Do We Choose To Experience Pain Before Birth?

It would be impossible to exist on this planet without experiencing pain, suffering or struggle. And as a species born with reasoning capacity, man naturally attempts to make sense of such incongruities. Even in light conversation, when discussing daily frustrations, you will hear comments such as ‘I don’t know what I did to deserve this…’, ‘I must have been really bad in a past life for this to happen to me.’ or ‘This has got to be a payback!’

I’ve also heard from survivors, after the passing of a loved one, who believe their loved one pre-selected to depart this earth early in just such their manner of death, and that the survivor pre-agreed to share in that experience. Since no one really knows, it’s possible this explanation is correct, yet it does not lessen the grief. It merely fulfills that human need to rationalize a situation which can never truly make sense to the heart.

In fact, there is a new book out which explores the theory that humans plan their challenges before birth, but then maintain their free will once they arrive here. This combination of factors sets up the possibility for a soul to naively and unknowingly alter the course of their pre-determined education, setting them on a new path of discovery, all with the unseen help of guides, loved ones and the angelic realm.

This supposition lead me to be curious with regard to how many folks actually believe we choose in advance to incarnate, solely for the purpose of working through a specific lesson of some sort, then along the way, we experience pain and suffering as some form of karmic payback, debt or retribution. I’ve toyed with the idea, and so far it doesn’t make sense. Why? My understanding lies in that which we DO know, instead of that which we do NOT know. We do know that we are always searching for understanding for that which lies beyond our reality. However, the only truly concrete evidence on which to base our insight lies in our known universe.

1) Know Your Universe to Know Beyond It At the risk of repeating the same idiom, ‘As above, so below, and as below, so above’. (To be more easily grasped, this should really read, ‘As among you, so beyond you and as beyond you, so among you.’) This expression encourages an awareness for the concept that a possible connection does exists between our reality and a greater one. And as such, we are never left adrift or without that long arm of love eternally guiding and communicating to us. That guidance is continuously provided through the paradigm physical examples surrounding us while on this material plane, which helps us understand the more expansive reality beyond it. So, by widening our perception to that which is around us, we are gifted with an education as well as a glimpse to all that lies far outside our current field of vision.

2.) To Know God, Know Yourself Now let’s apply the same concept by closely looking at ourselves, (below) to better understand the heart of ‘God’. (above) When we strip down to the core of who we are, past our homes, material possessions, and physical forms, what primarily matters to humans is stimulation fueled in love.

a.) Humans Need Love
Since there is comfort, warmth, connecting, sharing and belonging in a true love state, it seems fairly safe to state that humans enjoy feeling loved. Due to breakthroughs in science, we can even take this concept a step further to include animals and plants.

b.) Humans Require Stimulation
Coupled with this basic necessity, is the human requirement for stimulation, whether it be of a mental, physical or emotional state. Humans revel in conversation and receive stimulation from the exchange. We are attracted to and appreciate finding others who bring that factor out in us. In fact, many enjoy simply talking ‘at’ one another – even this action stimulates the ego. And finally, we receive mental stimulation through continuous learning and physical stimulation through the impressions received within our primary senses. (taste, touch, sights, sound etc.)

The Stimulation Jack Pot
Our entire biology is energized by positive stimulation to the extent that when one has the rare fortune to connect to another human on a mental, physical, spiritual and emotional level, the flow of energy is so positively charged, we gave this individual a special title: ‘soul mate’.

Science Agrees
Consider animals which have been utilized in scientific experiments whereby they are devoid of affection and stimulation. Sadly, the animal withdraws, regresses and growth is stymied. If this type of situation exists for a long enough period of time the animal will lose the will to live. Quite literally, this gentle creature will die of a broken heart.

What Does This Tell Us About Our Source?
If key aspects to our personality are love and stimulation, wouldn’t a magnified level translate to a superior ability for both? And wouldn’t the most reasonable answer to questioning the why of our biological make up be that the superior energy from which all flows must be designed of a like, though greatly enhanced version?

In essence we ARE sparks of an intelligence that are continuous, capable of love, eternal, intelligent, organizational, beyond the bounds of our human comprehension, and understands a necessity for stimulation at all levels of existence. If you were to take the greatest love you have ever experienced, and magnify it by ten, you still could not come close to comprehending the enormity of love available to us from this source of all love.

What Was the Question Again?
To re-address the original question, ‘Do we choose to experience pain before our birth for the purpose of learning? (And comments such as: ‘I don’t know what I did to deserve this…’, ‘I must have been really bad in a past life for this to happen to me.’ or ‘This has got to be a payback!) When we create this supposition, we are stating that an energy, capable of a much greater love than we can comprehend, deliberately designs negative, painful experiences with the intended goal of a greater awareness. Does that sound Godlike to you? Or is it painted in shades of human grey?

Why It Doesn’t Make Sense
Would this nucleus source of eternally magnified love, desire less than all that is wonderful for us, the extensions of its very heart? It makes sense that our need for stimulation as an eternal energy would translate to our need for continuous learning and challenges. However we are provided this ability simply by receiving the loving gift of free will.

