talked to me about that too. She called them "walk-in's". She believed that sometimes a person could get to a place in their life where they would just give up. Die inside from defeat. At that time, another soul waiting in the "station" might step in and take over. She used evidence from accounts where someone was of a certain character into their young adult life, then one day after some events or trauma or something, they would change and seem to become someone else.

 

 

Are you suggesting the possibility of 2 individual souls being in one person at the same time? I know people think of demon possession, that would be more than one.

 

Granting that the soul or individual consciousness survives death, I see no reason why this could not happen. A soul going into a body - occupied or not.

[mymistake]

I'm the other monkey wrench.

 

Even memories about this life are mostly imaginary. It has been shown time and time again that memories from events that happened years ago differ dramatically from memories of the same events recored within a few hours after those events. We don't really remember but rather we rewrite.

 

In a physical sense the atoms in our bodies were part of many other living things. And after we die the atoms in our bodies will usually become part of the environment again and after time has passed will become part of new living things. However the consciousness of each human is unique and there is no reason to think it survives past death. Even if it did why would it go into the mind of a new human or a new animal? No other animal seems to have the complexity of consciousness that we have. Where does our consciousness hang out when it doesn't have a body? Our population has exploded so that there have been more people alive in the last 100 years than lived in all the years before that. Where does new human consciousness come from to make up for the deficiency? Of course there is much we don't know about the topic.

 

The simplest explanation is that each human brain forms one human consciousness and there is no reincarnation.