| | |  | Wind Power | Home » » Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth? | | | | | | | Description: | | Please note that as of March 24, 2009, Courageous Souls is out of print. It has been reissued under the new title, Your Soul's Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born (ISBN 9781583942727). Courageous Souls explores the premise that we are all eternal souls who plan our lives, including our greatest challenges, before we re born for purposes of spiritual growth. The book contains ten true stories of people who planned physical illness, having handicapped children, deafness, blindness, drug addiction, alcoholism, losing a loved one, and severe accidents. Because very different life challenges are often planned for similar reasons, readers who have not faced these specific challenges will nevertheless see themselves - and their motivations as a soul - in these stories. As readers come to realize that they themselves planned their lives, suffering that once seemed purposeless becomes imbued with deep meaning. Wisdom may be acquired in a more conscious manner; feelings of anger, guilt, blame, and victimization are healed and replaced by acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and peace. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Robert Schwartz | | Paperback:
| 327 pages | | Publisher:
| Whispering Winds Press | | Publication Date:
| December 16, 2006 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0977679454 | | Product Width:
| 1.37 centimeters | | Product Height:
| 2.06 centimeters | | Product Weight:
| 0.01 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.5 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.5 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.0 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.01 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 150 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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129 of 134 found the following review helpful:
 A New Way to Look at LifeMar 11, 2007
By Katie
"book worm"
In "Courageous Souls" Robert Schwartz not only discusses the concept of pre-birth planning, but he also provides an in-depth look at both the pre-birth planning process (which occurs while in spirit before each incarnation), as well as the various reasons a soul may have chosen the particular challenges they're dealing with in this lifetime.
What I found particularly interesting were the personal interviews the author did with several participants & the subsequent sessions with various mediums/psychics to assess each person's pre-birth planning sessions. Together these sessions provided background information regarding each person's challenge & the reasons their soul chose that challenge for this lifetime. The types of challenges discussed include: physical illness, parenting handicapped children, drug addiction & alcoholism, death of a loved one, & accidents.
Reading this book allows one to consider a whole new way to look at life's challenges - a way where each challenge does in fact serve a purpose, and a high purpose at that! A way where there is no reason to blame or judge or hate - because we're able to recognize that each person on this earth is also serving a purpose.
Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in spirituality & the concept of pre-birth planning - it's truly inspiring.
P.S. This book also offers the names & contact information for the psychics/mediums who worked with the author on this book - a great addition for those of us who would like some assistance in accessing our own pre-birth planning sessions!
239 of 254 found the following review helpful:
Fascinating and Important BookMar 05, 2007
By Janet Boyer
"Author of Tarot in Reverse"
"There is a need to create limitation, as the soul uses limitation in your realm for growth. As you experience limitedness, there is a need to overcome frustration, work within one's own parameters, and focus energy--an energy that cuts through the density in your realm and creates spaces of light and a higher vibration." - From Courageous Souls
At some point, everyone on Earth has asked "Why?" in the face of difficult circumstances. Why did my fiancé die in a car accident? Why is my mother an alcoholic? Why is my son Autistic? Why do I have cancer? Why is my brother a quadriplegic because of a diving accident? Why do some people die at the hands of serial killers or suicide bombers?
Like existential detectives, many of us try to wrap our heads around life challenges and, ultimately, find out "whodunit?" Was it because of a nasty devil wanting to afflict? Is a capricious god punishing me--or is the wheel of karma catching up? Is negative thinking the root of my illness?
What if NONE of these scenarios was the case--but, in fact, we CONTRACTED our life challenges before incarnating?
In his book Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth?, author Robert Schwartz takes readers behind the veil of forgetfulness into the conversations and decisions that have taken place "between lives". Interviewing about a dozen people who have experienced loss, illness, accidents, and addictions, Schwartz explores the idea of agreements made before birth to learn and experience certain life lesson--and coming to know our true selves.
In addition, the author facilitates sessions between these individuals and several mediums. These mediums access the Akashic Records (an etheric "book of life" that records every thought, word, and action) for information on pre-birth planning sessions or "channel" messages from their spirit guides about specific agreements.
Echoing the case studies of hypnotherapist Dr. Michael Newton, author of the books Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls--as well as the children's book The Little Soul and the Sun by Neale Donald Walsch-- Schwartz maintains that Earth is place of duality where powerful creators incarnate in order to learn through opposites. A candle surrounded by brilliant light can only experience darkness by entering it.
