But spiritually, we might imagine that you began even before your conception.  We can imagine that even before conception, your soul chose to come into this life.  Many wise traditions believe this.  But no one could really KNOW what’s true.  It’s a mystery.  Whatever.  Why not go ahead and imagine this?

We are souls inhabiting these human bodies and lifetimes, and then we go “home” when we die. Whether or not you totally believe this, it’s fun to imagine.  And it does help explain the chapters in our lives, the lessons we learn over and over, and a certain ineffable feeling we all have that this life is one big set-up!

Can’t you just imagine your soul up there, deciding to be born?  “OK I’ll choose these parents. They’ll surely teach me the lessons I need to learn this time around!  Sometimes they’ll make it easy on me, and sometimes it will feel torturous – but I’ll learn what it’s like to be human!” 

In the game of life, maybe your soul came here to learn through experience! Good experiences.  Hard experiences.  They are all ways to learn.  Once you’re in the meat suit of this human body, hard stuff feels BAD.  But from your soul’s perspective, maybe that hard stuff is just the challenge of a good game! 

Oh yah, I can imagine your soul up there getting excited about diving into this life. “Hey, maybe I’ll walk through a major tragedy mid-life this time!  I want to set myself up to really learn! Yay!”  And then you get down here, experience that same wisdom-laded tragedy, and think, “Boooo!  I would never choose this!”  Ah yes.  That’s life.

Here’s the rub.  This “conception” thing doesn’t happen just that one time when your parents got it on.  This moment of re-engaging in life happens repeatedly. Like after a divorce, you might consciously decide to re-engage in dating again when you’re ready.  Or after you blow out your knee, you might at some point need to decide if you are going to re-engage in running marathons. 

Sometimes it’s a moment where you choose to re-engage in life itself. I bet you could look back at your life so far and pinpoint a moment where you were not sure you wanted to be here anymore. Many of us have gone through depressions, tough spots, and low points. Maybe you’ve had to find your enthusiasm to be here, to be alive, again and again.  

Sometimes, that enthusiasm has to rise out of a dark night of the soul. And when you step back into your YES to being here, you can feel yourself on the verge of a new chapter in your life.  Woo hoo!  You just re-conceived yourself!

Every single time you’ve experienced one of these passages of “Conception” again, you’ve grown wiser.  That’s particularly true if you weren’t resisting, ignoring, or numbing yourself through the whole thing, right?  

Well there ya go.  Conception.  That’s Initiation ONE of the Nine Life Initiations.  So think back through your life a bit.  Give yourself some credit for those times when you let yourself feel enthusiastic, when you trusted the universe, when you made the LEAP that you knew would change everything.  Those were the moments you began a new cycle. Those were times life initiated you with conception, again and again.

Over the next weeks, I’ll be showing you the other initiations, too.  So stay tuned.  You might just be wiser than you’ve been giving yourself credit for!