If there are so many incarnations, why is it that we should work so hard in a given one? Is it possible to have wasted lifetimes?

The Guide: Actually there’s a twofold answer. The separation from the total unified consciousness is often so far advanced that it requires a great deal of effort and work. The second thing is many, many, many incarnations go by – with many individuals – that are really wasted. They are not completely wasted in the sense that afterwards this is recognized as a waste, and that increases the incentive for future effort and future incarnations.

When a person is born with this incentive, he is then perhaps more eager to overcome the obstacles and the resistances within himself. So from that point of view, it may not be wasted. But the incarnations themselves are often really wasted and nothing is being fulfilled. And that is very sad, because a tremendous amount of effort is required to incarnate, for yourself and also for others who help you in the process.

It is a tremendous investment each entity makes when he or she comes into this life. It is painful to be born. It is painful to live in the confines of a material body. And that pain is chosen because the development then can proceed so much faster. Now, if that is then negated because one lives into the day and refuses to think about the meaning that life may possibly have, and then one just negates any such possibility because it is the line of least resistance, then all the effort and pain of incarnating is for naught.

So it is so important that you value the opportunity and the pain and the effort you have chosen yourself, every one of you in every instance, and that you make the best of your life. Because again and again and again, we must witness the sadness of an entity leaving his body and saying, “If only I would have listened and had been open to the opportunities that I have been presented with,” for each one has innumerable opportunities and they are so often being rejected.

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