The belief in reincarnation and karma is at least as old as the written word and it is common knowledge that there was language long before it could be written down. These beliefs date back to ancient India and the Hindu religion, or perhaps even to the time of prehistoric Mesopotamia.

The New Age understanding in this respect was primarily brought about by the information given by several “channeled” entities, such as the entities channeled by Edgar Cayce, Seth (channeled by Jane Roberts) and many others. Seth, however, went way deeper into the subject, telling us that these incarnations were actually experienced all at once! I am not going there!

This New Age belief is that the human soul is given a body, and the opportunity to live in this world for the sole purposes of learning and growing spiritually – lessons which can only be learned in the material world. Since virtually nobody ever reaches anything even remotely resembling perfection, or has enough time to experience everything this world has to offer in one lifetime, we must return time and time again, in a cycle of life-situations, each aimed at a gradual, progressive soul-growth: a self-perfecting which eventually leads to spiritual maturity. This allows us to then move on to a higher level of awareness - a higher plane of existence, so to speak. This process is, of course, known as reincarnation or rebirth. 

YOUR KARMIC LESSONS

Throughout our many life-experiences on this earth-plane, there are bound to be some things left undone, some lessons left unlearned. We come into this life with several specific lessons to learn and a number of inborn talents and abilities to utilize in learning them. However, as it is in any school, there may be certain subjects, or certain specific areas within a particular subject which continue to cause us trouble. We may be advanced to the next grade, but that subject seems to always be a problem area. Our process of rebirth works in much the same way; there are usually areas in which we are lacking in our spiritual growth. We carry these things with us as karma from one life to the next.

A popular misconception is that karma is a system of reward and punishment for our past good and bad deeds; this is not quite true. Technically, karma is a system by which we put certain circumstances into our earth-life so that we may learn from them. If we learn the lessons inherent in these conditions the circumstances tend to drift away; we don’t need them anymore. But, if we don’t learn, the same types of problems keep recurring, over and over in our life, until we do! It may sometimes feel like we are being punished for something but, in reality, these stumbling blocks are meant to be stepping stones, opportunities for spiritual growth and progress.

Now: According to this New Age belief, before we begin each new life, we are aware of the lessons we have to learn, the subjects we need to bone-up on, and we plan the vibratory forces we will encounter in the future life experience according to these needs. Everything we will encounter is taken into consideration beforehand. Each obstacle we will have to overcome, each opportunity to learn and grow, each facet of our environmental atmosphere - everything - is carefully planned well in advance of this great learning experience. There are no mistakes! everything in our life has a purpose! Our reactions to these experiences determine our progress through life.

To ensure the proper early atmosphere and life situation, we carefully choose from among the countless available parent-souls, and pick those who will perfectly fit our learning needs. Again, there are no mistakes! Whatever treatment we experience from our parents, whatever ways in which we may feel that we are victimized, is all taken into consideration in this advance choosing of the parents to whom we will be born. Our parents are perfectly suited to help us learn the life-lessons which we, ourselveS, with assistance and guidance from our higher Masters and Guides, have chosen to learn.

The early hardships faced in life are pre-chosen. As we grow up in our life-experience, our reactions to problems, and the decisions we make pursuant to them, determine our future pathways and the ease or difficulty with which we travel them. But - it is all worked out in advance. Each situation along the way is a test, an examination, so to speak. Our reactions and decisions surrounding these examinations determine our “grade”, our level of soul growth.

Of course, we can’t walk into these tests with full knowledge of the circumstances surrounding them. If we walked into an earthly classroom with all the questions and answers to a test, there would be no point in taking the test at all; it would be no indication of our true level of knowledge. The tests of life work in the very same way. If we were to clearly remember our eternal life, and the relative unimportance of our day-to-day earthly trials, we would not - could not - take them seriously. Our reactions and decisions would not fairly indicate our level of spiritual growth. So - we forget….

All conscious memory of our eternal nature is wiped clean and transferred to subconscious and Superconscious levels of our mind. We come into this world with a clean slate, bringing with us only our subconscious memories of lessons previously learned. If we listen to that still, small voice within us, these memories can help us make the decisions which will further our soul-growth. But - we have to listen very carefully.

Although we can never know our exact future, or perfectly remember our chosen objectives for our present life - either of which would defeat the purpose of this learning experience, there are many ways to pick up hints about the vibratory influences surrounding our lives. Tarot is one of them, as is Astrology, Numerology, and/or the Akashic Records.

As a “rule of thumb”, if you find that the same type of “negative” experiences seem to be happening over and over in your life, you need to learn how to detach from your negative response to them. “Judge not” means a lot more than not judging other people. It means non-judgment of anything life throws at us. Once we stop judging these experiences and resisting them, we will find that it is all just "stuff", they just drift out of our consciousness… We just don’t need them anymore! We have learned the lessons they came to teach us. The Karmic influences have served their purpose. We are now free to move on to other important lessons.

Be grateful for your Karma; without it we just couldn’t grow spiritually. We would just keep having all our negative situations over and over again, day after day, lifetime after lifetime, with no way of learning from them!