A reader recently asked me a fascinating question:
“When a soul decides to incarnate, does it ever have civilizational preferences? For example, historically, large population centres were concentrated around the Mediterranean, the Indian subcontinent, China, the Middle East, etc. I know that I have repeated incarnations in the Roman Empire. Is such a phenomenon by chance, or preference?”
Let’s dive into this.
Choosing Parents… and Everything That Comes With Them
When a soul decides to incarnate, the first choice is always the parents. That decision alone sets so much in motion: geography, culture, financial circumstances, even the political environment. Choosing a couple in rural India leads to a very different life path than choosing a wealthy Roman senator’s family or a struggling farmer in medieval France.
And souls don’t make these choices randomly. They’re deliberate. If a soul wants to learn resilience, it might pick parents who will raise it in hardship. If it wants to understand power and responsibility, it might choose parents who are influential in society. So geography, culture, and “civilization” are really baked into the parent choice.
Why Some Souls Return to the Same Civilization
Imagine you’re in school and there’s one subject that really fascinates you. You don’t take just one class on it—you take several. The same is true for souls. Some will incarnate over and over in a particular civilization because it offers themes they’re deeply curious about.
Take Rome, for instance. One lifetime might place you as a soldier in the legions, another as a senator navigating politics, another as a merchant trading across the empire. Each incarnation gives you a new lens on the same overarching civilization. By the time you’ve finished, you’ve not just dipped your toes in Roman life—you’ve swum its full length.
Other souls prefer to sample widely. They might incarnate in Egypt, then Japan, then South America, collecting diverse experiences like stamps in a passport. Both approaches are valid—it depends on the soul’s learning style.
Chance or Preference?
When people discover they’ve had multiple lives in the same region, they sometimes wonder if it’s just coincidence. But in my experience, it’s usually preference. The soul keeps circling back because something about that culture resonates.
Think of it this way: if you love music, you don’t listen to just one song once and move on. You play it again, you learn it more deeply, you hear nuances you missed the first time. Civilizations are like that for souls.
The Bigger Picture
Whether a soul keeps returning to the Roman Empire or hops from continent to continent, the choice is always made with the experience or growth in mind. The soul asks, “What do I most want to experience, and where can I best experience it?”
So if you’ve noticed a pattern of reincarnating in a particular civilization, it’s not by chance. It means your soul is working on something specific there—unraveling the threads of power, community, spirituality, or survival—until the lesson is complete.
And once it is? The soul moves on to the next adventure, ready to explore new cultures, new challenges, and new ways of expressing its unique character.
