The Lessons of Rona. Part 4: Memento Mori
Originally published via email to my community on 18th April 2020.
Memento Mori, roughly translated from Latin as 'remember that you must die', is a motto containing great hope. It reminds us that if you can come to terms with death you can deal with anything.
Alas, this is not where our society is. Instead we are simultaneously in both fear and denial of the one thing which none of us can avoid – death.
This matters because the decisions that have profoundly altered our world have been fuelled by an irrational fear of death. Irrational because death cannot be negotiated with, comes to each of us and provides very few with the chance to choose the manner and time of their passing. There is nothing new about this, it was forever thus.
Yet our society says no. It sells us anti-aging creams with the promise of turning back the tide of the years and it sells us pills and procedures to extend our life long after its natural course. It encourages us to think that everything is a transaction where things can simply be bargained for, while ignoring the fact that life is not just about stopping death. It’s also about living life!
Our society also seems incapable of dealing with uncertainty. This became apparent in the aftermath of the EU referendum when the word went about that somehow the result had created uncertainty. Well you might as well say that getting out of bed creates uncertainty, or going on a date creates uncertainty, or signing up for a course of study creates uncertainty. What type of crazy is this?! Life itself is uncertain, to its very core, and no amount of statistical modelling or flattening of curves will ever erase that. In fact, the more certainty we attempt to create the less we will be able to cope when the inevitable uncertainty strikes. Life is a risk, and sometimes the world is a wild and startling place, but the more we insulate ourselves from it the more fragile we become. It is only within uncertainty that we can have adventures. Stopping risk, ending uncertainty and denying death only has one consequence, that life itself becomes meaningless.
I appreciate these facts – that life is uncertain, and death comes to us all – are difficult for some, and I have no wish to upset people who have lost loved ones. Indeed, I not long ago lost an old friend myself and I know how deeply challenging death can be. But these are facts, and if we are interested in spiritual growth we must, sooner or later, recognise them as important strands in the tapestry of life.
If I had to think of one thing, and one thing only, that I could do to help people to think differently it would be for them to gain knowledge and understanding of reincarnation, that the soul lives forever, and moves from body to body, life to life, throughout the ages. My own journey - from Middle Eastern farm worker, to Greek philosopher, to medieval knight, to naive German schoolgirl, to English bloke who sends emails about spirituality to everyone he has ever met (plus a load of other lives in between) – informs all that I do and everything I am, it enables me to make sense of what I see and provides me with the perspective to take a longer view. It helps me to see, for example, that all civilisations rise and fall, and that one lifetime is but the blink of a cosmic eye.
But more important still, knowledge and understanding of reincarnation completely upends common notions of life and death, confirming that it very much matters what you do and say right now, because you cannot ever get away with anything! This fact of reincarnation, above all others, perhaps explains why so many people continue to deny it.
The downside of investigating past lives should be clear - how can you possibly verify what you sense, feel or discover? Would you go to an expert? Well, yes, but only if you got the right one. I remember, many years ago, watching a self-appointed Priestess-of-the-Temple-of-a-self-absorbed-ego proclaim to one young woman after another, at the top of her voice “You were Cleopatra!” I promise you it was as absurd then as it sounds now, yet no-one in the room seemed to question it. I think plenty of this type of thing still goes on, after all, we can’t all have been someone important and if we consider history it's overwhelmingly likely that we were pretty insignificant in a previous life. And then there's the matter of values and ethics, and how those change over time. For example, if you were in Victorian England you probably ascribed to Victorian values, no matter how abhorrent those things might seem to us now. Past lives are not glorified, cleaned up versions of our present self.
Numerology can give clues as to the state of a previous life, but the truth is that you already know what you were – you just don’t know that you know. To dig further examine yourself a little.
What are the skills which come most naturally to you, which you learned very quickly without stress and enjoy doing to this day? Things that come easy are things you have done before.
Where would you really like to visit? What cultures and time period of history do you feel most drawn toward? Where you feel called to now is probably where you have been before. It feels good because it is familiar.
Clearly there is a lot more to unravel here, for the whole subject is vast. But no matter how far you go you should not live on past glories or endlessly relive past tragedies. No, we must learn from the past so that we can move on from the past. Then - and perhaps only then - can we live in the present. Knowledge of both the general and personal facts of reincarnation can help us to do this much more effectively.
When the Corona Panic has eased (I won’t say passed because I don't think it will, certainly not for a looong time), I can help you go a bit deeper with the matter of your own past lives. Make a note, and when the time is right make an appointment to come and see me .
In the meantime, if you wish, tell me what you either know or suspect to be your past lives. After all, they say that souls reunite with each other…
