Reincarnation

Reincarnation:

I don’t know if it’s true or not. Science? Does everything we can ever know about ourselves and reality have to be proven by the scientific method? If it does then doesn’t that mean that what we call the scientific method might have to be updated and adjusted for new data? Otherwise it becomes a religion doesn’t it? Like the Christians who say God never changes and therefore this 2000 to 6000 year old dogma is still up to date for modern society. Anyway, before I get off course let me get back to reincarnation. I don’t intend to share this with anybody unless they come across it on my blog. I don’t intend to post it to facebook where all my Christian friends will try to pray the devil out of me at best and disavow my very right to exist at worse. Where my scientifically inclined friends (I think I have a couple) will think I’m nuts to even think I’m more than the chemical reaction of an organic collection of matter and neural firings totally dependent on the existence of my body to exist at all and there is no other existence possible. So, I might just keep this one between me and God. I keep most of the deeper parts of myself between me and God anyway. Even the parts that are culturally or sexually provocative are pretty much kept between my own sense of self and my own sense of a greater ground of being. (God) so, what do I think reincarnation means?

Well first of all I don’t equate it with religion any more than I equate the eternal sense of I Am with religion. I sometimes hear people debate the honest questions of none intentional evolution with the neo Darwinian view that it’s all just a happy little accident. They do fine in my opinion because regardless of the accusatory cry of “stupid creationist” on the Darwinian side there really is an honest question as to intent in the universe. But, then the one questioning the straight materialist will go “But Jesus” which takes it out of honest intellectual discussion and paints them into the religion corner. Sorry, the bible says it, I believe it, that settles it, doesn’t work for me. Doesn’t work for anybody who honestly wants to think and figure out what life is about for each individual. One size doesn’t fit all. So, my thoughts on reincarnation likewise have to be separate from Buddhist or Hindu or new age dogma.

When I was a child I had a memory that I couldn't really understand. I "saw" an old man walking in to a room. Perhaps down some stairs (50 year old memories are fragile things) I knew somehow that the old man was going to sit in the chair and die. I felt a connection. There was a ticking clock and he (me?) I honestly don't know. Did sit down in the chair and die. I remember telling my mother about the memory. She dismissed it because none of my family (southern born and Christian to the core) had any concept of reincarnation. I don't think I had any concept of it when I first told my mother but later I must have read something about it. Most likely Edgar Cayce who ironically spent some time in Gadsden, Alabama which is the town I was born in. (No, I don't think I'm Edgar Cayce reborn.) Anyway, I must have read something about it because I went to my mother as a young person and showed her the top of my right hand. I have a birthmark there that looks like an age spot. Now, that I'm sixty I have age spots anyway. But, not back then. Her response was pretty much "get out of here. that's crazy" So, I put it on the back burner and went on with life.  I have also always hated ticking clocks. I would get in trouble with my mother and my sister and other family members because if they had a ticking clock in a room I would do my best to remove the battery or silence it in any way that I could. I still don't really like to be in a silent room with a ticking clock. I understand there are people with absolutely no past life belief's or memories that don't like ticking clocks. I'm just saying.

When I was really young I would be in bed and think about being on a raft in a raging river. I was safe on the raft and I would sometimes put my food on the edge of the bed for a thrill. Like it was dangerous. Now, I knew I wasn't really on a raft but it was at once scary and fun for me to play like I was. Many years later I read an account where Edgar Cayce (No, I'm not saying I knew him in a past life but this did honestly make me think) gave an account of a past life where he was with a group of people on a raft in a swift river.

I have always felt connected to certain people in my life. Even people who I would not really have much of a present life connection with. I have some really strong feelings about that but I won't go into them. I did meet someone in recent years who I can't even remember their name. But, the recognition was instant. I don't know them in this life and the meeting was really casual and quick but I just felt a knowing. Hard to explain if you have never experienced it.

I really tried to connect reincarnation with my Christian faith and when I honestly didn't think I could I tried really hard to demonize it. I read Frank Perriti a Christian writer who wrote a very entertaining novel about the evils of a Christian believing in reincarnation. I read the apologetics and decided that I would just have to be careful not to expose myself to the evils of new age stuff (though I and the Christian apologist seemed really fascinated by it.)

