Do we plan our lives? Also, are our lives predetermined, or do we have free will? These questions, relevant to many of us, are still being debated and have been for centuries. Some people believe our lives are predetermined and some think we have free will. From conducting many regressions into past lives and life-between-lives, I believe both are true. But how can this be the case?
Predetermination
Predetermination is defined as ‘to settle or decide in advance.’ From the regressions, I know that much of our life is predetermined, including our choice of parents, our bodies, the people we incarnate with and the challenges we face. As you can see, we help plan our lives before we are born, and ‘sign off’ on all these decisions.
Obviously, we plan our future lives not as humans, but as souls. Does that mean we are just avatars controlled by our soul-self?
No, because not all is predetermined. Even though there is a plan, much choice is left to the human individual. An illustrative example is David, whose case is discussed in detail in my book, Other Lives, Other Realms: Journeys of Transformation.
David’s life plan
In one of David’s lives during the early eighteenth century, the plan includes marriage. David fails to fulfill this plan. After meeting the woman he is supposed to marry, he leaves their village to pursue opportunities elsewhere, and never returns. He lives a solitary life, focussing on accumulating material possessions.
David’s plan to marry is important. In previous lives, he experiences many solitary lives, incarnating many times as a warrior, a religious devotee and a spy. These experiences develop many useful capabilities that carry over to his following lives, such as courage, the strength to be alone and the ability to read people. All that is fine, but his current plan is to develop new skills. Potentially, marriage provides opportunities to develop important characteristics such as love, physical connection and the tolerance required in a close relationship.
In his previous life, David exercises his freedom to follow the plan or not. Given that there was a good reason for the plan, why didn’t David follow it?
Over many lives, his solitary nature habituated. He feels comfortable alone. In the past life after meeting his predestined wife, he loses his job as an apprentice watchmaker. Fearing for his future, David leaves the village to make his fortune.
When we fail to complete our life plan, we repeat it—just as we repeat a subject at school that we fail.
David’s second chance to fulfil his plan
David waits two hundred years to incarnate again in the late twentieth century. This long timeframe is most unusual in this era when the Earth’s population is growing enormously and there are ample opportunities for incarnating. But this time lag is deliberate. His soul waits until the circumstances for completing the plan are more auspicious.
Again, David is to marry, and again he is failing to fulfill the plan. Now in his thirties and with few friends—none of whom are female, he chooses a solitary profession, works long hours and fails to socialise.
Fortunately, this time, he has a better connection to his soul-self and is open to the idea that he is more than his physical body. His spirit guides help, guiding him to Michael Newton’s book, Destiny of Souls.
Before coming to see me, David has a sense that something is not quite right in his life, and Michael’s book confirms it. He finds my website and makes an appointment. During the regression, he experiences two illuminating past lives. Once he clearly understands his soul’s plan, he significantly changes his life to get back on track with the plan.
Does David fulfill his plan?
Until recently, I didn’t know if David could fulfil his life plan or not. About six years ago, he calls me when caught in a difficult relationship with a narcissist. I give him some advice which he takes on board.
But one day in September 2025, I decide to call him. As we connect, I hear the voice of a small child. It is David’s two-year-old son. I cry as he tells me he is happily married and completely settled.
Now, he is fulfilling his life purpose, not by predetermination or coercion, but by exercising his free will. David and I experience a joyful moment in our lives as we reflect together on his spiritual progress.
In my book, David’s experiences are substantial, greatly informative on several levels, and beautifully articulated. As you can imagine, I am very grateful for his contribution.
Do we plan our lives even with free will?
Even though we decide and settle (e.g. predetermine) what we want to achieve in our incarnation, we still have free will. As a soul in a human body, we decide how we proceed in each of our lives. On Earth, there are many opportunities to choose, as well as what we have planned.
Many people come to see me for regressions to discover their life purpose. Unfortunately, most find that they are off track with their life plan. Further, some are disappointed to discover they’ve failed to reach the same objective in several lifetimes.
However, every life is of value, especially when the plan is not completed. Each life delivers more information, enabling the plan to be refined. Consequently, people are inspired to change when they realise that their current life is another attempt at achieving an important goal.
People who are on track with their life plans are happy in life and in death. Being a witness to many past life deaths during regressions, I notice that those who fulfil their life purpose before they die, leave joyfully and with a sense of peace and accomplishment.
