Some Thoughts on the Idea That We Come Here to "Learn Lessons"

One of the persistent areas of concern when it comes to the afterlife and its relationship to this world is the concept of reincarnation and the idea that we choose to come here to "learn lessons." And, if we don't learn our lessons, we might have to, or choose to, come back to learn the lessons we failed to learn this time around.

People in this group often express their desire to never come back, and often worry about why they chose to come here in the first place, what "lessons" they came here to "learn," and whether or not they are fulfilling that process. They occasionally wonder, "why couldn't we have just learned those things over there, without going through all this pain and suffering?"

My view on this mirror's Robert Monroe's perspective when he answered this question about the most important things we come here to learn: you can't actually live any length of time in this world and not learn some very basic things: how to identify the distinction between yourself and others and other things; how to move your physical body around and orient yourself in a space-time construct; how to breathe; how to recognize and use patterns, how to deliberately do or say or think things, etc. We "learn" these things not because some teacher is educating us; these things are just built into the fundamental qualities of life here.

One of the fundamental things we get out of living a life here is our well-defined sense of self, our personality, the things we we enjoy and love as well as the list of things we do not enjoy - IOW, our ego. This is why I disagree with the often-expressed view that it's a good thing to get rid of your ego, or that the ego goes away when you die. It's what makes me uniquely me. I didn't come here to "get rid" of my ego; I came here to grow/develop/refine my ego for it to blossom into its full state when I die in what we call "the afterlife" because there it has already manifested as a full reality. IMO, this process is what "expands" all of existence into being: countless unique individuals manifesting unique contributions to the "all that is."

The thing is, we do this when we have lives here whether we do it deliberately or not, whether we're aware that we're doing it or not. It's just the nature of existing and having a life in this world, whether we are conscious about having "learned" how to do this or not.

Another major thing we unavoidably, naturally "learn" how to do here is: we learn how to code and decode. We do this first when we are very young and we naturally decode primitive language by making noises and gestures to get something from the adults who are taking care of us. We decode basic physics and intentional physical activities in space-time by getting our body to move around, crawling and reaching towards objects, etc. We "code" our sounds and gestures and movements via pure, raw, primitive intention and attention. I mean, it's not like anyone gave us an operator's manual for using these bodies. We didn't attend a class. We don't even have a control panel in our heads with labels for "reach out" or "if I cry I'll get the uncomfortable, warm nasty soup removed from my bottom."

We learn how to decode the sensations in our mind and then recode them into strings of symbolic sounds or markings - language - in order to communicate with others. It doesn't really matter how good you are at it; you've "learned" how to do it. That's an extremely useful ability to develop and have with us when we get to the afterlife because we can use that to recognize patterns in the afterlife, decode them, and translate them into our own ability to input code (via intention and attention) into the "physics" there to intentionally generate aspects of our experiences going forward there with our partners and others we love.

To some degree, we "learn" how to manage our ego and psychology. It doesn't matter if you get good at it; you pretty much have to learn some basic fundamentals. You can get good at it later, in the afterlife, even if it's particularly difficult in life here.

We come here and "learn" what suffering is; nobody can "teach" you what suffering is. You just have to experience it. Suffering is an extremely valuable experience for many reasons that can only become clear later - such as when Irene died, and the suffering I experienced was a revelation to me about how much she means to me and how much I love her. I thought I knew; I didn't. I had no idea, really, that she is everything to me, until she died and I was staring at the black abyss of my life without her. Nobody can "teach" you that. You have to actually experience it.

Suffering here also provides necessary context so that the enjoyment and appreciation of the afterlife and what it offers can be maximized - or really, even experienced to any degree. If you live your entire life in and surrounded by wealth, there's no way you can really understand its value, what it provides, or enjoy or appreciate it. It's just the ubiquitous "normal" without any contrasting context. If you live in this world for any length of time, you're going to suffer to some degree or another. That's just the nature of this world.

I guess you can call what we get out of our life in this world "learning lessons," but IMO it's not about learning lessons in any normal sense of that phrase, any more than a seed "learns a lesson" about how to break through the ground and start producing leaves and grow into a tree, or learns how to produce bark or learns how to manufacture the photosynthesis mechanisms it needs to survive. Or how to find moisture in the ground. It's all built into the seed and in the seed's environment.

IOW, if you're reading this, you can't "not succeed" in "learning your lessons" here. You've already "learned" them. All you're really doing now is refining these abilities and using them to more deliberately and consciously "grow" (like the tree) in a manner that suits you as the individual you are. IMO, this is not to learn "universal lessons" because those are inescapable and basically automatic, as I have described, but in terms of your own unique creation of the aspect of infinite creation that can only be generated as an expression of you as a unique individual.

The greatest thing I "learned" here is exactly what kind of being - or species of "tree" - I am: I'm a pair-bonded romantic love tree. My roots, trunk, limbs and leaves are thoroughly and completely enmeshed with and dependent upon my mate - Irene. I have absolute clarity about this only because when she died, I experienced it fully with no way to hide from it. It was just another "lesson" - if you want to call it that - that nobody could ever teach me or explain to me. I had to come here and experience it for myself.