"Who but the most power of souls could conjure an illusion that appears real to its very creator?" he asks. While we're on the other side, we consult with members of our soul group and guides and agree to perform certain roles--all for the purpose of soul growth and experience. By incarnating on the Earth plane--being born--we enter a "river of forgetfulness", as Caroline Myss describes in her book Sacred Contracts. We forget so we can have a powerful "remembering".
If we accept that each human has contracted particular life lessons such as parenting a disabled child, losing a loved one, participating in an addiction, or experiencing an illness, then the concept of being a "victim"--either of a negligent person, system, or god--is neutralized. Even more than that, there is a sense of meaning and empowerment that enables the personality to move forward, heal, and even contribute to the well-being of others and the raising of group consciousness.
Courageous Souls parts the curtain on the great stage of life, revealing the elaborate play and agreed upon roles that humanity acts out here on Earth--all motivated by deep love and respect for one another. Schwartz writes:
"We love the souls whom we plan our lives. During our earthly existence, they may be people who complicate matters, cause us stress or worry, or even become our `enemies'. When not incarnate the estranged husband and wife, the abusive parent and neglected child, and the warring ex-business partners are loving friends. They care deeply for one another and will often reincarnate together in an effort to master lessons unfinished in previous lives."
Of course, empirical verification of the stories and channeled information relayed in Courageous Souls is impossible, but so are, ultimately, any assertions made by a sacred text, religious leader, or jaded philosopher. One thing I know for sure: ALL of us tell stories to ourselves (and others) that attempt to explain why things happen as they do. Many of those interpretations of "the facts" come from outside us, such as the doctrines of religion or the mores of a culture.
So if we're all telling stories about what we're experiencing on Earth in the attempt to explain situations or create meaning, why not tell ones that embolden, enlighten, and inspire? What is accomplished by playing the victim, wallowing in blame, or becoming entangled in mind games of "woulda, coulda, shoulda"?
What IS has already happened--and how empowering is the idea that we all are playing our roles brilliantly--and that we will embrace all the actors on the other side, congratulating them on their performance and their act of service!
If these ideas sound like the kind of reality you would like to learn more about, then I highly recommend Courageous Souls by Robert Schwartz. By allowing us, the readers, to eavesdrop into pre-birth planning sessions and post-"trauma" interviews, we are given a precious gift of comfort, peace, and meaning--urging us forward in our unique destinies with the knowledge that none is a victim...and EVERYTHING can be used for our highest good.
Janet Boyer, author of The Back in Time Tarot Book: Picture the Past, Experience the Cards, Understand the Present (coming Fall 2008 from Hampton Roads Publishing)
75 of 77 found the following review helpful:
Pondering the Possibilities Outside the BoxFeb 27, 2007
By Grady Harp
Robert Schwartz is an eloquent spokesman for his explorations in the realm few of us have even considered, much less explored fully: the concept of pre-birth planning as a convention of souls who make decisions about incarnation - place, time, circumstances, and challenges - that will heighten the overall improvement of not only their repeated growth in the process of rebirth but also the gift to the betterment of mankind.
Schwartz' manner of writing is so tender and so lacking in preaching that he gradually draws the reader into his realm of thinking in a way that allows us to suspend any doubt or prejudice we may have about spirituality or after life or universal karma. He uses conversations with people who share their experiences of living with such 'handicaps' as physical illness, parenting handicapped children, deafness and blindness, drug addiction and alcoholism, accidents, death of a loved one and alters the word 'handicapped' to 'challenges'; 'Challenges are mirrors that reflect to us our feelings about ourselves. In that sense, they are gifts. Wisdom allows us to recognize them as such.'
In addition to discussing the above challenges with particular people who have them, Schwartz introduces us to mediums and channelers who channel the souls of the people we meet, allowing Schwartz to relay to us the conversations between the spiritual world and the physical world. In this very quiet manner Schwartz offers an explanation as to why 'untoward events' happen: his conversations with the various people he shares (for instance the autistic child or the parent of that child) allow us to consider that these choices are made in the spirit world prior to our birth and that these challenges offer the opportunity to separate the physical self-centered being from the choice to make the situations examples of growth, and of revealing love to those around us.
