What would reincarnation mean for the self?

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Reincarnation means destruction of self.

One of the more fascinating things I’ve learned about and considered about is how fetuses in the womb often display personality traits. This is extremely curious, as it means that not all of our personality can be determined to be from our environment, wombs are more similar than they are different. It is my belief that experience is unbroken from before one reincarnates, and existence in the womb is experienced as an extended dream, soon forgotten as dreams usually are.

Another aspect of development that is mightily curious is what’s called childhood amnesia, the inability of a person to recall events before a certain age. Our earliest days, we simply don’t recall the details of, despite having a personality and the ability to think and reason. our brains start developing in the womb.

This two-step process is how I believe reincarnation, at the same time continues a person, as in a person’s experience remains unbroken, while at the same time destroys the self, the collection and history of thoughts and convictions and feelings and desires that determine how that person experiences.

I have experienced a form of amnesia in my life. My early years in southern Louisiana were painful and ugly. I’ve mostly forgotten them after we moved out of there when my mom married a military guy whose job eventually took us away from there. I have only a handful of memories from back then, and I only think about them when I have reason to.

The pattern mostly repeats itself even continuing to this day, in less dramatic form. I remember well the various places I lived after I left my hometown, but again, I only ever bother to think about them when I have reason to, for all intents and purposes, I’ve reincarnated many times in my life, the new self discarded the old, thinking about the old self is like recalling a previous lifetime, so different is everything.

I can move even further along with this. At some point I became interested in spirituality and over the course of many years of learning and growth I had the realization that I was enlightened. Even weirder, I’ve been enlightened since birth. In this context, enlightenment means a nondual perspective, that when I see and process something, my identity gets completely subsumed by that object.

Self is destroyed anytime I perceive an object, basically constantly, and the new self that is generated afterward is indelibly marked by the thing I just perceived. One can see ego in this sense as that which keeps your self from being totally destroyed upon perceiving a new object. Our identities become our prisons.

Lack of such a prison, my ability to simply let go of things. is what’s made it so easy for me to just forget my previous lives, to accelerate the process of reincarnation so big rebirths happen on the order of years rather than decades or whole physical lifetimes.

Important to note here, the subconscious can be a vessel of self that your conscious discards. My parents both knew I would end up reconnecting with my father one day in adulthood, and one of the moves I made, and therefore rebirth, was due to me suddenly realizing I wasn’t going to be a whole person without knowing him. Once all that was resolved, I simply rebirthed again without the conflict and all those weird and angry interactions I had with him back then are now ancient history, once I’d analyzed where they’d come from of course!

Selves get destroyed by reincarnation, and the ability to allow your self to pass out of relevance, and therefore existence, is governed by your innate and learned spiritual development.

If you go read and study Hindu spiritual concepts, where the ideas of the cycle of rebirth come from, you may realize that nothing about the concepts is solely intended to bear relevance on existence after physical death. That’s a materialist perspective and materialism will never help you truly grasp spiritual / philosophical truth. Samsara, the cycle of life, death, heavenly life, redeath, then back to physical life, applies just as much to Earthly life as it does to heavenly life, and we can exist in heaven right here on Earth. Interestingly, this view is very much shared by many Christian perspectives.

People have big and little deaths, and to the extent that you’ve developed yourself spiritually, medium deaths that speed you along as well to bigger and brighter.