(Spirit guides, mediums, and the awakening to pre-birth memory)
She explained that each of us has spirit guides, nonphysical beings with whom we plan our lives prior to incarnation. Through her I was able to speak with mine. They knew everything about me—not only what I had done but also what I had thought and felt.
Although I did not realize it at the time, my session with the medium triggered a profound spiritual awakening for me. I would later understand that this awakening was really a remembering—a remembering of who I am as an eternal soul and, more specifically, what I had planned to do on Earth.
As you read the stories, you’ll probably wonder whether you planned your own life challenges. My research suggests that the vast majority of life challenges are indeed selected. In general, the more profound the challenge the more likely it was chosen before birth.
“Was this challenge planned before birth, and if so, why?” They had agreed that this was a sound starting point, and further inquiries grew out of the response to that question. In some instances they permitted me to handle most, if not all, the questioning during those sessions.
Mediums and Channels Mediums and channels receive information in a variety of ways. If they are clairaudient, they hear the thoughts of nonphysical beings. (I use the term Spirit to refer to such beings; by contrast, I use spirit to refer to the nonphysical realm.) When a medium or channel “tunes in” to a nonphysical consciousness, it is much like setting the dial on your radio. Just as every station is at a particular wavelength, so, too, is each being with whom they speak.
Mediums and channels communicate with a variety of beings, including spirit guides. A spirit guide is a highly evolved, nonphysical entity who in most (but not all) cases has had many physical incarnations. Through these incarnations, they have acquired great wisdom that now allows them to act as guides to those of us on the physical plane. Spirit guides speak with us in the same way our souls do: through inspiration, feelings, ideas, and intuition. When we have a “gut” feeling about something or when we “just know” that something is so, these are often communications from either our guides or our souls (also referred to as the “higher self”). One example is the person who decides not to board a plane because he or she has a “bad feeling” that something will happen and thus avoids a fatal accident. Spirit guides, who are well aware of our life plans and whether or not they include plane crashes, can create such feelings in us. It is said that Spirit whispers to us; meditation is a powerful way to quiet the mind so we may hear those messages. Experienced meditators are able to hear the inflow of nonphysical energies into the body, something they describe as sounding like the wind.
When Staci’s spirit guide conveys to her conversation from pre-birth planning sessions, he is accessing the Akashic Records, though he prefers the term “Book of Lives.” This is a complete record of our every experience, act, word, and thought.
CHAPTER 1 Pre-birth Planning
(Why souls incarnate: contrast, forgetting, and deeper self-knowing)
YOU MAY FIND THE CONCEPT of pre-birth planning—particularly the planning of painful challenges—astonishing. I know this feeling well.
Why We Incarnate The planning we do before birth is far-reaching and detailed. It includes but goes well beyond the selection of life challenges. We choose our parents (and they choose us), when and where we will incarnate, the schools we will attend, the homes in which we will live, the people we will meet, and the relationships we will have.
When we enter the Earth plane, we forget our origins in spirit. We know prior to incarnation that we will have such self-induced amnesia. The phrase behind the veil refers to this state of forgetfulness. As divine souls, we seek to forget our true identities because remembering will give us a more profound self-knowing. To obtain this deeper awareness, we leave the nonphysical realm—a place of joy, peace, and love—because there we experience no contrast to ourselves. Without contrast, we cannot fully know ourselves.
You are that music. It was not something you heard outside yourself; rather, it was you, and you were it. And by creating yourself in a new place, you now know yourself—truly know yourself—in a way that was not possible had you never left Home.
A soul is a spark of the Divine; a personality—a human being—is a portion of a soul’s energy in a physical body. The personality consists of temporary traits that exist only during the physical lifetime and an immortal core that reunites with the soul after death. The soul is vast and goes well beyond any one personality, yet each personality is vital to and dearly loved by the soul.
While we are in our physical bodies, our souls communicate with us through feelings. Feelings like joy, peace, and excitement indicate we are acting and thinking in ways that are consistent with our true nature as loving souls. Feelings like fear and doubt suggest we are not.
