The afterlife reliving

[rainfaery]

I posted some time ago about what I read in RB's blog, that people who experience deeply tramatic events in the physical life and can't let go of these events until they die will be ultimately experiencing these same events in the afterlife until they let go of them. I wanted to post in that thread but couldn't find it so I'm starting a new thread. I remember then a few of you agreed with RB that this is the way it happens. I've got the question now. If this is indeed the way it always happens and one always lets all the things go in his afterlife, how can you explain the fact that the same traumatic events can be experienced from one physical life to another repeatedly? Logically, if one moves past his trauma in a life between lives, in his next lives the same trauma should never happen?!!??!? How come it can?

[dan]

I've got the question now. If this is indeed the way it always happens and one always lets all the things go in his afterlife, how can you explain the fact that the same traumatic events can be experienced from one physical life to another repeatedly? Logically, if one moves past his trauma in a life between lives, in his next lives the same trauma should never happen?!!??!? How come it can?

This is a good one

I think there's a saying, Religion always contradicts itself.

Really i think new-age was thought up by demons themselves, what a perfect trap for humanity

[Edi]

I've got the question now. If this is indeed the way it always happens and one always lets all the things go in his afterlife, how can you explain the fact that the same traumatic events can be experienced from one physical life to another repeatedly? Logically, if one moves past his trauma in a life between lives, in his next lives the same trauma should never happen?!!??!? How come it can?

This is a good one

I think there's a saying, Religion always contradicts itself.

Really i think new-age was thought up by demons themselves, what a perfect trap for humanity

I will reply honestly here, even though I see this type of questions at a kinder garden level. And I don't mean by that that I'm at some higher level, but simply that I've learned a long ago that anything I read should be taken "cum grano salis".
From from I see, what I conceive as "trauma" someone else doesn't. Some people are insulted when you say certain things to them, while others are not, and don't even think about it. Thence, our reality is our perception of reality. And what is "happening" to us is our interpretation of outside events.
Of course we all agree that some events are harmful and we all agree they are traumatic, but the way karma threads are woven is not something we have insight too. In this life I've learned to accept two things about bad things happening: 1. if I hurt someone in my past lives the way I am hurt now, then it's ok for me to experience what's it like. And 2., we have a saying in translation it goes: from each bad event grows something good.
In short anything that is happening in reality is happening now, and all mystics agree to that. Past life, and the period in between lives from the point of reality, of action, of what you can do to change, is not a direction where you should put your efforts in order to gain peace, reconciliation or solution to any problem.
Past cannot be changed, but what can be is anyone's perception of what is true and real. If events seem to be reoccurring, it's because the perception is the same. You see what is in your mind.
It's like that story when they brought a peasant to the Louvre and when they asked him what did he see in the paintings he said: chickens.
I hope I'm clear as I don't expect you to agree with me.

[sash]

The trauma occurs in the ego, so one could also ask 'if the ego is let go of after death, why does the ego come up again in the next life?' It is practically the same question, because without ego there is no trauma. The trauma itself doesn't control you, it's your wanting to hold on to the trauma, the decision comes from you. It's not like you're forced to re-live it. You do re-live it, either now, or in the after life, or in 1000 years, it's totally up to you.

I wouldn't say the variables are always the same though. Plenty of people struggle with trauma for 30, 40 years, and then stumble upon a healer or a new perspective and find themselves suddenly able to let go. Likewise, a lot of energy vibration changes happen in the 'after life', or astral consciousness. A lot of people have come back from NDEs with a new consciousness on their pain and suffering, and allowed themselves to let go of many ego constructs altogether. That's not to say that having a higher consciousness experience will give you the 'push' needed to let go. If you wanna hold on to it badly enough, nothing's going to interfere with that.

[dan]

The trauma occurs in the ego, so one could also ask 'if the ego is let go of after death, why does the ego come up again in the next life?' It is practically the same question, because without ego there is no trauma. The trauma itself doesn't control you, it's your wanting to hold on to the trauma, the decision comes from you. It's not like you're forced to re-live it. You do re-live it, either now, or in the after life, or in 1000 years, it's totally up to you.

Something doesn't seem right about this (my instinct is telling me) so i Wikipedia this


(Hoping that this picture stays up because i really suck at this)
But the ego is submerged into unconscious which i take is the part of us that is fully awake when we die. So if the ego is holding trauma then it seems like its has to deal with this like Rain says when you die. Before you can move on.

