Around the world, many people—perhaps the majority overall—accept a belief in reincarnation as part of their religion.
Not many people in the West believe in it, though. In fact, many scoff at the very idea and regard it as nonsense.
This is largely because in the West we are enamored with the benefits of scientific knowledge and increasingly sceptical of the old religions—rightly so, in my view. The knowledge science provides can be systematically checked to ensure that it is valid and reliable. This is why it is of such great value.
But it is not necessarily the only source of knowledge that is valid and reliable.
Besides, what science can see is limited to that which is physical and objective. Reality itself is not necessarily so limited. If we limit our understanding of what reality can be to just what science can see, we are leaving ourselves half-blind.
A wealth of information is now available from a wide variety of sources which, despite their differences, give surprisingly coherent and mearningful insights into the nature of the soul and its evolution.
Thanks to a combination of channelled teachings, insights from near-death experiences, reports of hypnotic regression, transpersonal experiences induced by meditation, breath-work or psychoactive substances, after-death communications, and even scientific research into children’s spontaneous descriptions of their past lives, it is now possible to put together a very clear picture of reincarnation.
Regardless of the medium (no pun intended), the message is consistent. Whether one regards such information as factual knowledge or as loony nonsense depends upon one’s openness to non-physical sources of information.
Interestingly, in light of this accumulation of knowledge, we can now see that even within those Eastern cultures that believe in reincarnation, many people’s understanding of it is confused by all sorts of religious doctrines that are just plain wrong.
So, here are ten things about reincarnation which I think are valid and reliable and which I believe everyone—East or West—would benefit from knowing:
10 things everyone should know about reincarnation
1. The soul exists.
- The soul isn’t just a myth or an illusion or a relic of pre-scientific superstition. All human beings are a combination of physical, mortal body and non-physical, immortal soul.
- Your soul is the absolute essence of you — the only true answer to the question, “Who am I?” It is who you always are regardless of how you feel or what you believe or how you perceive yourself.
- From the body’s perspective, the soul is the conscious, animating life force within it. From the soul’s perspective, the body is a vehicle for inhabiting the physical world and experiencing physical existence.
- The soul is pure consciousness, pure energy, pure being. It exists on a timeless, non-physical level of reality. It is a piece of Spirit or God or Source, a spark of divine light and love, a fragment of absolute perfection.
2. The soul evolves.
- All souls are on a mission to evolve (grow, develop) through their own experiences and efforts.
- To evolve as a soul is to become increasingly self-aware and self-capable as a unique expression of Spirit.
- By evolving, the soul changes in its level of beingness and consciousness, from new-born innocence to greater and greater levels of love, power and wisdom. In effect, that which is created rejoins the Creator — after eons of evolution.
3. The soul evolves most effectively in physical form.
- Evolution of the soul comes about through individual experience and choice.
- A soul evolves most effectively by facing and making choices as a separate individual, making choices big and small, and experiencing the effects of each choice.
- To do so, the soul incarnates — that is, the soul fuses with a physical body for a whole lifetime, from birth to death.
- By doing so, the soul gets to experience being physically limited and physically separated from others and from all-that-is. This is actually an illusion, a trick of the senses, as the soul itself is never really limited or separate. But the illusion creates enough desire, fear and other pressures to cause the soul to experience conflicts and dilemmas and to make choices. It also puts the soul’s own perceptions, feelings and decisions under the microscope, as it were.
- The experiences and choices of a lifetime serve as lessons for the soul once the life is completed. After death (the soul’s exit from the physical realm), the soul and its guides review what happened during the life and what lessons can be learned from it.
- The soul not only reviews its own experiences and choices but also discovers the effects of its own choices on others during the life. For example, the decision to steal a sum of money at one point may have caused the victim significant hardship and anxiety.
- The soul learns that all choices have experiential consequences, not just for the self but for everyone involved.
4. The soul undergoes the full range of meaningful experiences and choices by reincarnating.
- One lifetime is not enough to experience the whole gamut of life circumstances and to make all choices. For example, the soul needs to experience life as both male and female; as both victim and perpetrator; as both student and teacher… Hence, the soul re-incarnates many times over in order to experience the full spectrum of life.
- Being human again and again, each time with a different body, different life circumstances and different relationships, enables the soul to experience the full range of possible perspectives and relationships and all the lessons that these entail.
- Through many different human experiences, the soul gradually becomes more self-aware, gradually discovers more of its true capabilities (love, power, wisdom), and gradually learns how to overcome the illusory limitations of being physical.
- Generally, the soul learns best through a “compare and contrast” process, not through blind repetition. Hence any given lifetime may be completely different in some way from the last one. (From the soul’s point of view, there is little value in repeating the same kind of life again and again — unless, that is, there is a specific lesson within that lifestyle which has yet to be learned — in which case, Groundhog Day is an excellent metaphor).
- Each human lifetime is an opportunity to learn specific lessons. One lifetime, for example, might focus on learning greater self-responsibility while the next might focus on being kinder to others. If in one lifetime the soul experiences being a man with a lot of power over women, say, it would then be of value to contrast that with the experience of being a powerless woman.
- The soul has no preference for one side of the equation or the other, since both sides help draw out different aspects of the soul.
5. The soul has no nationality, creed, race or gender.
- There is no such thing as a Jewish soul or a Chinese soul or whatever. We are just souls, and as souls we are free to experience the whole variety of human cultures across the planet.
- We choose our birth location, race and nationality to suit our purposes for any given lifetime. Sometimes race and creed are a deliberate choice; at other times they are merely incidental to what the life is about.
- Because the soul learns through a process of “compare and contrast”, one who has just experienced a life as (say) an Israeli soldier might decide to be (say) a Palestinian orphan in the next.
- There is no such thing as a male soul or a female soul. Gender is a biological phenomenon, not a spiritual one. Human beings are of two sexes and so we have to choose which one to be before each life begins.
- Because we want to experience, compare and contrast all possible perspectives, we will choose to experience lives as both men and women. We can be male or female as often as we please. We can be male in one lifetime and female the next. Or we can be male for ten lifetimes and female for the next fifty lifetimes. It is all a matter of choice. Even if we have a strong preference for one gender, we will still tend to incarnate as the other gender every now and then, just to maintain a balanced perspective.
6. The soul sticks to one species at a time.
- Contrary to certain teachings, the souls of human beings reincarnate only as human beings.
- That’s not to say we did not experience life in simpler life forms before that. But at some point in our earlier evolution, we selected the human species as our vehicle of choice (no pun intended) to evolve as self-aware individuals.