It is the absence of something that best teaches its value and meaning.
Higher dimensions vibrate at faster frequencies than ours and are therefore nonphysical, but they overlap and incorporate lower dimensions. In short, all is one.
Incarnation does not literally remove us from our eternal Home; rather, it simply limits our capacity to see the nonphysical part of it.
Death, then, is the dissolution of the veil that screened the nonphysical realm from us.
The one who chose to be the caretaker may feel burdened by the need to care for another person, perhaps even viewing it as punishment for misdeeds in a past life. In truth, however, there is no punishment, simply a desire to balance karma. Similarly, because we have scripted the roles we play, we are not victims. No one is to blame; in fact, there is no blame. The universe does not punish us by making “bad” things happen. Like gravity, karma is a neutral, impersonal law by which the world operates. If we stumble and fall, we do not blame gravity or feel victimized or punished by it. When we realize that karma works in the same way, feelings of blame, victimization, and punishment in regard to life challenges dissipate. In their place we may find an understanding of what we had hoped to learn and an abiding appreciation of the challenges that expand our souls.
(Karma as neutral law; challenges planned for growth and service)
Most souls plan life challenges to be of service to others. This desire is a fundamental aspect of our true nature as eternal souls. When we are in spirit and aware of our oneness with one other, we view service as a basic purpose of life and see opportunities to serve as wondrous blessings. Like souls who are balancing karma, many of those who appear to be struggling with life are actually performing acts of service. A soul may plan, for instance, to experience alcoholism so that others may express and thus know themselves more profoundly as compassion.
The angel had beautifully stated the heart of the spiritual growth process on Earth: self-love is kindled when we cease to think of ourselves as limited, flawed personalities and instead remember that we are transcendent beings. To recognize this inner light is to change thought patterns and, by extension, physical health.
“In other words the personality goes into lightbody during the night, meets with the soul, and agrees to do something when awake to contract AIDS?” The term lightbody is used to describe our appearance when we are in spirit. It is a literal description: our luminous bodies are made of light. “Yes,” she said. “Staci, beyond what we’ve discussed with Jon, what are the main reasons why souls plan to experience a major illness in a lifetime?”
“There are many [reasons], including selflessness and selfishness,” he said. “Major illnesses can be used to make major modifications within oneself and one’s belief system, values, and judgments. Sometimes it is a form of karmic balancing.” “What would you like to say to people who have an illness or care about someone with an illness and are trying to understand the deeper spiritual meaning?” I asked. “Use a great deal of love. And I would remind your readers that although it may seem burdensome to be the one who is ill or caring for the one who is ill, it is a stepping-stone to something else. It is a rung on the ladder of evolvement.”
“This soul [Doris] has had a fear of its own power and—these days we will call it—a fear of success,” declared the channeled being. “The combination of the two can be very difficult. This spirit has more of a challenge within a female structure than a male structure.
“We are an oversoul. We encompass all personalities. The personalities do not die. They are a part of the great chorus. We leaf through them together with our guides as we plan the life as a painting in three dimensions, a collage.” Because I knew that the soul contains all personalities from all incarnations, I understood that oversoul was being used as a synonym for soul. I was shocked by this announcement; never had I imagined that Doris would channel her soul. Doris was therefore providing an extraordinary opportunity to talk directly with a soul about the plan for an incarnation. And now that I knew who was speaking, I focused on the meaning of Doris’s breast cancer.
(The soul’s perspective: no failure, only experience and self-teaching)
“There is no pass or fail with life. It is simply choosing your lesson. We would have accepted all possibilities. None would have been incorrect.” Here, Doris’s soul conveyed a perspective I was to hear many times. From the viewpoint of the soul, no event or course of action is “bad.” All is simply experience, and every experience teaches and offers seeds of growth. “When you plan a life, you are shown the most probable path, correct?” “Yes. We are shown, let us say, the major artery on the freeway. Exits are also pointed out, [minor] arteries and detours. All are a part of the road. One does not have to drive every inch of asphalt.”
