There and back again.

I was going to use this title for the blog itself. For me it sounded like “reincarnation”. “There” being the planet Earth (or the physical world you choose to reincarnate, in my case it’s been always planet Earth, as far as I remember), and “Back” the spiritual world. Due to technical reasons I finally couldn’t do it, and I’m glad now, first because I identify much more with Eowyn and her bitter watches, and second, because today I’ve realized… there is no going back. Just like Frodo says at the end of The Return of the King.

And this can be applied to many aspects of reincarnation.

One of them is reincarnation itself. We say we are a soul having a human experience, and when we die we return home, where we’re eternal and we have nothing to fear. Well, this is true, but our soul is not exactly what it was. Human experiences change us, possibly at a slower pace than most people think, but when we’re back home, we’re never the same. We can’t be. Maybe that’s the fundamental reason why we incarnate, to be changed… to learn, some say. And they call it “spiritual evolution”. I don’t like the word “evolution”, because most people understand it has to be always a change for the better. However, I’ve just searched for the meaning of “evolution” in the internet, and this is what I’ve found:

1. A gradual change in the characteristics of a population of animals or plants over successive generations: accounts for the origin of existing species from ancestors unlike them.

2. A gradual development, esp. to a more complex form: the evolution of modern art.

3. The act of throwing off, as heat, gas, vapour, etc.

4. A pattern formed by a series of movements or something similar.

5. An algebraic operation in which the root of a number, expression, etc, is extracted.

6. An exercise carried out in accordance with a set procedure or plan.

http://www.wordreference.com/definition/evolution

It says nowhere it has to be for the better… unless people have thought all this time human beings are the best form of evolution and then they have extrapolated this thought to our spiritual condition too. Of course, I disagree. We evolve, that’s certain, but that means we change gradually through our human experiences, sometimes for the better, sometimes we just… change.

Frodo made me think of all this, because some of his wounds from his quest and his journey to Mordor never heal. Like he says, there are hurts that go too deep. And I’ve found this is what happens with us, those who remember past lives. Or at least it takes time, a whole lot of time, and no, it’s not enough visiting past life healers or spiritual counselors… it just takes time. I can be the best doctor in my field, but I can’t rush the process, nature is nature and it has its laws. I can help, I can clean, I can foresee complications and fight against them, but to heal completely… it will heal just when it has to.

So, we return home, and we go back to Earth, but the burden is not the same. The burden is ever heavier and heavier, we may have chosen to leave behind a part of that burden, but we can’t turn our backs on the things we have lived, even if it’s in an unconscious way.

Another aspect of reincarnation where we can apply the saying “There is no going back” is the process of discovering your past lives. Not long ago I used to say that once you have found knowledge, you can’t go back to ignorance. In other words, you can’t “unlearn” what you have learnt. Yes, you can pretend nothing changed, or even ignore the fact that the dreams you had were not normal dreams, but past life memories… you can go on with your life and not give reincarnation a second thought. But lying to yourself is not very responsible, is it? And repressing feelings is not even healthy. So there’s no use in hiding or avoiding what you have found: that you have lived before, that sometimes you’ve made mistakes, that for some reason you’re back here in this difficult task, not very sure of the meaning, if it’s any at all. Almost without realizing it, you’ve changed. And when you die and go back home, you won’t be the same anymore.

Remembering past lives changes you so much that people who used to know you may say you are like a stranger to them. And that’s a curious thing to happen, as now you know yourself much better than before…