“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In many cases it is the family, rather than the incapacitated member, who questions and does not understand — as in cases of severely mentally retarded children, for example. Yet in all instances not only do children choose their parents ahead of time, but parents choose their children, of course.

Someone else may choose to focus upon intellectual achievement to such a degree that he shuts out all true closeness, and though he can accept a permanent relationship, he will not experience the emotional richness that others may derive from a much briefer encounter. Therefore each of you choose — ahead of time, in your terms — the kind of framework through which you will contend with this life situation. This applies personally and collectively.

(9:38.) These lifetime organizations may involve very drastic physical disabilities from birth. From the outside it seems impossible that anyone would choose such a background, such a highly restricted or even painful situation in which to live. From that viewpoint birth defects, or lifetime diseases of any kind, make no sense.

[...] Six months before starting “Unknown” Reality, however, he made a few remarks that I’ve applied ever since to life in our physical reality: “Each person chooses his or her parents, accepting in terms of environment and heredity a bank of characteristics, attitudes, and abilities from which to draw in physical life. There is always a reason, and so each parent will represent to each child an unspeakable symbol, and often the two parents will represent glaring contrasts and different probabilities, so that the child can compare and contrast divergent realities … Your two brothers also chose the family situation. Each parent [both of whom are now deceased] represented opposites to them — but individual ones, and so they saw your parents differently [than you did]. [...]

[...] When that picture was taken, however, your parents were beginning to realize their difficulty. [...] He was secure, but not as secure as you had been, as the division between your parents was beginning to show.

[...] She was 2 years old when her parents were divorced in 1931. With her daughter, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Marie began experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis, but worked as much as possible.

Now: each person chooses his parents, accepting in terms of environment and heredity a bank of various characteristics, attitudes and abilities from which he draws in physical life.

There is always a reason, and so each parent will represent to each child an unspeakable symbol, and often the two parents will represent glaring contrasts and different probabilities, so that the child can compare and contrast divergent realities.

[...] Each parent also represented opposites to them—but different ones, and so they saw your parents differently. [...]

[...] Usually between lives you choose ahead of time your children, and they choose you as parents.

[...] We not only form our environment now, but ahead of time we choose our parents and circumstances. [...]

[...] You merely cooperated with your parents in forming it.