Juditha, the lession my not be for the murderer, but for the child, or the parents, or, or, or. I believe that the lession is about the sacrifice and love. The freewill of the soul,( for lack of a better word)to make the choice to die, or to kill, to assist in moving the soul group to a higher level of spritual consciousness. Forgiveness perhaps.(?)

As Hawkeye said, the lesson may be for the victim as well as the perpetrator. Jesus said something to the effect that "Such things must happen, but woe to them by whom they are done."

Young and immature people tend to do impulsive things, poorly thought out, often forceful and imposing on others. Regression feedback suggests that this is also true of immature souls.  Young souls, ignorant of better ways to do things, tend to incarnate into either self-serving roles, or into roles where they try to inflict their will onto others by brute force. With time, maturity leads them to realize that force doesn't work, and that compassion, love, wisdom and joyful activity work much better. And then you get people who remain at low levels of social impact but generally do good.

This seems to be the reason that so many well intentioned people who view themselves as just and righteous get involved with Inquisitions, global conquest, or on a lesser scale, they feel justified and righteous and beat their husbands, wives, children and so on into submission (husband abuse is less reported, but fairly common) because they are certain that this is th proper path to bliss.

Getting these souls from the stage of social infancy to social competency involves a lot of living. So, for example, the guy who was a brutish child molester is his past will need a few incarnations to move to a better point of view as he grows older. One of those will quite likely give some other new soul the opportunity to molest him, while the older soul will realize that this is what he had done in the past, and will be able to reject it as a way of living.

This is a sort of "bootstrap" system in which each level rests on the level below it, as we see more clearly through the fluff and fog of everyday experiences and deeper into the ultimate meaning of life. There is no malice involved. In fact the whole thing operates on love. It is because we love others that we are willing to change, to stop beating on people, to support worthy charities, and to abandon old habits of anger, rejection and dominance. (I have about 6 hours on DVD of a series of regression sessions with a man who went through most of these changes.)

In fact, when on of the dictatorial types goes into spirit it is quite likely that he will both have the pleasure of knowing that all the dictatorial strategies were done with a good will, plus the displeasure of knowing that  after all the tortures and killings, it didn't really work very well. So, being more or less right in the face of God at that time, it seems useful to go on to a better way of doing things, in hopes that life will go on.

That we do this as a "group soul" is more or less like saying that your grandchildren are part of your family. We're all connected. My one vision of this was that there seems to be a mesh of connections that we share at the fringes as individuals, and then as the connections merge the individuals together, moving back toward the Source, they get "thicker" and begin to connect groups of people and so on, until we join with the connections supporting animals and such, and finally all the way back to the one root, connected to what we often refer to as our Higher Self, in the center of the Heart of God. (The Catholic priest Teilhard de Chardin did a very nice description of this - for which he was nearly excimmunicated.)

It isn't that we all get together and figure this out in advance, but rather that we jump in and get our hands dirty, and then try to figure it all out. I often feel that we can look at the various peoples and cultures of the world and generally we can see the levels of spiritual development that some cultures seem to have attained. At the present time, technological development seems to have nothing in common with spirituality, which means that we can also see the same progression in our own world when we move our gaze from brawlers and thugs, to politicians who seek power, then to politicians who seek to benefit the world, to businessmen who cheat, and then those who seek to create a decent product, and finally the common wage earner who is just a happy photographer (Edgar Cayce), engineer (Bruce), health worker (Depak Chopra) or even guru (Dalai Lama), or perhaps a psychic like you.

As another example, one of my patients was doing the piss and moan routine about how bad her life was in the past. So I asked how life was today. She said life was OK. She had a house, food, good friends and adequate finances. "OK," says I, "You might not like the way you arrived at the present situation, but now that you're here it's all right. That's the best you can do. So now just go forward." (She cancelled her next therapy session, saying, "I know what to do ... I just have to do it" )  That seems like the way with all of us.

love
dave

I am suspicious of the invented reasons I hear about why people
come down here to play certain roles that have a bad aspect.
It has a mythical quality to it.

Many belief systems have what I call an explanations department.
That is, when something is difficult to explain, in the context of some
preconceived world view, some lame idea is thought up of why this
bad thing had to be. Like, oh, somebody had to learn some
particular lesson, so that is why this bad thing was arranged. This
to me sounds like a system of invented myths. I am not inclined to
believe it.

In my paradigm these myths are not needed. I simply do not presume
that what happens is "supposed to be" good for something. This idea
assumes that someone is in charge producing some sort of ultimate
good. I don't make that assumption. It seems more probable that no
one is in charge of most things, making them happen, they just
happen on their own, from a set of pre-exiting circumstances.
Or someone or something will on rare occasions intervene to make a
good thing happen. But that is the exception.

My view does not assume that what will happen will result in some
ultimate good. Why should I assume that? My observations of things
generally do not lead to the conclusion of ultimate good being
arranged. It could just as easily be ultimate bad. I find it easier
to understand things with an open mind. I don't make the assumption
that there is a reason for this. The actual reason is inherent in the
preceding events.

