spiritual joyride: why we come back

One of the persistent struggles since my last big burst of spiritual growth in 2012 has been trying to comprehend why we come back. Truly, to listen to my loved ones from the other side, to read the accounts of near death experiencers, even to have been immersed in my own holy STEs, why? What kind of nitwit leaves that for this? (And yep, I know there’s only This, but I am wearing a human suit with its language of separation, so I’m going to write from the perspective of the Lynette story.)

That we do come back is indisputable unless you are a committed cynic, unwilling to set aside personal beliefs in the face of great evidence. Witness Ian Stevenson’s work with reincarnated children, a long term detailed scientific study which even the AMA couldn’t dispute. And there are so many others.

But why? Many of us who’ve experienced grief, loss, and a host of other miseries and tortures in this life find ourselves wondering why anyone would choose another slog through this vale of tears. Of the spiritually connected folks I know, almost all say “Never again! Not coming back. Nope!” despite living lives of contentment, purpose, and love.

For years I bought into the eastern religions and their concept of working our way off the wheel, becoming better and better, toiling and grinding away, until we at last achieve freedom in being good enough to escape human life. That at least provided a hope my Lutheran upbringing did not, with its original sin, one-try-before-judgment premise followed by the joys or agonies of an eternal heaven or hell.

But there are some pesky physicists out there with a wild theory that there isn’t any time, that everything’s happening at once. Given that, it seems I can be both monster and saint, hobo and head of state, all in simultaneous lifetimes. Yes, all at once, so how, then, am I progressing in holiness, one lifetime after another?

Not too long ago, I was pondering this question of why we idiotically decide or are forced to come back and, even more stupidly, why we would forget all previous lifetimes. I sat down for meditation and, as is my habit, reached above my head for a spiritual book to read before getting down to the business of stilling the wild screeching thing resident in my skull. I was hoping to grab the first or second of Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God. As I blindly snatched, I whispered “not Book 3, not Book 3” because it’s my least favorite of the trio.

Of course I got Book 3. Assuming no mistakes, I opened it and, of course, no mistakes. On the very page I opened to, Walsch was asking “why do we do this again and again and again? and why on earth would we forget everything we experienced before?” The plaintive tone of the question led me to believe that Walsch was as frustrated when he asked that question as I was feeling at that very moment. (This is where the question arises, are we ever really alone? And the answer is never. My guides were in on my irritable pondering of the stupidity in forgetting et voila! — an answer.

And God (if you believe Walsch was hearing from God; I do, because why not? But let’s assume at the very least it was some high level consciousness of the One of us, with greater insight than Walsch or me) said “for fun.”

Yes. God said for fun, for the joy of it. We forget so that we can again experience the most divine, ecstatic, magical experience of human life: awakening to who we really are. Could this be true? I read it again. Yes. That’s what it said, and suddenly something clicked. As I read those words about forgetting because of the deliciousness of Awakening, it suddenly made sense.

I remembered a time decades ago when my family spent every summer in a cabin on 99 Springs. It was a small lake in southwestern Kansas, a beautiful place, surrounded by huge old cottonwood trees, spring fed and clear, with a swimming area and a small park for kids. As a bitty girl at the park, I envied the older kids climbing up to the top of a crazy tall slide, then sailing down with shouts of excitement.

When I was finally old enough ~ about 5 or 6, I think ~ I mustered my courage and with my folded piece of speed-up-the-ride waxed paper to sit on, I clambered to the top. From there it seemed I could see for miles. It really is a very tall slide, the kind not likely to be allowed in a park for kids these days, with a great potential for broken bones or worse.

Standing at the edge of the platform, the slide gleamed before me. It was sparkling, polished to a fare-thee-well by thousands of kid butts and decades of use. Though terrifying to look at, it was also inviting, with a graceful, rising curve in the middle followed by a big drop. As the older kids did, I sat on my waxed paper, clinging to the rails before finding the courage to let go.

Taking a deep breath, I released my hold and holy smack! I took off like a bullet! I shot down the slide, went airborne on the hump, literally flying down that silvery metal, screaming with delight. Also terror. The waxed paper increased my speed and ensured what would have been a fast ride was something else entirely. Oh my stars. Oh. My. Stars!

