[Rocket Surgery]

Yes, this theory goes well with the "Earth-as-school" concept and perhaps not as much with the S-R, "have everything you want" concept. Although, I do believe there's room for both to co-exist, I do see more purpose to existence when I lean towards the former.

The idea is that each of us is an individual soul, connected to each other through the OUC, yes, but still possessing our own unique identity and history.

From countless origins, we eventually found ourselves here at the School Earth, where the primary courses of study are LOVE and ILLUSIONS OF SEPARATION (from God).

We enter the School by incarnating as human beings, and there the cycle begins. Because we all agree to leave our memories "at the door" when we enter in order to receive the full, 1080P Hi-Def resolution of physical existence, we also mostly forget what we came here to learn in the first place. And while we're here, we are introduced to KARMA, that law that keeps an constant tally of the energy we create by our actions in life, both positive and negative.

Since the bulk of human history, mankind's time was mostly devoted to survival, and henceforth was full of the lesser vibrational states like fear, pain, suffering, hatred, vindictiveness, etc.... most souls ran up a huge negative karmic debt. This debt must be "paid off" before any soul can "graduate" the Earth School, and so most souls must reincarnate over and over again through the ages to try to work off all this bad karma.

When we die at the end of each physical incarnation, we take stock of the most recent life and do a spiritual "audit" of sorts to determine what lessons we next need to learn in order for our soul to make our karmic "payments." For example, an evil dictator named Sadaam just left the planet. His soul -- if not too consumed by anger -- could very possibly be kicking himself for getting caught up in so much negative energy, and will need a lot of spiritual therapy just to deal with all the bad karma he's built up for himself. When his soul is ready, he will try to reincarnate into a situation that will produce the best chance for him to pay back a good chunk of that debt.

Does he need to "die a million deaths" to pay all that off? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Obviously, he will need to experience enough of the same sort of suffering that he dished out until he develops EMPATHY for all who might experience the same. When he ultimately gains that empathy, the debt will be paid, and he will be able to move on to a new lesson.

We all choose our parents before we incarnate. We choose them for the express purpose of putting ourselves into situations that give us the best chance at creating obstacles and challenges designed to teach us the lesson we wish to learn. This is one explanation for "why there's so much suffering in the world." It's not the only one, but until every soul who has caused suffering has worked of his karma, there needs to be some suffering in order for the growing soul to experience it and develop empathy for others.

But it's not all about just learning how not to do evil deeds. I will use myself for this example. Most of my life, I have enjoyed working with others in group efforts. I am always trying to organize a group of people together for some project or group trip or club, you name it. But it's something that until recently has been quite difficult for me to do.

Recently I took on what I can easily say is the biggest project of my life to date. It cost me several thousand dollars of my own money, and I had upwards of 50+ people working for me, and for almost no pay. Some were not paid anything at all.

As the project approached "crunch time," more and more things began to go wrong. I was constantly "putting out fires" while trying to remain calm through all the chaos. But some of the "fires" were quite UNUSUAL events that each threatened to bring everything to a halt. So unusual, in fact, that I began to wonder if the Universe was purposefully working against me. It made me question the worthiness of the project.

However, none of the "fires" were so great, they could not be fixed, and I wound up remaining cool and pulling it all off with no real disasters occurring. In fact, many commented on how amazing a job I did considering the breadth of what I had taken on.

A few weeks later, I was surfing around for an optical illusion on the Net that I had seen and wanted to send to a friend. My Google search turned up a link to Steve's website, and as I surfed around these pages, I read something in one of Steve's articles that opened up my eyes to something so obvious, I laughed that I had not noticed it before.

See, I always tell people that if they want to know what their purpose in life is, they should look to those areas in their lives that have always challenged them the most. For most of my youth, I had a policy of "taking the path of least resistance," and that path lead basically nowhere that I wanted to be, career-wise, that is. But when I began to study metaphysical theory, it clicked with me that the best way to learn was overcoming obstacles and taking on the challenges that gave me the most difficulty. But most of the time, I'd hit a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, and just surrender and move on to something else. Or I would have a dream career, but then sell myself short, thinking it was much too difficult to be successful at that, and try to do the logical thing and choose a career that made more practical sense, dollar-wise.

But this project was basically me taking on the role of my dream career. I was able to do this because I paid for the project myself, but the responsibilities were the same. And I've been doing this project since mid-2005, and it's almost complete. When we were in the middle of crunch-time, and I was constantly doing damage control, and everyone was depending on me to hold it all together, I can safely say it's the hardest job I have EVER had in my life.

And I loved every minute of it.

And so I found myself on this website, perusing through this Pavlina guy's metaphysical articles, and I remembered this same method that I always tell others about finding their purpose... and realized that all those "unusual" snafus that kept popping up were not, in fact, the Universe working against me. It was the Universe SIGNALING me -- actually SHOUTING in my face, in the only way the Universe can -- that this project and the job I was doing is EXACTLY what I should be doing, and may well have intended to be doing even before I incarnated into this lifetime.

Does that mean my life is all about putting together large projects and employing lots of people. No. It means that by pursuing this particular career, I will create situations over and over that will present me with the types of obstacles and challenges best suited for teaching me the LESSONS that my soul wishes to learn in this particular lifetime.

For instance, my birth situation was to alcoholic parents and I had a rather miserable childhood growing up in a quite dysfunctional family. You shouldn't be surprised that this caused me to develop a fair share of ANGER within me, and I have been suffering the consequences of said anger most of my years.

This probably is a major player in why it's difficult for me to organize people into group activities. However, I've invested a lot of time over the past ten years into releasing all this pent-up anger and it's now beginning to pay off. Not only do I not hold grudges anymore, but I rarely even get very annoyed by people. Especially people whom I wish to build relationships with. I'm morphing from "cynical-sarcastic-annoyed" guy into "easygoing-fun-positive-passionate" guy. Granted, I don't have it down pat quite yet, but I can see the results, and I am very happy about my growth in this area. I don't miss "the old me," and "the new me" is making lots of new friends and contacts, and I'm confident that I'm on the right path now to leave this planet a much improved version from the soul that entered it several decades ago.

Hope that answers your questions. Have to get to bed now. The Seahawks are playing the Bears early tomorrow, and they're going to need me and my I-M powers for this game ;-)

~ RS