Ask The Council

Does Spirit’s Pre-Birth Planning Negate Human Free Will?

This post is third in a series describing a session with The Council on Saturday, March 30, 2013 to answer questions from Jose, Michelle, and D. This post focuses on the first of Jose’s four questions and it’s about guidance from The Council in a recent post and the issue of free will:

“In the case of what was shared in Maria’s Plan for a Spiritual Leap, it appears that the spiritual agreement made prior to the incarnation is more powerful than Maria or her friend’s “godly” power to manifest a new reality of survival and togetherness in this lifetime, as if there is no free will in this incarnation.” —Jose

Background

In our post, Maria’s Plan for a Spiritual Leap, we discuss a session with The Council to answer a question from a reader named Maria who describes her best friend as on his deathbed. Maria’s question was inspired by our post, Everyone in Your Life Was Invited By You, which makes the point that everything you experience as a human being has been invited into our life by who you are as a spiritual being in a human body.

Planned While You Were in the Spirit World

Maria asked The Council’s opinion on whether she invited into her life the experience of her friend ‘dying,’ because she found it difficult to understand why she would have agreed to lose him at this time and in this way. Part of The Council’s guidance for Maria was:

“And so, although you find this very painful, it has been discussed and planned while you were still in the spirit world.”

Maria’s Question About Gods

Maria also asked if gods, or angels, or saints hear her prayers, or when she yells at them in anger, and part of The Council’s answer was:

“You are all part of this infinite being that you believe is out there somewhere.”

“You can create and do anything that you wish, but it will come when you finally understand who you really are [as a spiritual being].”

The Council’s complete answers to Maria’s questions can be found in the post, Maria’s Plan for a Spiritual Leap.

What About Free Will?

Jose’s question seems based on a difficulty reconciling the two aspects of The Council’s guidance for Maria mentioned above, and he seems to have come to the following understandable conclusions:

1. Maria would use her divine creative power to manifest a human reality of health and longevity with her friend.
2. An agreement Maria and her friend made while “still in the spirit world” is preventing their human free will from manifesting a reality of health and longevity together.

Maria’s Feedback on Our Post

Here’s an excerpt from the comment Maria posted on our blog after she read the post on her question:

“With the pains and joys we feel in our human incarnations before remembering who we really are, I think I understand why the Council call us courageous, because it takes courage to know that it will be, or can be, a painful experience, and yet still be willing to do it for the greater benefit of learning and growing…and that growth benefits all of Spirit, correct?” —Maria

You can read her complete comment by clicking here.

Our Response to Jose Prior to Asking The Council

Since it can sometimes take weeks for us to do a session with The Council on a reader’s question(s) and publish a post on the session, if we think we can provide the questioner with a reasonably prompt answer based on our understanding of what we’re learning from The Council, we try to do that. Here’s our response to Jose prior to our session on this question:

If Maria and her friend’s spiritual intention is to experience the expansion of their love by Maria remaining in a physical body and her friend leaving his physical body, which is our impression of what The Council said during the session [on Maria’s question], then this is where we would expect their [Maria and her friend’s] godly (i.e., spiritual) power to be focused.

Maria’s human desire may be to manifest a new reality of survival and togetherness with her friend in this lifetime, but we would say her human desire is more closely related to human power than godly power. We would say the godly power you [Jose] mention is more closely related to their intention as spiritual beings, not human beings [if the intentions differ].

When Maria’s human desires are in harmony with her spiritual intentions, we expect she’ll experience powerful, godly manifestations in her life. As far as free will in this incarnation is concerned, it’s our understanding that Maria has complete free will as a human being to choose what is in harmony with the larger part of her (her spiritual being) or to resist what is in harmony with spirit, and have that experience.

Spirit Wants You to Experience the Challenge

The Council begins the session on this question from Jose with the following:

“The human mind and the human body does not understand that it has the power of free will. It has the power to change this — what they think [is a] horrible situation. [But] the spirit is pushing you forward and is keeping you on track. It wants to experience this situation.

“And so as human-you goes through it [a challenge] thinking, why can’t I change it?, it [the challenge] is exactly what spirit-you wants to experience; it is exactly where human-you needs to be. And spirit-you is creating what human-you would think of as the ending [i.e., death] to this situation, exactly the way spirit-you wants it for your expansion. [Edits to the quotation were made that do not appear in brackets because their use seemed confusing rather than helpful.]

The Council appears to be affirming the power of human free will, but they also seem to be suggesting that if who we are as an unconditionally loving spiritual being has an intention for who we are as spirit in a physical body, then perhaps there are limitations on what our human free will can achieve if we are resisting our spiritual intention.