- The soul’s mission is to expand in consciousness, and there is no value for the soul already at the human level in experiencing life at a “sub-human” level of consciousness. There may be rare exceptions where a soul who is normally human experiments with being a dolphin, say, but as a rule we do not return as insects or cows or blades of grass or what have you. We are spiritual beings on a human journey, learning to be ourselves through human experiences, human relationships and human choices.
7. Each lifetime is pre-planned.
- Before taking birth, the soul (along with its guides in spirit) will decide what experiences and choices the life should include.
- The appropriate circumstances and relationships will be chosen and set up with the cooperation and agreement of other souls who will be involved.
- For example, let’s say the soul wants to experience being compassionate towards children. The soul may decide that the life to come should include its own childhood experience of abandonment by the mother. This would help drive the personality in adult life to want to help abandoned children. Another soul will then agree, out of love, to be the mother who abandons this soul in childhood.
- Most major events in life are pre-planned: the birth, the family, the school, the relationships, the career and so on. This includes deaths, accidents and illnesses. There is, however, plenty of room for unplanned things to occur. The choices we make on the ground matter far more than “destiny”.
- The body is also chosen by the soul before birth. Souls are aware of which foetuses are viable and which are not, and which are going to be terminated before birth. (Hence, abortion is not really ‘murder’.)
- Some lifetimes are explicitly set up for the soul to undergo a particular learning experience (such as being a teacher, for example), while some are actually undertaken for the benefit of others‘ learning experiences.
- For example, we might opt to live a life as a much-loved child who suddenly dies while still young, purely in order to help another soul undergo the experience of tragic loss.
8. There is a law of karma…
- … but it is not like many people think it is.
- If soul A kills soul B in one lifetime, then in a later lifetime soul B will kill soul A. That is the effect of karma.
- But karma is not (repeat not) about cosmic justice or divine retribution. From the perspective of Spirit, there is no need for cosmic justice because there is no such thing as cosmic injustice.
- Karma is really about learning through “entanglement”. If I do something in physical life that violates your free will, we become entangled. We both feel the lack of equilibrium between us. It’s like we have become tied together by a rope. The only way to restore equilibrium is to undo the entanglement—by having you violate my free will in a similar way. That way, we both know from experience what it is like to be both the violator and the violated.
- Souls tend to commit karmic acts in the early stages of their reincarnations when they have less experience of human existence.
- Typical karmic acts are: murder, rape, dismemberment, imprisonment, abandonment.
- In all cases, one person imposes something on another against the other’s will. There is no karmic entanglement for acts that are accidental or not by choice.
9. Reincarnation has a beginning and an end.
- Contrary to certain teachings, we are not tied to a wheel of endless death and rebirth, to be saved only by renouncing the world and seeking spiritual liberation.
- The whole journey of evolving through reincarnation begins with us at a certain level and ends once we reach another level. It takes (typically) well over 100 lifetimes. From first human life to last requires thousands of years, depending upon the availability of physical bodies.
- In spirit, the whole path is clear to us and we know exactly what we are doing. Each lifetime is a deliberate adventure and is undertaken out of love and a desire to evolve.
10. There is no urgency.
- Contrary to what many teach on the subject, there is no urgency for us to become enlightened, or to complete our reincarnational cycle.
- It is not “better” to evolve quickly over a few lives than to evolve slowly over many lives.
- Reincarnation is not a challenge to reach the end of evolution as quickly as possible.
- We are not “caught” in the cycle of human death and rebirth.
- The physical world is not a hell-hole to be climbed out of.
- God is not wishing we would get a move on.
- From the perspective of Spirit, there is no passage of time. Time is just a perceptual phenomenon for us while in physical form. Souls literally do not care how many thousands of years it takes to get from one level of reincarnation to another. The passage of time in human terms is, to the soul, irrelevant.
A final word
I would also add one more correction to certain teachings: souls do not normally reincarnate instantly after death. Usually there is a period of several years or decades between one life and the next, during which the soul recuperates, considers the lessons learned from the last life and plans its next one.
———
It should come as no surprise to learn that we have had a past life, or even many past lives. The only ones who haven’t lived a previous life are those at the very beginning of the reincarnational cycle. The only ones who aren’t coming back after this life are those at the very end of the cycle.
Reincarnation is the norm for all human beings. It is universal. It is what we are all doing here.
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Further reading
For a useful perspective on the stages of reincarnation, see –
You can also check out all my blogposts tagged “reincarnation” , including these popular posts:
– barry
I would like to know if we lose someone’s in this life, very precious to us, we would see him/her in the afterlife ?
And…one more question….If I want to meet someone very much whom I knew in this life but he didn’t know me, will I have this chance in the afterlife ?
Yes. In the first case, there’s a good chance they will be one of the first to greet you during your transition into the realm of light. In the second case, there’s nothing to stop you contacting any other being, and there’s no reason why they would avoid or refuse such contact; your motivation for wanting to meet will be clear to them.
If you believe in reincarnation and past lives the odds are that you will not see them and recognize them in life after this body of yours dies. Proponents of reincarnation like Barry here will tell you “there’s a good chance they will be one of the first to greet you during your transition into the realm of light”. How does he know that? The one thing that reincarnation tells you is certain is that you are born and have almost no recollection of your previous lives. I’m giving ground on this one in saying that you would even have any recollection. If reincarnation is true almost everybody has no recollection. Think of all those loved ones you created memories with. Do you want to see them again? If you believe that you live one life and that after this body dies you will live again at some point with another body and it will be a consciously aware existence of all that you created in your original body you will indeed have meetings with those relationships you developed. Also, you will get an opportunity to meet people you knew in this life even if they werent all that aware of you. In reincarnation there is no guarantee of any of that. The net result is that with one conscious life there is a huge incentive to create healthy loving relationships that will carry on throughout all of eternity. In reincarnation that is no there. Why create when it will be lost? Its sort of obvious. There is no incentive.
I remember quite a few things from precious lives. I have had the chance to check quite a few were definitely true, some I don’t know yet but I presume they’re true too. I’ve spoken with friends about common memories, places we were in, things that happened. I understand it may not happen in every life or to everyone, but it is there.
Interesting. I met someone online and we both felt mutual recognition. He’s had past life readings and in one he was a female prostitute in the Caribbean at the time of British empire and piracy. I’ve had a past life dream of being in the same place at the same time, on the run for some reason.
Hello
From ancient Greek literature we know that there is souls in animals and in plants but they are considered as different kingdoms who co-exist with us.
The karma or emarmeni (in greek) is actually a trap. Consider yourself as a cruel person and in the next life those you tortured are torturing you know. Is it endless that traps you in? The key of success is be able to surpass that… say NO i forgive him I wish no involvement with this person again and I wish to go forward. If we accept to make someone pay for his Karma we fall into the trap of Karma in our next lives.
