Quote:I had suggested the possibility of this deep seated mistrust as an issue that goes back many lifetimes. This phenomenon (of issues repeating themselves over lifetimes) is better understood when one considers the purpose of physical incarnations.
I went ahead and clicked on the link you provided and read some of the discussion there about this issue. I can only say that I believe this understanding of karma and reincarnation must be erroneous, if we are to have hope for the progress of the soul.
My reasoning is simple: Even with a hundred, a thousand, a million lifetimes, no human being is capable of fundamentally altering his or her nature. One's nature is given, determined, pre-programmed by God or whatever you want to call the Master Creator of the universe. If God has determined that a person will have certain proclivities and attitudes, it is only God that can ever change that, not the individual.
Consider the issue of tastes. Do you like the taste of a cheeseburger? If so, no amount of refraining from eating cheeseburgers is ever going to purge your desire to eat one. Even after 50 years without a cheeseburger, the pangs of craving will still accost you when the thought of a cheeseburger comes to mind. Someone else, on the other hand, might hate cheeseburgers and no amount of eating them will ever change that -- he will simply always dislike the taste, as a God-given feature of his being.
Similarly, one cannot voluntarily overcome any desire, attitude, or personality trait through individual effort. One can only repress undesirable aspects of one's being or cultivate positive aspects by choice that might grow to become stronger than the others. But only God can "un-make" a person and "re-make" the person into something else, a new creature. Divine grace is necessary for true progress to occur, rather than simply building new subconscious defense mechanisms, schemes of the superego, and resulting conflictedness and fragmentation of being.
For this reason, the karmic view of reincarnation in which people are cursed to endure life after life of repeating the same mistakes because it's in their very nature, unless they can somehow choose to systematically defy their nature and create for themselves a new nature (which is virtually impossible), makes little sense if the universe is ruled by a God of goodness and love. It's like a hamster running on a wheel -- he expends a lot of effort, but never gets anywhere. I personally choose not to accept this view of reality, because I find it hopeless and depressing. I prefer to believe in a God who is willing and able to transform each and every one of us, knowing that we can never do it through our own efforts alone. I find this belief provides me with hope that cannot be found in some other belief systems.
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