My Heaven II

This is meant to be a wrap up of all the blogs since "My Heaven I". Before I actually move on to any more views of heaven, let me introduce a few more examples of repetition/recursion. Many religions/cultures believe in the idea of reincarnation. I have often wondered if this is at all compatible with Christianity? I don't see anything in the Bible to suggest that we would ever have more than one shot at an Earthly life, but I'm not sure there are any definite evidences against it either. I have especially wondered if all who don't "get saved" might get reincarnated again and again until they live a life where they do accept Jesus. In this way, everyone would be saved, I think. This would line up with my ideal model of how learning works, doing things over and over until you get them right. Anyway, I can't say there is really any truth to that, it's just something I've wondered about. 

 

Recently, a new friend of mine introduced me to Nietzsche's idea of Eternal Recurrence:

This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust. 

 

That would be pure repetition, and if you were totally enthralled with your life, that might  actually feel like heaven! However, I doubt there has ever lived any person who was that excited about every detail of their own life. I think there could be worse lives to be re-lived than my own, but just the same, if I'm going to have more lives, I'd like to at least have a manual override button somewhere. Although many people do believe in reincarnation, I don't think most of them actually have memories from their past lives. If people claim to have memories from past lives, they are generally thought of as crazy (I've yet to actually meet anyone who claims this, though). However, if I were going to be reincarnated, I would really, really like to be able to benefit from the presence of such memories. I used to say that I didn't believe in regret:

...since I never will live my life over again, I don't see the point of searching for regrets. Furthermore, my past has shaped who I am, and if I changed my past I might become a different person who would make a different decision about changing my past, and the process would become an endless loop. 

 

But what if you would get the chance to live your life over? In regard to school (college), specifically, I have often wished to have done things differently. I have often felt that I wasted alot of time and energy with nothing to show for it, that I missed opportunities that I should've taken, that I let other people's ideas override my own better instincts, and that in general I gave up much too easily on things that would've been good ideas. So, for a long time, I kept "re-planning" my education in my own mind. Now I think I'm finally getting to the point where I am assimilating those experiences into myself. All the thoughts and conflictions that came out of those experiences are now part of me, and now that I am that me (before I was still in the process of becoming that me), I find it nearly impossible (though not quite) to imagine or desire another me. But before I got to this point, I used to imagine all the time getting to go through the motions again. As a sort of wishful thinking, I even imagined that it could be done in the following way: create a time machine and a robot that can do brain surgery, then go back in time and have it transplant your adult brain into your childhood body. Then, you would always know what was coming, and could act accordingly. Furthermore, you could effectively live forever, with memories of all lives  always there to help you in the next. I don't know that I really wanted to live my life infinitely many times; but I at least kept hoping that in heaven I'd get the chance to design my own life, or live my life over as many times as necessary, until I got to a version that met with my complete and unreserved approval (and then perhaps I would actually want to repeat that one forever).

 

Reading GEB, I was going through a particularly long mathematical proof, and at the end the author made a brief revisitation, comparing each part of the derivation to music, and to the feeling you have in music of "knowing what comes next" and looking towards a resolution. As with all chapters, he begins with a dialogue/narrative/story section. In this particular one, he was constantly putting the characters into very threatening situations, and he was pointing out how this tension too, pointed towards an ultimate resolution. And I was suddenly reminded of a Sixpence None the Richer lyric: "For tension is to be loved/for it is like a passing note/to a beautiful, beautiful chord."

 

And it all brings me back to the advice I gave to that guy who was complaining about Saxon math being a bore: "try to think of it like music", I told him. In this sense and this sense alone, I think I can perhaps accept the possible necessity of pain, sin and suffering. Does this mean I am accepting the "Yin-Yang Hypothesis"? Perhaps. However, I don't think that it is as simple as saying that "pleasure cannot be appreciated without pain", and it's certainly not the cessation of desires! I think that perhaps each song/life is perfectly and individually tailored to be the most pleasing for the one who is living it. Now I am tending to see heaven as the resolution of all desires. Which again. reminds me of another lyric, this one from the title track of Charlie Peacock's album The Secret of Time (the first CD I ever owned) "I can see, I can see/What a great and grand, great and grand/Act of affection/It's all been."

 

If you have enough faith to believe in that, then each problem or hurt in your life can been seen as a mere foretaste of its resolution. And if I am right, that each song is perfectly tailored for the who must "play" it, then free will would sort of disappear from the equation. Of course you will want what you were created to want. If you can just have a bit of patience, you will actually get it, and it will be made that much sweeter through anticipation. So, did God have to create life in the tension/resolution format? I don't think so. I think he just has a sense of drama and wanted to. And, maybe I'm ok with that ;)

Oh, and while I'm in the lyrics mode, here's two more that go back to the whole pot and potter analogy:

Margaret Becker, title track from the Falling Forward album
"I am clay and I am water/Falling forward in this order/While the world spins 'round so fast/Slowly I'm becoming who I am"

Sixpence (again!) Dizzy
"And I'm spinning unconcealed/Dizzy on this wheel/For you my love"