Father created us from the same essence as his, it means that Father used the essence of a greater consciousness, what some call as the source (the global organism). Meaning in order to become Gods we have to evolve, we dont become one at the end (the definition of ONE is actually virtual)
I only wish to know one thing and its not clear after reading several lbl and plr.. I am in this body now and I am that and that…I am sensitive, loving, hateful, etc… are we the same later on in our next bodies but a bit more evolved? Some books say YES – some other books say NO like they shed the imprint like snakes and that sounds strange, more like there is no need. This is not clear to me, to much newagers and if we are not the same and we shed away what we are now.. is it sound like a total shed of the spirit from our soul (spirit is what we are, soul is the essence but both are unite and the same)… if we shed away what we are, whats the point.
so I want to decline the second belief about souls shedding their imprint(lives) its cruel and reminds me religious beliefs of their gods giving us bodies without spirit…zionism or judaism.
The essence of self is constant, eternal. The essence is a pure energy, spirit. For example, I am a Scholar in essence – my basic role is to absorb and integrate knowledge. What changes and evolves is the individual consciousness of essence, which is driven by personal experiences as an incarnate being. This is what is meant by soul age – essence evolves in consciousness. It evolves in a certain inevitable sequence, but HOW it gets there is totally open and always comes from its own choices.
To learn lessons from reincarnation, the essence has to take on personality traits that will best enable it to interact with others in life. Or to be more exact, certain energies are emphasised while others are filtered out. For example, a Scholar like me could take on the goal of Dominance for one life. This would give me a streak of wilfulness, a slightly pushy edge, like a King. I might also add the mode of Repression, which would filter out my own energy and cause me to just fit in with the rest.
After that life, when whatever lessons have been absorbed into my evolving consciousness, that personality would be shed and – after a bit of R&R – I would then pick a different personality for my next life – whatever would be appropriate for my current lessons.
I have found this theory today and I have some questions. Since I was kid that I have an obsession with Angola and Lisbon in the 40´s / 50’s and 60’s. I never was there not people from my family but I feel I was there before, that I lived all my life there, but I can’t remember. When I see photos of Angola (mainly Luanda), or when I go to Lisbon, I always feel pain in the chest/heart. I feel I was there before, but I can’t remember. I like to see images of Luanda in those times and I feel like sad, and I also feel an urge to go there. I feel I was in those streets, but I really don’t have a memory of it, just a feeling. Do you think my past life was there?
About your post, I didn’t quite understand what happens after. You said our souls have a limit of reincarnations, so from where they come and to where they go? In my next life will I be conscious like in this one? What I mean is, when I die, will things get dark or will I continue to think and exist?
Is there a way to see my past life ? (can I do that alone?)
Great post!
Is reincarnation limited to this planet? What happens if the planet is destroyed?
There are zillions of planets all over the physical universe being used this way. We happen to belong to a wave of souls who chose this planet and species as their physical vehicles, but if we end up making this one unsuitable for further evolution then we will simply redeploy to another one.
After you will research Flat Earth you will find that everything is a lie about the world we live and all those planets are based on theories there was a song “Space may be the final frontier but it is made in a Hollywood basement. And everything coming from NASA is CGI made on PC like movies and they are Satanic worshipers because NASA mean SATAN with red serpent tongue in the middle the fallen angel is behind them. So basically everything that happen today is to exclude God as creator.
Thanks, Barry, so we don’t bounce around the many choices, we stay earth bound? Might be an incentive to finish while earth is still viable.
Or, an incentive to keep the earth viable for as long as possible?
Wonderful article! It is clear, concise, easy to read, easy to understand. It stays on point and is complete in explanation of reincarnation. Thank You.
Thank you very much, Maria
My Son is proof of reincarnation.
Nole being my Son in a previous life lived in Egypt and would sketch fabulous places he had lived in Egypt. Nole was 3 when this came about and in Elementary school he carried a scarab which he considered his magical charm. Nole’s teachers were stunned by this, but I was not and I always encouraged him to believe his memories and cherish them. Nole is 37 now and deals in antiques and attends weekly classes in Physic Development. Needless to say I’m proud of my baby boy.
Thanks Darlene
Hi Barry,
I was born with Lillian Disney’s Bday, my daughter has Walt Disney’s Bday, and my son has Raymond Disney’s Bday. I was born in Alameda Ca. Walt Disney Studios in Burbank is on Alameda Rd/Buena Vista Street. I was also born with the last name Donald..like the Duck.I decided to pick up a book on Walt Disney’s life because I felt I needed to learn more about him. We have had a lot of weird things that have happened to us over the years that I have documented but its too much detail to go into here so I will give you the short story. In the book I read in Marceline Mo there was a local meat Market Walt and his family use to go to called “Hayden & Anderson meat market”. I named my daughter Hayden with no knowledge of this. I actually named her after the composer Haydn but added an e because that’s what my intuition told me to when she was born. This past yearr we decided to get a puppy and answered an ad for a pug. When we got there we realized we answered the wrong ad and the dog ended up being a red Dachshund. He was so cute…we decided to get him and named him Walter. When we got home we decided to Google Walt Disney & Dachshunds because something told me this dog was not a mistake. A movie called “The Ugly Dachshund” I never saw or knew of was released on my fathers birthday Feb. 16, 1966~10 months before Walt passed away. My father has been dead for 14 years. It’s also very well known that Walt was associated with the freemasons (The DeMolay Chapter in Kansas). I found out Haydn the composer was a freemason through my research of Walt and I always see the number 33 everywhere. Especially on receipts which I have kept all of them. Walt Disney also had a polo injury that hurt his vertebrae. I had a slip and fall accident several years ago fracturing my vertebrae and almost taking my life. His daughter Diane also died of complications from a slip and fall accident in November 2013 and I had my accident in early March 2014. Is there any insight to this you can give me? My soul has been on a mission to figure this out. I feel there is a higher power at work here. The synchronicity in my life is almost too hard to believe.
Thank You,
Tiffany
Hi Tiffany,
Sorry for the slow response, I’m gradually getting through an enormous backlog of comments and questions.
The parallels and coincidences you mention are striking and bizarre, and not easy to explain. However, I am reminded of the life of Jewelle St James, a Canadian woman who kept spotting coincidences that pointed to a “John Barron” in England. She went to see several psychics and learned that John Barron was a lover of hers in a former life (17th C); they were also brother and sister in 19th C England; and in the 20th C he became John Lennon, but they never met in that life. The messages and synchronicities started coming through to Jewelle right after John Lennon died in 1980, and it seems that his spirit was “prodding” her to remember and heal some old emotional wounds.
