Coming Back Again

hiya folks,

a couple of weeks ago, there some discussion about finally becoming free from the cycle of death and rebirth in this world, and it got me wondering about whether or not I wanted to become free from this alleged cycle. (grin). also, i started wondering what other folks thought about it, so i started a poll..

the question was posed in the following post that I made to the list. and most of the responses were also posted under the same subject heading:

> From: "percyval"
> Date: Thu Jul 11, 2002 6:00 pm
> Subject: Poll: Coming Back Again (was: You're Still Not Dead...)

> if you died tomorrow, and the Great Karma Boogie-Woman told you that
> evaluating your karmic balance was such a close call, that you could
choose
> to either return to Earth for another life (with no clues about what the
> life would be like), or not return (with no clue as to what would happen
if
> you decided not to)... would you decide to come back to Earth for another
> life?

> yes, no, or undecided?

i then clarified my reason for the poll, and the reason for how i worded it, in another post::

> i would just like to clarify my intention on the poll... it is not that i
> even believe in karma-related reincarnation (or, not believe in it)... my
> curiosity is mainly about how people feel about living in this world...
> about whether they like it here enough to want to return, if they had a
> choice about it...

there were 17 respondants, and the results were:
Yes: 9
No: 6
Undecided: 2

i have summarized and edited the comments that came with the answers, and they are included further down in this post. the answers were not always so easy to fit into these 3 categories, but i made some judgement calls, and did my best when interpreting them. so read them for yourself to see how there are really more than just 3 possible replies...

although the poll showed a slight preference for coming back for another life here on Earth, i think that these results are slightly skewed... that's because folks who do not find life here so wonderful as to want more, are less likely to publicly post their feelings than those who are enjoying life more at the present time ...

after a day or two, David Bozzi expressed that he felt that many people did not understand the question. he thought that if the question was posed differently, it might get clearer responses.so when i asked him how he would have worded it, he wrote:

"If a magical button existed
that if pressed
would Immediately release you
from the restrictions of form
(time/space/individual identity)
to unite with, be and experience unlimited Godhead
(thus 'sacrificing' all personal limitations/preferences/imagined
identities etc., bound in time)
would you press that button now?"

i don't have the energy or ambition to compile the results of a second poll, so all of the interesting responses to his question are not included in this summary. but there is a large thread of posts with the subject line, "The Real Poll Question"... the answers to his question were perhaps even more interesting than the original poll's responses.

so, if anyone wants to read through them, simply do a search of the subject line, "The Real Poll Question", in the K-Gateway List archives... the posts are dated from between 7/14/02 and 7/16/02. if anyone is interested in compiling the results of that poll for the list, i have saved all the posts in a folder, and am willing to forward them to assist with that task.

below, is a summary of the comments included when answering my original question:

*******************************
I have no choice in the matter- cant come back, the next job awaits...and it is not anywhere near here..(ps, not everyone has karmic problems-either, requiring such a choice)

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if i felt that i needed more lessons i would return (since i feel it is ourselves that passes judgement) - might as well get it over with as fast as possible.

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I have thought about this many times (in this life) and I want to come back. I believe we are immortal, but I at the same time I am grateful we do not have to be immortal in these same bodies. Even if it were possible to keep this body, this life forever, I would not want to. Immortality in the same body does not appeal. I don't want my youth back either, the idea of stopping the process of life and death is a major turn off for me. I want a new model from time to time, for varitey if nothing else, but mostly because there are so many things that I cannot experience in just one life. I think life is a gift, weather self realized or given as a reward it doesn't matter to me. I don't think it is a punishment as some have said, or karmic paybacks, though I think it may be possible that there is no choice, that spirit lives forever and physical lifeforms are the result of spirit wanting more for itself. I think it is wonderful and painful and grand and if I really do get to make a choice there is only one choice for me. LIVE and LIVE again... and again... to the very end of eternity and beyond.

BTW I have been sucicial. The thing that kept me alive was a fear of not being given the choice to come back if once I *choose* death. Not comming back would be hell IMO.

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Don't matter to me in the least. Whatever I make up will be the most fun at the time.

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Well, I been promised at least one more trip back here anyway, so I guess its not up to me this time around. But if I were given a choice.........I think I'd still come back. There are too many things that I want to experience. There's still a bit of fun to be had too.

************
I think I will always come back again, given the option. I like doing the 'bod' thang. ; ) Not that this one's the end-all-be-all, by any stretch of the imagination (lol), but it's fine for me. It's the senses I'd come back for. I love touching and being touched. Smelling and seeing, feeling the warm rain...hugs.... There's lots of pain, but there's so much bliss that I can't imagine passing it up.

************
Subject: Check Please...

No Return.
The world is filtered

************
Hello ------,
I noticed that your response was that this world is a filtered experience and so you would not want to come back. I agree that the filtering exists but what if the filters are the price we pay for this existance? Some have experinced being part of the ALL/ONE consciousness and seen other realms. Their experinces indicates, to me, that it might be possible to have both, briefly, but sustaining it is not yet something that we have mastered. *Maybe* the many lives we stumble through are the testing grounds in a search to unite the filtered world and all its experiences with the unfiltered in a way that can be sustained.

