My past life timeline according to my guidance...

[Unbound]

Fair enough mate. It's just that free association is such a primal/fundamental tool it's important but the results are crude in regards to what they represent.

And honestly this sounds like notions plucked from a stream of free association with the idea of past lives, which isn't bad and you can learn about yourself through it (regardless of it is actually true) but it is still unrefined (personal) information, no two ways about it.

And presenting unrefined ideas to the public as something of a fact (just in the way it's presented, I know it's often just a personal musing) is what gets up a lot of our noses here lol but anywho

But seriously, the Poe thing (it should be noted you spelt his name wrong) is there any special connection there? Poe's such a cool guy lol

Also, there is a fair bit of controversy regarding whether Shakespeare actually wrote the works that are attributed to him, so you may have been him, but also a shameless thief

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One more thing, in cultures where reincarnation is believed but the cult of celebrity is not established people are much more inclined to think they are the reincarnate of an ancestor than anything else.

In nations where such importance and value is placed on the famous, publicly visible and wealthy many people feel as if they don't hold these things they are lacking worth. This insecurity unfortunately can bleedthrough with desire in regards to searching for past lives in some effort to validate who they are now.

Goddammit people, you're all valuable lol

Edit: clarity

So what do you think of people like the Dalai Lama? As far as I understand he is just one person incarnating continuously as the Dalai Lama. Is he an exception? What determines the exception to "fishermen, slaves, etc"?

Who is to say that those who have achieved fame in any form have not also lived many mundane lives? Also, there are thousands, maybe millions of famous humans, and each of these is an entity which will probably have incarnated again.

I see perfectly well the perception and interpretation of it as something of a 'compensation' for perceived lacks in the self. However, on the other hand, the apparently "realistic" view actually appears to me to be more pessimistic than anything else because it says to the self, "How could you have ever been anyone of importance?" Those who refute claims of famous past lives could possibly be doing so from a point of jealousy or self-minimization, no?

I do not know with absolutely certainty the truth of any past lives of anyone, especially because I believe all lives to actually be parallel and that "past" and "future" is a contextual description of location in time/space.

Here is one for you, what about people that are becoming famous now? Do you think maybe a couple incarnations down the line they will remember and people will never believe them? What about the people who only got famous after they died?

The problem I think is that, as you said, in a cult of celebrity oriented society such individuals are made to be "larger than life" and I think this is also the reason why it is considered "unrealistic" for anyone to claim famous past lives.

For me, I cannot say what is "right". To me health is not about being just objectively stable in a social environment, but being at peace with all of your self-perceptions. True or not, these beliefs have an impact on people and the decisions they make in their lives. In many cases they have spurned individuals to want to grow, but it is true sometimes they are used as an attempt to gain some form of authority, intentionally or not.

For me, when I look in to these things I just try to see people. Not famous people, or "normal" people or magical people or divine people or powerful or weak or any other adjective applied to the person. I just see people. When I just look at people, devoid of attachment to any trait or characteristic, I feel I have the clearest awareness of the ties my consciousness has to other versions of myself in time/space.

Anyways, just my thoughts and an amusing ramble, maybe I am just kooky! Aha