This strikes me as manifestly unfair, because I don't have the slightest notion what I did in my prior life or lives. This makes it difficult to understand what I did to earn the punishments and rewards I am currently experiencing. However, I have been informed that I had a choice regarding the time and circumstances of my life. According to this theory, a soul gets to choose where, when and to whom it is born. In other words, not only did I get to decide which past life debts I should pay interest on, the lessons I have to learn, or the best way to develop my spiritual potential, I also could choose my parents!

The peculiar notion of past life experiences, karmic consequences, spiritual evolution, and prenatal freewill can be quite appealing. It lends credence to the idea of what goes around, comes around and as you sow, so shall you reap. It also explains why certain people actually deserve to be born in a famine ridden, war torn country, in an inner city ghetto, or to abusive, and neglectful parents. It tells us why some people suffer an inordinate amount of bad luck, such as being Jewish in Nazi Germany or down wind from the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl.

Reincarnation backs up the premise that people who win lotteries, or are part of Bill Gates Microsoft Empire earned their good fortune. Assuming I have grasped the basics of reincarnation, it seems we are responsible for our advantages, disadvantages and choices in this life and will experience their consequences in the next.

Pretend we are disembodied spirits, temporarily liberated from the demands of the material realm. We know we will return to physical existence and before we do, we need to select that particular womb which facilitates working off karmic debts; enjoying the fruits of previous achievements; expanding our spiritual horizons and preparing us for life on the earthly plane.

Conscious pre-selection of an appropriate womb is vital to future development. It is widely accepted a child's mother, father, grandparents and all the twigs and branches of her family tree have a profound influence on her life and sense of identity. However, families carry their own karmic baggage and this brings me to the tale of my family curse.

This is the story of our family curse, related to me by my mother and passed through her Irish grandmother. Theoretically, the curse should have ended with my grandmother, but judging from the tragedies that have afflicted all the women in my family, I wonder if our family curse is really done with?

One might wonder what a rather nasty story about one of my ancestors and a pregnant beggar woman has to do with me? Are the sins of the parents really visited on their children? Why should I pay for the transgressions of a cruel social system and a money grubbing ancestor? I didn't turn the unfortunate woman away! I'm certainly not responsible for her poverty, pregnancy or it's consequences! Or am I?

However unfair or unjustified it seems on the surface, the dynamics of reincarnation and prenatal choice dictate otherwise. It seems we choose to be born into a situation, which leads to eventual enlightenment, or to a much-deserved punishment. If this is the case, my Irish foremothers decided to become part of a family where women would suffer in order to work off a karmic debt incurred by a greedy, heartless male ancestor. It also appears that the nasty doctor choose to be an instrument of punishment for a soul who deserved to perish in childbirth.

Perhaps guilt plays a larger role in prenatal decision making processes than is commonly recognised. After all, why would anyone choose to be born in a slum in Brazil or a refugee camp in Rwanda? However, no matter what one believes about reincarnation, prenatal free will or family curses, it seems obvious that some families and people have the odds stacked against them.

Assume once you were a free-floating soul liberated from the burden of physical existence. You wanted to develop your spiritual powers and the only way you could do so was by choosing the kind of a life that would broaden your knowledge of the physical realm. It would assist your working off debts incurred by past life transgressions; reward you for correct choices and put you in a position where your soul would gain first hand experience of the highs and lows of the human condition. Your first task is to select an appropriate family matrix.

In making this choice you need to carefully evaluate the particular blessings and curses attached to that family tree. You also need to decide if you really want to live a healthy, fulfilling life or if a darker path will better suit your personal development.

This is where the topic of curses and blessings deserves careful evaluation. These generally fall into three distinct categories: the archetypal, the biological, and the traditional. The curse laid on the women in my family is an excellent example of an archetypal curse. Such a curse follows a predefined pattern and often conforms to a mythological precedent.

Being an ethical young man, he had no desire to kill his father, or commit incest with his mother. When the oracle gave him the same prophecy as his birth parents, he ran away from home, encountered his biological father, got into an argument over whose chariot had the right of way, suffered the first recorded case of road rage and beat his father's brains out.

