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[Michelle]

Don't really know where I stand on the idea of reincarnation. Personally I believe that when we die we just end. That's it. Nothing.

I'm prompted by a theory of sorts: If you built a mechanical man and it had an off switch, we would not see it as being dead should we use that switch as we can of course turn it back on. It's not really alive.

However, let's go forward a few hundred years. Our mechanical man has had countless upgrades and improvements. Biological parts replace the mechanical ones. Eventually we can no longer tell the difference between him and us. We "know" he's not real because we "built him", yet when we go to switch him off he now pleads to be kept "alive" and fears the "death" that would follow with his termination. As he is now mostly biological such a shutdown would indeed be irreversible.

Is this entity alive? Would his "spirit" go on?

My point is that simply because we are biological beings doesn't really mean we are truly alive. It's quite a concept but goes along the lines that believing you are a living thing is merely a property of being a biological entity. When the biology stops, the biological machine has merely shutdown.

Having said all that, how come I have memories that are not my own? I once voiced these memories to my mother who turned white as I told her. She then told me of my brother who had died some years before I was even born. What I was remembering were his memories. I didn't even know I had a brother.

[Scorched Eartha]

I kind if half arsedly believe in reincarnation. Probably only as a result of a few hard to explain any other way events or memories I have experienced.

But at any rate it doesn't really matter to me much. I've a hard time coming to terms with how much of our precious and sadly limited time on this plain is used up in speculation over what might await us on the next.

Maybe we come back again in another corporeal body to re-learn lessons we missed excelling in first time round. Maybe the Pantheists are right and we become part of the life force of the whole planet and universe. Maybe even the Christians are right and there's an up and down elevator to eternal bliss or eternal damnation.

I dunno. The only people who do know for sure are not in any position to communicate to us what the truth is. Because they're...well...dead.

And why waste the hours on cogitating it? Whatever will happen will happen. We have no power to make it otherwise. And there is so much to learn here. So much to see. So much to taste and smell and drink and yes - so many people with whom we have the chance to dance.

Seems to me the only real sin possible is to eschew any of that in favour of pointlessly worrying over and speculating on what might lie at the end of a path most of us will never come near to fully exploring.

What a wicked waste of this beautiful gift of life we have all been given.

[Michelle]

So true SE. A dog lives for only about 11 or 12 years. Perhaps it's just a cruel joke of the Gods to create something so beautiful, so faithful and loving, and then to only allow it such a short time.

A dog doesn't spent it's time stressing over such things as reincarnation. At least I hope not.

[The Pet Goddess]

As I said somewhere on this forum just recently, I am a medium and I still have issues with believing in past lives or spirits.

Just a few days ago, I was talking with a friend and I told her there was a man in a hunting coat standing behind her.  He was turned sideways and kept acting like he couldn't wait to go.  I could tell he had a bad attitude and so didn't know why he was there.  Then I saw a young boy with a noose around his neck.  I had seen the young boy before when working with this friend.  It turns out that the man was the abusive father of the young boy who hung himself.  They were the uncle and cousin of my friend.

How did I see them if they weren't really there? 

As an Atheist, I believe all is energy, both the material and the so-called spiritual.  How it all works is beyond me.  It doesn't bother me that I don't have a clue.  Que sera sera.

[The Pet Goddess]

I guess I lost track that this thread is about past lives. 

My father and I have always had a bad relationship.  During a past life regression, I saw my father and I in the same past life.  That experience went a long way in helping me see my father in a different light.  Our relationship is still the same, but my father's comments no longer have the affect on me that they once had.  Understanding has gone a long way in enabling me to cope and heal.

There have been other past life regressions that have shed light on issues I have in this life.  I find past life regression to be very theraputic.

[Scorched Eartha]

I had a past life reading done once and it was pretty freaky. Never met the woman. Spoke with her for only a  few minutes before she began the reading and that was very basic stuff like date and time of my birth and the place etc. Not a digging for clues kind of conversation at all.

She told me about my most recent previous life in the most detail and it shocked the shyte out of me. because it was almost word for word a disturbing recurrent dream I had been having for years.

In this dream I was a small black girl and I knew...I just knew I lived in Louisiana near a swamp. I have never been to Louisiana nor seen many images of it but in the dream I was overtly aware that this was where I lived.

The house we were in was no more than a shack and I was always being pursued in a terror by an older male and I always knew that if he caught me I would die. The dream always ended with me looking down at the body of this girl (she was about 11 from what I could tell) as she lay partially covered by sticks and branches in the swamp at the back of the house.

I would always see this as if I were from the vantage point of an overhead movie camera and be drawing back...going higher and higher hovering above the scene until I could see the swamp in detail and the girl was just a speck in the midst of it.

I always woke up at that point and felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and betrayal far more than fear.

This woman said to me: Your last life was lived in the American South in the 1920's. It ended abruptly and far too soon. You'd lived a life of poverty and abuse to that point and I keep seeing a man who ended your life. It ended very violently. He is also black and he is very close to you. I think he was your brother and he murdered you to keep you quiet about something. That's why your soul was so troubled when it left you. It felt utterly betrayed by this man you loved deeply.

That's one of the things I mean when I say I do kind of believe in reincarnations. I cannot for the life of me rationalise away the manner in which a woman I did not know and had spent so little time speaking with could possibly have just lit on a recurrent dream I had been having for years and which I had discussed with no one.

And that was precisely the way this dream had always made me feel.

Also when you talk about regression being therapeutic. I have never had that dream again since the day of that reading. it's like knowing about that sad child's ending on a conscious level stopped her needing to get  me to see her in my dreams.

[The Pet Goddess]

Very interesting, SE.  I am hoping the little girl is at peace now.  Is there a relationship in your life that could explain the feelings of the young girl towards her brother?  It is said that family members often reincarnate together.

I "died" during a tonsillectomy as a young child.  I heard someone screaming and screaming.  From that, I have been haunted by thinking death is something terrible to experience.   

During a past life regression, I saw myself as a pioneer woman who saw her husband and two young children murdered by Indians.  I screamed myself into insanity.  When I came out of the regression, I knew the screaming I had heard had been me in a past life.  I am so glad to have that puzzle solved.

[Scorched Eartha]

Yes. My second eldest brother (17 years older than me) was a proper gobshyte. A violent drunk. I always feared him and cut him out of my life absolutely over 15 years ago.

I know...I had made that connection almost immediately. As if maybe she had been coming to me to warn me of him and what he might be capable of doing.

Weird huh?
This is why i say I don't give a lot of thought or time to the notion of reincarnation. I just kind of accept it as a given and get on with this plane. It's the only one I have any power to direct isn't it?

[KissTheMiMes]

Does anyone remember Hudini saying if there was a way to come back he would? It's said there has been nothing. Maybe he changed his mind, maybe there is nothing, or maybe he was reincarnated and doesn't remember his past life.

[Scorched Eartha]

Serp is the resident Houdini expert... fascinated by him. He will know the answer to this. I imagine we just need to wait for him to log on and we will find out.