I recently had coffee with a friend and I was informing him of an article I posted about the election where I said I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump’s future incarnations involved him taking on the role of oppressed individuals such as an American Indian, a slave, or a female in Afghanistan, just to name a few possibilities. Unexpectedly, my friend then asked me a question that had me rethinking much of my philosophy about the afterlife.
I had made this bold claim for two reasons: one being that this is a form of justice I can accept, as it allows the oppressor (you can replace Trump with literally anyone who you feel who defines this role) to experience life through the eyes of those they have directly impacted. This approach to karma is about healing and reform, as opposed to a lock ’em up and throwing away the key or eternal damnation viewpoint.
The second reason I subscribe to this belief system is because Dr. Michael Newton confirms this notion in Journey of Souls after conducting over 7000 past life regression sessions. In it, he states that oftentimes when a being has done great harm to others on earth, they will request to come back on the receiving end of that harm, so as to evolve their soul.
But my friend wasn’t buying it. “How do you know Trump wasn’t already a slave, American Indian etc.?” Good question. I made a couple lackluster attempts to support my chronological theory, but my words couldn’t sustain what I was feeling in my gut. Apparently I would need to delve deeper into my psyche in order to sort this out.
After several days of exploring internally, I landed on this: over many lifetimes we will endure hardships- each one to encourage growth, love, and compassion. Each particular challenge is to teach us something about ourselves and in turn, help others learn more about themselves. Additionally, not all contrast is happening for the same reason, or to teach us the same lesson. As we conquer one challenge, we will inevitably be faced with new ones. It may sound daunting, but think about it- if life is eternal, how boring would it be to stop learning and evolving? Then what would be the point of life?
In the context of oppression, the logical order of things would be (at least for me) that one would become an oppressor because either they hadn’t experienced what it was like to be on the flip side of it, or because they had and instead of learning from it, they became bitter and angry, thus embodying the very nature of those who did them harm. An example of my theory would be this- say you grew up in an abusive childhood. As an adult could work to heal yourself and vow to never hurt anyone the way you were hurt, or, you could have kids of your own that you then mistreat because your anger and resentment towards your own parents has now trickled down onto them. The latter path will require you to keep experiencing some form of trauma until you choose better and stop harming yourself and others, the former path is essentially you saying to the Universe “I got it! What’s next?”
Either way, the ability to choose our response to our experiences is our free will at its finest!
Consequently, I have concluded that it doesn’t really matter what order things happen in. What matters is how many times we must experience things in order to learn from them, and that answer will be different for everybody.
That said, the more spiritual I become the more I am fascinated with the concept of faith. Faith is defined as complete trust or confidence in someone or something. One doesn’t need to be religious or spiritual to have faith. An atheist for example, has faith that there is no higher power. The whole point of having faith is that our beliefs cannot be proven; however, neither can they be disproven, and therefore who are we to say anyone is wrong, though many of us conclude this when faced with opposing viewpoints.
Unless you were indoctrinated from a young age, you were fortunate enough to choose what you believe in and what you define as truth. This truth creates a perception, which in turn, creates our reality, and shapes the way we feel about it. Faith fascinates me because in many ways it gives us the power to create our own reality.
It’s crucial to keep this in mind during these tense, chaotic, and often divisive times. Remembering how much we have control over and recognizing just how powerful we truly are is so very critical to not only our survival, but our ability to tap into the beauty and the essence which is our existence in this very moment;)