From this life or from a past life?

Sometimes, when struggling with deep emotional issues, my wife Phoebe will ask me: Is this something from this lifetime, or something from a past life-time?

It happened yesterday. We were talking about an issue I've had all of my life, where a part of me is actively trying to convince myself how disgusting, ugly, unwanted, horrible, untalented, and worthless I am.

Whenever I grow and expand and enjoy success and love and abundance, this part of me will step up and kick me to the curb. Again and again and again. Tirelessly.

Then she said it: "It feels like this might be some past-life issue".

Suddenly the energy changes. Instead of a "poor me" victim story, looking for an explanation in my upbringing, it becomes a question of what happened in a past life that made me want to manifest these circumstances in this lifetime?

Sure, there are things in my upbringing that have caused this. But why did I choose, at a soul level, to create these circumstances?

Immediately I felt it had something to do with punishing myself for letting down an entire people through the use of my power. So now I need to punish myself by preventing myself from becoming powerful in this lifetime.

Whether or not you actually believe in past lifetimes is irrelevant. If you're simply willing to consider the possibility, to just play with it for a while, then you'll notice how the energy shifts to a much more empowering place: "I chose this. I can chose otherwise."

A choice is empowering. Something that happened to you is not.

What circumstances did you create for yourself this lifetime, and why?