The Blessing of Knowing Reincarnation
I am writing this in a moment of frustration, which not the the place I expected to blog this from.
As I have briefly mentioned before, reincarnation has played a foundational role in my spiritual development. I have known that I am a being who has lived countless lives since I was 23 when in a moment of experiencing a dark night of the soul, I for the first time prayed to Apollo. I asked him to show me why my life was worth living and he responded by allowing me to see a psychic impression of all the lives I ever lived. It was something like perceiving a color spectrum of emotion.
I recognized instantly that it was impossible for me to experience so many of the feelings present there. I was young, I was privileged, I was alive in New York City in a very specific time period. I shortly thereafter became enamored with the idea of having a past life regression and eventually had one 2 years ago. Again, the same thing occurred. I (re-)experienced dying twice in war, the first with the life most recent to mine chronologically in which I (re)learned what it felt like to have my own blood spill into my mouth from a gunshot wound to my head. The second I laughed along with the man who I stabbed and who stabbed me until we both died, us enjoying the absurdity of how ridiculous it was to kill someone so like us over what was apparently a small skirmish.
Outside of my personal experience, there is not one model of reincarnation. According to case studies from the University of Virginia School of Medicine's Division of Perceptual Studies, there are a variety of experiences and memory recollections that point to different pathways. It's also possible that like with Umbanda, where the the spirits say they cannot share what happens when you die other than general details, that because reincarnation so heavily involves death us incarnated beings are just not allowed to know. It seems we came here to experience mortality and the only way to do that is not remember what immortality looks like.
As for what is related to my experience, here are my basic tenets:
- We seem to have multiple parts of the soul or selves, one part being what I call the Divine Self who does the reincarnation. However, we act out our incarnation through our personalities, which one Stoic line of thought proposes is the result of marriage between the Divine Self and the body. This is how we can simultaneously be connected to the divine and be divine, but also have connection to nature and unique roles in our particular ancestral lines
- The Divine Self basically knows what is going on all the time, but the personality is separated from this via some type of veil-like effect so the Divine Self can fully experience the events and challenges of incarnation. However, I have either embodied or otherwise come into contact with my Divine Self multiple times, starting this process by reading Holy Daimon by Frater Acher
- I have previously known a lot of people who are currently important to me in other lives, which is a phenomena described by Brian Weiss in his book Many Lives, Many Masters*
- Our lives have certain "missions"** which seems potentially encapsulated by Robert Hand's technique of deriving a chart from a native's Lot of Spirit and reading it as "a chart of wholeness, consciousness, and spiritual growth" (not his intent, but something that intuitively resonates with me)
It's my "mission" that I really don't love at the moment.
I have been told that in other cycles, I have often lived my life in close knit families and groups, doing what others needed of me. In this life, I am supposed to be myself. "What kind of cheesy, generic shit is that?" I scoffed at the time, not helped by the fact that my go-reader at that point leaned a little more hippie dippie New Age than I now tend to seek out (she was the first reader I ever had access to who read me accurately). Well, turns out, when you have lived the life that I have where you spend the pre-Saturn Return period living in a close, ethnic family with expectations so high and rigid to the point that you don't know who you are or what you want, that shit is really fucking hard.
Couple that fact with now I am trying to reconcile with my parents, who I now need to teach that my gender is not a choice, this shit is really really fucking hard.
I try to remember the comfort my psychic perceptions of reincarnation have given me in times like this. How at 23 I was in awe that turns out, I was just one chapter in a gigantic soul's beautiful book. How shortly when I moved to California I was texting someone who I now know is a soulmate and I could perceive many lives interconnected solely by my love for him, like the various instruments playing together in a symphony. I did not know unconditional love was real until I met that person.
I try to remember how I have experienced grave injuries saving friends' lives. I remember how my closeness and then my passing inspired family members to realize and achieve new dreams. I remember how I have known both my parents in other lives and that I loved them then too.
And I have to tell myself well, you can get through this like the rest of the incarnations had to with theirs. Just give it a little more love. Just give it a little more time.
*I don't agree with Brian Weiss on everything, as I have recalled at least one animal life, which he has stated is impossible in what I imagine is an attempt to appeal to scientism. Well, as is common for American Jews to say because we think it makes up for most things, at least he's Jewish!
**I put "mission" in quotes because that line from Pixar's Soul rings true: "Your 'purposes.' Your 'meanings of life.' So basic." As I keep being reminded recently, life is not based on accomplishment. It's more about fully experiencing a lifetime within certain parameters and confines. I may blog about this on its own at a later date.
