I have never, never considered reincarnation a possibility before, not even when Carl Jung started talking about it at the end of his autobiography. I know there are literalist Buddhists who rant about it, just like the many literalist Christians who drive me crazy by ranting about Satan and God's Laws.
It's an interesting thought. Suppose God wanted to become a family. Suppose we were all made as eternal pieces of him but something about freedom in the law of love required that we start out as single-celled forms. Over the course of time and history, through choice, struggle, and learning, we grow into unity with him. Suppose the earth will keep turning into something new, with more and more heaven in it as each of us grow closer to the saint version of ourselves - something that can only happen as a result of all the love we give and receive collectively.
Reincarnation stuff that strikes me as definitely distorted: "In a past life I was [insert dead famous person's name here]" or "You will be a dung beetle in your next life because of karma."
We've certainly got a ways to go as a collective, but there are great sweeping areas of love progress. No world wars have been fought or atomic bombs dropped for the last seventy-five years, and nonviolent change movements spearheaded by people like Gandhi and Martin Luther Ling Jr. have swept through multiple nations. There are always new wounds and crises arising, smaller genocides are still taking place - Rwanda, Cambodia - and the potential for destroying the earth through our technological advances is a pressing problem to solve. But maybe over thousands upon thousands of more years of growth and love on a spiritual level, and scientific progress on a care-for-nature level...
The Jewish tradition and Christian Bible talk about seven layers of heaven. After-death experiencers seem to allude to something similar, different levels once you leave the body. Maybe we touch the first heaven layer sometimes in our dreams, and the next few layers are places where, after we die, we get to be who we were on earth alongside everyone we loved (though if we have multiple lives here, I guess that would mean we would move in and out among all the various love connections we've had, with different family from different times?), and maybe the layers above that are where we experience no self and total oneness with God.
Who the hell knows. It doesn't matter too much to my current experience as Bethany Patchin, age 31, lover of Nathan, mother of four great kids, from Wisconsin and Nashville. It's weird to get too literal with it, kinda like getting literal about drinking a crucified man's blood. My grandma died two years ago, so would a reincarnationist believe that when I have another baby with Nate, conceivably it could be her in her newest body? Dr. Who keeps reincarnating, and there's something profoundly sad even in fiction about losing the actual features and characteristics of an individual you love.
"Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The 'newness' in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components." (Carl Jung) Maybe reincarnation is a clunky way of getting at something mind-boggling about our interconnectedness. Maybe I'm both Bethany and parts of my grandma already (epigenetics certainly points to this in the body), maybe we're all parts of each other.
Reincarnation is a possibility to me, in a lesser way than examining the Shroud of Turin makes the actual resurrection of a man named Jesus a probability to me. I'm fine with the Mystery - but it feels good to be open-minded and respectful of the held beliefs of millions of my human relatives half a world away.
The moral of all these stories is, do your part - be a healer and lover, to the extent you are able, in the place and body you've been given. Whatever we become aware of after we die, right now is always the most important moment.
..................
Along these lines, I am really, really interested in reading this book. I couldn't stop reading the Amazon reviews of it. ("It's no-nonsense, it's not pretentious, it's not 'new-agey,' and yet it isn't overly scientific in a materialistic sense" - that's the mark of a spiritual writer I trust.)
It's an interesting thought. Suppose God wanted to become a family. Suppose we were all made as eternal pieces of him but something about freedom in the law of love required that we start out as single-celled forms. Over the course of time and history, through choice, struggle, and learning, we grow into unity with him. Suppose the earth will keep turning into something new, with more and more heaven in it as each of us grow closer to the saint version of ourselves - something that can only happen as a result of all the love we give and receive collectively.
Reincarnation stuff that strikes me as definitely distorted: "In a past life I was [insert dead famous person's name here]" or "You will be a dung beetle in your next life because of karma."
We've certainly got a ways to go as a collective, but there are great sweeping areas of love progress. No world wars have been fought or atomic bombs dropped for the last seventy-five years, and nonviolent change movements spearheaded by people like Gandhi and Martin Luther Ling Jr. have swept through multiple nations. There are always new wounds and crises arising, smaller genocides are still taking place - Rwanda, Cambodia - and the potential for destroying the earth through our technological advances is a pressing problem to solve. But maybe over thousands upon thousands of more years of growth and love on a spiritual level, and scientific progress on a care-for-nature level...
The Jewish tradition and Christian Bible talk about seven layers of heaven. After-death experiencers seem to allude to something similar, different levels once you leave the body. Maybe we touch the first heaven layer sometimes in our dreams, and the next few layers are places where, after we die, we get to be who we were on earth alongside everyone we loved (though if we have multiple lives here, I guess that would mean we would move in and out among all the various love connections we've had, with different family from different times?), and maybe the layers above that are where we experience no self and total oneness with God.
Who the hell knows. It doesn't matter too much to my current experience as Bethany Patchin, age 31, lover of Nathan, mother of four great kids, from Wisconsin and Nashville. It's weird to get too literal with it, kinda like getting literal about drinking a crucified man's blood. My grandma died two years ago, so would a reincarnationist believe that when I have another baby with Nate, conceivably it could be her in her newest body? Dr. Who keeps reincarnating, and there's something profoundly sad even in fiction about losing the actual features and characteristics of an individual you love.
"Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The 'newness' in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components." (Carl Jung) Maybe reincarnation is a clunky way of getting at something mind-boggling about our interconnectedness. Maybe I'm both Bethany and parts of my grandma already (epigenetics certainly points to this in the body), maybe we're all parts of each other.
Reincarnation is a possibility to me, in a lesser way than examining the Shroud of Turin makes the actual resurrection of a man named Jesus a probability to me. I'm fine with the Mystery - but it feels good to be open-minded and respectful of the held beliefs of millions of my human relatives half a world away.
The moral of all these stories is, do your part - be a healer and lover, to the extent you are able, in the place and body you've been given. Whatever we become aware of after we die, right now is always the most important moment.
..................
Along these lines, I am really, really interested in reading this book. I couldn't stop reading the Amazon reviews of it. ("It's no-nonsense, it's not pretentious, it's not 'new-agey,' and yet it isn't overly scientific in a materialistic sense" - that's the mark of a spiritual writer I trust.)
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