Poor, ignorant Oedipus then went into town, dealt with a menacing sphinx who was terrorising the populace; was rewarded through marriage to the widowed queen who just happened to be his biological mother.

This is a classical example of an archetypal curse. In other words a complete innocent, Oedipus, is born into a family where he is doomed to be rejected, tortured, condemned to death and finally to perform an act that would destroy his life, and the lives of those he cared for.

From this we can deduce that an archetypal or classical curse is often tied to a particular family tree. Such a curse attaches itself to an innocent and cannot be averted or escaped. If we are to believe in free will and karmic debts, we need to accept that Oedipus selected the path of spiritual growth through pain and sacrifice.

There are many cases of archetypal curses in folklore and mythology. One can gain insight into them by reading the Bible, familiarising yourself with ancient Greek tragedians, or by talking to your grandparents. However, a more modern type of curse is genetic in nature and is generally confined to the physical characteristics of your birth family.

For example, you could elect for a very short and uncomfortable life by being born with the defective gene that causes Tay-Sacks disease. This particular disease generally kills a child before it is three years old and seems to be limited to families of northern European Jewish lineage. The only problem with choosing a genetic curse is that modern geneticists are all to likely to spot a defective gene and fewer and fewer women are willing to carry defective babies to term.

In my opinion, the most common type of curse is traditional or psychological. This involves selecting a family where physical, intellectual or psychological abuse is part of the family tradition. We know that low self-esteem, child abuse, alcoholism, depression and various dysfunctions seen to run in certain families.

For example, I once asked my son-in-law why he hit my grandson for activities I considered relatively innocuous, though definitely irritating. He said that he had been spanked as a child and didn't see any reason why he shouldn't do the spanking now. I asked him why he had been beaten as a child and he said it was because of his uncontrollable temper. I asked if being hit a lot had taught him to control his temper and he said no. However, the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of the punishment was not particularly important. After all, hitting small children when they did not comply with the wishes of parents was a well-established family tradition.

My grandson is now in his teens and shows signs of low self-esteem and depression. I wonder if his soul choose to be born into a family where the males suffered physical abuse from their elders and were burdened with the curse of an inadequate and poor self image?

This brings me to one of the more bewildering of the fates one can choose, the curse that is linked to a blessing and visa versa. Classical models for this particular fate abound in Greek mythology. There is Cassandra who was given the gift of prophecy but was also cursed with the doom that no one would ever believe her. Teiresias was cursed with physical blindness but was given the blessing of inner vision by Athena. Such curses and blessings may be brought on by the actions of the person. Cassandra was given her prophetic blessing because she had the good fortune to be loved by Apollo. However, she was stupid enough to cheat on him and he turned the blessing into a curse. Teiresias accidentally viewed the Goddess in her bath. However, Athena, was a fair-minded goddess, and compensated him for his blindness with the rare ability to see things and people as they really are.

Careful investigation of blessings that turn into curses and visa versa can teach the unborn soul a number of useful truths. First, don't cheat on the divine! Apollo was a god associated with truth, beauty, integrity and the capacity to know ourselves. Those of us who pay homage to these ideals should avoid playing loose with the truth. Teiresias can be a model for those who seek the hidden blessing, which often accompanies a physical handicap. In short, if you are attracted to cerebral, independent, Athena, patroness of heroes and crafts you may need to accept physical limitations and compensate for them by embracing the life of the mind.

The curse that is linked to a blessing is associated with the choices we make on the material realm. Such choices encourage creativity, ingenuity and faith in our innate capacities. They ask us to dwell on what we can do, rather than on what we lack.

One of the great classical blessings appears in the relationship between Abraham and God. Abraham is told that he; an elderly, childless wanderer, would become the father of nations and a blessing to all the families of earth.

