You can follow the links if you want more on that, but also note that the sceptical scientist Carl Sagan wrote, in one of his books (which I once had a hard copy version of, but no longer do) that some evidence he considered worth investigating further was the past life recall of young children - which Professor Ian Stevenson has done and written about for years (see here).
So ... having got that out of the way ... why?
Why do we reincarnate? Is there a purpose?
In my opinion, yes.
I wrote about that here, which was basically the spiritual evolution (or growth) argument.
I still hold to that opinion, but I would like to add another layer and some nuance to that.
Specifically, what I want to suggest you, Dear Reader, consider, is the notion that one of the attributes to be developed through reincarnation - over the long term, not as a foolish and impossible fantasy of improving over every successive life - is skill with ideas & thinking, including working with/collaborating with others, which also includes taking on responsibility beyond one's personal circumstances.
As I just pointed out, this is a long term trend, based on capability - it does NOT mean something as ridiculous as becoming a leader of a group in one life, a nation the next and the world the life after that.
But it does mean one might, say, learn better ways to communicate in one life, improve one’s empathy and thus ability to distribute tasks in another, learn how to accept responsibility for failures in another and then be reminded to also graciously accept success - and the right balance between team and leader in yet another.
It also means learning to accept, understand, and work with matters such as nuance, complexity, and uncertainty, and how to manage risks and adapt to changing circumstances - often across multiple lives.
And for each of these attributes, just as with the capacity to love, there are skill levels. That means one may be working on, say, basic skill level acceptance of responsibility for failures, advanced skill level gracious acceptance of success, mid-level skill level with nuance, and introductory battles around uncertainty in one life, and a completely different set of skills to do with love.
And when we reach a point where we “graduate” beyond needing to reincarnate, we are doing the equivalent of leaving, say, the highest class of primary school, and starting as the least informed and least skilled at secondary school (although some of our skills may be at a more advanced level, and we are not devoid of skills and thus we will be able to contribute).
The next major level of reality above the physical is the astral, which is essentially emotions, but emotions building on the lessons of the physical.
Above that is the mental, or mind level - which is not devoid of emotions, and definitely is NOT some hyped up version of CBT or Vulcan logic from Star Trek: it is a realm where all aspects of ideas in their purest form, which includes emotions, are examined, refined (including when they do or don’t apply), and developed.
While you think about that, keep in mind also that love is not solely an emotion, it is also something that must be expressed in actions or deeds - and that is where ideas/thinking/concepts (such as the concept of whether something is truly beneficial for a loved one) comes in to play.
The actions by which we express our love (and “just” sitting and being with someone is an action) is the proof of whether or not we have learned and grown.
I’d like to end with the following thought.
The reason we have to learn to look after the physical world is not so we can repeat the same actions or types of actions in the next world: it is so we know to willingly learn what is needed and do in order to look after the next level of reality for the greatest good of all, over time (and most definitely not for the profit greed of a demented few and their brainwashed lackeys).
To look after that world, as with this, requires things like cooperation, communication, perspective, respect, self discipline, comfort with difference (which is really a pre-kindergarten level skill, spiritually), and so on - which are all ideas.
Such ideas are also essential for our growth - which is, in itself, also a concept.
PS - one idea to learn is the value of, as Voltaire warned, not letting the perfect get in the way of the good - that is, delaying doing something because it is “only” good, and not perfect. That mistake can be made for many reasons (often, in my experience, trauma caused by abusive perfectionists causing a fear of mistakes - or trauma caused by abusers in general), but if the good will help more than harm, it should generally be proceeded with
Assumptions / basis
In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following:
- see the initial section of this post;
Possible flaws
Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:
- there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;
- I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2024 NO AI
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