All of which suggests the possibility that you have some old or long-standing connection with the soul who lived as Walter Elias Disney (1901-1966). Perhaps you are soul mates. Perhaps you know him in a previous life up to the year 1933. Perhaps “he” has since reincarnated – several decades have passed since the man Disney died. Perhaps he (or she) is a youngster in your current life? I’m just speculating around what these signs and coincidences could mean. The way in which these “reminders” keep coming to you might well indicate that there is something for you to dig up. I would suggest either go and see one or (preferably) several respectable psychics for a reading, or maybe have a hypnotic past life regression to see if you were connected in the early 20th C, or possibly get in touch with a Michael channel and ask for their insight.
hope this helps,
Barry
No such thing as coincidence. I read your post twice and I found it as a confirmation of speculation. Thank you for this post I love it namaste
Hi Barry,
Thank you for getting in touch with me. I tried to respond above where you commented but I did not see a reply button.I know you have been having issues with the site. I actually found out that I am Walt Disney and my daughter is Lillian…. We came back as Mother and Daughter. I was told this was put into place because I was fearful of death and did not want to die…I had too much I still wanted to do in my past life and did not want to accept death as the final ending. The thought of death just seemed too eternal for me. I also did not want to leave my family and was worried they would not be able to keep things going at the Company.This whole reincarnation actually goes back to my connections with the Freemasons and The DeMolay Chapter I was in. I had suspected this as well because of the vivid signs… but because they are my brotherhood…I will not go into detail here. My son is in fact Raymond which I find remarkable that he actually came back as a man again and so soon. We all came back here within 5 to 10 years after our deaths in our past life. That normally doesn’t happen because when we reincarnate we normally like to come back as some other sex or something we have not experienced yet in our life cycles. We also discovered the hospital Hollywood Presbyterian where my son was born is 1 block from Raymond Disney’s Insurance Company on N Vermont Ave in Hollywood. One of my spirit guides I was connected to through a spiritual adviser was Salvador Dali who I was close to in my past life and he has he showed me a lot of the missing pieces of the puzzle of how I got here. I also want to note my daughter who has Walt’s Bday is Spanish…just like Sal..I am Irish/Scottish. At one point this just became very scary and hard to accept.The more I rejected this theory the more signs were thrown at me. I also stared having flashbacks of my life especially of my mother Flora’s death. When we moved into our new place in Burbank recently…she came to me and frantically kept telling me to turn off the fireplace and blow out the candle and call someone. Eventually, I had to do it because she would not stop.It was like a siren going off in my left ear. The candle I burned above the fireplace started going crazy one night out of control so I blew it out and the next day a picture of a skull showing up in the wax and knew we were in danger. It Turns out we had a bad gas leak and we very close from an explosion had it not been taken care of.The gas company was shocked that none of the neighbors reported it or smelled it either. As you know my mother Flora died due to my neglect of not hiring someone professional to take care of the issue at the new house I bought for her and Dad. Instead I allowed the studio repair men to fix it being oblivious to the fact this was a dangerous situation. We also discovered our dog Walter who I mentioned in the earlier post has Hazel Sewell’s Bday May 1st. Hazel was Lily Belle’s sister who actually told her about the job at the studio that got us together. There is so much more but this is not the place to get into detail. At this point I have decided I am going to write a book about this. I have documented everything with actual proof of pics and birth certificates ect. I have researched online reincarnation cases and although some seem valid most have a little proof. I also want to let the world know that things like this do exist and are possible.
Just a funny little note to end here…that whole Kurt Russell note before I passed was simply me noting him for an upcoming role..and nothing more than that. I had saw potential in him and wanted to help him in his career because he was a new star at the time and my intuition told me he was going to be a valuable asset to my company in upcoming movies.I also really liked him as a person..he was a polite boy and very talented. Just like Hayley Mills I was just very partial to certain people I felt had it and she was just one of my favorites to work with along with Kathryn Beaumont. There mystery solved! LOL
Barry when this is book is done I would love to send you a copy.I think you will be amazed at the documentation I have collected over the years. Its almost mind boggling.
Take Care & thank you for responding to me…
~Tiffany
I will get back to you soon Tiffany – started doing some research – but very busy at the moment so just waiting for a few free hours !
There are many issues with reincarnation the greatest being that if we have lived in the past and will in the future as different people this reality eliminates the possibility that God is in its essence love. For to be reincarnated and subjected to pain and suffering after we die a God who is love would not allow us to be subjected to evil and suffering again. There is actually a good argument to be made that any God that is love would not allow us to be subjected to any evil or suffering at all. To sufficiently argue this out one would need to study the nature of free will and what sorts of choices free agents have upon each other as well as the need for free will for love to exist in the first place.
Back to my point, there is much better argument to be made that God is love if we are born once and die once and following that death all humans are fully healed and made into the humans they were born to be minus the suffering and evil they were subjected to during their life. Now if its of no need or concern that God be love then reincarnation would be the perfect means for a God who is not love to allow creatures to be subjected repeatedly to torture and a nightmarish existence. That is exactly what life is for so many people. A living nightmare! Then to add insult to injury certain people say that the nightmare that people are living is actually something they agreed to and desired. If thats the case why intercede and involve ourselves into the suffering of others as we may be interfering with someones desire to suffer. If they planned it and want it that way then the last thing we should do is interfere. Let them suffer!
I understand that people’s desire to understand why. However, reincarnation at its heart for so many reasons is cruel and inhumane punishment. I prefer to see that reality is to be and should be ruled by mercy. Karma tells us that we get what we deserve. Mercy shows us that we get something that is unexpected (look up the meaning). Mercy will transform a world for good while Karma leaves us stuck. I could go on with the weaknesses and as I say downright cruelty of reincarnation but I will leave it here for now. I have been researching this for the past two years and reincarnation leaves me with the reality that its just another form of toxic religion. Thank you for your post.
To Brad!
Very Good , Precise, and Authentic Perceptions and Comprehension of Truthful and Factual Realities in Life in this “Beyond Messed Up World of so-called planet Earth!!”
—By Amy LifeStar, HD, Ethicist, and The WOUND-HEALER
Amy:
I am curious as to why you begin almost every word with a capital letter. Do you mean for your sentence to be a title?
Who is Barry????? And why or how is your word gospel???? It’s obviously what you believe but who honestly knows.
Erm, Barry is the owner of this site… these are his ideas based upon the Michael Teachings and people like you and I who are drawn to this page are here to learn more. His word isn’t gospel and nor has he ever said that. He cites a lot of other pages and literature for those interested and spends a lot of time reaching out to people who contacted him. If you don’t like the ideas thats fine too.
