QUOTE(Cloud Hex @ Jan 10 2007, 11:14 AM)
Edit: Cloud Hex, could you post the information here rather than directing people to another site which cannot be viewed unless people register, they may not wish to. Cheers.
this is a thread I started that got to me to make this one.
posters post:
1. I disagree that only people who remember their past lives still have lessons to still learn from those lives. In many cases, people do not remember a particular past life so that they have the freedom to not make the same mistakes that they made in those past lives. Remembering a particular past life merely sets the stage for sticking in the same rut, and responding to similar stimuli in the same manner. Or, you have the choice to respond differently.
It is true that we have many lessons to learn from one past life to another. Clinical psychologists have demonstrated through past life regression, that when a person is taken back in time, they often relive events in a past life that, once become cognizant of, current life crises are averted. These range from asthma to persistant unreasonable fears, such as claustrophobia, wearing tight clothing around the neck, fear of heights (or falling) and so on. In the vast majority of these cases, the patient has no clue about their past lives, yet they are affected by them.
2. I agree with oldsoul. The past has always something to teach, and if not something specific in a given situation, it can always inspire. Who we were is in continuity with who we are. Are greater being is, in fact, the totality of the thread of our experience from past happening to future possibility.
To address the school analogy, a professional of any given field never throws away accesses to the knowledge of past courses. You will always find the need to reference with the past to get a more complete view of the present as well as the options available.
To me learning only to forget the source of learning makes the learning faulty and incomplete. I think people may not remember past lives because they are focused on their current form and situation. This is well and good, but sometimes this focus can be quite rigid. I have used hypnotic regression to access past life material, and had some success often with great detail, but except for a few cases of marked vividness, I could never tell if the material was real or my subconscious putting current issues in the context of past life symbolism.
Years later, I started getting a different kind of past life understanding. This was not centered on details, but on general life themes, personality trends, and the thread of my current aspirations revealed in a past context. I found this kind of access much more constructive and devoid of the temptation to miss the forest for the trees.
So one may need to examine if the generalization that "if something is difficult it is not meant to be" is an attitude that can be limiting in esoteric development.
3. If one remembers their past lives, isn't the idea of your soul eventually remembering all of its past lives, whether in this one or a next life, sort of sound like the key to eternal life?
What I wonder is if at some point, you "remember" the lives of _other_ people in your lives? Wouldn't that make "being one" understandable in a non-esoteric sense? If eventually I will "remember" what you experience in your life, and you will remember mine, then couldn't we be seen as one mind?
The point being they seemed to have missed the point about the main topic of the thread, as I will now post as number 0.
0. The point of the great work is total spiritual maturity, the reason for this is simple, eternal freedom. I've read a few things that try to explain why most people in Reincarnation don't remember their past lives, to me the only real reason that doesn't happen is either their not supposed to, which is the case for those that try and to that end can. When you learned a lesson and understand for all that it is you no longer have to bother with about it, because its done and over with, like a test that you've just aced at school, spiritual maturity is like that, when you reached a certain point with it pretty much being total in nature you pretty much are free from it, forever.
Those who remember their pastlives have a lesson, even if they don't know this it will come in time. most people learn this lesson piece by piece while most of the time they are procrastinating in some way for form, the great work is taking time to study seriously so it won't bother you ever again. Like taking one test, just once and never having to go to school anymore.
I'm a chaote, and in this being the case I can say that my path to the great work is different from someone who does not follow the middle path, or as I prefer calling it the ambidextrous path.
I'm not interested in becoming enlightened like buddha or endarkend like anyone who cares to say that they are so that thats what they are, what I'm interested in is finding my own way for the purpose of the great work, because for me its the only way to go.
Peace...
This post has been edited by Cloud Hex: Jan 10 2007, 01:55 PM