“Judge Not” in re Lessons to be Learned

Right now, I’m reading a new book, “Your Soul’s Plan” by Robert Schwartz. It brings up a point I knew about intellectually—but the book seems to have taken me to a deeper level within it. Here it is:

Prior to each birth we map out our coming incarnation. We use an ‘if-then’ technique. If we take a certain path, we open up new possibilities later on as a result of the earlier decision we made. These new possibilities may or may not be experiences we would hope to encounter from the physical perspective.

For instance, suppose you are living in a mode such as Passion, Power or Aggression. So you might take lots of risks—diving into your experiences and thinking about them later—if at all.
So, one day, you decide to go bungee jumping and you hit your head so hard your neck is broken and—POW!—you’re a quadriplegic.
Now, certainly, this is not something any of us set out to accomplish on the physical level. Who would do such a thing? No one.
BUT—our souls don’t operate at the same level and by the same rules our personalities do. At the soul level, we see the Big Picture in a way our personalities, operating within our self-induced amnesia, do not. There are lessons which can be learned only by being totally dependent on others and this may well be one of those ‘if-then’ situations we set up prior to birth: if I take a certain path [an inability to see the ways we need to depend on each other, for instance] then I’ll give myself a crash course in dependence.

Here’s another example:
Alcohol dependency runs in my family—on both sides. By the time I was 11 years old I recognized that it has a genetic quality about it and decided to steer clear of alcohol [and I’m glad I did].
In fact, I was amazed, years later, when the medical/psychology methodologies unveiled their theories regarding drug addictions and genetics. Hello??? I thought EVERYONE understood those basic facts long ago! After all, if a pre-teen could figure it out — what took the professionals so long?

Anyway, galloping back to the point here [lessons, remember?] when I was in my twenties an uncle died of alcoholism. He shut himself into his home and, essentially, starved himself to death—after a prolonged bout of drinking.

From the human/personality point of view, Uncle Marvin was a profound failure. He let his addictions get so out of hand that he saw no way out and—that was that.
But was it, though? From his soul’s viewpoint, his life may have been an astounding success. Who knows what lessons he, his family, his friends, his acquaintances took from the experience of seeing Uncle Marvin’s downward spiral? We often take on such huge tasks in order both to learn and to teach.
xxxxx
Here’s my point:
For many years I’ve recognized, “We are all where we need to be.” It’s such a basic tenet of this belief system that it’s posted at the top of the blog.

For a few years, now, I’ve had a composite picture of Hitler, Kim Jung Il, George W. Bush and a man who has obviously just been tortured and is about to be killed posted on my wall to remind me: WE ARE ALL EXACTLY WHERE WE NEED TO BE.

But until now this was, I think, simply an intellectual knowing. I posted the picture above my desk because it was something I needed to remind myself of. It wasn’t an inherent gut-knowledge.
Now, though, the book seems to be acting as a catalyst. I believe the knowledge is moving from the level of intellect to something more visceral. Maybe an emotional-knowing or, perhaps, something even deeper.

The admonition by Joshua bar Joseph not to judge others takes on a whole new meaning at this level. Judgment has no place in our world because we have no way of knowing what lessons a given soul has set out to learn. Or even more — if a soul has set out on a quest to undergo what looks, at the human level, like a failed life in order to teach the rest of us a basic lesson.
And if that’s not love, what is?