Birth as Earned Result
There is a trend of thinking which is natural but which is erroneous when considered from the view of reincarnation. That view is that a person who is not born in a well-to-do or skilled family, and who endeavors and is successful, did so and should be recognized as being even greater than one who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth or whose was born to parents who were super-skilled.
The fallacy in this view is that it does not take into account reincarnation. The endeavors of one who is born in a wealthy or skilled family and who from day one has an advantage because of easy money or exposure to skills, are not seen in the present life but were there in the past life and were just as laborious or enterprising as those who took births in poor or unskilled families, and become successful presently.
For those who endeavor and are successful in the current life, we see the evidence directly while for those who endeavored in the past life we only see that they got a result. We assume that there was no pre-endeavor in the past life. This is due to the lack of ability to see the past life.
This lack of ability to pierce the past was discussed by Krishna who stated that Arjun did not have the ability. Call that ability a siddhi or whatever suits your fancy; but to be without that causes one to form the wrong view. Ignorance is not something to be proud of. A lack of insight siddhi is not something to wave a flag about. It is a case of psychic blindness which causes someone to miscalculate.
A yogi should have an inkling into the past life and should not reduce everything to what is seen only in the present circumstance. How can one hold an enlightened conversation with someone who habitually only regards the present life?
Here is the statement of Krishna (my English translation):
श्रीभगवानुवाच
बहूनि मे व्यतीतानि
जन्मानि तव चार्जुन ।
तान्यहं वेद सर्वाणि
न त्वं वेत्थ परंतप ॥४.५॥
śrībhagavānuvāca
bahūni me vyatītāni
janmāni tava cārjuna
tānyahaṁ veda sarvāṇi
na tvaṁ vettha paraṁtapa (4.5)
śī bhagavān — the Blessed Lord; uvāca — said; bahūni — many; me — of Me; vyatītāni — transpired; janmāni — births; tava — your; cārjuna = ca — and + arjuna — Arjuna; tānyahaṁ = tāny (tāni) — them + aham — I; veda — I recall; sarvāṇi — all; na — not; tvaṁ — you; vettha — you remember; paraṁtapa — O scorcher of the enemies
The Blessed Lord said: Many of My births transpired, and yours, Arjuna. I recall them all. You do not remember, O scorcher of the enemies. (4.5)
e Blessed Lord said: Many of My births transpired, and yours, Arjuna. I recall them all. You do not remember, O scorcher of the enemies. (4.5)
-
From LinkedIn:
-
"There is a danger for those of us who want to go to higher dimensions, where if we maintain in ourselves the earn-my-keep attitude, we may deprive ourselves of the opportunity to get transferred from having to take these physical transmigrations.The idea that by the sweat of his/her brow a person should eat bread has some value when one uses a material body but if we keep it as an attitude in the subtle body or psychology, then we will limited ourselves only to physical existence.In the higher dimensions no one works for a living. It is 100% leisure existence with no possibility of endeavoring for anything."
This last reply quoted above I find very critical based on personal experience. The gist of my realization can be based on a timely reminder by Michael, regarding the "future live" of a caged bird.
Once conditioned to living under a certain format of livelihood poignantly or otherwise, it is a tedious affair to switch or adapt to the opposite. So when the bird was liberated from the cage, it found it impossible to regain its true freedom. All it's dreams of the outdoors turned into mere fantasies, for even when granted the opportunity they could not be turned into reality.
Erinn Earth ~ (devaPriya Yogini) After reading your books and learning from you I've really been able to see people as composite forms made up of lifetimes of experiences contained in their psyche, the vehicle of reincarnation.
I see people more wholly now and discern (judge) them from a more enlightened perspective. (I do this to my own self too.)
So many experiences and complexities brought us all the moment we exist in right now. We are not just one person.
But thank the Lords for Yoga so that we may have a fighting chance to clear the air, clear the mind, the karma and samskara and get the heck up and out of this dimension!!
