The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes

Who do think you have been in previous lives?

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delalluvia:

--- Quote ---isn't the whole thing about reincarnation that we are supposed to be learning something and we get a life that will teach us? Maybe the people who were in concentration camps and now are gay are supposed to be learning something (what I do not know) and didn't the last time so they are reliving a similar experience??
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That was my thought too, Jess about the point of reincarnation.  If what Louise below says is correct, it may be that humans are forced to have new lives that treat them no better than the last because they didn’t learn the cosmic lesson the first time around simply because they forgot those previous life lessons.

That’s a scary thought.

But I think the point of forgetting a previous life is to be able to adapt comfortably to the newest life.  I imagine it would be extremely traumatic after all to find yourself years or centuries in the future, all that is familiar to you gone and forgotten.  Anne Rice in one of her ‘Vampire’ books has one of her characters explain how poorly adaptable to eternal life some converted vampires are and in the end they don’t survive because they don’t want to.

Again, we assume reincarnation is a divinely driven phenomenon - something we humans undergo to ‘learn’ something for some unknown future betterment goal – Nirvana, paradise, enlightenment, etc.  For all we know, if reincarnation exists, it is simply just one more naturally occurring phenomenon and whatever life we end up in future lives is simply chance. 


--- Quote ---Louisev said The reason why we have buried these memories is because our subconscious mind is a buffer against things that are too overwhelming for us to deal with.   No one can tell us better what our own souls have counseled us to forget, and it is profoundly irresponsible of "past life regressionists" to recite to us things that we do not remember and provoke things under hypnosis.
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ednbarby:
Del said:

"Again, we assume reincarnation is a divinely driven phenomenon - something we humans undergo to ‘learn’ something for some unknown future betterment goal – Nirvana, paradise, enlightenment, etc.  For all we know, if reincarnation exists, it is simply just one more naturally occurring phenomenon and whatever life we end up in future lives is simply chance."

This is exactly how I see it.  Being an atheist, it's the only way I can.

On somewhat of an aside, some people who know my beliefs (or lack thereof) have asked me, "How can you find meaning in a world where everything happens by chance - where there is no *reason* for anything?"  I say that there doesn't have to be a reason for something to be meaningful.  Do we fall in love with another human being for a reason?  Those same people would probably say yes.  But I think that the fact that we are here, that we have evolved far enough that we are connecting with each other in this space, that we do all the things we do every day, is a miracle.  Not a miracle of God, but a miracle of nature.  And that if we embrace how really extraordinary that is, that can give us all the meaning we need.  That extraordinariness is my concept of God.  God to me is not some white-bearded man sitting on a cloud mountaintop.  God is nature.  God is chance.  God is natural selection.  And we are not God's favorites.  Sometimes, God roots for the bacteria.  Or the poisonous snake.  Or the tidal wave.  Or the conqueror.  Sometimes not.  All we can do is hang on and try to enjoy the ride and try to be good to one another in the process.  But then maybe that's just me.

And I'm with you, Louise.  I think some memories are better left buried - or at least until our psyches are ready to handle them.  I used to not believe in "Repressed Memory Syndrome" - I used to be suspicious of people who said that suddenly they were flooded with memories of abuse/molestation from childhood.  I knew my brother had molested me.  Thought I had accepted that.  So in my egotistical way I thought those other people were full of shit.  How wrong I was.  Once my conscious mind was ready to let the memories in, in they came.  And I remembered episodes of abuse and manipulation long buried.  I realized that it wasn't just a few times over a few years.  It was every day.  But had some hypnotherapist forced all that out of me (I question whether they're able to, honestly - a couple have tried and failed) before I was ready, the result could have been devastating.  As it is, I'm at a place in my life where I can handle it - I can handle it to the point that I'm not afraid of sharing it anymore.  And as I have with close women friends and folks here, a startling number of them have admitted that they, too, suffered frequent abuse from an older brother or parent or relative.  For those who need a reason for everything, maybe the reason I'm ready now is because I'm supposed to help other people with it.  But think of all the other people I could have helped years ago had I been ready then.

But I digress.  (And digress, and digress...)

Such an interesting conversation.  I love talking about this stuff.  I should have been a Philosophy major.  That's what I would have truly enjoyed studying, instead of the soul-sucking computer science and math I inflicted upon myself instead.

Kerry:

--- Quote from: louisev on March 24, 2007, 11:34:24 pm ---I have been taught in a legitimate spiritual school, and this school has methods for slowly, safely, and PRIVATELY unfolding our self knowledge by gentle means.  I can describe some of these techniques for those that are interested, and the method is known as Creative Visualization.  And no, it doesnt cost anything.  Unless you remember it yourself, and convince yourself of its veracity, nothing that a hypnotist tells you is really worth a hill of beans.

