Belatedly perhaps, but we all end up by doing some sort of spring cleaning. It might be a cupboard that is too untidy to squeeze anything else in. It could be when the fridge or freezer fails to work, that we find ourselves defrosting un-named packages and end up making soup. Relentless time or the failure of so-called perfect products ends up in us having to reassess what to keep and what to throw out.

We need to take this habit and also apply it to our minds, our attitudes, our intelligence as well as our bodies in order to provide a better instrument for the soul to utilise. If you have just come to grips with this idea of letting go of past hurts and disappointments that are hampering the body in this life, what will you do when you understand you also need to take the concept of releasing accumulated baggage from past lives?

“Many, if not most, of the spiritual traditions of the world accept reincarnation as a fact. Ancient African cultures, American Indian cultures, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and mystical Christianity all recognize the validity of reincarnation. It is only the “modern” world that has been slow to acknowledge this idea.

There is overwhelming evidence of reincarnation in both modern and ancient times. In modern Western culture, for example, methods such as hypnotic regression evoke apparent memories of past lives. People under hypnosis may speak languages they have never heard before or recite detailed, verifiable memories of periods long before their current birth.

The Vedic tradition confirms the reality of reincarnation. For example, the Bhagavad Gita 2.13 explains the transmigration of the soul saying. ‘As the embodied soul continually passes in this body from childhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at Death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change’……

The Quar’an (2.28) states: ‘How do you deny Allah and you were dead and He gave you life? Again He will cause you to die and again bring you to life, then you shall be brought back to Him’………

Even in the West, the idea of reincarnation was originally part of the Christian outlook. For example, early Church Fathers such as Justin Martyr (100-165 AD), St Clement of Alexandria (150-220AD) and Origen (185-254 AD) taught aspects of reincarnation. The belief in reincarnation remained in certain currents of Christianity until the sixth century, when the emperor Justinian, seeking to unify his empire, outlawed the belief. Members of the priestly class also began to realize that the Church could gain power and exploit the masses more easily if the general public did not have access to higher spiritual knowledge and believed that they only lived once.”

For all the many self help books out there, how many do we actually take seriously? There are plenty of tv preachers giving ideas of how to live a better life and enjoy more now. Who is actually encouraging you to live your life in a better way now so that your next life will be better, whatever it may be like now? For one person the idea of an improvement in the next life might be seen as an incredible opportunity. However there are too many people who are doing nothing about changing their lives now, just waiting to end this one. So they are absolutely guaranteed to not get what they are desiring in the future. Another person reaping the so-called “good life” now, needs to understand that he only has this good opportunity because he seriously worked on it in an earlier life!

“Spiritual warriors must examine this idea of reincarnation as deeply as possible, because our present situation is inextricably linked to our previous lifetimes. Given that we are eternal and that our real identity exists on a continuum, our future lives will be shaped by the sum total of everything we are presently doing and thinking. Ultimately, it is our interactions with the cosmic laws of God that are especially relevant to the next life we are preparing. Our thoughts and actions now shape what we will become.

Our current life – combined with the residue from previous lives – will determine our future karma. Karma is the principle that every action produces a reaction, and somehow affects every living entity in God’s creation. The effects we cause will eventually be reflected back to us. The way others view and behave toward us is directly affected by how we view and behave toward God and our fellow beings. Not only accumulated karma, but we must also realize that the accompanying degree of pain, fear or suffering we experience is a measure of the extent of our karma.”

The soul that inhabits a body for a certain amount of time goes through many changes in this life alone. We, the soul, the intrinsic part that is always there, feels exactly the same. But have you noticed how different the body is in the all the ages we have passed. Looking back at pictures makes us realise we were not that baby, nor that toddler, nor were we that difficult teenager. So we, the soul, can’t lay claim to anyone of those stages of this lifetime, let alone many other lifetimes, no matter how intriguing we find out they were.

The body, the mind, the intelligence are our instruments of this lifetime. We are none of these, nor should we lay claim to any particular designation either. If you are a mother, how many millions of times have you been a mother and seeing things from a grander scale, how can you focus on just this one child when there are so many others to call you “mother”.

Although the saying goes “a healthy mind and body” we should apply this in a way similar to the idea that accurate instrumentation is vital when flying a high speed jet. If a pilot becomes too wrapped up in the workings of the instruments he will make vital course errors. If his intelligence is not used as a precise instrument but given over to wasted thinking, he could endanger his own life and others.

Spring cleaning, whenever it is done, is a good barometer to see what improvements we have made and need to make so that we, as the spirit soul, can better achieve our special potential in this unique opportunity of human life.