Love you Dad

In 2007, while migrating from a PC to a Mac, almost my entire digital photo collection was lost.  My father was a photographer who worked in the printing industry, and over the years I had occasionally sent him photos of some of the projects I had worked on. After he passed a few years ago, it didn't take long to discover a folder with my name on it containing all of those photos, some of which have been posted on the site.

Letting go of the old

A couple of years later I met Sara, and she completely turned everything upside down. Within a few weeks of meeting she told the story of a person who lived 100 years ago in China, who just happened to look like me, act like me, and even had the same sense of humor as me. After accepting the story, I started researching the process, attempting to understand how reincarnation works, how our consciousness interacts and interfaces with the biology of our bodies, and why these things are not better understood.

That entire process required letting go of the idea of who I was. Most of what I had identified with as being me, were just ideas. Once the context of our lives change, meaning often falls away. Looking back from where I sit now, loosing 10 years of photos, reminders of the life I had left behind, actually made it easier to let go of the past and live more fully in the present.

For several years Sara and I traveled around the western US in our Airstream travel trailer, and would often meet retired people who were following the good weather. Something we started to notice was that it seemed difficult for a lot of retired people to adjust to their new life. One couple in Sedona introduced themselves as former defence industry executives, rather than Joe and Sally from California. As we paid closer attention, it became apparent many people introduced themselves as "a retired X", rather than just Bob from Michigan.

And that is the way it was for me, only it happened at the age of 38 instead of 65. All of the sudden my phone was no longer ringing, and the habit of checking email every hour became once a day. It took a while, but eventually I stopped mentioning what I used to do when meeting people. I was just a guy. Born into a family from Texas. Nobody special.

However, how many people discover who they were in another lifetime? And, I didn't go looking for it, it found me. There must be a reason why that happened...

Dad and Grandpa

The Big Picture

Looking back, it's apparent that there is a bigger picture plan unfolding, something outside of the conscious awareness of Sara and I both. The last 15 years together has been a process of letting go of who we thought we were, and the stories inherited from our families and our cultures, in order to get a little better understanding of who and what we really are, underneath the stories we tell about ourselves.

There is nothing wrong with identifying as a retired X from someplace, with such and such ancestry and X number of kids. We can identify with our history, our family and culture, and love those that are close to us. All of that serves a purpose, it's part of our experience of life. However, it's not who we are.

When we reflect on our life from the perspective of a 70 or 80 year old, we don't remember the time we ate too much pizza and didn't sleep well, or the hurtful thing someone said when X or Y happened, or how much stuff we had in relation to others when we retired. What is important is how we lived our lives, the people we helped and the people who helped us, the lessons learned and the things we were able to teach others. Those are the things that matter, those are the things that become part of our permanent record.

Mini-me and Mom

Re-writing History

Hindsight often reveals the true meaning of our lives. What may seem like a difficult experience, is later seen as a positive turning point. And, mistakes often lead to valuable lessons. The way we choose to frame our experience, can completely change the way we look at our life.

And, the same can be said of reincarnation. While doing research for We Meet Again, I learned that in my previous life, I was born into an influential Hong Kong family, studied at Cambridge in the UK, and later contributed to the Garden City Movement. However, in this incarnation, I was born into in a middle-class Texas family.

On the surface, particularly from an Asian perspective, this seems like a karmic step backward, as wealth is seen as a reward for good deeds. Yet, that's far from universal truth, especially today. Being born in humble circumstances, free from the burden of upholding a family legacy or conforming to rigid social norms, allows the freedom to pursue one's true interests, and to be our authentic self.

Reference:

James Perkins gave a talk in the 1950's called "Reincarnation for Everyone", which covers some of the concepts presented.