Reincarnation, Parrots and Female Fishermen

Jim Whitaker
"Hill of Beans" Author, Columnist,
Staff Writer Cynic Online Magazine has kindly allowed me to share his email to me:

When I was a kid I thought reincarnation was when you returned the evaporated milk can to the store and they refilled it. Come to think of it, reincarnation is something like that.

Reincarnation is the belief that when you die your body decomposes but your soul, spirit, essence, psyche -all right, whatever you consider you have - lives on. Then you are reborn in another body or form. If you’ve lived a wicked or at least non-exemplary life, you may return as a slug in a salt mine, a hopelessly tone-deaf wannabe on American Idol “performing” in front of Simon, or some other unenviable creation suffering in just retribution for your previous life indiscretions. That’ll learn you. If you’ve been first-rate, though, you get the reward of coming back in a higher status of life. Maybe you’ll be Simon. That’ll learn you, too.

So I got to thinking – now there’s something that’ll weaken the nation. A lot of people tell me what I am, but I wondered what I supposedly have been. Funny, I don’t remember any previous lives, just some of this one. Between you and me, I can barely remember what happened yesterday or even this morning.

What was I writing about just now anyway?

Oh, yeah.

In fact, researchers say, very few people overtly remember their past lives at all. Recollections of earlier experiences have to be coaxed out of them under hypnosis. Which makes me ask the question: If you can’t remember in your present life the lessons you learned in a past life to help you do better in this life and a future life, what’s the point of living the past life? There’s a sentence with a past life all its own.

Regardless, I wanted to know – without the hypnosis, thank you – so I used an online past life analysis generator. Hey, that’s what they call the thing.

You type in the date you were born. Then you hit the “Press for Diagnosis” button. Sooooo…

I was female. That’s OK, except I was born in 1650 in the territory of modern Central Russia. Somehow being a female 357 years ago in Russia isn’t very appealing. No offense intended to females or Russians. It’s just not my part of the world and too far on the other side of the 19^th Amendment.

On the brighter side, uh-huh, I was a warrior, a hunter, a fisherman or an executor of sacrifices. I’m either killing people or I’m gutting fish all day long. Who could ask for more? Offense intended to executors of sacrifices.

Not liking the diagnosis, I surfed to another site. This one gave me a “mirror.” Instructions told me to gaze into the mirror and say “Mirror, mirror in front of me, what is it that you see? Tell me who I was before, was I rich or poor? I’m…” you get the drift. 

Then comes a warning: If you don’t say those words to the mirror, your reading may not be accurate. Why do I think that whoever is on the other side of that mirror is having a real good laugh? I’d never say those words.

“Are you talking to your computer again?”

“No, dear.”

Anyway, I clicked the mirror.

Hey, I used to be the University of Phoenix online.

Oh, something to look at while I’m waiting.

Here we go. I “may have” used to be a politician, leading and fighting for the rights of others. What? No graft? No payoffs? No kickbacks? No interns? That’s enough of that website.

Perhaps, I decided, I’d get more satisfying results pursuing a future life. What will I be next time?

This assessment asks a series of questions such as how you treat people, are you likable, how vain you are, how social you are, how you react to criticism, if you return what you borrow from neighbors, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Perhaps it was the question about borrowing from neighbors. I answered that I never borrow from neighbors until after dark while their dog is asleep.

A parrot. According to the test results, I’m going to be a parrot.

A regurgitating vain birdbrain fit for a cage and bombarding old newspapers. What an insult. Those people who set up this analysis? Why, I’ll hunt them down and I’ll fight them. I’ll gut them like a fish. I’ll …

Oh, excuse me, I must have been thinking about something from a past life.

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I'd like to thank Jim  for allowing me to use his offering today as it fit so nicely with my topic.  As promised, I said I'd share with you another "ghostly" experience:

My grandmother passed away and I traveled to Southern California for the funeral.  My granny had shared a home with my mom and on the night of the funeral, Mom and I were trying to recoup from such a traumatic and emotional day with a little television.  My grandmother loved "Ben Gay" for her aches and pains.  I'd almost say it had become her fragrance of choice.  Mom's TV was upstairs in the loft, and I decided to go downstairs for some ice cream.  Halfway down, I passed through a aromatic fog of Ben Gay that burned my eyes.  

"What are you putting Ben Gay on," I called back up to mom.

"What are you talking about?" she responded.

The cloud dissipated as quickly as it had formed, and I suddenly knew that Granny was checking in to make sure we were okay.  I slept in her bed that night, between the sheets that she always sprinkled with talcum powder, and I knew there was no place I'd rather be. 

I offer my thanks to Dave Donelson for his creative genius, and ask that he forgive my "borrowing" of his appropriate artwork.  :)