Dr. N: Is it possible that both Haroum and Steve became more extreme in their conduct because your soul was with them?
S: (heavily) I haven't done well, I know that ...
Dr. N: Look Sumus, I hope you know I don't think you are a bad soul. But maybe you are easily seduced by the trappings of human authority and you have now become someone who feels in conflict with society.
S: (disturbed) You are beginning to sound like Jor!
Dr. N: I don't presume to be doing that, Sumus. Perhaps Jor is helping us both to understand what is going on inside you.
S: Probably.
Steve and I have reached a productive stage of contact with his soul. I address this subject as if he were two people, while tightening the bowstring between his conscious and unconscious self. After applying additional conditioning to pull these two forces closer together, I close our session with a final series of questions. It is important his mind not be allowed to drift or his memories to become dissociated. To foster responsiveness, my questions are confrontive and spoken rapidly to increase the tempo of my subject's answers.
Dr. N: Sumus, begin by telling me why you originally accepted Steve's body.
S: To ... rise above my attraction for leading others ... always wanting to be in charge ...
Dr. N: Is your soul identity in conflict with the direction Steve's life has taken?
S: I don't like that part of him which is fighting to be on top and, at the same time, having thoughts of escape by self-destruction.
Dr. N: If this is a contradiction for you, why does it exist?
S: ... childhood ... sadness ... (stops)
Dr. N: Who am I listening to now? Sumus, why aren't you more active in helping yourself, as Steve, overcome the shame of abandonment by Eone and your anger from an unloving childhood with Talu and Kalish?
S: ... I am grown now ... and managing others ... won't let people hurt me anymore.
Dr. N: Sumus, if you and Steve are now speaking to me as one intelligence, I want to know why your lifestyle is so self-destructive.
S: (long pause) Because my weakness is ... using power for selfpreservation on Earth.
Dr. N: Do you feel if you were less controlling of people as an adult, life would revert to the way you were treated as a child?
S: (angrily) Yes!
Dr. N: And when you don't get self-gratification from the body of your choice, what do you do as a soul?
S: I ... tune out ...
Dr. N: I see, and how is this accomplished, Sumus?
S: By not ... being too active.
Dr. N: Because you are intimidated by a body in an emotional tailspin?
S: Well ... I go into a shell.
Dr. N: So, you use avoidance in not actively dealing with the major lesson you came to Earth to learn?
S: Uh huh.
Dr. N: Steve, your adoptive parents were rough on you, weren't they?
S: Yes.
Dr. N: Do you now see why?
S: (pause) To know what being constantly judged is like.
Dr. N: What else?
S: To ... overcome ... and be whole. (bitterly) I don't know ...
Dr. N: I think you do know, Steve. Tell me about the damaged self you present to people around you.
S: (after some procrastination) Pretending to be happy-covering up my feelings by drinking and mistreating people.
Dr. N: Do you want to stop this cover up and go to work?
S: Yes, I do.
Dr. N: Define who you really want to be.
S: (tearfully) I ... we don't want to be hostile to people ... but don't want to risk being a ... non-person ... without respect or recognition, either.
Dr. N: So you are on a fence?
S: (quietly) Yes, life is so painful.
Dr. N: Do you think this is an accident?
S: No, I see it isn't.
Dr. N: Steve and Sumus, repeat after me: "I'm going to give back the pain of Eone, Talu, and Kalish, which they gave to me for my own good, and get on with my life by becoming the identity I really want to be. (subject repeats these words three times for me)
Dr. N: Steve, what are you going to do about revealing yourself in the future, and taking responsibility for improvement?
S: (after a couple of false starts) Learn to be more honest.
Dr. N: And to trust that you are not a victim of society?
S: Yes.
This case ended with my reinforcing Steve's understanding of who he really is and his mission in life. I wanted to help liberate him as a person of value, with a contribution to make in society. We talked about his love and fear choices, as well as the necessity to get in touch with himself frequentlyI felt we had laid the groundwork for his dealing with resentment and a lack of intimacy. I reminded Steve of the need for follow-up counseling. About a year later, he wrote to tell me his recovery was going well, and that he had found the lost child within himself. Steve realized his past mistakes were not failures, but the means to improvement.
Case 27 demonstrates how the hard tasks we set for ourselves often begin in childhood. This is why considerable weight is given to family selection by the soul. The idea that each of us voluntarily agreed to be the children of a given set of parents before we came into this life is a difficult concept for some people to accept. Although the average person has experienced love from his or her parents, many of us have unresolved, hurtful memories of those near to us who should have offered protection and did not. We grow up thinking of ourselves as victims of biological parents and family members whom we inherited without any choice in the matter. This assumption is wrong.
When clients tell me how much they suffered from the actions of family members, my first question to their conscious mind is, "If you had not been exposed to this person as a child, what would you now lack in understanding?" It may take a while, but the answer is in our minds. There are spiritual reasons for our being raised as children around certain kinds of people, just as other people are designated to be near us as adults.
To know ourselves spiritually means understanding why we joined in life with the souls of parents, siblings, spouses, and close friends. There is usually some karmic purpose for receiving pain or pleasure from someone close to us. Remember, along with learning our own lessons, we come to Earth to play a part in the drama of others' lessons as well.
There are people who, because they live in a terrible environment, suspect the spirit world of not being a center of divine compassion. However, it is the ultimate in compassion when beings who are spiritually linked to each other come forward by prior agreement into human lives involving love-hate relationships. Overcoming adversity in these relationships may mean we won't have to repeat certain abrasive alliances in future lives. Surviving such trials on Earth places us into a heightened state of perception with each new life and enhances our identity as souls.
People in trance may have trouble making a clear distinction between their soul identity and human ego. If the human personality has little structure beyond the five senses and basic drives for survival without ensoulment, then the soul is our total personality. This means, for example, that one could not have a human ego which is jealous and also possess a soul which is not jealous.
Yet my cases indicate there are subtle variations between their soul identity and all that is manifested by the human personalities of many host bodies. Case 27 showed similarities and differences in the personalities of Haroum and Steve. Our constant soul-self seems to be a governing agent of human temperament, but we may express ourselves differently with each body.
The souls of my subjects apparently select bodies which try to match their character flaws with human temperament for specific growth patterns. In one life an overly cautious, low-energy soul might be disposed to blending with a quiet, rather subdued human host. This same soul, encouraged to take greater risks in another life, could choose to work more in opposition to its natural character by melding with a temperamentally high-strung, aggressive body-type on Earth.