Do You Choose Your Next Life, or Is It Chosen for You?

A fairly common theme and question regarding reincarnation, is whether we choose the next life and its circumstances, such as our parents. Or, if these things are chosen for us, imposed and dictated by an external authority. Or even, if they are random, assigned in a chaotic manner.

To begin with, no circumstances in your life are random in a literal sense. All moments in life are part of a flow, a dance, which is always tuned to a background of spiritual meaning, as well as to your energy, spiritual nature, and choices. All situations connect, relate, and/or serve you, in some way. For example, any time you meet someone, from the most fleeting acquaintances to the people who’ll hold the more relevant roles in your life, it is rare for the person to be entirely disconnected from you, i.e. to have nothing to do with you. Even with those who might connect with you in negative ways, can still be considered as a type of connection. There’s always a message, a commonality, and/or something that drew the person to you, on some level. There’s always energy and meaning at work. The same is true for the choices and directives planned and established prior to a lifetime. Regardless of how and why those choices are formulated, one thing they are not: random.

In the space in-between lifetimes, a plan is made for each new lifetime, prior to it, which reflects your spiritual intentions for that life. This plan can be more specific and detailed, or more abstract and generic. To an extent it can be both things simultaneously: contemplating both overarching and long-term directives and intentions, as well as specific details, situations, and events, describing for the most likely and/or desirable scenarios. This is because, while a life/incarnation does follow spiritual meaning, at the same time it can be quite unpredictable. There are no strict guarantees in place for what’s planned for the lifetime to actually occur. What happens during your life is at all times dependent on the choices you make at every moment. You might choose according to your own spiritual nature and guidance, or you might not – hence the importance of connecting with your inner spiritual meaning within. An incarnation functions more like an ongoing game, a puzzle of sorts, one that’s constantly being accompanied and monitored by your spiritual guidance team, and much less like something predefined and set in stone, programmed to happen no matter what.

I’ve addressed lifetime plans in other articles, the latest being On the Biological Race to Have Children, Part II: Romantic Contracts. There I wrote (without intending to sound pompous by quoting myself, it’s just I already wrote on this): one’s spiritual plan is not a predetermination of what will happen. No matter how much careful deliberation and detail went into it, a spiritual plan can only ever be an expression of your spiritual intentions; a guideline of sorts. It is, however, not binding. No matter the plan in place, you will never be forced to comply with it. There’s a military saying that goes something like this: “a plan never survives the first encounter with the enemy”. One thing is what you set out to do before a project or journey (in this case, a new lifetime); another quite different thing, is what actually happens once you get thrown into the midst of it.

Your Participation in the Plan

When your next life is being planned, the extent to which you participate in this planning in a conscious or, so to speak, “intelligent” manner, directly depends on your spiritual advancement. In other words, it depends if, and how much, at that time, as a spiritual entity, you are aware you’re the one truly making all of the choices, and dictating your own reality and experiences, at all times. This includes the planning and directives for a new incarnation.

This may sound like a paradox since I’m stating you’re the one making the choices. However, you may not be fully aware of it – yet the process needs to take place, and will, regardless of what you believe.

At any given point in the spiritual journey, across many lifetimes, you may not be entirely aware of your own intrinsic inner spiritual nature, essence, traits, and so on. You are a spiritual being and you have a spiritual nature within, always – but at the same time, it is possible for you to walk distant from that nature. It is possible for you to be, act, and hold beliefs, that are dissonant with, and/or do not allow, the recognition and manifestation of your own spiritual nature. The possibility of not aligning with your own spiritual nature is called Free Will, a metaphysical attribute of all Souled beings.

Also, when a lifetime ends and you return to Spirit, that doesn’t mean you instantly become enlightened. That’s not the way it works. When no longer impaired by the restraints of a physical body and metaphysical veil, your awareness does expand and become clearer, but, at the same time, you do retain your overall level of awareness, as well as most beliefs and perspectives, you held while living. Neither your identity nor your spiritual journey end upon passing: they simply continue, just as they were.