If you wonder if you are on track with your life plan, you might like to see someone like me who can help.
Hi Karen,
When I was younger, I was questioning myself as well if I have free will or my life is planned by someone else. After many years of past life regressions, I came to the realization that we ourselves have planned our life before we even incarnate on Earth. This means that our soul contract was our ticket and agreement to come to this planet. It is easy to blame a higher being or beings for forcing us to a soul contract that we never agreed with.
By being able to remember our past lives, it shows us how much power we have in our hands along with responsibility. You are right though, when we fail to fulfill our mission, we need to come back to finish what we started. Though when we consciously remember what our life mission is, we can change the future and get out of any loops we put ourselves in.
Thank you for this wonderful post!
Zaria
Free will its incompitible with a life plan. if we choose our parents, then our parents did not choose each other or to have children, it was decided. if it was decided, there is no free will. if i choose a wife out of my group, how could our son guess what would happen? if he knew, there is no free will, if he did not know, there is no plan, if there is no plan, how can we reincarnate in groups? if we can reincarnate in groups, there is no free will.
Eduardo, I think you are misunderstanding the nature of the choice of family members. You, your parents, your wife, your children all agreed to the plan before anyone incarnated. If a soul did not agree to the plan, that soul was excluded and another one found to take that position. If you believe you are more than your physical body, you will realise that the non-physical YOU can make choices at the higher levels of non physical existence and these choices play out during your physical life.
I have been reading up on manifesting but I am confused. If we plan our life before we come to earth, then how can we manifest? Do we become aware that certain things must happen so we cannot try manifest? for example: if we planned a life of poverty how could we then manifest to become rich?
Thank you for your question Andrea. In planning a life we are exercising our free will. We are not incarnated when we plan our life. We plan it the level of our higher self, the being that we truly are. The higher self invests energy into a physical life. So you are connected to your higher self playing out a life like an avatar. If you truly did choose a life of poverty, your purpose would be to experience what that is like and to learn how to come to terms with a life of poverty. In other words to find a way of being at peace with poverty. Manifestating anything is not possible unless you are already at peace with what you have. That is a given in the manifestation process. So you would not be able to manifest wealth until you had completed your purpose of accepting poverty. Any emotionally driven desire to manifest has an element of fear and dissatisfaction in it. You cannot manifest while you are carrying those negative attitudes, which are often deeply buried in your psyche.
Free will and predestination are incompatible from a logical and practical standpoint. If everyone is free to make choices, their choices have a direct impact on other people’s lives too and can derail those journeys. Even small choices can mean your parents never meet and you’re not born. Or my choice to marry this person instead of that person will affect both those persons lives. You can’t have certain events predetermined while others are subject to free will because the moment you have choices those predetermined events are in danger of never happening. There is also a danger that you will never learn the lessons and you will forever stagnate. That is in contradiction with the notion that the final destination is the Source. That destination may never be reached if free will is the driving force. This is chaos not cosmos. This leaves everything up to chance.
There’s no such thing as free will. This talk about souls has a very strong dualistic flavor where there is God or the Source and then there are these souls working out their missions with their own volition. There is only one free will and that is God’s will and God has already decided everything. God wants to experience limitation through all its physical manifestations. Your incarnations are not about choices. It’s all about the emotional experience and that was predetermined the second God came down into fragmentation and limitation and is pulling itself back up according to plan. You, defined as an individualized aspect of a God in a state of self-imposed limitation, learn from the journey in the sense of gaining a higher awareness of your own identity until you merge into the absolute consciousness which is a state of being with nothing attached to it, the eternal I AM.
Humans have a very hard time letting go of free will. They like to hold others responsible for their actions and they also like to think they have choices in life. This is all from the ego level.
Andrei
Thanks for your comment. I respect your views and opinions, however as you can see from the blog I differ. From the thousands of clients I have had over my career, I see quite clearly that because we have past lives we can exercise our free will to not fulfil a contract with others and come back again to repeat it. No experience is lost, even when the plan is not fulfilled. That is how our lives can be planned in a context of free will. Our higher self agrees to the plan, invests energy into a physical body and then plays it out or not. Others agree to the plan as well with the understanding that all players have free will to play it out differently. That is how we learn.