I agree, Doc,
especially with what you brought out in the 2nd paragraph. We are here to love.  So it's not only that we're gathering learning, but we have to give love, a positive energy/emotion to add to this morass.
Humans are capable of loving in more complicated situations, in spite of various flaws or blockages. So if we came and were a rapist, maybe that is the only role that gives us credibility to some souls we love.(  I don't mean the victim! Maybe the rapist's family needs to see a rapist's life up close. ) and want to help. Ever watch the TV reality show "Dog, the Bounty Hunter"?  He has compassion for the lawbreakers he must deal with. They experience his love (usually). Would he have as much impact on their lives if he were a traffic officer or even a priest?
Earth School is dirty sometimes.
bets

  Good point John, attachment, though it's not the whole of it in my beliefs.

Hi Dave,


I don't think of you as arrogant, in fact I think were we not on opposite coasts, I might have tried a past life regression or hypnosis with you.  Or at least had some good discussions.

To take this thread to the next level, let us imagine, if you will the moment we shed our earthly body.  Dave suggests that being exposed to the light/love, we will feel so unworthy that we will want to incarnate again to make amends.  I certainly can imagine this feeling.  However, most NDEs do not support an immediate return after being in the light.  

Now take some of the more advanced souls on this forum.  People who have experienced meditation, thought things through.  Bruce, Alyssia, Kathy, Marilyn, Kyo, Dave, etc.   Ok, now you may or may not be going through a life review.  You see where you came up short expressing love, where your flaws are.  However, from these discussions and your earth years, you also realize that living as a human being, you can't "get it right," per se or "wrong."  So then, if you carry your rational mind with you, you say "I feel unworthy in the face of all this PUL," however I understand now.  I tried my best under the circumstances.  The deck was stacked on the earth plane, however.  It is not an environment where it is easy to be a saint.  Deceit, lies selfishness are mixed in from our earliest experiences.  Eventually, we realize that love and unity are the way; I know this now."  We say all this to the light.

So Dave, imagine that conversation.  And they play back a scene where you could have been more loving but didn't act so.  Wah, wah.  Are you to tell me that your sharp insights into love and unity of all things won't be there with you?  If they are, you may simply be interested in expressing love and approaching unity with God.  You may state that as a fact.  And you may choose to help others on this new spiritual plane, without reincarnating.  

If you have no insight that can be brought with you, then yes there would be a powerful impetus toward giving it another shot.  The shame of seeing those acts of human imperfections may want to have us give it another go.  But with our enlightened attitude we can see that human imperfections are part of being human.  This is no sin or crime, and there is no shame in it.  

I like what John said about attachments to earthly things being a strong primal attraction of spirit back to incarnate.  This, I believe is talked of in the Tibetan book of the dead among other sources.

I also think that would was said about a part of the group soul sending a new probe out, instead of an old soul electively wiping his/her memory may be equally valid, and a different form of reincarnation.  In this way, the Dave entity, part of group soul number 45657 returns to the spiritual realm, and continues to evolve, but group soul number 45657 may send out another incarnation, a new one with the specific goal of resolving issues that the Dave entity didn't "get right."  If this new incarnation, let us call him Solomon does a past life regression, he may feel closely related to Dave MBS.  However, David's soul is continuing to evolve on the spiritual plane, where he is helping others.  

This is what I mean by many paths, and a flaw I believe in New Age thinking (of which I am a part).  In our discussions of good and evil with Kyo, it came out that there was no absolute good or evil, right or wrong.  The closest thing to right action came in acting cosmoethically and getting closer to God.  However, look for a moment at the notion of reincarnation;

the soul has a life review, feels it got things wrong, and wishes to make amends.  But wait a minute.  There is no right or wrong.  You can't have it both ways, guys.  If there is no right or wrong ultimately, you have the life review, have regrets, but say "I was exploring my dark side, but I'm sorry"  and you move on.  

