reincarnation, why dont we keep what we learn in the past?

[juliotx]

sorry if this is in the wrong board to post this.

i was wondering if everytime we reincarnate and grow spiritually (if things go as planned) why dont we keep what we have learned. if we have been to the other side we surely must be aware of the spirit world and how to connect with our higher self while on earth. in my case, instead of starting over why cant i just remember my past without meditation, learn from it and make better choices which would help me grow more.

ive had some struggles in my life and my dad says it may be a karma debt i have to pay from past lives. its taken me 34 yrs to find meditaion, i feel im starting to grow spiritually, becoming a better more sensitive person but what am i going to take away from this if i dont remember any of this in my next life.

[pkeod]

Your dad does not understand karma. Life has no karma debt, zero is the lower bound. Karma is not a system of justice. It is simply cause and effect. If you die tomorrow... your karma continues on without you. Your family has to deal with the grief of losing you. Your pets may lose their home and get put down. Yet, everything that you have touched in your life carries a bit of your karma onward, and you are currently carrying the karma of people who have touched your life. Depending on how you deal with karma, there will be a different consequence. If you work with bitterness and resent, then bad karma happens, but if you work with compassion and love, good karma happens!

There have been people, children even, who have claimed to be able to remember past lives; however, the most important thing for you is to fulfill yourself in this life. Move past your troubles, and continue to shape your living experiance into something more beautiful.

You should consider getting The Art of Mindful Living: How to Bring Love, Compassion and Inner Peace into Your Daily Life - Thich Nhat Hanh. It may not be for everyone, but you may like it!

[frajilthunder]

You don't have to remember learning something to have learned it. Do you remember learning to walk? IMHO, there are facets of our personality that were formed from our past life experiences. We don't remember them, but they still shape us to some extent. I also believe that there is a higher, subconcious self that does remember past life experiences.

[dave marshall]

Hi,

we do have many lifetimes however we filter out that information to bring this lifetime into constant focus. This filtering allows us to focus on our present and most important identity and not be distracted too much from it. if you want to explore your other lifetimes then tell yourself that you want that inmfromation and trust you will bring it to yourself. I did this and am now aware of a number of lifetimes that i am experiencing, mostly in the past but also one in the future.

Time is also past of this filtering process so don't get too caught up in it, this information is availbale to you.

cheers

Dave

[juliotx]

guess my understanding of karma is incorrect. if i understand this right karma is a earth bound law?

i understand that our past could be filtered to focus on our life now but why? remembering my present life past doesnt keep me from focusing on my current life or moment. it could actually help me if i could remember past experiences and learn from them. i look in my past know and learn to keep from doing the things that have hurt me or others.

[Anagogy]

Originally Posted by juliotx

sorry if this is in the wrong board to post this.

i was wondering if everytime we reincarnate and grow spiritually (if things go as planned) why dont we keep what we have learned. if we have been to the other side we surely must be aware of the spirit world and how to connect with our higher self while on earth. in my case, instead of starting over why cant i just remember my past without meditation, learn from it and make better choices which would help me grow more.

ive had some struggles in my life and my dad says it may be a karma debt i have to pay from past lives. its taken me 34 yrs to find meditaion, i feel im starting to grow spiritually, becoming a better more sensitive person but what am i going to take away from this if i dont remember any of this in my next life.

There are many reasons we don't remember past lives. Some including:

1) The temptation to avenge past wrongs done to you.

2) The temptation to seek out old relationships rather than forming new ones.

3) It would negate the "human experience" which oftentimes is specifically for the experience of total memory wipe. Believe it or not, this is a motivation for some souls to incarnate. They want a new experience.

4) Coming in without memory allows us a "fresh perspective". We see old problems in a different light.

5) The lessons you came to learn in this life may not be lessons that require the "prior knowledge" of previous existences. Sort of a "need to know" basis.

6) Knowing how great life between lives was would make life miserable now, by comparison. You would very likely not wish to continue your incarnation.

7) It wouldn't be a test if you knew the answers.

Having said all that, not all souls come in with a memory wipe. It simply all depends on what you're here for. Different souls have different contracts with the earth. There are many planets where such a memory wipe is unheard of, and non-existent.

