Reincarnation

[Fishkill]

I've been preoccupied with the idea of reincarnation lately, I think everyone thinks about it sometimes, and I would love to hear people's thoughts on the validity of this concept. I keep having these dreams that seem to be telling me that we are reincarnated as the answer to a strong wish we had in the life that is ending. In one of these dreams, a dream entitled "This Alternative Life" (My dreams give themselves titles sometimes), It showed the story of a group of people working together to save a boy at the top of a mountain. At the end of the dream, it is revealed that each person, including the boy, are in their current lives because of a wish they made in their previous incarnations. Wishes like "I wish could meet a woman who was wise" or, "I wish I was brave" were answered eventually for these people, but sometimes only after reincarnation, and in a very different way than the wisher thought it would be answered. For example, the wish that the boy makes "I wish I could meet a woman who was wise" was answered because he is guided by the spirit of his past life, a native American girl, who reveals herself to him. And the Native American girl, during her life wished that she could prove her bravery, and after being reincarnated as the boy, succeeds in this by conquering the large mountain he is eventually saved from. Then my next dream which added more pieces of the puzzle, seemed to show me that all our true wishes are granted in some form, but sometimes our wishes can only be answered in a new life, and that is what ties us to being reborn, a desire to return. But not just a generic form of desire, complex desires that find their answers custom made into a new life. For example, a burn victim whose largest wish is to be seen as beautiful by everyone might be reincarnated into a girl everyone thinks is gorgeous, but the wish is foolish, because perhaps that life causes even more unhappiness as a whole than that of the burn victim. Unless we become wiser, the wishes drawing us back into this world can give us lives that can seem like confusing punishments. But it appears that we always get what we ask for.
So I would love to hear what people think about reincarnation, or my dream theories, as I am in pursuit of Truth, and seek to find the answer to reincarnation. thanks,

Tom

[Drew Ross]

Tom --
Thanks for your thoughtful post. The site still is in testing, so I hope that more people weigh in on your topic as we get the word out about the site after testing is finished. Many people believe in reincarnation. Some believe that a single soul is preserved, and that the soul has a string of successive individual lifetimes, one after the other. Others believe that perhaps our consciousness combines with others life after life, that each person's soul forms from a "soup" of many souls after death.

This issue, as I'm sure that you know, is very charged, with some people and groups believing very strongly in reincarnation and others believing that it doesn't happen. What I've observed is that people who are neutral on the topic, but open to either possibility, often find that the idea of previous lifetimes explains some of their experiences better than other theories. Some of these people felt an affinity for a language and culture with which they had no contact in this lifetime. Some even could speak words that they hadn't been taught.

The idea that successive lifetimes are to solve questions, resolve conflicts, and end patterns is a popular idea in the history of humankind. Much of these ideas are contained within the idea of karma, which some people think of as a punishment for bad things. Your discussion may be closer to the ancient idea of karma, that we come back to figure things out, less to suffer for our past behavior than to learn from it.

Many mystics believe that a person can resolve their karma, and come to a clearer connection with spirit, and that this person might "graduate" from the cycle of birth and death to go to another realm in which time, space and physicality are less dense, more fluid and light. It also is believed that those who "graduate" to the other realm may choose to come back to this realm to be of service, to answer questions, and to find their way again.

Perhaps there may be no scientific proof of which of these ideas are true, but some form of them probably has been present in the cultures of humankind for far longer than the competing notion that people die and nothing happens afterward.

Thanks,
Drew