Only Once?

SAT., FEB. 4, 1995, 6:55 AM
FARM, STUDY

Last evening was yet another opportunity to speak of matters spiritual. In some ways you did well, but, uncomfortably, you pulled up short of affirming that you, and some others, have been in the earth before, as part of your eternal, everlasting life. You believe this. You know this because I have told you it is so. And you see the sense to the observation that “it is no more amazing to be born twice than to be born once.”

I have reminded you often that time, this unique feature of this earth realm, is mostly circular. Years are linear, and you can count minutes, hours, weeks, and months also, but these are “recycled”. This is Saturday. There was a Saturday last week, and there will be another in each week to come. This is winter. Next it will be spring, but, finally, winter will return.

Energy, by your first law of thermodynamics, is not lost or gained, but is transformed from one form to another. You burn wood in your fireplace. When a log is burned up it shall be no more in that form. It has provided warmth and light, and its carbon dioxide “residue” can be taken in by leaves and returned as the oxygen necessary for your life. The ashes can be strewed, and they return minerals to the soil.

Atoms and molecules are continuously reborn and reformed. You are taking in and giving off many of these each day. You have heard that the cells of your body all die and are marvelously replaced each month. You have quietly and unobtrusively become a new, renewed person in comparison to what you were on the first day of this year. And you shall have twelve or so “reincarnations” this year alone, with some deterioration, and a lot of building up and repair.

With all of this circularity here in the earth, why would a human soul be born, live, and die only once? There are annual plants that live one season and then die, even as they leave seeds or roots for regeneration. But there also are perennial plants, and the trees that you see surrounding you here shall, in a few months, return to their full leafy splendor, replete with new molecules, some of them from you.

It could be said, then… and I will say it… that regeneration is the fundamental law of life, here and elsewhere. Life continuously regenerates, returns, in both similar and new forms. And so it is with the life of spirit. Spirit realms have no geography. From your earth perspective it is most convenient to affirm that heaven is up from the earth. There are many spirit realms, and they are not in any “place” that differentiates it from others. Spirits are here in the earth, even in the soil itself, certainly in rocks, trees, bodies of water and even in some buildings and other structures. Just as the earth is not just inert matter, so there is spirit and there are spirits throughout this plane. And as the soil is made fertile by its microscopic life, so the earth is made more holy by everpresent spirits.