The soul, suffering, healing, learning, and spirituality [Night Shift split]

Having thought about the concept of souls learning from incarnations, I have tentatively reached some conclusions:

1)      Every possible evil act sits on a continuum - there could be similar acts that would be a bit worse, and others that would be a bit less evil. In other words the situation is akin to the real numbers. This means that it is futile to try to single out particular evil behaviour and argue that it is uniquely beyond the pail.

2)      The same goes, I think, when considering assorted handicaps in life, whether as a consequence of a defective genome, or as permanent damage inflicted some other way. Furthermore, I guess there is no way of knowing whether certain extreme damage leaves a person that does not actually house a soul at all.

3)      It isn't clear to me if there are different types of soul - some that are simply discarnate humans, and others that operate at a higher 'strategic' level. However, if a soul has access to hundreds or thousands of lifetimes, that may utterly transform their perspective on what is or is not acceptable from the point of view of someone who is incarnate.

4)      When people were regularly executed in public, or when they were thrown to lions, there was no shortage of spectators, who presumably paid an entrance fee!

5)      We simply can't help but hurt people in small ways in ordinary life.

6)      When children go to school, part of the aim is to let them learn how to interact with other children and adults. The parents may, nevertheless, intervene if (say) their child is getting bullied excessively. Good parents will try to encourage their children to handle more routine problems themselves. This sounds very like the situation that confronts souls when they arrive in a body. This adds plausibility to the concept of souls reincarnating to learn lessons. In both cases senior entities can step in if things start to go really badly.

7)      What the hell is the purpose of humanity's lengthy training period?

David

@Valmar

I apologise in advance if you have explained this already, in which case a link will suffice, but I am very curious about your experience of the spiritual world.

Did you always know you had experienced past lives, or did a hypnotist or medium uncover this?

Can you remember all those lives, or just a select few?

Are you able to explain the ultimate purpose of mankind's progression through all these lives?

Can a person be incarnated more than once at a given time?

Are you limited in the information you are permitted to access (in this reality, and in the spiritual reality)?

Have you ever written up your experiences - say in a book?

David

Having thought about the concept of souls learning from incarnations, I have tentatively reached some conclusions:

1)      Every possible evil act sits on a continuum - there could be similar acts that would be a bit worse, and others that would be a bit less evil. In other words the situation is akin to the real numbers. This means that it is futile to try to single out particular evil behaviour and argue that it is uniquely beyond the pail.

2)      The same goes, I think, when considering assorted handicaps in life, whether as a consequence of a defective genome, or as permanent damage inflicted some other way. Furthermore, I guess there is no way of knowing whether certain extreme damage leaves a person that does not actually house a soul at all.

3)      It isn't clear to me if there are different types of soul - some that are simply discarnate humans, and others that operate at a higher 'strategic' level. However, if a soul has access to hundreds or thousands of lifetimes, that may utterly transform their perspective on what is or is not acceptable from the point of view of someone who is incarnate.

4)      When people were regularly executed in public, or when they were thrown to lions, there was no shortage of spectators, who presumably paid an entrance fee!

5)      We simply can't help but hurt people in small ways in ordinary life.

6)      When children go to school, part of the aim is to let them learn how to interact with other children and adults. The parents may, nevertheless, intervene if (say) their child is getting bullied excessively. Good parents will try to encourage their children to handle more routine problems themselves. This sounds very like the situation that confronts souls when they arrive in a body. This adds plausibility to the concept of souls reincarnating to learn lessons. In both cases senior entities can step in if things start to go really badly.

7)      What the hell is the purpose of humanity's lengthy training period?

David

I think 6 & 7 are important questions, 1-5 seem like mere rationalizations for suffering rather than explanations for me.

It seems clear to me that senior entities at the higher transcendent level are not around or happy to just spectate, at best we might get some benevolent helpers who are closer to our level...

I think 6 & 7 are important questions, 1-5 seem like mere rationalizations for suffering rather than explanations for me.

Well they certainly aren't rationalisations, more like attempts to understand the message that we seem to be receiving.

Items 1 and 2 are an attempt to counter Nbtruthman's constant suggestion that there are levels of evil and of suffering on Earth that are absolutely evil, so that they can't fit into the scheme.

Item 3 is a straightforward query, and item 4 is a relevant observation - plenty of people went to public executions!

It seems clear to me that senior entities at the higher transcendent level are not around or happy to just spectate, at best we might get some benevolent helpers who are closer to our level...

I guess that is an answer to 6, but 7 remains unanswered (I think).

David

Well they certainly aren't rationalisations, more like attempts to understand the message that we seem to be receiving.

Items 1 and 2 are an attempt to counter Nbtruthman's constant suggestion that there are levels of evil and of suffering on Earth that are absolutely evil, so that they can't fit into the scheme.

Item 3 is a straightforward query, and item 4 is a relevant observation - plenty of people went to public executions!

I guess that is an answer to 6, but 7 remains unanswered (I think).

David

What I mean by rationalization is along the lines of what @nbtruthman has brought up - in the face of all the suffering of this world can we really just hand-wave it all as just lessons of the Soul School?

It would seem the transcendent soul has little to nothing to learn and additionally it isn't clear why the soul is learning anything at all. Is there some more real reality in which the soul will go and live in after its training in this world?

