CHAPTER 1

Why Were We Born?

My daughter was a catalyst in my life. She wasdogmatic, argumentative, and stubborn in many ways,but she helped open me up to different views of life. Iwas pretty much a dreamer, and not too involved in life in general.It was her death in November 1990 that shook me into a realityI hadn't wanted to face; one that I would never have wished forin my wildest dreams. But it was a reality that is far beyond thephysical world of the senses. It is a reality that smacks of thespiritual world; and the forces therein. It does not pertain to thisworld of materialism, as it is now, yet the two interact, and thereis no way to differentiate them. I felt, no, I knew, there was moreto this life than just this physical reality.

I find it sad when I hear some people say this life is all thereis, and at the end there is death, the closing of a blind, noughtbut blackness, nothingness, a void. I cannot, and never could,accept that death would be the end of life. I guess I never reallythought about it very much, but I certainly didn't think there wasnothing after this life. A loving Creator could not have created usby chance; for no reason but to live and die into nothingness.

If we take a look at nature, we see the birth and death of theseasons; the birth of plant life, its death, and then it springingback to life as each new season dawns. If we look at the treesand plants, for example, as each tree dies; a little seed falls, andin time; a new tree shoots up out of the fertile soil. Within eachlittle seed is the making of a new plant, tree, or flower. Evolutioncontinues in nature; as indeed it does in the animal and humankingdom. Our souls are continually evolving; as surely as lifecontinues in the great universe. Each moment new planets arecontinually spinning, evolving, and being birthed. Nothing thatexists came into being without purpose. Every experience inlife has a continual spiral of purpose. We are told by spiritualphilosophies that nothing happens by chance.

Our rational mind looks "out there" for an answer. Our innerself sees everything as being part of self. In Deepak Chopra's bookThe Way of the Wizard, he gives us an explanation for the orderof life:

"Energy and information are basic to everything we see,hear or touch in the relevant world. Yet their primordial state isformless. A bundle of energy can drift away in a chaotic swirl likea puff of smoke; information can break down into random blipsof data. It takes another force to organise the wondrous order oflife—intelligence. Intelligence is the glue of the universe."

Intelligence has created life for a purpose. I believe we are borninto this world to learn to evolve spiritually into our true nature.Every experience we have, we learn from in some way. We are allpart of the intelligence that is called God. There are many namesthat are used to describe this intelligence: God, Source, Universalenergy, the universe, the All-That-Is and many others. Whateveryou call this oneness with Source, it matters not. We are all partof it. We are as much a part of this Source as any other humanbeing or, in fact, any part of nature or the planet, or the universesthemselves. Everything that exists is God. There is nothing thatis not God. You may find this hard to accept if you were broughtup with a religious background, seeing God as a separate beingsitting on a throne in heaven, but the great masters throughouttime have told us that all life is experience of God Source.

Before we come into this physical dimension we are and alwayshave been spirit. Our souls have always existed as part of thecreative force. They were before the beginning of the world, andwill be still when the world has passed away. We are far morethan our physical bodies. We are told we have lived many, manylives, and each time we die in the physical sense; we are given anopportunity to view our past mistakes. We see what we failed todo; or how we may have hurt someone; or infringed on their freewillthrough trying to control them or bend them to our ways.Sometimes failing to do something is the greater error. To makeamends for these past "mistakes" we are given an opportunity tobe born into circumstances that allow us the chance to alleviateour wrongs and so give our soul another chance to grow into itstrue oneness with itself. The circumstances we are born into;reflect the amount of learning we have completed in life.

It is our soul's choice when we choose our particularcircumstances. If we are far enough along the path in ourlearning, we are given the privilege of choosing our parents andcircumstances in order to advance further in our soul's learning.Most of the events in our life pattern are planned before we areborn into the human body of a baby. Many of the circumstanceswhich happen to us in our lifetime do not happen randomly, butare actually part of our soul's planning, and they are chosen forour greater learning, prior to our being born. We have choicesalong the way, but the main shape of our life pattern is not alteredto a great extent by these choices. Our guides and spirit helpersare always prompting us to follow certain patterns at differentjunctures in our lives.

Our choices and circumstances are our responsibility. It is wewho choose the hard lessons in life or the easy ones. Those whoface the toughest times are often facing the greatest growth. Thosewho face loss of children, for example, or adverse...