I also dont presume that I, or anyone, is a "part of God". Why
should I ?  Is Osamaa Bin Laden a part of God? I dont think so.
Why should I? I dont presume we are inherently good. Some of us are,
and some are not.

Because I view the universe as an amoral machine, these is no
assumption that things are going to happen in a good way. They will
happen in a good way sometimes, and other times not. Thus I am in a
state of expectancy that corresponds to reality. So to me reality
does not require silly lame explanations.

Hi Juditha,

Regarding that idea of 'Like attracts like," 
I think that's a general principle but not a hard rule applicable to everything.
Actually there's also "Opposites attract," so they would just cancel each other out if they got in a power struggle, lol!
I think they are principles--- just like in music and color, certain principles state that certain notes and colors go with certain other notes and colors, but there are so many variations on it that it doesn't stand as a rule.

Bets

Hi Juditha I used to wonder the same question you asked about like attracting like. maybe it could be that people who have a certain belief system are attracted to those who also have similar beliefs, and this on both levels. opposites attract too, just to be curiosly examining the differences for to learn.

I think basically earth is like a spiritual kindergarden and so we have certain segments, we can call them young souls, and they run amuck like children also run amuck and need disaplining. you can come across grown people and look into their soul easy enough and see they are not spiritually mature or everything that came out of their mouth would not be a whine or a complaint.
the number one rule to grow spiritually, and I think this is a blanket statement, that we have to take responsibility for every evil or unjust incident that comes to rain on our parade and bad things happen to good people all the time simply because we are all here in the soupmix and each of us effect others by our words and deeds. the idea is earth is an experiment for many. we didn't have anything necessarily set in stone destiny, we had some tools is all, and each soul grows the garden of their own soul, their character, while some get the mindset somebody owes them something. its not true. we grow our own consciousness and reality.

the way I see it, a life plan is drawn up, with planners assisting, making suggestions. and on the other side we tend to think rather optimistically, then we can bite off a few more hard knocks than originally planned on..like a set of possibilities for growth were developed based on the tools given to a soul or earned from previous circumstance.

so that if you see a man who says I am self made, its exactly true. theres just is no god dictating how things shall be a garden here. one must have these yearnings before they can manifest. we are gradually getting more in alignment with justice for all, and equality, that sort of thing, but since it is a planet known for its war practices, you can see how it is a big experiment that everyone trys to make their contribution.
as for evil, you will have selfish children mentalities and they are throwing a tantrum is all. then you will see heroism among humanity the same, unselfish acts of love inspire all of us and we must look to these who inspire, and gradually the children will be taught and disaplined by these others as their behavior does not get them what they want. well, its a process, and one of the lessons here is learning extreme patience sometimes. love, alysia

To respond to Boris-
The reason that things work out for the good is thermodynamics. Two cases -

(1)     If you have one idea and then acquire another idea later, there is a probability, however large or small, that those two will come together. Their union is a more stable state than their difference. Briefly: For {A} and {B} the probability of thinking of A is 50%. Now allow them to be in additive space. Then there is a probability of forming {A+B}. The beginners are also saved, since thinking an idea doesn't use it up. So we have the additive outcome {A}, {B}, {A+B}. The probability of thinking a thought containing A is 67%. This is a more stable state for both A and B, hence they stay stuck. (This is true for all potential state spaces.)

(2)     Every day you encounter things that affect you. Making random choices, your odds of sucess are 50%, less friction, leakage and nuisance value as your neighbors try to steal a bit. But you learn. You cannot help but learn. Each thing you learn is reinforced or not, leading to acquisition of perpetually better coping strategies that must form because we can't prevent them. (In "artificial intelligence" studies, neural nets are given similar experiences and reinforced for learning. The results are identical.) Thus, your tendency to err declines. Eventually, if you live enough lives, your response set will be in total accord with surrounding reality, and you will be able to deal with any unexpected event. (This is called satchitananda in yoga, and is the mechanism of salvation for Hinayana Buddhism.) That's better than before, and you keep growing anyhow, until you reach total enlightement and reabsorption into God-Mind.

Orlando- You are correct in your evaluation. My job is to give people a good listening to and then get rid of them by  allowing them to handle their own issues.  (An occasional assist with a Size 10 to the backside may help.) The ritual of analytic therapy, "abreaction and decathexis", and payment of my rather substantial fee is the hook by which they buy into the system. That's all. God heals, I just collect the checks and go to the bank. 
dave

Dave said: That's all. God heals, I just collect the checks and go to the bank.
____

thanks Dave for pointing out something important. it is said when the student is ready the teacher appears. as I see it the clients who come to you are sent to you as you would then be the teacher who has appeared to the student who now is ready.

the other point is that money is a symbol. it is paper. paper is made from trees. money has no intrinsic value of itself. on spiritual level, it is a sign of abundance of life as it promotes survival on this society level for the time being as a measure of our worth of service to others. my opinion, and you know this already, I feel you are worth every single dollar that makes its way into your bank account. thank you for your presence here, unpaid as it is! much love, alysia