Photo: Shyald

It is often as I’m telling a story, something about life and the bigger picture, that I approach the subject with a bit of trepidation. Almost apologizing, mumbling just a bit, I admit the reason that I agree with some general observation is because I believe there is more than just this life.

Of course, it matters who I’m talking to. Tribe members can often be noted from afar, and they nod their heads quickly in agreement. Others are just as obvious, and of course, those are the ones with whom I tend to end up in these types of conversations. Their pupils constrict as they attempt to hide their judgment, or they go ahead and more openly question my assuredness of lives before and after this one.

It doesn’t necessarily matter that I only truly started believing in past lives about six years ago, though I often throw this fact in the conversation for good measure. That before then, I’m sure my eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly at those who off-handedly mentioned a wound left over from a sword to the gut during the fall of the Roman empire, or a burning at the stake during Salem witch-hunting times. That I can still stand outside of myself sometimes, understanding that if the day a person was born and the moment they die is all they believe they’ve got, the world looks a hell of a lot different.

A lot more depressing, really.

Sure, I get the scientific, it’s-just-as-crazy-as-saying-a-big-man-in-the-sky-made-this-all-in-seven-days perspective. I can see how people see a body is buried in the ground and eaten up by the insects that live there (though the whole quantum idea of energy never dying, only changing form chucks a wrench in the system). Guess if you don’t believe in the soul, or energy, simply being fodder for the bacteria makes the most sense.

But I guess my question is, why believe in just one life/one death?

The Science of Life and Death

I searched around the web a bit for “scientific evidence” of past lives, and surprisingly came across more than a few booksand articles pointing toward “proof” of reincarnation.

Photo: Alejandra Mavroski

Even a website dedicated to “small-caps stocks, options, and high-growth opportunities” offered up an article on the work of Dr. Weiss, a Yale-trained psychotherapist, who kinda fell into research about past lives. The author of the article, Jonathan Kolber, wrote:

I personally had an experience in college that seemed to fit the bill…most interesting to me, the images explained some anomalies in my life and the information gained changed my perspective on some things. Since childhood, I had harbored hostile attitudes towards France, a country with which I had no apparent connection whatsoever. I regarded the French as irrational and prone to mob rule. I also had a phobia of being in crowds.

After seemingly “remembering” a life as an insignificant member of the nobility in France, apparently born in 1756, all of my irrational attitudes disappeared. And for the first time in my life, I was able to enjoy vacationing in Quebec and listening to the French language spoken.

He goes on to discuss possibilities around spontaneous healing, which Dr. Weiss has seen occur time and time again (though by no means every single time). I was reminded of my own experience of seeing an intuitive, psychic, whathaveyou, and her telling me a story that felt like a massive punch in the gut. My friends who have to stretch far in the direction of suspending disbelief did their best to be supportive when I told them my lifelong (well, at least since I was a teenager) fear of being raped came not from an experience in this lifetime, but from being assaulted and left to die last time around. I apparently was around 23 when it happened.

In this life, at 23, I began an intense battle with candida overgrowth, which is often thought to be emotionally linked with sexual abuse or repression. Although it was by no means spontaneous healing, hearing what had happened to the body my soul last inhabited felt like skidding to a stop in the fight.

Why Not?

I can’t help but wonder whether or not it’s true, doesn’t it just feel better to think this one life isn’t all there is?

Photo: h.koppdelaney

That each of us have our ups and downs in order to get to a more evolved place? That those who seem to have so much in this life, and those who seem to have so little, will have their karma switched next time around?

That it’s not all for nought?

Interestingly, just as I was writing this piece, I came across a Huffington Post article by spiritual writer and psychologist Mariana Caplan. Titled 10 Spiritual Transmitted Diseases, she points out our often unconscious ways of spiritually bypassing the hard work we have to do throughout life to continue to grow. One STP struck me in particular:

Spiritual Pride: Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of “spiritual superiority” is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that “I am better, more wise and above others because I am spiritual.”

So I can’t help but wonder, is my belief in more than just this life not only a way of surviving the hardships I face (and watch others handle in even larger quantities), but am I employing spiritual pride at the same time? I certainly can feel superior to those who think this is it, and feel sorry for the depression I can’t help but believe they harbor somewhere deep inside. Partly, this stems from my own past experiences of having a lack of something-to-believe-in. But is it also steeped in feeling better about myself, and my purpose, because I now do have something to believe in?

Maybe more importantly, how does this effect my interactions with the “others” who don’t believe the way I do?