by Lucy Dahill, Sydney, Australia
There is a belief I have found that I now see far more clearly, and that is that we are led to believe everything has a start and an end. Everything in existence is set and established according to my reaching a certain point. Let me give you an example: the day starts and ends, the year starts and ends. Within that, my life starts and I learn to do things, to crawl, to walk, to repeat the alphabet. I learn to do good, to please, to be happy, to do school, college and university. I start work, I start relationships and somewhere inside me I am waiting for them all to end, for my life to end.
My straight line is based on success and completion. What a shock to fail – to have to repeat. That would mean I was going backwards. If life goes in a straight line with birth on one end and death on the other, then if I am not going forward, if I am not improving, if I am not doing things, then surely I am going backwards. Hold on a second, that would mean I might die without being recognised for what I did. If no-one recognised me then what would be the point of life? I lived believing that I only have one life and I have to make it count.
Where does this belief come from? Is it just an innocent part of life – the ‘having a purpose’, the ’improving ourselves to make us more employable’, or is it a drive that impels us to be constantly on the move and at the mercy of someone else’s approval? It cannot be innocent because it feels like a curse. It keeps me constantly on the move with no allowing for stopping and stillness except in sleep – exhausted sleep. ‘Stopping’ feels indulgent, lazy, costly – I could find ‘a better use for my time’, ‘no-one recognises me for sleeping’ and ‘life might end tomorrow’.
I made decisions to work as hard as I could and to be good at it all, yet however many boxes I ticked, however well I did, there always seemed to be more to strive for, the recognition never quite satisfied the longing inside me. It was exhausting, how long could I go on like this – was it to be till I came to the end, till I died – surely THEN I would get a well earned sleep from all this trying and doing – wouldn’t I? I could see the gift of this ‘one life’, this start and end from my exhausted point of view.
Then I went to a Universal Medicine workshop and Serge Benhayon reminded me of a teaching I had always known to be true – the science of reincarnation. I have never been afraid of dying. I always felt like I would be going home. I remember picking up from somewhere that you come back to balance the karma, to ‘right the wrongs you have done in a previous life’. But in that workshop I suddenly realised that we are just going round and round, there is no start and end, you don’t leave anything behind. The microcosm of the start and end of the day is just a snapshot of the macrocosm – the start and end of your life… or indeed, many lives. So I had to ask, as many others in the workshop did – what does that mean for the life I am currently living?
It was exhausting and overwhelming just to contemplate. I had a mental download of all my underlying anxieties… would I get more depressed because I couldn’t escape from all that I actually wanted to leave behind? Would it expose that actually I was not really living how or what I wanted to live? Or would I simply fall apart without the structure of a day, a year, a lifetime – without the rest? How serious could this questioning get and, to be honest, I questioned if it was helpful. Should I not just stick with what I was currently living (the ‘one-life’ approach)? But it was too late – I had to contemplate it.
I pressed the pause button. For the first time in as long as I can remember I stopped the train.
I noticed that this conditioning of everything starting and ending stopped me completing things and stopped me feeling like I needed to commit or to have any responsibility – I could see my pattern of ticking boxes to move on to the next level or task or day or indeed life. If all that was needed was a tick, then did it matter how I was doing it, or what I was doing to get it done? My teacher didn’t mind as long as I got my assignment in, my boss didn’t mind as long as the client didn’t complain.
Yet if reincarnation was true it meant that it wasn’t about ticking boxes, because if I wasn’t going anywhere then everything mattered and how I did everything mattered. If I abused my body to get something done like pulling an all-nighter or drinking a gazillion cups of coffee, then I was going to be coming back to the hangover of that the next day, and with my new eyes I could see that the same applied to the pace I was living my life – if I gallop through this one in nervous energy then I would be dealing with the monstrous hangover from that in my next life. If I wasn’t going anywhere then I had a responsibility to myself.
I quickly came to see that I was comfortable in the lack of responsibility aspect of pretending we only had one life because it meant I could blame someone else for my not being good enough, for my not achieving and, in the end, I could just walk away from it. Considering life as one continuous repeat, seeing the simplicity of working and living together meant I had to be responsible for what and how I contributed to what we were living and doing in our family, in my house, in my work… and it was not going to change till I did. It was responsibility but it was also love. Love for myself and my family, friends, everyone I come into contact with.
So what would my day look like if I was coming back to the same day tomorrow?
Groundhog Day! I found that it is actually much more amazing than the negativity of my ‘one life’ outlook. Another day is another opportunity to experience what it is like living from the yumminess of not ‘doing’. I blacklisted multi-tasking and embraced just doing what I could in a day without tiring myself out. I even started giving myself breaks. I gave myself permission to have lunch, to have a shower without thinking about what I had to do next. I had to remember to have fun – because I love having fun, I love being playful and I thought that all had to stop when I grew up. I started practising being in the moment. I built routines, rhythms, space in my day that changed my approach to bedtime and my sleeping. I found that very slowly I came to feel a whole different side of me. A side I had suppressed for as long as I can remember. I am actually fragile, tender, strong, very loving and actually very organised – not the frazzled mess I believed I was. I have much more fun with my family and friends, they all welcomed the departure of ‘try-hard Lucy’ and are quick to remind me if she comes to stay again. Bizarrely it has created much more space in my day and I have an ever-expanding relationship with Time!
I am learning what it means to be open, to let people in. To show them who I am and not need them to like me or approve of my choices. In order to be OK with that, the most important point for me is to continually ensure that my choices are not at the expense of another.
I feel like I am learning so much about life – I am back at school and will learn forever… because the more I choose to see, the more I am aware that I have only chosen to see such a small part of all there is to see! Believing in a start and an end meant I was always making my way to the departure lounge. It put pressure on me to do as much as I could to have a good resume! Re-incarnation to me was a gift, like taking off a pair of glasses that had a pre-determined picture inside them which meant that everything I saw, I saw through that picture. Once they were off I looked again, and saw something totally different. Once I had started asking questions about this picture that I had always thought of as ‘the way it is’, I started seeing situations, people and places with so much more love.
To re-incarnate or not to re-incarnate, does it really matter which is true? No, not really. I know I want to be responsible in everything I do, say and think. If I don’t come back then I will have lived with more responsibility to myself and others, and if I do come back then I will be able to say ‘OK here I am, where do you need me this time?’… You never know, I may even come back as a scientist to prove reincarnation once and for all!
So what about today? Today I am committed to working more, to my relationships more – in fact to everything I thought I would run away from. How strange to take a moment to appreciate that everything that sent me into overwhelm when I thought there was a start and an end – everything I was desperate to get away from – I now choose. All the difficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healings.
Shakespeare didn’t say ‘To do or not to do’, he said ‘To be or not to be’. Mmmm – methinks he had a point. Now, that is my question – and my choice.
Lucy I have always been fascinated by reincarnation. It was a thing openly mentioned or talked about as I was growing up in the Indian community. Often the bad experiences were the repent and yet, the so called good that occurred for a person, was seen as a good fortune for that person. But what wasn’t discussed was that it was much more than that, it was more about how we lived responsibly. This living with more responsibility came through Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, and I understand more about this cause and effect of living with this responsibility.
Life is much more different when we consider not just the quality we live in and with, but the impact it has on another. That is a huge responsibility without making or sounding it to be such an arduous task. There is more to life than just us…
Re-incarnation and the word Responsibility go hand in hand – and the funny thing is that although we balk at the word responsibility and we resist embracing it in life, once embraced our life enriches in ways we would never have fathomed!
Groundhog day sounds like a curse, but it is the greatest divine gift to get to come back to do it all again but this time completing the task in front of us with the utmost grace, gentleness and true love that we are and that we are from. A task indeed for there is much to re-imprint.
I loved this reminder Henrietta, it is the opportunity to redo and undo what we have done – simple…
Thank you Lucy for this awesome blog on myth busting of living in a linear way. I too know that there are too many things that feel familiar so I cannot write off this life as just one life to live, and I know deep inside re-incarnation is a fact for me. But I do not prescribe by certain notions of re-incarnation that state that we come back as a grasshopper or a centipede etc. We come back to clean up the mess that we have left behind, in other words to complete what was left incomplete.
What a difference whether we see life as a linear progression or a circle. And I can feel how much complexity we come up with to fight this most amazingly loving science.
I love the word ‘hangover’ in this context – it applies not only from one life to the next but also from evening to the next morning, from morning to afternoon, from one hour to the next, to everything that we take along with us as we go around in cycles, big and small.
It is in the being not the doing and so much of life we are addicted to doing the right thing and of course the not so right. So when we understand that we are “to be or not to be” it exposes us because we are the doing and in the doing not having a focus on our connection to our essences, which is the true being who is divine in essence.
A beginning and an end are man-made through their limited mind that cannot see beyond its self-made borders.
And the beginning and end story suits us as long as we dont want to take responsibility for how our life has turned out to be.
Many choose to not be responsible for how they live, ‘I quickly came to see that I was comfortable in the lack of responsibility aspect of pretending we only had one life because it meant I could blame someone else for my not being good enough, for my not achieving and, in the end, I could just walk away from it’.
I choose to be responsible for my life, in how I live, ‘I know I want to be responsible in everything I do, say and think. If I don’t come back then I will have lived with more responsibility to myself and others’. The short film ‘An American Attorney in London’ comes to mind when thinking of responsibility, and accountability as it presents how we live in life and what we do behind closed doors impacts others regardless.
I cannot imagine that I would only have one life, this current life with birth as the beginning and death as the end. What would be the purpose of that for an eternal being?
A convenient ‘get out of jail free card’ is the one life approach, but there is only so long one can fool oneself with this and also lead other off the path too. When you begin to see life for what it truly is, then there is little delay in cleaning up what one has been sent here to clean up so that we can get back to tending to what and where we really need to be.
Yes, Lucy, we really do not have anything to lose by being responsible and living life to the full, whether we re-incarnate or not, but I do love the energetic law of cause and effect because it reminds me that every thing and every moment matters.
Being responsible is also love, love for myself, family, friends, and everyone I come into contact with, ‘Considering life as one continuous repeat, seeing the simplicity of working and living together meant I had to be responsible for what and how I contributed to what we were living and doing in our family, in my house, in my work… and it was not going to change till I did.’
Being in the fullness of me and feeling what to do in each moment has been a revelation to me, I no longer trudge through life trying to get by but embrace all that is on offer this time around.
The discussion about beginning and end takes one path if we consider form and a different one if we bring formlessness into the equation. We are both but we reduce the discussion to the former and from there conclude that there is always a start and, by definition, that it has to be an end. We may get trapped in this way of thinking from the beginning to the end. The key for us to free ourselves from it is to decide to end it (meaning ending the grip it has on us). So, we need to apply the linear way to be able to transcend it.
Being comfortable with the irresponsibility of thinking this is just one life…if we live this way we can do, say and think what we want, we hold on to our right the do what we want without considering the consequences for others. The more I deepen my understanding of what we are leaving behind for another to walk through the more I see and feel how much more loving it is to live knowing we will be back to walk through what we have chosen not to notice.
I think when we live focused on life in a linear way we can create ‘end points’ that we hold as being more important than all the moments leading up to them and in that we create a dis-harmony as we’re negating the whole we are eternally a part of and how each moment is of equal importance…
It is a great point you write Lucy that everything is predetermined to reaching a point. It is the biggest distraction. I can think of a couple like once I am in a relationship I can settle and be all the love I know I can be INSTEAD of, being all that love I know I am right now including loving me to the bone .. and work is something similar — I have to know so much before I can land my next career progression job.
It’s a lot of joy renouncing this and attending to these things I want by acting and living it now and, its interesting because there is tension I feel straight away .. hmmmm. This tension is outside of me though or is it? It is my own tension of not choosing it.
I love the idea of Groundhog day… we get to go round and round with an unending opportunity to feel what our decisions were like yesterday, what supported us and could be repeated, and what did not. It makes so much more sense then the linear approach to life.
