Reincarnation won't help you if you don't know who you are.

an excerpt from Eckhart Tolle's book, "Stillness Speaks":

Reincarnation doesn't help you if [you] don't know who you are. All the misery on the planet arises due to a personalized sense of “me” or “us.”

That covers up the essence of who you are. When you’re unaware of that inner essence, in the end you always create misery. It’s as simple as that.

When you don’t know who you are you create a mind-made self as a substitute for your beautiful divine being and cling to that fearful and needy self. Protecting and enhancing that false sense of self then becomes your primary motivating force.

Editor’s note: Reincarnation won’t help you if you don’t know who you are, and, with vivifying “catch-22,” you won’t need reincarnation if you do know who you are.

When we speak here of “need reincarnation,” we mean in the sense popularly employed but not as reflective of reality. The “fearful and needy self” looks for “more time” to complete its self-evaluated condition of “I am not enough.” But this assessment is illusion. We already have what we need.

However, this is the psychological driving force behind reincarnation’s appeal. People are looking for a way to complete themselves, enhance and add to themselves, and they feel that they need “more time” to do this.

everything in life takes time, except one thing, the only thing you really need

There’s a certain logic to this demand for more time. In all activities of life we need time – to read a book, to travel from A to B, to pull weeds in the garden. Everything takes times, and so, what could be more reasonable than to believe one’s bottomless pit of “fear and neediness” should not require thousands of extra lives upon the Earth as herculean effort toward bolstering “I am not enough”?

But this is wrong. If you know who you truly are, you don’t need reincarnation – if such were an option or possible – because the “true self” is part of Universal Consciousness which exists in a timeless dimension of the eternal now.

No time is required to access it, nor is time required to find your true self. It comes to us in one timeless moment of cosmic clarity.

Eckhart Tolle, from a lecture entitled The Flowering Of Human Consciousness

The small ego seeks for "more time" in order to complete itself...

The small ego seeks for enhancements as it believes itself to be “not enough.” If the small ego could speak it would say...

“Please give me more time so that I can know myself [in order to complete myself]. That is the mind-pattern, because for everything else you need time: please give me time to make money – you need some time. please give me time to learn a language… to find a mate; please give me time to bake a cake – everything requires time, and on that level, it’s fine, you need time, you need time for all those things – but then if you step into the area of [self-knowledge, and if you say] give me time to know who I am, that’s the beginning of the delusion, to say, I need time to find myself.

"Once the delusion that you need time to find yourself is firmly established, and it happens quickly, then all further actions, thought, aims are colored and distorted by that delusion – they’re all an expression of needing to find yourself [in time].

"All the desires and fears that provide the motivating power behind what people do, the basis for that is the mentally-made sense of self – it fears that it might never become complete or that it might lose that little that it has,” and therefore it seeks for more time to complete itself, when in reality the true person is already perfect and complete but lacks awareness of the inner wholeness.

Eckhart Tolle, from a lecture entitled Even The Sun Will Die.

believing that our better state of mind will happen "in the future" is the core error of the "false self'

People ask, how can I reach this new state of consciousness? How do I get there? This happens especially with “spiritual” people, they see a new state of mind to be achieved and they believe it will happen “in the future.” And this illusion that the new state of mind will be achieved “in the future” lies at the core of the error of the mind-made self [the “false self,”] which is led by feelings of “I don’t have enough” because “I am not enough.”

people want to "add" something to themselves, they want "more time" to become better, not realizing they already have all they need within the deeper person

And they strive toward some mentally-created ideal, some mentally-crafted sense of self or perfection. That’s a trap of spirituality, not realizing that [what we seek is already within us and cannot be “added” to us].

Almost every religion [Editor’s note: including the religion of reincarnationalism] gives you "more time” to achieve, to “become” – we want “more time” [because we sense a neediness of the “false self”]. And this misses the essence of the truth, which is “time won’t get you there.” You cannot get out of the old state of consciousness by adding “time,” more “future,” by giving yourself “more time.”

more content, more knowledge and experience, while good per se, will not create the new state of consciousness that you want

Or, even by adding content to your mind through further experiences, knowledge, even all kinds of spiritual experiences – [because that can be "external," too] but, this need to “add more before I can be myself” [is the problem]. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with knowledge or having new experiences -- yes, investigate and explore, and these things will require time, and nothing wrong with it, it’s fine, but there’s something more vital that most humans miss, and that is knowing who you are beyond the form in which you appear. That is the one thing that matters in life. Everything else matters relatively.

All the things that we can add to ourselves – the knowledge and the experiences – that’s relatively important, but not absolutely important. That’s the one thing that “time” and “future” cannot give you, it cannot be acquired by “adding” something to yourself. Nothing wrong with “adding,” but finding your [“true self”] will not happen by “adding.”

more than drinking the koolaid

The long reach of cultism encompasses much more than crackpot churches. The root idea of cult offers the sense of "cut." This core concept of "cut" leads us to images of refinement and refashioning and, by extension, development, control, pattern, order, and system.

Cultism as systemization finds a ready home in religion and philosophy which seek to regulate and redistill the patterning and ordering of ideas. However, in a larger sense, the spirit of cultism extends to every facet of society. We find it scheming and sedulously at work in politics, academia, family, corporations, entertainment, science, artistry – anywhere power might be gained by capturing credulous and fear-based minds.

See the “cultism” page for a full discussion.

it's not possible, even in an eternity of time, for an individual to gain all experience

The following is an excerpt from Patricia Joudry's Twin Souls. Her writing is one of the best within the "Twin" genre. However, when she veers off into other subjects, I must demur somewhat. Consider her words:

This mystical vision of soul-groups merging with other soul-groups, like clusters of galaxies dancing in harmony, is something that, independently, I came to see as a possibility in terms of our destined cosmic oneness.

I would disagree, however, with Joudry in this: what is true for the individual is also true for the group -- eternity is not long enough to experience absolutely everything; it's like trying to name the highest number -- you can't do it as we can always add one more. Therefore, I submit, the thesis of each soul requiring all experience to achieve perfection is found wanting and bankrupt. But this concedes too much deference, as the inherent fallacy has not been addressed: if we were to live an infinite number of lives, in an infinite number of universes, experience, per se, without something else, would still not produce the enlightened soul.

Editor's last word:

Politicians invented the phrase "It's the economy, stupid!" to highlight the importance of finances; allow me to borrow this linguistic construct and say, "It's the joy and bliss, stupid!" - or, as Dr. Campbell said, "It's the rapture of being alive!"

That's what evolves the soul. That's what opens the eyes. That's what "saves" us. And it happens in one timeless moment, not endless lives led by the dark ego. One moment of contact with celestial love and joy forever changes, opens the eyes of, the percipient.

And why should this be so? - because it's the great "coming home," it's the "utter familiarity," it's like answering to like, it's invitation to eternal destiny, it's "rebooting" and returning to "factory-installed" settings; it's perceiving, with the eyes of the hidden inner-person, the fundamental essence of the universe, the secret mind of God, the very substrata of our own souls - which knows nothing else but joy.

It is not by accident that a surfeit of love-songs speak to this great awakening; the above example by The Hollies is but one among tens of thousands. Authentic Twin-soul romantic love (not the ersatz brain-chemical version) is designed to introduce destined lover and beloved to the mind of God, that cosmic epicenter of joy and bliss - an intoxicated pleasure extending far beyond that which typical marrieds in the world know as love. 

Each sacred romantic partner, each for the other, is "made in the image" and, as such, is custom-tailored to reveal blissful divine love and joy, an explosive, extreme delight - in a particular sense; that is, to one person only. You can't do this, it won't work, with just anyone.