Do you know why you chose your body?

Spirituality
#1

It has been found in NDE research and said by many traditions that after we pass over and enter the spiritual planes we wait for a while, and even get help in choosing what we want to do next in our journey, more specifically where we would to reincarnate, which parents, which society and which body and what do we want to accomplish and learn.

Do you know why you would have chosen the body you have right now? What goal do you think you set for yourself before you incarnated? How succesfull do you think you have been in realising that goal in this life?

#2

well I dont really care to think about or adapt the belief of choosing this body, mind, parents, etc… but There are things I like about this body, five nine is a good height for surfing

#3

so why did you choose your body, mind, and life circumstances?

#4

I don’t really know. If I did, life would be much easier, for I would know what my mission in this life is.

Maybe there are people here who have been able to work it out.

#5

[QUOTE=Surya Deva;38288]I don’t really know. If I did, life would be much easier, for I would know what my mission in this life is.

Maybe there are people here who have been able to work it out.[/QUOTE]
what is the purpose of all existence?

#6

Interesting question. I heard this idea some time ago. I was wondering then why in that case we don’t remember anything from before birth. If aim of life is learning - it seems its not incremental learning (because this works best when we build on what we already know) bur rather something totally new each time.

Looking from a side, we can see some patterns in life long learning. For example importance of money. Its very difficult to find a child who would appreciate value of money. And its difficult to find an old person being financially irresponsible. So the lesson is: money are important and you should respect it! :wink:

#7

If reincarnation was real, there would have been no way that I would have chosen this body. I guess that’s why we go out with hot girls, so we can look at bodies far better than ours :slight_smile:

#8

Pawel, I think one explanation for the loss of memory would be that we have a new brain which has no links up to the old memories and forms new memories. A bit like after you delete files on your computer, they still remain in your hardrive, but there are no links up to them. Interesingly, the forgetting process begins in this life itself towards old age and death. There are rare cases, however, where people remember their past life memories. However, this is not a blessing, but a curse. As they end up living confused lives and find it hard to settle in this life. As they grow older they begin to forget about their past lives and get on with their current life.

Nonetheless, I think remembering your past life would be very beneficial in that it would give you some understanding of where you are coming from and what you need to do in this life.

#9

[QUOTE=YogiAdam;38312]If reincarnation was real, there would have been no way that I would have chosen this body. I guess that’s why we go out with hot girls, so we can look at bodies far better than ours :)[/QUOTE]

I agree. I don’t know why on earth I would have chosen this body, my parents and the society I was born in!

#10

Hi, everybody.
Surya Deva, applauding for this subject.
While I still dont know exactly if there is a reincarnation and a karma, these theories seems to me much more convincing then others. Pawel, about money and old people: this may just mean that we are doing the same mistake again and again. Thats what Im sure in: we can change everything - bodies, places we live in, society and even our minds (or this first of all...). When a man is drunk with freedom, he changes things from mentioned above (or others), until freedom becomes a natural state - and theres no need to do anything.

#11

I agree all those things body, places we live in, society, personalities, even people who we consider to be our parents can be changed again and again. I have actually done this several times in this life alone just to prove to myself I am not fixed to just one body, place, society, personality. I done such radical things that most people would dare not to. However, there is obviously a baseline that I have always adhered to, but I think if went to the extreme, I could probably change that baseline as well.

The thing is we should not arbitarily change things. There must be a reason to change and a lot of insight for that can come from remembering your past life or remembering what goals were actually set right before you incarnated. For example suppose for the last 5 past lives you were working on overcoming a particular fear, say fear of speaking to others, if you knew that this was your goal in this life it would become so clear and you can get right onto working on it.

Then again I guess even if we introspect a bit we can come to know what exactly we need to work on in this life. In general I think our challenges in life come under the following categories: social, physical, emotional, mental, intellectual and spiritual and we need to identify the challenges we are facing in each sphere and work on all of them holistically. I guess following a complete Yogic lifestyle is the best antidote to that.

I have recognised my problem in each sphere as follows:

  1. Lack of empathy with others, love and inability to open to others(I can open to some people)
  2. Lack of energy and drive, tension in jaw, shoulders, need for more flexibility
  3. Very left-brain, scientific, rational, lacking creativity, poetry, colour
  4. Too much thinking, too little doing
  5. Poor short term memory and poor mathematical and motor skills(need to do sport!)
  6. Aversion to bhakti/devotion, need guidance

The solutions to the above challenges are inherent in the challenge itself. Such as taking up a creative activity to engage the right-brain, and doing a physical sport and physical exercise to boost energy levels.