Who is Barry? – These pages should answer that question:
https://personalityspirituality.net/about/
https://personalityspirituality.net/articles/personality-and-spirituality-my-search-for-understanding/
https://personalityspirituality.net/2015/11/08/my-first-michael-reading/
Gospel? – The definition of gospel is “good news”. Hopefully my content is good news for some people.
Dear Barry,
Terrific response to the newest comment.
Please keep doing what you are doing, it is of great value and answers many questions about this physical “Journey” …why we incarnated, what lessons we must learn,
and where we will return to.
After a loss of my loved one of 48 years, I had my and my partners Michael Teachings chart done.
It CLEARLY defined our life’s path, what lessons needed to be learned, and what our souls “Journey” agreed to prier to this incarnation.
At 69 years old, and able to honestly evaluate my life…I was completely taken aback at its accuracy, this provided me with great insight and comfort.
Our lives are not random, or…. ALL IN VAIN…..There is “A Plan”.
Barry, Thank you for all your work, and insight.
Robert
Hi Robert
Absolutely delighted to hear your reading was so clear and helpful. Do you want to say who the channel was?
Many thanks for the feedback,
B
Barry
Is it possible for a passed soul that you knew in this current life who you were related to, to come back in a birth of a baby of your own?
Basically my grandfather passed a couple years ago, and I am now pregnant.
A psychic told a family member that my grandpa is coming back, and that someone in the family is pregnant. I’m the only one pregnant in the family so I feel as if she was referring to me, even though I wasn’t present for the reading, and this family member still doesn’t know I’m pregnant.
Could part of my grandpas soul be in my future child? Regardless of gender?
And if so…obviously this baby wouldn’t have any recollection of the connect with me in its past life right?
Yes, it’s certainly possible. Edgar Cayce’s grandfather came back as his grandson for example. There’s a whole book about experiences of this sort happening — Return from Heaven: Beloved Relatives Reincarnated Within Your Family by Carol Bowman. Changing gender is common.
As for recollections: if you read the book by Carol Bowman you’ll see that there is a window during which kids sometimes have one-off flashbacks and will say so to a parent like it’s the most normal thing. Like “The last time I was big, you were MY baby.” This usually shuts down as soon as they start school and become preoccupied with the present.
Some can have nightmares if their last death was particularly traumatic or violent.
Mostly however, if there’s any memory it will be subconscious and intuitive, like a vague feeling of recognition or familiarity.
A gap 2 or 3 year between lives is pretty short, usually it’s a few decades, but then my own last gap was (I’ve been told) minus-5 years!
The Soul is in fact part of the divine which is God, and being part of that divine means that there are no lessons to learn for the Soul for the soul is already all knowing and is pure love.
The Human aspect of life is for the spirit which separated from soul to create its own illusion here on earth. Yes there are lessons to be learnt and re-lived over many many lifetimes but the purpose for these lives is to connect back to the divine soul and for the spirit to realise and unite back to what it separated from. Once this occurs and the spirit comes back to soul and to what it truly is a spark of the divine only then will reincarnation be used to bring humanity another guiding light. For a fully infused body with soul is here to magnetically pull and show all humanity where they are from and that the life they live is not it. We are here to claim ourselves in full with our soul and stop the spirit indulging in a so called life it created for itself.
We are not from here and one day we will not be here but until that time we will come back and back again until our spirit can no longer deny who it truly is and where its from.
Hi Barry, your ideas and beliefs about reincarnation confirmed my own thoughts about it. So thank you for putting this up. When I was quite young (5 – 9 years old) I didn’t ask questions like normal kids did, I asked things like “why am I here”, “who decided that I would be here”, “who decided I would be born female” and “where was I before I was born”. I didn’t ask these questions to anyone in particular more to myself. As I grew older I would make decisions saying “well in this lifetime I will do this”. I had never heard of reincarnation and often wondered why I would say that. I also had a “knowing” about certain things e.g. planet Earth wasn’t the only planet we could have a “lifetime” on. I actually feel that this lifetime may be a first for me to be on planet Earth, or at the very least it’s been a long while since I’ve been here.
No. 7 Each lifetime is pre-planned, really struck a chord with me. I have struggled all my life with my personality i.e. I am a quiet, shy person and have trouble “loving me & accepting me for who I am”. I have always wished I was “fun to be around”, more outgoing, could joke around more, was more popular. I have often wondered if in my past lives and in my future lifetimes if l would have the same personality? Can you shed some light on this?
I was just checking this site and read your comment, the personality thing is something I had to struggle with during a long time and it wasn’t until a few months ago (I’m 30 years old now) that I finally feel like my true self and like I don’t really mind anymore about what others might say or think of me. It has been quite a journey and certainly my soul has been looking for answers and ways to deal with my very own denial of who I really am, my anxiety, the fact that I kept comparing myself to others and trying to reach perfection by hiding all those things about me that I wasn’t comfortable with.
Like you said, what you are going through is about acceptance, I think as long as you can accept and love yourself for who you are, you will be able to discover your true purpose in this lifetime and probably learn a different lesson in the next one. You will even start to worry less about things and enjoy life, since we are all here to be happy and learn as much as we can in a healthy way. That’s something you might need to focus on, maybe you can write about it or seek for help and talk about it with a psychologist or find a way to express yourself without fear. I’m a psychology student -about to finish my career- so I can tell you that having therapy is not bad at all, actually it helped me a lot (I strongly recommend to look for some sort of connection with your therapist in order to feel comfortable while talking to him/her). Also, practicing yoga worked out a lot for me but you might have your own ways.
I don’t know if this helps somehow, hope it does and hope you’re doing better now.
Best wishes!
I need help. I am severely tortured under electronic targeting and neuromonitoring. THey have my entire nervous system and mind controlled. I am in the most horrific torture a person could experience.. I do not want to die but am being forced to.. this is murder, it is not what I want but I cannot hold , I have held 6 years and it is like I am on an electrical chair full blast with severe mind control. If I am forced to end it as I cannot spend one sec in my own body what happens to me. It is not what I am choosing.. I am fighting with all I have but unless you experience it no one could understand.. This is happening to people all over the world being forced to end it due to this torture..
Heaven
If you mean today technology world that surround us then the best option is to move away and live into the woods or a place outside big cities.
Also look for lipomas if you have, i have many and think they are implants sensors of the Aliens (demons) after they abduct us they leave this kind of implants to monitor our entire body.
