by Samantha Dunn

Created on: July 30, 2009   Last Updated: August 01, 2009

Many people believe in reincarnation of some form. With all of the different religions and spiritualities it is not inconceivable that several have similarities. Many people found themselves lost, not knowing what to believe, and so they had to strike out on their own in search of a belief that called to their soul. For some this belief is reincarnation, for others an eternal afterlife, and for still yet others nothing. At the age of sixteen I myself felt lost, I did not know what to believe. I was raised Baptist, but to me there seemed to be discrepancies in what I was taught and told. Things in the bible we read were too astounding to be realistic to me even as a very imaginative child, so I had to search for an idea that felt right to me, that called to my soul.

I read many books on life, religion, spirituality, death, everything imaginable really, and finally came to my own conclusion. Why Not? Why can't everybody's beliefs be real? I settled on the idea that what a person believes is what is real for them. That settled, I wondered why people fought over the idea of what is right to believe and what is wrong. I decided what others thought was of no consequence to me, I would not force my beliefs on them and I would not allow them to do so to me.

There are many people that believe a past life is what determines who or what you will become in your next life. There are others that believe when you die that is it, there is nothing there, just dirt and blackness and unawareness. Some believe in an eternal afterlife where your actions in this life determine what you will spend your afterlife doing. There are plenty of theories on religion, but how many on the idea of reincarnation?

The common idea of reincarnation one may run into is that a soul is continuously used. Over and over it dies in one body and is born in another, at a later date. In the most common of reincarnation beliefs stands the idea that what is human will come back as human. A twist on this idea is that a person could be reincarnated as an animal or an insect. However; I am not clear on how this works. For some they believe if one dies and has lived a good life they can choose what to be in their next life, while those with a bad life will have no choice, perhaps to become a dung beetle and see what the poo they have fed people their whole lives tastes like. This ties into the idea of Karma. A good deal of people that stake their claim in reincarnation believe in Karma. Thinking that ones

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