#12

I wouldn’t choose this body either, if I had the choice. But I guess, it is possible that we are choosing our parents, society and sort etc. Perhaps, we are dying with a particular psychology in our head, which becomes an anti-psychology in our next life. In other words, we die with an attachment to particular things and conceptions in this world; we die with that intention, and guess what happens in the next life? Your wish comes true, only that you begin hating that wish as you grow up. That’s samshara, and if we can’t realize our quintessential purpose on earth, and work on it diligently we are subject to reincarnation.

Agreed with those problems Surya. Mine would be:

  1. Personal insecurities and aversion to the society I was born in.
  2. Lack of physical energy and drive, tension in jaw, shoulders, back, legs…
  3. Lack of will power, thus being indecisive.
  4. Poor motor skills (I need to do sports too!)

I am often inclined to engage right-brain but I overall lack will power and suffer from indecisiveness, Because, life has thrown a lot on me for the past five years, and I have grown a lot of interest in many things to alleviate my suffering. Thus, I have grown a very peculiar sort of ego, which makes me indecisive on many things. Perhaps, I must work on my indecisiveness in this lifetime by increasing my will power. However, I fear that it might be done at the expense of many things I care >.>

#13

The ultimate purpose of life according to me is self-realization/enlightenment. However, along the way on that path, we have to deal with minor goals as well. To model it in terms of Yogic psychology it is clear the path of the Kundalini is to ascend up the spine and break through the sahasara, but before it can do that its passage must be made clear by removing the various blockages each of our chakras holds. We are obviously holding onto many blockages which is preventing the free flow of the cosmic energy. I guess this can only be remedied by through working through our challenges through holistic development. I have always had this problem-solving approach to challenges I face and always met up with my challenges head-on.

Decisiveness and will power will come automatically after you are clear on what your challenge is and what the solution is. The best way to develop will power is to overcome the terrible habit of procrastination and hestitation. As soon as you know what the solution is to your challenge is, just go ahead and do it. Speaking of which, I am going to move on right ahead and join the gym tommorrow finally and start Yoga asana class! I am tired of being tired all the time :smiley:

#14

Yep. procrastination sorta defines my current psychology. I might draw some strength from Bhagavad-gita and Tao te ching, but in the end, it must be “me” who must act with wisdom, not Arjuna or Lao Tzu.

I also have some hard time speaking with very hot girls, actually approaching them is quite intimidating. That’s also have something to do with my ego, and I need to work on that as well :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

as far as purpose in life, there is a say that we cannot ask God to answer a question that we cannnot answer for God. SO we say “God, why do I exist” and God could say “neil, why do I exist” God just is, God just exists, so we just are, we esist. does that mean we dont have purposes in life, reasons for doing things, No. but the very nature of us “just is”. Some people have purposes like helping homeless people, starving children, stray animals, etc…

as far as past lives, ive read a book called “before I got here” it is a book about children talking about past lives. some people say a childs connection with things can lessen over time because adults may see a child a crazy when they have "imagineary friends and what not. My mom also talks about living before, talks about where she lived and what she did, and she seems totally fine with it.

#16

I like my body. Glad I found it lying about. Fits me perfectly.

#17

[QUOTE=FlexPenguin;38373]I like my body. Glad I found it lying about. Fits me perfectly.[/QUOTE]

Ditto!

#18

Surya Deva, High Wolf, this approach - dividing problems into categories and working with them separately seems not very efficient to me (though, it`s just my opinion). While you are dealing with one, other appears, you concentrate on it, third one rises, and so on.
But if we dig deeper to the root of all this problems…

#19

Perhaps you can also ask yourself, if you could choose, what would you choose for a body/ parents/ society?

Is it perfect? Does the perfect body/ parents/ society even exist?..hummmm, I think not.

Happiness is a state of mind, and I’m afraid if you look to any parent or society to make you happy you will fail miserably.

#20

[QUOTE=omamana;38399]Perhaps you can also ask yourself, if you could choose, what would you choose for a body/ parents/ society?

Is it perfect? Does the perfect body/ parents/ society even exist?..hummmm, I think not.

Happiness is a state of mind, and I?m afraid if you look to any parent or society to make you happy you will fail miserably.[/QUOTE]

Absolutely agree. I know I may have mentioned this before, but I see no real reason to assert the idea of perfection. As Stephen Hawking has clearly demonstrated, not long after the big bang, the universe was a mass expanding gas particles. The earlier back in time we go, the more symmetrical the gas particles seem to be from one and other. If the particles actually were perfect, then the universe, to this day, would be a bunch of gas particles, all held together by gravity, at exactly the same distances from one and other. It’s only due to the fact that the universe contained very small imperfection, and irregularities that the gas particles where thrown off symmetry, and over the course of 200 billion years, our universe went from what was ‘seemingly’ perfectly symmetrical to absolute imperfection, and this is the reason we are even here today. So the next time you make a mistake, remember that imperfection is the nature of our universe, and is the whole reason we are even here to begin with.