I swept off the end of the slide, landing six feet out in a sand pile. I gasped and instantly thought, “AGAIN!!” I dusted off, retrieved my waxed paper and climbed as fast as I could to the wooden platform. Again.

Once more, it was incredibly fast and so much fun. But it didn’t feel quite as fast and it wasn’t precisely as much fun as the first time. It wasn’t ever that again. It couldn’t be. Once I knew what to expect, once I’d had the experience, it would never again be that intoxicating mixture of fear, courage, daring, flying, speed, and ecstasy.

I needed to forget. Why? To experience the bliss and joy — and terror — of doing it again for the first time.

Why do we forget what it is to live as humans? To experience the exultation in awakening again.

Finally. Finally, this made some kind of sense. At last I could understand why we, differentiated aspects of All That Is, would choose to stumble around blindly in our little human suits as if we know nothing, as if we are not All That Is wearing a costume for just a little while.

I needed verification, though, and for that I turned to the countless written transcripts of Sanaya, the guides who inform the work of Suzanne Giesemann, and whose wisdom is available in written and audio form on her website.*

You can imagine what happened. I only had to read a few pages before it was there. WE DO THIS FOR FUN.

“And why would Love need to express itself at all? For the fun of it. For the fun of it. And there are some of you who are saying “It is not very much fun at this moment,” and we understand that, and it will never be all fun. But Love welled up and had to be expressed. And here you are.” Sanaya, November 2018 and other dates as well.

Again, apologies to the deeply grieving. I know as well as you do this life seems like hell much of the time and it’s enraging to even think that some of the things we go through  here might be for fun. Experience is a better word on this side of the veil. But odd as it sounds, it could be that when we shed our skins, our Essence thinks it’s all been a riot, one bigass thrill-a-minute party.

Imagine it: We cross over, shedding our meat suits. We’re welcomed, of course, by multitudes of loved ones and divine beings of all kinds. Someone entices a cloud to float over for seating (kidding, but who knows?) Another someone starts the popcorn. We all gather round, sitting together, to watch the replay of the life just completed. There is much laughter, maybe some misty-being tears. “Wow, look at you! We were all really shocked when that worked out. We thought you’d be coming home then, but you corrected course. Good save. Well done!” Maybe there’s some ribbing about choices that weren’t the best. Probably a lot of commiserating as well. “Yikes, what were you thinking there, you dodo?” and, of course, “Ouch, that really hurt, yeah?”

Some very famous old book advises us to “count it all joy.” I do trust that there is a difference between what I, the Lynette story, thinks is fun, and what my soul views as a great good time. That was made clear to me in a reading with the gifted medium, Sandy Soulsister, when my mother, whose young years were fraught with hideous sexual abuse, said “even in the hard times my soul was rejoicing.” And in the face of my shock at that pronouncement, she followed with, “it’s just a silly little human life, after all.

It’s taken me a loooong time to mesh “my soul was rejoicing” with what I know about my mother’s young life. Perspective. Our souls know that all is always well. Our souls know there’s no ending, that there’s no permanent loss in loss. They’ve got the big picture, the Awareness that experience is both for learning AND for fun, for joy though that joy may not be apparent until after we shed our skins. Sanaya describes the ecstatic love of THIS as endless loving creation. For God so loved the world that s/he/it created all things, everything in it, with love for every bit of it and that love is within us, embracing all of it, the stumbles and the triumphs, the heartbreaks and the rejoicing.

Awakening. There’s been no ride like it in my life. I used to curse the forgetting, not knowing why I’d do such a thing and now I embrace that, I embrace all of it, because in coming to really know who I am, there is a deep-seated and certain safety. Hell has been vanquished by truth. Not good enough has become meaningless. Awakening to Who We Are is the promise we return to Love, no matter what.

Then maybe, having finished yet another human life, we’ll look back and think “Whew! That was wild. Let’s do that again.” And we count it all joy.

*A note to the grieving: in the worst years after my husband and my father died, reading a couple of pages of those many, many Sanaya transcripts before bed each night provided so much comfort. It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket of love, making it possible to rest with a little less heartache.