Chapter 3.6 Spiritual Heritage

Spiritual Heritage

YOU ARE YOUR ONLY ANCESTOR!

“Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.”

Voltaire (1694-1778)   French Writer/Philosopher

So you see, this one assumption of past and future lives leads to my conclusion that, at least spiritually, you are your only ancestor.  You carry your soul through many lives, learning how to become a better piece of this infinite force.  In a sense each of us is a straight line through time … no one to blame, no one to lean on … we are here to learn, to take charge of our destiny, and to improve ourselves.  If you knew that you will enter into another earthly lifetime, would your perspectives change, your cultural beliefs, your way of living?

If we all believed that we were going to come back again and again, perhaps we would be more tolerant of other races and religions, gender and looks, capabilities and weaknesses, disabilities and deficiencies.  Without cultural baggage, would we be more forgiving, more open to new ideas, more willing to help others?

What if your next test in your next life was to become the typecast you despised, to kind of undo the “wrongs” that you have done this time around?  What if you were on the other end of your intolerance, to kind of balance out your yin and yang?

“Afterward, you and your committee, which is comprised of loving guides, masters, angels, and others who have helped to guide you over eons of time, plan your next life, so that you can rectify the wrongs you have done.”
Messages of the Masters Brian Weiss

Of course, one could make the argument that if everyone just believed in the same religion (theirs, of course), or just believed in universal good, everything would be wonderful too.  Being faced with everlasting hell in their only life hasn’t seemed to stop the continuing flow of bad folk yet, has it?

“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)     Minister/Civil Rights Activist

Individually, you would carry the essence of what you have learned, accomplished, and achieved … how you made yourself a better person.  Many of those that believe in multiple lives, believe that we choose our spots of return to work on certain issues that we must address to improve our souls.

And yes, according to the Masters, familiar souls often come back to be with you … soul-mates, husband/wife, parent/child, servant/master, warriors together, brother/sister.  But hark!  Not necessarily all of your extended family members are in your same soul-group.  Can you pick out who, in your family, may not be in your soul-group? …. Take some time here ….

“You develop through relationships.  There are some with higher powers that have come back with more knowledge.  They will seek out those that need the development and help them.”
Messages of the Masters Brian Weiss

Life is about the relationships that we develop with others and how we nurture them, how we improve them, how we enjoy them.  Have you ever encountered some one with whom you just immediately clicked, that you felt a bond?  Your encounters may be brief, but lasting.  Maybe this person was a friend in the past, or perhaps, this is your first introduction to them for future needs.  Remember the general sense of goodness that you felt in their presence, how you felt better about yourself, because they felt so much like you?  You can’t always define it, nor rationalize it.  But you know … you know.

“To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed, that can make life a garden.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)     German Playwright

You may ask the same question that I did.  Our population is higher than any other time on earth (6.5 billion.)  If souls keep coming back, aren’t we going to run out of souls pretty quick?  My first thought was that some of the people around me just must not have a soul … they are empty shells.  We all have empirical evidence to support this premise, right?

The Masters once again have answered this question through Dr. Brian Weiss:

“There are more people than ever on this planet.  But there are many more souls than people.  This is not the only world.  Souls exist in other dimensions.  They are attracted to this planet in increasing numbers because our planet, one of many schools, is a very popular school.  There is so much to learn.”
Messages from the Masters Brian Weiss

Okay, I know … we’re getting a little airy-fairy here. But if one believes in an infinite universe, a Heaven that has no bounds, then the fact that there are many floors in heaven makes a little sense.  I can also buy that Earth is a popular school.  Perhaps nowhere else can the soul actually experience the five senses of physical being.

If this is the only place that one can hear beautiful music, can smell wonderful fragrance, can savor distinct tastes, can feel the warmth of another’s skin, can see specific beauty in all objects … that would make Earth a pretty inviting school.  No wonder we keep coming back for more and more times … slow learners, we are.

“Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant??  I’m halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God… I could be eating a slow learner.”
Lynda Montgomery     Comedienne

The five senses also have bad elements …  excruciating noise, sewer smells, un-sweetened medicine, whisker-burn, unsightly smog.  In fact, many of the feel-good parts of earth are items we must overcome.  Gluttony and possessiveness are a couple that come to mind.

Now I can grasp the spirit occupying different bodies in different times, but the hard part of this multiple life process … pay attention now … is that our mind, our thoughts, our detailed memories … they don’t carry through into future lives!  Only our spirit … no concrete brain memories.  Of course this makes sense … we have all had a familiarity with a certain place, a certain person, the déjà vu. Perhaps memories of past lives are locked away somewhere in the 95% of our brains that we never use.

So it seems that every time back, we’ve got to keep figuring out how to be good for the world, in this new body with these new thoughts, with these new friends, with this whole series of new circumstances.  We need to continue our “growth,” to not succumb to temptation, to choose the right forks in the road. No wonder there have only been a few truly recognized “Masters of Spirituality”. … the road to enlightenment is certainly not for the unfocused. It’s hard enough to simply master the obvious that is in front of us.

“Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand.  The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into a focus.”
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)     Inventor of the Telephone

Yet, the only way that I can really know my spirit is through logical thought, self-analysis, thinking things through.  Not so! According to most of the “new spirituality” books that I’ve read, one can only come to know our spiritual self by turning off our mind.  (I know turning off my mind would help my golf game.)

So how do you consciously turn off your mind?  The most frequent answer would probably be through meditation. We’ll consider meditation in more detail later under the ‘Earthwhile Tools’ section, but for now, just zone out for a couple of minutes each day. We are all gurus at that. Just make sure that you don’t have anything sharp in your hands or for that matter, a steering wheel.

No matter how you do it, once you get to know your soul-essence better, you really should do something with it.  Being here on Earth cannot be only about finding myself.  In a way, attempting to be the next Buddha, or Enlightened One is kind of self-centered, I think.  To really go inside oneself takes many years of training and hours of daily meditation in solitude, often striving for one’s personal perfection with the Divine.  Sounds like the Me-World to me. What about the rest of the world?

As we continue on this journey to the Plateau of Positive+, it is certainly not necessary that you have to believe in past life theory. The path to the Plateau of Positive+ is a wide path that accepts a very diverse group of explorers.

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