Here is the simple idea: You finally die a natural death and find out you can be reborn, and the details are up to you. What would you choose? No limitations, any person, any place, and any time frame.
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Here is the simple idea: You finally die a natural death and find out you can be reborn, and the details are up to you. What would you choose? No limitations, any person, any place, and any time frame.
thats really hard could you be yourself again but be able to remeber so you could change some things but then maybe you wouldnt be the you you are today if didnt have the same past hmm
that sounds like a good idea! I guess it would just be like an alternate version of your life, with new choices. Can you think of anything you would really want to change if reincarnation could work that way? I would have gone straight through school. In real life I dropped out of high school, then went back, then I dropped out of college, but eventually went back. In a new chance version I would have stuck it out.
Actually, I think you'd have to retain a concept of yourself for this thought experiment to work. Unless of course at death you're mature enough to allow your identity to be erased in the cause of moving your soul in a specifically chosen direction. That would be cool, but since few if any of us are grown up enough to make such a sacrifice:Quote:
Originally Posted by sleepysam
I think I'd like to be restarted in interesting times, as the Chinese sentiment suggests. In this life I grew up in a safe, secure middle class american family full of love, peace, and minimal difficulty. Yes, shit happened, as it does in all lives, and I certainly had my struggles. But I often wonder where I would be if I had ever been driven to reach my goals by more than just my own curiosity. Sort of like that book, The Third Eye, where the kid gets recruited into a monastery and has no choice but to grow into his destiny.
That aside, I guess I'd pick a life where I had the opportunity, the will, and the social impetus to continue the work I started in this life, but with a new perspective and social support system that will help that continuation go a little more smoothly and without so damn many "real world" destractions and delays.
Coming back as the son or daughter of a bazillionaire might be okay, too! ;)
Sivason, I just had another thought.
Perhaps I was thinking from inside the Box in my last post.
Since there are no limits, I think I'd like to not come back as a human at all. Better, perhaps, would be a transition of my Self and soul into an an energy being with the knowlege, power, and potential similar to the ascended Ancients from The Stargate series. But maybe with a bit more compassion...
Clever idea for a thread, BTW; I hope you get some thoughtful responses!
Great thread indeed!
Now this may sound silly, but I have been actually thinking about this a bit and even making notes. All in hopes, that when I transition to the Beyond, I will remember them.
I don't have any details hammered out yet, but my biggest wish is to remember that I have discovered lucid dreaming and all that comes with it. Mostly talking about not the fun part, but the exploration of myself part. Or if I don't retain memory of it, I want to discover it at younger age than this time.
And I want to retain my curiosity about the Universe, love of nature, travel, languages, and some other more or less personal things.
Wouldn't hurt if I was smart, have a job that I would love doing and made bunch of money, so I can give some of it away. Work in space, maybe in law enforcement.
Don't want to be a bad guy and don't want to be born in place with wars and genocides and other crap. Hopefully I won't, since I understand that those things are bad. So maybe I already went through such a scenario.
Do you guys think, that our personalities and traits in this lifetime are a direct result of what we have learned in previous ones?
yes sivason my changes would be similar to yours knuckled down in school try to be straight A student go straight college then uni i would also make sure i lived healthier and not make any bad choices i would fill my self with confidence not let other peoples problems become mine or interfere with my life but i would still want my same family etc.
Great ideas so far! I agree with Sageous that having a setting where your goals are more likely and you will be driven sounds good. My mother was satisfied just with us being good people, and did not encourage us in much of any way otherwise. Plus, being the child of wealth (and education) would be a great blessing.
Assended energy form, sounds like it would offer all sorts of new experience.
Gab, all of your desires seem very reasonable, and if you believe in reincarnation, I feel they are attainable. I do feel as if many traits are due to past lives. I think our personalities are often affected by our physical bodies. For instance, if you get a male body with too much testosterone, you will probably have a more aggressive personality. However, I think love of music or travel and things like that are taken with you from life to life.
I am going to throw in perhaps a dolphin life off the shore of Hawaii! I would have a big brain, so could self-reflect, but no worries from jobs and such. The area is beautiful, and being able to dive deep would be nice. In our anything/no limits concept, I would also like the dolphin to retain some sense of my human life and memories, so I could grasp the contrast.