Showing decency and respect to all we do is sharing how to live with a deepen True responsibility for what we do and this will one day be the foundation that will bring us to a deeper understanding about reincarnation. Then as You have shared Lucy, for I understood this and felt the same for most if not all of my 65 years that! “I have never been afraid of dying.” And we eventually will all come to the same understanding.
Revisiting this blog I can see such deeply embedded behaviours that come round again and again and again to be re-evaluated and assessed – are they needed any more? To consider we are a tick box reduced the lessons on offer.
Tick boxing does indeed reduce the lessons on offer to just a to do thing, rather than a divine opportunity to grow and evolve.
In the end we can only come back to ourselves and all that we have lived. We have such great responsibility to be all that we can be in the world.
‘Re-incarnation to me was a gift, like taking off a pair of glasses that had a pre-determined picture inside them which meant that everything I saw, I saw through that picture. Once they were off I looked again, and saw something totally different……I started seeing situations, people and places with so much more love.’ Beautifully said Lucy.
The cycles of life allow us the amazing gift of re-imprinting and expanding our living way.
Why do things happen in life as they do? Is it just pure coincidence? Is there even any such thing? Is life about doing more or leaning how to be in all we do? Great article Lucy.
Every day is a new opportunity with the offering of a new way to live life. We can make deep and lasting change if we so choose.
Yes and we can see how the way we live can support another, not just by what we do, or say, but by the reflection we offer. If we live committed to life and to living it in a loving way then that inspires another to see it is possible to live that way themselves – even if we never talk or actually meet.
What an amusing and perfect analogy: “If I abused my body to get something done like pulling an all-nighter or drinking a gazillion cups of coffee, then I was going to be coming back to the hangover of that the next day, and with my new eyes I could see that the same applied to the pace I was living my life – if I gallop through this one in nervous energy then I would be dealing with the monstrous hangover from that in my next life.” Whether it is the day repeating, whether it is a year or in fact an incarnation we are constantly being offered another chance. These and the many other cycles we have on our planet are the greatest support for us to learn about the responsibility of living the truth and love of our essence.
Yes totally and by the grace of God we are sometimes offered stop moments to get us out of our pattern of behaviour to look afresh at what we have taken as our normal. I can see how many of these I have been offered. So much grace and love in one repeating cycle.
If we are honest we can all feel that this life is not our first one. So what then makes us think it is our last? Knowing it isn’t means, as is shared above, that we have the opportunity to take responsibility for how we live this one. A much needed quality if we are to even begin to touch the sides of illness and disease that we now have as a world wide plague.
We can all feel that some patterns and behaviours are older than this life as they are so hard to shift, even with the best of intentions and all our resolve.
‘All the difficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healings’, I found this to be true. In my most challenging times, I learned so much about myself, and haven’t understood the lesson or lessons, I have grown so much in the process. And I did learn to ask for support.
The beauty of groundhog day is it offers the constant opportunity to re-imprint our past behaviours or choices with those that represent who we really are.
Yes, no judgment, simply another opportunity to have another go.
When we see life as cycles, reincarnation just makes sense, it’s just another bigger longer cycle we’re all part of, and of course it asks of us a different level of being and presence, for after all if we’re in a cycle we’re going to come back around to meeting what we’ve left behind and everyone else meets it too, so we are responsible to us and in this we are responsible to the all.
Yes and this responsibility is a privilege not a curse. Really, when you stop to consider the divine order we live within and the tension that calls us back to the love we are from, it is the most extra-ordinary blessing.
To actually stop and consider the cycle of life, that it continues and is a great reminder of how much disregard we live in when we think that there is only one life, when we realise that this is but one life of many we have a responsibility to prepare ourselves for our next life, and that over many lifetimes we are continually given opportunities to make more loving choices which gives way for more lessons to be learned over the space of each lifetime.
Spot on Sally – seeing life as only one life and nothing more is a convenient way to not clean up one’s mess.
‘Making it count’ may means two totally different things. If you do not believe in re-incarnation, it means carpe diem. Let’s throw all the meat to the barbecue and have fun with it. If you believe in re-incarnation, it means, let’s use this life well to heal and advance us. So we do not have to repeat so many difficult things. What you do in the name of let’s make this life counts is totally opposite, depending on your own understanding of life.
Yes and it is so important to delve into how we feel and how we then move without being told what to do by another and taking it on without being discerning.
Many see life as the strait line you describe, and often there is some relief in believing it will one day come to an end, the constant struggle and striving forwards, at the point of death reaching our final resting place – the saying ‘I’ll rest when I’m dead’ being an epitome of this thinking. I remember when I first heard of the potential of reincarnation, of coming back again and again I was horrified – what, no end? No peaceful oblivion where i can cease to exist and in doing so, not have to have responsibilities and need to be or do anything? For in the cycle or rebirth, there is inescapable responsibility and a never-ending commitment to life, to evolution – not to doing, but simply to being and returning to who we truly are.
So true Rebecca, in the cycle of rebirth there really is no point in exhausting yourself because you are going to come back to do it all again, so you may as well take your time and lay a fiery footprint to inspire on your return 🙂
I agree Lucy – we often give up towards the end of our life, wanting to kick back and lay down responsibility, but how does that set us up for the next phase of our cycle?
I love the feeling of joy in this blog Lucy… the joy of understanding true responsibility and lightness of being it brings.
‘So what about today? Today I am committed to working more, to my relationships more – in fact to everything I thought I would run away from’. Today, I am feeling I need to be more committed to work.
The day starts and ends and so does the year. But as soon as one “ends” another one starts. If it wasn’t for our measurement and labelling would it really be a start and end? Or just a cycle that we repeat?
Oh I am so getting that, really there is no start and end, there is just space to rest and space to move. If we can feel from our bodies the stillness in the rest and then build a knowing from our body that it is part and parcel of who we are, then it is simply expression whether we are awake or asleep, moving or resting.
The more boxes we try to tick merely results in us creating the more lists in that insatiable quest for satisfaction from an external source rather than connecting to our qualities that lie within which builds awareness, understanding and grace from our everyday experiences day to day, year to year, life to life.
We are not taught about the quality of being, only in getting the job done and finished. Yet, in the getting the job done we chase our tails, exhaust ourselves and run on nervous energy. Perhaps if reincarnation was a truth universally shared we would be more considerate of how we live in the knowing that how were leave is how we come back?
When we see that there is no end point in life just another cycle we have the opportunity to see every moment as a choice to be present and be just as we are and explore the vast world around us by how we feel and observe life with an open heart see what unfolds from there.
What you have so beautifully shared here Lucy is the constant learning and simplicity of connecting to our natural rhythms and cycles and how these rhythms then support us through our lives and help us to see what is love and what is not and that is simply awesome. There is so much to enjoy and ponder in this blog thank you.
If indeed there is no start and end but only continuous cycle, fighting it would be so devastatingly exhausting, and if we are to keep coming back to what we think we are leaving behind, it is much wiser to make sure that what we are coming back to is what we want to come back to.
I always knew reincarnation was true and that you came back to clear up the ‘mess’ you left behind, so I struggled with the concept of a straight line – linear – way of living. All I could see from this way of living was that everyone thought that they left all their ‘stuff’ behind them, took no responsibility and just got on with their straight line living. I wonder how many people would change their way of life if they knew, without a shadow of doubt, that all that they leave behind will be waiting to be addressed in the next cycle…?
It would be a tumbleweed moment Ingrid! The moment where you are lost for words as your beautiful body reminds you of all the choices you have made, all the movements you have gone into that have laid a foundation for you to walk back through. The space of that tumbleweed moment also shows how time is immaterial, it is simply space that allows us to build a way of living that is more consciously aware of the way we move and the imprint we leave behind us.
I love your ‘tumbleweed’ analogy Lucy and can feel the lightness of its movement offering us “space that allows us to build a way of living that is more consciously aware of the way we move and the imprint we leave behind us.”. When we make the choice to return to us we do have to walk back over all we have left behind, but we have a choice to do so in a way that is light and full of grace and not weighed down by the realisation of the imprints we left behind previously.
All the difficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healings. Yes, this is my own experience especially when I was ill, and if we are open and willing to learn what the lesson is – so much gold comes our way in the form of support – we are never truly alone.
There is responsibility every moment and every where in life. It does not stop when we are on vacation or if we are with people we are close with. If we think we can escape from this responsibility in any moment, we have chosen to not commit to life fully and it affects everything and everyone.
Reincarnation makes so much sense and indeed puts a stop on that there is a beginning and an end. Like every day is the same, another opportunity to learn in life, to discover what it is like to live as a multidimensional being not bound by time on a planet that is turning around and around until the end of days.
You might say that if every day is the same, then life is super boring. However, if we are constantly expanding and feeling more of that multi-dimensional everything that is on offer, going deeper and deeper… that is never going to get boring.
Bringing life back to the simplicity of our movements and our responsibility to connect to our bodies allows us to appreciate our natural rhythms and cycles and that nothing is ever complete it just keeps unfolding and learning more which brings the joy and wonder back to life and not the strive and push to get to destination.
“to have a shower without thinking about what I had to do next. I had to remember to have fun…” Gosh I can relate to that, yesterday I felt to have a bath in the afternoon so I ran myself a bath, and I had put too much bubble bath in so bubbles were everywhere! I settled into the bath amongst the bubbles, and found myself thinking about what I had to do next, and was slightly annoyed about the bubbles. Then I stopped myself, and reminded myself that I love baths and bubbles, and I returned to how I was as a child in the bath having fun with LOTS of bubbles.
There is such a lightness when you read how you have become since changing your relationship with straight vs cycle, and seeing it much more as a cycle and embracing responsibility. The straight driven line feels much harder.
I have found myself back here 5 years later and therefore I have been living with this awareness for a minimum of 5 years! The difference in the way I live is palpable. The space that opens up and the connection that can therefore develop with your body and space is well worth experimenting with 🙂
Seeing life in a straight line does set us up for the drive and momentum to go somewhere to see a result and yet if we looked at life cylindrically just like the earth we could see that life is part of a much greater cycle and one that we have moved around many times. Re-incarnation offers us the opportunity to learn from our past and to show us that by listening to our inner wisdom and movements or behaviours that we can begin a new movement towards a deeper exploration of life and our responsibility in it.
At the close of each earthly day we prepare for the next day when the light is in the sky and at the dawn of each earthly day we have an opportunity to further our awareness of the purpose of living. This is a cycle that repeats each day and it is a reflection of each and every reincarnation on Earth as we increase our awareness of the responsibility to all move to the next level in the cycle of no longer being constrained by a physical body.
‘All the difficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healings’. I love you share this truth that I have also discovered. When life has presented those challenging times, I have grown the most in that it was an opportunity for me to be more gentle and loving with myself. This process is ongoing as is the refinement of my lifestyle choices, but the more love I allow the more I become aware what the next refinement is and again always my choice to heed or ignore – to accept or to delay.
I love how being more responsible actually brings a lightness and joy to life. This is what I can feel in the way Lucy has shared reincarnation and our responsibility with in our life today and how that ‘how we live’ not ‘what we do’ is what we take to our next life.
in the innocence of our deepest knowing we know whether reincarnation is true or not. That’s for each of us to come to – and the answer is sheer common sense. We keep coming back – to the same day, the same spot that’s not yet complete. In order to complete. And on and on we go…
No end, no beginning. As is the universe, so are we…
I can feel the pressure of the belief of a straight line one life and the push to nail it first time. Reincarnation for me is so much more liberating and is more in line with all the cycles that we see everywhere in nature and the universe and it takes the pressure off because we are going around and around until we learn once again to live who we are as many times as it takes.
Very much so Nico, our choices in past lives bring us to the point of where we are at in this life, and now at this moment in time, there is no getting away from responsibility.
