Now I want to go to Disneyland.

JB stated that everything that happens to you, you attracted to you. And basically you have to learn how to be compassionate. So I'm asking... If you were a sociopath, or had some mental illness that rendered you incapable of such feelings... did you attract that to you? Meaning did you bring on the mental illiness to yourself?

Compassion is related to unconditional love. Love and compassion is something that will guide your life in the positive direction towards positive things. Without the ability to feel love and compassion towards others, you will not proceed to the next step spiritually.

Krimsa,

Empathy is a word, for me, that does not have the deep spiritual impact as compassion. It seems temporary and attached. Like a brief time spent feeling sorry for someone.

Compassion is deeper. It comes with more understanding and love in my opinion.

jb

Oh I get it now Jill. I had to backtrack a little ways. So you are asking if they somehow caused that to happen? To be born as a sociopath? No. I also dont believe that people are born evil necessarily. Its just an unfortunate combination of psychological and external factors that combine and create a perfect storm.

An example of learning compassion:

I always thought my mom was a hypochondriac and made herself sick for whatever reason.

Now, I have Lupus. I have real compassion for people with "invisible" diseases.

JB, as always I respect you and your opinions. And I always enjoy talking to you. But as far as us choosing before we're even born what happens to us, then how can we take responisibilty or control over our life? If we already decided before we even got here, then we dont' truly have control over anything that happens. So that being said, how can we learn, evolve, and change when it was already decided before we got here?

The idea that life is a school is a very popular notion.

I personally don't buy into it.

I believe that as spirits in our true essence, we have nothing to learn. We already know everything.

We forfeit that knowledge when we come into the physical world.

The only purpose is to enjoy the experience. Not to learn.

The reason I say this is becuase the idea of spirits learning things implies that spirits too, grow in maturity and wisdom.

But if that is true then spirits aren't any better off than humans. They would just be stuck in the same predicament as humans. The only difference is that they wouldn't have physical bodies.

Morover, what would be the 'final goal' of an eternal spirit?

How could an eternal spirit even have a final goal?

That makes no sense at all to me.

I don't think we are here to learn, but rather just to participate.

Participation is the only 'goal' that's necessary.

Sure, we can get into the 'lofty' idea that we are supposed to learn good morals.

But I don't buy into that.

The reason I don't buy into it is because people don't seem to progress linearly in that way at all. Neither historically, nor during the span of a lifetime.

I don't believe that I've learned any better morals during the course of my life than I had as a fairly young child. Of course, then I was never out to get anybody from the get go.

I can't put myself in the mindset of people who were.

So I can only speak to my own life's experience.

I wasn't born mean with a desire to get over on everyone I met.

My entire life was just a matter of wanting to share life with people and do nice constructive things.

It's true that I have learned something from experience.

I used to get peeved at people who harmed me, now I don't so much. But even when I was younger, although I would get peeved it was always a very short-lived grudge and I never took on the mindset of feeling a need to 'get even'.

But I have met people who were obcessed with getting even!

Clearly that's a character trait that I have seen in other people but have never truly experienced in my own personal life.

So if life is some sort of 'lesson' this brings us right back to the idea of reincarntion again, because I must have leared that revenge isn't worth it in a past life. I certainly didn't learn it in this one since I have never felt a need to get revenge in this life.

I think the point of life is just to enjoy it the best you can, whilst not harming others.

For me, the 'not harming others' part is easy because I have no desire to harm others.

But I guess that's just not true for everyone.

Clearly there are people who have no problem harming others, and there are even people who actually thrive on harming others.

Eveyone isn't the same. That much is for sure.

That's another reason why I never bought into the Biblical crap that all men are sinners.

I say baloney. That's a blanket judgment that is totally invalid and clearly a lie and holds no truth whatsoever.

I don't think that means you brought the lupus upon yourself. It also doesn't change the fact that your mom very well was a hypchondriac.

I didn't mean to imply that I brought it on myself. I mean that the only way I could truly have compassion for a person with an autoimmune disease was to have one myself. She isn't a hypochondriac. She is actually quite ill. And, now I understand to a small extent what she goes through. I am not nearly as sick as she is.

The problem with picking a specific life and asking a question like this is that my belief is based on the premise that we live many lives.

