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I would like to think there's no credibility to it, but, again, there are moments it can scare me. I know the idea is big in India. The poor smile at their poverty, believing in the next world they'll be rich and comfortable.
I'm comfortable enough, and that's where the scare comes in. If there is credibility to it, does that mean I'll be impoverished in my next life?
Giving how many pets are treated like royalty, I often wonder about my spoiled, rotten ferret. What kind of life did he live before this current life?
It depends on how you treat the people you cross paths with in life. Are you a jerk, or kind and thoughtful, or some of each depending on whether it's a bad or good day?
In theory, you won't have the rug whipped out from under you, unless you've done something to deserve it. Better watch your step!
My interest is in consciousness and what it means after I die. Just thinking about it, there will likely be countless humans born after I die. I don't even know how to explain it in writing but what if I am one of those humans? Not me as I am now, but as another person. Of course I won't know of my life right now but I will be that human in the future. I'm pretty sure I don't make much sense explaining it but I tried my best
I would like to think there's no credibility to it, but, again, there are moments it can scare me. I know the idea is big in India. The poor smile at their poverty, believing in the next world they'll be rich and comfortable.
I'm comfortable enough, and that's where the scare comes in. If there is credibility to it, does that mean I'll be impoverished in my next life?
Giving how many pets are treated like royalty, I often wonder about my spoiled, rotten ferret. What kind of life did he live before this current life?
Having come from an upbringing where eternal torment in hell was a post-mortem option, any aches and pains coming from reincarnation, as intense as they may be, seem pretty tame to me in comparison.
That said, while it doesn't scare me, it sometimes annoys me. Right now I'm a full grown adult, living independently, without parents or teachers telling me what to do. I came a long way to reach this point. Reincarnation would involve going back to square one again, with parents, curfews, homework, school, etc. I also am not keen on marrying again, but in the next life I’ll probably do that very thing, dang it.
I realize I will have forgotten the taste of independence at that point; the amnesia that is said to accompany each new mission virtually guarantees it (I say ‘virtually’ because some children reportedly do, initially, remember elements from their previous lives). But looking at it from this angle can be irritating.
I do fall into the camp that believes that reincarnation, if it’s true, is voluntary, and that you go at your own pace once you’re ready to tackle whatever the next mission entails. Much like signing up for college courses, we choose what it is we want to learn/accomplish and then ‘sign up’. We might even map out the general trajectory our lives will take, if not the more minute details therein (sometimes referred to as soul-contracts or pre-birth-planning). The general assumption across various belief-systems seems to be that we’re forced to be here by no choice of our own, and over time I’ve come to realize there’s no real reason to believe that as opposed to the belief that we come here voluntarily. For one thing, the 'forced to be here' perspective is very enabling, dis-empowering, and it ends up making me feel victim-y. I'm allergic to feeling victim-y.
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I have never spent one minute worrying about reincarnation. I am a person who goes with the flow. I am curious about the afterlife, and I look forward to what happens next. I hope I see those who have gone before me in heaven, but if I come back as a rock, or a coffee table or a cow, so be it. Worrying won’t change anything.
My interest is in consciousness and what it means after I die. Just thinking about it, there will likely be countless humans born after I die. I don't even know how to explain it in writing but what if I am one of those humans? Not me as I am now, but as another person. Of course I won't know of my life right now but I will be that human in the future. I'm pretty sure I don't make much sense explaining it but I tried my best
It’s a matter of understanding the neuroscience behind consciousness i.e. it dies with you. It’s your brain’s activity which allows for perception, emotion, ‘awareness’ and the cognitive process to exist.
That said, even if reincarnation were ‘real’ (I don’t believe it is), why would one ‘fear’ it? In my mind, it’s simply another way in which people cling to the idea of staying ‘alive’/conscious longer (as with any ‘afterlife). In other words, it’s probably not reincarnation they fear, but death in and of itself.
But you could also be reborn as an animal? A pampered dog, a pampered cat?
I wouldn’t mind being an adorable, spoiled rotten cat, considering the lifestyle my cats have.
That said, they weren’t born into privilege. They both spent their early years as strays on the mean streets of Gary, Indiana, and both were very nearly euthanized before a feline rescue swooped in and took them from the pound. Now they’re living the good life.
I was reading an article more than a decade ago about the weird things kids say. It wasn't the article that got my attention, though. It was the comments after it.
Over and over and over parents said their kid had talked about living in a different house with different parents and knowing things they couldn't have known. If it wasn't the parents saying this, it was people who said they were told by their own parents that they would say something like this. Over 300 comments and almost identical in content.
Anyway, on another forum I'm on several years ago, someone asked if anyone had kids who said strange things. I told her what I just posted above and she came back with, "That's exactly what it was!"
Yeah, I know kids can have vivid imaginations and imaginary friends, but reading so many comments and also now so many stories about this...I have to believe reincarnation in some form is real.
I have a friend who was flatlined for over ten minutes and came back to describe everything she "saw" (with her eyes closed) and what she heard in the room after she was clinically dead.
MN has the miraculous "frozen woman" who was found one winter night at twenty-two below. She'd been outside for six hours and was frozen solid.
I imagine you can restart a heart and pump lungs to give the appearance of life but how do you get consciousness to come back to a dead body? There has been in the spiritual and quantum-knowledgeable communities considerable discussion of consciousness as being connected to a sort of universal hive mind in which we carry genetic memory, archetypes, innate universal knowledge.
Just this spring German scientists have announced they are performing the unthinkable experiment:
I wouldn't claim for a moment to be sure what happens after death but I venture to say that if these experiments are for real it's about as good of news as one could expect.
Since so far I believe it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience I hope to be lucid enough to pay attention.
Edited to add:
I can't say the thought of existing in a conscious state indefinitely, even if I'm comfortable, is appealing. But who's to say that the belief that we're just gone after death is any less wishful thinking than the thought we'll live in paradise?
We are beings who can't stand the thought that we don't have control over our lives.
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