By letting the reality of reincarnation to be part of my life I feel automatically responsible, not only for my life in a next incarnation but also for my life now. As I allow myself to feel all my previous lives then I know exactly why my current life is as it is. So nobody to blame anymore and what resides is to become honest with myself and to see what choices in past lives have brought me to the point where I am now.
Lucy your blog got me pondering more about reincarnation this morning, and what I came to is even within concepts of reincarnation there is an end point, a state of enlightenment or nirvana which means you’ve made it, you are free of the suffering of this world and can exit. It feels to me very limiting and untrue, because we are actually returning to the divine beings / Sons of God we were before we entered this physical creation, and after that return we continually expand into more divinity, which is the rhythm of the Universe as there is no “end”, there is always more. And it’s not about us getting out of the earthly life but serving in a way from our divinity that gets everyone out i.e., we have all returned to the state of divinity we originated from.
A great line here Lucy “All the difficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healings.” This reminds me that discomfort is not necessarily bad, our culture seems to be geared for the path of least resistance, avoiding “problems”, and remaining comfortable. Feeling discomfort can though be a sign we are actually growing, the process of evolution is happening and we are moving out of stagnation and our safe comfort zones.
When we stick to the one-life concept of what many have made life to be, we do not have to be responsible whatsoever as the only thing what then matters is te be recognized and seen and everything in life will be geared to that goal. How different then life is when we consider to be part of the endless cycle of life and death, to die and being born again and to understand that each and everyone of us is in this same cycle and has many, many lives already lived of which this life is a part off. When we really understand this and also the reason behind it, we will be become more responsible as every time we are born we return in a world we to have helped to shape and form in the way it is, and that said, we cannot blame anyone for that but only look deep inside and ask ourselves what is my part in this is.
That is beautiful Nico, “every time we are born we return in a world we too have helped to shape and form in the way it is,” Often reincarnation is seen as someone’s opportunity to escape their own personal suffering, it rarely includes the big picture the way you have here.
Thank you Melinda, and to not include that bigger picture in our daily lives actually makes us so much smaller then what we naturally are and are able to live. And we tend to say I cannot cope with the responsibility that comes to live in the Glory of God, but what we actually choose is to live in our own small world we have created for ourselves and have investments in.
I love how every day is an opportunity to live my life with more responsibility, integrity, steadiness and love. Reincarnation is a truth I know from deep within, learning that it is actually about responsibility has been key in stopping me to really looking at how I want to live this life and choosing it.
The cycle of life and death teaches us that there are cycles, and this is also shown clearly in nature through the changes of season, as they come around again and again with plants or parts of them dying off, only to be resurrected again once the planet is in its optimal position for them to do so. And as each plant responds to a different point of the earths’ rotational journey, so too do we all have our own relationship with time.
To see life as a cycle gives it more of a rounded feel and one that is forever changing and moving from our choices and movements made. If we see it as a beginning and an end it feels very lineal and final which doesn’t allow for a full expansion of our expression and for the constant flow and change of our movements throughout life. There is much to learn about life and how we live in it and reincarnation is a big part of the whole.
A lot of people today reduce life to the initialism ‘YOLO’ – ‘you only live once’ – an attitude that seems flippant, dismissive and, ultimately, irresponsible. If we only ‘live once’, we can pretty much get away with whatever we like or, if we’re feeling less than inspired about life, give up on it altogether. Reincarnation provides the rhyme and reason as to why we are where we are and how the magic of life works.
Reincarnation made so much of life make sense when I first heard Serge Benhayon speak about it. I never struggled with the concept before that, but what l’d been told didn’t ever gel with how I felt. Understanding reincarnation for the unavoidable accountability and loving balance it constantly offers us in life is very beautiful actually. It makes me feel confirmed in the sense that there is purpose to life, and to the things we experience, and not just random occurrences or bad luck.
The concept of time is like a control mechanism that keeps the human race reduced into thinking that there is a start and and end and that we are actually moving forward. But as the sun, moon and the rest of nature reflects, it is all about cycles and returning to what was already there before.
To be honest life never made sense and it was always in the back of my mind, so one day I will die and that’s it? It made no sense and I could get my head around doing everything I was doing only to die and see that it just ended. I must admit I never entertained reincarnation in a sense but I knew something wasn’t right and hence my question to most things became, surely there is more then this? It was like walking around in circles doing the same things, asking the same question and hoping someone from somewhere would answer. I was guessing this was where God stepped in at some point to light the way, he never did in the way I was picturing it. Life now makes more and more sense everyday, every moment I open up more and more awareness of what goes on around me. It’s a living choice I make, a dedication not to one thing in particular but to everything, a true connection to everything through The Way Of The Livingness http://www.unimedliving.com/voice/about-the-audio-presentations/the-way-of-the-livingness-presentation.html
Great blog Lucy, there is so much to digest here. That chasing to the end and making it count has been an underlying anxiety I’ve felt for a long time. It brings such a try hard way of living, and keeps everyone in a constant moving and with little time and place to contemplate us and our purpose in life. And indeed the quality we approach life in, one which embraces and honours us fully, or one which pushes through to get things done. And that Love get approach you speak of applies to lives and not just days, so consulting define that I might be hung over in my next life due to how I lived this one is a sobering thought! So I choose to live this one to the best of my ability in true connection to myself, and my body, and looking at this as a journey back to living fully the Love I am, not as a sprint and a drive, but as an opportunity to open up embrace me, life and the divinity we’re all a part of.
Being on a constant spin cycle of life and tiring ourselves out from the constant lists and tasks takes the joy out of being in our bodies in every moment and feeling our next movement from there. The key is in our responsibility and the simplicity to our choices. When we start to see this and live from our bodies connection a new cycle and quality begins. A very cool way to live life and move from one cycle to the next.
If the universe has no beginning and no end, then neither should we.
So if we truly embrace the possibility of reincarnation we would definitely have to approach all things starting and ending in a different way, and what I realised reading your great offering today Lucy, is we would really have to look at the quality of how we are in all we do, and it would not be about the task, it would be about the quality we brought to it, a very different approach and one which feels so much more spacious and in fact loving in how we can be with ourselves and all others.
This is so great Lucy, what you have called out here is so on point and super easy to understand about what is true with regards to reincarnation. There is no denying that we do come back, even if others do not want to acknowledge that. It is quite amazing how we are so loved and so held, so that we evolve.
Lucy this is such an amazing blog. I loved to read it as I could find myself so much so in that. Truly inspiring, thanks a lot for sharing, I love your questions, clarity and to feel the joy – yeah inspiring 🙂
Great point you are bringing in your discussion about reincarnation, Lucy. Whilst it is a bit daunting to be responsible for everything that we do, it is also very stilling to know that we always have another go, so even if we make a mistake or stuff up, next time we come around, we get another chance – how absolutely loving and beautiful is that? It brings a great ease into life and it shows how much we are held in love.
Regardless of reincarnation, I too prefer to choose a life of responsibility and of enjoying the blessings that can come when you truly embrace that the challenges and difficulties in life may in fact be opportunities for your greatest lessons and healings…. and an opportunity to reimprint the steps once taken and those still to come.
This is such a refreshing take on one life, or many lives and how our approach affects how we live now. I’d never considered how the box ticking approach spoken of here applies when we see something as starting and ending as in one life, now that is something for me to deeply consider in how I approach my own groundhog day.
On the surface of things, one would consider the philosophy of reincarnation to be irresponsible. After all, what does it matter if you get to come back over and over and over again? It is in its own way as freeing a philosophy as the person who only believes in one life in that sense. And in that there is a seed of truth. If you are eternal, and you cannot get it wrong, then what does it matter what you do? Party now, and party tomorrow. Like groundhog day you get a thousand, thousand lives to get it right, so why should it matter?
Except of course to treat the concept of reincarnation like that would be to ignore the law of karma, or to put it another way, the law of energetic momentum. In other words, sure, be irresponsible. Be as irresponsible as you like. But the truth is that you reap what you sow, and that is actually where responsibility comes in, which is what the true philosophy of reincarnation is actually about. For eventually you have to meet that which you have lived before. And in its own way this seeks to explain the supposed injustice of much of the suffering that we cannot make sense of, but instead put it down to random events.
A child gets cancer, a good person gets raped. Perhaps that sounds harsh, and in many ways it is. However, the true philosophy of reincarnation is not about punishment, or a vengeful and judgmental God. The true teaching is that you attract that sort of behaviour based on your energetic momentum over many lives. And so equally, you have the opportunity to bring about your own corrections, and in doing so actually live a life of harmony, vitality, and love. Your choice – so the philosophy goes, and in that sense reincarnation when looked at in this light is actually very empowering and truly empathetic.
One may equally say, how can you say it is empathetic when you say it can be karmic to be raped or get cancer? Well, if you consider we are merely human, that consciousness ends and begins in birth and death, then I would agree. It does not seem to be empathetic. If life is eternal, however, and if we are more than just physical; if consciousness does not end and begin with life and death, then it is a truly empathetic teaching, for then one starts to see life not as a random event, or playground for the irresponsible, or evil or good as we like to think, but rather an opportunity to truly heal a wayward spiritual being through the living of physical life. In other words, all of life is about healing, one way or the other.
And what is it that we are healing? As the esoteric teaches – it is the fact that we belong to a way of being that is magnificent beyond measure, that our true healing is to resurrect ourselves to the point where physical life is no longer the needed body of form for our expression, and we return to the body of expression we were originally born from – that of The Soul. in the mean time, however, whilst we may have such a revelation, it is physical life to which we must commit, over and over and over again, with our entire being. So pick up a shovel, get practical in the mean time, stop staring at the moon, and get your feet dirty. There is work to be done.
Thanks for the reminder of having fun and not striving to do things.
Re-incarnation: everything starts WITH the end. We cannot escape this great cycle of life. We can only dull our awareness that we are going around and around on this sphere called ‘Earth’ until we whole-heartedly return to the love that we are. Great blog Lucy.
‘Re-incarnation: everything starts WITH the end.’ Great point Liane. If this fact was lived and consciously known, I feel that humanity would behave very differently and responsibility would not just be about doing the house work.
A gem Liane and one that makes so much sense when we accept life as spherical not linear. On a piece of rope there is a start and an end, but if you connect the two ends then everything starts with the end. As we leave this life, so we start the next. I personally see the end of my life as going home so it is very much the start of the reflective period where I work out what is needed in the next life. So indeed, my end is my beginning and my beginning is my end.
Even when you look at life from a purely scientific point of view, you realise that nothing truly has a start and an end. Each molecule, each creation, only undergoes multiple processes of transformation. It stands to reason therefore that reincarnation is not as loopy as it sounds. Certainly we have no proof for its existence, yet that is not reason on its own to at least ponder on it at least as a possibility, for it would certainly fit in with everything else we understand about the universe.
Reincarnation is not loopy…but it is a great loop 😉
A great question, Lucy – does everything start and end? Interesting to read how your perception of life being one line made you more focused on just ticking the boxes and not worry about how it was done. For me, the same perception was bringing in perfectionism, wanting things to be definitively terminal when it is done so that I don’t ever have to do that again, which explains how I hate repetition. How I hate repeating myself, and how I can be very impatient when being asked to repeat things. Either way, it feels like we all do know about what true reincarnation is, but just are not willing to accept it in full.
Hi Lucy I just loved reading your blog. Understanding the cycles of life is paramount to us living in accordance to those cycles as this allows us the opportunity to see where we have openings that allow space to close up and overwhelm to come in . Life is a game of energy and how we play it is up to us. We can play the straight line and the race to the end or as you have so beautifully presented or we can view it in cycles with the understanding that everything we do , say and think today will come back around tomorrow. This bring an enormous responsibility as when we understand this we can clearly see how we are unable to blame anything or anyone for the consequences of the momentum we ourselves have built . . .thank you for your sharing.
