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Picking Our Parents and Our Life Circumstances

May 10th, 2007 by Erin Pavlina          Email this article to a friend Email this article to a friend

In my recent blog entry, Destiny vs. Free Will, I mentioned that before you incarnate you pick your parents and your life circumstances.  People always ask me why someone would choose to be born into a poor family, or into an abusive home, if indeed we are allowed to select our own situation.  Here is the explanation.

Imagine you are back in the ether and you’re getting ready to design your next life.  To use an analogy, you are handed a form with checkboxes for the kind of life you want to have.  You fill out the paperwork indicating you want to focus on learning compassion, perseverance, and kindness.  You also decide you want to have a large impact on the planet instead of just living in your quiet little corner of the globe.  You turn in your paperwork to the wise Rishi whose job it is to help you find a life situation you can be born into so that you will learn these things.

Using his vast ethereal computer, he inputs all your preferences and the computer spits out 20 families who have the exact life situation you would need in order to learn compassion, perseverance, and kindness.   Using other parameters, such as who you’d like to marry, their location, and the political climate surrounding these families, the computer narrows the choice down to 10.  He narrows the search further by analyzing the families’ current financial situation and the computer spits out 2 families.  He hands you the information on each family with a projection for how likely it is that you will succeed in learning compassion, perseverance, and kindness, and you read it carefully.

You discover that both families currently live in poverty, but one is in America and one is in Croatia.  The American family has 4 other children, and the Croatian family has 1.  You can see both families struggle with finances.  But the American parents are at a consciousness level of anger and are sometimes abusive towards their children.  The Croatian parents are very loving and confident they will make something of their lives and be able to provide well for their children.  You can see that in both cases the likelihood of you learning compassion, perseverance and kindness is very high.  One of the children in the American family is a soul you recognize from a previous incarnation.  You don’t recognize the Croatian souls from any of your incarnations. 

Your final decision is to be born into the American family even though you know you will suffer terrible abuses.  You feel certain that the adversities you face in childhood will help you learn compassion for others, how to persevere in the face of adversity, and the kindness towards others that your parents could not demonstrate to you.  It will be a good life. 

The Rishi makes the arrangements; your future parents accidentally get pregnant (darn condoms that break!) and in you go.  The veil is drawn and you are off on another adventure.  Will you succeed?  Will you learn?  Will you raise your level of consciousness?  That remains to be seen.

Now obviously there are thousands of parameters for choosing a family and life situation so the above scenario is a vast oversimplification of the process.  But hopefully you get the idea.

When you are in the ether you remember that you are a part of consciousness and that you are being sent out into the world to experience, learn, and grow.  You know that physical life is temporary, and that the pain and adversity you face as a physical being is but a moment in your existence.  Why do people choose to enter a life that is filled with pain and torment?  Because from the perspective of the ether, any pain or adversity is but a blip of discomfort in the grand scheme of things.  It’s like asking if you are willing to suffer a paper cut in order to gain vast wisdom and knowledge and tremendous personal growth.  When we incarnate, we forget that, so yeah, it can be extremely difficult to understand why horrible things happen to you and even more disconcerting to think you chose for it to happen!  This is why I feel it is so important to remember where we came from.  When you remember that this life is temporary and that your goal is growth, it can make even the most horrible conditions bearable.  Just look at Nelson Mandela.  With all that he suffered, to come out of that experience with his spirit intact, and able to make a profound difference in the lives of his people, you can see how even severe adversity may be required in order to make an impact on our planet.

When you choose your parents and your life situation you are giving yourself an opportunity.  What you do with that opportunity is entirely up to you.  Don’t waste any of the life you’ve chosen.  Learn from every experience.

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  • 9 Responses to “Picking Our Parents and Our Life Circumstances”

    1. Deja Vu - Personal Development for Smart People Forums Says:

      [...] You don’t choose bankruptcy and drug dealing ahead of time. You choose the circumstances but not the details. So you may choose to be born into a wealthy family or a poor one and then let the chips fall where they may. Read this blog entry for more on that. __________________ Erin Pavlina, Psychic Medium "Remember Where You Came From" Book a Reading | Read Testimonials| Get Info [...]

    2. rationalising distress - Personal Development for Smart People Forums Says:

      [...] Erin wrote a blog, Picking Our Parents and Our Life Circumstances that has her perspective on this question. There was lots of discussion on the forum, too! Great question! [...]

    3. Raise Conscious Children » Blog Archive » Law of Attraction Says:

      [...] Your children have manifested you. That’s right, no one is left out. Everyone gets to play, whether they are aware of it, or not. Erin Pavlina has, ever so simply, traced the act of manifestation back to the ether with Picking Our Parents and Our Life Circumstances. Give it a read and come back to finish this up… [...]

    4. Erin Pavlina’s Blog » Blog Archive » Did I choose to be disabled before I incarnated? Says:

      [...] Question:  You mention in your blog entry, Picking Our Parents and Life Circumstances, that people choose the circumstances of their life.  I was born deaf.  Did I choose to suffer with this disability?  Does everyone who is born disabled choose it ahead of time?  Was it karma that made me this way? [...]

    5. Erin Pavlina’s Blog » Blog Archive » Abortion Says:

      [...] First a soul decides it wants to incarnate.  It selects its parents and life circumstances.  When the egg is fertilized a contract has been made; an agreement between the new soul and the parents.  The baby’s soul does not immediately enter into the fetus, however that doesn’t mean that life does not begin at conception.  I would say rather that intent begins at conception.  The contract begins at conception.  Life mazes are created, events are planned, a journey is begun, a commitment is made. [...]

    6. What is the spiritual meaning behind mass suffering? (Blog) - Personal Development for Smart People Forums Says:

      [...] As a quick answer, read these two blog entries on what happens before we incarnate: Erin Pavlina - Psychic Medium, Spirituality, and Personal Development » Blog Archive » Picking Our Parents and Our Life Circumstances Erin Pavlina - Psychic Medium, Spirituality, and Personal Development » Blog Archive » Destiny vs. Free Will __________________ Erin Pavlina Psychic Medium, Author, Speaker, Blogger, Wife to Steve Pavlina "Erin’s reading was unbelievably insightful. In just 20 minutes she helped me sort through 4 major areas of my life that I’ve been struggling with in therapy for more than 8 years! I was stunned. I’m truly amazed at her abilities, and I am so thankful I found her when I did." - Jeanette in Tulsa, OK [...]

    7. Erin Pavlina - Spiritual Wisdom for Conscious People » Blog Archive » When Life Appears to Be Against You Says:

      [...] Picking Our Parents and Our Life Circumstances Destiny vs. Free Will Like Rats in a Maze [...]

    8. Time to Die Says:

      [...] this: Picking Our Parents and Our Life Circumstances and this: Destiny vs. Free Will I don’t personally believe that people and animals incarnate as [...]

    9. Spiritual Ascension Round-up - Vera Nadine Says:

      [...] abound. Erin Pavlina has put forward her view, a quite interesting explanation, in her newest post, Picking Our Parents and Our Life Circumstances: You fill out the paperwork indicating you want to focus on learning compassion, perseverance, and [...]