We do not have souls…we ARE SOULS. A soul is a living being. When life leaves us, we, the living being, the soul, die. One is not conscious in death. Death is as a deep sleep from which we will be awakened by our Creator at a time of His choosing: Resurrection. No one is immortal save God. We are not God nor can we fully comprehend what or who He is. To say you do is the height of presumption. It would be like a plant trying to know who planted its seed and where that seed came from. You ARE a living being, a Soul. Whoever Created us we call Him God. yes? Check out the origin of the word soul in any language. Don’t take anybody’s word for it. Search out all things for yourself. It’s so easy to believe a iie, but more difficult to find any truth in this world.
not conscious in death….huh…ok whatever
I have a strong feeling that reincarnation does happen. I have no basis for believing this, other than a strange episode with one of my sons when he was a toddler. He told he had been an old man and he got sick and died. He repeated this a few times to me, we were alone, and later he looked blankly at me when I asked him to tell it to his father. I read all of posts on here. Some are very detailed about what happens after the death of a physical body and where and what the soul does afterwards. My question is this; are these people just speculating? How do they know such graphic, precise details of the process of souls? Is it wishful thinking or is there some serious foundation of fact that they can cite? I’m not being difficult or snarky, I honestly want to know how people can speak with such surety on a topic that certainly can not be verified as fact. Please let me know.
As I’ve written in the article, a wealth of information is now available from a wide variety of sources which, despite their differences, give surprisingly coherent and mearningful insights into the nature of the soul and its evolution. These include
– channelled teachings
– insights from near-death experiences
– reports of hypnotic regression
– meditation
– breath-work
– psychedelic experiences
– after-death communications
– scientific research into children’s spontaneous descriptions of their past lives.
Regardless of the medium (no pun intended), the information is surprisingly consistent.
For specific references, I would recommend:
Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transendence in Psychotherapy, by Stanislav Grof (observations from LSD and transpersonal psychotherapy).
The Pathwork of Self-Transformation, by Eva Perriakos (channeled)
Children’s Past Lives: How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child, by Carol Bowman (real-life accounts)
Life Before Life: Children’s Memories of Previous Lives, by Jim Tucker (academic research)
Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives, by Michael Newton (hypnotherapy accounts)
Your Soul’s Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born, by Robert Schwartz (channelled readings and personal experiences)
Messages From Michael, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (channelling)
Dying To Be Me, by Anita Moorjani (near-death experience)
In-Carnation does exist; and a Soul must have Existed: which IS and function as a Vital Pre-Cursor for a Soul to In-Carnate or being Embodied in Human form with a physical body, structures, mass, and bodily movement/speed/force, and so on!
But re-incarnation is a completely different subject matter. And the fact that are countless, but unauthentic and untrusted sources keep claiming and wanting/controlling the vast of the human population—especially, the “Unconscious Ones—to falsely and blindly believe the Distortion/Illusion that whatever happened to us in this lifetime is voluntarily and willingly Chosen by us through our personal choices: Pre-incarnation and Post In-carnation!”
For instances if the Soul simply wants to experience this and that; those and these, etc. etc.in impulsively, childishly, and maladaptively in Bouncing/Jumping from one end to another in 180 degree or 360 degree turn from one lifetime to another and another, and so on; will such attitude, behavior, and essence of a Soul still be constituted as Pure, Sacred, and Incorruptible Spirits anymore?!! Or even evolvable in that respect?!!
So, exactly, how is such Soul going to evolve or Ascend to Higher grounds when one chose to be the Wounded this lifetime and being Wound-Doer next lifetime: back and forth and back and forth for countess lifetimes—-that only Manifested as a Vicious, Un-Pure, Un-Clear, Ungrounded, Un-Lovable (pertains to Self-Love and Introspection), Un-Truthful, and Un-Authentic Pathway TOWARD ONESELF and ONE’S OWN SOUL!!!
The CORE Essence of the Soul simply DOES NOT CHANGE; ought NOT TO CHANGE/ALTER unless the SOUL per se is SO or TOO fragmented, dysfunctional, disintegrated, disoriented, and so on!
—By Amy LifeStar, HD & Ethicist
Hello,
What is our creator’s point in creating flawed and imperfect souls?
Thank you for your anticipated response.
There are no flawed and imperfect souls. All souls are fragments of perfection, immersed in perfection. That’s our reality between lives. We reincarnate precisely in order to experience non-perfection: the darkness that is only possible with the experience of separation. At different stages in our evolution we respond in different ways to separation. Infant souls can be callous and savage; baby souls can be brutally conventional and moralistic; young souls are in it for themselves; mature souls rein themselves in and fret about the meaning of relationship; old souls try to be themselves as expressions of the greater unity.
To Deborah’s comment:
From Amy LifeStar!
Actually, “God is Too Far Far Away and Distant from Planet Earth;” and this so-called world and society is “Way Too Messed up for the True and Sacred God/Godess/both to Hang Around or near Planet Earth let alone created flawed beings/people!”
Only Flawed Creators can and will Create and have: Not just Created flawed, but destructive beings (imposing as human beings) on earth; like defective manufacrures or companies will and have Created Defective/Destructive Products!
Human history root: claimed the Reptilans donated their Genes (Defective/Destructive Genes) in creating Human Race eons ago!
So, the Reptilian beings are presumed to be Widely Defective and/or Destructive! They are ALL about C-O-N-T-R-O-L and OPPRESSION, ETC. TOWARD ANOTHER or OTHERS…PERIOD…!!!
That is/were also there are so many Defective/Destructive Zooming around planet Earth for eons; and that nowaday, there are still many of them Zooming around on Earth!
By Amy LifeStar, HD & Ethicist
I came upon this site a few days ago and was shocked and happy to find information that completely matched upon my personal enlightenments and beliefs. I have always lived a life that knew since early childhood that I have lived multiple lifetimes. Various elderly have approached me to strike random conversation despite me being a young teenager at the time and we would have the deepest spiritual talks out of the blue that was completely outside of orthodox religiosity. They would comment on how they felt that I had an old soul. But despite all this, I’m still here. Which clearly means I am not done. And I know in this lifetime, my greatest flaw and shortcoming has been my pride and hubris since birth. I am a leo as well. I have noticed that despite me consciously and effortfully trying to lessen my ego in everyday situations, it’s still very difficult to manage internally even if it looks good on the surface. My heart inside still burns with anger and arrogance throughout many moments in my life. My patience is decent, but not enough when I imagine the entire reincarnation process. I too realize the insignificant concept of time when scaled with this process, but I still can’t help but feel that I wish I had ended my cycle before the current era. I can feel deeply in my soul that my greatest joys and simplest pleasures came from my lifetimes of the past. It just seems to get far more difficult to get out of these entanglements of material needs and wants as society grows faster than even our mental and spiritual bodies can. Even with all the empathy wisdom, and knowledge I’ve accumulated, I have this burning desire to simply just move on. Tired.
What happens to the soul when an animal is extinct??
is a soul wiser, smarter after bring reIn-carnationed many times ‘earlier/younger” each time it comes back in life? And, it it kinder most likely?
