Reincarnation Hell

I think this attitude to reincarnation all almost certainly make you get reincarnated.

Do i believe in reincarnation? No idea. Actually it doesn't matter if we come back or not i figure. I don't really want to be a man, nor do i want to be stinking rich or poor. Superbeautiful or exceedingly ugly. Genius or dunce. It would seem i was born into the goldilocks zone in this life, where everything is JUST NICE. Or i could just be sanguine and phlegmatic. The point is, there is nothing i really want to do apart from live the life i have. I don't even want the perfect relationship cos, guess what, it don't exist. So, nope - reincarnation is a moot point. Then there's a part of me that just finds the whole tiresome business of learning everything from scratch such a pain. I mean learning to walk and eat and sit up. My god. It's tough work. I suppose that would be my phlegmatic side speaking.

HOWEVER this i do believe, which goes something like this: if you do not learn from your mistakes, you are going to end up repeating them again and again here on Earth. In this life. And that is reincarnation hell. (There is no such thing as reincarnation heaven. Even bodhissatavas forfeit nirvana to suffer alongside mortal on earth.) The two things which will help you learn and thereby escape reincarnation hell are humility and kindness. Humility because with no humility you cannot learn and kindness because without kindness there is no joy. The best part of this is that you KNOW all the bits and pieces of yourself that need to be altered to make you a better person. The challenge is that acknowledging that is the impossible task. People would much rather do almost anything than to admit to themselves who they really are. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

I had a really weird dream last night. Someone whom i had found quite troubling over the last few weeks appeared in my dream and i decided, the Bhudda in me sees the Bhudda in him. And we got on really well. It was really nice. We were in a hotel with other friends, which suddenly turned into the old convent school i used to go to. Then it turned into this really old castle i often end up in which is filled with rooms and turrets and lots of places i have never been in. All the time we were together and getting on really well. He is such a nice person i thought. I have been terrible wrong all this time.

I quite like it that the dream life is co-operating with the intention life. Then it got a bit odd in that i needed to go to the bathroom and suddenly i found myself in a swimsuit. But inside out. And the string around the neck was not tied properly. Such is the nature of dreams. I can't remember how it ended, but i did wake up around 4.30 am feeling that it was a lovely night and life was brilliant.

I also watched the film My Week with Marilyn which was on BBC a few nights ago. It was strange in that acting, the way it was portrayed, seemed to be such an awful profession. Why would anyone want to act, was my question. OK, it would be fun to pretend to be someone else, but ultimately what it seemed to be was the person who was supposed to be the real person was absent. It is either extremely zen or extremely unhealthy. It would appear in Marilyn's case it was exceedingly painful and tragic.

Well i sometimes go through reincarnation hell myself. I really wish i could stop things, but as i have discovered, sometimes, it isn't up to me to stop them. Then i can only protect myself. I'm not very good at protecting myself really cos my default position is trying to understand other people. It makes me very confused when people are horrible to me. I would rather not say anything than make things worse and people then mistake this for some kind of slow stupidity. Perhaps it IS a slow stupidity. Quite often i burst into tears. In a Ja'ime style way. But i hopefully am on the right path to averting my reincarnation hell vis a vis people whom i find difficult. The dream was a good sign. Perhaps after i have the being nice to annoying people a bit done, i could do the being assertive without being aggressive. I may have tried it once in my life and it was quite good. I'd like to try it again sometime soon.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. The sun is shining and the skies are a-shimmering and we have the weekend to do a whole loada stuff in. With my lovely sons.

Right, gotta get the boys ready for brunch now.