In accepting and reclaiming reincarnation as a fact of living life, my responsibility to life and everything I am has changed drastically. The life I have now is just a continuation of many lived lives and this current life will continue in a next and many more thereafter. I have found that reincarnation is the gift from God, that provides us with the opportunity to experience different incarnations in which we all eventually will evolve back to soul, the origin we all come from. The important thing is to understand that there is no beginning and there is no end, it is just one continuum of movements through the different spheres of life.
Wow Lucy, there is so much here to contemplate… and how when we are on the track of ‘only one life’ it’s like an excuse I feel sometimes to do whatever you please, whether it is at the expense of another, a group etc. just to make this life count and ‘go out with a bang’ as they say. What jumped out for me today was, “My teacher didn’t mind as long as I got my assignment in, my boss didn’t mind as long as the client didn’t complain.” and how we are with each other and our expectations really feed this tick boxing and also rewards the tick boxing.
Well said Aimee, in fact, if we don’t tick those boxes then you get into strife. So how to stay responsible for what you have committed to but equally keep it in perspective and ensure that you do not compromise your own health in order to tick those boxes? I have found the way was to keep my focus on how I was living, how I was supporting myself which meant I created space that allowed so much more to be completed.
The whole of life is a beautiful reflection of the cycle of life and death and renewal, and we are part of this wondrous cycle also. This awareness naturally inspires a level of responsibility when we realise we do not in truth leave anything behind… it travels with us.
Now is the most important moment, because it is the one we are in and living…. and the one that determines the quality of the next moment.
As a society, we have subscribed to a way of living with the belief that we live in a straight line and in a way it gives us the licence to abuse our bodies and not take responsibility for the way we live, we push and push knowing that we can get fixed so we get back onto to the disregarding behaviours without taking stock of our choices. The fact is, we go around in circles and reincarnation is our opportunity to come back until we get it right and learn to live from our inner heart equally with the love that we all are.
When we connect to our bodies we naturally feel more, the more we confirm and honour those feelings the more we understand we can access a divine wisdom that lives within us all where the concept of past lives and reincarnation are just a normal and truthful way of being.
I have been considering more and more how this way of living, the fact that how we leave this life is laying a foundation for how we will come back, would change age care and the dying process.
‘… if reincarnation was true it meant that it wasn’t about ticking boxes, because if I wasn’t going anywhere then everything mattered and how I did everything mattered’ – This is a great way to look at reincarnation and how we live. We’re simply living in cycles – every choice matters. We leave an imprint for the next time around and this sets up the foundation. Reincarnation makes sense and brings with it a responsibility – how we leave this life is what we come back too.
The understanding that our life is a continuum and actually has no start and end is a great thing to consider. I now can see that making life only about this life is reducing ourself to a one off occurrence in which we can do what we like without having to take the responsibility for the outcome of our actions. But the fact that our lives do continue and that the choices I make now do affect me in another life gives a new perspective to me and brings responsibility to another level.
The understanding that my current life is one of the reincarnations of my being and part of the many lives I lived before is sometimes unfathomable to my mind but deep inside I know this to be true. And from this knowing I do understand that there is no start and end, but actually it is one continuum, lived in different dimensions adhering to the cycles of life and death and comes as part of the choice of living our lives in the human form.
I am really starting to see when something comes to an end, or so perceived usually it’s not the direction or path we were meant to follow, surrendering to and allowing the next path to open up usually leads to a completely unexpected turn of events, one we could not have predicted. So letting go of the reins and trusting the journey is a cycle of evolution and return in life and reincarnation.
I was brought up with Christian beliefs and I remember feeling uneasy about the way God was held responsible for everything but did not come across anyone with any real answers. In my early 30’s I was introduced to the concept of reincarnation and this immediately sat well with me – it just made perfect sense. However, in truth, all I did was exchange one set of ideals and beliefs for another. I did not take on board the most important part – to live my life with the understanding that it is my responsibility to live with utmost integrity, love and understanding in every word, action or deed.
Absolutely brilliant blog Lucy – you have inspired me to take a deeper and more honest look at my current understanding and relationship with reincarnation.
So strange that we think in straight lines when everything around us, everything in nature, is based on cycles… going round and round to give us another opportunity. There is a huge gift in this for us all if we can learn to see the cyclical nature of things as we are given an unlimited opportunity to perfect it.
I have to say shifting my awareness to cycles, as is the constant reminder from nature, has been a wonderful gift. There is clearly an order and a divine rhythm to all and my role is merely ensure I am keeping up with that rhythm and feeling what is called for to keep the divine order. Simple right?! Yes, if I move with the flow that is on offer 🙂
Great to read this again and be reminded again Lucy. The thing that resonated today, was how the idea of one life and how we live believing that, means we frantically try to pack it all in, and it offers a opt out on responsibility – it’s like we visit a beautiful place but because we only go there once or so we think, we feel we can litter forgetting that others are affected and that we may come back. And that’s the crux of the responsibility – reincarnation offers us the learning that everything we do affects everything including us and initially the only way many of us feel this is if we’re affected ourselves as we come back, and through this we get to feel and understand our wider impact and that we’re all here together to live and be in brotherhood with all of humanity, and we’re all on that same journey back to living innately the love we are.
Wow Love works in such a way that we are given chance after chance to get it right.
The greatest fear about embracing reincarnation is the responsibility we feel in having completely created everything we currently have experienced, there’s not a single person we can blame.
That is definitely a bit of a shuddering stop isn’t it! I needed a fair bit of support to handle all the guilt I felt for what I had contributed to and brought into my life, and with that support I was able to see that the ‘mistakes’ I made are how I can now see so clearly it was not the way I know I can be because they were very often done when I was trying to get attention, or to get acceptance. Once I could address my own needs I because much less irresponsible.
I agree Lucy, this believe that we need to get somewhere is like a curse and designed to keep us in constant motion. What a difference when we perceive life as a cycle, where we get the same opportunities (with different flavors) again and again and again…. all of a sudden there is enough time to learn something in depth and really make sure we get it before we build on that foundation and do the next step. And when we make a mistake we know we will have another round where we can have another go.
I really relate to going through life with the ‘start and end’ approach. It’s like I see something coming up – whether its my working day, cleaning, exercising, writing….anything, and I take a deep breath, hold it in and start running to try to get to the end as quickly as possible so I can then exhale and have a rest. It’s exhausting. Groundhog Day (or shall we call it reincarnation?!) when I think about it now, is such a blessing. No place to get to, nowhere to go, just a constant refinement of our daily choices so the next day starts from the quality we went to bed in. Then life starts to flow.
When there is no start and no end then it is not about the quantity that we are producing but the quality we are choosing in every given moment, as the quality will determine the next move we make. That is where the ‘to be or not to be’ applies – are we living each day with our full presence or do we let thoughts, emotions and outside influences take us wherever they want.
Beautiful Lucy to move from the idea of a start and end way of living to the acceptance that it is not about that and that our lives are a continuation of many lives here on earth. For me this understanding gives purpose and responsibility to my life, as how I experience my life to be now is a result of the many lives I have lived before, therefore how I conduct my life now will have an impact on my life in my next reincarnation. Very empowering…
Yes Nico and we can take a moment to appreciate what we have laid to get to this moment. However good, bad or perhaps downright ugly our experience or lessons, they have all been to know we can be the change we want to see in our lives. To live the change we want to see in the world – and perhaps know it might take a while for that to filter through bearing in mind how long we have lived in abdication of that level of responsibility to now.
Sure Lucy, it is about the quality of life now and not about anything we have done in the past. We only have to come to the understanding that our life is about evolution, that is to increase our awareness on all matters of life and the vibrations we are engulfed with and are part of. By choosing to have a physical life, a life of creation, we have chosen to walk away from this part and in that have stopped, or at best delayed the path of evolution that has been laid out for us. So actually becoming more aware of all of this means we are on our way out of that experiment we have been able to choose because we have free will out of free will and returning to a way of being that is only love and in obedience to our true nature and the grandness we belong to.
Many great gems here, what really stood out for me today is “All the difficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healings” This turns everything around, when we can look at challenges as opportunity for evolution we start to go with the flow of life in confidence rather then in apprehension and fear.
‘ All the difficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healings’, yes I have found this to be true. There is one relationship in my life that I have found very, very challenging, so much so that things came to a head and we took many months of space from one another, During this time I have worked on my part, and slowly and surely my heart started to open once more….. and as it did I could observe how this positively impacted all my other relationships too .
This blog is a great ‘stop’. It allows you consider exactly how we have been running our lives. While also giving us an insight to how it could possibly be and that we all don’t have to reach the end of the line to have a successful life. Quite the opposite this blog highlights how there is no line and there is no end. If there is no end then there is no achievement when reaching the end because it doesn’t actually exsist. Instead successful is qualified by the quality of life lived, meaning the more love lived the better.
When I first heard Serge Benhayon present about reincarnation and the cycles we all live in it was a moment of realisation of the truth that I knew but had dismissed when I had taken on the beliefs of a lineal existence. It was a dawning of freedom and at the same time of responsibility for every choice I make and the understanding of the choices everyone makes.
When I came to understand about reincarnation, I breathed a sigh of relief, I had had the christian belief that we just had one life, this life was the start and the end, so I was anxious that my family, friends and people would be saved, and that this life was there only chance. Coming to know that we have lived many lives and will live many more, and that each life offers us an opportunity to come back to who we truly are, fills me with joy and gratitude for God’s tender loving care, for us, his children.
I couldn’t agree more, it has supported me to focus on what is needed in this life rather than thinking it all needed to be done in this life! Even remembering how I used to be reminds me of the anxiety of getting it all done and there never being enough time!
We lay in the bed that we make. Every event we experience we leave a lasting impression (imprint). I know I have been thinking recently if I came back to this same situation again in what way would I return to it?
“I am learning what it means to be open, to let people in. To show them who I am and not need them to like me or approve of my choices. In order to be OK with that, the most important point for me is to continually ensure that my choices are not at the expense of another.” So many valuable lessons that speak to me in your blog Lucy. Thankyou.
“Yet if reincarnation was true it meant that it wasn’t about ticking boxes, because if I wasn’t going anywhere then everything mattered and how I did everything mattered.” A nugget of gold here Lucy. And it’s all our choice – how we do everything……
This is a wonderful choice to make…the choice to consider the big picture and not the the ‘self’, “I am learning what it means to be open, to let people in. To show them who I am and not need them to like me or approve of my choices. In order to be OK with that, the most important point for me is to continually ensure that my choices are not at the expense of another.” when I am not loving and caring towards others, I do not feel good about myself, I may make excuses and attempt to justify the behaviour but fundamentally, I do myself and everyone a disservice by choosing to be selfish and not consider the big picture. As you say ensuring that my choices are not ‘at the expense of another’ allows relationships to flourish.
Well said, there is always a tension when we behave in a way that impacts on another, because we can feel there has been an effect on the other person even if we don’t want to acknowledge it. We go into justification because we want to excuse what we know has caused difficulty to another.
When we view life as the cyclical pattern that it is, the forever going back to where we come from we are freed from the temporal belief in the one terrestrial life. Reincarnation is a beautiful truth and so much more expansive than the Christian view of paradise or hell.
Certainly Patricia, reincarnation is truth and its going to happen irrespective of what you believe
Yes, how powerful those 6 little”big”words of Shakespeare’s are “To be or not to be”. lncredible to ponder deeply.
Thank you Lucy for a great blog, so much here to ponder on. In my “Christian days” I felt an anxiousness for my family and friends to be saved, this was the only life we had, so it was either, saved to be with God or lost in damnation. (When I look back I can’t believe I bought into that. ) These days, with my (now) understanding of reincarnation, it is such a relief, to know life after life gives everyone opportunities to get to know the truth of who we really are and where we come from, and in the end we all will arrive at this place of being, being the love we are.
