Sarina and J.T. Baptista, in My View from Heaven, A Boy’s Story of His Journey to Heaven and the Purpose of Life on Earth, gave a fascinating, easy to read introduction to our souls’ activities in Heaven and on Earth, where our souls are essentially in school. I wrote about this book in my third post, dated January 2. The Baptistas recommended another author and book, which I devoured just as avidly!
Journey of Souls, Case Studies of Life Between Lives, by Michael Newton, 5th Edition, 2014
Journey of Souls, by Michael Newton, PhD, 5th Edition in 2014, was more academic and more detailed. Dr. Newton is a psychologist specializing in hypnotherapy, who stumbled across past lives in some of his patients. When he could not find research on past lives, he decided to study it, and developed how to best question people to elicit information on their past lives. He has been studying past life regressions for decades. His patients over the years have been of different ages and professions and come from a variety of cultures.
Later, Dr. Newton stumbled across what happens during and after the soul leaves the dying body of a past incarnation and returns to Heaven! Oh my! My father could use this sequential coverage of the dying process! Maybe this would help defuse his fear of death. I put sticky-flags on the typical sequence of events as the body dies and the soul separates from it. (I have yet to go over this with Dad, sadly. He has not been alert enough to tackle the topic.) Dr. Newton reports which stages of the sequence are typical for most people and which ones tend to vary.
What was most interesting to me, however, was the information and perspectives of the souls when in their heavenly stages. The book covers a soul’s activities from one body’s death; transitioning back into Heaven–the heavenly address and cohort, for want of better terms; activities and studies while in Heaven; then planning and preparing for another incarnation; and finally entering its new body in utero.
This would sound TOO fantastic IF I had not read similar parts in other books and seen similar parts in movies, some of which were presented as purely made-up. This Soul’s Journey, however, ties together the corroborating bits and pieces from those movies and other books into a coherent whole cycle. Wow.
The purpose of a heavenly soul’s life is not aligned well with the body’s culturally-influenced ego. That is understood, so souls pre-arrange, while still in Heaven, who will help whom learn what lessons—setting up sacred contracts. This means that, the major traumas, including birth and death, and our main talents and resources to use have been generally set up and agreed upon before we ever get to Earth.
(But remember, as J.T. Baptista explained so well, humans have free will, so the details and timing of teaching lessons are not set. They come when there is an appropriate teaching moment.)
Our souls grow, develop, evolve by learning their appointed lessons through facing fears and meeting challenges. Feeling a body’s separateness and apparent isolation is a harsh issue for souls fresh from interconnected Heaven. Overcoming negative emotions related to any particular fear can take multiple lifetimes. Evil, pain, and mistakes provide us with motivation to learn how to and work to improve the physical world.
We each need to learn to accept our own self and other people the way we are, instead of wanting to turn others into clones of ourselves or expecting them to make us happy. We are here to grow connections with each other on the physical plane. Learning to overcome judgment and find love where egos find hate is the goal.
(Oh, wow. Yeah, I’ll get right on that, no problem! Hah! Well, it’s a good thing I believe in reincarnation because it’s going to take me a long while to evolve that high. But I’m working on it! I’m working on it.)
On the upside, souls really relish the joys of the physical world and uncovering their true nature and seeing other souls discovering their true selves inside their bodies. We also grow spiritually as we recognize and appreciate the deep connections we have with our close relatives, friends, coworkers, and even rivals, and help each other meet our goals.