Schwartz takes no credit for the information he presents in this book. His drive is to open doors to us the readers to consider his findings and philosophy as a means to learning more about how life and the spiritual world are enmeshed. 'I have learned from the wise nonphysical beings with whom I have spoken...Through them I now understand the immense power of this most elemental truth: that we are not our bodies...If you also know that you planned your disability, that it indeed has a deep significance, then your life may become a quest to uncover that meaning. Suffering is lightened, emptiness replaced with purpose.'
Writers such as Robert Schwartz challenge our inside the box thinking, encouraging us to suspend prejudice and the state of being uninformed to enter the arena of growing spiritually. The beauty of this enormously moving book lies in the simplicity of the style Schwartz has chosen to communicate. This is not a sensationalized series of speaking with the 'great dramatic séance', this is instead a welcome to another way of viewing our lives - this one and the ones that have been and will be. Grady Harp, February 07
85 of 93 found the following review helpful:
 Why only growth through suffering?Nov 30, 2007
By Star Tulip
Rundown of the book - It's not about helping you find your own purpose, unfortunately. It's got 6-7 chapters, each one focusing on traumatic or tragic life events and how they changed some people. Two to 3 people's traumas/tragedies are highlighted in each chapter. Their guides, angels or higher selves are channeled and they talk about the pre-birth agreement the soul made and how this tragedy would help the person achieve whatever he wanted to achieve in this lifetime - the reasons for their particular tragedy/trauma.
The chapters are: Physical Illness (2 people are highlighted, one with AIDS, the other breast cancer. Accidents; Deafness and Blindness; Alcoholism and Drug Addiction; Parenting Handicapped Children; Death of a Loved One.
I was bothered with the fact that the only way that souls, apparently, choose to learn is through suffering. It's the typical eastern and western philosophy, yet again. No one grew through insight or emotional searching, questioning or personal angst, only through paralysis or a son dying through drug overdose or having two very disabled children or getting AIDS or having a bomb blow up in their face or their fiance dying in a diving accident. There was no learning through chronic illness or emotional abuse or more benign "suffering." It always had to be really tragic, traumatic. It seems such an contemporary human way of looking at the world, always pain and suffering before one can grow. It's so typical of the philosophies/religions these days and days past.
The author asks the guides that are channeled why suffering has to occur for growth, and the answer is because the physical plane is about duality. This worn out example is used: How can you experience joy if you've never felt sadness? How can you experience light if you've never been in the dark? Although I understand this and see the validity, it annoys me that severe long-lasting suffering is the "only" way that people can seem to find their purpose, according to this book. Only through suffering can a person access his soul and then understand why he chose events in this lifetime. Only then can he proceed toward his true life's work.
Also, I found it annoying that the book focused on the people in the book and their plan. It says it helps you figure out your soul purpose, but without already having figured it out pretty much on your own by that point, this book would just talk about other people, who are interesting, and you might be able to find parallels, but contrary to the back cover, it doesn't help you access or understand your own personal blueprint at all.
Sure, you can see how your situation is similar to others if you have some similar tragedy in your life. I certainly saw distinct similarities between me and someone in the book, but all she figured out I had already figured out. If I hadn't done the emotional work I had, perhaps this book would have helped open my eyes, so I could see why the event "happened" to me. Maybe that explains all the 5 star ratings. People see themselves in these common human events and it helps them come to terms with their suffering.
My final assessment is this: Humanity is moving beyond the idea that the only way toward personal growth is through suffering. Up to this point, perhaps much of humanity needed something negative to change, but I feel we're moving beyond this concept.
This book perpetuates the myth that the only way to enlightenment is through suffering. I find this outdated and untrue. Humanity is ready to move beyond this destructive concept. That's what the Aquarian Age is all about, this New Age. We're leaving the Piscean Age of suffering, victimization, and martyrdom behind. What a relief!
37 of 38 found the following review helpful:
Planning our LivesMay 20, 2007
By Elizabeth Reveley
After reading this book, I have no more questions about how I planned my life. I also gave up blaming anyone for anything. it is completely clear that I requested my best soul friends to participate in my life. Out of their great love for me they agreed to play certains roles for me to support my soul's learning and my soul's evolution.
This book shows there is nothing to forgive as you asked for every situation in your life.
Maybe you only need to forgive yourself for being so hard on yourself.
Robert Schwartz has a clear style. it is easy to read.
This book will change your life....it is a must.
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