[dave marshall]

Hi anagogy,

who said this life was a test? just refering to number 7 on your list?

why does it have to be a test and who is testing whom?

dave

[Anagogy]

Originally Posted by dave marshall

Hi anagogy,

who said this life was a test? just refering to number 7 on your list?

why does it have to be a test and who is testing whom?

dave

We are testing ourselves. And life doesn't have to be a test, its just that many souls enjoy challenges. So we create a challenge. It's like, "Hoorah! I climbed Mount Everest!". And then you put it on your spiritual resume. I don't want to make it sound like a competition, because its not, but setting goals and then achieving them is a big part of self actualization.

[philm]

Originally Posted by juliotx

sorry if this is in the wrong board to post this.

i was wondering if everytime we reincarnate and grow spiritually (if things go as planned) why dont we keep what we have learned. if we have been to the other side we surely must be aware of the spirit world and how to connect with our higher self while on earth. in my case, instead of starting over why cant i just remember my past without meditation, learn from it and make better choices which would help me grow more.

ive had some struggles in my life and my dad says it may be a karma debt i have to pay from past lives. its taken me 34 yrs to find meditaion, i feel im starting to grow spiritually, becoming a better more sensitive person but what am i going to take away from this if i dont remember any of this in my next life.

juliotx,

Karma literally means 'action'. As reality is completely one, interwoven, no act escapes or exists in a vacuum. All that you do in mind (thought, feeling), speech, deed plants seeds in our consciousness that create experiences yet to become until conditions are met.

That most of us dont remember the whole game is because we're still snoring our way through life. Or as the Dalia Lama notes we just continue willfully 'acting' on our basic ignorance about reality.

We so busy caught up in the usual conditioned way of experiencing life & reality we act on this and create future experiences when the right conditions are met.

The usual way is to take our thoughts and feeling seriously. The struggling with Be-ing or Becom-ing Someone or Something. Spiritually or Materially powerful for example. To experience ourselves, our identifities, our beliefs, relationships, motivations, goals, our life stuff and all the things 'out there', particularly stuff we value highly as actually existent in themselves.

Sensitive souls such as you juliotx, and i can relate to you, are left with this lingering intuitive deep unsatisfactory, the hollowness, emptiness, the shallowness of life lived in the usual manner in our stillness in deaths shadows.

best wishes to you my friend : )

[Davidya]

Interesting views, all. Life may seem shallow when we first begin to see through it. But don't stop there. Go deeper. The richness that fuels your restlessness is beneath the shadows of the past.

Some people do come into this life or soon after, remember the past. But for most, as Dave observes, it would be too much. How can we function in this life with thousands of years of history to sort out? The idea is to tackle it a bit at a time.

Buckminster Fuller described humans as Special Case. We can tackle one thing at a time with our attention.

It's also useful not to romanticize past lives. Most of us were not famous or rich. We have all done appalling stupid things. What's changed this time? (laughs)

We do keep much of what we've learned. It very much shapes our world view, personality, expectations, and habits. But much of this is sub-conscious. For reasons stated above. We don't loose the past, we simply file it and build on it.

The past can give us some understanding of the strange nature of the present. But never forget it's the past. Only the present counts.

[Truthsayer]

If there is a great need to know your past lives, a tool being used now is past life regression through hypnotherapy. Personally, I don't think I'd want to know. My mind can't be hypnotized anyway.

I discovered one past life I had lived by studying Saturn's placement in my astrological birth chart. Saturn is the planet of karmic connections. Saturn was transiting Pisces on the date of my birth. This position is indicative of karma acquired through a past life lived in the piscean age, during the christian era at the time of Jesus Christ. It is the karma acquired through that life that I must justify and atone with this present life. Clues I have uncovered so far point to Judas Iscariot!

[Davidya]

Truthsayer - we are still in the Piscean age. They last about 2,000 years. Saturn is the planet of karma and limitations, structure, and also a marker for liberation. Saturn takes 2.5 years to transit a sign so everyone born the same year would be similar to you.

One of the markers of a typical past life memory is it's relevance to the current life. Some issue or scenario we are dealing with triggers the recall. Usually it is thus a strong memory with emotional impact and frequently not happy.

Karma is what you must resolve. It is action you have resisted, experience that is incomplete. This is why experiences tend to come back over and over again - because we have not yet fully allowed them yet and thus resolved it. You simply need to see it fully and it is resolved. Be present with it. Then there is no need to relive some bad experience. When the resistance drops and it flows, it is resolved and that aspect steps off the wheel of karma.

