Someone asked me about cerebral palsy. My apologies for taking so long to reply. While I can’t prove my theories, maybe there are some thoughts here, about disability in general, that you haven’t considered previously.
Cerebra = brain. Palsy = weakness or lack of muscle control. Cerebral palsy is a disability that affects movement and posture. It distorts messages from the brain to cause increased or diminished muscle control, resulting in erratic movement of the muscles. Only the message pathway between the brain and muscles is affected, not the muscles themselves. Cerebral palsy is usually the result of changes in, or injury to, the developing brain before or during birth, or sometimes in early childhood. The precise nature of the injury is not known.
https://www.cerebralpalsy.org.au
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au
For some reason, I think it is more important to explore this disability from a spiritual perspective. In the past, I believed that we only lived one life, but over time, and because of the many experiences that I can’t explain, I now embrace other lifetimes, and that the totality of my physical experience is far greater than what my conscious memory can hold or reveal to me.
I believe that we choose our family of origin before each lifetime as they will offer the best support for whatever it is that we are coming to experience. I also believe that even in the womb no one can do anything to us unless we have agreed on some level of consciousness. We may appear to be a group of dis-empowered vulnerable cells, but even in the womb our essence is a spiritually empowered being who allows or disallows each of our experiences.
I also believe that people born with a disability could be choosing to experience life from an opposite perspective to what they have done at some time in the past. Positive and negative must be kept in balance. One is neither right nor wrong. They simply are. They are different to good and bad; right and wrong which are related to a specific value system. Positive and negative are related to the laws of physics. Every positive is held in balance with a negative. So what might appear to be a good life or a bad life may only be the positive and negative finding perfect balance.
Once, when I was working with a person who had a disabled child, the person was shown the reason for the disability. The purpose of the child’s life this time was ‘to do no harm’ which was the opposite of another life experience which was also shown at the time. It wasn’t as if the disability of this lifetime was a punishment. It was that all things must be in perfect balance and the disability was a way of doing that. The revelations that came during the session helped the person to move past the value systems that are so much a part of our lives, and see things as good and bad, and connect to a much greater spiritual reality that is unexplainable and illogical.
From the physical perspective of cerebral palsy, the brain injury occurs before or during birth, or in early childhood. This does not infer that the mother contributed in any way because as I have said before and will emphasis again – nothing happens to us without our agreement on some level of our consciousness.
From a metaphysical perspective problems with the nervous system are related to communication and control issues:
Do you expect others to communicate the same way you do
Misinterpreting messages
Not being able to get your message across
Who is in control; I have no control
Not using your potential
A need to be protected
A feeling of being delicate
Victimhood
Problems with the muscular system are about divided loyalties and being pulled in two directions.
Are your loyalties divided
Do you do things you ‘should’ do rather than what you love to do
Does guilt drive you
What motivates your choices
Are you scattered and doing too much
Do you need time out
Do you have lifetime commitments that are difficult
Do you need to change direction
So in the case of cerebral palsy, the person may have agreed to teach lessons related to either or both of the body systems mentioned, or be fine-tuning something they need to experience in these areas.
On a logical level, we may never understand why a person would choose to experience a disability. Maybe they are our teachers who come to challenge us, and draw out compassion and empathy. Maybe in their desire to experience the fullness of the spiritual life, they need to experience both the positive and negative in the physical sense, without judgment.
I am including an excerpt from my book Wisdom in Retrospect as it approaches birth from a spiritual perspective.
I also believe that in spirit, I made a contract. I agreed to certain events before I came. Some positive, and others negative, which could well be described by logic as good or bad. I then placed myself in the best possible position to achieve what I had chosen, and put myself directly into my unfolding story. I chose the family, the culture, the circumstances, the time frame and the experience, all in advance.
Joining in the human experience and defining myself as an independent entity brought with it the illusion of being separate from Source, but definition was the only way I could experience anything; it was and still is, the only passage to any experience.
And so I chose to come to earth – a plane of existence that was foreign to my essential spiritual self – and become a part of God in experience.
As I began my earthly journey once again, I slowed down my vibration to allow me to become part of this material reality. My physical body would bring limitations. The density of matter and emotion might once again convince me that I was disconnected from Source.
Conception came, and I sat in the darkness of the womb waiting.
What value would this human experience hold for me?
How richly would I benefit from this physical expression?
Did I want to change my mind?
It wasn’t the defenceless unborn child who asked those questions, but spirit without form or encumbrance who was allowing a body to take shape, in the expectation of an experience that would bring it ever closer to completeness and Source. The evolving cells were vulnerable, but even in their vulnerability, they were responsible. Everything was on my terms. Nothing could be done to me without my express permission, no matter how tiny my body might be.
For an alternative perspective on many common issues of life, you may find Wisdom in Retrospect inspirational. Further information….. Click here