Belief—specifically, the belief that one is not limited—empowers thought. The combination of focused thought and a belief in oneself as unlimited is potent enough to move mountains.
“That is correct,” confirmed Doris’s soul. “There is no fear of failure during the planning stages, because there is no separation. Humans, because they believe in separation—us versus them, right versus wrong—feel that to not go in one direction means the other direction has to be lesser, that difficulties are given because one has flunked the exam. We say that a soul who has chosen this [other direction] is one of great strength, maturity, and courage.” “It seems to me,” I observed, “that the soul is often teaching the personality—which is part of the soul—something the soul already knows. For example, we’ve talked about one of Doris’s lessons being self-love. My concept of a soul is that a soul is love. It’s as though you’re teaching yourself something you already know. Can you help me to understand that?” “Yes,” said Doris’s soul. “The soul knows that all is one but casts itself from that [knowledge] so that it may feel separation and learn to come Home. Also, the lessons that the personality brings back to the soul are incorporated to understanding the greater human experience. While souls know that they are love and that they are loved, to learn the fullness of it we experience the lack of love, so that we may understand self-love from all facets and all directions.”
“We, too, serve as guides and mentors for others, and we seek our own melding with the Absolute. There are many experiences for which a human would have no words or comprehension.” “Is your growth dependant upon how well the physical personalities learn their life lessons?”
The duality we see in the world—right/wrong, good/ bad—sits in marked contrast to the neutrality of the soul. Although the personality tends to judge everything that flows by on the river of life, the soul sits quietly and contemplatively on the riverbank, observing with detached compassion and nonjudgment.
“I’ve become more compassionate, more understanding,” she replied. “I have a lot of perspective now. The big thing I’ve learned is that I can’t control Tony’s behavior. I can support the positive. I can not enable him. I can’t control him. I can only control how I respond to him.”
The angels had just provided us with a succinct explanation of why the physical realm is so appealing to eternal, nonphysical souls. As they spoke of limitation, I remembered that Doris’s soul (chapter 2) had told me that souls see themselves as unlimited. Because contrast leads to greater self-knowing, souls incarnate on the physical plane to experience the perception of limitation. That perception, which is itself an illusion, contrasts dramatically with the great power we know ourselves to have when we are in spirit. On the physical plane, we challenge ourselves to work within—and, at this time in humanity’s evolution, move beyond—the illusion of limitation.
(Judgment, pity, and fear as mirrors for self-knowing)
All judgment of others is cloaked self-judgment. It is necessarily so. Profound spiritual growth occurs when we bravely pull that cloak away and acknowledge how we feel about ourselves. This process is difficult and requires unflinching self-candor, but its rewards are great.
“Pity divides us, compassion unites us.” To pity someone is to see the person as a victim and thus overlook the great courage demonstrated in living the planned challenge.
Judgments are thoughts, and thoughts are living, moving energy. Because energy attracts like energy, judgment attracts judgmental people. The world is a mirror in which we glimpse ourselves. If there are judgmental people around us, it may be that life is asking us to examine our own willingness or tendency to judge.
The love Sharon gives and receives in this lifetime has an impact that extends far beyond her immediate sphere. “Nothing is done, nothing is said, nothing is thought that does not create a ripple effect.” The importance of this truth cannot be overstated. Like stones dropped into a still pond, our lives have effects that radiate infinitely outward. Though our eyes cannot see these ripples, they reverberate throughout the universe. In this way self-transformation can change others—if they are ready to receive the energetic effects.
Our fears separate us from our real identities and are therefore to be sought, not shunned. In living them, we remember who we really are. Pat, for example, harbored a fear of being alone. Only when he felt utterly forsaken did he realize he was never and could never be truly alone. In seeming abandonment did he find connection; in surrender, sovereignty. By creating what he had most feared, Pat called himself into recollection of eternal truth. Thus able to peel away his self-created illusions, Pat demonstrated that fear is a master teacher who shows us to ourselves.