I personally don't, though I'm likely a minority in this particular thread. I like to think that my "immortal" soul is an accumulation of my own thought energy, from this lifetime only, and will project and contain the person who was "me" long after I'm gone... and, if my waking consciousness can move to my creation after death, all the better!Quote:
Originally Posted by gab
It simply doesn't make sense to me that our souls, the root of our being, is another being altogether that simply uses us as a vehicle for fourscore and seven. Seems sort of diminishing.
However, if upon death I discover that everything Sivason has said is right (or something else altogether is the case), and I managed to carry my consciousness with me through death (which is the plan), I'll be open to the paradigm shift, be prepared as possible to accept and find joy in whatever the Next Step has to offer, and hold deep curiosity about how many Steps my soul had already tread upon...
Also, regardless of beliefs, the OP is still an excellent thought exercise, as it forces a little introspection and gives a moment's pause for the stuff we could've, should've, or would've done, had the opportunity arisen.
I would definitely escape this matrix and go into higher realms and dimensions. Since it's more to it than just hypothetically saying "control," hypothetically I would totally live like a solar being like we're supposed to.
Starting off with my least interesting thought about this, to get it out of the way....I know I don't want to be born into wealth. Generally speaking, I think its a curse more than a blessing. I've never encountered someone who was born into wealth who seems to very much understand the value of effort. Also, if your parents are very wealthy, usually they got that way by exploiting other people and twisting their perceptions all around in the process. Rich people tend to be obsessed with weird things. I've known one rich person who didn't have very much of his self-image invested in his wealth, but he made other sacrifices. Its true that if you're born wealthy you may have leisure time for interesting pursuits like philosophy. But you're also disconnected from what the reality of life is to so many of the people you life depends on, so I don't know how much all that time actually helps. Obviously some wealth is helpful, but it seems to me to start becoming counterproductive fairly quickly as one rises out of the middle class.
The 'what to be next life' question is interesting because its very nearly the same as the question of why we are here now. And of course its also interesting because you can't answer it without thinking about what it means to be 'you'.
I can't answer that for myself, but I'll take my best crack at it. I guess these aren't new thoughts.
I'm horrified by the reality I find myself in, having to kill other things that want to live in order to survive for instance. This should not be. It feels to me like the real world has been stolen and replaced by some kind of perverted imitation. So I'm obsessed with trying to find how to put it right. Or if it doesn't need to be put right, I want to understand that. It seems arrogant, one man imagining he has a role in fixing the universe, which from all appearances is damn big. At the same time, it seems I didn't choose this, its more like I was created for this, that everything I express is a small part of a larger story.
What I want for a next life depends on the truth about this. If there's nothing I can do by living that helps fix the world, then I don't want to come back to a world that's even remotely like this. To use a metaphor I've used before, I want to eat aging caterpillars and shit youthful butterflies. Food should be consensual. I don't want to be spiritually blind, it should be my right as a living creature to be able to discover what the fuck I am if I'm capable of asking the question. What did I do to deserve this? Its like being a life-long Alzheimer's victim.
Another part of me just wants oblivion, believes its the only answer, despairs that its not even possible.
If this world can be redeemed, and if my being alive and in its grip helps somehow, then I want to be a part of that. Since I don't understand why the world is the way it is, I can't judge what is the right thing to want though. It does seem that I am at least in some sense evil, so I want to put that right. This says the same thing I just said about the world, but I've just shifted my standpoint and called it myself. I guess it seems to me like the same thing, 'I' am what I am, there's really no escaping from myself.
Now I'm not sure that the question makes sense, that a person's life can be very different from who they are. If you could 'come back' and have some significantly different set of experiences you wouldn't be you. I guess somebody already said that.
The moon orbiting the earth is in balance, in the sense that it keeps falling past the earth. A satellite that would fall towards the earth and impact it is also in a kind of balance, in the sense that its following its natural path under the same law, but its not in balance in the same sense, its going to end in destruction. My point of this metaphor is that it seems like everything is in balance, and yet, there is a way that everything is out of balance. Life is somehow perfectly choreographed by some hidden intelligence, and yet, somehow its all fucked up at the same time, as if the plan its following is insane. Many people think, for example, that tornadoes are random, but they're not. I know there's a reason they hit houses instead of missing them all, even though I don't understand what that reason is. Its as if its an expression of something, somehow we've lost our compassion and can't hope to find it again unless we see our brutality expressed.
