I suggested on the What are We? page that we, being created as individuals with free will, experimented being different from the Source, and since the Source is perfection, we became less than perfection. Some of us became very different...
So our journey back to being the same is long and sometimes hard. We can progress more quickly when we are on the earth because the things that we experience are more difficult here, and most people come across some pretty tough lessons in their lives!
But this doesn't necessarily mean becoming more 'holy'. We may have come to experience a particular thing, in which case it may be that we have to pursue this aspect of life - for example, the experience of being a drug addict, (read The Afterlife of Billy Fingers - and ignore other aspects, even though it may make us difficult to live with, or in some sense a burden to others. I am not saying it's ok to be unkind or difficult. But some people can't help it because of physical, emotional or mental handicaps or just the innate nature of their physical make-up. Perhaps by being one of these people we understand first hand the difficulties and so can learn to love. And others may be on a path whereby they need to learn patience and tolerance, and thus the two fit together perfectly. For both sets of people the task may be to become more understanding. That is why we come to earth, with all its challenges, in order to learn to love all people and all things - like the Creator - but from our own unique perspective. Perhaps in this way the Creator/Source learns from this new experience too.
Soul Planning
Many people (spirits are people too!!) say that before we incarnate, we plan the major events and the important people that we will meet in our physical lives, a process known as Soul Planning. But in this life we do have the free will to modify it to some extent.
We plan who will be our family, the important people we meet, the people we fall in love with, and even those who may do us harm. This, especially for those with very difficult lives, may be hard to believe. Why is it, and how is it, that in some cases we would plan for such horrible lives? In truth, I can’t really answer this question. Those of us who live reasonably comfortable lives, meeting our challenges on the way - albeit some of them very difficult or sad - can probably accept this more easily than those, say, in a war-torn land or those suffering from famine or persecution, whose life is or has become basically hell on earth. I admit that this is when it gets difficult, and the only answers or suggestions that I can give is that when we’re in spirit we are very optimistic about facing our challenges in the material world, and we want to experience and learn 'to the max' by giving ourselves these challenges, knowing that when our life is over and we return home, we will have made much more progress then if we’d had an easy life.
I remember a news story a while ago that moved me greatly. It was about a man who had been captured by the Japanese during the 2nd world war. His captors tortured him terribly, one man in particular. Then, some decades later, they met - I think it was on request of the torturer - and on his knees he begged forgiveness. This was granted, and they have become friends.
So what sort of things might be planned - in conjunction with other souls - before we incarnate on earth?
Who our parents are
Who our children will be
Who we marry or have civil or special partnerships with
Who our best friends will be
Who our important teachers and mentors will be
Who will help us at significant moments in our life. Sometimes these people we will only have a brief contact with.
What we will look like or what our physical characteristics will be
What health issues we might have
What will be our strengths and weaknesses
How much money we will have
Key moments in our life – birth of children, marriage or civil partnership, death of loved ones (obviously in conjunction and agreement with those loved ones)
Our race, religion, gender and sexual orientation.
Our general persona and character or personality for this incarnation
Our main interests and/or career
Our main challenges and tasks - perhaps great challenges, such as the story above.
Our own death
We may not plan all of these - and there may well be other things that we do plan - but this general list serves as an example. But I also want to stress that we have free will, which means we can change the plan at least to some extent, if we choose to do so. A thought has just occurred to me as I write this, (now where has that come from?) that perhaps manifesting a 'better' life is like a test that some of us might have set ourselves...
In addition to an earth-life, we may also incarnate on other planets, planes or systems, some of which are very different to ours. And I mean totally different - an existence that we could not comprehend - not just like being little green men or having 3 eyes and 6 fingers on each hand. It is thought that earth is one of the 'lower' planes, which is why life can be so hard. Here we are all mixed together. In the course of our life we may meet violent murderers as well as very loving and kind people. Whilst we should not be quick to judge and label people - because we may not know what has happened to them in the past to make them who they are now - I think we can generally assume that those who murder in cold blood or commit other horrible offenses against people or animals are less progressed spiritually than people, say, such as Ghandi or Mother Teresa, or, dare I say it, Jesus. If we have had past lives, who knows (a) who we were and (b) what we did in those lives? We are likely to have done awful things in those lives when perhaps we were less progressed than we are now. We most likely will have also been all sorts of races, colours, genders and had different sexual orientations. More of that on the Reincarnation page.*(see footnote 1)
The purpose of our existence per se is harder to comprehend. As I have said earlier, some think that we ourselves, along with everything else in the universe, living and non-living are actually part of God/The Source and The Source is learning and expanding through us about him/her/itself. At any rate, the general concept is that we came from God and our goal is to return to the perfection that is God by learning from our many experiences so that we choose to return of our own free will to the perfection whence we came.
