Saturday, May 8, 2021

Why things happen: Our pre-birth plans (video)

Rob Schwartz (yoursoulsplan.com); Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Countless worlds in 31 Planes of Existence
Rob Schwartz offers both in-person and online workshops (arranged at rob.schwartz@yoursoulsplan.com for a minimum of 25 people). Sign up for newsletter for automatic notification of events.

The Awakening to Your Life Purpose, Discovering Your Life Plan workshop will be offered. It consists of four components:
  1. Talk about WHY we ourselves plan our greatest challenges before we are born;
  2. Divine Virtues exercise to gain insight into the qualities being worked on in this lifetime;
  3. Contact a Deceased Loved One group hypnotic regression (which can lead to contact with multiple loved ones on the other side including pets); and
  4. Group "Between Lives Soul Regression" (BLSR) in which to find what was planned for the current lifetime and WHY, how well things are going in terms of fulfilling the plan, and how to better fulfill those plans (in the form of an incredibly complex flowchart of decision points accounting for freewill and any change of mind or agreement).
People who experience a BLSR (as a group workshop or private session) often comment on the powerful, unconditional love and total nonjudgment of the nonphysical [deva] beings with whom they speak in the regression.

The conversation with those beings leads to a much deeper understanding of who we really are -- a "soul" beyond this one life to the being or gandhabba (Sanskrit gandharva, explained below) over many lives collectively and why we are here on earth at this time, which in turn leads to greater acceptance, peace, and joy.
  
Rob has many free gifts on the website (in the Help Yourself section of) yoursoulsplan.com. For more information about workshops, write to rob.schwartz@yoursoulsplan.com.

Buddhist explanation of popular Judeo-Christian concepts we all grew up with in the West
Dhr. Seven and Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly
In conventional terms, a "self" (atta or atman) is reborn countless times wandering through samsara. There are not only past and future lives, there are also intermediate rebirths between lives.

In the Mahātaṇhāsankhaya Sutra of the Middle Length Discourses (Majjhima Nikāya 38), the Buddha explains that an embryo begins to develop only when three conditions are met: a female must be at the appropriate point of the menstrual cycle, she and a male must join together, and a gandhabba must be present.

According to the commentary to this discourse, the use of the Pali word "gandhabba" does not refer to a celestial light being (deva), but a being enabled to be reborn by its karma. It is the state of a sentient being between rebirths.
    • Celestial deva of the Four Sky Kings
      [Ultimately, a gandhabba is not an eternal "soul," but conventionally it is what anyone would call "a soul, a spirit, a being, a personality, or a transmigrating relinking-consciousness process" because it does not die at death but persists through countless lives.]
    • [Again, it cannot be emphasized enough that this is NOT what it actually going on -- of course it is not permanent and eternal but constantly changing at every moment with no identity to cling to. But in ordinary ways of speaking, this is exactly what it seems like. And it may be spoken of in this way without misunderstanding if one is mindful that there is an ultimate truth to consider: Namely, the Buddha taught that to awaken (reach enlightenment and liberation from continued rebirth), one must directly see that all things are in fact, in an ultimate sense, anicca, dukkha, and anatta: impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal. These are the Three Universal Characteristics of all states of existence.]
    • Abhidhamma made simple
      [Anyone hearing the word "soul" in the West may immediately fall into the wrong view that there is a self to cling to when what is really there are Five Aggregates clung to as a self that are not a real self but impersonal composites operating under the force of karma going through all these experiences and taking them very seriously rather than seeing them as illusory, passing, and egoless, impersonal, and not-self. But how many times can we or the Buddha repeats this before we get it already? No amount of times. One will not get it until one practices the Ennobling Eightfold Path and practices insight meditation on a foundation of serenity meditation leaving the "self" (ego) and selfishness (manifesting as greed, aversion, and delusion) aside to see how things truly are in an ultimate sense or by reading and penetrating the Abhidhamma, the "Dharma (the Buddha's Teaching) in Ultimate Terms."].

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