Recycled

The education of the soul is not linear but rather a beautiful spiral continuing outward.

Feb 07, 2025

Recycled

That was my biggest fear in boot camp—getting “recycled.” My brother, Shane, experienced this. In military basic training, getting recycled means being taken out of the platoon you began training with and sent to remedial training for a week or two. This can be due to a physical injury, sickness, additional discipline, or special physical training to lose weight to meet standards.

When the recruit has completed the remedial training, they are placed back into a new platoon at the point in training when they were taken out of their original platoon. That is the most challenging part because now the recruit is a stranger within a group that has already bonded during those first few weeks of an intense experience, and from that point on, they never fit in completely. That’s just human nature.

It becomes the primary goal of every recruit - and I imagine it’s the same for all the other branches - to finish recruit training with the group you begin with. My brother Shane (God rest his soul - he left us in October 2022) did graduate with his new platoon and became a good Marine in his job field. However, he never bothered to write home to let the family know that he would graduate a week later than initially planned. That is a story for another day.

That’s how a training system works, and the Marines have it down pretty well. But you can see how the recycling process works in just about any other system made up of people as well - sports teams, businesses, education - no one likes to be put back because we are conditioned from an early age that all progress is linear, and to not “stay with the program” is somehow akin to failure and shame.

The most significant progress we can make with our lives is not strictly linear, but it is discovered in how well we react and adapt to self-perceived setbacks and what is learned below the surface in the process of being recycled. With so much emphasis in the past on perfectionism and pre-determined education and career paths, we’ve closed ourselves off to where actual growth occurs. More recently, we are re-opening ourselves to the hidden value of what was once considered failure, defeat, and, in some ways, shame. That’s a good thing and testimony to the freeing love that is forgiveness.

There’s a line from an obscure movie - Running Brave - that came out in the 1980s about the life of the Olympic runner Billy Mills (another Marine, BTW) when his coach said to him during a time when Mills needed extra motivation, “Do you know why I always had you running in front of the group? Because it takes a winner to come from behind.”

There’s a reason why that line from that movie has stuck with me for so long, which leads me to my next point.

Why would it be different for the soul?

If genuine progress and refinement of this world’s mind, perspective, and identity are not linear, does it not stand to reason that the same holds for the soul?

This is where I risk running afoul of some religious dogma. Still, as I age, this makes perfect sense—as with the physical world, the process of growth and refinement is at play in the spiritual realm, particularly with the human soul.

Perhaps, just maybe, there’s a spiritual “boot camp” in this life, and those prior and those yet to come are ruled by the cosmic universality that is the energy of love. Maybe what we experience and observe in the temporal plane of bodily existence is inherently tied to the soul’s education in the college of life.

No one can deny the power of the spiritual awakening and awareness of the unseen energies over the last two decades, which have accelerated rapidly since the collective debacle and darkness in the early 2020s. We may now see the true reason for that experience.

Every soul simultaneously represents the uniqueness of an individual journey, likely in an unknown number of iterations, while divinely connected to all other souls and living beings.

Now, that’s a point I wish I had insight into when taking religion classes at the Catholic high school I attended in Ohio. There would have most likely been a very vocal pushback along the lines of reincarnation bordering heresy. Perhaps not so much these days. Here again, a good thing.

Increased access to information and other people’s experiences has also had a noticeable impact on our current reawakening to the spiritual realm of the soul and the Divine. Recently, for me, it’s come in the form of listening and watching quite many personal testimonies of NDEs (near-death experiences). I have yet to listen to one that DOES NOT mention that this life, the one here and now in earthly existence, is a “school” or a “training ground” for the human soul.

Maybe we are here in this form today to help walk each other to and from school and be present and supportive when we get “recycled.” Always be open to the learning opportunity that can be found in just about any situation, and maybe help take the pressure off the belief that we only have one shot and better get it right and perfect. Is that kind of pressure best for mind, spirit, and soul, and what God had in mind for the human experience? I doubt it more and more every day.

The soul’s education could follow a kind of pattern circling back around while simultaneously expanding, such as with a labyrinth, the Golden Ratio, and the Fibonacci sequence. The spiraling outward can be found in artistic compositions and whenever there’s growth and expansion in the natural world. Who’s to say that the patterns we see in art, science, and nature reflect the same patterns, perhaps even more well-defined in the spiritual realm? Consider, too, the universality of the symbol of the outward spiral, found again and again in the ancient petroglyphs of North America and the standing stones and tombs of the Celtic people of Europe.

Another common theme in the stories of NDEs is the absence of time's linear progression, which is a construct of our own making.

There is something so hopeful and beautiful when pondering the possibility of the soul’s eternal nature and how it is intricately connected to all of life, both seen and unseen. To think we are nothing but an accident on a fixed timeline is darkly limiting and ignores the immense capacity of the continual growth of all energies emanating from love. And like another favorite line from a more recent movie - Interstellar - is the only power to transcend time and distance. Well, gravity, too, but I focused on the love part.

So, can being recycled be all that bad when considering how the soul grows and expands? Perhaps not, even if we must finish training with a new platoon. There is much more to our lives, experiences, and lessons than simple physical existence and temporary fixes that please the earthly ego.

I believe there is more—much more than just one lifetime. And maybe through prayer and love, we write home to tell our loved ones, “Hey, I’m not going to graduate as scheduled. I had a little setback.”

I like to think they’ll more than understand, and I believe souls that are transitioning and returning once connected in one lifetime will recognize each other in the next.

I know I’ll see Shane’s soul again, and we will both be amazed at how much we have learned and grown.