Oprah seems to be making her way down the New Age aisle of the bookstore lately.

From The Secret to Ekhart Tolle and now to past lives (I do NOT want to see the show she does on colon cleansing!).

Have you ever heard someone talk about their past lives? Or heard someone tell another what they did when they were here before?

Have you noticed that however un-cool, un-accomplished, un-impressive or just un-  we may be now, in the past we were all important, amazing and admirable.

We might be losers now, but when we were helping birth homo sapiens, we were good enough, smart enough and, gosh darn it, people liked us.

Go to a past-life workshop and you’ll meet Cleopatra! Go to another workshop the next week and you’ll meet, why could it be? another Cleopatra?! Another workshop, well, I’ll be… ANOTHER Queen of Egypt!
Why doesn’t anyone ever discover that in ancient Rome they were Vic the vomit bucket carrier, or in the Ming dynasty they were Chang, a soldier in the army who was known for being the fourteenth guy from the left… or was that fifteenth? I don’t know, but somewhere under twentieth.

Okay, sure, sometimes someone “recalls” a less-than-stellar lifetime. But even those were somehow important. “I died giving childbirth and saw the ephemeral nature of life… and that’s why I now have 37 cats in my one bedroom apartment.”

Those who had, oh, less than respectable careers always find a way to make them uber-special. Prostitute in ancient times? If this was you (and if this was you then, there are many who want to know you now), well you weren’t just giving handies underneath the steps of the Acropolis for 20 dinars… oh, no, you were doing SACRED SEXUALITY, or were the mistress to the Sultan of Somewhere-ville, or were Gaia and gave birth to the universe itself!

I can’t recall one past life story (and, living here in Boulder, people answer “What do you do?” with past-life stories) that sounded like, “Oh, I was an accountant in a small town. Nothing much happened. Died in my sleep.”

I’m just not sure why I would believe that under the unusual and often mind-bending conditions that are required for “remembering” past lives, I should assume I’m getting the facts straight. I know how crappy my memory is about things that did (or didn’t) happen to me in this life, let alone when I was a crystal cleaner in Atlantis. Hell, I rarely remember what I had for breakfast by the time I’m eating dinner. Oh, and I have a VIVID memory about having pneumonia when I was 10… which is only complicated by the fact that I DIDN’T HAVE IT!

I’ve also noticed that past-life readings tend to “reveal” causes from the past for events we are aware of now. Got a pain in your leg. Well, guess what? You were stabbed in the leg in the Peloponnesian War! Migranes? Killed with a shovel to the head by Gengis Khan.

But we don’t tend to hear stories that reveal something previously unknown to us in real-time. I haven’t seen any testimonials for past-live workshops where someone remembered where they hid all that Mayan gold, or buried the body, or etched “Michaelangelo was here” under David’s scrotum… and then found the gold, the body, and, well, where Michaelangelo had unknowingly been.

Now, look, I’m open to the possibility that we were here before and we will be here again. Could be. Granted, I’m not going to hide the Hot Wheels cars I’ve saved since I was 7 with the expectation I’ll pick them up again in 1000 years and become a millionaire on the reincarnation of eBay.

And I also won’t deny that some people find great solace in “discovering” that, say, they have “commitment issues” now because they were the daughter of the 4th concubine of the Prince of History-stan in the 12th century. I’ve seen it happen that a thought that sure FEELS like a memory triggers a great release, a stunning insight or even the eradication of some pain or illness.

But sugar pills are also very effective against pain and depression.

There’s a phenomenon I call “The Resonant Lie.” It’s something that FEELS right, that SEEMS true, that may even bring a big “AHA!” with it… but isn’t true. You can have a life-changing insight about your “Inner Child”… but there’s no such thing. It’s a concept. A sometimes-useful concept, but just a concept. (Admittedly, when my inner child wants chocolate, I spoil him rotten.)

My favorite Resonant Lie story is of a woman I knew whose father died and at the funeral said, “I’m at peace with the fact that Dad died, but I’m sad that I won’t be making new memories with him. I remember when I was a little girl and he taught me how to wash a car… I just wish we could make more sweet memories like that one.” The memory was very useful for her in many ways. Afterwards, her uncle approached her and said, “That was a very touching thing you said about your dad teaching you to wash the car… but *I* was the one who taught you how to wash the car.” SNAP!