Hi
Yes, the level of wisdom and compassion (though not necessarily intelligence) attained by a soul will be more visible at an earlier age as the soul evolves. So old souls, for example, will often exude an uncanny wisdom as children, at least if they are surrounded by relatively younger souls. Intelligence is a separate matter — it’s something we can choose to develop, or not, from one life to the next. Some young souls are very smart! But compassion/kindness/empathy/love and wisdom/depth/integrity/gravitas do correlate with soul evolution.
Do we really have spirit guides that help lead us in earth?
Each soul is on a solo journey, and has total freedom of choice relative to its human existence. However, each soul also has a number of non-physical soul mates and elders who will watch over and provide assistance while physically incarnate on Earth. These sources can provide subconscious hints and nudges, especially during the human sleep/dream state. They can also be called upon in meditation or prayer to provide explicit conscious advice. Some guides have short-term specific input, e.g. while we are in childhood, or while entering a relationship, or while starting a career. Others have a more general lifelong commitment. The purpose of all guides is advising only. No guide will ever tell us what to do. Each soul on Earth must make its own decisions for itself.
What about aliens? Are they doing this too? Could we switch to another planet in the next life as a different kind of being?
As I understand it, there are many species in the universe available for souls to experience evolution through reincarnation. However, a wave of souls will pick one species and try to stick to it for the duration of their incarnations. So we are here using the human species on planet Earth as our learning vehicle, from first life to last.
That said, once we have completed a whole cycle of evolution, we can do the whole thing again with a different species on a different world. Many of us here could have done this already at least once before starting the human journey.
It is also possible for us to see what life is like on other planets in between our human lives, but that would be for fun or adventure rather than as part of our reincarnation process.
Hi Barry.
I’m not sure if anyone here will believe me, but I am going to share a little story about my personal PBE.
I’m also not sure if this was a dream or a memory but oh well..
I remember waking up from death, in a void kind of place, it was black and purple and kind of twirled around. There were other souls there too. I remember my thoughts also; I woke up and thought “well that sucked, time to go again, I’ll get it right this time. So I got out of that chamber looking thing and joined a long line of souls waiting to reincarnate.
I remember creating my physical body, it was similar to creating a character in an rpg game but was extremely detailed.
Then I spoke to whom I believe is my family now, they told me this life I chose would be rough and they were concerned I couldn’t handle it. I agreed to incarnate anyway.
It’s all kind of fuzzy after that but it’s to be expected I think.
I was born a heroin addicted baby, 4 months premature struggling to survive. Then was adopted out to a loving family.
I’m sure this made no sense but I wanted to share anyhow.
Thank you for reading! 😁
Andy,
You sound very courageous and gamely, to me.
Take care in your journey.
Debi
Thank you so much, Debi!
I try my best.
And to you too!
God bless you 😊
Presumably PBE = pre-birth experience?
If this was an accurate recollection, it sounds like you had a pretty short interval between lives. You didn’t meet up with guides, have a ‘family reunion’, or bask in the heavenly light, and so on. Just an instant desire to get it right next time. Perhaps you had committed suicide in the previous life, quickly realised that hadn’t got you very far, and just decided to hop straight back in.
Thanks Andy
Barry,
Thank you for clearing up some things.
My Mother and I were raised strict Baptists. So one life, one death. Saved go to heaven, unsaved forever he’ll.
At the age of around 2 years old I startled having night terrors. Always cried water over and over. At 3 it was water coming in car and up on me. At 4 while teaching me colors my Mom said I see something green. I guessed a few times wrong and Mom said your eyes. I said they were blue. My took me and held me up to mirror. She said see they are green. I became very upset and said they were supposed to be blue. All the while I was still screaming about water coming in car.
The dream became clearer. Backseat of car. Black and white shoes on, a pretty blue dress. I was looking at a children’s book. It was raining and I was singing to the windshield wipers. It’s raining, it’s raining. The man said look through the trees there’s Grandmothers house. A bridge to cross. Water hitting the car. Water coming in. Screaming. Get the baby. Woman turns she has dark hair and blue eyes wide open. She reaches for me. The car goes on side and now I am almost covered. The man is trying to get us out. I scream over and over, Mommy, Daddy.
Second grade I meet a girl. I told her she had my blue eyes. She thought it so funny.
We became best friends that day 55 years ago and still are.
When I was sixteen my Mom came home with a very upset look. She had been at library doing some research on our family. She set down and said that She had read a old newspaper that had shook her up. Mom told me she had read about a family that were killed on a Easter Sunday in a flash flood. The story was the way I had dreamed it. Mom asked if I wanted to go where they were buried. I told her no.
For years she signed any card to me, Mama #2. It shook her faith but she now believed it was true.
All my life I have had panic attacks where bridges and unknown water was. Like if there was a turn in the road and suddenly there was a bridge.
I actually passed out over a trip to Eastern Shore when on the bay bridge.
My husband was taking the scenic way home one day. I was breastfeeding my son when I looked up I started screaming stop, stop! I told him I saw a house through the trees and there was a bridge ahead and this is where I had died. I refused to let him go forward. He was not happy. I said that we should walk around the turn. Sure enough there was a bridge and he had to turn around and go back the way we came.
I have some questions. The car that makes me the most upset is a 1956 or 57. I have actually asked to set in the backseat.The problem is I was born in 1957. Would this be possible?
If we all return where does the increase in population come from?
My best friend and I feel as like we have been on many incarnations where our lives have crossed. She is a older soul than me.
As a child I only wanted blue eyes dolls and said many times that I would marry a blue eyed man and have a blue eyed daughter. Those statements came true.
I can recall about 10 past life’s. Five are very violent. Two, I am the one that does the violence to others. Horribly.
Do you only recall past lives or can you recall future ones?
In one life I am a man who is a serial rapist of young girls. This terrorizes me.
I have physically gotten ill upon waking.
If a man would so much as touch a child in a sexual way they should get life or least 20 years in prison. I was abused sexually as a child and a teenager.
I know this is way to long but you are one of the many who believe these past lives are true.