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I remember reading a book about Creative Visualisation some years ago. It was written by Shakti Gawain.  I would be very interested in learning more from you. Could you explain the techniques here? If so, maybe you should start a new thread. I am very interested in this subject.  :)

Marge_Innavera:

--- Quote from: louisev on March 24, 2007, 11:34:24 pm ---The reason why we have buried these memories is because our subconscious mind is a buffer against things that are too overwhelming for us to deal with.   No one can tell us better what our own souls have counseled us to forget, and it is profoundly irresponsible of "past life regressionists" to recite to us things that we do not remember and provoke things under hypnosis.
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IMO we remember so little about past lives because the physical body we're currently in is where we need to be at present. And human nature being what it is, it would be easy to waste a lot of time and energy by brooding over past bad experiences or reliving good ones.


--- Quote ---Hypnosis is a means of making the conscious will helpless and give direct suggestions to the subconscious mind.  If you surrender your conscious will to some unlicensed, unqualified, and irresponsible person - then what are you really doing?  Seeking truth?  Or setting yourself up as a victim of someone who is after money to facilely and irresponsible dig into your karma and serve up bits on a plate, leaving you devastated.

I have been taught in a legitimate spiritual school, and this school has methods for slowly, safely, and PRIVATELY unfolding our self knowledge by gentle means.  I can describe some of these techniques for those that are interested, and the method is known as Creative Visualization.  And no, it doesnt cost anything.  Unless you remember it yourself, and convince yourself of its veracity, nothing that a hypnotist tells you is really worth a hill of beans.
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Have been regressed twice - once in a private session in 1979, which was when I got my alternate username Talks to Coyotes. And again in a group workshop setting; this time the director gave us a suggestion that anything too upsetting would get blocked out. I had a vivid memory of being in some kind of cart and being taken to an execution. How I died I don't know because there was some kind of barrier in front of what I was looking at. That's why it's so[/i] important to pick the right person. You're opening doors that in "normal" life you're not meant to open and a lot of caution is in order.

I'd be interested in hearing about Creative Visualization!

moremojo:
Interesting topic. I can't say I have anything real concrete to contribute as reply, but I have had a few glimmers or intuitions that might mean something. For example, I have always dreaded fireworks, even as a small child. My grandfather took me and my sister to watch some Fourth of July fireworks when I was very little, and I was terrified. To my grandfather's consternation, I went and cowered in the backseat of the car until the show was over. Later, I have wondered if perhaps in a previous life I might have been a soldier who died in a hailstorm of bullets; perhaps the fireworks remind me of the sights and sounds of the battlefield.

Similarly, I have wondered if my phobias of flying and of outer space (sounds weird, I know) might stem from my having been a pilot or astronaut/cosmonaut who died in the course of performing his duties. It wouldn't be necessary to explain the phobias in these terms, but there might be something there.

I have also had a dream and a mental vision that have provoked speculation in me along these lines. First the dream, which I had quite a few years ago. I awoke once from a dream, recalling the very end of it, and being left with a warm, comfortable feeling. In my dream, I was a woman, clad in a long dress (my surroundings had a nineteenth-century ambience), standing before a window overlooking a courtyard. As I stand watching, a horse-drawn carriage, open (no roof visible), comes into view before the courtyard below, with two males figures seated therein. The man holding the reins was older, and his companion was younger. I feel a sense of great connection to these figures, and am quietly glad to see them. I feel that the older man is my husband, and the younger is my son. As the carriage is brought to a stop, I sense great comfort in knowing that these two are home, as I myself am. And that is when I awoke, with the continued feeling that somehow I had been in a very familiar, comfortable place...indeed, that I had been home.

In my vision, which occurred more recently, I was nursing a very painful, throbbing toothache in bed one night. I had nothing at home to reduce the pain, and was just waiting it out, which was proving to make for one very long night. I decided to quit mentally fighting the toothache, and just meet it head on. I focused on the throbbing sensation...throb, throb, ebb and flow, pain in and pain out, the rhythm of life. I went inside the pain, making no resistance to it. I remembered my visit to Hawaii in 1981, and of the delicious sensation of the soft ocean breeze blowing through the open window into my cousin's bedroom (where I slept) from the beach nearby, and of the soothing sound of the waves breaking upon the shore. I imagined myself back in that nocturnal bliss, and I thought of myself flying over that moonlit beach, past the breaking waves, out over the open ocean. I flew over those inky waters, my spirit borne by the nurturing wind, and my thoughts turned to the ancient Polynesians who had once traversed these uncharted seas, and of how they were like our modern astronauts, peering and probing fearlessly, deeply into the unknown. In my mind's eye a vessel appeared below me--a long wooden craft being steered by strong men, their boat being peopled by their women and their children, their goods and their animals, forging through foreign waters for a new home. I honed in on this slender yet sturdy ship, and focused on a young mother holding and tending her little baby. I focused deeper and deeper into this maternal vignette, as if I became that child, being loved and protected amid the surroundings of that starry sky and those murky waters, so tiny yet so safe. My pain faded away, and I slept.

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