with a special gift or talent without the apparent need for learning it. Some kids even reincarnate with the knowledge of a foreign language which their siblings lack. Parents who treat reincarnation as foolish may simply dismiss such a gift with an airy, “Oh, well, he sure didn’t get it from us,” and let it go at that.
They have no inkling as to where or how the child picked up such an ability.
Learning the Spiritual Laws
Whenever I look at a child, I see a little adult. Mighty oaks from acorns grow.
There’s no impulse to talk down to children once you realize they are Souls returned from an older time and place. They need today’s leg of their spiritual journey, too, the same as you and me.
Sometimes they reincarnate to wield the sword of fear or power, while at other times they come to demonstrate the Law of Love.
A child of three, four, or five will dis-play a unique personality, perhaps an out-going or adventurous one. But by age eight 7
to ten, the child may suddenly turn shy and reserved. Upon reflection you’d say it isn’t the same individual.
A young child often remembers the distant past and may well speak of it.
A good question to ask a child of two to four is this: What did you do when you were big? You could be surprised if the child, in a nonchalant manner, sketches out a past life in broad details. Recognize it for that.
When people leave this physical life, they ascend to the next heaven, the Astral Plane. Some advance to a higher place, the second or third heaven. The second is the Causal Plane. St. Paul spoke of a third heaven. It is one of the regions in the up-per worlds where Souls go to rest, to learn different facets of spiritual law—including the Law of Love.
The books of ECK present these planes and laws in some detail.
How Children Enter a New Life After a short or lengthy rest in the higher worlds, we return to earth as a tiny babe. The body is a new prison of sorts.
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This containment of Soul is the hardest part of reincarnation to deal with. In the last physical incarnation an individual was perhaps an adult in a well-trained, func-tioning body. Now, with baby fingers, he will try to pick up objects but fail in the attempt. Eyes struggle to focus and make sense of a blurry world, but for some time a scene remains a smear of black-and-white shadings. Months pass, and a perception of color dawns. Little by little, the infant’s mind develops in a heroic way to influence the brain to put it all together.
In effect, the mind commands the brain,
“OK, now sort out the light waves and make order from chaos.”
Of course, as our true, eternal Self—
Soul—we exist beyond the human mind.
From the lofty heights of Soul, we flash marching orders to our mind, which, in turn, passes them down the chain of command to our physical brain for execution.
And so the will develops. We thus move and act. We grow.
With the passage of time, the infant comes to recognize Mommy and Daddy, 9
vague forms that begin to register as real objects. It knows when the bottle’s on the way, and so forth. A baby thus learns to put things into categories or files.
Its growing ability to place a thing into a familiar slot reduces the infant’s fear, making the world a more comfortable place.
* * *
A mother observed the way her young child characterized things and put them into categories of his own making. Around the age of ten months, he began to mimic certain sounds. Sometime later, the mother noticed that every time they passed a body of water or a drinking fountain, he would say, “Mo.”
One day she figured it out.
She had been teaching him to drink water from a glass. After each sip, she would ask, “More?” The child had taken the characteristics of this wet stuff in the glass and put it into the wrong file. He thought its name was “more.” So anytime he saw water, he tried to call it by that name.
A child learns bit by bit. First on its 10
agenda is the name of basic
Jennifer McCartney, Lisa Maggiore