Dear Mr. Schwartz,

I have two sons, Ryan and Bradley, who are autistic. Ryan has Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a type of high-functioning autism. Bradley has much more severe, straight autism. I recall having an interest in autism when I was a high school student. In college, years before I became a mother, I even chose to write a paper about autism. Could it be that Ryan, Bradley and I planned their autism before any of us were born?

Sincerely,
Jennifer

Dear Jennifer,

Thank you for sharing your story with me. In my research for my book Your Soul’s Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born, I found that souls do agree - before birth - on such physical challenges.

This is difficult to understand from a human perspective, since having a handicapped child is one of the most heartbreaking challenges one can face. Beyond the desire for their children to be happy and healthy, parents naturally want them to have better lives than they themselves had. When a child is born with or later develops a handicap, there can be anger at the Universe. Why, we wonder, would this to happen to an innocent child? Parents who give birth to a handicapped child may sometimes blame the partner or themselves for “faulty” genes. Their anguish can be profound.

Jennifer, I asked medium Corbie Mitleid to see what she could learn about your pre-birth plan for this lifetime. Here is a portion of what she said:
“Jennifer,” Corbie began, “Spirit is showing me the 1930s. It’s a newspaper office of people scurrying back and forth, papers in their hands, clackety-clack of typewriters. You are one of the people at the desk, one of the reporters. You were doing a story people did not want to hear. Primarily, you were receiving information about the Final Solution. There was frustration on your part. You were banging on every door, sitting in hallways for hours waiting for meetings that always got put off. But you knew that these people [Jews] had no voice and that you had to be the voice. You were banging on the American public, on Congress, on everything that you could to get people to finally realize what was happening. You were not Jewish. You could have ignored this and done well simply doing the society page, but you had a profound fear of being shoved away or not heard. So this was something you did for the entire world.

“You had connections in Europe. You were told about the camps being built, the disappearances, and what the Jews were really being put through, which the American public at that point wanted to stay blissfully unaware of. You shuttled between New York and Washington, D.C. quite often. Your offices were in New York. You were with one of the smaller, more independent, more feisty newspapers.

“You did what you could to get people in Washington to see what was happening, to offer some aid, raise our quotas for immigration, anything. But you were patted on the head and told, ‘Yes, I’m sure. Europe’s been around a long time. They can take it,’ pretty much keeping you at arm’s length. Nobody wanted to get involved. Nobody really believed that World War II was going to occur. Not yet.

“The sense I’m getting is that your children were in Europe. Your boys were on the opposite side of the fence--Nazis.“The lesson for all of you is communication. You had spent your life trying to communicate to others that this kind of desecration of the soul needed to be stopped. At that time your sons, who were also brothers, spent their time working propaganda.

“The reason Ryan and Bradley chose to come back communicatively disabled--or coming through a ‘cracked megaphone’--is to learn what it is like to have the truth and be unable to communicate it, since before they had the truth and deliberately buried it,” Corbie explained.

“You again [in this lifetime] have the truth and are doing what you can to bring it forward,” You have agreed to walk them through their challenge in a sense just to show how big your soul is. You are further along the road than they are in terms of soul age. They’re still young souls. You’re at a mature stage. When you are a mature soul, it is the emotions, the understanding of personality, and who are you that’s important as opposed to worldly power.

“Just because someone was a Nazi doesn’t mean their souls are black and therefore they deserve to be punished. They chose to do that [be autistic] to learn. It’s a matter of balance and consequence. If you have a thousand dollars and you choose to spend that thousand dollars on things other than rent and bills, the consequence may be that you’re delinquent on your bills and you lose the apartment. Are you being punished? No. It’s neutral. Cause and effect. People have to get the idea of punishment out of their heads. Your soul chooses all kinds of things to taste. In one case it’s power. In another, it’s riches. You can have a lot of money and use it wisely. Or, you can have a lot of money and be greedy about it. It’s going to torque people a bit, but neither one is good or bad in terms of how you learn. It’s just another chapter in the textbook.”

Jennifer, Corbie’s reading brings up a very important point. As humans, we often misconstrue karma to be a punishment. It is not. As Corbie said, karma is a neutral, impersonal law of the universe. In that sense, it is much like gravity. If one stumbles and falls, one does not say, “Gravity is punishing me. Gravity is bad. I have been victimized by gravity.” Clearly, it would not make sense to speak that way. Similarly, we are never punished or victimized by karma, nor is karma “bad” or “good.” It is simply a tool by which we ourselves choose the lessons we wish to learn.

Your sons chose you to be their mother because they knew that you possess the wisdom, soul-level maturity, and love to guide them through a difficult life challenge. Truly, you are a blessing to them, and they a blessing to you.

With gratitude,
Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz is the author of Your Soul’s Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born, which will be published by Frog Books on March 24, 2009. (This book was previously published under the title Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth?) A free PDF with a large excerpt from the book is available at www.yoursoulsplan.com