Do we really chose our lives before we are born?

[kris]

Originally Posted by Mystik

I know a guy who says that we chose our lives before we are born. He says in your past life you make a choice or enter a kind of contract to determine what your next life will be. However, he says that we forget what it is when we are born but he says it's already been determined. He referred to a book called "souls journey." He is using this book as a reference for his beliefs.

I guess you must have made a contract with him before you were born for him to tell you this now! Just kidding.

I don't believe in free will 100 percent but I don't believe in determinism 100 percent either.

Our free will comes with a price - ignorance. With our free wills, we make choices all the time, choices that have outcomes - some that come immediately after we make our choices and some that follow us in time to come. The lingering effects of our choices can follows us long into distant future, long after we have forgotten that we made those choices. Universal law that determines the effects of our choices is not bound by scale of time that we are normally accustomed to, namely our puny lifetime. Its time scale is eternity, which is why ancients called it sanAtana dharma or Eternal Law.

[c-estca]

We most definitely do. We also get to choose our own parents.

M,
I'm new here, so way behind in posts. Do we chart our path's prior to coming to earth school? I would say yes and no, depending on the level of the soul. i believe there is a hierarchy of souls residing here on earth, the more spiritual your soul is, there isn't a chart. Souls (just started on the spiritual quest of advancement), Mission life entities, (more spiritually advanced than soul), Nuvos (more advanced.....), these souls all have charts. Then we get to Mystical Travelers and Earth angels (which do not have charts). I would suspect the person you have referred to was a highly advanced soul. I have met many in varying levels of participation here on earth. They may be here for their advancement or the advancement of the souls they interact with. No one will know for sure, until they head home and scan their life. Hope this helps.

Hi, I'm very new here and not at all an expert on the subject. I'm just wondering: can't it be that sometimes, something goes wrong along the way? I mean: maybe we do choose a path before coming back to life, but almost nothing depends on us from then on, we surely cannot choose everything about our whole life before it actually starts. We all live on a thick web after all, where everything and everyone is connected.

[Belle]

Originally Posted by SiS_ter

Hi, I'm very new here and not at all an expert on the subject. I'm just wondering: can't it be that sometimes, something goes wrong along the way? I mean: maybe we do choose a path before coming back to life, but almost nothing depends on us from then on, we surely cannot choose everything about our whole life before it actually starts. We all live on a thick web after all, where everything and everyone is connected.

I think that's absolutely it. We choose our lessons and our plans - so in essence we choose the "theme" of our life - what we need to learn for ourselves and what we need perhaps to teach others. What we will excel at, what our limitations may be and so on.

It's of course, more complex than us.

However, we can alter the course of things by whether we grasp the lessons easily or no, we can refuse to engage with them, and also those whom we encounter can adjust their position in relation to us. Life is a myriad of choices and possibilities.

I would dare to suggest that we have fundamental life lessons and if we choose to avoid it in one aspect, then it will just crop up again and again. So you walk away from one "teacher" and you will just be met with another teacher as such.

Originally Posted by Internal Queries

right right because we humans need "reasons" and even if life just happens the way it does we'll make up reasons for the way life happens. it's easier to believe that a starving baby in Africa somehow chose, wants or deserves to be a starving baby in Africa than to accept that starving African babies are victims of horrible circumstance. we don't like victims. do we? victims make us feel pity and obligation and if someone chooses or "karmically" deserves to be a starving baby then they aren't really victims. are they? which is very convenient for those of us who have the luxury of sitting in our more comfortable "karma" and making up such cosmic reasons for agony. i have a real problem with this kind of "reasoning". my heart tells me that such "reasoning" is self serving and untrue. i just can't buy it.

Hear, hear!

Excellent points. And I'll use this post to hang my thoughts of the matter on.

