Quote Originally Posted by Tempest
In the same vein, those we choose as companions along our journey are usually there for a purpose. And, I mean the supposed "good" and "bad" companions. If you accept the idea of past lives, in doing past life regression hypnotherapy, I've learned that we often come back as antagonists to the protagonists in our life story. We actually choose people/souls and make agreements with them to create disharmony and pain in our lives for purposes of learning and experiencing. After death, everyone usually becomes "friends" once again, even though they may have made our life a living hell. While not having omniscience, souls usually are made aware of the reasons for the supposed good and bad occurances in their lives. Time and again, I've seen clients who were taken to the time between lives come to the understanding of why they chose certain people to create havoc in their lives, creating a healing and an acceptance of the roles we all play in each other's live. This personal acceptance and healing has allowed them to move past the idea of right and wrong, and see, for the first time, how we work together to create experiences of all kinds...not just "good" ones.
I'm not discounting that this probably is sometimes the case, though based on my experience, in life as well as getting feedback on various situations from my HS, I would have to say "sometimes but not always."

On one hand, I could present the example of my family. We've all been an asset to each other in some ways I think, and in others we've caused a lot of suffering for each other. This is probably the case in most families to varying degrees, but I could see where there were agreements involved here, partly because I've had an experience that seems to support the idea that I picked my parents. Although, I know others who would dispute that they picked theirs -- I've seen cases where evidence seem to indicate that the families they ended up with was more of a case of derailing on the way in, than a mutual agreement.

Likewise, there are situations in my life that my HS has indicated were an attempted derailing, rather than anything I consented to, whether at his level, mine or anywhere in between. At that point it seems that the HS has the choice of whether to accept the attempted derailing as part of the incarnation's experience because he (gender pronoun used for convenience, although mine seems to manifest more as a "he") thinks there's a high enough probability of something he hopes to gain from it, or he can intervene directly. I've seen examples of both in my own life. There are times when I personally got things back on track and learned something in the process; there were other times when I got direct intervention unasked, and there were still other times when I asked for intervention, and got it, because it was mutually agreed that the antagonist wasn't going to stop on their own, neither I nor my HS wanted to continue in the direction the antagonist had in mind, and I didn't yet have the resources "on the ground" to put a stop to it on my own.

Conversely, I've gotten indication that the HS of some people playing the antagonist role do not approve or consent to what they're doing, and in some of those cases it's whatever they're possessed by, not the HS or any sort of agreement, that is the driving force behind the course of events. In extreme cases it may be that whatever remained of the HS's influence and its connection has been squelched out, there's literally nothing left of the original person, and the identity is that of the possessing entity. In one such case in my own life, according to my HS, he has no prior or current association with the HS of the person who was playing that role in my life, but then, that person doesn't have much of a remaining association with the former HS either.

Not a fun subject necessarily, but just another alternate view to consider.