Reincarnation

Take a deep breath everybody - this blog isn't funny, disrespectful, irreverant, or about my cat.

It is about reincarnation.

To give you a bit of background on why I decided to write this one, I go sometimes to various discussion groups, and the most recent one I missed was on reincarnation. I would have gone, too, except that when I got home from work that night I lay down on the bed for a minute and woke up at 4 a.m. with Bijou asking me where the hell her supper was... Never mind any possible past or future lives, in this one, I tire rather easily!

But in a way I'm glad I missed it, because ever since the group decided that would be the topic, it's been bugging me - ergo, I've been doing some of that stuff they call "thinking". Wonderful thing, thinking, if you can find the time...

See, my original position on reincarnation was a great big smug snicker at all the fools running around in this world and the outrageous things they'll talk themselves into believing in order to avoid taking any personal responsibility for their lives.

I saw it as another version of "Life-After-Death", "Heaven / Hell", "Santa Claus", or "Wait Till Your Father Comes Home..." All of these are methods to control behaviour. Behaviour of small children in some cases, behaviour of hordes of people in others. A way of making sure the bulk of the population stays quiet and does what it's told.

See, human beings are by nature extremely superstitious. We'll read something into any coincidence, any event. Even in the 21st century in the most developed nations of the world, where religion and the state have been separated for generations, and where the churches are empty, few people will willingly walk under ladders, stop to pet black cats, or buy a house whose civic number is 666. And young urban professional couples still usually want that church wedding, even if it's only because their parents went to that church. And a whole generation of youngsters is now watching poker on tv and teaching themselves to believe in luck. Superstition, plain and simple. Snake oil.

This was, and remains, my position on reincarnation, in the strictest sense of "do you believe that souls inhabit different bodies, lifetime after lifetime." Nope. Hogwash. "Do you believe there is a Hereafter?" Nope. Dingo's kidneys. "Do you believe there is a Heaven?" Not up in the clouds with harps. A baby suckling, a kitten's purr, the gaze of a lover - those are what I call heaven. And certain flavours of cheesecake. "Do you believe" is the dead giveaway phrase. If it starts with those words, chances are it's poppycock, plain and simple. I'm not a "believer".

Nevertheless, I found myself wondering why myths of reincarnation continue to flourish. See, I like mythology. I find that myths, by and large, stick around because they contain a grain of truth. The story can be utter nonsense, but the kernel of truth hidden in it is (here comes a big word) an ARCHETYPE of human behaviour or understanding.

Something to learn from. Something to help us understand the gigantic pile of confusion we're mired in. Something to help us get through the day, get through our lives.

So I engaged the analytical, non-cynical part of my brain. Quite an enjoyable experience, I should do it more often. Maybe I'd have more friends...

I love the song "Galileo" by the Indigo Girls. The line is "how long till my soul gets it right?" I can really relate to that line. I've made so many gaffs, pissed of so many people, it's a wonder someone hasn't tried to shoot me. Every time I accidentally shoot myself in the foot, that line comes to mind. Other versions are "Will I EVER learn...?" and "When am I EVER gonna keep my big mouth shut?". We've all experienced these kinds of moments.

Sufferers the world over have been wailing "Why?" and "Why Me?" ever since time began. Nature, the universe, is a harsh place. It is without mercy. There is absolutely nothing we can do to stop the tsunami, the earthquake, the volcano. Children born without limbs, babies dumped in trash cans, rampant disease. Or man's inhmanity. These forces are immensely powerful and totally beyond our control. No matter how kind, how evolved a civilization becomes, there is always a horde of nasty sociopaths waiting at the gates to knock it down, blow it up, rape it till it dies, and take all the booty. That, my friends, is human "Nature." A very nasty piece of work. One which every decent person wrestles with daily in one form or another. One which caused us to to create for ourselves gods and governments. Snatching at straws, we plead to ourselves, to each other, to ANYONE WHO CAN HEAR US - for peace, for a good harvest, for medicine, for our homes and loved ones. For some kind of meaning in the midst of all this horror.

My Favourite Psychiatrist (don't you just have to laugh at someone who can start a sentence that way? I mean, REALLY...!) My favourite psychiatrist pointed out to me many years ago that a certain amount of denial is necessary to get through the day.
Not just for me. For everyone in the world. Because without being able to shut that chaos out of our lives, out of our minds, we'd have no minds left to deal with anything. There is, quite literally, a limit on what an individual can understand, can take on, can do - and some of that energy must be directed inwards, to one's own health and one's own family, if the individual and his or her family is to survive. It's a survival mechanism, to turn off. To stop thinking about things that make us sick, things we can't bear.

And that's why a lot of evil goes unanswered by the developed world, by the way. When our inner thoughts inform us there is nothing we can do about a situation, we turn away from it. Because we'd drive ourselves nuts trying to deal with it. And that particular turn of phrase, which we toss off so easily, actually hides a difficult truth :"drive ourselves nuts." None of us really wants to go there. The white coat? The padded room? The long fall off the bridge? The bottle in the paper bag? There is no point in driving ourselves nuts.

So it is thus that I came to my understanding of the purpose of the myth of reincarnation. Beyond the way most people would use it, as a means to avoid taking any responsibility for what they do in THIS life, it is also a way to understand that the come-uppance will come. That the invaders and rapists and generals and torturers and despots will all go through their own hell, purgatory, or be squished like bugs for millennia to come. A way to create a little island of peace-of-mind for survivors, so we can actually survive and go about the business of living, of raising our families, of being kind to people, despite the horrors all around us. As an archetype, if you will, of inner peace, of personal serenity.

Not in different lifetimes though. In this life. To enable us to pick ourselves up and try again. To get on with living.

I've recently been reincarnated. I left my life of the past 14 years and I'm setting up for whatever the next bit will be. I don't have a clue what it holds, but I still have hope.

My past life, the one with Hubby, was also a reincarnation, from a decade of loneliness with a little girl to care for. And that, in turn, was a reincarnation, from my previous marriage...

I've been reincarnated at work, too. Ever so slowly, I'm beginning to master my attitudes and reactions to people and situations that would normally cause me to blow my stack. I'm getting there. In this lifetime. I can see me, years from now, almost being calm, content to smile knowingly instead of losing my temper and my head.

Every time I fail, every time I lose my temper, every time I forget to be kind or gentle, every time I am completely unreasonable, there is still hope. There is still a chance that NEXT time, I'll think before I speak, that I'll answer softly, that I'll "deal with it." That I'll improve. That I'll get better.

There is hope.