People like reasons. We want reasons for why this or that happened, or why things are the way they are. Naturally that inclination extends to life circumstances. Which becomes fertile breeding ground for grandiose, seemingly empowering "spiritual" explanations for why your parents are chronic alcoholics, or why your wife cheats on you. You simply chose that life, becomes a mantra of defense against the inequity of life. Modern self-proclaimed spiritual-but-not-religious belief systems are deeply indebted to the phenomenon of individualism: they attempt to impose a self-affirmative spin on all events and objects. All occurrences become lessons to further your all-important individual growth leading to "ascension", "enlightenment" and other possibly escapist states of being. As Internal Queries pointed out, victims make us feel uncomfortable. By admitting the natural predatory and harsh facets of life it seems to disarm the notion of individual control and providence over one's existence, again, always leading to a particular state that places precedence on idealized life, rather than life as-is.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it ultimately destroys personal-responsibility and humanness. Instead of overcoming hardships and rising above misfortune, they're instead commended for learning the lessons they were already going to learn, regardless of their choices. The claws of nature are removed by putting on rose-tinted glasses, and chanting "it's all going as planned", even when droves of countless other peoples die before they see their 5th birthday, or a person lives in constant poverty. Lessons. Just so, but the lessons that are truly being taught are those concerning the ways people use beliefs to cope, whether through providential destiny, or the choice of one's life-circumstance by a mysterious phantom christened the higher self. A wily way to have one's cake and eat it too. We choose our lives, but not us. Something else unconcerned with your own pathway of humanness, instead focused on a utopian ideal that's at the end of a great-tunnel makes that choice for you.

ramble ramble, etc.

[sweatervest]

I believe it is human nature to want to make sense of it all. If it turns out that life is ultimately pointless and utterly random, I know that at least I am not capable of dealing with that possibility.

Thinking of "humanness" as being a good thing is also an idealized viewpoint, as one doesn't have to look very far to conclude that humans aren't a very evolved species.

Personal responsibility could also be part of a master plan. However, it seems that no matter how hard some people try, they cannot escape a short, painful, brutal life. I hope there is some point to such suffering, even if it is no more than entertainment for some higher being.

I believe in everything that has been said here and agree, but I'm curious.. Isn't there sometimes a scientific explanation? We know that we can inherit certain things from our parents. Even mental disabilities, CAN be inherited genetically. Recessive genes and such that we don't even know we carry as individuals can be passed down to our offspring, sadly. Things like Aspergers, etc. Or are we saying that still, the soul can 'choose' that life, any way? And that the soul KNOWS that per-disposition that lurks within these two lovers, as it choses it's life between two people?

I hope that question isn't too confusing... But the idea that a soul can sense these genetic recessive possibilities that could spring up between two people merging and conceiving? That's incredible in itself, seeing as science can see why and how (literally prove) certain diseases come to be in an individual from being inherited by two parents who are completely normal and show no signs of such an illness. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I am new to the forums, and am VERY familiar with all that is being said by recent posts. I even agree with all that has been said. I am dating a man who has a wife who channeled these 'truths' about incarnations and the way the soul operates and evolves. I have heard all of this before word for word. But I find this topic particularly interesting.

[A human Being]

Originally Posted by Belle

Sometimes, some things are beyond answer. We wrestle our brains, we look for a truth, we look for a reason, we look for a tangible, but sometimes we have to let go and accept that we can't know all the whys, the reasons, the rationales.

I used to find that sort of thinking very frustrating, I guess because unconsciously I believed that mind was God. But it's actually liberating to embrace the reality that the mind is much more limited than we might like to believe, and there are many things in life that are beyond its comprehension; it's a very useful tool, but we should see its limitations. And so what if it's limited - that's only a problem if you believe you are your mind. But of course, you're much more than that.

As per the OP - as others have said, I think it's all about growth, and in order to grow you have to experience every privation, every sorrow, every high, and every low, so that you can see what really endures. Because all situations, good or bad, always pass eventually; what's left is who you are.

[A human Being]

Originally Posted by sweatervest

I believe it is human nature to want to make sense of it all. If it turns out that life is ultimately pointless and utterly random, I know that at least I am not capable of dealing with that possibility.

I think it's a necessary stage in the evolution of our consciousness, tbh. From the perspective of the mind that's identified with forms, life must look ultimately futile, because all forms wither and die, eventually. The recognition of the formless reality - that's the next stage in the evolution of consciousness, for me.