part deux

I've never read anything about anything like this, but I wonder whether the recent Korea fetish I've developed over the past five years might be something like "future life resonances". Akin to and opposite past life resonances I've written about before, whereby people who believe in it might muse about past lives based on current life patterns, habits and characteristics.

Quirks about me that I can't explain have led me to wonder if I was Japanese in my previous life. My cousin Audrey thinks so. She also has an affinity towards Japan, and she even thinks we were a couple there in a past life. In Kyoto, apparently, although my spidey-sense is not quite that particular (and mind you I find a lot of what my cousin says as suspect). I also think it's possible that in some previous life I was a Native American tracker in the southwestern desert of the U.S.

Those sort of quirks are distinguishable from characteristics that do have an explainable basis in this lifetime, like my love of music or being a musician. It's possible that it's from a previous life, but my affinity towards music could have developed logically and naturally in the course of my experience in this life. I have no particular sense that it came from somewhere else, that it's extraordinary. Unless you count that I come from a decidedly unmusical family. Music wasteland.

This Korean thing came out of nowhere and had a definite start – asking Hyun Ae to make me a mix of Korean music she liked – which snowballed into an unreasonable affinity towards many other aspects of Korean culture, which outlasted and surpasses anything Hyun Ae may have been about.

The strangest and most uncharacteristic thing, of course, is K-pop, which I would have rather choked to death on than listen to when I was younger. It boggles my mind, and no matter what excuses I make or try to make it palatable for other people to give it a listen, it's still pop music. And other people who hate pop music also aren't convinced. I've lost a lot of music cred over K-pop, I shouldn't wonder.

Another thing is I've read that through the death bardos, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and related literature and commentary, that in the early stages of the bardos, we have more association with the body and life that we just left. The habit mind of the existence we just left is still fresh and strong, so whatever disembodied impression or consciousness there is, it's related through that.

But as we progress through the bardos and still don't attain enlightenment or realization or whatever and head towards another round of samsara in a brand-spankin' new life, we have more of an association with our life-to-be, our future life.

So I wonder whether there might be an analogy at the end of the life bardos whereby we start experiencing things that may be resonant of things regarding our future life. As with past life resonances, sensitivity and inquiry is required to spot them. 

Stranger things have happened. Of course, there's this outrageous assumption that I'm at the tail end of my current life. I'm not going to die for the theory, but I'd have to die sooner rather than later for this theory to have even a drop of being in the realm of the credible.