by Dragana Brown, London, UK
I was brought up in a family that was not involved in any religion, yet I remember as a young child feeling that I wanted to meet God. As a 7-8 year old I had a friend who talked a lot about God. She spoke about heaven and hell, who ends up where, doing good in order to go to heaven, God punishing us for our bad actions – the entire religious cliché… and pretty much that there was this grey, long bearded, big guy somewhere up in the sky, who sees and hears everything and acts upon anything we do, say and even think – so no negative thoughts about any deranged family members!
I didn’t believe a word she was saying and I vehemently denied the existence of such a God. Even as a young girl I was able to feel the flaws in these and similar statements and raise a lot of questions in regards to her claims; if we are ALL the children of God, how can HE love some more and some less by way of rewarding some and punishing other?
I used to frequently ask my mother who she loved the most out of her three children. She always gave the same response: that she could not but love us all equally. She would say whilst pointing at each and every finger on her hand: cut this finger, it hurts, cut this finger it also hurts… Being the youngest in the family I used to persist asking if the little pinky would hurt a teeny weenie bit more than the others, to which she would give a smile and say, “still hurts the same as any other finger”. Being equal rang true even in my quest for recognition from my Mum.
Another thing that required explanation was that if adults mess up and have to ‘pay for their sins’, how about a baby born with a disease? I would hear replies like – that’s God punishing parents for their wrongdoings etc, but I accepted none of it. There was a huge part of me that wanted to believe in God, but what I was presented with by any of the ‘believers’ didn’t feel true.
That was not the God I wanted to meet.
Because I could not explain true God and had no way of knowing how to get to know Him, I decided it was best to be anti-God. But reality kept bothering me – from a very young age I could not be convinced of life being ‘it’ – just us human beings – we get born, we die and that’s it! It made no sense. What also nagged me was that there had to be some greater meaning/reason for our existence on earth, otherwise – what is the point? I could feel that there is a lot more to us than meets the eye, and that the physical cycle – birth/death – is only a part of the whole, but not the whole itself.
One sunny day in July in the Eighties I arrived in London for the first time in my life. The moment I landed there was a certain familiarity that gave me goosebumps! The family I was to stay with had said I should get a taxi from Heathrow and they’d pay for it, but I was drawn to take public transport – underground and buses. It was a glorious day and I looked around with the curious eyes of a little girl and the feeling that I had known this place all my life. The family was shocked when I arrived and no taxi to pay – needless to say they were thrilled I had saved them a considerable amount of money – but they were amazed that I could do that on my first ever visit and with limited knowledge of the English language. I shared that to me it felt a very familiar journey.
Every time in the first couple of years when I went back to former Yugoslavia, where I was born, I could not wait to go back to England, and I kept saying I was going back home to London, yet I knew nobody in London and I had no home in a physical sense. There were even periods when I was homeless!
One day a few years ago I was in a Japanese restaurant having a meal. When the Japanese waiter brought my bill he hesitantly (and with lots of ‘excuse me-s’ and ‘forgive me for asking-s’) wanted to know if I had ever lived in Japan – I said never, then added – in this life, and we both laughed. He asked if my husband was Japanese. Again I said he could not be more English and no, nobody else in the family was from Japan! I asked why? He explained how the way I was eating, and not just the way I was using the chopsticks, but my entire mannerism, was so very Japanese, that he had not seen people outside of Japan eating in such ‘Japanese way’, even those foreigners who spend a long time living there! He wanted to expand on this but struggled for words – although his English was very good – and he just kept nodding his head in disbelief that somebody who never lived in Japan could have so much of Japan in her! I shared with him how I disliked going for Japanese meals with non-Japanese people, because of their clumsiness. There is a certain elegance and order in eating in Japan that I must have remembered from my past, and I am often tempted to go over to those eaters and explain how to eat Japanese food. I have always felt strong affinity towards Japan, yet I have never been there. Almost all my crockery at home is Japanese – not even from other parts of Asia, but exclusively Japan. I even had a kimono. And the entire family including four children, since they could hold a chopstick, have been eating with chopsticks at home for the last 25 years!
To me it makes sense that we do not just vanish into the thin air, but perhaps the way many feel about reincarnation (not being possible) is a reflection of our inability to take full responsibility for all our choices. We often hear people say: ‘Ah, it’s just one life, so make the most of it’. What if it is not just one life? What if we do come back? Would we then think of our actions, decisions and choices in this life more carefully? I was talking to someone about big changes that the British government plans to introduce in secondary education by 2017. His attitude was: he had no more young children to be affected by any of it so it didn’t matter. But what if we do come back and these changes do affect our children and even US? Would we think and act differently now? Most of us assume that we leave this planet to our ‘future younger generations’ – but what if instead we are ‘borrowing’ the planet for a lifetime for something much greater that we all return to again and again and again?
It does seem strange that the Dalai Lama gets invited and so openly spoken to about reincarnation by most of the world’s major TV, radio stations and newspapers – and that none of these establishments think he is a ‘barking loony’ claiming to be the 14th re-incarnation of Tibetan Lama. But when Serge Benhayon says to an interviewer that we do reincarnate and that he can feel connections to his past lives, there is a snigger.
I can understand society being cautious of any such claims or statements. I too have always approached this subject with extreme caution, but do we have to completely dismiss it? Even ridicule it? What if, through getting to know ourselves, we get to know our deepest essence and where it comes from, and then by the virtue of knowing ourselves, we get to know if what Serge is saying is true or not? What if in doing so, maybe, just maybe, more light could be allowed to shine on this fascinating topic?
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
I love that feeling of arriving somewhere you have never been to previously, and yet you feel so totally familiar with the space and get a sense of being at home. This happened to me when I landed in Australia many years ago – a country I had never set foot in previously and yet the moment I landed I had tears and felt a relief and recall thinking ‘finally I am here/home’…An inner calling that was heeded allowed me to come to Australia and that same inner calling lead me to the Ageless Wisdom, the real reason I feel I came here to live.
I too recall moments in my childhood where time stood still and I could feel such a deep joy and connection in my heart, a time when I could sit looking out at the surface of the lake, feel the sun shining on my back and know that there is and was a God and that I was not alone, and that everything is and was exactly as it needed to be. I did not allow these moments often enough though, and as I grew up those moments of feeling so deeply became further apart and became forgotten. But this was revived in me again and so much more deeper when I came across the Ageless Wisdom and its work. Something I knew to be true and had existed for eons and and was forever there waiting for my/our return.
Dragana – thank you for an awesome sharing on God, his existence and re-incarnation. I love the examples you have given which I too can relate to and how there are certain aspects or ways of being that we know have come from somewhere else and could not be from this life. This may not be proof to an evidence based approach but there is an inner knowing that supersedes an knows more deeply and widely.
I like wise felt in my younger days what is the point of us being here on earth, there has to be more, ‘What also nagged me was that there had to be some greater meaning/reason for our existence on earth, otherwise – what is the point?’
Dragana you have raised a point here that doesn’t make any sense to me either
“It does seem strange that the Dalai Lama gets invited and so openly spoken to about reincarnation by most of the world’s major TV, radio stations and newspapers – and that none of these establishments think he is a ‘barking loony’ claiming to be the 14th re-incarnation of Tibetan Lama. But when Serge Benhayon says to an interviewer that we do reincarnate and that he can feel connections to his past lives, there is a snigger.”
The premise of both people is that we should be more loving towards ourselves and all others. I personally cannot see the harm in this and I feel if it was put into action we would find ourselves living a completely different life. The students of The way of The livingness are a great examples of living a more loving life, so it can be achieved.
Good point about the Dalai Lama and how the media leaves him alone but attacks Serge Benhayon about his presentation on reincarnation. It feels like they are having a self-worth issue and thinking such tremendous love of God known as reincarnation is only for a selected holy few.
I agree Fumiyo – and other cultures such as the Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia have their beliefs of different lives this is deeply respected – and yet if one were to speak against this or make fun of it then it would be seen as racism and one could be prosecuted for this.
Reincarnation is one of the many things that has been carefully managed out of the bible. A book that holds some truths, but does also has reintepretations and omissions, like the part on reincarnation. And it has been omitted for a very good reason: it would give people a different perspective on life, where they would claim their power, their own responsibility and not be dependent on God or higher authorities in church in being connected to God.
So many people can recall ‘being there before’. I remember on a visit to Greece and sitting in an amplitheatre I felt like I could see clearly the place buzzing with life, people watching the stage, vendors selling foods, the smoke from their small fires burning and the sounds and smells of ancient Greece. It could have been my imagination but it was that sense of familiarity that you describe. To me reincarnation as presented by Serge Benhayon makes sense.
All of the worlds major religions have re-incarnation as a teaching. For some this has changed over time to reduce it. Having said that what does it matter that some believe in re-incarnation. No-one should be condemned for it or judged for it.
I love how you have exposed the hypocrisy surrounding the Dalai Lama and Serge Benhayon
It’s a very insightful question to ask. Actually it is more than a snigger it is down-right disbelief and vile abuse and I do wonder who these people are that feel they have a right to dictate to me what is right and what is wrong. I feel that I am perfectly capable of making up my own mind without any help from their biased point of view.
I remember that as a child I had a neighbour nanny who always talked about reincarnation. I felt so at home with her. Finally someone who understood more of life than I was used too. It gave me a feeling of being home and being more with family in a true sense.
The key question of reincarnation opens many other crucial questions about life and living.
Death has always been placed as a mysterious ending, and when we introduce the relevant truth about reincarnation life becomes simpler and death is looked forward too and when it arrives for those left behind the feeling of being in completion with nothing left unsaid means there is no need for any sympathy or regrets, just love for what they have shared. So being open and transparent in all our conversations brings a full-fill-ment to our lives that brings a loving joy to all we connect with, so expressing in life will be felt as we explore the love that is there when we open our lives to this endless journey reincarnation offers.
It does seem crazy that everyone accepts and revers the Dalai Lama when he talks about re-incarnation but when Serge Benhayon talks about it he is told he is a cult and ridiculed. There is so much evidence to say that reincarnation is a possibility, but the bottom line is that until we are willing to take responsibility for our choices in life, our behaviours our ideals and beliefs and the need to criticise and blame others for our failings, we will not want to embrace reincarnation because it exposes the ill and unloving ways we run our lives.
How many people have had deja vu then feel more connected to a past event?
We ridicule what we don’t understand and when we feel threatened for being exposed that we don’t understand we encourage and manipulate others into ridiculing as well. There is nothing big, intelligent or clever in that.
What a beautiful personal real experience of reincarnation shared here Dragona that is so expansive and can be felt as the truth we know inside. I have gone places that are so familiar and known to me like coming home also and it makes sense that we have been to places in other lives before us and the responsibility and open ness this brings and offers us in connection and oneness in the world.
We are also responsible for what we leave behind, as we will be returning at some point. So it is a big responsibility for our contribution.
I have travelled to a few places and had a very strong sense of the familiar. The Middle East is one area for me and have very strong feeling of what life was once like in these area, which is nothing like we hear commonly now. I have also met people in life that I know without doubt that I have met before and yet I also know in this life I had not met them before. How do we explain these things? How do we explain the behaviour of children things they say and do and simply how they are in many situations when they have never been exposed to anything like that before? I was having a conversation yesterday with someone and she was talking about her young daughter. We ended up discussing reincarnation, because really it was the only thing that made sense. To me this is one of the greatest travesties in part of the world today that this is not part of life or even a consideration. For life makes so much more sense when we not only know that this is true, but live in a way where it is true and alive for all of us.
Its so simple – if everything else is going round and round, day after day, year after year, then life after life naturally follows. We need to stop being afraid of the unknown, and feel those moments when we go yes… I have been here before, spoken this language, met this person – just not yet in this life.
How can we vanish into thin air – even science acknowledges that things are never destroyed, and so why this unifying principal that makes me me, or you you? Amazing how logic can get over ridden simply because we cannot measure or prove something. There is a natural order and flow and you just have to follow that.
I like to come back to this blog as like you Dragana, I have always felt there has to be more than this one life, otherwise what is the point? Even though it was never a topic we discussed in my family growing up, I have always felt a deep knowing ( without needing proof), that when we pass over, we do come back and continue where we left off last time. Maybe different parents, different country etc, but wherever we find ourselves born into, is always perfectly constellated for the lessons we have come back to learn.
When all the pieces about reincarnation and the way we die are put together what do we find? And could it be when pieced together as is presented by Serge Benhayon the whole that will fill the hole that modern day religious teaching are missing?
Yes… One of the advantages of teaching in India, is that at least this… That is reincarnation… Is considered normal in the fabric of society.
There is so much Love that is shared when we understand the True meaning of reincarnation.
It’s so true Greg… It feels so incomprehensible to live life without a deep knowing that reincarnation is simply a fact of life, and course of death, and to live with the responsibility that this awareness and knowing brings.
Life brings us so much when we open up to a deeper understand of reincarnation and it is with a complete Humble Appreciative-Ness that this level of Love is open for everyone.
It just makes sense that we come back but I also understand why we avoid reincarnation as to fully embrace it brings a whole other level of responsibility to life. If we truly lived knowing we borrowed this place lifetime after lifetime we would act very differently for even those who say they believe in reincarnation (me included) at times live in a way that does not honour that truth. Any form of attachment or wanting things to stay the same, or wanted to be more or less than others doesn’t fit with reincarnation and how each of us is here to live and be us and to evolve back to living and knowing the fullness of who we are.
I hadn’t thought about approaching life as if we were borrowing the space and as such I can now see we live as if we own it.
Spot on Monica and Lucy – there is an arrogance in the chosen ignorance about re-incarnation and a total lack of respect of the space we hold.
The fact of reincarnation brings greater self-responsiblilty in ones life and an interesting slant to ‘family trees’ and genealogy. The latter being very linear, while reincarnation allows for a forever expansion and deepening of awareness.
Deepening the fact that this life is an accumulation of many.
That sort of God – a physical being living in a vacuum who spends their time looking at everybody – that was too preposterous to consider.
Love hearing about your connections with Japan and London, I know when I visited Egypt I was sure I had been there before, I was blown away by the familiarity of the place, I loved the language and was surprised at how much I could understand.
To me reincarnation makes lots of sense and nothing confirms this more to me then spending time with toddlers – they come already very much their own person and what makes this – their experiences and choices from other lives.
Toddlers and children are very much their own person and when we treat them as the small adults they are ( with many past lives), they are very wise and understand so much, and they already hold this quality of learning. For example, when they fall down while learning to walk, they pick themselves up, and keep trying until they are walking… they do not have right or wrong, but an amazing curiosity about the world around them.
So true Dragana, it cannot be ‘we get born, we die and that’s it! ‘ It makes no sense and there is no purpose for life if that is the case. Reincarnation does make sense when we understand ourselves on a deep level and feel our own essence. That is the journey for everyone, and then there is no need to talk anyone into anything, I know deep within me I have been on earth before and I will return.
Reincarnation is about us learning about love and making everything in life about love. This makes sense rather than thinking that it either does not exist or that it is some random allocation. This however puts us front and centre in the way we live our current life, for everything matters in the choices we make.
” Ah, it’s just one life, so make the most of it’. What if it is not just one life? ”
But funny enough for me its just one life , but my ” life force ” so to speak is the aspect of me that is the continuation of one life. When I physically die , my life force lives on and re-incarnates again if necessary for the purpose of more life lessons on being the full power in my life force.
If we knew that every mistake, purposeful harm, unintended harm, error of judgement, regret followed us until we resolved it.. we would live very differently.
And that’s a sobering thought! And if sat down and pondered on further, the word, responsibility pops up, in relation to taking responsibility for ones, thoughts, actions and deeds, as the old saying goes, what is put out, must come back.
I never considered that our cut and run mentality with how we often are with ourselves, our bodies, our relationships and our environment has it’s seeds in ‘there’s only one life’ … and when we consider and see it this way you can see that it engenders an irresponsibility in how we are and in how we live. We literally think we can cut and run, and that we don’t have to deal with it, but if you consider the fact of reincarnation then it shines a light on it differently and shows that everything has an impact either harmonious or not and that there is a balance and we are offered endless opportunities to bring back balance where we may have introduced disharmony, and that is such a gift for all of us. So rather than dismissing reincarnation why not look at it?
It makes perfect sense to me that we reincarnate into a new life, because there are so many feelings of having been certain places before, or a feeling of having had certain experiences which without reincarnation are not explainable.
Yes, it is entirely logical when you get your individualised self out of the way.
Humans humanize the relationship with God. If you do embrace him (in faith confirmed by your acts), he loves you. Otherwise he does not. So, he is said to operate on a TIT FOR TAT basis. The fact that humans cannot help it to try to humanize everything makes clear they have no true appreciation for the wonders of life and their relationship with God.
I too knew God as a child, but lived in a home where God was not talked about, and when it was it was in relation to a religion. As I grew I found life very difficult to live, as how I felt to live did not match what the world was living, and I went with the outside world. That is until I too found my way to Universal Medicine.
Its interesting how so many people associate God to a religion rather than the truth of connection to ones own inner truth. God is within us, we are with in God, it has nothing to do with any religion.
“but what if instead we are ‘borrowing’ the planet for a lifetime for something much greater that we all return to again and again and again?” Most beautifully said and it highlights the great service planet earth is giving us. Something that is to be deeply honoured and cherished.
Some things are so clear and so obviously true that the veil that is clouding and restricting so many people’s awareness becomes more and more visible, and when it is exposed in this way it must eventually go.
Thats so true once the awareness becomes more visible there is no space for the cloudy veil.
The idea that we disappear into thin air never made sense, the idea we’ve been here before and we’ll be here again always did, so many things feel older than this life and places and people feel familiar beyond what we physically remember and know – there is no other reasonable explanation but that we’ve been here before. And of course the question with that is what do we learn from each time here and are we repeating ourselves or evolving?