Abraham gives us a wonderful example of our right to argue or reason with the divine. In this era, where countless evangelists warm us of the fate of Sodom and Gomorra, often seeming to relish the thought of wholesale slaughter and destruction, people may forget Abraham actually argued with the Lord over the issue of mass murder. In ch.18 of Genesis, v.23 through 32, Abraham got God to agree if there were ten good people in Sodom, God would not destroy the city. Abraham first articulated the issue of rightful war and whether it was just to destroy the innocent along with the guilty.

Unfortunately, in our modern wisdom we have trouble realising the blessings of mercy. We seem to accept the rather ridiculous idea that those who have the least influence in a society should suffer for the pride, greed or wrongs of that society's leaders. (How else can one explain America's willingness to bomb Baghdad in order to punish Saddam Hussein or its 30 + year embargo of Cuba?) However, that does not negate the wonderful blessing of being able to apply moral reasoning to ethical, economic or political issues. This seems to be the birthright or blessing of every person who examines the rights and wrongs of an act or decision. One can argue that some families are more concerned with goodness, with justice, mercy, and living an ethical life and that these are the true inheritors of Abraham's blessing.

Classical blessings can be associated with the talents a child is born with. Mozart wrote his first symphony when he was six. Although he died before his 37Th birthday; his musical gift has enriched humanity for the last 200 years. His particular blessing became a blessing for all of us.

This brings us to the nature of a blessing: it is not bought or earned; it benefits more than the original recipient, and is often the source of a new reality or an enlightened way of being. Your soul may choose a life where you develop a recognised blessing and raise ethical and spiritually alert children. It might send you on the path of originality and genius, where you create works of beauty, find a cure for Aids or invent cold fusion.

Another blessing, though not often recognised as such, is physical. In this category, I place those lucky souls who never have to visit the dentist, whose immune system successfully resists infections and whose bones maintain their density after menopause. One can also point to people who don't need to watch their weight, who are born athletes, or whose physical beauty turns them into much envied role models. Of course, people can generally improve their health, athletic power and appearance, but wouldn't it be nice if we had a genetic advantage to begin with?

I will finish my survey of family blessings with the more common psychological variety. This entails being born into a family where one's particular physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs are fostered. For example, I was born into a family where the cultivation of the mind, where knowledge, information and the ability to articulate them was encouraged. I don't remember when I learned to read, but I recall being astonished by the idea that anyone wouldn't like books, or that some parents never read to their children! I received the blessing of a naive confidence in my own intelligence. Although I have often doubted my worthiness, loveableness or attractiveness, I have rarely questioned my ability to be articulate.

I suspect some disincarnate souls seek the blessing of being born to a wealthy and influential family in a society where females are educated and health care is available. With any luck, such entities might gain access to a family where their basic worth and natural talents are appreciated and encouraged.

However, judging from the number of therapists in North American society, such openings seem rare. If one looked at the number of malnourished and traumatised children in the world, one might assume that a large number of souls choose to be born into a family or society where they reap the benefits conferred by a short, brutal, and painful life.

I heard a rumour that Earth is a dumping ground for misbehaving or unenlightened souls from the rest of the galaxy. If so, it may explain why so many bodiless entities select a less than adequate family or social matrix to take physical form in. Ignorance may play a larger role in determining one's karma than is commonly realised.

Achieving spiritual growth and redemption through suffering is another possibility. One of humanity's popular religions is based on a story of salvation being achieved through the sacrifice of an innocent soul. The blessing of sacrifice, resurrection and salvation is one of the few promises held out to the poor and disenfranchised by certain religious hierarchies. However, that promise is tarnished by a carrot and stick philosophy, which claims if you don't accept the saviour into your heart and obey all the rules of a particular sect, you run the risk of being punished for all eternity.

It seems that we have a number of conflicting beliefs regarding our prenatal choices. We might choose to be born into the kind of family where our spiritual growth is fostered. We might insist on rebirth again and again until we have experienced everything this mortal sphere has to offer. We might opt for a single excursion through this world and choose the kind of family where we can make our own heaven or hell.

Of course, this assumes we are not the result of a random genetic accident, that we exercised choice in the parental selection process and our souls possess clear memories and a preferred destination.