Anyway my answer to the question is Yes of course I would come back. I would even relive every bad moment a thousand times to have such a beautiful life. I look at my two daughters and that is enough for me. Seeing them cancels out any pain I would have to feel or relive. I LOVE LIFE AND I AM SOOOOOO

So to clarify my answer to hopefully meet what you would like to see yes I would like to return to Earth becuase I think it is an amazing and loving place. This is where I am happy now if you ask me once I am deceased maybe I will change my answer but for now this is how I feel. None of us really know what is out there that is a completely different discussion in itself so I am just keeping things here on Earth I have many many attachments here and I am not ready to change my whole belief system at this time.

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Not coming back.

My reasons for not coming back are simply that even though I am an ascended master, courtesy of ------, I still find life to be emotionally so difficult that I do not wish to come back. I am more than aware that we create our own reality. I am more than aware that our thoughts shape our lives. Yet I continue to find myself in the midst of difficult circumstances, apparently my own choice, my own thoughts, but difficult enough that I can't imagine myself wishing to repeat most of it. I think I'm probably far better off than 99% of the people on this planet. I've got a job with people I truly like and care about, which I'm keeping even as I move. I've got a partner, who though difficult is often very interesting to be around. I've got ------ and ------. I've got five children whom I love and who are very smart indeed and who love me back, even if they are not always the most helpful of kids. I'm usually a very loved and cared for human being, a good bit of the time.

Anyway, I get very tired of constantly having life be difficult and I surely wish it were less so, but am apparently choosing to continue to create difficulty. So it goes.

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when i originally posed the question, i expected that i would answer the way so many others have so far... sometimes my life has been so painful and difficult that i have wished that i were not alive... yet still, i find that my life is also filled with much beauty, great people, amazing experiences and delicious pleasures... so i thought that i would choose to come back for another round...

then, i started to remember glimpses of some other worlds that i have seen during lucid dreaming... there are places of such incredible magical beauty, that it is only dimly reflected in the most beautiful places and experiences in this world...

so i have changed my mind, and i have decided that i would prefer to take my chances, and choose to see what's he didn't behind door #2... i do love it on Earth very much, but i would be happy to experience someplace different after finishing up with this life here...

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I agree with you. I know there are other places as beautiful that I have been before. We choose the place according to our desire for experience, I think. I am open to coming back here or going wherever else is appropriate. . .but I know I'll be back here sooner or later. Earth has the best chocolate ;)

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I'd probably say what I said the last time, which was no way in hell...then some time later get bored and ask if the offer still stood. I get told this is my last time around, and it's comforting. I'm old, I'm tired...and I'm only on 23 of this incarnation. Truth is I've had a hate-love-hate with being physical for as long as I can remember, and even though life is beautiful in some respects, it's dreadfully boring and repetitive in others. I'm old, I'm tired, and I'm hunting the retirement home.

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yes

When I was about 6 I had such a uncontrolable imagination. I had a re-occuring dream that was so incredibly real, where I was suspended in a vast 'infinity'. An entity allowed me to be seperate from her (in the dream I seemed to think it was a female) so that she could ask me what my choice was now, after I had been more experienced. Would I like to do it again through all that grief and anguish and confusion? Or move to the next 'developement'.

My response was clear and without hesitation. I said I would do it again. There was so much to understand and so much to learn that if I just opened my eyes enough I could do it right this time around. I seemed to be explaining to myself that the love and the pain were both gifts. You can't dismiss only one to see past the illusion.
All that when I was six and didnt know what reincarnation was, and attending a caltholic church where they told me I would burn in hell without baptisation... is a little odd now that I think about it. I asked my dad around that age this very question. "would you come back"? And he said he probably would. I think so would I.

I'm now remembering the first time I told my parents, verbally, that I loved them. They were so happy it reduced them to tears. You can't do things like this in non-duality I suppose. :)

On a related note according to the more esoteric teachings and the 7 paths (crap or is it 8)... you can reach the final path in many ways, and once your presented at the final gate of dissolution into the one- most turn back. The 'masters' and 'teachers' who've gained enlightenment by this time are so compassionate and wise that they turn full swing and come to help those who can't quite make it. So... when learning your trapped here. When enlightened, your trapped here by choice. Funny how things work out. ;)

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Put me in the "hoping to come back" column. I'd be absolutely delighted to return. There is still just too much here I haven't yet experienced. It would be particularly wonderful to come back K active again, at least during part of the return trip. :)) But I have to have faith that whatever is in store here or (t)here is ultimately for the best.

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I don't care if anybody isn't going to believe me, but I have been given the choice (from above). And I am not going yet, if there is anything i can do against that. In this life i had some awful experiences (true), but life is just too much worthful.
I do not want to to go and just do not anything with the things I have learned!!!!!!
So I am stubborn enough, I am staying and I am trying (als o in the small things) to make this place a better place.
Just give an extra smile to a person each day, it will help.... And for extra life's; YES !!!! I am stubborn enough to want to help and not going to the one Source immediately. (I have made that choice already)

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Well, I'm in no hurry to leave my family, but otherwise I feel much as ------ does (though I'm 39). In some of my deepest prayers I've asked that I might be somehow close to or at the end of the rebirth cycle. Hopeful that this energy I've been experiencing might mean I'm pretty old spiritually and have earned it, somehow. Still feeling a lot of joy and gratitude for daily beauty, but tired, too.

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I believe coming back this time was a choice... I didn't have to... I once got a glimpse of a "future" lifetime... not on Earth exactly... living on a space station.