I do not know how old you you are. But I guess at least 20 years. 20 years makes 7300 days,if you are 40 about 15 000 day. How many days do you remember? Lets look only at your birthdays. This are special days, but I assume you do not recall all of them!
With this 7000 days there were very special days, day you were very happy and days you were very very sad.
How many can you remember? A hand full? 10 or even 15? Not that they are important anymore, they are gone! We forget them, most of them. But we do not forget the lessens, not the questions they bring us, to make us look for the answers.
If I look at my life, I had a few life changing experiences. No, nothing dramatic.
In my first part I was a normal German becoming an electrician. Then as it was custom by then in Germany I was requested to join the German volunteer army. I did for a short time and then became a legal conscientious objector (Kriegsdienstverweigerer). There I was confronted with a new set of people and a new set ideas and new ways of living. I did some schooling and then became a member of the German Volunteer service. I was sent to Africa for 2 years and there I had a new set of people and of ideas again.
I like to think that each step build on the previous one. But when I cam back from Africa, it was not a clean cut as it has been from the electrician to the Conscientious Objector. I kept the friends and acquaintances form my time as a Contentious Objector.
I went to university (I was already 27 when I started) where again I met a new set of people but now I did not mingle much. They all were much younger and I had a certain goal (I wanted to go back to Africa and build a farm together with am guy from Austria I had met there). By then I still was an atheist, but had started to look for a (different/real) meaning of life (again). You could say I was looking for God again whom I had lost at the start as an apprentice for the electrician craftsman ship.
I had left my parents place when I was 18 and only occasional went back there - mostly for family celebrations. During one of this occasions it was the Eulogius Fest, a procession with horses. As a boy this had been a very special day, but now I was there as a spectator. Like hundreds of others I stood at the roadside occasionally changing the position. It was a sunny day I think second Sunday of June, so it was fairly warm and I looked for a place not so exposed to the sun.
There in the half shade, I was addressed by a stranger. A stranger? Well to me. It turned our that he was my colleague and fellow apprentice when we became electricians. We had worked together for 3 and a half years and also spend some of our spare time together, but I could not recognize him. Of course I did not show!
It was a shocking experience. I was studying by then, so my memory was fairly good, but this man, this former friend, was erased from my memory?
Even now, I remember the occasion but I do not remember him. I mean if I would meet him in the streets I would not recognize him!
Maybe because we had no special experiences together. No fights I recall and no special highlights. Maybe he was like a normal sunny day in my life, in our lives.
If this can happen in one life time, what more so if we die and reincarnate in a different body? What if we change race and sex?
But there is more to it!
If we extend out question "Why" and look at the spiritual side of life, we may find another piece of the puzzle.
Again if you look back at your life. What come to mind first? A happy experience and second a bad one? Or is it vice verse? From the 10 days or events you remember how many are happy and how many are sad occasions?
And to go a step further, which of the 10 events had a bigger influence on your live?
Eckankar teaches that we are now at the peak of our spiritual development, even if we are a beggar or a criminal in the outer life. Now if you dwell in the esoteric communities or New Age groups you find a lot of people claiming to have been Jesus or saints, kings or heroes. I do not say it is not true, but I like to ask you how many saints, heroes or Jesuses do you know? I never heard a person claim he or she was a beggar or criminal! This is the hard side folks!
Before you can enter the realm of the primal force, no matter of you call it God, Allah or Sugmad you have to look a your dark side too.
If we look at all religions, and Eckankar is not difference here, we learn that God is almighty all encompassing - but the negative force is not part of it!
But this leads to a new set of questions, so lets go back to you and me and the HERE and NOW!
We do not like to have a dark side. We ignore it if we can, or keep it to ourselves if possible, we even like to forget it.
Now if we try to forget the bad things we did or want to do in this lifetime, how much do you think we shut this off when we reincarnate?
Btw. if you want to start to recall some of your former life times or if bad dreams hunt you, Eckankar offers a number of exercises to to put the Vail aside.