I have read that if you have a birthmark it could be how you died before, I have a brown birthmark on my belly about the size of a 50 cent piece when I was younger it was lower but now I’m grown and had children with pregnancy and age it has moved higher up and has stretched but I’ve always felt about it and every time I see old wooden banisters I get very dizzy and I feel like I can remember but every time I get so close to feeling a flashback I just can’t seem to get there — one time I was in an old building that I’d never been in before and is even an old banister and just held it and just blurted out my mouth I died when I fell down these stairs the stairs were like a cream color with black stripe and the pattern was of maybe Art Deco print it was really freaky to say the least but I flashed that when I fell I was pierced by something sharp rite where my birthmark is on me now and also feel like I was young like in my late teens early 2o. Very weird indeed also I used to always have what they call deje vu in my 20’s but now that I’m older I don’t have it so much anymore. Thanx for reading listening to me. Melissa
Hey barry! I am a 12 year old and I am very scared when my parent sand grandparents die (im typing this while crying right now since im super scared) But I wonder could I see them right after I reincarnate? like would I see my mom or my dad? My dad is very nice he donates every homeless he sees, I wonder if theirs a heaven? Please help me I am a crying 12 year old out of luck I’ve been worrying for the pass 2 weeks I lock my door so my parents wont see me crying, please tell me 🙁
To Amy Lifestar:
To your comment: “God is Too Far Far Away and Distant from Planet Earth;”
If so, then what good is God to us?
Debi
Not really Good, Debi!
We Needed True and Authentic Answers in various subject matters in our lives: that could and would ONLY CARRY WITHIN our Sacred and Authentic. Hearts and Souls!
This required a person to be CONSCIOUS
AND CLEAR AT ALL TIMES (at least most of the Time) during WAKING HOURS/MOMENTS in our Daily Life..
Period…!!
Actually, this “so-called World and society was/Has Always been an Alien Destructive/Disorderedly: World—Physically/Environmentally/Spiritually, etc.; EXCEPT THAT OUR SOCIETY, MOST PEOPLE, AND EVERYTHING AROUND US—CURRENTLY ARE ‘SO SO MUCH WORSE’ THAN the BC and during the Jesus Time Frames!!!”
—-By Amy LifeStar, HD and Ethicist; and The WOUND-HEALER
Barry, I’m really curious about a couple things. Are there other planets we can reincarnate to? Is reincarnation bound to future time because time doesn’t really exist in the spiritual realm? And why are there so many people on earth now. Could souls possibly fracture to reincarnate? Life seems so shallow, maybe the fragments learn different lessons and could explain the 7-8 billion souls? Thanks in advance. I’ve written before years ago. I kinda don’t really believe in the ‘Michael Teachings” and yet so Much of this site resonates with me. It’s a weird experience.
People confuse soul with psyche. There is no soul. There is a spirit form that reincarnates with a new personality and body to evolve in consciousness over millions of incarnations. Each of the almost 9 billion people on this planet are different in their consciousness and on their own to evolve. You must think for yourself.
My husband who passed away was one who believed in being able to meet with your soulmate again. I was always open to the possibility but never was totally committed to the idea. His last recording before he passed away said ” I’ll be waiting on the otherside for you with his hand out and ready to give me 3 kisses. There was a serious unwelcomed problem before he passed that changed my relationship with him and within myself, so he said he would love me and hope I love him in the afterlife. Do I have a choice?
Hi,
Are you saying that you’d rather not be greeted by him now that something untoward has emerged between you? And can you make that choice?
As I understand it, those who are outside the human sphere are able to read our hearts and minds very precisely. The process of transition beyond death goes through stages, and early on (while we still have our human identity and relationships in mind) we are greeted by those who would make us feel most welcome and comfortable. Anything ‘awkward’ would be avoided.
Later, once you have transitioned beyond the human state of mind after your life review, the limited human identity falls away and you recover full soul consciousness including the love you have felt for others. Then you might be ready to meet up. The chances are, the soul who acted as your husband while you acted as his wife is a soul friend, one of many you have known for (literally) ages. Whatever happened in this life will seem like a blip in your ongoing relationship. But even so, choice is still the name of the game – if you were to choose not to interact, that choice (like all choices) would be respected.
I’ve never seen this answered – what happens if you loathe your immediate family and wish to opt out of seeing any and all of your family and relatives? Can you ‘block’ and ‘unfriend’ them on the celestial Facebook so to speak? Everyone seems to want to do a re-hookup with relatives etc. but how do enforce not meeting them again?
Do animals like insects have souls? Because I feel really bad when I kill them.
Not like human souls.
There is a universal animating life force, or spirit, and this manifests with different degrees of intelligence and consciousness in different life forms. Each living cell is animated, for example, but with nothing like what we would recognise as consciousness. Amoebas don’t have meaningful thoughts or feelings, for example; they just react to their immediate environment according to their genetic programming.
Much more complex creatures, like dogs, have the capacity to learn from their experience. Feelings are definitely part of their experience and learning, so they clearly feel sensations like pain as well as emotions like grief.
Insects are in between these two extremes — I’m not sure how much they can feel, but given that they seem to evolve ‘passively’ through natural selection rather than ‘actively’ through individual learning and cultural transmission, I suspect not at all.
It is worth bearing in mind that natural selection is a normal part of life on Earth; all creatures must die one way or another, and it simply doesn’t matter to a fly whether it dies by being eaten by a spider or swatted by a human. A species will adapt or not as its environment changes.
As a rule of thumb, I’d say that it matters how we as individuals treat individual vertebrates, because they can feel, whereas how we treat invertebrates could be better considered on a larger scale (e.g., damaging the ecosystem with pollutants that causes insect species to go extinct).
Human beings (as well as whales & dolphins) are the outliers on this planet. We are an ‘ensouled’ series, which means that it’s not just our biological bodies that are evolving. Our bodies serve as hosts for our individualised soul consciousness, which is also evolving under its own steam.
As souls, we are here in human form to make choices within our own experiences, so as to learn from our successes and mistakes, and thereby evolve our own perspective. If planet Earth is a game, each human being is an ‘avatar’ for our evolving souls (players) to learn through the experience of physical separation and independent action.
I have a great love of family, books, reading and writing, and anime/manga. Is it possible that these could passover to my next life?
Yes. If there is one thing that stays with us as we evolve it is love in every possible form — not just our love of this or that individual, but also our love of animals, places, activities, foods, academic pursuits, hobbies, etc. The specifics you focus on might be different, however, but this is no different from how our tastes evolve over the years even while we are living a life. For example, someone may have loved Tom & Jerry cartoons in their last life, but in this life they love Phineas and Ferb, and in their next life it could be something else. The drive to do and enjoy what we love carries over.
What an incredible website. Thank you so much for putting this up, such pure truth.
I have been through the cycles. But I’ve come down again to help out.
I can actually go back up to ‘heaven’ / ‘between lives area’ whatever you want to call it at will although I’m not really supposed to lol as I made a choice to return to Earth again.
I can also go up to the ‘higher area’ with bigger Gods and did you know hell actually exists below us too ?
Anyways, this website has really helped me orient myself / get my bearings in order to be able to more thoroughly continue to fulfill my purpose here on Earth.
Thanks Barry 😊