Hey Della,
I was recently watching an interview with Joseph Campbell on The Power of Myth, where he talked about how Jesus rose up and ascended into heaven. He spoke about how people take this act literally (can thank some fundies for that) and they miss the message in the myth by not approaching it as a myth, that this ascension is something we all need to do. Onlookers see him ascend to heaven, but we could say per the story, whoever dictacted it down, that the writer was trying to convey we need to transcend the matrix. Their day was unique from ours, but still had its own troubles, and still required the same antidote to suffering.
Im in a similar camp like you when it comes to reincarnation. We've got these great stories of lamas who have been tested upon returning (but a wild child 24 year old who would like to stay in the marketplace for now, but thats to be expected). But they did the work, possibly, in previous lives, as most tibetans are masters at lucid dreaming and being able to transcend the matrix. They do it by doing their own right way to live, they dont have a boob toob bombarding them with worldly messages and they're not pulled into the heap like others. So they dedicate their lives understanding they are beings who are going to die, and understanding their are no guarantees they will clear all those bardos and make it to where they want to go. We, if we dont do the work, end up in the big cosmic ocean where we're dispersed in many different consciousness, broke up amongst the collective, born again in some 'new form' is what at least, my own gnosis has led me, if we dont do the work. Ive said before time and time again, I have no desire to come back to the future of this particular planet. It looks grim, the outlook to me, esp the overpopulation issue. So I struggle on my path that whatever I can do, must do, will allow for me choice. But I can only have a prayer of choice, if I do the work in the here and now, and not lean on any crutches at all. Even tho I may appear to lean on buddhism, and sometimes I do, I do it cause its logical and makes sense to me. The wheel of samsara I see as a matrix too, one which offers a cycle of suffering that we can transcend from, by finding our center in it. and then the double is the other 'out' we got, which is a secret from the cc books we all know and love. That being that we dream up, who then was dreaming us all along, we have to give the double the strength and knowledge to pull us out in the nick of time, so we're not gobbled up, our awareness. Cause once its gone we just start over again, but a mass from the pool, something new and recycled, like we recycle plastic, all a mass of many other plastic parts.
So I can cringe the same when I do see too much reassurance say, from more new agey sites, all will be ok, esp in an afterlife (Ive recently even wrote on that word, 'afterlife' even it offers a denial in the statement). Like you're a good person, that will equal a good afterlife, but did you develop your soul, something of substance that can transcend all this? Where is spirit in the whole picture? its got to be more than just what others tell us, or what we lean on as a crutch, we have to be able to stand without the crutches and do the work, answer our own questions for us and be sure what will become of us, so we're not simply dust in the wind in the end.