I queued into an idea a long time ago, about karma, and the nature of reincarnation. I had really beautiful thought once, that in the machinery of karma, time is irrelevant.

This idea meant a lot to me, because it means that reincarnation has no need to adhere to any kind of linear progression. I could come back as Einstein or Tagore. I could come back as Genghis Khan, Cleopatra, my own mother; doesn’t matter.

I came to believe that the mechanism of reincarnation is driven by the questions we have once we leave a given body. This idea gave rise to a particularly poetic understanding of suicide, and has acted, I’m sad to admit, as my go-to suicide repellant. The idea is, that if you take your own life, that you take on a karmic debt that can only be resolved by accepting reincarnation as every person whose heart was shattered by the tragedy of your death. You’re forced to relive the horrors of your own decisions, over and over and over and see and hear the various realities in succession, all of which become symphonies to why all the reasons you made that decision were so catastrophically wrong. To hear so plainly that you were not alone, that you were loved, that you would be missed, and to experience it all as though you were that person, because you are.

Of course this idea is also hinged on an uncompromisingly deterministic reality, which I ascribe to. This means that all our lives are saved, and every moment lives as a static monument to itself. We souls, we ride these monuments, driven by the engine of time through each experience as each moment is built on the infinitely deep foundation of its predecessors.

Such a deterministic view also serves as a convenient vehicle, offering effective transportation to a place of forgiveness, for myself and others, but mostly myself. I often envision an afterlife in which I sit in a room with anyone I ever owed any loyalty, and we review the relevant contents of my mind. I am often ashamed at how often my thoughts do not reflect the loving person I would ever hope to portray, but quickly, with all the love in my heart, remind myself of this perfect determinism, and repeat my oath to myself, “I’ve always done my best. It’s not always the best, but I can always do better.”

In the end I find it reassuring that this ethereal fantasy is always self reflective; I’m always mostly concerned with the hurt my thought may cause, as opposed to using such a room as an interrogation chamber, to probe the minds of all who ever did me wrong. I think that means I’m at least a basically decent person at an impulsive level, and there’s not much more I could imagine asking from anyone, than to be simply, impulsively good.

But back to reincarnation… With the above in mind, we have a system of reincarnation more intentionally complete; a system that cognitively matters. I admit that this may be a human fantasy, but we’re talking about an ultimately human system in a very loose manner of speaking. There is still the burning question of “why”, and I think that question is answered, for me at least, with the idea that our spirit is capable of storing information, and the information we take from each life is built in succession into what may manifest in life as a deep spiritual wisdom. This is not my idea of course, this is just how I understand the purpose of reincarnation to be explained by Eastern tradition.

Another critical aspect of the Eastern traditions is the concept of exiting the system. To escape the endless karmic wheel of birth and death and rebirth. An idea that I have just had compounds all of the above into a distilled map of how to find such an exit.

This is manifest by the compounded understanding from living all the lives and learning all the lessons necessary to find the key. That key, I think is fairly easy to assume is a complete, epitomized understanding of human experience. That’s the key, if you can hold in your mind a clear vision of the fundamental pieces of humanity that define our experience, well then you’ve done it. You’ve completed the mission. Your soul has nothing left to learn from this indulgence in human experience, and so there is no more need to reincarnate. Indeed it is not an exit; it is not breaking the wheel of karma, it is simply the end of an impossibly long spiral that only looks like a wheel from the front.

So how does this help? Well, in this life, you are either at the end or you’re not. If you are, then you have my congratulations on a cosmos well lived. If not, don’t worry, it’s a very long, and beautiful road. The best advice I can give you to help you on your way is to always do your best. It won’t always be *the best, but you can always do better.