As a young adult in the 1980's I went to Montgomery, Alabama to attend a seminar put on by A.R.E. which is the Edgar Cayce group based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. There was a lady there and this is how I remember it. I have already admitted that memory is an odd and at times unstable thing especially as years go by but this is how I remember it all these years later: A lady walks up to me. All 5 foot three of her. She has long brown hair and I have the thought "She was a man in a past life." "She was a warrior." Now, I don't know why and can't remember why. But, she comes up and says her husband is a professor at Auburn University and isn't really pleased with her attendance at this event. He would be ridiculed by his colleaque's at the university if they knew his wife was into this kind of woo woo stuff. But, she said "I was a man in a past life." "I was a warrior." She then went into some detail that I have forgotten over the years. Their were two memories from this event that I remember. One was the speaker who I have forgotten over the years. I should have been paying more attention but this was a lark on my part and so I was really more concerned with my old clunker car making the trip home than anything else being presented. Anyway, the speaker said although we would like to  think reincarnation is in the bible and was removed from it. The truth is we don't really have any hard evidence for that. I think her honesty was admirable. The final incident that I remember concerned an old man. He was close to the end of that lifetime and some people were around him praying. I  remember praying that if this really was "of the devil" that God would have mercy on him because they weren't Christian. (remember when I  tell you I was steeped in bible belt Christianity I'm not lying.)

Another thing that happened to me as a young adult. Again, I think it was the mid to late 80's or very early 90's. Most likely 80's. I had written the great researcher at the University of Virginia Doctor Ian Stevenson. I had read some of his work concerning reincarnation and I was asking him about intelligent people believing in God or any other so called supernatural reality. I was going through a very questioning time in my life where it seemed like only superstitious and unintelligent people could believe in spiritual matters. I really needed to hear a person of education tell me it wasn't completely idiotic to have hope beyond these few short years of this life. I really wish I had kept his letter. But, I didn't. So, all I have is a memory of it. It was short and to the point. Some very intelligent people including some scientist believe in God. Other's don't. It has nothing to do with being intelligent. Believe it or not this helped me immensely. It gave me permission to at least think about these things without having to leave my brain at the door.

I have no religion to sell to you. I have no burning desire to prove to you I'm right. For one thing I haven't proved it to myself. But, it works to an extent for me. It makes sense (to me) that the eternal essence of who I am isn't decided by the sperm lottery at birth. Still, there is much new agey baggage that comes with these thoughts. Much like religion it has stuff like "everything is planned before birth." I  find that extremely insulting and cruel. I can say that I don't believe the Jewish people planned being burned in ovens by Nazi's or that black people planned to be slaves or that children planned to be raped by adults. I could go on and on. But, that doesn't touch the core reality of the possibility of reincarnation any more than creationism or neo Darwinism touches the reality of evolution.

At the start of this blog I said I would not share it on facebook or any other place except my blog. But, now that I look at it I don't think it's all that scandalous. I didn't name names except for myself and public figures (which I'm surely not.) I don't think I've tried to beg for someone to agree with me nor have I disrespected anyone else. So, I think I will share this after all.

Finally, please understand I mean no disrespect to any of my friends or families faith. I understand how you feel. Please understand me. I have the t-shirt so don't try to convert me to save my soul back to a fundamentalist view of God or Christianity.

As my grandma Snead on my dad's side once told me. "Stevie if you belong to Christ nobody can undo that. So, don't tell me you or the bible feel I have fallen or backslidden." So, understand I have my own understanding of who I am. You don't get to judge and you don't get to pound me over the head with a 6000 year old collection of sacred writings that you don't understand completely yourself. Also, to my more science oriented friends. I have considered atheism. It doesn't work for me. You can put lipstick on a corpse but it's still a corpse. So, you don't get to pound me over the head with "It's Science" as if science were a single entity that answers to that name.

 I in return will not try to  tell anybody else that what I have written about is absolute or even correct. I reserve the right to be wrong. But, I don't  think I am wrong. After all it's my opinion at this part of my journey. In the end all we have is our own inner life that we can share with others who are graceful enough to want us to share. I believe in prayer. I believe in meditation. I believe there is more to us than brain farts or neural firings that somehow produce this entity I call myself. I also believe in medical science and biology and that quantum science is fascinating and that we need to watch our footprint that we are leaving on the earth.

Peace.