Great post and I'll be thinking about it while at work dealing with complex souls!!
Gordon Paterson Intriguing question, Michael! Incarnation is not the only subject that is difficult to discuss with ajnanis. Best wishes, Nirguna
Eileen Hitch Xenarios Interesting points. What is your perspective of material wealth and success related to spirituality? I’m just curious how that would fit in. With the traditions that I study, material excess would be seen as something that needs to be overcome as an obstacle to spiritual progress. Therefore, if a person evolves spiritually, they wouldn’t necessarily have material success as we define them in their next lives. Thoughts on that?
Michael Beloved Eileen Hitch Xenarios,
Technically speaking there is no relationship between physical opulence (material wealth/success) and spirituality. There is an example of how to understand this in the life story of Vamana Vishnu, a dwarf boy who was rated as an incarnation of God. As the story goes he wanted to get three steps of land from the Emperor Bali. The emperor for his part explained to the boy, that three steps of land was useless because if one wanted to build a residence and farm then more land would better serve the purpose. However Vamana insisted that three steps was enough because he said that if a person was not satisfied with that amount, even the entire planet would be insufficient.
In other words being satisfied with what is easily attainable is a demonstration of being spiritual satisfied? Being greedy and wanting more is an indication of being out of touch with spirituality.
Michael Beloved To directly answer your query, I would state that in my experience, I found that material nature already has its idea of what it is willing to give anybody. It may give a criminally minded person money. It may keep a law-abiding citizen on a provenance of scarcity with enough only or even with less than enough generally.
If one tries to outfit oneself with more than nature willing will provide, one may get into hardship, stress and difficulty. For most people excess wealth serves as a distraction from spirituality. For that matter with wealth comes the need to preserve and protect the opulence. That takes energy and attention which could otherwise we used to research and realize spirituality.
Wealth attracts competition and causes others to envy oneself. In the Uddhava Gita, Krishna gave the example of the hawk which acquired a piece of meat and flew away with it. Some other hawks noticed and attacked it in midair, dive bombing it to get the meat.
Michael Beloved For while the hawk kept the meat and fought as best as it could. But then it dropped the meat and the pursuing hawks left it and dove down to get the fallen meat. Krishna said that the hawk became happy once the meat fell from its beak.
This means that any opulence we have which is noticed or heard of by others may cause envy, which in turn makes us become the subject of attacks. That unnerves or stresses us out, which is an inefficient use of energy which could otherwise be used to discover and reinforce spirituality which is life beyond the endangered physical body.
~~~~~~~
What you said is correct that if a person evolves spiritually, he/she would not necessarily have material success. This is absolutely true. But we must take care not to come under social influences which would make us become dissatisfied if we have no opulence.
Michael Beloved Someone may be evolved spiritually and have access to abundance, while some other person may be even more evolved and be hard up for money. This is because each individual self has a preset relationship with material nature where one may be its favorite and one may not be in its graces, no matter what one does to change this.
Hence it takes resignation to fate.
Sometimes a mother is easy on one child and very permitting to the infant while the same mother is rude and disciplinary to her other child and very hard up to it. Why is this? People say that all relationships should be equally serviced!
What is the cause of innate favoritism?
I feel that the best way for people who are on the spiritual path is to recognize how best to get along with material nature and adopt the relationship where nature is the least antagonistic to oneself and where it best facilitates realization of the spiritual self. If that means poverty, then so be it!
Michael Beloved Jesus Christ helped us to understand this:
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Michael Beloved There is a danger for those of us who want to go to higher dimensions, where if we maintain in ourselves the earn-my-keep attitude, we may deprive ourselves of the opportunity to get transferred from having to take these physical transmigrations.
The idea that by the sweat of his/her brow a person should eat bread has some value when one uses a material body but if we keep it as an attitude in the subtle body or psychology, then we will limited ourselves only to physical existence.
In the higher dimensions no one works for a living. It is 100% leisure existence with no possibility of endeavoring for anything.