Do we choose our Experiences

In a recent class, a powerful question surfaced: do we choose our experiences, even the painful ones?

It’s a question that deserves more than a simple answer, because we live within a collective imbalance. Entire societies have been shaped by systems of oppression that normalize inequality and even promote violence. When we speak about “choosing” trauma, we have to tread carefully. To say that someone chose their abuse or that it is simply karmic is a slippery slope into victim-blaming. It risks dismissing the very real impact of systemic harm, generational trauma, and the circumstances people never asked to endure.

And yet, it is also true that while we are here, we are continually offered choices. We may not choose what happens to us, but we do choose again and again-how we respond, how we process, and how we move forward. We choose whether we numb or avoid, or whether we turn inward and begin the work of healing. We choose whether we pass our pain onto others or transform it into wisdom and compassion. These choices matter. They don’t erase the harm done, but they shape the path of our healing and the legacy we leave.

Soul Lessons and Free Will

Some spiritual teachings say our souls set certain lessons in motion before we arrive, invitations to growth that we agreed to encounter. These might be themes that echo across lifetimes: learning to trust ourselves, cultivating compassion, standing in our power, or healing patterns that ripple through family lines.

Soul lessons aren’t punishments, and they aren’t meant to justify harm. They are threads of growth woven into our soul’s journey opportunities for deep remembering and transformation. When we meet these lessons in this lifetime, they often show up through relationships, challenges, and choices that stretch us. Sometimes they appear as recurring patterns until we are ready to see them differently. Other times, they show up as a single defining moment that changes the direction of our path.

And here is where free will enters: while a soul lesson may be seeded before birth, how we engage with it is entirely up to us. We can resist it, deny it, or repeat it. Or we can choose to meet it with awareness and healing, transforming what was once heavy into wisdom that ripples forward. The lesson is not the harm itself, but what we do with what life places before us.

Healing Begins With Us

Whatever the path to healing looks like for each of us, it always circles back to this: the work of tending to our own wounds. Everything we experience is filtered through our least healed places. That means our reactions, our interpretations, even our spiritual messages are shaped by what we’ve yet to process.

This is why our healing matters so deeply, not just for ourselves, but for how we show up in our relationships, our communities, and our connection with Spirit. Each of us is worthy of peeling back those layers, continuing to pursue our gifts, and deepening our healing.

Perhaps the deeper question is not “Did I choose this?” but “What will I choose now?” We may not choose every hardship, and we certainly do not choose the systems or circumstances that cause harm. But within those realities, our souls still carry the capacity to shape meaning, to seek healing, and to transform pain into wisdom.

Each time we choose awareness over avoidance, compassion over bitterness, or healing over repetition, we step further into the soul lessons we came here to embody. And as we do, we not only shift our own path, we ripple healing into the collective, like light moving outward through a web of connection.

Choice, then, is not about blame. It is about remembering our power in the present moment: to meet life with courage, to walk with integrity, and to let love and truth guide the way. In this, our lives become more than survival they become living prayers of resilience, transformation, and remembrance.