Back to August 2007
Mind States – August 2007
Courageous Souls
Do We Plan Our Life
Challenges Before Birth?
by Robert Schwartz
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So often, when something “bad” happens to us, it appears to be meaningless suffering. But what if our most difficult experiences are actually rich with hidden purpose–purpose that we ourselves planned before we were born?
After a personal experience with a medium led me to investigate the reasons for the challenges that have occurred in my own life, I examined the pre-birth plans of dozens of individuals. I worked with four of the most gifted mediums and channels in the country, including one who is able to hear conversations individuals have had with future relatives and other loved ones. My book, Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth?, is the culmination of three years of this research. In it's pages, I highlight the situations of people who have planned such life challenges as physical illness and disability, drug and alcohol addiction, losing a loved one, and severe accidents.
Why do we plan to experience challenges? I found four primary reasons. First, challenges allow us to balance karma from past lives. Karma is sometimes conceptualized as “cosmic debt.” I think of it, however, as “unbalanced energy.” Let's say, for example, that in a past life one person was physically ill and another person was the caretaker. When these two people transition back into spirit and review their lives, they will have a sense of unbalanced energy. One way to create balance would be to switch roles. The one who was ill now plans to be the caretaker, while the one who was the caretaker now plans to experience illness. What makes these life blueprints so challenging is that once in the body, neither soul will remember their pre-birth plans.
Secondly, we plan challenges in order to heal.
For example, Penelope is a deaf woman who planned to be born without hearing because in a past life she had heard the gunshots that killed her mother. She was a small child when the murder occurred and the event traumatized her. She went on to commit suicide later in that incarnation. In this lifetime, she sought to focus on self-healing and wanted to make sure that her healing would not be hindered by a similar trauma.
In her pre-birth planning session, her spirit guide asks her “My dear, would you prefer to be born deaf so that no sound will ever remind you of those sounds again?” Penelope replies, “Yes, that is what I wish to do.”
Third, we plan challenges to be of service to others. In the chapter in Courageous Souls on physical illness, I write about Jon, a homosexual man who planned to have AIDS so that he could teach tolerance to humanity. In his pre-birth planning session, we hear Jon conferring with the soul of future lover. This lover would, at Jon's request, transmit the virus to him.
“There is an issue larger than the personal benefit of contracting this illness,” says the future lover, “We can teach our elders, honor them, and provide them with a valuable opportunity to experience, learn, and grow.”
Jon is not someone to be judged or scorned, but rather someone we may thank for having the raw courage to plan such a bold mission in service to others.
Lastly, life challenges allow us to know ourselves as love. This does not simply mean that we are loving, although certainly that is true; but rather, we are quite literally made of the energy of love. On Earth, in a realm of duality and stark contrast, we often encounter a lack of love. As we choose, in the face of such experiences, to give and receive love freely and unconditionally, we remember who we really are.
Robert Schwartz is the author of Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth? A free PDF sample is available at www.CourageousSouls.com (click on About the Book). It can also be ordered online at the above website, through Amazon.com, or by calling Whispering Winds Press at 800/742-0148 (from the US). Courageous Souls can also be ordered through any library (at no charge) or bookstore by providing them with the ISBN number (9780977679454). Robert Schwartz may be reached at author@courageoussouls.com.