Friday, June 3, 2011

Ask Amber Donkey - June 2011

Q: In my family we had quite a number of experiences that animal friends, mostly dogs, that passed into Spirit did return for another lifetime with us. Several times only a few months or even only weeks had gone by from the time of passing to the time of reincarnation. It seems that animals reincarnate after much shorter periods in Spirit than do humans, and also that some species of animals reincarnate sooner than other species. Could you share your insights as to whether this is indeed the case, and, if so, what influences the length of time a soul might be in Spirit before it reincarnates. Thank you for your wisdom.

Amber: What a magnificent question. It is great to experience the joy of reuniting with a dear friend when they return isn’t it? It is such a testament to the eternal relationship of heart connections. Before I answer this question though, I must first say that not all souls come back and not all of them will come back with you in this lifetime. Not all of you choose to travel in the same circles. To better understand this, just look at your lifetime now and think about the friends you have had and continue to have. You have friends or people who came into your life and have had profound impacts on you and your development and who then moved on different ways from you, eventually maybe even breaking all contact physically. Yet, their impact is still just as profound and your love for them and theirs for you is very real. And you have yet other friends who are new to you in your life toward whom you feel like you have known and loved them your whole life. You have friends who you’ve kept over the years and some who have even moved miles away but who still remain close to you. There are all kinds of connections. The same applies to those connections once one moves into Spirit. We can look at these connections over lifetimes instead of the span of one life and the same principles hold true. There is no one size fits all definition then for reincarnation or “how it works.”

Your question, however, is about the differences between humans coming back and animals coming back. Technically, if you want to put this into “how to” technicalities, there is no difference. However, in its application there is a basic difference. There is no hierarchy of life forms. One does not start out as a worm for example and then work ones way up through lifetimes until one gets the honor to be a human. That is not how Life works. A soul chooses a form based on what it wants to focus on and experience. The human experience offers a multi-level approach. It is a complex existence where many different aspects can be worked out in one single lifetime. That sounds wonderful and if multitasking is your thing, then being human has distinct advantages. However, with those advantages comes a whole lot of distractions and ways in which to forget why you are even here in the first place. Many humans spend lots of time just trying to figure out who they are and why they are here. That is not a negative thing. For any soul, the main goal of incarnating is to learn and experience itself. The human existence then offers enormous opportunity by having to really hold on to who you are and what you are about. It is not superior, however, to the animals or plants or trees, or any other life form. There is much to be learned. A soul is also larger than can fit in any one form and often is in more than one form during any given period.

But back to your question. Do animals reincarnate quicker? Let’s put aside the time aspect of this because, in human terms, faster is usually seen as better, and that is not actually the case here. But, yes, animals can have a quicker turn around time and here is why. Animals live shorter lives, and they are much more focused on what they are trying to learn. They have fewer distractions. When they move into spirit, they are able to process what they’ve experienced more precisely and quickly. So while a human lifetime takes longer to live, has more to process, and takes longer to assimilate all the aspects in spirit, the human lifetime actually can accomplish a lot quickly. However, it is also more complex. Usually, a soul lives both as human and animal to focus on different aspects of things under different circumstances. One route is neither better nor worse than the other. This same principle holds true when comparing one species of animal to another.

These are broad generalizations because sometimes the animal experience can be quite complex and sometimes a human experience can be more simple with less to process as well. Each life, each soul, each experience is unique unto itself. You may observe the life of a bug, for example, who lives for only a week and ends its life colliding with your car window and wonder what on earth that bug could have learned of value. But that bug experienced things you will never experience in 100 years of being a human. And I don’t refer to its ending on your window. And yet you will experience things being human that the bug could not learn or experience in 1000 lifetimes as that bug.

You can have a moment in your life of a chance encounter with another human that can take you an entire lifetime to process and understand and a long time in spirit to assimilate. You can also have eternal relationships that go on for many lifetimes, as many as you choose, where you help one another both in physical and in spirit to process experiences. That same is true for animal existences as well as humans.

Neither experience is better than the other. It simply is a matter on what the soul decides to focus on and under what conditions it likes to learn best. I, for one, find the human existence far too distracting to learn well. I was quite happy being a donkey. But, yet, I love to share with my human friends, and we can help one another with our experiences and form bonds and heart connections that sustain us both. That is the miracle of Being. Whether you are a physical being, a being in Spirit, or even a light being, it is all a joyous and amazing journey.

1 comment:

Anne Sofie said...

Hi Amber, what a profound lecture on reincarnation! "A soul chooses a form based on what it wants to focus on and experience." You gave me a deep understanding of, why swouls choose different paths by incarnating in human and not-human forms, and how these paths are equally important.
I always appreciate your answers - thanks for the good work!