Teaching Circle 5: Afterlife and Karma
Mon May 12, 2008 at 03:28:44 PM PDT
One of the great questions every religion has to answer is, "What happens when you die?" Wicca’s answer, in common with many religions, is that the body dies and the soul lives on. We differ, however, from many Western religions, in that there is no heaven and no hell. Most of us believe that once the soul is done with a life, there is a sort of debriefing that takes place. We review our goals, our needs, our wants, from a different perspective that can see the events of the life we lived differently. We relax for a time, perhaps, in what many of us term the Summerlands. But the Summerlands are not an eternal destiny. They are a place of rest. Soon enough the spirit grows restless, and seeks rebirth, in a time and place where connections forged over previous lifetimes may be remade, where the things that the spirit needs to accomplish can be done. And life begins again.
Since we believe in reincarnation, many Wiccans have done work to find out about our past lives. Sometimes they hold a key to a phobia or a personality trait in this one, or explain a fascination with some period of history. It’s interesting to learn who we were, and when. Very few of us were heros or noblemen....the best I ever did was as a fifteenth century Dutch wool broker’s daughter. Often, we discover that friends and loved ones in this lifetime have been with us before, if in different roles. It is perhaps less accurate to speak of soulmates than it is to speak of a soul group; souls that reincarnate together over and over, relating in different combinations. We also tend to believe that part of the overall experience is experiencing the different genders, though not everyone remembers lives lived as the opposite sex. We keep living, and reliving, and loving, and learning.
Karma is a natural part of this process. Unlike eastern religions, Wicca attempts to create ties of love and affection and friendship that will last through lifetimes. Other things, however, will also carry along. Your anger at someone who hurt you is something you’ll have to work through at some point. It’s easier to do it now. Give and make love and connection, help others and bring delight, and you’ll get that back. Bring others pain, misery, and worry, and you’ll find yourself unhappy, even if you own more than everyone else. Karma works both in such short-term contexts, and in the longer term, over lives. And as we say, "Karma, like gravity, is not a suggestion." It all comes back around.
And in the end? The end isn’t something most of us worry too much about. There’s a lot of theories about what happens. Perhaps we slip into God like a raindrop into the ocean, ripe with the love and wisdom of lifetimes, and God is More because we were. Perhaps we become angels, or saints, or choose to be bodhisattvas. It’s not a focus of Wicca...you can decide what you think about it yourself. Wicca’s about the journey, after all, not the destination. In a way, the journey is the destination, after all.
