I recently (last Saturday,) had one of my best friends in the world die. We had talked often about reincarnation and spirits. When I was at Chancellorsville, I got the distinct feeling that I had died near where I was standing. “When I told Richard that he said, “Do you think you were Stonewall?” and I responded “Richard, a hell of a lot of people died at Chancellorsville and Stonewall didn’t actually die there. He died in Spotsylvania.” I felt I died the last day of the battle, stonewall was shot between day one and two.
Christian Dogma today denies the existence of reincarnation. But what they are denying isn’t actually reincarnation (because Jesus talked about it,) they are denying the “wheel of samsara” where you have to keep coming back again and again until you get it right. That might be a never-ending journey for some of us.
When Jesus asked his disciples who people said he was one of the responses were that “they say you are ‘The Prophet’ returned.” When I was an agent and learning interrogation and interviewing from the Laboratory of Scientific Interrogation from Tel Aviv, Israel they said, “What a person doesn’t say is as significant as what he does say.” I applied that to the Biblical text when I was in seminary. Jesus did not say, “No silly, there is no such thing as reincarnation.” (I think this could be a pretty important point if there really wasn’t and every one of the times believed in it.) But he didn’t. What Jesus DID say was, “No, ‘the Prophet’ has already returned only you did not recognize him.”
Bang!
Reincarnation does exist and God could send us or allow us to return more than once. Jesus said so, “The Prophet has already returned.” Jesus didn’t explain much more, he didn’t need to because some sects of Jews already knew about it, else they wouldn’t have popularly believed Jesus was the Prophet returned. Anyway, we don’t know too much else on that for sure. But it is real.
But when I walked into the Army recruiters he asked if I had any ideas. I said “I always wanted to be in the Confederate Cavalry, but I guess you don’t have cavalry anymore. Actually, we do, the recruiter said and set me down in front of a recruiting tape about the cavalry. After I took my ASVAB battery of testing my unusually high scores caused them to try to redirect me into weapons research or nuclear energy, but I was set on being “in the cav.”
Later, watching Gods and Generals when Stonewall Jackson was killed, I burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying. While I have always liked Stonewall Jackson that reaction, was…ridiculous. It was like it was real to me and I was there. The loss felt…personal and not historical. When I joined the cavalry, I told my sister it felt like I was home, and she told me that when you are relearning something you knew in a previous life that it comes to you more easily. I have friends who were also “in the Cav” but I lived “the Cav” I wasn’t just in it.
I am pretty sure I was alive in ancient days and World War II also, I have had memories of both, and each life was oriented to the military. I seem to have a special affinity for Roman cavalry helmets…But each life has its own task and its own purpose. We are not here for the heck of it. My sister Reverend Pamela, who was sensitive to such things, said that we (my wife and close friends and I,) had all gone through this life together before and that I had brought them with me back into this “vale of tears” because I wanted to experience things. If it’s true…sorry guys, but I will probably do it again, my wife says she’s not coming next time…but she will. But each life is its own and it must be lived to its full or the experience is wasted. Far too many people are wasting their lives. I have said before I went through years where I suddenly realized it was summer and didn’t remember experiencing spring, or that it was winter and I didn’t remember the fall turning of the leaves. I was not living, I was “pushing through.” For what? Living is the purpose of life.
When I had my Near Death Experience (NDE) the angel who stood right behind me at the mouth of the tunnel to the place of light, as we were in the upper corner of the emergency room and looking down on my body and my crying wife beside me said, “You have not yet finished the task that you were sent to accomplish but God said that you can come back home now if you wish. It is up to you.” (About my mission you will have to wait for next time when I will share part of it with you. It is important but I’m trying to stay on one topic at a time.) With the angel (who had the most beautiful voice but one that I could not place as being male or female because it had elements of both,) and the tunnel of light there I felt such a strong pull to go into the light. It felt like…home.
But then I looked at my young wife and her crying and thought of her going on alone and I thought I couldn’t leave her like that. I was trying to decide how I could explain this to the angel because the decision struck me as stupid. Come back to this world of pain or go to heaven? It should have been no contest, right? But the instant I thought that I realized I didn’t have to say anything the angel knew my thoughts. At that instant I was sucked back into the body. It was like being sucked down a vacuum tube and bam! Back on the emergency room bed. Immediately all the pain I felt came rushing back in upon me and I remember my first thought was “this was the wrong decision.”
But I soon adapted, sat up, and told my wife we were going home. The orderly came in and said you can’t leave and I responded, “Watch me.” They looked panicked and I put my shirt back on and picked up my jacket and the orderly returned with a full bird colonel who was a doctor – we were at Ireland Army hospital. I told him I felt better and was going to go home and he said no you aren’t. I said I feel better, and he told me to get back in bed. I said no I want to go home. To which he said, “I am a colonel in the United States Army, and I order you to get back to bed and cooperate. If you disobey my lawful order, I will call the MPs (military police) to handcuff you to the bed…I got back in bed and spent the next week or so in the hospital.
The army screwed up. Some orderly took my temperature at 104.5 but because it was just a high temp put me in the “non-critical” pile…until I passed out in the emergency room. I later went into my medical records to see what they said and there was nothing in there but an annotation that I had a high fever and a viral infection. There were no blood tests, no doctor reports, nothing. I don’t know if you know the army, but they document everything. But in this case, there was almost nothing. That’s when I realized the army had really screwed up there and sanitized the records.
Anyway, the things that stuck with me were that “I had a choice” and the angel said I could come “back home,” and “I had a task to accomplish for the kingdom of heaven.” Not coming into heaven for the first time, but I could come back. After that I have had no fear of death. None at all. However, I do have an assurance that once I leave this life I am done with this life and nothing will really be the same, I will have knowledge of all I have done, and this will be only one. The immediacy of this life and this life’s relationships will still be real but will feel…different…not so immediate.
You are not endlessly recycled. Each incarnation in this life is a unique creation. You may be the same soul, but you are isolated from your other lives so that you can fully live THIS life. This is the one that matters now. And it matters more than you may know. Each life is incredibly precious and is totally unique, but we too often take it for granted. You need to fight for every moment, every experience, the good and the bad for every single moment, every single experience is more important than you know and is presented before you for reason…to live it.
Live every moment of this life to the full. You won’t get another chance to live the same moment again. This is your only chance to be here and effect the lives that your are able to affect now. Make the most of it. Jesus came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly. But you have to live that life in abundance and not let it waste away doing nothing and wasting your time.
Tony Campolo, a Southern Baptist sociologist, pastor, and evangelist I have enjoyed listening to once said many of us pray that child’s prayer every night “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” However, he said it would be better if we were to pray “if I should wake before I die” because most of us go through life as if we are half dead zombies. Shuffling through life, not noticing or acknowledging the people we pass each day we are never “doing what we are doing” (see Do What You Are Doing – How To Turn Busy-Work Into Meditation – SabersEdge – Cutting Through Lies to Get to Truth – Reforging Foundations) we are always rushing from point a to point b and never actually living where we are.
The kingdom of God is here now, let those who have ears to hear, let them hear. You will never pass this way again in this way and with these people. Any moment you waste is wasted, and you don’t know what important thing you may have missed doing. You will find out, when it is over and too late for you to redo. You get one shot at THIS life and need to make the most of it. Don’t let it slip through your fingers unlived. Live life to the full. Live it hot and burn through each moment totally present and living each day with all your might. It is an easy concept but hard to do, for the doom of humanity is complacency and a failure to understand that they were given their life to live; to fully live and not just to exist until your last breath.