Here’s My Thought
The overall purpose of this theory is to suggest to individuals a shift in perspective from which to view challenges

1.) It’s natural to question, but within the conclusion of a ‘pre-designed fate’ framework, there exist the risk of arriving at a preemptive end. In other words, we could easily assume these conditions are larger than us - a completion of a cycle based on a pre-selected fate - or worse, our penalty due for a previous err in judgment, of which we many not even be aware in this life time. If we believe the only choice left is to ‘Let go and let God’, why not just shrug our shoulders and completely relinquish control? Sadly, this thought process runs the risk of us becoming victims to our self imposed limitations, and we stymie a creative learning process which otherwise would continue to move forward if we only chosen to utilize our free will gift, to operate from a positive, compassionate intent.

2.) To define our purpose for incarnation as the method for working out karma or learning a particular lesson of greater importance, is to undermine the incalculable multitude of experiences that could be just as important to each phase of existence. The education could be as practical as exploring the use of our senses, or testing our physical potential, and as difficult as comprehending the delicate art of temperance. As eternal creatures, whether discarnate or incarnate, experience always continues. It plays a natural role and growth can take place through unlimited multidimensional opportunities.

3.) In addition, to believe we pre-select before birth certain goals for each physical existence either negates the free will choices available to us here, or it selects to walk a murky middle ground by determining that though we came here with a predefined plan, we still have our free will and -unbeknownst to us - can choose to alter that purpose possibly failing to complete our original mission.

The first possibility virtually renders us as little more than a puppet, with a higher self pulling the strings. The second grasps at a series of unknowns, with us moving through our lifetime, ignorant of the pre-designed goals which we may be failing to achieve.

While a belief that we ‘pre-choose’ will eventually achieve the same knowledge, this route takes a largely meandering path towards the attended objective.

A More Direct Route
Instead, what if we were to consider the possibility that the residue of guilt we retain from childhood religious belief systems, led us to believe we deserve less.

Maybe the ill winds that blow are not a pre-destined, prior-birth selective choice, so much as knowledge we attract into our awareness, due to a lack in wisdom and likewise, an inability to transcend the situation thus far.

Isn’t it possible that the cruelty of others imposing their ill will on those less suspecting is purely the free will action of those less enlightened, not the pre-designed choice of the victim? Couldn’t it just as easily make sense that diseases such as cancer, which attack the physical body, are a living organism, in an out of balance ecosystem, not a pre-selected method for death?

In Sum

It’s interesting to ponder the possibilities. We may be right on course or we may have veered from our pre-determined path. No matter how we arrived to this point, this is where we are now, and the situations which have been part of our experience are the ones we face. We may have spent a life time guarding tender emotions wounded in childhood, and have since built thick protective emotional walls, guarded by a door of heavy locks and chains. The only sure way to freedom is the path of awareness and forgiveness, companioned by love.

Let’s shift our awareness. Instead of thinking, ‘The cosmos is paying me back’ or ‘I must have done something to deserve this’, why not say, ‘Horrible as it was (or is) how can I now grow from this place?’ ‘What can I take from this which will allow me to transmute the experience, finally know freedom from it and transcend it forever? What will draw me or others closer to a state of love?’

By breaking through our self imposed prisons, a space is created for something beautiful to develop. Tolstoy would agree. He once said the greatest prison he was ever in, was the one that existed within his own mind.

Even when the situation is beyond painful and leaves us wracked with grief, we can choose to honor those we love. We can funnel every ounce of that pain into a form of fuel to ignite positive action and set into motion an affirming never-ending ripple.

I’m not suggesting we never ‘let go and let God’. Instead, maybe nourish the relationship with the ‘Source’ so that a friendship can be birthed and flourish. Let this be a connection that becomes integrated in a positive manner in your daily living.

And when faced with another who has been less than kind, and a ‘letting go’ is the only possible next step, I am suggesting we consciously view the event in totality and where necessary, find a way to forgive ourselves or others. I’m suggesting we view this wounding individual as more than someone who has found a way to hurt us. Perceive them as someone who has to live with that shadow light inside of them, instead of the purity of a clear light. If you plainly apply your focus on the fact that these individuals have to exist with roiling unpleasant emotions cohabitating within them, you’ll understand that the problem is much larger than you. You were merely in the path of an outward though misguided bullet. This act of climbing inside the essence of another who is not joyous – one who feels less than joy… this is a leap in your compassionate self.

Once this realization finds a soft place to land within you, there will be an opportunity to take the experience and view it from a removed perspective. In doing so, you experience a pure freedom to choose how it will affect you and your future. Will it continue to be a burden you carry? Or will you lay that burden down, and instead, draw from it, a positive learning – a ‘fuel’, all that will enable you to have an enhanced compassion, to lift up others in need from that point on.

We are energy, in the continuous state of becoming. By finding a way to swing wide that heavy door to the past, and embrace all experiences – the good, bad and ugly - we become something more - one who can bear honest witness for another. For ourselves, we experience a newfound freedom, enabling us to shed the heavy bonds of this plane. Then, lighter of spirit we are able to soar into the infinite places beyond.