Karma tends to be places where we have blind spots, so you don't really find clues. After you remember something well enough, you may find details that can be verified in the historical record. But its quite direct, like remembering your 8th birthday.

It's possible you were someone well known in history but given there are only a few hundred well known historical figures and over 6 billion people, what are the odds?

From what I've seen, the memories will arise naturally in time if there is value. No need to see someone. Sure, there are regression, psychics and such that may tell you some of this. And that may be useful too. But as I said, its the past. What matters is now.

[Acting Like Godot]

In ordinary consciousness, you cannot even remember most things that happened to you when you were between 0 - 3 years old. It is hardly surprising that you cannot remember what happened before that.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Truthsayer

If there is a great need to know your past lives, a tool being used now is past life regression through hypnotherapy.

I did it. It was an interesting trip, and I saw a few dominant traits in my past lives which persist in my personality today.

But really, apart from the fact that the experience opened my eyes to the weirder sides of reality, it really didn't do much for me.

Don't waste your time with PLR unless there's some specific issue in your life today which you have problems dealing with, and which you think could be linked to a past life event.

[freestate]

Godot, you sound rather disappointed with your PLR. Did you find out you were a tax collector or something? How much info did you get and how many lives did you learn about. Were they able to tell you the total number of human lives you've had? Did you get any flashbacks?

Thanks.

[jeff3]

Also to be considered is the possibility that reincarnation does not actually occur and our belief in it was handed to us by previous generations and we simply accepted it. The memories, whether recovered through hypnosis, or spontaneously coming to us may simply be our consciousness accessing "old thoughts" that are in the idea-sphere. If the LOA works at all, it would certainly work well in this area, since it is "subjective". Consider my delving into reincarnation some years ago. First I simply had a little interest in it and was really unsure, then I began to read and consider it. As I began to focus on it more, it started popping up everywhere, but still in the form of a debate or question of it's reality. A friend whom I trusted and admired told me of their belief in it and I thought, well, maybe, then....sure, it makes sense. After this 'decision to believe in it' I began to see confirmation, everywhere, kids with memories, some gal in England telling about a previous life...ect.

Despite all this "evidence" I'm still unsure about it because I have personally had very odd occurrences during meditation where I saw events happening that were not in my personal experience but someone else's completely, the catch is, they were friends of mine, alive and well today so I could not have been experiencing an old life, I simply saw the events occurring as if I were there.

I'm not saying reincarnation is bunk, I'm just saying it could be and we would have no real way to determine that. If "we are all one" , then we share a consciousness and we also share memories, often referred to as the "race mind", if I can access my personal memories then there is no reason that I cannot access other personal memories and under the belief in reincarnation claim them as my own. People who are more psychically active, especially beginners or people who access this information spontaneously could easily be confused and assume the memory is theirs. I'm just sayin......

[Davidya]

Acting - we don't remember before 3 years old because of physiology & state of consciousness. Past lives are stored differently.

Jeff3 - there are several types of 'memories' that can come up. Current stuff in other places, what some call the akashic records - group memories of others, and our own past lives. Each of these has different qualities and relevance. If we remember our own past lives, the memories usually have a direct relationship with current events, just like this lifes memory works. So they have a relevance that others memories don't have. They explain some of the personality stuff Acting mentioned, but also some of the odd events that come up, or irrational fears, or certain people in our lives.

When these memories are clear, there is no mistaking whose they are and their relationship with us. At some point, there is usually some detail that comes up that can be checked in the historical record - an event, name or accomplishment that would have left a record.

When it's your experience, it will have a reality for you. Until then, it is just conjecture.

One point about belief though. If you don't allow for the possibility of past lives, you are much less likely to experience them. Or if they do come up, the ego will reject them. You don't have to believe, just be open to the possibility. Inversely, whatever you put your attention on grows stronger so whatever you are thinking about will keep showing up. That's what you talked about.

If you want to go more out there, there are further types of 'memories'. In higher states of awareness, past and future collapse into the moment. Then you are living all lives at the same time. More still, when you become one with all, the attention can move across any "person" and see the entirety of their life expressions. There is no 'other', no boundaries.