I think it's also important to keep in mind we get a lot of different afterlife descriptions, especially when one goes through the length of human history. This does give us some interesting commonalities to add to the witness evidence of Survival but my belief in the afterlife has yet to alleviate my feeling that Evil is a powerful force in this world....if not the next...

What I mean by rationalization is along the lines of what @nbtruthman has brought up - in the face of all the suffering of this world can we really just hand-wave it all as just lessons of the Soul School?

This is why I would like people to separate the question of what is from the question of what it aught to be!
Otherwise we are rather in the position of a biology student being told that human beings start out as single cells. Surely the response to that should not be, "That is totally unacceptable we are obviously more noble that a single cell!"

It would seem the transcendent soul has little to nothing to learn and additionally it isn't clear why the soul is learning anything at all. Is there some more real reality in which the soul will go and live in after its training in this world?

Maybe this is a bit like the fact that someone could know the relevant physics of ice skating and yet would just fall over if asked to demonstrate it?

I think it's also important to keep in mind we get a lot of different afterlife descriptions, especially when one goes through the length of human history. This does give us some interesting commonalities to add to the witness evidence of Survival but my belief in the afterlife has yet to alleviate my feeling that Evil is a powerful force in this world....if not the next...

I see this as probably indicating that the afterlife is a really big and complicated place. Again, isn't it more important to focus on the truth rather than on what we think it should be?

David

I see this as probably indicating that the afterlife is a really big and complicated place. Again, isn't it more important to focus on the truth rather than on what we think it should be?

David

Well the truth is unknowable even via the accounts of people who have had NDEs, shamanic journeys, In Between Life memories, etc.

What exactly would be the determining factor between all these accounts? It seems to me we can made some educated guesses based on reason, while realizing that this may be inadequate.

For me, the idea the souls are choosing to act out roles in order to learn about living would naturally invite questions about what exactly are we meant to learn, and why we are meant to learn such things?

For me, the idea the souls are choosing to act out roles in order to learn about living would naturally invite questions about what exactly are we meant to learn, and why we are meant to learn such things?

Well I suppose an actor might feel he learned a lot performing in some role. However, I do agree, this is the nub of the question!

David

Well I suppose an actor might feel he learned a lot performing in some role. However, I do agree, this is the nub of the question!

David

I think another key piece of the question is time and space related - is this idea of the soul choosing a life for itself and all the suffering it might entail a modern phenomenon? Is it mainly something we see in the Western world?

There do seem to be CORTs where someone receives a premonitory dream that a loved one is going to reincarnate back into the family, however in these historical cases I've not seen any indication that the reincarnating soul is choosing to suffer.

There are also pregnancy premonition dreams that have happened in Asia, perhaps the most famous is the story of Buddha's mother dreaming of a white elephant, but I've also not read or heard anything about souls choosing all the suffering that might occur in that life.

I do recall some Greek variation where there is a part of Paradise (Elysium?) reserved for those who reincarnate into this world a set number of times (3?) with the idea that Earth is a place in which suffering is known to occur. That's the closest I can think of to the idea that we know beforehand the suffering we will have this life.

I think another key piece of the question is time and space related - is this idea of the soul choosing a life for itself and all the suffering it might entail a modern phenomenon? Is it mainly something we see in the Western world?

There do seem to be CORTs where someone receives a premonitory dream that a loved one is going to reincarnate back into the family, however in these historical cases I've not seen any indication that the reincarnating soul is choosing to suffer.

There are also pregnancy premonition dreams that have happened in Asia, perhaps the most famous is the story of Buddha's mother dreaming of a white elephant, but I've also not read or heard anything about souls choosing all the suffering that might occur in that life.

I do recall some Greek variation where there is a part of Paradise (Elysium?) reserved for those who reincarnate into this world a set number of times (3?) with the idea that Earth is a place in which suffering is known to occur. That's the closest I can think of to the idea that we know beforehand the suffering we will have this life.

An attempt to broadly summarize this issue:

As you bring out, there isn't much in the deep historical record, especially of channelings or other psychic pronouncements, that souls actually choose the broad outlines or even details of their next incarnations in some sort of soul learning process.

Such claims do come out occasionally as part of accounts of veridical NDE OBEs and veridical CORTs for instance, but the claims themselves due to their basic nature can't be veridical (checkable through later investigation and verification in the physical world).  Most such claims have seemed to come via unverifiable psychic channelings and intuitions by sensitives, after long immersion in the belief system.

That leaves the persuasiveness of these claims to be mainly from the fact that they seem to make some sort of sense of life and its trials and tribulations in addition to its joys, rather than leaving this to some arbitrary or even random process. The mind shys away from the latter kind of "explanation", since this makes our existence with all its drama and good and bad experiences seem sort of pointless.  

However, as has been somewhat explored in these discussions, the "physical Earth life is a self-selected and determined school for souls" model has some very unpleasant downsides. Mainly this is the clear implication that the usual assumption that the human is one with and the same as his soul, in other words that the human is in some important sense actually his soul, is actually invalid, since common sense would indicate that the human obviously would never select some of the very suffering-filled lives that actually in real life afflict many humans.