Do I think, with all of this pontificating that I can determine with certainty whether most of us return to the Earth School again and again, or whether it is a new probe from our familiar disc, or whether past lives are, as Don suggests a mind-meld with other discarnate entities?  Of course not.  I won't know until my time comes, or unless I am gifted through grace to travel to the astral realms.  I did, however feel it important to go through these discussions, and question the belief system that most accept called reincarnation.


Matthew

Kathy,

Thanks for your insightful post (as usual).  I agree with everything you have said.  The notion of reincarnation is, I am sure in my gut different than a defined separate soul trying to "do it all again to get things right."  If you take this to a personal level, Kathy, imagine yourself during a type of life review.  You have these insights, you see the unity of things, and understand the concepts.  Would this understanding be stripped away from you and only your regrets at not living up to PUL all the time draw you, yourself back to the Earth School?  I think it unlikely.  If, as a unique entity who is really part of the greater whole (and knows she is), you decided to dive in again, for your own reasons, you would.  If you wanted to explore the spiritual realm, the notion of love and assistance there and unity, you would not reincarnate.

Swedenborg and many new age sources credit each person as having discarnate guides/helpers with them to help and assist them in the earth school.  With 4+ billion earth souls we would have perhaps 30 billion + discarnate entities who are in the spiritual realm.  Swedenborg claims most of these are former human beings, now become "angels," as he saw them.  My point in this thread is not to discredit reincarnation, but to make us think outside of the box.  Sometimes in being open minded, we take certain paradigms (that we will all come back to earth again and again) for granted.  

The evidence is there, as I cited that there are many paths to enlightenment/unity with God.  As Dave pointed out, few, but some achieve this while alive on the physical plane.  But what about us?  What of those on this board who may learn and feel deep spiritual concepts and truths?  The idea that I'm going to have to dive in as a new born babe again, currently does not at all suit my idea/concept of spiritual evolution.  So I look for the evidence, and I question, probe and meditate on life.  

While I am usually on the same page as most on this board, reincarnation is a sticking point with me.  I can more likely believe in a group soul to which I am a part, which upon my death may send out another Matthew type probe, with some of my spiritual makeup, but who would not be me.  My energy/vibrations would be on whatever spiritual plane I evolved into.  If the future Matthew probe then were to lie down on Dave's hypnosis couch, he might see me as a past life.  This is different than me, Matthew staying as a discrete energy unit and having my memory "washed," and then being reborn (living, perishing, and then having the old memories restored).  


Matthew

Hi Matthew- someone needed for me to eat a little crow, and it's always a beneficial diet.

Let me try to explain the sensation - although I can never express the intensity. All of us have loved ones, and we all know that they treasure and love certain things, of no importance here. I'll use the term "Mom" because that's a common loved one for most of us. 

Let's say that you decided to steal a cookie of two, despite being told that it would make Mom unhappy because it would damage your teeth etc. So you grab the loot and run off to a hiding place, and in the process you break the cookie jar - only too late to remember that it had been left to Mom by her Great Aunt Gussie whom she revered.  So you come out of hiding with crumbs on your face and find Mom sitting and looking at the broken cookie jar. In that instant you sense that she has unlimited and unconditional love for you, and that your actions are shabby, uncaring. All kinds of rationalizations run through your mind, "Can I deny it?" or "Can I just apologize and say it doesn't matter?" or "Can I find a different way to look at the situation?" and so on.  No intellectual ploy offers salvation because of the deep sense that what was intended to be an innocent act of disobedience has turned out to be a violation, a betrayal of Mom's love. The sensation is kind of like guilt, kind of like fear, kind of like confusion, but intensely regretful. So intensely regretful that you'd do anything to keep from hurting Mom ever again. So you disown that way of living, take up a better way and go back to the world.  We've all had this, or a similar, experience.