You may debate if you agree or even accept the possibility of such statements, but this is completely real for some people and is a documented stage in ancient texts. Ever wonder why artists from India and China draw beings with many heads and arms? What do you think seeing a bunch of lives happening at the same time would look like? (laughs)

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by freestate

Godot, you sound rather disappointed with your PLR. Did you find out you were a tax collector or something? How much info did you get and how many lives did you learn about. Were they able to tell you the total number of human lives you've had? Did you get any flashbacks?

Thanks.

No, not disappointed. In fact, I was very astounded and amazed at that time. But looking back now, what did that experience do for me? It directly inspired me to start searching and exploring the metaphysical / spiritual universe. Tha's a big thing.

But the specific experience itself - the details that I learned about my past lives - didn't help me to deal with any specific problems or issues in my current life. Maybe because I have no really big problems or issues in my current life; or none that had any significant karmic cause related to my past lives.

I think that some people enter into their current lives with a lot of karmic baggage. In other words, certain things happened in their past lives which they carried over into the present lives, and those particular things continue to exert a big influence.

But not everyone is like that. In fact, I suspect most people are not like that. Most people, I suspect, are like myself - they had their past lives; the past lives shape some aspects of their personality, behaviour etc in the current lives; BUT the influence is not overpowering, and the individual definitely has a lot of room to exert his will and take his current life in new directions that his past lives wouldn't have suggested.

I explored only two past lives. In one, I was a solitary fisherman living on an island. I came into contact with others quite rarely. It was quite a rugged existence, also very boring depending on how you look at it, but I sensed a lot of calm and peace in me, just being close to nature, living by myself. One of the very vivid scenes I was "in" was one where I killed a big fish, I'd already caught it and I expertly smashed its head with a rock to kill it. The fisherman "me" was very calm as he did it (just another ordinary day in his life), but it was a very gory, frightening sight for me as the Past Life Traveller.

In the other past life, I was a monk. Living in a community of monks, in a big temple, and I was a senior monk. I was treated by the others with a lot of respect, and for some reason I couldn't figure out, by some of them with a degree of fear. And although I was living in a community of other people, the existence also felt very isolated (like the fisherman's) because basically the other monks kept a distance from me.

Here's an interesting point. For the fisherman's life, I "viewed" my life as if I was in the fisherman's body, looking out. (In fact, at the start of that life, I had gasped and exclaimed loudly to the hypnotherapist, because she'd asked me to look down at my feet, and I said in surprise, "Those are not MY feet!!"). For the monk's life however, I was like an invisible presence looking out at this monk, following him around, and somehow I just knew that he was "me".

And here's the interesting part. In the very last part of the session, the monk suddenly "knew" he was being watched. And he did not like it. He turned and looked directly at "me" (the invisible presence) and he said, "NO" very firmly, and he had this very piercing look on his face. At that moment, I snapped out of my hypnotic state, and my eyes flew wide open (I swear that they flew wide open in the most astonishing way - I don't think my eyes have ever opened that big before; it was like someone was grabbing my eyelids and pulling them apart), and the session was over. Even my hypnotherapist was surprised.

[freestate]

That's an amazing story, Godot! Thank you very much for sharing it.

Interesting that your perspective was variable. Perhaps more conductive to your learning to see your 2nd life from 3rd person. And it would make sense for a monk to be especially sensitive to spiritual presences. To be honest, I've "felt" things watching me before, and I always send out an intention/prayer that only beings of 100% be allowed in my vicinity, which helps a lot. I've also told things to get the hell out before – it's strange almost "seeing" but not really seeing anything.

But all this raises the question, "How does Past Life viewing really work?" I wonder if there is indeed some kind of time traversing happening. Like a non-local perceiving. It would reflect what certain quantum mechanical documents have talked about.

Really fascinating stuff though. We should start a thread about past life stories, or is there already one?

[Davidya]

Perhaps I can explain. The first person experience is like re-experiencing. The 3rd person is when we step back into awareness, into an observer role. Then the life experience is seen within awareness rather than within the body.

In the first case, one may feel caught up, as if trapped in the experience. This is being identified or attached to the body experience. The other is detached, and not caught up. There can also be 2nd person - see ourselves through the eyes of another. And just simple remembering, not re-experiencing.

The examples may not sound like "memory" how we would usually define it, but memory is far deeper and a more intimate part of our experience than we realize. It is the very nature of mind.

In fact, the idea of linear time is a construct, simply so we can step through experiences. All time is in the present moment. So no traversing is required. Just an observation of that segment of experience. One can "remember" the future too. (laughs)