reincarnation

Some nights when I'm arm deep in web design, I'll put on a documentary in the background and zone out to the blare of scientific studies and talking heads. In the moment, nothing shines the dullness of computer work, like some food for thought.

The other night I found something random on reincarnation - one of my favorite topics.

There are some really compelling cases out there that suggest the existence of reincarnation. These are the ones that I liked:

John Gordon Jeff Keene 

 

A fire chief from Connecticut was checking out some historic Civil War sites.

He had a complete and uncharacteristic breakdown for no reason in a ditch along the road. 

Later he found a booklet with a Civil War general's picture that looked just like him. 

Then he found out the general was shot right in the ditch where he'd collapsed.

Barbro Kalen & Anne Frank

 (She looks a lot like her, dont you think?)

 As a child in Sweden, Barbro Kalen had nightmares with soldiers and 
uniforms terrified her. She though her name was Anne and 
remembered details about this past life even though the Diaries of Anne Frank 
had not been published in Sweden at the time.  At 10 she visited Amsterdam 
with her parents and knew her way around the neighborhood without a map. 

She pointed out changes that were made to the Anne Frank house 

when it was converted to a museum. Barbo had a knack for writing. 
She had her first book published at the age of 12. 

Anne Frank's cousin in Switzerland met Barbro 

and even he believed her to be AF's reincarnation.

I just got a book from the library on the topic. It makes me wonder if I've had a past life or if you have? Sometimes there are strange tendencies, affinities or the opposite that make you think, hmm I must've encountered this before.

For example, I'm not afraid of heights; I'm not afraid of animals or a tragic death or stabbing or buglers. But I can easily conceive of drowning. When I'm at the bottom of a pool swimming around with two lungs full of air, it doesn't matter; I feel like I'm one moment away from watching it all fade away. I can easily imagine the diluted sky above waffling out in a blur. There's no good explanation. I grew up at the lake; I've been swimming all my life without any incident. It's just a gut reaction.

If you are reading, do you have any assumptions about a past life?

one little cloud

Death ends a chapter or begins another, it's never just a text-heavy page. For how much time people spend thinking about dying, it might as well be an errand to run or a TiVo episode to watch. Probably yet another reason why, when it happens, expected or not, it's always shocking.  

Its presence dominates the psyche like a master ninja, striking hard and retreating to invisibility. The aftermath is a tornado of loose thoughts, unchained emotions, and shifting perspectives. Expressing grief (or not) is as disorienting. 

Memories start to playback on a constant reel. Alone or together, so many details come to the surface. Taking stock of all those quirks, th  important and the nonsense on equal ground, is cathartic and seems honorable, sending off a soul with respect and recognition of all that happened here. 

knots

 

"All of nature in its awful vastness and incomprehensible complexity is in the end interrelated - worlds within worlds within worlds: the seen and the unseen - the physical and the immaterial are all connected - each exerting influence on the next - bound, as it were, by chains of analogy - magnetic chains. Every decision, every action mirrors, ripples, reflects and echoes throughout the whole of creation. The world is indeed bound with secret knots."

~Thomas P. Kelley

source