“To re-incarnate or not to re-incarnate, does it really matter which is true?” To me it is not a question. I know that I don’t want to be in a spiritual form longer than I need to. So- I am up to re-incarnate! I am with you on this one, Lucy:”… to be responsible in everything I do, say and think.”
I like also:” You never know, I may even come back as a scientist to prove reincarnation once and for all!” It would be a great gift to humanity.
Reincarnation is a fascinating subject to me because if we are open to the possibility that not only do we re-incarnate but that we bring back with us the quality of the life we have just lived, together with many lifetimes of choices, then it is a game changer in terms of our day to day living. We can exist and hope that the next day is better than the last or we can actively go about establishing the quality of our lives and relationships with others. The control and freedom contained in the latter is way beyond what anything else can deliver.
This had so many great points within it Lucy. I love how you pointed out what Shakespeare said – ” to be, or not to be, that is the question” it’s so amazing the little gems that people’s past lives bring through that we don’t realise until really pointed out. I also thought that this was a great way to look at reincarnation – ” If I abused my body to get something done like pulling an all-nighter or drinking a gazillion cups of coffee, then I was going to be coming back to the hangover of that the next day, and with my new eyes I could see that the same applied to the pace I was living my life – if I gallop through this one in nervous energy then I would be dealing with the monstrous hangover from that in my next life.” be responsible for your quality of this life so that you have a quality you’ll actually want to come back to in the next.
Yes! and to be honest it is a constant refining because we only know what we know and it is not till we have a reflection from another person that we see there is more to learn! An example might be my raciness might feel relaxed until I meet someone or see someone who does not run their life at the same pace as me – note the ‘run my life’, it is only when I see that, choose to clock it, that I am open to consider there is, perhaps, another way.
Lucy, fantastic blog, there is so much here, where to start … I love your line ‘if I wasn’t going anywhere then everything mattered and how I did everything mattered’ – it really nails why we often buy into a linear view of life, we don’t have to take care and be in a consistent quality, if we’re not going anywhere then we have to look at the quality of how we are and see clearly that how we are affects everything, simple really when you put it that way. Thank you.
Yeah good point Monica. If reincarnation was real and we had to come back to our choices and the energy we are living In now then I bet many would not want to come to it. Being ignorant to the reincarnation fact means we don’t have to look at ourselves or take responsibility. “It’s okay, it’ll be over soon” sort of outlook on life. Really sad, rather then loving life and living it as a joy to come back to.
In this blog Lucy you have made reincarnation a real part of everyday life, not some mystical Eastern belief. It is very real to you that what goes around comes around, not directly by the hand of god but indirectly by the laws of the universe applying to the energy of our own choices return to us like gravity. You have exposed the lack of responsibility aspect pretending we only have one life but also that it is nothing to be scared or guilty over, there is fun in taking responsibility for every action, and learning from life’s lessons like a child.
Lucy I love this “all the difficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healings.” You put very clearly in perspective the pervasive belief we have in a beginning and an end. But life is an eternal cycle. Thanks Lucy.
Thank you for highlighting this part Patricia. Another gem in this treasure chest of a blog. Every seemingly difficulty has something we can learn from.
This blog has certainly given me a stop moment, and in very good time as I was about to rush into the day. There is so much is this blog to consider about why we don’t stop and why we choose exhaustion. I am definitely coming back for re-reads. Thank you.
Lucy, I will be back for a re-read here as it really got me reflecting on my attitudes and behaviours. It is very easy to just skip along in the current day in a linear fashion and forget/over ride the lessons from the previous day but as you say, the result of our choices comes along with us and will keep doing so until we make different choices.
I agree with Lucy when she writes about having a central belief that holds us bound and in a state of anxiety about what needs to be constantly done, and how that does not allow for the love that is reincarnation to be a part of our everyday lives, like the sunrise and sunset.
I love your blog Lucy and relate to the truth of Reincarnation. I have never had an issue with the concept that reincarnation is factual and real. Why would we be here on this Planet and have only one life to evolve from. As you say it gives another dimension to our evolutionary process and the responsibility to be and live the truth of God that is Love for all in Brotherhood.
It does give a whole new level of responsibility and purpose to life when we consider that we do reincarnate and that we will be coming back. I feel a deep sense of how important the quality we live in each moment then becomes and just how important it is to not hold back our love, joy and playfulness because that is is truth the way we seek to live and if we are coming back again it is worth making sure we come back living a truly amazing quality of living not just pushing to get through.
I had never any fear of dying. I have great experiences in supporting my father and aunty of letting go and passing over – it is a huge joy the moment someone can let go the body form.
l am ok with reincarnation, however there is still fear in me about death; and my loved ones dying. This obviously means there’s still deeper levels l need to go to in understanding and accepting it.
Reincarnation the law of cause and effect, what energetic quality I do choose is the result in manifestation as a human life.
Great blog Lucy, I re-read it today and it is awesome. I am one of the lucky one who doesn’t need science to believe in re-incarnation and see the true purpose of it. I keep working at it, I don’t mind falling on my bum like a baby and getting up again 🙂 I really like the fact we have true responsibility for ourselves and towards each other as human beings, it makes so much sense and still a lot to be done…
It’s interesting how sometimes we require science to prove things… It’s like we can’t really trust ourselves and so need the proof. “I keep working at it, I don’t mind falling on my bum like a baby and getting up again” learning one day at a time Alexandre. I like that- Humble beginnings 🙂
Yes, me too Alexandre, I don’t mind falling on my bum and getting up again either, it is part and parcel of learning! Reincarnation offers more responsibility than anything else and I feel that this is why it is a belief that sceptics then require scientific proof for…like a child with their head in the sand saying prove it – I won’t believe you till I see it with my own eyes! It is very confronting to accept that everything we do and choose affects others either seen or unseen.
A beautiful blog Lucy that inspires much pondering. I found myself reading books on reincarnation from young as I always felt there was more to life. I feel there is a connection between the state of ‘given up’ in the world and non acceptance that there is more once we die, almost like there is a thick fog that stops people from connecting to the knowing that we do come back, and keep coming back until we all return to the divinity that we deep down know ourselves to be and come from. What an amazing responsibility.
I had always liked the notion of reincarnation on a basic level it made sense to me then when i started to read it sounded so much more complicated what we could and could not re-incarnate as etc. When Serge Benhayon presented the notion of cycles and lives lived not in a linear fashion reincarnation made absolute sense to me not just a fanciful idea. And as Angela says being connected to responsibility, choice and a cycle (with no end and no beginning)
I used to think that there was only ‘1’ life as well, which seemed to be a rather random event (which I never quite understood i.e. why did some things happen to certain people and not others) but which was explained at the time by “it’s God’s will” or “part of God’s plan”. I accepted this in full at the time to the extent that I totally dismissed reincarnation and felt it was rather blasphemous to suggest it! Then when I became a bit disgruntled with my view of this, I began to accept the idea of reincarnation (because it made a bit more sense and at least explained the deja vu experiences) but it still seemed like a series of random events or lives, which still left me with questions. It was not until I came across Universal Medicine where reincarnation was presented as being connected to responsibility, choice and a cycle (with no end and no beginning) that everything finally made complete and utter sense! In fact, it’s been the only thing that makes sense!
Angela, I never twigged how that expression ‘it’s God’s will’ is used so actively and it was one I heard often in my childhood, and how dis-empowering it is often in how it’s expressed, it makes us small not equal and gives us an out, an excuse; you’re right without reincarnation life makes no sense, and actually we’re set up to look without and go it’s God’s will and can then more easily be at the mercy of many religious institutions, and all the while we’re avoiding our part, our responsibility. Reincarnation makes sense and when it’s seen as part of a cycle we get to understand there is so much more going on than we think and we’re all in cycles so that so called random event can be an outplay of something from 2 life times back; it’s very simple and clear and it puts us very much back in the centre of it, to see how our choices impact us and life and to understand that every choice matters. It’s such a beautiful teaching and I’ve always felt it’s truth but now understand it on a more deep and practical way with what I’ve learned from Universal Medicine. And the thing I love most about it, is how loved I feel knowing reincarnation – imagine we come from so much love, and are so loved by God, that we’re not condemned, we’re offered an opportunity to see and feel again and again until we fully embody the love we are, no judgement, just a constant offer and presentation of love that says you’re this love too, and you will keep being offered that love no matter what.
Exactly Monica, we are held in so much love that it’s actually not “God’s Will” (as they say) causing things but the use of our own will. We have free will to choose to be love or not and see the consequences and out play of every choice, and each and every choice is ours to choose freely.
Was lovely to re-read this Lucy. Today this line stood out for me; ‘ All the difficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healings’. I can very much relate, as the most difficult time or challenge of my life was when I became ill, but 4 years on I can truly see that this period was my wake up call and as such was my greatest healing and learning so much about myself and about life.
I don’t know why it has taken me so long to get to your amazing blog Lucy, but I know that I’ll be back! I don’t have many memories of my childhood but one memory stands out so vividly and that was around dying. I can remember lying in bed, at quite an early age, and hearing my parents talking about someone who had died and it got me to thinking about death. I can remember knowing so very clearly that dying was just like going to sleep – you woke up again. It was that simple! Unfortunately the main belief in the family was that there was no God so I did not feel safe to share the very clear realisation that I had experienced. Even so this little snippet of wisdom has stayed with me all my life – it was my “secret” – but now it does not have to be a secret any longer when we have amazing people like you Lucy sharing what you know, and I know, to be true. Thank you.
I love your words Ingrid, they are innocently beautiful, your inner knowing that dying was like going to sleep – and you wake up again. That is divine simplicity.
I love the innocent wisdom of you as a child Ingrid, even then you knew that dying was like going to sleep, and there is a knowing that it would be followed by awakening in a new body, but with all the energy lived in the past life.
Awesome to hear about Ingrid. It’s amazing what e innately know.
It makes sense Ingrid that you knew this since it’s what you have done many times over and over. 🙂
This isn’t one of those blogs you can read once as there is much to learn from returning! So then what if that was the purpose of life? To learn what to repeat and what not to repeat. It does seem rather silly to believe that we are going anywhere when right in our faces we have cycles and repetition – day/night and the seasons are just two examples, even our bodies are on a constant loop of breathing and heartbeating. But I also know that I have played the game of pretending I can avoid things – but it is not true success if the issue keeps coming back!
What I have learnt about coming back to my choices is that it is a much lighter route to admit I made the wrong choice rather than fight and defend the indefensible, that my choices have led to my results and those results affect many others if not all others. Taking responsibility for my choices has brought a lightness back into my life and an understanding that there is always more to return to. Like the day/night cycle I find that every choice can expand on the previous or make those lessons of ‘to not repeat’ even louder.
Same for me Leigh, there is so much in it. Thank you for this blog Lucy!
Completely agree Leigh, this blog has so much to revisit. Life’s just one big learning, and so it makes sense to make it about energy and what to repeat / not repeat to live a true life and evolve. I’m always surprised about how much things come back up to deal with it. There is no escaping the things you have to look at no matter how hard you try or seemingly change the way it looks.
I so agree Leigh! Coming to the understanding that we are simply coming back to our choices for me brings a level of responsibility that I was not living before, and has also as you describe brought “an understanding that there is always more to return to”. Far from the limitations of a lineal (start / end) approach to life, with cycles there is always room for more and more expansion.
I love that you have called reincarnation a Science. It brings a tangible factor to it that makes it not only real but relatable. The science is huge and there is still so much to be understood but that does not mean it does not exist.
Understanding Reincarnation is so freeing! As a human race we are stunted by religions that do not have the true teachings available. Thanks for sharing this profound science with us.
Thank you Lucy for a great discussion on reincarnation. When I realise i have to come back there is a greater sense of purpose to what I commit to in this life.
What you have presented here about the Science of Reincarnation is so informative and, to me, very sensible and common sense.
