There is a common idea that when we die, we initially experience pure joy, light and peace, but that confronted with a life review and contemplation we feel either unworthy or that we have made mistakes and wish to atone for them, or just have a "do over," and get it right.  To hear some talk of it, this is the prime reason for reincarnation or our incarnations.

From my point of view, life can be so rich in terms of joys, sorrows and experience, that it seems unlikely that we choose to incarnate again out of guilt.  Guilt shares a bed with fear and while I am all for overcoming fear, it seems to me that the beauty in life, the accomplishments which are possible and our presence on earth all should be based on more than mere guilt.

In certain forms of Buddhism, it is felt that we reincarnate if we don't reach enlightenment after death, because of our earthly attractions (lust, greed, etc.).  I'm not sure if I believe this model either.

What we are left with are different views or schools of thought as to why we incarnate in the first place.  Some say it is all planned with advisors to achieve certain spiritual ends.  Others say we are trapped on a karmic wheel of birth and death and rebirth until we "get it right," or remove ourselves from the game.

It would be a shame if guilt or feelings of unworthiness were really the main underlying drive for incarnation - my gut feeling is that there are better reasons for having come into the physical than guilt.


Matthew

Agreed!

Guilt is so relative anyway, since what folks feel guilty about varies so from culture to culture, time period to time. It's hard to choose something to be guilty about so I don't try so hard anymore.
Sometimes I think the whole of life is just a big set of retrievals, that we come to find and offer solace, for ourselves and for others.
Also I think we might be here to rejoice and celebrate this Earth aspect of Creation.
I don't do that well either but I'm trying to do more, even if it's quiet celebration like lighting a candle and offering thankful thoughts.
thanks for the reminder, Doc.

Bets

Incarnating on earth in order to accompany a loved one or guide them seems like a very loving selfless act of monumental proportions.  Essentially it means agreeing to erase your past memories and start from scratch so to speak so that you will be there for your loved one as a father, son, wife, mentor, etc. to help guide them this time around.  But in so doing, you willingly engage in the game of dualism and karma, knowing full well that if your decisions made by free will take you into dark territory, you may yourself become more entangled in the karmic world of the physical.  If that isn't a huge sacrifice, I don't know what is...


Matthew

I don't think its guilt..nor do I think its karma.  I look at it more as education or adventure.

Our home is not here..this is more like a vacation spot, albeit, a very looooong vacation.  A place to explore and experience that does not exist in the astral/nonphysical realms.

I personally believe that most forget where they came from and why they came, which could be the reason for so much "evil"...think children on a long trip in the backseat of the car crying "are we there yet???"

I read that the designer of the Titanic reincarnated to dig up all the history of the building of the Titanic, and explain how it all happened.
He is reportedly alive today, and doing that.

  It seems that Bruce also gives "karma" as one of the reasons too.  This is taken from his account of Curiosity the Probe story. 

  Before i post what he wrote, i would like to say that as parts of Source, there is an innate knowingness of Sourceness and un-Sourceness at some level of our being, and also as parts of Source, we want to be perfectly balanced and loving like Source is, and the combo of these innate knowings, feelings, and energy reaction is what encacts what some call Karma, or what Bruce seems to call in the below "unresolved emotional things, issues,," etc.  When we feel we have made another part of Source/ourself suffer, we feel an innate reaction on a deep Soul level to want to rectify that in some way, and usually we choose to experience in a similar manner what we have given out in order to know the full impact of that kind of out putting of energy on others.   It's not shame, guilt, or other human emotion type things like that, but rather a desire to become more compassionate and loving through actual experience.   If we were fully loving and compassionate to begin with, we wouldn't have done destructive to other/self things to begin with and on some level we know this...however often we try to ignore it while in physical.

   The Bible says it in an odd and severe way, not a way i would put it, but it basically means the same thing as what i was talking about above, when talking about Yeshua and his commonality to us, and how he eventually transcended.  "He learned obediance through the things he suffered."   Not that he was "punished by an outside source" but rather when we do things contrary to our innate inner Source nature, it dogs our conscience and we suffer for it.  If we do it in the physical dimension, we attract and experience it via physical, if nonphysical then through nonphysical.  The more attuned to Source and individual, the more automatic it (that feeling) becomes, and eventually we learn not to act, and out-put in a contrary nature to Sourceness.  Existance is a giant catch 22 in some respects.

  Buddha talked a lot about suffering, and oultined reasons of why we suffer.  For humans in particular, suffering is the great teacher until its no longer necessary or viewed as suffering.

  Bruce's bit on Karma:

"Curiosity repeats the cycle in an almost endless loop
In that first life there were so many things left undone, unexplored and unknown. But most of all there were the emotional things, unresolved, between itself and other Separated beings. Curiosity, still asleep, had to go back again and again to find those beings it had been with before. There were wrongs to right, debts to pay and collections to make for what was due. You can guess what happened. Each time Curiosity went back again, born into a new body and new circumstances, it became further entangled in a bigger emotional web than before. New patterns to join, old ones to combine, the possibilities were endless. It's a good thing time has no meaning because Curiosity spent eons in this almost endless loop."

  Ok, so someone could say, well maybe that is just a mistaken idea on curiosity's part to want to do that, and yet, almost every Soul who has come to earth and who has expressed un-Sourceness seems to do the same thing, this points to a unbelievable universality to this experience, and that, in a sense, karma or karmic reactions and attractions are an innate thing within us.   If there was no Karma, and no innate energy law of like attracts and begets like (which relates to karma), there would be little or no growth/remembrance/full re-awareness with Source once a Soul for whatever reason decides to choose un-Sourceness in consciousness.  There would be little impetus, little pressure.   So i say, thank God for Karma, the great impetus towards growth and the changing of our ways so we can know full and deep happiness again.

