Reincarnation

 

Sophocles...said that, "mortal life can never have anything great about it except through ate."  P. 94

Imagining myself at the beginning, middle, and end of life through mythology makes sense.  I can remember listening and reading about many beginnings as a child which, as was said in class, typically began with, "Once upon a time...."

Sexson spoke of the birth of human life as our beginning, which is true, but that falls under the realm of our "present" life.  What of those who are reincarnated?  Have reincarnates already been through the cycle of life, trauma of living life (according to mythology), and the ending of it all through death only to begin the cycle all over again as a reincarnate.   Or is it all just a vicious cycle that is told in Hesiod's Theogony?  We have the story of Chaos, Earth and Sky all rumbling around and where vengeance is born.  Is vengeance in the middle of the end of life or part of life?  When Sky submerges his kids back into Earth, a terrible thing happens to him....he's castrated!  Is it because we can never go back to our womb?

A vicious cycle indeed.

As the point was made in class, "You can't go backwards to birth, you have to die, and then recreate the beginning."  As what though?  I can go on this fantastical journey imagining who or what I'd be reincarnated as because it seems the gods are always dying and then they miraculously live on, if not literally, than certainly through their mythological stories.   But isn't that how people continue to live once they have achieved an end to breathing and living in this place we call life?  I suppose it would depend if you believe in God, or some other entity, out there that says we are resurrected and continue to live in heaven.  Is that why science says that once a person has no vital signs of blood thumping and pumping through their veins, they're dead.  There is no soul.  Our skin decomposes.  Our eyes disappear into their sockets.  All that's left are bones. 

We are a reincarnation of what came before, whether it's captured in mythology or the mythology of our family.  And so the cycle continues with the beginning; next our initiation into living through pain, suffering, trauma, and hopefully, much happiness and laughter and family; and our eventual death.

I like to think of myself in a perpetual cycle of reincarnation.  Though I have yet to shake hands with death, there have been many moments when a traumatic situation in life led me to believe I'd died, but then I brush off the dust of the old and re-invent myself all over again.