[sash]

Good picture. The reason ghosts and malevolent spirits get trapped in this world might well be due to holding on to the ego, not the trauma itself. I.e. needing to relive the trauma (an ego need). It's not the trauma that holds them inasmuch as that need.

So while the ego 'holds' the trauma, the trauma itself is suppressed to lower levels. In a lot of healing and trance-states the ego gets bypassed altogether. During a 'trauma' you might have a few hours maximum to process it. If you refuse to face it right away, it may well get pushed deep in the unconscious mind, from where it sends out bursts of information to the conscious mind (manifesting as anxiety, fear, stress, general sadness) etc. But at that point it's much harder to deal with.

I think I misunderstood the original post in any case. Is the issue about why we have to experience trauma again even once we've let it go in a previous life? That's what I thought the dilemma was, and based my last reply on this, so I might have misunderstood that.

[rainfaery]

I think I misunderstood the original post in any case. Is the issue about why we have to experience trauma again even once we've let it go in a previous life? That's what I thought the dilemma was, and based my last reply on this, so I might have misunderstood that.

From RB's blog it seems to suggest very strongly that each and every person who didn't let go of their trauma must re-experience it in their afterlife. The fact that the same trauma can be experienced throughout several physical lives indicates to me that not every person goes through re-experiencing process in the afterlife and lets go if he or she deals with the same issues in the next physical lives. So it seems to me that RB's take on it is not universal and there are exceptions to this rule, so there are other options for people to deal with the trama than in the afterlife and not everyone must go through the process RB describes. That's what I meant by my original post.

[sash]

This would then play into belief systems of Reincarnation and Karma somewhat I suppose? If you can't let go of the trauma, then you may still have to move on to a different level of consciousness, and face the trauma later (the karma people may say), who knows though... RB's approach to basing his claims on personal insight is awesome, however it also makes it pretty hard to universalize them. It's a fallacy to take your own experience and to assume that everyone goes through the same thing. You'd never be able to know for sure.

The other thing is that there's a difference between traumatic experience itself and the effect a traumatic event has in shaping personality, and ultimately which one you're trying to let go of. In fact traumatic experiences are seriously misunderstood, dan's picture representation illustrates the difference somewhat, just below the ego you may have the actual event itself as pent up 'energy', in sub-consciousness. It's not really accessible, but it keeps pushing upwards, like a buildup of pressure that you're sitting on (the ego). What happens when you astral travel though? You often leave the ego behind, and cognitive manifestations appear (from sub-consciousness) and come rushing through without much resistance or censoring at all - often is the same with dreams.

(Do you have a link to RB's blog post btw?) I think it's up to the person what they want to experience or not. Traumatic experiences can really grab your consciousness and emerge you so much that you forget yourself. But ultimately it's your decision of how long you want to experience them for. There are no rules, or musts, in my experience. Probably not the type of reply you wanted to hear. But the bottom line is that you are definitely right, there are exceptions to the rule.

[rainfaery]

Here's the link to RB's blog:
http://blog.astraldynamics.com/?p=308
I reread it and I guess I've distorted a bit what it says. It doesn't say everyone must ultimately relive their suffering in the afterlife but still strongly suggests that's what people deeply affected by trauma have to go through usually.

[sash]

A suffering person may create the conditions and experiences that caused the suffering. This may involve reliving painful events over and over, until these are processed and realized as being the life lessons or illusions they represent.

(from RB's blog post)

It sounds to me like what he is saying is that if you've already realized the life lesson or illusion associated with an experience then in many cases 'letting go' won't be a part of the process, because you've already let go on some level. He does use the word "may", as oppose to 'must', as you've already pointed out.

[dan]

dan's picture representation illustrates the difference somewhat, just below the ego you may have the actual event itself as pent up 'energy', in sub-consciousness. It's not really accessible, but it keeps pushing upwards, like a buildup of pressure that you're sitting on (the ego). What happens when you astral travel though? You often leave the ego behind, and cognitive manifestations appear (from sub-consciousness) and come rushing through without much resistance or censoring at all - often is the same with dreams.

This is kind of the way i understand it. The ego feeds the id (of course i think this is Freuds theory) and once in the id it is un-accessible. But get glimpes of it in dreams.