Good Day, is it possiable for a person on his spritual journey back to the source , along the way instead of progressing towards ones goal degress along the way. Surely if one has freewill then one makes his/her choices along the way then surely it is more than possiable thanks to your ego to move backwards rather than forwards in the jounery of the soul.

Regards rNick

Apparently yes. There's an essential tension between Grace/Buddha nature/higher guidance and unwise  egotistical drives which means it happens unknowingly all the time in most of our lives - we are pulled hither and thither by competing urges.

The process of awakening is often taught as being one of developing the wisdom (intuition and knowledge) and  compassion ( dropping of self interest) necessary for us to come to know and to live in accordance with the former.

The process is subconscious in most, but there's a view that the rate of progress really picks up when the connection becomes real - that is knowledge driven, and consciously experiential.  (when we've some learning under our belts as to the nature of reality and how to live in it, and we've opened spiritually to the point where we consciously seek and to one degree or another experience guidance)

I guess there's a big difference between the perfectly normal straying/unknowingly making unwise calls  from/about what's spiritually wise/in our greatest interest that we all do, and purposely misusing knowledge for nefarious ends or going against what we know as some say happened in the case of some of the South American indian cultures.

It's also possible for the ego to make a comeback or for some that are quite highly realised to get off track, leading to the potential for all kinds of quite serious problems. Some of you can probably quote examples.

There's a view that no matter what happens we all get there in the end, with or without teaching  -  that even the big errors are only temporary diversions. Temporary could mean until tomorrow, or  many lifetimes -  and could entail only a shift in perspective, or if we are slow to respond to intuition a lot of pain.

The good news seems to be that once we are knowingly on the path we may still make some errors, but we don't easily step off...

based on my reading, i'd have to say "yes."  particularly journey of souls by michael newton (great book) mentions people degressing spiritually depending on what they did in that particular life.  i agree free will must mean this is possible.  as i understand it, progressing would mean you move towards love and source (God), and degressing would be moving away from all that.   i'd have to imagine if hitler lived previous lives, he was probably a nicer person in those lives