Traditionally I had been exposed to and taught the belief system that one makes a contract with God before being reincarnated into a new life. This contract is supposed to contain all of the lessons you will deal with and learn from in your new incarnation. It includes what type of family you will have, who you will be in the family (mother, father, child), if you will have a happy or difficult childhood, a positive or negative marriage (if indeed you are to marry at all in your new life), and if you will be able to have a good education or not. It also covers if you will have a very successful and wealthy life in which you could be generous to others or not; or if you could be stuck in a poor existence where you may have to rely on others for help just to get by. These various scenarios afford you the opportunity to grow from the experiences. Many of the common experiences we learn from are: generosity, honesty, love, happiness, compassion, mercy, and being non-judgmental. The opposite of course would be: anger, dominance, envy, ego, dishonesty, being judgmental and perhaps someone who always thinks they are right all of the time.
I have talked with colleagues and friends about this topic in great length throughout the years as I think that if I had the gift of working for a lawyer for twenty years in another lifetime, as I did in this one, I don't think I would have ever agreed to such a contract for this lifetime. I have been on a journey of learning since I can remember, but there must be a time during a one's lifetime when you can say with certainty that you learned your lessons and want to experience some of the benefits of that knowledge. Apparently I have not come to that point in my life yet as I am still being put to the test almost every day.
So the question is, "Would we choose a difficult life?" Most respond, "We are spiritual beings and would know which lessons we need to learn during a particular lifetime. We would put ourselves in those situations where we would learn the most from those types of experiences." That is a neatly rehearsed and packaged answer, however, would we really agree to all of the hardships that we endure lifetime after lifetime? Would you agree to lose a child? Would you agree to go through the anguish of divorce? Losing very important relationships in your lifetime that really causes you heartache and pain? Would you agree to never marry in a lifetime and handle all of life's problems alone? Would you really choose to be poor or go without a job for years until your pride, dignity and self esteem were nearly gone. Would you agree to go through bankruptcy or lose your home and move to a very small apartment where your family could hardly even move without bumping into someone or something? Would you really agree to being disabled or crippled so that you could learn some sort of important lesson? In my opinion, I don't believe that this is a realistic outlook to learning lessons and; therefore, throughout the years my viewpoint about Contracts with God have drastically changed.
As luck would have it, I was guided to attend a lecture given by Tony Frishichella, sponsored by The Metaphysical Center of New Jersey. I was relieved and intrigued to learn that someone else thought as I did. He affirmed that he did not believe in contracts and thought that reincarnation into third dimensional realm was random. That is something I could understand and believe. Why wouldn't people choose to be beautiful, rich, famous, and successful as opposed to being plain, disabled, poor, unknown and unsuccessful? Why would you choose a life of struggle and discontentment rather than a very fulfilling life where everything you have ever wanted came easily to you? His sentiments exactly mirrored mine.
I have learned that whatever you feel you should be doing in this lifetime is what you are supposed to be doing, even though this changes throughout various stages of life. People come and go in your lifetime and when you no longer learn lessons from a partner or friend, you must move on to new relationships. Sometimes you must be the strong one and just let go of the familiar or safe relationship. There are plenty of other experiences awaiting you after each stage of life.
Of course, there is also a time to be alone, to meditate, to learn, to experience life on your own and to concentrate on one's future. You may go through a period when you no longer want to be part of a group or have many people around you at all and take comfort in sharing your life with a pet or getting engrossed in a hobby. Perhaps you only want to be surrounded with trusted family members where you feel safe and secure. Sometimes you outgrow organizations and jobs and must look for new experiences in all areas of life. The cycle continues and changes throughout the years you have upon this Earth until the day you are left with the option - sign the contract or not for your next lifetime.
Did you sign a contract to come back to Earth in this incarnation? We'll never know until we are standing in front of God with a contract in one hand and a pen in the other; then it will be up to us to sign the contract or lead a random life in which all the lessons presented to us will still be valuable experiences even though they were not planned or agreed to ahead of time.