Understanding reincarnation provides us with an opportunity to have a greater level of responsibility and awareness as to the purpose of life; that being constant and continuous expansion and evolution.
The last line of this blog sums it all up for me – “To be or not to be.” This words are often quoted but rarely understood, if at all lived, and yet nature all around us shows us in detail what is offered by these words. There is a deep and rejuvenating stillness that exists deep down that is all ours to behold if only we allowed ourselves to surrender to the fact that who we are is never going to be found outside the walls of our own skin.
‘To re-incarnate or not to re-incarnate, does it really matter which is true?’ Reincarnation brings about a deep level of responsibility, something that a one life view does not. What does it matter how we treat ourselves, each other, the planet etc when after we go there is nothing anyway? If we do indeed continue to live the same thing over and over (and I firmly believe we do) then for me responsibility is a beautiful offering, something that supports me to truly live in a way that is about love not just for myself but for everyone and everything that I do.
I have to say that I am glad we have reincarnation as I cant imagine what our purpose would be here on Earth otherwise. After all how could we all become self nurturing Loving beings with just one life to do it in? With all the wars and upheaval in almost every part of the Globe it appears we will be here helping each other out for some lives to come. This encourages me to be more responsible with my decisions and thought and actions toward others as well as myself.
Hi Lucy, great to open this discussion. It got me realizing that every night we happily surrender to a kind of death called sleep and the next day can be likened to a reincarnation as we have a fresh day to start over and chose to make different choices or not, only we are in same physical form. My feeling is that reincarnation is simply that we continue on where we left off the day or life before. Being responsible for everything we do, say and think in every moment then makes complete sense.
Kathleen what a great analogy! It not only makes total sense but I can feel the truth of it. Many people are terrified of death and what you have shared removes the fear and normalises it.
It is the projection of the idea of death that people hold that is dreaded; this has us live in fear of these held perceptions that are never going to be what it will be in the moment.
In contemplating the possibility of reincarnation, we also need to evaluate the level of responsibility we are choosing to live from. Responsibility is touted by many as ‘boring,’ ‘uncool’ and an element of life to be avoided. . . but from my personal experience, when we begin to choose responsibility and allow this choice to build and expand life just gets better. Being ordered and organised isn’t boring or prudish, quite the opposite, it leaves you with a sense of completeness that disorder and disorganisation never can – and you can actually have so much fun with it. Being considerate and thoughtful of others actually paves the way for deeper and truer connections – ‘looking after number one’ just doesn’t compare.
So. . . As you express here Lucy, if we are all riding the wheel of reincarnation, then choosing responsibility is an investment in our forthcoming lives. . . but even if the end of the road is the end of the road, why not choose responsibility anyway and give yourself permission to live life an a whole new level?
Totally agree Katemaroney, reincarnation has guaranteed that we will one day be forced to look at the way in which we live and interact with others. Responsibility is the one thing that people think they can be absolved from – the more this Science is accepted the quicker we will see the changes needed to turn humanity’s misery around.
What an inspiring blog. I could totally relate to how you have perceived and dealt with life as there being an end point – I used to think the more I crammed into my lot the better, and I did it while I held my breath believing that I would be able to come back up to take another breath when it’s all done – that for me was reincarnation. I love how you are now making life about constant expansion, and how that takes account of everything – the world and the people, so you actually have more in your life but end up feeling more spacious. That’s so cool.
Great contribution, teasing out the details of reincarnation as presented by Serge Benhayon and the Ageless Wisdom and demonstrating how it makes us responsible, whether we like it or not. It just is as it is and ignominy ways this blog fees like a worthy precursor of and introduction to Book 1 – Time by Serge Benhayon, published two years later in 2014.
The idea of an other life being the next day on which you feel the consequences of the life you have lived. This makes it very clear that we are here to learn and care for our bodies, and when we don’t we will feel the consequences next way around.
I love the way you have related the start / end mentality to the belief in only one life, Lucy. I found that exposing those two ideas as being part of the same mental construct very revealing. The start / end way of life does indeed go with the belief of just one life, so you have shared the action / lifestyle that goes with a debilitating belief- that’s awesome. Thank you.
Like the concept “Everything is energy” I had always known and accepted reincarnation as a fact. But how that related to my life and what that actually meant to me, I had not considered deeply until presentations by Serge Benhayon. Most of us get into the glamour of having been a pharaoh or king or the drama of some traumatic death in a past life, but few of us consider the huge responsibility and opportunity reincarnation actually offers. I loved the way you compared a drinking splurge one night and the hangover the next day with the way we live one life and what we ‘wake up with’ in the next life. I certainly take far greater care of myself and the way I am with people now, knowing there really is no end, just constant cycles.
Great blog Lucy, a true joy to read.
I love what you share Lucy, understanding reincarnation is truly freeing.
The other day I was asked in a job interview for working in a crematorium if I think death is the end. I said how could it be, there is so much to learn, I need to come back many lives. For me every day is a new day to learn, every morning I wake up and I am looking forward to what this day will bring.
Mariette what an unusual thing to be asked in an interview – but when dealing with death it would bring so much more perspective and understanding to a job like that.
Wow Lucy I really enjoyed your blog. Some of the things you were describing I deeply connected with.
Good one Lucy. I love it.
I love the way you talk about being more fun, expanding in the newfound space instead of feeling hectic and rushing to get from one point to the other. There’s so much to appreciate in this blog Lucy, thank you.
Great Blog Lucy. Whether we come back our not, living for the day making loving choices and enjoying life… where is the down side?
The lineal versus the cyclical version of life are two very different ways of seeing and living it. The cyclical lives today preparing for what comes tomorrow. The lineal’s motto is carpe diem (enjoy while you can). Indulgence and selfish is the way to go. Why bother to act differently? The cyclical view of life’s last name is responsibility. This is a major reason why people do not want even to consider the possibility of reincarnation.
Spot on, emfeldman. The refusal to consider reincarnation and that we are part of cycles does justify ( apparently) in the mind the irresponsibility of the ‘carpe diem’ mentality. There’s a lot of it out there, too….
Lucy Dahill I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS BLOG. You explain your understanding of Reincarnation in such a real way. It actually makes even more sense to me now I have read this and can see that much of my troubles in life have been due to this straight line approach. Thank you for the loving choices you have made ;0)
Awesome blog Lucy, thank you.
Love to read this blog again Lucy. It was so clear to feel that when you were in the there-is-only-one-life phase, to opening up and considering the possibiliy that we do come back, how very open and expansive and responsible your world became. Thankyou for sharing with us all your wise observations.
Thank you Lucy. For myself, the cyclical returns of each season in nature are a constant reminder that life begins again and again, and that we are a part of this.
An American scientist, active about 40 years ago who was working in the field of reincarnation, essentially did prove that reincarnation may exist. Over 2000 cases were studied and many of them were attended to in person. Children re-counted their previous lives and through a series of objective and measurable experiments (like taking them to their previous home and asking them which bedroom was theirs, looking at photos of their alleged siblings and then asking them to name each person and many other ‘tests’). The work revealed far too many extremely accurate cases of reincarnation to leave any doubt. There is also further work by another author who dissects this scientist’s immense catalogue of work.
All that said, I never needed to read a line to know that I’ve lived before. I remember distinctly as a teenager, lifting-up my arm and then looking at myself in the mirror and saying to myself “I’m back and I’m in such a wonderful body; it feels great to be back in this body”. I too as a child was constantly philosophical about this life in comparison to other lives and was repeatedly called an ‘old soul’ by my whole family for the way I was. Thanks for the blog Lucy.
I think so many people have a feeling that they have been here before but are perhaps afraid to say it out loud for fear they are seen as being ‘kooky’. I too have never needed science to prove what I feel and know – that we keep coming back. To me it’s freeing and powerful to know that there is a cause and effect, a consequence to everything. At first it was a consequence to myself, now I see my choices affecting other people, not just me, somehow and somewhere, a far bigger picture. Yes it’s responsibility, but it is a pleasure to live without blaming anyone.
Thank you Lucy , I really loved your story, it reminds me not to get caught up in the doing, or the list that needs everything to be ticked off thinking I was getting some where, but really going around in circles. It really is amazing, that when I choose to be consciously present with what I am doing there is plenty of time to get things done. I choose” to be”.
Thanks Lucy I enjoyed reading your blog and you have presented much to think about in regard to how we live each day
Love your blog Lucy. It has always made sense to me that there is more to us than one life , one chance to get it right. Thanks to Serge Benhayon for the insight into Reincarnation, and thank you Lucy for bringing to light your observations too.
‘To re-incarnate or not to re-incarnate, does it really matter which is true? No not really’. Thank you Lucy, great article.
Even contemplating the possibility of re-incarnation as a concept would shift the world. There are so many people trashing themselves, and the earth in survival mode, destroying their relationships, crashing through to the finish line believing it will no longer be their problem. Imagine if we considered that this is the ground we are laying down to return to. Contemplating this can bring a little more responsibility towards ourselves and others and a more willing awareness into the equation.
I appreciate what you say here: “…because the more I choose to see, the more I am aware that I have only chosen to see such a small part of all there is to see!” There is so much more to life than what many of us are prepared to consider. I know my life used to feel much smaller, narrow and, yes, linear…through ‘choosing’ to see and feel more, my experience of life has deepened and is expanding.
I really enjoyed this part of the blog too. It was the moment I realised that I will forever be returning to something far bigger than I can fathom right now in my head, but my body knows and has always known only too well. Cool that you connected to that too.
Thank you Lucy you raise a brilliant question and answer it superbly. Everything does matter. To take responsibility in fact is truly living!
I love what you have explored and exposed about the way we can choose to live and how opening up to the idea of reincarnation in this way has made you reassess the way you live life. It does feel as though with this perspective there is far greater responsibility on us all to choose the quality of our relationships and the quality with which we choose to live our lives. It makes so much more sense to me than to think that we live just this one life.
This is a profound blog Lucy. I can really relate to the mental state of always worrying about what comes next, and never living in the moment. I loved your line – ‘I started practising being in the moment. I built routines, rhythms, space in my day that changed my approach to bedtime and my sleeping’, I think this is something I too could really do with practicing. ‘To be or not to be’ – I would like to start working towards the former!
Each choice in each moment reflects to the next moment and around we go. It makes total sense to be responsible and in being so we are free to be lighter and more fun and joyful, not weighed down with hangovers of past choices that didn’t support us.
Thanks for a beautiful piece of writing Lucy. By taking responsibility we find there is more depth and space in our lives. I love how you came to realise that,” All the diffficulties were the opportunities for my greatest healing,”
‘To be or not to be’ – great question – obvious choice!
Thank you Lucy for the bringing simplicity to the way we view life. How beautiful is it to have the understanding that some of our difficult struggles in life come with ‘blessings’ if we so choose to allow the healing that is being presented. If we choose not too, then that’s cool because the opportunity will come around again, believe it or not.
I am coming to learn that life has so much more depth as you lovingly accept responsibility and when i miss the opportunity it always comes back again and again – funny that!
Lucy, I love how you express, it has been a pleasure reading your words. ‘If I gallop through this one in nervous energy then I would be dealing with the monstrous hangover from that in my next life.’ I love this, as it shows that there is no getting around or getting away with things and through reincarnation we are given the opportunity to take responsibility and learn to let go of all the things that do not truly serve us.
I really get now how the only person we are really lying to is ourselves yet the impact if the lie affects everyone.
I agree Esther, it’s a great way to pull ourselves up to the honesty of what we are doing to ourselves. It is easy to delay the reckoning as we let each day go past in raciness and motion, but eventually the body has to tell us where we are at, and with re-incarnation, the responsibility is inescapable. The nature of cycles and the Universe re-presenting us again with the same lessons also allows the space to learn and understand what is true for us and what is not. We don’t need to regret anything, just learn and grow, and deepen our foundation of what is true.
Fabulous sharing Lucy, your playful ponderings on reincarnation really helps make the topic feel less overwhelming, thank you.
