Why would we choose to live embodied lives full of struggle and pain and failure and mistakes and inevitable death?  Why would we choose to come be in bodies and lifetimes full of sorry and regret?  Why keep ourselves on a continuous wheel full of negative experiences and punishment?  Well, there is no one reason why we enter into any given life, but the over arching reason why we enter into embodied lives is to feel.

I like coming into a body like condensing vapor into liquid.  Souls have no form or, more to the point, they have the potentiality for all forms.  Souls communicate telempathically with each other and so everyone feels what the other feels, has the same thought at the time that someone thinks it, and lives the experience at the same moment that another soul is experiencing it.  And that is going on all around us in every second.  Which causes two things to influence our communications and our experiences and our thoughts.  One, we are conscious that we effect others and so we try to minimize impact on others through modulating our behaviors. Just like having an indoor voice when being around other people, it doesn’t change our message, our ability to live our lives, it just modulates it in order to be courteous to others and make social interactions more conducive to positive connection.  The other thing that happens is that through this modulation and social interaction we learn to be more than we are, interconnected and so a great deal more socially aware of each other and ourselves.  We become considerate citizens of a broader community working for the betterment of everyone because it is literally true that the betterment of one member of the community makes me a better person.  Because I can feel their feelings, have their thoughts and experience their lives.

But what that also does is slow down our own learning process, our own becoming.  Because becoming involves so many others and we move carefully and interconnectedly.  Also, it keeps us a bit distant from our individual selves since there are very few times or means of becoming isolated, separate, or alone.

Embodied lives take who we are and condenses it.  We are no longer spread out throughout the community, but are truly, purely, 100% just us.  And everything becomes immediate and sensual and completely foreign.  No more direct input from others.  No more guidance and communal voice urging us on or cautioning us.  No benign censorship of what we think or feel or do.  Anything is possible and we are responsible for our own actions and the consequences.  Learning and becoming accelerate because of this.  What might take millennia as a soul can take only a lifetime or even just a few years to accomplish in a body.  So many aspects of self can be experienced and explored, some that we might not have any chance to play out as a soul.  And as we learn as much or more from negative experiences and negative emotions, from mistakes and failures, as we do from success, being embodied is the perfect place to learn and grow and become for those who are willing to take on the challenge.

You are experiencing one of the most difficult things a soul can do.  You are learning you. You are becoming more of who you can truly be hour by hour.  Past lives can show you how you did it before, give you perspective on how to do it better this time, and give you courage to follow your personal path and your dreams.  Because there is no reason why not to.  The only thing holding you back is you.