While you’re the one ultimately making the choices regarding your path, simultaneously, your level of awareness at any given moment in the journey might mean you’re not fully aware of the process itself. This includes the afterlife and the planning of new lives. You might be sufficiently perceptive to understand there’s an actual process of planning going on, and to that extent be allowed to partake in it. But, at the same time, your awareness can, and will, prevent you from having a broad perspective and ‘complete’ understanding of that plan.

Spiritual Entourage

For each lifetime, you always have entities, such as your Higher Self, your spirit guides, and so on, overseeing the process, plans, and decisions made – not just before the lifetime begins but also during it, throughout. So you aren’t actually alone, on your own, making the choices. Your spiritual entourage is there, participating in the process, always in alignment with the Light and the directives of your Higher Self (i.e. your own highest level of consciousness always staying above and beyond the conundrums of incarnation), and with a perspective and awareness that are broader than your own at any given time.

This entourage is not so much controlling the process, rather it’s overseeing it, so that the decisions made regarding the next life follow the directives of your spiritual advancement in the mid to long-term, and aren’t (only) driven by what your more superficial, transient desires and perspectives happen to be at the time. Because on their own, without said supervision, these could very well lead to further awareness loss, further sidetracking of your meaningful path (or sidetracking too much), getting further lost in karmic and reincarnation cycles, and so on.

Reincarnation sometimes is taken lightly and in a ‘sportly’ manner by spiritual entities. This is because physical experience is ultimately seen as an intense, short, and “fun ride” for an abstract Consciousness who exists for all eternity. Still, at the same time, reincarnation is no joke. There are immense stakes at it, pertaining to your spiritual status and path. You aren’t going to be allowed to incur in any more suffering or loss of awareness if you’re not “meant” to, i.e. if it doesn’t serve your intended spiritual lessons. If, for example, your broader spiritual aim is to rise in consciousness instead. Without the supervision of your spiritual entourage, you could very easily risk being trapped in the physical reincarnating indefinitely, “forever”. You always need some type of reference and surrounding guidance to, ultimately, eventually, find your way back Home. This reference is, in a manner of speaking, represented first and foremost by your Higher Self, in other words, the purest, Soul-level awareness of your spiritual nature, who you ultimately are, spiritually speaking.

If you’re not actually aware, or to the extent you’re not aware, of the context in which these decisions are being made, and how they pertain to your spiritual nature and context, then this same decision-making is still working and taking place – just with reduced or no participation on your part. In other words, your spiritual entourage is making the choices for you, based on the next step to be taken, while still, always, at all times, envisioning the directives of your own Higher Self for your intended spiritual path, while also taking into account the experiences that match the requirements of your karmic attributes, representing the accumulated energy of loose, unresolved past experiences.

But even if this is the case, or to the extent that is so, all the things directed for you are still necessarily following both i) your Higher Self’s directives, representing your deeper/higher-level spiritual directives and intent, and, at the same time, ii) always matching the collection of elements composing your current energy/vibratory state, your beliefs and perspectives, your karma/traumas, etc. So you’re always making the choices. Perhaps not always a choice in the sense of, from your perspective, making a conscious decision between A or B, but a choice nonetheless, in the sense your energy/vibratory state is always inexorably directing and determining what happens to you, and what can.

For these reasons, the answer to the question is: both perspectives are true at the same time.

You are the one always making choices, however, you might not be participating in the process with a full conscious self, instead relying – to the extent you need to – on the assistance and support of your spiritual entourage. These work with you and support you, to the degree your awareness for the moment hasn’t connected and merged, yet, with your true spiritual self, which is ultimately the end destination of the reincarnation process as a whole.

It is not possible for you to go through any experience in an incarnation that doesn’t match, reflect, or correlate in some way with your consciousness, beliefs, as well as your karma (unresolved lessons) if any. It simply doesn’t happen, because external reality is always matching your inner one at all times. So in essence, you are the one always making the choices – it only varies the degree you’re aware of it.