“Well, we don’t choose our parents!” How often do we hear or say that when we don’t like what our parents say to us or when they do something that bothers, angers, hurts or embarrasses us? How often do we wish, if only momentarily, that we had been raised in a different situation? How often do we blame our parents for things that go wrong in our lives? 
What if we actually do choose our parents? What if we actually know in advance, subconsciously, the family we will be born into and the challenges we will encounter in our lives?
Many strands of paranormal research point exactly in this direction. The fact that we choose our parents and our basic life situations has profound ramifications for how we live our lives.
As we have seen elsewhere, responsible paranormal investigations demonstrate the truth of reincarnation – that most of us live many lives on earth. That means that our souls spend some years on the other side between earthly lives. In those periods of time, our souls are “working” – growing spiritually, helping other souls, resting, adapting to a new reality, and so on. Our souls in this in-between time are also in “conversation” with other souls, often those who are quite advanced and who help guide us on our spiritual journeys. When we and our guides decide that our souls are ready to return to an earthly life, we work together to make “pre-birth decisions;” such decisions include choosing our parents, our life situations, and other factors – in order to grow spiritually.
As renowned medium James Van Praagh has found through his readings, souls consult a so-called Etheric Council. “When it’s time to come back to earth, we meet with our etheric council. We go over the patterns of our soul, things we have to learn and what the process is like to come back through the physical world. We learn how to create a physical body. As spirit, we hang around the mother for many months before our birth, influencing her to eat right or to take care of herself.”
The Life Readings of the 20th-century seer Edgar Cayce further support this notion: “Yet it isn’t merely the parents that we select, but the lifestyle, personalities, and experience a particular family offers. This is a selection over which our angels hold particular influence. There may be many sets of parents who are attractive to the incoming entity, and it is only with the angels’ help that the right ones are chosen.”
Robert Monroe, in his adventures out-of-body, learned about the relationship between the conscious mind and “supermind:” “The conscious mind is a modulator of a master or driving force. Who is the master? Call it supermind, soul, greater self – the label isn’t important. ¶ It is important to know that the conscious mind automatically responds to commands of the master without question. In the physical state, we seem only dimly aware of this. In the Second State [the “other side”], it is a natural occurrence. The supermind knows unquestionably what is ‘right,’ and problems result only when the conscious mind stubbornly refuses to recognize this superior knowledge.”
Massachusetts-based psychic and healer Maureen Hancock, similarly, works with “spirit guides” to help people through her readings. From these spirit guides she learned that we repeatedly return to earth to work through challenges in order for our souls to grow; “we have a set of goals to help us reach our highest vibrational level.” 
These decisions are closely intertwined with free will. While our souls work with advanced “Masters” or “spirit guides” to determine the situation into which we will next be born, our decision-making continues: we have agency and make important choices throughout our earthly lives. Noel Langley in Edgar Cayce on Reincarnation states, “However sore the straits may be in which you find yourself, you put yourself there by your own previous indifferences to the laws [of cause and effect]. Whatever laws you broke, you broke of your own free will, the free will given you in the beginning by your Maker. You alone chose to be where you are at this moment.”
Implications
What, then, are we to make of this and what can we do with the information?
It is normal for most of us to complain about our lives, misfortunes, families, relatives and parents, at least from time to time. We need to go easy on ourselves, and others, when we do this, while also accepting responsibility for our actions. With this knowledge of pre-birth decisions, coupled with free will, we can step back and ask why we might be facing certain challenges and determine what we can do about them.
- What might we learn from the people in our circle and from situations that are challenging us?
What might the “life lessons” be that our supermind or subconscious or spirit guides or Masters have been trying to teach us when we together decided on our path in this earthly life? - Do we have attitudes and responses to people and situations that might need moderating or tempering if we acknowledge that we are actually walking a life path that has been chosen in conjunction with wise spirits that love us?
- How do our life situations, especially the ones we consider negative or difficult, contribute to our spiritual growth?
- Some of us have truly been very wronged by our parents and guardians. Many such injured offspring live much of our lives angry, hurt and damaged at a very deep level. Those parents may now be deceased. The paranormal evidence suggests that some souls who have done great damage to their children realize this after they cross offer and want forgiveness. Can we be open to this possibility and to a penitent parent actually trying to come through to us in a dream or by other means to seek this forgiveness? Could we consider granting it?
- If parents who have injured us still exist in the physical world, can the knowledge of pre-birth decisions assist us with those relationships? This does not necessarily mean that we need to rush to a reconciliation that may be difficult or even impossible; what it might mean is for our own souls to be more at peace.
In sum, there are reasons for the parents and families that we have and for the contours of our earthly lives. Our life situations are far from random or accidental – quite the opposite. The knowledge of pre-birth decisions and its implications can be very liberating and comforting. May it be so for you and those you love.
Resources
Abrahamsen, Valerie A. Paranormal: A New Testament Scholar Looks at the Afterlife. Self-published 2015; printed by Shires Press, Manchester Center, VT
Langley, Noel. Edgar Cayce on Reincarnation. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1967. See especially pages 179-201.
Monroe, Robert A. Journeys Out of the Body. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1973.
Monroe, Robert A. Ultimate Journey. New York: Random House, Inc., 1994.
Van Praagh, James. Reaching to Heaven: A Spiritual Journey Through Life and Death. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.
Van Praagh, James. Unfinished Business: What the Dead Can Teach Us About Life. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2009.