Personally I loved Groundhog Day and the message within and have no desire to want to confront any ‘monstrous hangover’ in this life or the next due to choices made at the expense of another or indeed myself. So thank you for such a beautifully insightful piece of writing filled with inspirational considerations for life now and beyond. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and have taken away many things to ponder on and even blacklist too…
Lucy, your blog makes so much sense to me. I especially paused and caught myself wondering when I read your comment ‘So what would my day look like if I was coming back to the same day tomorrow?’. Mmmm – time for me to reconsider a few of my living ways ….
A lovely playful article on reincarnation thank you Lucy for bringing some fun with the huge responsibility it means for us all.
Responsibility often has felt like a burden to me in the past (and still does now at times) although I’m learning that it’s amazing to live with purpose and commitment in one’s life that emanates out for all others.
It is the gift of love isn’t it Thomas, to remind each other that some of the fear around responsibility and that it will be burdensome is actually an illusion. Responsibility is great freedom because you KNOW you leave something loving in you wake for others to walk through and make whatever choice the choose. I am always aware that if I walk in a bad mood then whoever walks behind me has to walk through that and make a choice in some level not to absorb it.
“To be or not to be” every day, with everyone, with ourselves, in the evolving cycle of life. Beautiful blog Lucy.
There were lots of statements in this article that I found very powerful, one was this: ‘Believing in a start and an end meant I was always making my way to the departure lounge. It put pressure on me to do as much as I could to have a good resume!’
These are both great analogies for how we often live life. Your way of presenting these beliefs and ways of experiencing life, attitudes etc, is very accessible Lucy. The pictures and stories are like parables, poetic and rich in meaning, and they certainly illustrate the concepts that you are presenting. I feel a little stopped in my tracks, as I contemplate how I make my way to those departure gates. Thanks Lucy for this amazing piece of writing..
Awesome blog! It makes us aware that it is more about the quality of what we do and how we live.
Everyday I can build and evolve, and then come back to it in the next round of the day, year, or life…
This was such a gift to read Lucy. I still catch myself behaving as if things have ‘an end’ even when I know full well that they do not. This blog makes the truth very simple and clear and it is very supportive. Thank you.
Super blog Lucy, thank you.
‘To re-incarnate or not to re-incarnate, does it really matter which is true? No, not really. I know I want to be responsible in everything I do, say and think’.
Yes it’s interesting. The only time I hear people express concern for how they are living is in the context of climate change (and that represents what I imagine is but a small percentage of our total, global population and a portion of all that there is to consider). The notion of responsibility for self, others and all is one we are all too willing to dismiss, because we’re either ‘not coming back’, too busy living our ‘you only live once’ lives, or don’t care either way. As Lucy states, the very thing so many tend to shirk away from – self-responsibility – is actually the one thing that makes life truly meaningful, whether you know you’re coming back or think you’re not!
Well said Victoria, responsibility and self responsibility is very much avoided. I really liked Lucy’s analogy of having the “hang-over” of choices in my next life, year, day and basically every moment. For me the question came up that people don’t really care about “hang-overs” which we can observe in the drinking and eating patterns, where alcohol and food is put into our bodies even though it makes people feel horrible after. Are people truly concerned? Even about the climate or is it just a topic to be concerned about? For me reincarnation brings true responsibility to life and all the little choices as what we leave behind is not just for a future generation, we are the future generation.
Such a great point. We are the future generation and as such have great responsibility. Just as we should care about the hangover in our bodies, so should we care about the hangover we leave others.
Yes the YOLO mentality (you only live once) is responsible for the huge lack of responsibility we have for our planet, our finances, our relationships, our health and more.
When we STOP and consider that we are ‘cycling’ around and not ‘racing’ forward we give ourselves a much needed wake up call. We have the opportunity to feel the magnificence of living life with purpose but without destination and life takes on a far deeper meaning 🙂 Thanks Lucy. Awesome blog.
I love this picture of us all ‘cycling’ around Kathryn. Let’s embrace each day with gentleness and responsibility and see what wonderful gift it gives us.
Absolutely Kathryn and Lucy, life is so much richer and fuller when it comes with the responsibility of knowing every choice I make has a ripple effect, as we all go round and round the sun. So much more enriching than living in the anxiety that I would feel when I did not take this responsibility and get caught in the idea that there is only this one life and that is it. Something that I had been told but never felt to be true because deep down I knew it wasn’t.
Since writing this blog Katerina, the ripple effect is what I am noticing more and more. We have a choice the YOYO effect which makes a massive and irresponsible splash or to take responsibility for those choices and ensure your ripple is a ripple of love.
Great comment, Kathryn. I agree with you and Lucy reincarnation is a great gift for us, like you wrote:
‘We have the opportunity to feel the magnificence of living life with purpose but without destination and life takes on a far deeper meaning’
I agree Kathryn, the ‘YOLO’ mentality has a lot to answer for. How different would we all act if we knew that we were coming back for another life and had to deal with all of our issues that we didn’t deal with in this life? I am pretty sure that people would take a bit more responsibility for their choices.
Ah yes Kathryn. The YOLO mentality. What a capping saying designed to keep us not responsible, but not only that, in complete denial.
“To be or not to be” – thank you for reminding me of Shakespeare and that somewhere there has always been those who held onto the truth. Thank you for reminding me that the truth is available to us all and that multi-tasking is probably not truthful!
Reincarnation is truly a gift from heaven, a gift of love.
A super blog, full of pearls of wisdom. I found your explanation of a linear life quite extraordinary, it made a lot of sense.
This is an awesome piece to ponder on. It certainly brings to the fore just what a responsibility we actually have in all aspects of our lives. And that this responsibility need not be arduous, it is our choice entirely in every moment that determines the next and the next moment. Why not choose love. As you say Lucy ” all the difficulties were my opportunities for greater healing.”
Thank-you Lucy for all that you express here. I too can relate to being totally comfortable in my lack of responsibility and using that as a way to hold myself back in my life. And reincarnation for me, was something that naturally felt to be true as I couldn’t see the point in only living one life.
It seems the greatest reason for people not wanting to accept or understand reincarnation is that word: RESPONSIBILITY. If all our choices impact on us and everything around us, which they do, then taking full responsibility for ourselves in every way is the only answer. We can’t just brush things off – everything has to be addressed. We could ponder on the last breath this life being the first breath next life…. nothing gets ‘left behind’.
Love it! Reincarnation or not, responsibility is the key to en-joying this life, and this life is the only one that we need to be concerned about! I have felt that I had better get this life ‘right’, otherwise I am in for the same crap all over again. But, as Lucy and Shakespeare both state: ‘to be or not to be, that is the (only) question’ that needs attention right now.
Thank you Lucy, this is an awesome blog. It has asked me to stop and slow down and appreciate this day among many other things… and I love how you wrote about believing or not believing in reincarnation, it doesn’t really matter… what matters is just stopping and taking responsibility and not blaming other for the choices we are actually making on a daily basis.
What a very loving summary of what one goes through once one gets past the knee-jerk reaction of rejecting reincarnation without any evidence that it doesn’t occur. I used to react by saying the idea of reincarnation was a load of new age poppycock. But once I looked with unbiased eyes at the issue, I realised that it makes sense scientifically, as everything else in nature cycles in and out of its states of being. And with that continuity and connection to everything, comes responsibility that is a joy not a burden.
It is wonderful to read these words of timeless truth from you Lucy. As I moved through the blog it was like a heavy box or cage was being lifted off from around me. How funny and cool that a re-consideration of death can bring so much joy to life.
Lucy, this is pure Gold. As you say – reincarnation or not, it doesn’t matter, but making responsible choices for ourselves and all others is such a loving way to live. One I’m definitely signed up for!! Thank you.
Lucy, what an amazing offering on reincarnation. So real, so simple…with that very powerful single day analogy: we live day after day, and we live life after life.
You moment of recognition, wondering what does this mean was funny and poignant to read.
Yes, what does it mean when there is no bail out at the end?
As you have asked us all to ponder, is it about the quality of this human being, and not just the ticked off list handed in by the frazzled human doing.
Love this blog and you Lucy, the already fully realised scientist of life.
Gloriously expressed Lucy. Reincarnation is such common sense, however, it is not always easy to accept as it requires taking responsibility for everything we do. For many this just seems too big to take on but oh how the world will change once it is generally accepted and people live from that understanding.
Lucy – we certainly are sucked into a start stop – which I had been heavily a part of!I loved reading your blog – just gorgeous and so true.
To live in a cycle is to take more responsibility. That is what I now know to be true.
Just like you Lucy, I have never been afraid of dying. I always felt like I would be going home. So much so that I would focus on that ‘home’ that was, ‘on the other side’, having the belief that one must pass over in order to get home… Now I know differently, I know that ‘the kingdom of God is inside of me’, thus the reponsibility I have to myself in this life is to re-connect and express this divine and loving part of me, to have more love for others, to live in true brotherhood, in the true essence of family, in the knowing that the level of love I leave this life with, will be the level of love I return with in my next.
I love your point here Lucy. Whether we believe in reincarnation or not, if we apply what you have outlined here in your blog about the quality of how we do things, then life becomes much more fun! A great reminder that it is not about what we achieve which can only give us a moment of relief. The true joy of life (and perhaps the lives after) come from the consistency in the quality of how we are with ourselves in all that we do moment to moment.
Only this morning I was reflecting on my approach to my paperwork. This brought me to realise that my attitude to paperwork has always been an attempt to get it finished so I could have space and time to do something I would enjoy more, in other words – very, very linear, and totally destined for failure. I had a picture of the endless stream of papers that arrive always needing to be attended to. They come and they go in a never ending stream. Like you in your discovery about reincarnation and cyclical living, Lucy, at first that seemed overwhelming and the feeling of endlessness too frightening, I wanted there to be an end, — but then another picture replaced it, of me consistently and patiently, and very respectfully, dealing with all that needed to be dealt with without hurry or the need to get it all done in one go, to come back to it another time, and another. A beautifully gentle way to allow the necessary task to become a pleasure, and accept the feeling of eternity. A little task is a reflection of the cycles we live through and will keep on living through, passing from this life and rejoining it again. Here on earth we can learn just that, to let everything we do be part of our whole way of living, instead of separating things into straight lines.
We become almost hardwired to try, to work harder, yet I have been finding I get more done by just being and applying myself from there. Whether we come back or not, it makes sense to live in such a way as if we do, with that responsibility to living with consideration for all of the impacts of my own choices.
I love how you talk about your experience of a linear way of life and how you became aware of all the cycles that were occurring around you. I have always felt and enjoyed cyclical, spherical occurrences in life and nature they feel supportive and I can appreciate this in reincarnation.
Great point you touch on here Lucy that there is an enormous pressure out there to make this one life count and to not waste it. I can remember making a ‘bucket list’ when I was in my late teens! I was so keen to do and explore as much as possible in life before it all ended. The problem was it was mostly based on doing things. My intention was to find out who I was but through doing and achieving not by just being or deepening my being. Realising that actually we all come back and repeat life many times over has taken the pressure off! I’m now in it for the long game and realising that the game is based on being my true self in every moment and not having an impressive bucket list on my last day of this life.
What a top blog Lucy Dayhill and you give us so much to really think about that big word Responsibility. I agree with you it doesn’t matter if you believe in re-incarnation or not – it is still worth starting to take responsibility for how we are choosing to live everyday.
This blog deserves a couple of reads as you are saying so much which is simply profound.
Lucy. Brilliantly written. We need to clean up our actions in this life, so that we can try to avoid repeating them over again in another life.
For me, the reality of reincarnation was always present, but I still bought into the game of proving myself to others (as you said Lucy, “building a resume’ for my life) as if I had to leave some kind of legacy of humanitarianism. This pressure put on myself was like carrying the world on my shoulders, and now when I feel into what reincarnation means to me, it gives me space and time to just be myself, focus on the quality of how I live, and let things unfold, knowing that I will be guided by myself to help others in the way that is needed now and in my future lives. Whew!, no more burdens to hold onto as I no longer feel responsible for everyone anymore.
