Reincarnation is the process by which a Spirit incarnates in a physical body as many times as needed in order to achieve perfection. Every time someone dies his or her spirit will take a new body to continue its progress. Simply put, reincarnation is the rebirth of the soul into a new human body. The principle of reincarnation should not be mistaken with beliefs of the human soul coming back into animal bodies. Such process doesn’t happen because the human soul can only reincarnate in a human body since it is constantly progressing and cannot come back into an inferior bodily form.
Reincarnation is a natural law of life which has been taught for thousands of years. Reincarnation is one of the main principles of Spiritism and the perspective that Spiritism has on reincarnation is that it is the only answer that it is in harmony with God’s justice which explains the differences amongst peoples’ lives. Since God is supremely just it treats everyone equally therefore the differences amongst us were not created by God but rather is the consequence of our actions during our process of evolution through many reincarnation experiences.
Thus Spiritism explains why there are the poor and the rich; the intelligent and the ignorant; the healthy and the ill; the attractive and the unattractive; the strong and the weak. Also have you ever asked yourself why were you born in the family that you have; why there is so much hatred between family relatives; why some people despite their effort to change their lives apparently everything seems to go on the opposite way? Why identical twins despite having the same genetic information can be so different from one another; and so on .. All these questions are easily answered and understood through the lenses of reincarnation which clearly demonstrates that whatever is our current social position, professional status, our health, the family that we have, the culture in which we belong; these are all factors which were created by our own actions in past lives. If in our present there are negative factors which are a source of sadness they are the result of negative actions from past lives. If we have positive factors which contribute to our happiness they are the result of positive actions from past lives.
Of course, there are many problems that we create in this same reincarnation. For example, if I have Cirrhosis of liver I can trace the cause of my suffering back to when I started drinking alcohol at an early age. Or if I have lung cancer I can trace back this disease when I started smoking when I was just 15 yrs old. But there are many problems that we face that we can’t understand what we have done to deserve such amount of suffering. For example, a child that hasn’t had the time to do anything evil but is born with a great physical impairment for the rest of his life, having Down Syndrome is a good example of this principle. Many people would argue that the parents of the child are being punished for their mistake. But is God being just when he makes an individual suffer because of his parent’s mistakes? Not to mention that that are many cases when children with Down Syndrome are left to strangers to take care of them and never sees their parents again. So is very clear that the explanation of God punishing the parents by making the child suffer is completely against the notion of a just and loving God.
The child with Down Syndrome is a Spirit who is amending his mistakes from past reincarnations and has received the opportunity to rehabilitate himself by going through a hard trial. In general a child with Down Syndrome is someone who committed suicide with a gunshot destroying the part of their brain that controls reasoning. As many would argue a person who kill themselves would be sent to hell for eternity. On the other hand, by reincarnating the Spirit would go through the Down Syndrome experience to fix his spiritual body to continue its progress. So at the end God is indeed all love and justice and he gives us all opportunities to fix our mistakes and move on.
Therefore the way we have conducted ourselves in previous lives shapes who we are today and molds the major events of our present. Thus our present is the result of our past and our future is the result of our present.
Above all reincarnation explains that we are never a victim of any situation and regardless of how difficult our lives are we have shaped it to be this way with our actions. But is important to understand that we are not being punished but rather we are receiving an opportunity to repair our past which will makes us morally strong and will help us to avoid doing the same mistakes in future reincarnations. The law of reincarnation places squarely in our hands the responsibility of our lives and teaches us that the biggest obstacle that one may have is our own imperfections.
Finally we all have heard the saying “we reap what we sow” and there is a profound truth to that affirmation. Thus if you are not satisfied with your life Spiritism states change your actions and you will forever change the course of your destiny.
