Reincarnation: What, Me Worry?

Blessings, Darlings!

Many of us in the Northern Hemisphere have Samhain on the brain for this entire month.  I'll quibble about what date it 'should' fall on, but I did that in April of '09 about Beltane, so I'll give it a rest now.

This time I'm up for talking reincarnation. Why? Bbecause I'm wonder how folks figure to contact their ancestors when so many  neopagans believe that everyone reincarnates.  World population being what it is, how many old souls are currently between incarnations and available to be contacted?  And why do folks think that the same people who weren't the sharpest tack in the box when alive are suddenly going to be fonts of info now that they're dead?  But, back to reincarnation......

I touched on reincarnation a bit before, in last years post http://www.fernsfronds.blogspot.com/2009/07/strawberry-in-jello.html.  There I talked about the soul and what initiation might do to it, and if that was good or bad. 

But now I want to talk about how neopagans have the ever so Western view that reincarnation is all rosebuds and unicorn farts, while in Asian countries - where belief in reincarnation was far more common that it was in Europe - it was seen as being pretty awful, something to get out of as soon as possible.  Life wasn't pretty for most of the world.  Heck, life still isn't pretty for most of the world.  Getting out of it, whether to the afterlife of any sort or to the relative oblivion of Nirvana, was a grand thing. 

But here we neopagans are.  Mostly we're in Western countries, with Western sensibilities.  And most of us just LOVE LOVE LOVE the idea of reincarnation.  Why is that?

So I looked at modern western life.  Anyone reading this on a computer in their home is among the top 1% elite of the world.   You have a home.  You are literate.  You have a computer in your home.  You have electricity.  Etc.  Yeah, I think that being part of the world elite colors our view of reincarnation.

Reincarnation including a rather 'evolutionary' view here in the West, 'clearly' anyone Elite enough to be reading this must have been quite the ubermensch in the past life, eh?  How else would you have earned this?  And, since we're all already so enlightened to have earned this, certainly WE aren't going to be facing a life of starvation, misery, etc in our next lives, either.  Fear the next life? Don't be silly.  WE won't be born in a slum in India.  WE won't be working the garbage heaps in Rio.  We will born in a clean environment, be educated, have enough food, have the right number of chromosomes,  etc.

After all, we have evolved.  We have learned all the lessons we needed to learn by being poor/3rd world/whatever.  So WE have no worries.  Clearly THEY still have lessons to learn.  Not us.

Frondly, Fern

PS = we REALLY need a dedicated font for sarcasm.

The Strawberry in the Jello

Kay's death reminded me that, back in the day, a friend and I had a conversation about reincarnation on a yahoo group. Here's my main contributions to that conversation. Well, it was really a discussion of 'what service initiation actually provides', but most of the conversation was about what it provides the soul/spirit after death...

Re: Initiation as a Public Service?

--- In paganpath@yahoogroups.com, Daimon2@... wrote:
>
>>> So my first two questions are:
>
> 1. What do people think happens after death, both to initiates and
> non-initiates?<<

Dang Imps and their Questions! I don't 'know'. The Celtic
Reconstructionist part of me says we all reincarnate - that makes us
Celts brave in battle, a 'screw you and the horse you rode in on'
attitude towards death. It isn't seen as the end of anything except
pain.

However, if you look at reincarnation as a form of recycling: a tree
dies, rots, the atoms/compounds feed other trees. The 'same' tree
does not reincarnate, its atoms spread out to many other trees.
Perhaps the 'atoms' of the soul flow back into the Great Unincarnated
and mix with all the others there. Then a cup full of 'atoms' from
the greater mix get poured into one incarnation or another.

Or perhaps that is what happens to the 'common' soul - it ends up 'in
common', as one, with the rest. Initiation might act as a unifying
power on the soul, holding it together to act as one, not as if it
has 'individual atoms' or 'quantum units of power' in it. An
initiated soul would still get poured into the common mix, but hold
together in it - a strawberry in the jello of soul atoms! - and go
intact into a next incarnation.

>>> 2. How long do you think a soul lingers prior to reincarnation
if
> reincarnation occurs, or is it in a non-temporal state so that it
doesn't matter?<<

Dunno. I don't think it's immediate. I think that there is
some 'aging' or 'resting' done between incarnations, but can't back
my view up with anything.

>
>>> My third question is then, supposing existence is a roulette
game, and non-initiates cease to exist, or the material of their souls are
recycled into new souls prior to reincarnating, would it then be a public service to
provide as many open opportunities for people to become initiates of the
mysteries, what would be the ways to do this, and what ethical and spiritual
questions would it raise? <<


Who said incarnation is a good thing? We Westerners, who have
oppressed others effectively enough to be the top 1% of the worlds
population, who have enough to eat, homes, computer access, clothes,
are VERY happy to reincarnate. But out East, the Hindus and
Buddhists feel that incarnating SUCKS. That we are CONDEMNED to be
bound to the Wheel of Rebirth. Their whole bloody GOAL is non-
existance, in a way. Nirvana/Samsara is opting OUT of the game.

Initiation, if it lead to reincarnation instead of oblivion, would be
the ultimate self inflicted injury. Initiators would be seen as
enslaving souls.

So there.

Fern