Lessons for Life ~ Life and Death

14^th of July 2009

Series called:

LESSONS FOR LIFE ~ LIFE AND DEATH

The subject of death seems to be extremely emotional for people. The obvious reasons are the loss of a loved one. How would it change your views on death and the living, if you accepted that those who passed away were not gone; that they remain a passive element of our lives?

In the West, we’ve been taught that there are only three things that are certain in life; we are born, we pay taxes and that we die. We directly and indirectly learn that once we die, there is nothing more. We are buried, the ones we leave behind must grieve our passing and unless you “repent and accept God,” there is nothing more.

Jesus spoke multiple times about the soul lasting beyond the death of the physical body. Christianity taught for over three hundred years that the soul within each human being, came from God and once physical death occurred, it traversed back to God. Three hundred and twenty five years after the death of Christ, Emperor Constantine created the Council of Nicaea. Constantine was a life long Pagan, but understood humanity enough to know, that if family member would kill another family member due to a difference in ideology, then he must unite their beliefs. He set out to create a unified religion that took from all other ideologies and set forth as the only religion in the world upon which he mandated its practice. Constantine did not feel reincarnation benefitted this unified religion and had all references to reincarnation expunged from the Old Testament. He then established that no one should teach reincarnation directing the Council of Nicaea members (three hundred religious and political leaders of the time) to establish an ideology that would guide members to the church for salvation, thereby changing the world’s view of life after death.

This background information is to establish that most Western people do not have an in-depth belief in reincarnation. They identify this ideology as one from the East. However, this was not always an ideology specific to the East. It was believed, practiced and taught by almost all organized religions. They unilaterally believed, that the soul return to a dimension other than our own until such time that it chooses to return in a new physical body. If this is truly an old belief, why then does it enrage so many and invokes with great passion, retributions such as that forced upon the ruling cardinals of 545 A.D. to draft a papal decree stating that anyone who believes that souls come from God and return to God will be punished by death;

“If anyone asserts the fabulous preexistence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema. (the Anathemas against Origen), attached to the decrees of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, A.D. 545, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d ser., 14:318).”

For those who don’t believe, I ask why not? Why do you suppose we are born to live a singular lifetime and only learn what we are exposed too within it? Would it not make more sense, that our soul has been here before and with each lifetime comes a series of lessons? Our soul gathers the cumulative knowledge from each life as we return from our physical adventures to a place of peace, meant for resting between lifetimes. If you believe in an omnipotent being that created us and this universe, why would such a being only construct us for a single life? What do you do if the singular life you have, happens to be a difficult one or maybe a down right crappie one? Do you get angry if you don’t come into this world as Bill Gates, but rather the child born to no father and a mother infected with HIV, no food, no home and no family? Wouldn’t it make more sense that we have hard lifetimes mixed with good lifetimes to solidify the lessons we are meant to learn from?

I believe that we are an accumulation of all of our lifetimes. That we add to our base of knowledge by our experiences. We can learn when we are resting between lifetimes, but we learn more when we interact with other souls, here in this earthly realm. That being said, I’ve come to understand that we agree to the lessons we are set to learn in each lifetime. Understanding the lessons we must learn and the path of the life we are set to endure, we choose the family that will best establish our experiences. For the most part, we choose souls that we’ve experienced in other lifetimes. We come into each lifetime as an established being that will best serve our learning the lessons we agreed to learn: male, female, straight, gay, color, nationality, ideology, etc. will all be established to meet the needs for those lessons we must discover.

When you view life in this manner, I have found that it is easier to understand the arduous experiences that some of us endure. When you question why you are with a family, it is easier to accept that you chose them in service to your needs in teaching you the lessons that you agreed to learn. When we understand life in this manner, it changes how we view the harshness of some of our lessons. None of this will ever remove the greatest gift we’ve been given, “FREE WILL.” We can choose to remain on the journey that was established or we may decide on a different path. However, I have found that life is so much easier when you don’t fight the path you need to be on, and yet, I know that it is always our rights to change our fait.

Life is meant to be a wonderful and amazing experience for us. Our souls excel when you learn the lessons you are meant to learn and teach those lessons that you can teach. This knowledge is written from the perspective of a belief in God (an Omnipotent being), but if you are not of the faithful, please accept that in the life you now live, it may best serve your needs in not believing. That will always bring us back to a common place that says LOVE, HONOR and RESPECT all who surround you. They may be in a different position, learning lessons that you’ve already learned. It may be you who is learning the lessons that those around you have already digested. We can learn every lesson with love, or we may need to learn them through harm, hate, anger or misery.

These articles are building a base of knowledge (A Series: LESSONS FOR LIFE), we all start from the same place as exactly the same thing…..a SOUL. Our goal is to end at exactly the same place and that is an enlighten soul with grace. The only way to obtain our destination is to learn all of the lessons we must learn. If we do not learn our lessons in this lifetime, we will learn them in another. Some lessons can only be taught with distress, while some may only be taught with love, but we are the accumulation of all that we learn.

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson