The eternal question:
Why are we are?

My answer is simple. We’re here to learn, to grow, to forgive, to move on. Life is an education. In grade school if we fail we are held back to learn the lesson we didn’t learn the first time around. It’s the same in life, if we failed to learn, if we failed to forgive, then we will be faced with that same situation the next time we return. That’s right, you read that correctly. The NEXT time we RETURN. We all come back, and we come back in groups. We come back in groups to heal wrongs done, to forgive and to move on. I’ve had a couple of adversarial relationships in this lifetime. Time went by where we didn’t speak for days and weeks on end. I didn’t comprehend why this occurred at the time. I simply wanted the relationships to be better. I wasn’t prepared to make the changes necessary to alter the relationships I was involved in. I went from complete hate to depression and I had absolutely no knowledge of how to change the course of my life. I just wanted things to get better. Things were only getting worse. I understand now this was all part of my soul-education. I needed to figure this out on my own, otherwise I was doomed to keep repeating this same school class over and over.

Finally about fifteen years ago I had an epiphany. I finally understood. I couldn’t change the people in my life who were causing me such consternation. I could only change myself. Once this dawned on me I was able to affect everyone else. I learned that soul lesson and now we are all best friends. It was all because I changed. Such a simple lesson to learn but one I couldn’t see when I was going through it. Like that saying. You can’t see the forest for the trees. And now that we’re all best friends in this lifetime, we’ll always be best friends in every incarnation. We are here to learn and grow, to forgive and move on. Until we can learn these simple lessons we’re doomed to replay the same situations over and over. I finally understand that and I live my life in a completely different way now because of this new found comprehension. We do all come back and it’s our choice how we choose to live with this group of people that is always in our lives.

Have you ever walked into a room, seen someone and had an immediate connection w/him/her, known from the moment you saw them that you were going to be friends, that your lives would be intertwined from that first day on? It’s happened to me countless times. One incident sticks out in my mind. About twenty years ago I was in a fiction writing class. The class had just begun when someone walked in. I looked up and knew IMMEDIATELY (don’t ask how, because I have no explanation for it) that we would be friends. After that first class was over he and I walked out to the parking lot together. VERY weird. It was like we’d known each other forever.

Too many experiences have happened to me in the past to doubt that we’re all connected.

I have one really close friend who I share some really weird crazy strange similarities with:
–We both share the same birthday. (Not the same year)
–Our mothers share the same first name.
–We’re both photographers.

I’m genuinely interested in your feedback. Anyone else have similar experiences they’s like to share? There are a couple of books out there that should be on your reading list if you want to know more:
1. Old Souls by Tom Shroder.
Tom Shroder is a newspaper reporter who traveled w/UVA Professor Ian Stevenson to Lebanon and India to document reports of children as young as 3-5 years who recall past lives. Very interesting the data that Stevenson was able to find. Most cases discussed in the book had these young children recalling past lives down to minute details and when Stevenson and Shroder were able to track down the previous families the child was able to find previous family members and the children knew things about the previous family that was unexplainable.

2. Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss
This book should be in the public conscious of everyone. Weiss is an MD who studied at Yale. He becomes interested in the case of a women named Catherine who has quite a few emotional issues. Catherine starts seeing Brian Weiss for therapy. When no progress is made after months, Weiss suggests hypnotherapy. That’s when things get interesting.

3. What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson
Check out the movie too w/Robin Williams
Another movie to see is Dead Again w/Kenneth Branagh.

Have you ever seen this:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation08.html