Stop and smell the roses now and then

To the editor:

A retired teacher asked, “How can reincarnation make sense in light of the world’s catastrophes and injustice?” The simple answer is that reincarnation enables human souls to increase their spiritual development through the experience of living a long series of human lifetimes.

However, the soul needs a body in order to experience the ups and downs of human life that bring about spiritual progress, as seen in the results of the 15th century enlightenment. There is obviously a relationship between our human inner-selves and our souls, but the relationship is confusing at this stage of our development.

I never seriously considered the idea of reincarnation until I read Edgar Cayce’s autobiography, “There is a River,” in which he relates that Jesus came upon a blind man, prompting a disciple to ask, “Who sinned, the blind man or his father?” (which implied that God had punished one or the other for some serious transgression).

Then Cayce explained reincarnation — or maybe it was the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, who later explained it to me — that after we die, instead of receiving God’s rewards or punishment, a person’s soul forms a symbiotic relationship with a newborn babe — and the soul enters the body of the newborn babe with its first breath of air — and (in this case), the soul became an objective observer of the blind baby’s lifetime, where the soul (hopefully) learned to be patient, as well as also learning the value of its parent’s compassion.

The use of reason and the ability to make choices are the means to achieve spiritual progress, but we are slow learners and nothing is simple, so humanity’s progress requires many generations. With the help of family, friends and our community, we adjust to the laws of physics and nature, and we learn the values and customs of our culture that is imbued with the basic tenants of spirituality — which are simply to be true to our self and accept responsibility for the consequences of our actions.

Except for man’s ignorance, everything “makes sense” because the universe is controlled by the infallible laws of physics, which are outward expressions of an ever-present sense of intelligence. Religious beliefs are important, but its contradictions require discretion, as do different viewpoints about the purpose of our existence, such as the possibility that a God-like form of logical energy has an inherent need for change — which is accomplished by the laws of physics that caused a Big Bang that resulted in the evolution of life and man’s development of a spiritual inner-self. Perhaps being born ignorant is our “original sin,” because all we really know for certain is that we exist here and now.

Maybe the most important thing about life is simply to stop and smell the roses now and then.

Art Carney

Wasilla