After my extremely informative and enlightening meeting with my Council ended, Amy (my hypnotist) steered me towards the Place of Life Selection. I believe that a broad summary of this aspect of the Spirit Realm would be appropriate as a prelude to a discussion of my particular experiences there. In my posting of October 10, 2009, as part of a general overview of the Spirit Realm, I offered a synopsis of the Place of Life Selection which I reproduce verbatim here:
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Place of Life Selection: This is a place where we can view/experience and evaluate the options available to us for our next life in the flesh. Amazingly, we have quite a lot of input in choosing who we will be in our next life as well as the circumstances of that life. These choices are made, of course, based upon the karmic issues we are planning to address in this upcoming life. Will we be born female?, to a wealthy family?, physically handicapped?, possessing a special talent? The choices we make here are in accordance with the karmic issues we identified, and the plans we made, as a result of the studies and learning conducted in the schools and libraries, and the meetings, consultations, and discussions held with our soul group members, spirit guides, and Council members. It all comes together here: If we learned well and planned effectively, then we will make a life selection that affords us an excellent opportunity to make some serious karmic progress.
The one great caveat to all this in-depth planning is this: We, as human beings, have free will. When we plan our next life we are not setting up a rigid script that is guaranteed to be followed to a "T". What we are doing is devising an outline where the players are free to ad lib. Lives in the flesh are not always lived according to the plans made in the Spirit Realm. It is hoped that we will adhere to the plan closely, but there are no guarantees.
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In his book “Journey of Souls” Michael Newton notes that, “…souls do have the freedom to choose when, where, and who they want to be in their physical lives.” He also explains that, after our “training sessions” with our “counselors and peer groups” in the Spirit Realm are completed and we thus begin the process of planning a return to a physical lifetime on Earth, “The soul must now assimilate all this information and take purposeful action based upon three primary decisions:
- Am I ready for a new physical life?
- What specific lessons do I want to undertake to advance my learning and development?
- Where should I go, and who shall I be in my next life for the best opportunity to work on my goals?”
Also pertinent here is the fact that most souls are very reluctant to leave the beauty and bliss of the Spirit Realm to return to, as Dr. Newton puts it, “a planetary environment of uncertainty and fear brought about by aggressive and competing humans” as well as “the physical and mental demands of a human body.” (I recall one NDEr – Near Death Experiencer – stating that when he returned to his physical body after his brief sojourn to the Spirit Realm the feeling of reentering his body after experiencing the lightness of Spiritual existence was like donning a pair of dirty, wet coveralls). The more accounts one reads of descriptions of life in the Spirit Realm, the more one gets the sense that existence on that other plane is ecstatic and rapturous, whereas life here on Earth, as we all know from personal experience, is often difficult, demanding, and uncomfortable. Interestingly, I’ve found in my readings that when Near Death Experiencers as well as LBL hypnosis subjects are asked if there such a thing as a “hell” - in the sense of a place of eternal damnation and suffering overseen by the “devil” - they invariably respond that there is no such place, but then they often qualify their answer by stating that life on Earth is the closest thing to a “hell.” So it is no surprise that most souls are not particularly eager to return to Earth for a new incarnation. One question that always nagged at me was: Well then, why do they do it? Of course I understand the reasons given as to why we need to return for more lifetimes on Earth, but what I never fully understood was why we ultimately agree to take the plunge, given the attractiveness of life in Spirit compared with the unattractiveness of life in the physical (I should note that it is often stated by LBL subjects that although we are encouraged to return to Earth, we are never forced to do so; ultimately we choose to reincarnate of our own free will). Well, finally, in my own LBL session, I received an explanation that made sense to me.
So, with that as background, let me resume my hypnosis session at the point where Amy prompted me to move on to this next phase:
Amy: So let’s go now to the Life and Body Selection place. How do you know when it’s time to incarnate? Does someone tell you?
John: You begin to get restless. You can’t fully enjoy the pleasures of the Spirit Realm. At first it’s like an annoyance in the background that goes buzz, buzz in your ear. But it gets bigger, and it starts to impede your enjoyment, and eventually you realize that you’ve got to deal with it, that you won’t be comfortable there if you don’t deal with it. There’s a tremendous resistance to knowing that, at least to me, but the discomfort there gets so great that it tips the balance. And in order to recoup the pleasurable feelings there, you have to come back here and deal with the issues. And that’s what motivates you. It’s like going to work here to earn money to buy things to give you pleasure. It’s like that, in a way.
(An interesting question here is: Is that “annoying buzz, buzz” the result of our own personal guilt, or is it an inherent, preprogrammed aspect of the Spirit Realm designed to give us the boot in the ass we need to finally give in and agree to make a return trip to the physical?).
Amy: So in considering your incarnation for this life, how did you feel about incarnating this time around?
John: I dreaded it. I didn’t want to come back period to this world. And then I knew the things I was going to be faced with in this life, that I had planned, for the reasons that I had, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be very pleasant. The early part, much more so. The later part has been good.
Let me take a moment to elaborate on this last statement. As I mentioned earlier, most souls do not look forward to a return to life on Earth. And, obviously, I felt the same – “I dreaded it.” But notice that I go on to point out that, while I dreaded the particulars of the specific lifetime I had chosen (“…I knew the things I was going to be faced with in this life, that I had planned…”) in order to address whatever karmic issues I needed to address (“…for the reasons that I had…”), I nevertheless stated that, “I didn’t want to come back period to this world.” I think the use of the word “period” in this statement is heavy with meaning, and, frankly, rather chilling: it suggests that I didn’t want to return to an earthly life under any circumstances. I have to admit that, looking back on my life, it has definitely not been an easy road. And I also have to agree with my statement that the early portion of my life was much more unpleasant that the later part; but consider that for the past seven years – in the later part of my life – I have been waging a very uncomfortable and stressful battle with prostate cancer – what does that say about how difficult the early part of my life was? Given that while in the Spirit Realm we are permitted to see at least some of the details of what awaits us in the next life we’ve chosen, it’s no wonder that I dreaded incarnating into my current lifetime. That “annoying buzz, buzz” must be pretty damn irritating!
Next time, more about my visit to the Place of Life Selection.
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