We have probably experienced being abused, being abusers, being sick, being killed in many different and horrible ways etc.

I believe I lived a life during the hyberborian age. It was an age when the black race was the root race of the earth.

The white race were people who lived in caves and were considered evil creatures of the darkness. Many were captured and made into slaves. I witnessed both my parents being tortured and killed in that life. That is about all I can remember about it.

We live many lives for many reasons.

jb

OK... I get what you're saying now. And I'm sorry to hear of your mother being so ill

James, I understand where you are coming from, but I have a whole different feeling about it. If the purpose of life is to just enjoy it and participate in it, then I would have no reason to continue through it. I long for whatever I left behind....I can't explain it exactly, but I find life to be tedious and painful. There are brief moments of joy and happiness, but I only feel peace by accepting what I am going through and not because I am particularly enjoying the experience.

Please don't misunderstand me here........I am not suicidal. But, if it weren't for the fact that there is a purpose to this life then I would be packing my bags right now to leave. Even if that purpose is only to make others happy, like my children. But, it can't just be to "enjoy the experience". At least not for me.

TY.

I agree. How could we possibly evolve if it wasn't for a learning process? We are here to learn, and to experience what we learned in a former life. Otherwise life wouldn't make any sense.

agreed... I don't know what the purpose of life is. But I know and would hope there isn't this much pain and suffering going on with everyone just to experience it.

It has nothing to do with whether or not I'm comfortable with the idea.

I'm saying that it can't possible be true unless you believe in soliplism.

And the reason being that eveyone in a family would need to attract the same things to them.

Also if you are in a plane crash, then eveyone aboard that plane had to have attracted that crash to themselves.

The list goes on.

It's has absolutely nothing at all to do with feeling comfortable with the concept.

I just don't see how it's doable. Period.

The example, would be when I got laid off from companies. Or anyone.

Did all of the employees who worked for a company than went under attract their lay off?

I don't think so.

I just don't believe that is even makes sense to believe that we attract everything into our lives without acception.

It's just not a sensible idea to me.

Clearly things happen to us that we did not attract.

That has to be a given as far as I'm concern, and it has absolutely nothing to do with being comfortable or uncomfortble with the idea.

It just isn't remotely reasonable as far as I'm concerned.

I do believe that we can indeed attract things into our lives.

But I definitely do not believe that we attract everything.

Some parts of our lives are in indeed just due to random events that we truly have no control over.

I firmly believe that.

It has to be that way.

It's not a matter of what I'm comfortable with accepting. It just can't be any other way. Unless your suggesting solipsism.

That would be the only way it could be true as far as I can see.

We don't choose in detail what happens to us before we incarnate into a particular life. It is a very general choice. It is like a package we agree to. We say that we want to learn certain things, and then we accept what ever the course presents that causes us to learn that. We just place our faith in the higher self to guide our lives as we face these challenges.

When you say "we don't truly have control over our life" you are speaking from the ego or the incarnated life person, and not from the true self. You are the true self. The true self does have complete control.

The key is to make contact with the true self. That is the key. That requires you to listen to that higher mind that is you.

When my higher self speaks to me it is in my own voice. It is the same voice I here inside of my head when I think in words. This is how I know it is me and that I am not psychotic or hearing voices of someone else or some evil spirit.

I have done telepathy with people who were great at projecting their thoughts and I have heard their voice in my head so I know the difference between a telepathic communication and communication from my higher mind or higher self.

I speak with confidence that what I am saying is true because I have actually experienced these things, not just because I believe them.

It is hard to have this kind of faith and confidence if you have not experienced these things yourself.

You can experience these things. Just decide to make contact with your higher self and that higher mind that knows more than you know. Ask that for guidance to achieve your purpose and you will get that guidance.

You will know your own voice when you hear it.

jb

Well, there you go.

You found your purpose in life.

My purpose was taking care of my mother.

When she died, I lost my purpose too.

I feel much the same as you Ruth. It's hard to live life for myself. And it's also hard to live life for others when I don't have the resources to help others.

I bearly have the resources to help myself much less anyone else.

Hopefully that will change as I learn the methodology of magick.

today is a good day for some money magick. I just decided that.

I was kind of thinking that also Ruth since the Gris Gris bags have historically been considered quite helpful for gamblers. I might make one of those bags up and then go find me a card game.