After many births
the wise seek refuge in me.
-
Bhagavad
Gita
In
order to understand the suffering in this world we have to go beyond it. We have to see beyond the limitations of
bodily existence and come to know ourselves on a deeper level. On the level of form we have to accept that
life is temporary and we are prone to pain, disappointment, grief and
loss. There seems to be no way of
getting around it. When we awaken to our
true nature, however we see beyond the illusory limitations of temporal
forms. We recognize ourselves as beings
of boundless consciousness, infinite light.
It is our attachment to impermanent objects that creates our suffering.
“Our bodies and our minds,” writes Brian
L. Weiss, MD, “are the masks our real self— the soul— wears in the physical
world. When we die, we remove our masks and we rest in our natural state. There
is no disappearance, no oblivion. We simply take off our masks, our clothes,
and other outer coverings, and we return home to the spiritual realms.” (Miracles Happen, 2012) His words echo the teachings of Krishna in
the Bhagavad Gita, “As a man abandons worn-out clothes and acquires new ones,
so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives
within.” This ancient knowledge although
disregarded and despised in the modern age continues to resurface in dreams,
meditation, past-life regression and psychedelic experiences. As we collectively awaken from the dark age
this knowledge is becoming more common place.
For example “According to data
released last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a quarter of Americans now believe in reincarnation.” (http://personalityspirituality.net/2010/09/05/western-belief-in-reincarnation-on-the-increase/)
Of course you
might say belief is purely subjective and doesn’t prove anything. However, many people report having meaningful
past-life memories. These memories can
have a healing effect on both physical and psychological levels, as Dr. Weiss
points out.
Reincarnation
enables us to make sense of life, to put suffering into perspective. Instead of seeing our lives as meaningless,
chance events, this spiritual perspective allows us to understand them as
stages in the evolution of our souls. A
religious perspective that excludes reincarnation doesn’t give us room to grow. As “The Healer,” a character in Bill
Douglas’s novel “2012 the Awakening” says, “The denial of reincarnation is
anti-evolutionary. The essence of evolution, which is required of us now more
than at any other time in our history, is fluidity of spirit. The rejection of reincarnation rigidifies
people, causing them to grit their teeth and resist who they really are, in
order to follow dogmatic and arbitrary rules so they can avoid eternal
damnation when they die. They stop evolving and live in obedient fear of a
wrathful, vengeful God – who will either give them a not guilty sentence for
their self-denial, or will damn them to eternal suffering for stepping outside
the rigid lines.” Reincarnation gives us
an opportunity to learn from our mistakes.
The
concept of karma goes along with reincarnation.
It simply implies that there are antecedents to our current life
experiences. We come into this life with
certain tendencies, abilities, needs and desires. We come to learn from this experience. Karma is both personal and collective. Sometimes it seems to represent a callous
attitude towards other – after all it seems to imply that we all get what we
deserve. Instead we might better
understand this world of our experience as a collective creation. It is an opportunity to develop love,
compassion and generosity, and to evolve beyond the narrow limits of our
self-serving ego consciousness. Perhaps
the innocent child who is killed so tragically is actually an aspect of God
telling us to wake up. Marianne
Williamson writes, “Starving children in Africa are not poor because their
consciousness is unaligned with love; they’re poor because ours is. A billion
people on earth live in “deep poverty”— that is, on less than a dollar and
twenty-five cents a day. A billion more live on less than two dollars a day.
Yet this is not an “exception” to the rule that love casts out fear. Quite the
opposite, it is a collective lovelessness on the part of the advanced nations
of the world that allows us to accept the reality of deep poverty, thus deflecting
a miraculous solution.” (Williamson, Marianne (2012-11-27). The Law of Divine
Compensation: On Work, Money, and Miracles . HarperOne. Kindle Edition.)
Beyond
belief in reincarnation or even past-life memories however is our real task of
awakening to our true nature as beings of consciousness. We are responsible for the reality we create
out of self-centered desire, hatred, fear, greed, etc. We are here to overcome these and to awaken
to the Loving Presence of Who We Are. We
must awaken beyond the dream, beyond the nightmare, beyond ego. Ultimately we are here to awaken from all
attachment to outward form and to recognize our inner unity and
perfection.
Meditation is the time
proven method for spiritual evolution.
Research indicates that if meditation became the central activity of
humanity then violence would be eliminated.
Is this possible? It starts with
each of us. Practice meditation regularly,” taught Swami Sivananda. “Meditation leads
to eternal bliss. Therefore meditate, meditate.”
OM
