Eric M W:
Hey Colleen,
Who is Rob Hubbard? A link to free dharma material is always great!
I'm glad you are open about past lives, I wish more practitioners were open to exploring or discussing this aspect of practice. I do understand why "psychic powers" are somewhat frowned upon, though, because they can be a distractor when it comes to insight. I personally know of one past life of mine, including a specific name and date, which was creepy at the time. I have a few others I suspect might be past lives, but it's hard to say for certain.
Look at Robert Monroe's books, his stuff is great for understanding past lives and why we incarnate. He was an atheist when he started having spontaneous OBEs, so he had to come up with his own framework. It's refershing to read about this topic without having to decode another culture or language.
What are your thoughts on future lives?
Eric
Hello, Eric, kind regards. Do you have a practice log? I have been unusually busy outdoors and mean to read all the practice logs.
"Rob Hubbard" is the infamous "Ron Hubbard", founder of Scientology and writer of books on the mind, including Dianetics. I met him at the end of my last life and he made an impression on me and so I meant to look him up again this life -- unfortunately he had already passed but I read many of his technical treatise's on the mind and also signed up for about 2 years of "auditing" to discover many past lives -- this was done outside the church.
How did you come to find out the specifics of that past life?
Getting into past lifes can be a way to boost ego, which is going in the wrong direction. It can also be educational if viewed sequentially as far back as one can go, which is what I did. But for Nirvana -- incidents should only come up as a result of exploring and nulling or erasing compulsions which can be arranged as a scale of goals with the highest being "To Know/To be Known" and going down from there.
I specialize in eating compulsions -- "must eat/must not eat" and attendant sensations and so most of the incidents my clients come up with are related to eating or drinking, and most of the time in this life first of all.
Buddha did feel the bite of his own past incidents and he was successful in putting them out of the now and back into the past where they belong without doing a "oh, I must not know about that..." Why should any of our past be hidden from us?
At this stage of my own learning curve I can't make progress without encountering incidents that are goals related. I take whatever the mind gives me.
I did read Robert Munro in the late 70's and it did stir up something in me, even though I was largely asleep and mostly seeking phenomenon, or "siddhis".
There is really nothing mysterious about being psychic or having abilities that are considered beyond human. A cat can make you want to feed it and make you think it is your own idea because no one told it not to do that. As we make progress towards Nirvana the limiters start to come off, but at the same time we are becoming wiser about games and would think twice about getting back into the mire.
For example, I spent many lifetimes doing yogic flying but look at me now, worse than before, still a compulsive games player. I've changed my tact and am gaining siddhis by removing compulsions first, and then I might find more interesting things to do than flying around the neighborhood, scaring people. :-))
I've seen "futures", to answer your question, but I realize they are mutable, but one can look at one's most probable future and analyze it for the compulsions in it and then improve on it by nulling those compulsions in present time.
Always ask for the best, intend it, process out any counter-intentions and how can you go wrong doing that?