Are we supposed to remember?

[usetawuz]

I don't really think that we are witnessing people suffering because of past life behavior but rather we are seeing our collective failure to shape and direct the development of the human species on this planet so that Love for each other is the predominant experience in our lives.

I think we have opportunities to choose difficult lives, made more difficult by our failure to shape and direct development...but the greater life difficulty brings greater rewards and experiences. I don't think of karma as retribution because there is the law of grace....enabling the understanding without living the experience. To suffer is to experience, and our reason for being here is to experience...whether its to win the lottery and live a life of ease in high style, or to be a paraplegic in 1800's NYC as a former laborer...fortunately I was married and survived a few years with a wonderful wife before succumbing to pneumonia. It was a high probability in my prelife planning that I would be struck and survive in a crippled state...this was another opportunity and it would put me with several soul mates...the former fiance, my son now and my father now. My son now was the driver of the street car then and I did not blame him for my injury...I was responsible, but he never forgave himself...we are working on that in this lifetime.


Once again, to me, we remember and are led to focus on the past lives when we plan to do so...the past can assist one in understanding how one has arrived where they are, not from a retributional standpoint, but from an experiential stanpoint. It is all love and do we blame the poor driver who couldn't stop the street car in time to keep from hitting you or do we take the cards we're dealt and play the hand? From my point of view...we play the hand...after all we get dealt back in the next lifetime. And its fun!

 

[Hannah]

I do find it hard to believe that an entire cultural group of any kind agreed beforehand that they would undergo genocide en masse. In fact, for all the next-life difficulties caused by horrific deaths, I sincerely wonder how any violent experience can teach anyone any kind of lesson. Assuming that traumatic experiences can leave both psychic and physical scars; and, assuming that most, or all of us may have experienced such things in previous lifetimes; I think choosing such things to happen would border on outright masochism. Considering the difficulties caused by such psychic scars for many lifetimes afterword, I would think that if there is such a thing as sin, choosing to have such trauma happen to ourselves would be the worst sin of all.

A soul may have volunteered to be a genocide victim [or survivor] for any number of reasons. A few I can think of, in terms of learning-growth-teaching:

• Help another soul by providing an opportunity to grow
  
• The importance of compassion and love for one's fellow man
  
• The value of familial bonds
  
• How it feels to suffer from hunger-thirst-cold-extreme fear for oneself and loved ones
  
• What it means to have hope in a hopeless time
  
• Teach others what is really important in life
  
• The absurdity of racism and extreme nationalism
  
• The actions of one soul can change the world for better or worse

I'm sure we could collectively come up with hundreds of reasons why being born/living/dying during that historical time provided a terrific opportunity for soul growth.


Just as there was unspeakable evil afoot during the time (yin), there were opportunities for souls to make a positive difference (yang). From the smallest act of kindness, like risking raising the ire of Nazi guards by tossing bread and marmalade to starving marching prisoners, to the huge acts like those of the Heugenots in France who risked their lives and livelihoods to shelter Jewish children, there were so many opportunities for soul growth during that time.


It's also worth noting that the lessons that needed to be learned and goals that needed to be reached by the soul in that incarnation may have already been taken care of, and it was time for the soul to leave. The Holocaust would have provided a perfect exit point for massive numbers of these souls in a short period of time, historically speaking.

 

[Nightrain]

We often question why we progressively forget the experiences of our past lives after we come into this world. Some of us have speculated that remembering would be like cheating on a test, thus failing to learn the necessary lessons. But, another thought comes to mind that continuing to remember our past lives might prevent us from realizing our potential to live fresh new lives.


When one considers the effect that memory is said to have on future incarnations; e.g. phobias, habits, physical appearances, birthmarks & defects, etc.; not remembering one's past lives may actually prove to be quite beneficial in some cases. Otherwise, as we age and fall apart, we could quite possibly remember, too well, how old, decrepit and stuck in our ways we were when we last lived in this world.


Consider the cases of birth defects and marks which are so pronounced as the examples in this video interview with Dr. Jim Tucker. The evidence is compelling that the memories of those children were so overpowering that the physical injuries sustained in the past can override the power of their psyche to heal. If this is so, perhaps our bad habits can also follow us into each successive incarnation.


Coming into this world as completely new and clean individuals could enable the memory of our defects, scars and bad habits to fade into the past, and might allow our psychic bodies to heal. Yet, remembering incidents from our past lives can help us to heal as well.


I speculate that, perhaps, this search for consciousness is key to understanding and working with these subtle differences -- to know when it is best to dwell on past memories and when it is not. Could it be that the real issue is not about whether to remember or to forget; but, rather, when it is to our advantage to focus on some things, and let other things go?