Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth?

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.

In a personal session with a medium in 2003, author Robert Schwartz was astonished to speak with nonphysical beings who knew everything about him - not just what he had done in life, but also what he had thought and felt. They told him that he had planned many of his most difficult experiences before he was born. Realizing that a knowledge of pre-birth planning would bring great healing to people and allow them to understand the deeper purpose of their life challenges, he devoted the next three years to studying the pre-birth plans of dozens of individuals. The extraordinary insights that emerged speak to our heartfelt, universal yearning to know . . . why.

The author is a former journalist with a corporate background. In 2003, at a time of personal despair, he consulted for the first time with a medium. In this session, he spoke with nonphysical beings who knew everything about him - not only what he had done, but also what he had thought and felt. The author learned that he had planned his greatest challenges prior to birth - not for the purpose of suffering, but rather for the growth that would result. Thus began three years of research on the topic of pre-birth planning.