Product Description

Please note that Courageous Souls has been reissued under the title, Your Soul's Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born. Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth?
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 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. For
readers, 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 replaced by acceptance,
forgiveness, peace, and gratitude.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #362562 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 327 pages

Annie Haws, Euro-Reviews
". . . a work of mercy . . . one will read through once and then
return again and again to sample according to one's current position in
life."

Shirley Roe, Allbooks Review
". . . this is a must read . . . If you are a soul seeker, this
book will resonate Truth deep within your hidden memories."

From the Back Cover

"The more we know about the meaning of life, the better we
understand the important choices we must make. Robert Schwartz has done an
excellent job of presenting the possible explanations of what we are doing
here and why we are here. I highly recommend this book." -Dannion Brinkley,
author of Saved by the Light, and The Secrets of the Light



Would you like to understand the deeper meaning of your greatest
challenges?



So often, when something "bad" happens, it may appear to be meaningless
suffering. But what if your most difficult experiences are actually rich
with hidden purpose - purpose that you yourself planned before you were
born? Could it be that you chose your life's circumstances, relationships,
and events?



Within these pages are stories of ten individuals who - like you - planned
before birth to experience great challenges. Working with four gifted
mediums and channels, author Robert Schwartz discovers what they chose -
and why. He presents actual pre-birth planning sessions in which souls
discuss their hopes for their upcoming lifetimes. In so doing he opens a
window to the other side where we, as eternal beings, design both our
trials and our potential triumphs.



Through these remarkable stories of pre-birth planning you can:



*Understand how you as a soul create your life blueprint



*Consciously use your challenges to foster spiritual growth



*Understand that the people in your life, including your parents and
children, are there at your request, motivated by their love for you to
play roles that you scripted



*Deepen your appreciation of and gratitude for life as a soul-expanding,
evolutionary process

Customer Reviews

Fascinating and Important Book
"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

Pondering the Possibilities Outside the Box
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, March 07

Your soul's plan
A fantastic book, easy to read and giving an insight into the "reason why"
unpleasant things or people might cross our path in life and what we are learning from it.
Having listened to Robert Schwartz in London made it all the more interesting.