Does this tendency today mean souls want to return to the same countries because of race? Souls are not inclined toward life selections based on ethnicity or nationalism. These products of human separatism are taught in childhood. Aside from the comfortable familiarity of culture in a soul's choice (which is different from racial bias), we must also factor in the affinity many spirits have for deserts, mountains, or the sea. Souls may also have a preference for rural or urban living.
Are souls drawn back to the same geographic areas because they want a new life with the same family they had in their past life? The tradition among certain cultures, such as Native Americans, is that souls choose to stay within family bloodlines. A dying man is expected to come back as his own unborn grandchild. In my practice I rarely see souls repeating the same genetic choices in past lives because this would inhibit growth and opportunity.
Once in awhile I hear about a soul returning to the body of a relative in a former life under unusual karmic circumstances. For example, if a brother and sister had a close affinity for each other, and one were to die suddenly while still young, the soul of the dead sibling might want to return in the surviving sibling's child to restore this broken life connection to finish an important task.
What is even more common in my experience, are the souls of young children who die soon after birth and then return to the same parents as the soul of their next baby. These plans are all made in advance by the souls participating in tragic family events. They involve a maze of karmic issues. Not long ago, I had a case where my client had died from a birth defect early in his last life. I asked, "What was the purpose of your life ending when you were only a few days old?" He replied, "The lesson was for my parents, not me, and that's why I elected to come back for them as a filler." When souls return for a short life to help someone else rather than work on their own issues, because there isn't time, some call this "a filler life." In this case, the parents had abused and finally caused the death of another child when they were together in an earlier life. Although they were a loving young couple in the last life of my client, these parents evidently needed to experience the grief of having a child they desperately wanted taken away from them. Experiencing the anguish from this terrible loss gave the souls of these parents a deeper insight into the effects of severing a blood bond. I will have an example of this theme in Case 27.
Spirits do not routinely see their deaths in future lives. If souls choose a life where their death will be premature, they often see it in the place of life selection. I have found that souls essentially volunteer in advance for bodies who will have sudden fatal illnesses, are to be killed by someone, or come to an abrupt end of life with many others from a catastrophic event. Souls who become involved in these tragedies are not caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with a capricious God looking the other way. Every soul has a motive for the events in which it chooses to participate. One client told me his last life was planned in advance to end at seven years of age as an American Indian boy. He said, "I was looking for a short-burst lesson in humility and this life as a mistreated starving half-breed was enough'
Another, more graphic example of a soul volunteering for a terrible assignment was that of one of my subjects who elected in her last life to join (with three others of her soul group) the bodies of Jewish women taken from Munich into the death camp at Dachau in 1941. All were assigned to the same barracks (also prearranged) where my client died in 1943 at age 18 comforting the children and trying to help them survive. Her mission was accomplished with courage.
While events, race, culture, and geographic location often appear to come first in the selection process, they are not the most significant choices for the soul's next life. Aside from all other considerations, incarnation comes down to souls making that all-important decision of a specific body, and what can be learned by utilizing the brain of a certain human being. The next chapter is devoted to an analysis of why souls choose their bodies for various biological and psychological reasons.
13
Choosing a New Body
IN the place of life selection, our souls preview the life span of more than one human being within the same time cycle. When we leave this area, most souls are inclined toward one leading candidate presented to us for soul occupation. However, our spiritual advisors give us ample opportunity to reflect upon all we have seen in the future before making a final decision. This chapter is devoted to the many elements which go into that decision.
Our deliberations over body alternatives actually begin before we go to the place of life selection. Souls do this in order to adequately prepare themselves for viewing certain people in different cultural settings on Earth. I sense those souls who set up the screening room know in advance what to show us, because of these thoughts in our minds. Great care must be taken in choosing just the right body to serve us in the life to come. As I have said, guides and peer group members are part of this evaluation process prior to, and after, we visit the place of life selection.
When listening to my subjects describe all the preparations which go into picking a new physical body, I am constantly reminded of the fluidity of spiritual time. Our teachers use relative future time in the place of life selection to allow souls to measure human usefulness for working on unfinished lesson plans. Blueprints for the next life vary in the degree of difficulty the soul-mind sets for itself. If we have just come off an easy life, making little interpersonal progress, our soul might want to choose a person in the next time cycle who will face heartache and perhaps tragedy. It is not out of the ordinary for me to see someone who has skated through an unchallenging life overloading themselves with turmoil in the next one to catch up with their learning goals.
The soul-mind is far from infallible as it works in conjunction with a biological brain. Regardless of our soul level, being human means we will all make mistakes and have the necessity of engaging in midcourse corrections during our lives. This will be true with any body we select.
Before taking up the more complex mental factors in a soul's decision to join with the brain of a human baby, I will begin with the physical aspects of body choice. Despite the fact that our souls know in advance what they are going to look like, a national survey in the United States indicated 90 percent of both males and females were dissatisfied with the physical characteristics of their bodies. This is the power of conscious amnesia. Much unhappiness is created by society stereotyping an ideal appearance. Yet, this too is part of a soul's lesson plan.
How many times have we all looked in a mirror and said; "Is this the real me? Why do I appear this way? Am I in a body where I belong?" These questions are especially poignant when the type of body we have prevents us from doing those things we think we ought to be able to do in life. I have had a number of clients who came to me convinced their bodies prevented them from achieving satisfying lives.
Many handicapped people think if it were not for a genetic mistake, or being the victim of an accidental injury which damaged their body, their lives would be more fulfilled. As heartless as this may sound, my cases show few real accidents involving body damage which don't fall under the free will of souls. As souls, we choose our bodies for a reason. Living in a damaged body does not necessarily have to involve a karmic debt we are paying off because of past life responsibility for an injury to someone else. As my next case will demonstrate, when a soul is inside a damaged body, this choice can involve a learning path to another type of lesson.