I am quite a 'fan' of Seth, the spiritual being that spoke through Jane Roberts in trance from the 1960s to the early 80s. This is how Seth explains the purpose of existence: he says that we are here to realise that our thoughts become reality, and that until we have learnt this lesson, and to control our thoughts, we have to come back again and again until we do. It is interesting that this idea of thoughts having the power to create events, experiences and matter and even living things, comes through all the way from the books by Rev. Vale Owen in the early 20th century to Seth in the late 20th century and in more recent books such as Multi-dimensional Man by Jurgen Ziewe and Journey of Souls by Dr Michael Newton. This consistency gives credibility.**(see footnote 2)
Learning to love unconditionally in every situation
Life is about learning (or rather, remembering) how to love. As humans, we first learn to love because we are loved, hopefully by our mother and other family members. As we grow up, we then learn to love through sexual attraction. These are easy loves to learn because we ourselves benefit from this type of love.
Then there is the love for friends and wider family members - again easy because it's pleasing to do.
But now it becomes harder: do we love these people all the time, or do we stop loving them, however temporarily, when we perceive they are not loving to us? Our love is conditional, though we may not want to think it is. So, in our stages of learning to love, an important step is to learn to love through the pain or anger of love that is seemingly not returned.
What is the next stage? It is perhaps learning to love those we meet with whom we have no particular connection - people who sometimes we relate to and other times we find difficult. And within this bracket, also are people we see or meet briefly but do not know at all. Perhaps we see them as irrelevant, nothing to do with us, or even perhaps a nuisance when they get in our way: other drivers, people making a noise when we want to be quiet, saying things we don't want to hear. Can we learn to actually love them and anyway, why should we? It is because they are people in exactly the same way as those who are close to us. If we have truly learnt to love, there is no difference.
And then there are those who commit crimes against people, property, or the environment. Perhaps not directly against us, but they are perceived as bad people by society. Do they deserve love? And then what about those who do hideous things, like murder, torture, rape, violent crimes - sometimes towards many people - like terrorists - perhaps against a certain race or type of person. How can they be loved? What is the point of loving them? Have they anything in common with us? Do they even deserve to live? Again, these are people who have not yet learned to love more than on a basic level. There is an expression: "he is some mother's son", meaning even the worst of the worst is loved by someone. Is that love wrong? No. Love is never wrong.
And lastly, the hardest of all: can we love those who commit crimes against us personally, or against our loved ones? For most people this is really the hardest lesson of all - to love your enemy as yourself. And the worse the crime, the harder to love.
To learn to love in all circumstances, unconditionally, just because. This is what we must learn to do, this is why we are here, this is the ultimate goal of life on earth. Nothing else is really important. No academic achievements, workplace promotions, not becoming famous or gaining riches, not even gaining skills and knowledge, nor self-denying or living in hardship. Though some of these may give us pleasure - or other experience(!) in life - and of course there is absolutely nothing wrong in that - all is nothing in comparison to learning to love. We are all on this pathway of learning through experience. When we can love all things unconditionally under all circumstances, then, then we are truly ascended. And perhaps ready to go on to unimaginably wonderful things that not even the spirit world can conceive of, yet... Life is infinite and never, never ends.
Watch these interviews with Robert Schwartz about soul planning and Brian Weiss about past-life regression on Afterlife TV.
(Don't be put off by the awful cartoon intro!!)
*This is somewhat different to the strict Christian concept of having only one life on earth, and in that short(?) life needing to accept Jesus as the only way by which we can be accepted by God. Otherwise the consequences are too terrible to contemplate - either annihilation or even worse, eternal, yes ETERNAL punishment. What, from a God of love???
Now, if you were to ask the 'average' Christian who claims to be sincere in his/her faith, you're likely to find that they don't actually, actually believe that. Or at least, there's a get-out clause - well, God is merciful, or God alone knows what is in a person's heart or, at best, that God understands how hard it is to be human and will forgive you because he loves you.
** Sceptics would say not, because the latter is simply copying the former, but then some sceptics wouldn't believe an egg is an egg unless it were thrown in their faces! That may seem unkind, but after reading several sceptics' websites I can see that they are generally as biased against anything spiritual or unproven as other people are gullable. To be honest, I've given up listening to them and am content to make up my own mind, using my own logical, critical and experiential thinking. My usual thought process is not to accept anything straight away which does not fit into what I have learnt already. Even then I am cautious, aware that it is easy to accept something which does fit, even if it might not be true. I hold new or conflicting things in mind until I can either find additional evidence/material which substantiates them - even if it means questioning what I already have accepted - or until some other piece of information makes them less likely or undermines them.
Personally I doubt that Jane Roberts had read the Vale Owen books as (a) she wasn't interested in that sort of thing before Seth appeared and (b) the Vale Owen books are very British and not well known in America.
