NOTE: It is recommended that you read the page on "Spirituality","Spirit and Soul" and "Mind and Body" prior to reading this page.
Reincarnation has always been a mystery, explored and theorized by many. It is a tool to understanding our own spirituality while answering the question, "Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People?"
Between lives, with divine energy/universal knowledge at our fingertips (so-to-speak), we choose our next life we are going to live and how much karma we are going to meet and settle. Some people believe if we abused animals or people in one life, our divine energy/knowledge would probably urge us to reincarnate into a situation where we would get abused to make us realize the misery we caused others. While this may be true, we believe it goes much deeper in lessons to be learned. Perhaps the abuser needs to learn self-control, to be more empathetic, more compassionate, while the abused may need to learn to be stronger, more independent, learning self-worth, self love, as well as forgiveness.
Let me give you an example that may explain this clearer. We believe we have soul groups. We often hear of a "soul mate", and we form an opinion that this means there is only one person who is our "soul mate". We believe we have many "soul mates", people we choose to continue to stay with in order to learn our lessons while helping them learn theirs, sometimes being husband/wife, or mother/child, friend or foe, often changing these combinations, depending on the lessons to be learned. The best example of this would be someone who chooses to be blind, knowing he/she will be raised by a single parent. The parent chooses to have a handicapped child in order to learn lessons in this incarnate. Example: The child may have lived previous lives always looking outward into the material world. Blindness would teach him/her to look inward, to learn self-love and self-worth as well as increasing his/her other senses. The mother/father may have lived their previous lives doing whatever they wanted to, not accepting responsibility, but in this incarnate would learn to be more grounded, taking on more responsibility and living up to its demands, learning self-respect, and offering security to their child. In a previous life, these same two people may have been husband and wife, but are now parent and child.
It also answers the reason for savants and indigo children. Have you ever wondered why some people are absolute geniuses in certain areas such as playing concertos at age five, or young children remembering and talking about their previous life, or having uncanny psychic abilities, or the ability to see and speak to spirits? This universal knowledge and divine energy is in all of us, but as humans we close our minds to it, we do not let ourselves "feel", and we do not take the time to look inside ourselves. We often ignore our young and assume they have wild imaginations instead of really listening to them and help in keeping their hearts and minds open to all possibilities.
The purpose of reincarnation is being born into the physical form for education - particularly, learning the eternal lessons of love and becoming one with everyone and every thing, especially our divine energy itself, given to us by God himself. Our need for worldly desires can hinder the free expression of our souls and can hinder our earth incarnations. Some people have made such horrible mistakes in life that, that they choose to re-experience another life to help in their progression. Reincarnation is a tool to continue on with the truths we have not learned, our greed for more, what we perceive as pleasures of our vices and desires. It is only when our souls learn the truth, that we can become compatible with universal knowledge and live within our divine energy in peace.
Karma insists that we meet face on all of our karmic debts. After death we have a review of our life can can decide if we have earned the right to advance to a higher heavenly position. The laws of love and forgiveness, however, are the greatest forces. To be forgiven, we must first forgive, to be loved, we must first love, to be truthful, we must first learn the "truth". Sometimes it takes an incarnate many returns to learn what is there to be learned.
Reincarnation and karma together explains justice and why some people are born into favorable conditions or are born into unfavorable conditions. Personality traits are also carried over from past lives. These traits are known as the "Spirit", not the "Soul", as "Soul" is the divine energy itself. "Spirit" is whatever we think and that thought becomes part of the universal consciousness, and the whole is affected by it. Our reactions to our past thoughts and actions become our destiny and karma. Our destiny is simply the effects of previous choices remembered by the "Spirit".
The one main misconception about reincarnation is that some people assume that after leaving the physical body, these souls reincarnate immediately instead of inhabiting the various realms or levels offered them for further growth. Talk to anyone who has experienced a "near death experience" and they will tell you that time does not exist on that plane. From our studies and experience, we have found it most believable that we have a choice, to reincarnate or to move from level to level. Living out one's karma through reincarnation is nothing more then a way of experiencing the lessons, or truths, that one has to recognize and become a part of to have completed their path. Should we choose not to incarnate to the physical state to learn our lessons, there are schools (or levels, which some refer to) in the spirit world were we can learn them. However, learning our lessons in the physical state is the fastest way to learn them. Think of this as a student at a local college. They have a choice of taking an advanced class in one semester and working harder, or taking an easier class for two semesters. Both will learn the same material, but the first student will learn it faster.
According to Edgar Cayce, "In time, we who are trapped in the cycle of birth and rebirth can once again come to know our original state and purpose, and regain our celestial birthright as a companion to God. In time we can again come to realize that the conditions in our current life is the result of our free actions and choices from past lives."
Some souls have a connection to certain incidences or people and choose to be reincarnated, or to continue in spirit form in order to be around those situations until the time comes when they feel they are ready to choose to go into the white light, thereby not being able to come back in physical form.
If one believes in reincarnation, then we also believe that consciousness continues in accordance to universal law, and through universal law then all things are possible such as spirit communication, and the importance of our spiritual journey and the need to understand the difference between mind and body, spirit and soul. Universal law teaches that we are all connected to everyone and everything else so it is not a big leap to ADCs (after death communication, OBEs (out of body experiences), NDE (near death experiences), EMFs (electromagnetic fields), astral projection, etc.
To read about the "Various Religious Views on Spirituality", Click Religious Beliefs.