I don't think its possible for us to find our true conscious balance from where we are now. But I want to find what moves us in that direction, so that it will be possible for someone, eventually, so to speak. 'Knowledge' seems to me to be real in a context. If this knowledge I seek isn't useful here, than I don't even need it. But maybe 'I' would like to be in a context where such knowledge is appropriate, even though I don't even know what that means.
I would like to be a mother again. But in better circumstances.
'I' is such a weird concept.
Being able to fly would be nice.
I would like to feel cared for.
I guess that was more than a bit hard to follow. That's my best answer today though.
There is the concept addressed by Azul. In Buddhist lore, if you were done for now with this example of the universe, you would have options other than this world. The premiss is that if the basis of reality is some form of thought energy or a dream like energy, then the experience is not limited. In this lore the idea is that alternate versions of the universe are reachable, if you deserve to join them. If Shadowofwind were the example in using this lore, he would be able to prove he was a good harmless person, and be next incarnated into a universe were eating was not part of it. In such a realm the very laws of physics could prevent violence from existing.
Using this line of thought, that seems very true and real to me, the possabilties become staggering. Not only can you spend endless time incarnating in increasingly happy and productive lifeforms here, you will also be presented with many other options. This assumes the ability to control reincarnation, which of course is the OP.
Maybe you must be very experienced or well trained in dream yoga to obtain this control,,, but the thread is about assuming we deserve that control, and can simply name what we want. In the context of my honest belief system (shared by millions) the next life could include anything, including Azul's "Solar Beings"
Azul, can you describe to us a bit of what you picture when you talk about solar existance?
Here is one idea I have. I would like to be born to a very long lived space fairing race. My father would be influencal and after raising through ranks, he would set me up as "Director of Cultivation and Collection" for the largest zoo project in the Milky Way. I would then be given a large salary and be allowed to live in apartments on the large Arc ship. This ship is capable of faster than light travel, and is assigned to explore planets, and retrieve samples of life. The Arc ship then can establish teraformed blank planets.
It would be my well payed job to select my choice of life forms, discovered along the way, and place them on newly teraform worlds. The faster than light travel also would allow for my return voyages to take place say 10 million years after placing the lifeforms.
So, that would be my job. I would also belong to a race that was free of violence, but more than capable of self protection or intervention. My physical body would have some form of regeneration ability, and perhaps I should also be capable of a variety of psy skills! I would fall deeply in love with a partner that would live on the ship with me, and we would have offspring. With the influence of my respected father, my children would be made govenors of a teraformed world or some fun job, so that as I travelled the universe I would be able to visit family. :)
^^ Given this some thought, have you, Sivason? ;)
I have thought about it a bit. Sounds like a really good time.
^^ A good time indeed; arguably the stuff from which Heaven comes...
You would also spend the next billion lives living as your childrens' tax paying subjects, just to make it all work.Quote:
Originally Posted by sivason
Nah, I am sure some other people will fill that role. After all, the race has space ships, regeneration, and a really cool zoo!
Plus they don't have to hassle with self-government, your dad takes care of that for them.Quote:
Originally Posted by sivason
I know you intended this as a light hearted fantasy, but you've just described Saddam Hussein's Iraq, from the standpoint of a member of his inner circle, with cosmetic differences. And destiny and free fantasy both spring from the same place. I really don't understand why a person would choose such a thing, it seems insane to me, even though I can see that most people do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
Oh, did Saddam have a really cool zoo?
Bahgdad had and still has a large zoo. If you consider animal prisons to be cool, then I guess it was pretty cool.Quote:
Originally Posted by sivason
^^ This is beginning to sound like a conversation at one of my family's Thanksgiving dinners... not that I have a problem with it at all. ;)
And for what it's worth, I do remember reading years ago about Saddam's cool zoo(s).
Not nearly as cool as my fictious zoo, though!!! As the OP says 'no limits' I will work for a zoo that is not an animal prison. All of the animals will be volenteers, free to go free and earn a living doing what ever animals do. They will stay around though, because each animal gets a pension for their family, free massage therapy, and unlimited ice cream. Unlimited ice cream!
So that is enough of the Iraq comparrison. Did Saddam give the lions ice cream? I bet he did not!
^^ Well, unlimited ice cream; that's a horse of a different color!
I think I may want to reincarnate as a fruit tree. I would be one of the main food sources for a village, and grow crazy huge. Everyone in the village would be able to eat apples (or mangos?) for over 100 years.
I picture it being relaxing and fufilling, plus a great way to pay it forward a little.
^^ I think I like that one!