by Gabriele Conrad, Goonellabah, New South Wales

A recent article by Nicole Serafin – Creating a Life to Come Back to – reminded me of how much I used to be put off by the concept of reincarnation and more specifically, by the way people talked about it – and before I go any further here, let me also state that in hindsight, I have actually always known reincarnation to be true, but I was fighting it because the way it was presented to me did not ever make sense. And because I was relying on outside information and not ever trusting of what I was feeling, did not even know what that might mean and how it could possibly be achieved, I had thrown the baby out with the bath water.

I used to get quite riled over reincarnation because the way it was presented would either be in the form of humans coming back as cockroaches, rats or poodles (the poodles are my addition) or in a very off-handed manner demonstrated in throw-away remarks such as, “well, that’s great then, get it wrong this time and just come back to have another go at it next time”. I even heard arguments defending suicide based on this casual assumption. But what was this next ‘go at it’ to be based on? And if we can’t do it now, if we can’t have this life we so want and don’t have now, what will make it possible for anybody to do it differently that imagined next time? Different parents perhaps? Or a different country of birth? Possibly more money? A better education? A different job? But where was it all going to come from? Continue reading “Reincarnation – Taking Responsibility for the Next Time Around” →

by Nicole Serafin, Age 40, Tintenbar, NSW

I had never really bothered to stop and ponder on what it was that I was here for, nor how it was that I should treat and relate to the body which I had chosen to arrive here in. I was born, I lived, I partied, often way harder than what my body could really cope with and so the roundabout went.

My uncle used to have a saying, and excuse some of the language…“you eat, you shit and you die”. The older that I got the more this became a reality.

Or was this the reality?

In one way, yes it was, but it felt like a false sense of reality: a reality that if I chose to live in such a way of pure existence and nothing else – then yes, that was life… A life where I got up and went on automatic pilot, going through the process of the day but never really bothering to stop and consider why we did what we did, and if what we were doing was actually right for us, or anyone else.

I began to ponder on the fact that maybe, just maybe, there was more to life and that I was here for a purpose; that there had to be more. Continue reading “Creating a Life to Come Back to” →