In Time You Will See the Benefits

I (Bob) commented to The Council that from a human point of view it can be difficult to appreciate how a painful challenge like Maria’s can be something that an unconditionally loving spirit wants her to experience for her expansion, when her human experience feels exactly like what she doesn’t want in her life right now, and The Council replied:

“The [important] word there is ‘right now’. In time – and we do not know how much time you will need – you will find an understanding to whatever the challenge is. You will never walk away [from a challenge] without creating some sort of answer for yourself that you do not see while you are in the challenge.

“And so again, where you think there is no free will, when you fight the direction of what you truly need or want to experience, it will feel horrible. Your emotions, your thoughts, will be off in (shall we say) a negative direction, and eventually you will see something that made you grow, even in [your] human form.

“We can say here there are children that have been abused through no fault of their own — horribly. And someone would think, why would this child choose this? But as the child advances, what has it learned? Perhaps it has learned: I will show love to others. If I have children myself, I will remember to be more loving. I will remember this is not the way I want it to be.

“What did I learn living through this? Did I have to fend for myself? I can now be more independent. Did I learn not to trust? But let’s look at the rest of my life. Can I trust now? Are there other people that will be there for me? Have I been abandoned, and in that abandonment have I learned that I can be self-sufficient.

“When you experience a lack of love, have you learned to love yourself? And it is all these little challenges, as you come out of it and you ask: What have I learned? How does it affect me now? Do I like how it is affecting me? I have the choice to change how this runs my life now.

“If someone I love is dying, have I learned to appreciate people before they are on what you call their deathbed? Let me bring the love in now, not when they are gone and thinking I should have done that, or I love them now that they are gone.

“So each situation you go through – and again we say, in whatever time you choose, there will be an aha moment and you will see some of the benefits that came from it.”

The Council’s position on the difficulties and challenges of human experience appears to be that we come as spirit into human experience for the joy of expanding the love we are as spirit into our human realities. And what makes these challenges seem so disturbing is that we lose sight of the reason we chose, as spirit, to experience these challenges in the first place.

The Council seems to suggest that the human pain we experience has more to do with our resistance to our spiritual intention to bring love into a situation than the nature of the challenge itself.

How Do I Make This Situation More Loving?

I asked if The Council’s guidance is to have faith in who we are as spiritual beings and that everything we are experiencing, no matter how unpleasant or even horrible, will eventually show itself to be exactly what we wanted and needed in order to experience the expansion of the love that is our true purpose as a spiritual being.

“Any situation that you are in where you feel you have no choice, we tell you #1: You have choice in everything. And every situation that you feel is difficult, there is the question, ‘How can I change it?’ No matter who it is, no matter where it is — how do I make this more loving?

“And if you do this, these challenges will disappear. You will learn quickly what it is. Your thoughts will ease away from the hardship of it. And many times, even before you get to that deathbed… you will appreciate yourself for how, being in one situation, you are able to change the way you thought about it, and it was really okay, and it had a purpose.

“And that’s why you’re here.”

If you are able to merely consider the possibility from time to time that you are an eternal, unconditionally loving spiritual being in a physical body, and if you can allow yourself to feel the feeling of this, even just a little, The Council promises you will be on your way to your challenges becoming less challenging, and more like opportunities to fulfill your greatest desire.

We Hope This Helps

Thank you, Jose, for this very interesting question and the three other excellent questions you asked. We don’t know if this post will persuade you that human free will is an essential part of what The Council is teaching, but if this post makes it any easier for readers to think about how you can bring more of the feeling of love into what you experience as challenges in your life, then we like to think the session and post have been worthwhile. We’re particularly interested in hearing from readers who’ve attempted to follow The Council’s guidance on dealing with challenges and how it’s working out for you.

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Additional Reading

While Jose’s question seems concerned with the existence of human free will in relationship to the will of who we are as spiritual beings, our conversation with The Council seemed to turn in the direction of a related issue: why an unconditionally loving spirit in a physical body might allow painful human experiences. This has been a somewhat popular question for readers of this blog and if you’re interested in reading more on this subject, we think the following two posts might provide you with some additional insights:

1. Before We are Born, Do We Plan Challenging Human Relationships To Advance Our Spiritual Expansion?
2. Why Would Spirit Choose to Be a Human Being Who Experiences Pain?

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Let Us Know What You Think

Thank you for taking time to read this post. We hope you feel your time with it has been well spent. We’d love to know what you think of this material. Please consider leaving a comment in the Leave a Reply section below. If you have any questions for The Council about ideas mentioned in this post or other posts, the Leave a Reply section is a good place to submit your questions. For questions not related to a specific post we suggest you write them in the Leave a Reply section at the very bottom of the Welcome page. We will be notified by email and reply as soon as we can.

April 12, 2013 - Posted by Cynthia & Bob | Challenges, Choice, Expansion, Free Will, God, Love, Part of a Series, Pre-Incarnation Planning, Questions & Answers | Challenges, Child Abuse, Choice, Free Will, Love, Pre-Birth Planning, Spiritual Agreements