Review Detail

Courageous Soul: Pondering the Possibilities Outside the Box
Review by Grady Harp
Robert Schwartz is an eloquent spokesman for his explorations in the realm
few of us have even considered, much less explored fully: the concept of
pre-birth planning as a convention of souls who make decisions about
incarnation - place, time, circumstances, and challenges - that will
heighten the overall improvement of not only their repeated growth in the
process of rebirth but also the gift to the betterment of mankind.

Schwartz' manner of writing is so tender and so lacking in preaching that he
gradually draws the reader into his realm of thinking in a way that allows
us to suspend any doubt or prejudice we may have about spirituality or after
life or universal karma. He uses conversations with people who share their
experiences of living with such 'handicaps' as physical illness, parenting
handicapped children, deafness and blindness, drug addiction and alcoholism,
accidents, death of a loved one and alters the word 'handicapped' to
'challenges'; 'Challenges are mirrors that reflect to us our feelings about
ourselves. In that sense, they are gifts. Wisdom allows us to recognize them
as such.'

In addition to discussing the above challenges with particular people who
have them, Schwartz introduces us to mediums and channelers who channel the
souls of the people we meet, allowing Schwartz to relay to us the
conversations between the spiritual world and the physical world. In this
very quiet manner Schwartz offers an explanation as to why 'untoward events'
happen: his conversations with the various people he shares (for instance
the autistic child or the parent of that child) allow us to consider that
these choices are made in the spirit world prior to our birth and that these
challenges offer the opportunity to separate the physical self-centered
being from the choice to make the situations examples of growth, and of
revealing love to those around us.

Schwartz takes no credit for the information he presents in this book. His
drive is to open doors to us the readers to consider his findings and
philosophy as a means to learning more about how life and the spiritual
world are enmeshed. 'I have learned from the wise nonphysical beings with
whom I have spoken...Through them I now understand the immense power of this
most elemental truth: that we are not our bodies...If you also know that you
planned your disability, that it indeed has a deep significance, then your
life may become a quest to uncover that meaning. Suffering is lightened,
emptiness replaced with purpose.'

Writers such as Robert Schwartz challenge our inside the box thinking,
encouraging us to suspend prejudice and the state of being uninformed to
enter the arena of growing spiritually. The beauty of this enormously moving
book lies in the simplicity of the style Schwartz has chosen to communicate.
This is not a sensationalized series of speaking with the 'great dramatic
séance', this is instead a welcome to another way of viewing our lives -
this one and the ones that have been and will be.