Lucy, thank you, lovely read, I wanted your blog to go on forever!
Lucy, this is awesome and inspiring beyond words! ‘I will learn forever… because the more I choose to see, the more I am aware that I have only chosen to see such a small part.’ I too have been looking at the smaller details and overlooking the big picture.
Hi Lucy, this is an awesome article, beautifully written and it resonated very strongly with me. I am reading it lying on the couch, where my body has put me because I did not choose to stop and rest after an operation. Still trying so hard to “do”, but my body knows better, so now I am learning, at last, to just “be”. Thank you for your amazing reflection, love, Anne.
Hi Lucy, I can feel the playfullness in you as you share such honesty with us. I too feel like I am in the best classroom I have ever been in… and the difference being this time I have chosen to be there… listening, seeing, hearing, speaking with all senses awakened to a greater way of learning, sharing and personal responsibility …and what truly happens when I take the time to be there .
Love it.
Hi Lucy, this was a wonderful read. Go the potential scientist – I love it!
Great article Lucy. I have a ‘try hard Susan’ that I am learning to let go of… The humour and fun you present with has allowed me to look at it all much more lightly. Awesome 🙂 THANK YOU.
Thank you Lucy for what you have presented here for us. It has been sinking in over the past few days (and a few days of ‘struggle’ at that!).
This morning I woke with legs of lead and the call to walk was overwhelming so I set off to walk a familiar path on wooden legs! My eldest son commented just last night that I had lost my sense of humour!
Part way through struggling to walk it struck me – just how much of a linear progression I have envisaged for ‘the path of return’ to unfold by (just how cunningly deceptive is that?!?) and that to make it linear calls for us to compare, rate, appraise where we are at in the moment without simply being in the moment.
Instantly my legs felt alive and springy, I felt for the first time walking back down a familiar hill that my arms swung with more emphasis backwards, to ease the strain on my legs and counter the momentum of being pulled downhill (gravity does that to you).
Just then I walked past a Magpie ferreting through the leaves, but a metre from the pathway. He stopped and watched me pass and I felt his comical retort “So some of you do get this (life on earth))!”. I turned round to him, gave him a big smile and pose and replied, “Yep, I get it :)” and in that moment felt that there was nowhere further along any path that I needed to be.
Thank you again!
Greg
Wow that was awesome, thank you Lucy. I’ve always been afraid of failing for that exact same reason but I’ve never examined it. To see it laid out like that was beautiful. Failure isn’t some permanent stain on me of where I wasn’t good enough even in the next day or the very next moment, I can choose to be all of me and make true however I haven’t been in the past. Cool, cool, cool!!
I admire what Lucy has written from both a personal standpoint as well as a professional one. Let me start from the latter. As a trained political scientist, I have acquired increasing interest on the power of narratives and frames over actors. Simply put, actors align (buy into) to narratives and operate based upon the assumption that they are IT (as depiction of reality). Narratives do not only offer clues to interpret what happens around you; they also portray what is desirable and, hence, they provide clues regarding how to act in the pursuit of wellbeing and happiness. Narratives not only affect individuals. They also shape social visions of what is desirable and how to act to achieve it.
From day one, what I found really fascinating about Serge is that he presents us with a narrative that opens up (if we allow our bodies to really feel into it) the possibility of reality being different of what we gathered so far. Aligning into the narrative he presents is simply a personal choice we can make. Choosing to do so, as I did, opens up another possibility, namely, to start exploring what may happen in your life (hence in your body) if you believe it may be truth or at least if you believe it contains elements of truth in it -checked against what your body tells you about it. If the permanent assessment leads to improvements in your wellbeing is only natural that you deepen your alignment with this vision of the world and your level of trust in what Serge presents and in what your body experiences and honestly tells you.
What Lucy presents here is a beautiful exercise in narrative reframing. She also walks through what she has experienced in her life after aligning to what Serge presents and shares with us how empowering this is.
Well done Lucy!! Love, Eduardo.
You are holding the keys to our greatest incarceration. The selling of the ideal of ‘the line’ which is our life… This affects everything!
It is a paradigm which translate into radical behaviour and common phrases such as YOLO (you only live once) which deflects all suits of responsibility and promotes individualism.
As it is seen as a free for all (every one trying to get the best possible experience out of their one life no matter the expense even if it is another person).
An amazing blog piece Lucy which raises so much awareness of the way in which most of the world lives and also exposing the things we identify with and strive towards. I can relate very much to the experience of the ‘one-life’ concept and the push to have things completed in order to tick the boxes, and the pressure and stress in having to continually tick boxes.- a process that is never-ending and simply exhausting in that as soon as one box is ticked, there is another waiting to be ticked! The stress in living this way is the way I used to live prior to Universal Medicine. Over the past 2 years, I have embraced a different way to live, a way that is not focused on ‘start /end’ and achieving results and an end goal. It is a way of living that involves taking responsibility for the way I live and the choices I make, and with an understanding that the way I have lived in the past affects the way I live now, and the way I live now will affect the way I live in the future – whether this be tomorrow, next week, next year or next life. Even though I sometimes catch myself falling back into the start /end way of living (no perfection), I have the awareness now to notice this and at that time, to make another choice. I have experienced that this way of living, a way of living that is about connecting to myself and my body (to the best of my ability) in every moment and allowing life to come to me, in contrast to me trying and / or forcing life to happen, has more flow and a steady rhythm and allows me to keep looking at my choices, and to make another choice if I so choose. Far more loving than the way I lived before, and far less stressful and less pressure!
Lucy, if I watched you perform this as a monologue in a theatre (great idea methinks ;)) I would be giving you a standing ovation – in fact I would want to hear it again and again and again and I probably wouldn’t want you to leave the stage so you could express some more. Can we have a sequel please – or is that in the next life 🙂
This is so wholehearted, yet so lighthearted. The messages are way too powerful, yet I laughed throughout – amazing.
Well, if you are coming back as a scientist to prove that there is reincarnation, may I, in this life, put an application forward for an assistant – you might as well start taking it into consideration – just want to make sure I secure my place 😉
And your response to Hamlet’s pondering: “To Be” – Absolutely blossoming Marvellous!!!!!
What an amazing unravelling, Lucy. Thank you so much. I realised as I started reading this, that I had already put a ‘time constraint’ on it, and was looking for the end! I felt a heaviness in my chest – my heart closing down to the joy of what you were presenting, and get caught in the ‘lineal’, just for a moment. So I stopped. And read again.
From a deep sense in myself, that I could never, ever “do enough” (to make a difference in the world), I have felt time constraining… there’s been a ‘giving up’ in this, a restraint placed upon even ‘starting’ in some respects. It’s taken a long while to actually come to the beauty of which you speak (& it continues to unfold…), and actually not make it about ‘what I do’, and whatever ‘I’ think that needs to be achieved, fulfilled, etc… but actually allow the “yumminess” of which you speak – the essence of me to be lived – to be the predominant factor, i.e. come back to me, and allow all of me “to be” (yes, thank you Shakespeare!) in whatever it is I may be “doing” (including just being – haha…).
And so in reading your words, they allow a weight to lift off my chest, that had wanted to creep in again… A welcome reminder, or moreso a teaching, that if I take it to heart, as I am, can allow a deeper unfolding of the be-ing that I am, and that this is what addresses what had so overwhelmed me about the ‘one life’… There’s no need to be caught in this trap (or “trick” as Lyndy wisely put it), just allow the being to be, and don’t hold back how lovely and truly amazing this naturally is. How could I deny such preciousness, play and love its right to be?
And hence, there is naturally, the commitment to all of life which your teaching brings us back to. Absolutely awesome.
It’s like stepping out of a messy room thinking that when we come back in all the mess will have magically disappeared. But we return to our mess day after day unless we take responsibility and start to tidy up what we choose to leave behind. Taking responsibility is not always easy as we have to begin to be aware of and acknowledge the part that we play in life instead of considering ourselves like a pinball randomly bouncing from one thing to another. Our past choices create our future so unless we choose to live differently it will simply be a case of history repeating itself over and over again.
Yes I agree Rachel, my life in the past was very much the same things repeating over and over again. I now feel so much freer of this, I enjoy taking responsibility now, rather than blaming others for everything, and my body has become progressively lighter and lighter as I have worked on this. I wonder what a physicist or biologist would say about how light my body is now… all because of choices, how simple and freeing.
Oh wow Lucy this is amazing , thankyou for sharing .
Oh Lucy, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your heart-warming post… truly inspiring and thought provoking. Thank you.
What a great article Lucy and well said Shakespeare!
At home there is a short corridor between the kitchen and my office. When I walked between the kitchen and my office, I used to start my walk at the kitchen and end it at my office… as if there was nothing between the two rooms. Recently inspired by something I heard Serge present, I have started to enjoy being me walking along that beautiful white tiled corridor. Therefore it is me in the kitchen, me all the way along the corridor and me when I arrive at the office. Whenever I am absent (such as in the corridor) I drain myself. The more I am with myself the more energy I have.
Each of these revelations such as this start-end one bring with them a glorious new way of living!
I can completely relate to this Nicola. I have begun to really enjoy simply walking along sometimes very long corridors feeling my gentleness and loveliness as I go, instead of being stuck in my head worrying about what I had to do at the end of the corridor. It’s so freeing, and I can also attest to what Lucy describes, the more we are present and feeling, the more time seems to open up and expand to allow us to enjoy being with all the things we do in the day. My own body has shown me this.
I am finding this too Nicola; ‘The more I am with myself the more energy I have.
Oh Lucy, you have written well, and it resonates so strongly with me. This endless rushing to get to the next thing takes away the being in the moment.
You captured it well with this: “…however well I did, there always seemed to be more to strive for, the recognition never quite satisfied the longing inside me.”
When I get caught up in the urgency of the day, of so many things to do today, how will I get them done, that urgency scatters my gentleness to the wind. And it does become a self fulfilling prophecy—indeed how can I get all these things completed.
But you know, on those days when I can abandon the urgency, to heck with the schedule, and I can just be with each thing that I am doing, the day goes along with such a flow. When I abandon the need to check things off my list, abandon thinking about the next thing to be done, and just be with me, and with what I am doing right now, it turns out that the things to be done kind of look after themselves.
It is as though time slows down, and even though what I am on is not being done in a rush, it gets done in a proper way, with full attention on that one thing. As though that is all there is to do. Just to be with one thing.
Thanks for your insights Lucy. And your reminder to be. Chris
I love Lucy! how you present that when you did away with the ‘one life’ theory/belief, it actually imbued your life with that great sense of responsibility that comes with the consideration of reincarnation; and it also allowed you at the same time a greater freedom to do things (without ‘doing’) in your own time, and with this, once the pressure was off, the awareness of how you were doing things in life grew and developed. And the result, a very rich life!
Lucy, this is an awesome post – it describes so clearly the whole enclosed arc of momentum that we have allowed ourselves to be trapped in, the whole short circuit that kept us rolling, and kept us from feeling the true richness within us, the beauty, the tenderness and the joy!
What a clever trick it was but you have laid it out for all to see. It lies there wriggling, knowing that its days are numbered. As we are discovering, once seen this pattern of madness can never fully take us in again – there might be remnants of it that hook us, but the more we feel the gorgeousness of our being the less that old trick has a hold and it begins to feel like a faint mechanical echo rattling around, ‘full of sound and fury. signifying nothing’ (to add another bit of Shakespeare!)
Thank you Lucy for taking the time to express that so honestly.
Lucy, I love how simply you have expressed how simply it is for us to come back to ourselves. Thank you.
Thank you Lucy for your awesome account of life and responsibility, it makes so much sense.