Now, take this family scene and imagine that instead of Mom, who is at least human and somewhat limited in love by human frailties,  you are in the presence of God, the Ultimate Essence of Love. While in this life we have the ability to think intellectually. Without a body and its brain to store multiple tasks, you think only with emotions.  There's no way out, it just feels really bad. It feels so bad that  the soul would do anything to make it stop. It isn't physical pain, it's a pain that cuts deeply into the essence of our being, at the root level where love is felt, and we feel it as a violation of everything tht we ever held valid, including our own existence.

Hippies taking LSD occasionally were able to reach this state without preparation, and invariably reported a "bum trip" of such magnitiude that many fled fom sanity in order to avoid the sensation of regret, self-loathing, and despair due to this or that violation. Because these are not cognitive feelings, and because these feelings are far deeper than cognitive and intellectual ratiocinations, there is no way to argue that "they aren't really important".  There is only the terrible sense of regret, failure, unlovability etc.

Working with entities that get stuck on other people, I've found that invariably they have only a single track "mind". It uses affective signs and signals to communicate about the immediate situation, instead of abstract symbolisms and external references that can include alternative interpretations. This makes it easy to work with them, because they only need to be put at ease so that they can again accept love, and then sent off to the light.

This single track one-pointed affective language of signs and signals appears to be the language of the spirit world. There is essentially no "thinking" in the cognitive sense, but there is feeling and responding in an emotional sense, through which we maintain an active and participatory presence. 

As an example, a woman regressed and described life as a refugee in WW II Italy, fleeing until she was caught and killed. Then she went to "stand in a long line of people who were waiting for something terrible that had to happen".  She later identified this as another war. There was no argument, it was simply a fact that this is where she had to be because this is where her identity was valid, and nowhere else. She felt it necessary to be here and to stay here because that's who she was. In the same way, our "thoughts" and feelings in the spirit world are "who we are", and we can't think up clever rationalizations to change anything. All we can do is to "BE our own response" as we adopt a superior lifestyle for next time.

This is quite difficult to explain, but I hope you got the gist of it.

The inability  to recall past lives is a decision made in this life. My 3 year old grand-daughter was playing and my wife asked her, "Where did you come from, Athena?" She said, "Out of Mommy's tummy." My wife continued, "And where did you come from before that?" Without missing a beat she replied, "Oh, I was a cook." (She's a dead ringer for her great-great-grandfather who was a merchant marine chef.) All kids seem clear on such matters,  but we talk them out of it by age 6. "Shut up, kid. That isn't real."

I have a "How-To" on my site if you want to play with this.  It's in the "things to read" pages. You'll find that all you have to do is to look inside and you'll find past lives.

Ugh - I still recall having that feeling of regret! And all I can do is to accept it, I screwed up and am now doing all that I can to live a better life, because anything else is not living.

dave

I understand Dave's point well, and I think there is much to what he says.  I still haven't gotten an answer to my question.  If we maintain our wisdom and experience, if Dave crosses over, let us say, couldn't he accept his flaws and shortcomings, and look into the light and say "I see my shortcomings as well as my successes, I now wish to learn more about love and unity."  And then not choose to go back to to the earth school.

Learning to love does not require wiping our memory.  Evolution occurs in many ways. 

I'd also be interested in Dave, Kathy and Alyssia's and anyone else's take on whether the actual entity reincarnates, or the newly incarnated earth form is not a different probe, so to speak of the same disc.

I do respect Dave and his views a heck of a lot, and I am just trying to make sense of things.

Dave, can you feel that inifinite regret, but realize the unity of all things, the end goal of samadhi, and choose to evolve on the spirtual planes?


Matthew

Thanks for the info, Cosmic, yes I have read NDEs quite similar.  People feel at peace in the light, and don't want to leave, according to the NDEs reported.  I believe that we pursue the spiritual realms for as long as suits us and then, we may choose to reincarnate or a disc member may, if it seems right, who incorporates some of our experience with him/her into the new incarnation.

This is not a simple issue, and I think, I'm going to try a past life regression at some point to satisfy my curiousity.  Probably with Dave's help.

M