[gernica]

Actually it was my inherent belief in reincarnation that helped push me out of christianity (well that and 3 1/2 years in seminary but that is another story...or twenty). The whole 'god works on mysterious ways' b.s. never really held water with me.

A simple comparison that I use: You're a dad. You decide to teach your kids to swim. So you dump them all in the ocean. They get one shot at finding land. But you dump some close to land, some on a boat, some so far from land they will never see it, some in the jaws of a shark. How do you decide who goes where? Just be a jerk and dump them randomly? A couple make it back, most drown, oh well. That's life.

Human life, with a one shot for heaven mentality, seems about like that to me.

Now we consider karma and reincarnation. Start swimming. Ok, sure you drowned a few times but your progress is saved, so you don't start back at the beginning every time. You do good, you get bumped ahead towards shore. You do bad, you get dunked. Your choice.

So if you seem to have all kinds of problems and other folks got it easy...there may be a reason for it. Sometimes I think I must have been Hitler in a prior life

Now the real trick is freeing yourself from karma altogether, get off this wheel of life, and go back to godhead. Good karma/bad karma, you still come back for more fun.

The swimming, the ocean, the beach, it's all illusion. Remove the illusory coverings of Maya and you will see that there is no separation from god. It is all illusion.

Some of us just take a whole lot more turns in this game to figure it out. Saying it is one thing, really believing it and figuring out to apply it to life...


But I'm too agnostic to believe in much.