THIS LIFE IS AN AUDITION FOR THE NEXT

I am often asked “What is my purpose in life?”, “Why am I here?” “What does God have planned for me?” and so, even though I have touched on some of these subjects before, I feel that it is necessary to include some of them together simply because of the gross misunderstanding of this very important subject to many people.

Some people never seem to really make a significant effort at life, preferring instead to kind of loiter around in life and wait for something good to happen to you or to die. I think much of this is because of mistaken ideas about God that have been taught, not only in churches, religious institutions and their misleading religious dogma but also in schools, in “self help” books and by psychologists ands scientists alike making life seem without any definite purpose and pointless. It seems like there must be some secret, hidden, elusive meaning to life that can never be found by the ordinary man or woman, and that no matter how hard you try, you are bound to be met by frustration, failure and finally death and certain destruction, but that is far from the truth.

This kind of outlook is based partly on some distorted idea that the universe is in some way pre-determined in its actions, set into motion by a distant and capricious god with the available energy beginning to dissipate at the very moment creation was completed and destined to collapse in some final cataclysmic event at some time in the future, with all life as you know it ending with annihilation and extinction and you in your present life, meeting with something quite similar only on a more immediate time scale.

With this sort of future to look forward to, it's no wonder that mankind can fall into malaise and depression, believing that life has no real meaning and that personal extinction awaits at their death, so it never occurs to them that by living their life the best they can within their personal capacity and limitations, they are fulfilling life's requirements by simply BEING. You tend to think that certain mysterious, physical accomplishments are required to fulfill your purpose to God for giving you life. If that were the case, there would be no hope for those who die in childbirth or soon afterward.

Lives come and go, not that each life is not important, because they are important and the future doesn't end with death. In a way, death is simply one giant step into the future, or in this case the continuation of a future already begun. There are some important reasons for the life you are now experiencing and you can't blame your existence on some accidental sexual encounter in a moment of passion after a party by your parents. No life is ever begun by accident and you could rightly say that no life is ever begun that was not already anticipated by your Soul or Entity. To the Soul, creating a new personality is serious stuff and it does not take that responsibility lightly.

You came into this life with a plan that you created before you were born that you have intentionally caused yourself to forget. This is for practical reasons that have to do with being able to confront and respond to events with no pre-existing certainty of the anticipated outcome, otherwise the outcomes would be affected by that previous knowledge and there would be no need for striving to achieve.

You are supposed to create, experience and learn from everything your life touches, and in so doing, grow in love and creativity and in the process, expand your consciousness and in that, you are fulfilling your purpose in life, but you must do all of this with no prior knowledge that you wrote the script for the “drama” of your life. No life begins without purpose or a theme and yours is no different. (see article of August 14, Life Themes across Time.)

Now, if you don't believe that life continues after physical death, then what I say from here on will hold little meaning for you, but if you do believe as you should that life is eternal, then you have ample reason to try and understand the importance of what you do in this life, and by doing so, give it new meaning.

You are essentially in this life, auditioning for your next life, or should I say, laying the groundwork for your next life, and what you do here will affect the “drama” of your next life that you will again write and act out once again in this physical world and once again, like the absent minded professor, you will forget that you wrote the script. There is one exception, and that is if you are ready to evolve out of the physical system and explore new challenges in more developed systems and in those cases, life continues only on much different terms than now.

The life you are living now with all of its challenges, its heartaches, its tragedies, successes, loves, hates and accomplishments is colored and shaded by your (last life experience), so you can assume if your present life is full of difficulties and tragedies, it is at least partially because you set it up that way through your actions in a past life.

Of course, I am referring here to reincarnation, and I would suggest that if you give little regard to your actions in this life, then you can't rail at the heavens cursing God for the problems you will encounter in your next physical life. Your overall experience in this life is the result of actions in previous lives and if this life is less than you desire, you can blame no one but yourself. Reoccurring problems may not surface in the next life, but in a way, you could say that “the piper must be paid” sometime, somewhere even though the time and place may be centuries in the future in distant lands.

I am not referring to the “Karma” effect as it applies to misdeeds, as much as I am talking about a natural flow of life from one life to another. You will live again in another age, as another person, perhaps another gender, another race, a new name and a new personality, but you will retain the inner “You” of you and the same identity and that can never be assailed or diminished. Sometimes I really wish I could sit someone down and shake them and make them understand that they are inherently of good intent, they were not born in sin and they are truly eternal beings, yet many write to me expressing little hope of the continuation of life after physical death.

When you act in the present, your actions are not only relevant to your daily life and your accumulated collection of experiences in this physical body in this life, but becomes indelible in your total psychic collection of personal data, recorded in electrical and chemical fields eternally and can be genetically drawn on in future existences. No “Important” memory is ever lost from one life to another and the knowledge of previous lives is genetically coded in the chromosomes of your present body although conscious knowledge of them will remain hidden for many reasons, one of them being, that you have enough trouble handling the experience of one lifetime at a time, let alone the knowledge of many lives. You would simply be overwhelmed and swamped with data that your consciousness could not hold at this time.

No action or no experience is ever lost or misplaced either and your first thought as an infant still exists today and is as real in its own field as a rock in your garden. No thought, idea or imagining is ever lost, and nothing is wasted in the entire universe. It then, behoves you to live this life, not cautiously, but with exuberance, confident that you, in your present day actions are laying a good foundation for a “Life to Come” in the future. All that is expected is that you do as good as you can.

I am not inferring here that you should be a do-gooder, a spiritual icon, walking softly and speaking quietly with head hung in submissive subservience to God. I am not suggesting the you should spend your Sundays groveling on your knees in holy reverence in a church. I am not even saying that you should learn inspiring, spiritual quotations in the Bible, Dao, Tao or hunker down in some mountain top cave or monastery living your life in seclusion contemplating your navel.

I am simply suggesting that you live your life to the fullest within your own scope of awareness to the benefit of yourself and your compatriots and to the best of your abilities, inflict no harm on others. Of course, that includes all living consciousness, i/e the animals and other creatures that share the planet with you. In this way, you are setting up the opening act for your next life drama, and you won't be disappointed with the results.

I like the saying that holds true for this life or a future life, and this is not a symbolic statement;

The future is a fertile field waiting to be planted with your thoughts and actions in the present, so be mindful that what you plant today will surely grow and be harvested tomorrow!