Reincarnation as a choice

Originally Posted by sweatervest

For me, I'm not yet convinced that I have that much say in the matter. If my higher self is the decision maker, then I believe "it" should provide better technical support, or at least a decent owner's manual to operating in this existence.

Maybe it does but you are the one not looking in it I can give you a book but I cannot read it for you.

I remember myself when I chose to come here
it was not a pleasant choice but I had too .. I know I absolutely had too
my guide reminded me of some beautiful things on earth .. and told me it's gonna be ok
and I jumped

I have long felt the way the OP does... love the way s/he says we should have better tech support and owner's manual! YES! :)

I've long wondered if I was truly 100% invested in this lifetime for various reasons. Pushed into it or overzealous plan I now regret or something....I don't feel like I belong here for one thing. This place breaks my tender heart & has ever since I can remember. I don't understand this place. I feel like adjusting to it out of survival necessity is damaging, not strengthening my spirit... I feel often like, "What the hell IS this place?? Why do so many do things the way things are here, by & large??"

I try to appease myself by looking at it as a journey (since I do like to travel, I thought the analogy might help ease things for me...) but the truth is, if I wasn't having a good time, I'd leave that place...and I do just long to go HOME. Sure, there are some beautiful things here on the planet, and sometimes, human actions can truly touch the heart and soul... and then there's the rest... people who say they 'love life' completely befuddle me. And then there's those that choose the 'learning soul lessons' approach, accepting 'our karma' or whatever to 'make sense of things'...I dunno, all these survival strategies (as I see them) just make me feel worse, that I am REALLY screwing up or something wrong with me because I just can't see how to do any of those, not with any authenticity... is how we feel really a choice? Is how we think? It just feels like mind games to me, I don't know...

I 'm having a hard time now & the only reason I don't call bull on all of this spiritual stuff is that I can't deny I've also felt such a connection & seen some amazing signs...and yet why all the suffering, then?? If we are in fact here to learn & grow, why does so much of it come through suffering & pain & trauma??

***Why can't we be nurtured & supported gently through lessons?*** Why the torture? A choice to see the things I've/others have experienced in a different way, that suffering is a choice?? Hmmmm, well, I just can't see my way through that one on the big things at least like war, rape, actual torture, etc.....or the chronic ones like debilitating health issues including depression & other struggles of the mind... it all just seems unnecessarily cruel to me... if we are all children of the Universe, no sane human parent would advocate that child learn through pain & suffering without trying to guide them otherwise first...but since there IS no manual or obvious tech support from the get go, we supposedly forget (or many of us do) the spiritual teaching we may already know when we get here, we are left to flounder, and may or may not happen upon a true spiritual teacher/understanding of the supposed 'laws of the universe', etc.....

I'm on a spiritual forum so obviously I haven't completely dismissed a spiritual approach or answers...but .... anytime I've 'trusted', I've gotten screwed by my perspective, soo....

Clearly I'm ranting, this post hit a nerve I've been struggling with, obviously...

[in progress]

It seems worse somehow after we awaken. Then you realize you've made this choice on purpose and wanted to do it. But you can't fully remember why or feel the desire for it now that you're here.

It feels like you're using rocks and sticks to accomplish something when you feel you know there are high tech tools hidden nearby.

[WhiteWarrior]

Oh, I have not suffered all that much in this life. That's not what makes me decide against reincarnating again. What decides me is the knowledge that we are pawns, playing pieces, in the hands of the Powers That Be. We are supposedly beings of free will, but out of sight there are always someone watching, allowing and maybe even encouraging this to happen while making sure other things never do. Someone who gives some of us riches from birth or places us in slums, someone who makes this one talented in every way and gives nothing to to that one. And when I said playing pieces I mean it, because this power want us to become like this while another has need of us for THAT. We get kicked from a to b, thinking we have great or ****** luck, having tons of happiness or tons of disasters heaped on us thinking it a matter of 'luck'. But in reality we are being used, over and over and over again. And I have had enough of it. I see backwards, life after life after life, and always I am useful for certain purposes until I am tossed away to die at a convenient time.

Enough of being the toy of beings who would rather gnaw off a bodypart than take a body and wander around down here to experience pain and misery on their own. I am moving to the other side and I am going to look for some place where they will leave me alone. Even if that means jumping into an energy disintegrator which destroys me forever. I doubt the powers that be will even notice they have 100 billion minus one beings to screw around with, but I won't care. Game over and good riddance.

(edited by SF staff)

[sweatervest]

(I'm a "he," by the way, LOL, I know you can't always tell by screen names)

There's a Hindu concept called Lila or Leela. As it was described to me, the creator is responsible for a play, which we experience as life. We are the actors in this play, and we are all an extension of the creator.

Wikipedia has a quote explaining Lila which claims that we aren't supposed to mind the pain and hardship because we are blissed out by our relationship with the creator. Not sure I buy that thought, but maybe it helps others manage the day-to-day ups and downs.

It's sort of like Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage."

In that philosophy, it doesn't sound like we have much if any autonomy in planning how or if we reincarnate. We're just all an extension of the creator, who makes all the decisions.

That would sort of align with WhiteWarrior's description of a higher self watching us fumble about on TV for entertainment.

I hope we have some kind of say in how or if we reincarnate, but at the moment, I'm not sure.

I believe there is nothing to know, as ones reality changes with what one think one know. To some there is no creator, only life and life creates and recreates itself, while to others there is a creator that creates life, you can call it a director if you like but when the play is running the director has little influence on the play, you can improvise if you like. Yet what do I know, maybe improvisation gives a ****** casting in the next life