  The only way to overcome or transcend karma, is by taking it on (carrying your cross so to speak), and becoming love incarnate, and then not viewing it as suffering, so you become detached to yourself and whatever difficult things from a emotional human perspective, you may be experiencing (which, chances are, you chose on some level).   Yet, easier said than done while actually immersed in this dimension, hence why so many are so consistently stuck among other reasons such as sheer curiosity, addiction, etc.

  So yeah, time to get back to my cup of hot cocao (hhmm addiction and over attachment)..but at least it doesn't hurt or imbalance anyone else... or does it, by making myself unhealthy i eventually may put a greater strain on collective resources, as well as being  emotionally grouchier than i would be if i was more healthy and balanced body wise.   If there is responsibility to self, then there is responsiblity to others and vice versa, because it is the same thing at the end of the day?

  I guess "karma" is self/other responsiblity and energy balancing in action.

Ha ha....

Yes, we are here. We exist. We experience. We love. We laugh. We cry. 

We enjoy the illusion that we know....something.....sometimes.

Pure presence.

We experience the yes. We experience the no.

It is all one.

love, blink

Hi Doc-
Since I'm one of the proponents of the "we really don't want to reincarnate but we generally discover that we have to" school, I'd like to add my two cents worth.

Our state of existence requires whatever we feel that we need in order to be whomever, or whatever, we believe ourselves to be. This requirement is non-negotiable, because it arises as an existential precondition for whatever that existence might be. The association between the felt need and the state for which it is felt is termed "attachment". We generally sense it as desire, craving etc.

There is nothing specifically wrong with the present state of existence as embodied beings, but with that existence, because of its nature, we always have the problems, as Siddhartha put it, of "sickness, old age and death". Buddhism sums that up by saying, "Life is suffering". 

Suffering is caused by bad choices, some of which are inevitable, because in any situation, we have only a 50:50 chance of making the correct decision, reduced by the degree of exploitation by others. We counter this by education, and especially by spiritual education through which we learn of the possibility of living better than by chance alone. Thus we develop morality and rules of behavior, and we migrate toward life with others of similar kind.  We use the term "enlightenment" for the evolving awareness of a better reality, and especially the spiritual meaning of that awareness.

In the end we live in a state called "liberation" or "satchitananda" in which we cease to create negative karma because we have learned how the cause and effect nature of the world operates. And that means that in general everything in the world operates in accord with whatever we do, so that we either make no mistakes, or so that there is always a suitable work-around by which to avoid discomfort. This is the lifestyle of gurus, saints, prophets etc. It can be rigorously defined using relatively simple logic.

There is no overwhelming reason to go on to a different embodiment, except that when we get rid of the body we also get rid of some of its quirks, such as sickness, old age and death. There seems to be a seductive attraction for the blissful experience of existence as a free spirit. With death, the limitations of motion associated with a body are said to fall away. As in an OBE, or deep meditation, there is an awareness of the infinity of love, wisdom and joy that emanates from Godhead, and, to the degree that we messed up, an intense regret that we denied this to ourselves.

The sense of regret is often associated with empathy and compassion, as we directly tend to sense whatever we did to others as something we have done to ourselves. This can lead to guilt, to remorse, to an unbelievable feeling of unworthiness. And, at the same time, it tends to lead to an equally intense desire to "do it right next time".

This is the hinge about which reincarnation seems to revolve. We seek the chance to improve, and to obtain it we accept the risks and problems of a human life. For those who have mastered the human levels, there seem to be a very wide range of spiritual levels of attainment, all of which are a lot more pleasurable. And, all of which bring us much closer to Godhead.  To make an arbitrary choice of being human as opposed to being an advanced spiritual being is thus like choosing a piece of broken glass over a flawless sparkling gem. You can't eat either one, but the gem has more to offer in giving pleasure to the beholder. (And, since everyone is everyone else, we don't lose anything by becoming spiritual.)

It seems that the process of death and reincarnation takes us through a cycle of decisions of this general sort. Notice that these are primary process operations, not thought about in the sense of "how many angels can fit on the head of a pin", but felt, sensed as turnings and impulses of our existential basis, right along with all other primitive emotional states.

In a very fundamental sense, life amounts to the accumulation of emotional states through manipulation of their embodiments in matter, like working at a job to buy a ticket to the opera which gives us pleasure. At death the manipulation ends, rational thinking pauses, and these primitive impulses are what comprises our nature. They manifest as "forces" or "tendencies", and return to us the results of their propagation through the world as a reflection of our existential nature at that time. This is both like "thinking" in the sense that it leads from pre-conditions to conclusions, and also it is like being dragged through a logical knothole because all we are is what we were and what remains. Given that state, we tend toward a rebirth in which we can get rid of our imperfections. Often we are terribly harsh on ourselves in an effort to improve. Reports from regressions appear to support this cycle.

Looked at from "outside", this suggests that after death we perform a sort of "feel how we are" kind of review, and then observe areas in which we wish to improve, which is the attachment that draws us back to embodiment. At the same time, in the spiritual state, as in deep meditation, we are aware that there is a better way to be whatever we are, so that there is a very definite attraction to spiritual growth, and, ultimately, merger back into the Source from which we initially came, together with the experience of unending pleasure, wisdom and love.

The tricky part seems to be that to become one with God we have to give up being human. In its place we become super-human, but in a different way. Rather than a personal life with personal attributes, the super-human state begins to generalize into non-personal, non-individual states. What gets lost is the ego-distinction between self and others, and what is gained is the oneness with all. The end of the process is, as Edgar Cayce put it, "to become co-creators with God". 

Fortunately, all of this becomes quite clear in meditation, which is one of the main reasons for meditating. It's fun!


dave