I’m sure there’s more to be said, both about reincarnation (BTW, the title of this post refers to the definition of REINTARNATION: Being reborn as a redneck), and the Resonant Lie… but I’ll have to save that for another time because, in a past life, when I was Henry VIII’s court jester, I was punished for getting to the end of a story, and now I tend to leave things hanging and incomple…

“How old were you when you stopped having sex with your pet?”

“What!? I never had sex with my pet!”

“Stop avoiding the question. How old were you?”

“But, I…”

That argument is clearly going nowhere. And the reason is obvious: the most important part of the question is actually the assumption underneath it. The questioner creates a domain and, in order to answer the question in any way, you must acknowledge the validity of the domain. To answer in any way, you must admit that your schnauzer was kinda cute.

Absurd as the above volley may sound, try out this one, from today’s Boulder Daily Camera (our local newspaper that sometimes has the editorial weight of Tinkerbell):

“Are human beings inherently good or evil, connected or disconnected?”

This was from an article about how more people are calling themselves “spiritual” rather than “religious” (I’ll have to save my thoughts about THAT premise for another post… but the short form is: same ugly prom date, different dress).

Check out the question again: “Are human beings inherently good or evil, connected or disconnected?”

Not much different than, “When did you stop pokin’ the puppy?”

They imply a belief: a spectrum on which we can judge people, with “good” on one side and “evil” on the other, and a set of relationships where “connected” or “disconnected” are the only possibilities.

They rely on the person answering to make up what “good” and “evil” and “connected” and “disconnected” mean, and then land on one side of the fence or the other.

And, clearly, “good” is better than “evil” and “connected” is more evolved than “disconnected.”

In reality, this question is no more meaningful than: “Are human beings inherently 4.17 or yabba-dabba-do, jalapeño flavored or Dutch?”

To even entertain the question is to suggest that you agree with the unspoken premise. And, sadly, to tell the questioner that they have been unknowingly speaking in a language that sounds like English, but is really a dialect of Moron makes you “defensive.”

Anthropologist David Eller gave a great example of the statement-under-the qusetion during a talk today: If we’re at a restaurant and I ask you ‘Are you going to finish those fries?’ I’m not asking for you to predict your future eating habits… I’m telling you to push the plate towards me!

Just because a sentence ends with a question mark, that doesn’t make it a question!

(But if it ends in an exclamation point, it *is* serious! Seriously!!!!!!!)

A question mark is like the command a stage hypnotist uses to make someone start clucking like a chicken. Say it at the right time, and the person will stop what they were doing and start looking for bird seed. Use a question mark at the end of a veiled statement and it’ll make the listener hunt and peck for an answer.

“How can I attract more money into my life?”

“How do I get rid of the blocks and resistance that are keeping me from having a successful relationship?”

“How do I get over my fear of intimacy?”

I know these SOUND like questions, but they are actually statements about a ridiculous set of beliefs. And to even consider that there is even a way of answering them means you buy into these beliefs. Let’s have a word swapping party to see what I mean.

“How can I vomit more money into my life?”

“How do I get rid of the hybrid cars and jelly donuts that are keeping me from having a successful relationship?”

“How do I get 5′ to the left of my fear of breathing in and out?”

Trust me, the first batch of questions is as ludicrous as the 2nd if you don’t believe in notions like “attracting,” “blocks,” “resistance,” “getting over something” or “fear of a concept.”

And, BTW, to “not believe in those” notions doesn’t mean you believe in the opposite. It means there’s no frame of reference for which  those notions have any meaning at all.

I’ll bet that if you’re reading this, you don’t believe that the Sun is actually the burning of Thor’s hammer as it travels through the cosmos. It’s not a question of whether Thor’s hammer is or isn’t burning, it’s that the question is nonsensical.

If you want proof that not all questions are questions, just go listen to your average high school student make the simplest statement and use the rising intonation at the end of their sentence, as if there were a question mark at the end!

“Hey, young man. How old are you?”

“I’m 17?”

“I can’t tell from the way you said that. Are you asking me, or telling me?”

“Um, I’m telling you?”

“Do you WANT me to shoot myself in the face because I find the way you’re talking so annoying?”

“No?”

BANG!