Why Did This Happen to Me? A Radical New Way to Understand Betrayal, Trauma & Life’s Hardest Moments

Lora Cheadle [00:00:01]:
You're listening to Flaunt: Find Your Sparkle and Create a Life You Love After Infidelity or Betrayal, a podcast for women who've been betrayed by their intimate partner and want to turn their devastation into an invitation to reclaim themselves and their worth. Tune in weekly so you can start making sense of it all and learn how to be okay on the inside, no matter what goes on on the outside. Download your free betrayal recovery toolkit at betrayalrecoveryguide.com. One of the questions that I hear over and over is, why did this happen to me? Why, oh, why did this happen to me? And you know, I understand how that feels because I think that was one of the first, most profound, and most painful questions that I had to come to terms with early on in my infidelity journey as well. And as you know, as my listener, I definitely have a very deep spiritual side. I channel, I feel like I've got a lot of access to my guides, to the wisdom of the other side. But one of the books that I was gifted early on Your Soul's Plan really put it in a different context for me. Uh, Rob Schwartz is the author of that book as well as many other books, and his specialty is understanding pre-birth planning.

Lora Cheadle [00:01:40]:
And if you're thinking, what the heck is pre-birth planning and what does this mean? Don't worry, we're going to get into that today. And if you're already on board with me, you know, yay, I get that. And if you're sitting here thinking, I have no idea what this means or what you're talking about, and I'm not sure if I even believe that at all, then keep listening too, because whether you believe this literally, whether you believe this metaphorically, if this is something that can give you some peace, and help you understand things differently, it is so worthwhile. So with that, welcome to the show, Rob. I'm really looking forward to having this conversation with you.

Rob Schwartz [00:02:29]:
Thank you, Lora. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Lora Cheadle [00:02:31]:
Okay, let's start kind of from the beginning. How, how did you come upon this work? And what is pre-birth planning?

Rob Schwartz [00:02:41]:
Rebirth planning is the planning we do before we incarnate. We actually plan our lives in tremendous detail, including the planning of the most difficult things we experience. The way I came about this, back in 2003, I was in the corporate sector, self-employed as a marketing and communications consultant, basically doing different kinds of corporate writing. I found that work to be tremendously unfulfilling. I felt that if I fell off the face of the earth, my clients would hardly know that I was gone, and my clients would just plug somebody else into my role and carry right along. But at the same time, I had this sense that I had come to earth to do something quite specific that I wasn't doing, and I didn't know what it was, and I didn't even know how to figure out what it was. So I tried very conventional routes to figure this out. You know, I went to my friends and family and I said, I'm really unhappy doing this corporate work.

Rob Schwartz [00:03:45]:
What do you think I should do with my life? That, by the way, is not a good question to ever ask another person because they either shrug their shoulders and say, I don't know, or they advised me to do whatever they were doing for a living. And neither response was helpful. Then I took that Myers-Briggs inventory. That was actually interesting, but it didn't tell me what to do with my life. And finally, I thought to myself, you know, I've got to think outside the box here. What can I do to figure out my soul's plan, so to speak? And an idea came to me, which I now believe came from one of my spirit guides, and that was go see a psychic medium. Now, no offense, but I didn't believe in mediumship at the time. I just, I didn't know anything about it really.

Lora Cheadle [00:04:32]:
Right.

Rob Schwartz [00:04:33]:
But I thought, why not? You know, I'll give it a try. So I go into this session with the medium, May 7th, 2003. I remember the date because my life changed that day. The first thing she says to me is, your spirit guides are here. I said, what is a spirit guide? I mean, I'd never even heard the term before. So she explained that. And then she said, your guides want to talk directly with you. And she started to channel them.

Rob Schwartz [00:04:57]:
The first thing they said right out of the box was, you planned your life, including your biggest challenges, before you were born. And I will tell you, Lora, I just shook my head and I said, why in the world would I have done something like that? They said, you did this for purposes of spiritual growth. Now, I would not have believed that any of this was real except They then launched into this lengthy and detailed monologue in which they went through my challenges one by one and told me why I had planned them. You have to understand, I didn't tell the medium anything about myself before the session. I didn't tell the guides anything about myself during the session. They knew literally everything about me without me saying a word. Well, coming as I did from a very mainstream background, this blew my mind wide open. And in the days and weeks after that session, I thought about the information I had been given constantly.

Rob Schwartz [00:05:56]:
The effect that it had is that it created quite a deep healing because it allowed me for the first time to see deeper meaning and deeper purpose in the most difficult experiences I had had. And that includes growing up in a very abusive, dysfunctional household. And I had always wondered, why did I have to go through that? What does it mean? Why did it happen? Well, they explained all of this. So this healing occurred. And then I thought to myself, well, if this perspective can create this kind of healing for me, then surely it can create a similar kind of healing for other people. That was when I started to think about writing the book that became Your Soul's Plan. Anyway, to make a long story short, I quit the corporate work, moved across the country to Ashland, Oregon, where I had never been, but felt guided to go. Didn't know anybody there.

Rob Schwartz [00:06:48]:
Lived there for 3 years, wrote Your Soul's Plan there. When that book came out, I had no idea, honestly, if anybody was going to be interested in reading a single word I had written. It turned out a lot of people were interested, and it led to a completely new and much more fulfilling life in which I now know that I'm doing what I came here to do.

Lora Cheadle [00:07:07]:
Right, right. It's always a journey, isn't it? And I really appreciate so many aspects of that story. But first, how this is not what you thought you were here to do. I mean, similarly, I did not grow up with a desire to be an infidelity and betrayal recovery expert. I thought I was going to be a corporate attorney and I was, but apparently I had other plans for myself that were revealed through some of my greatest challenges. And what I want to say about what you mentioned, and then what I also mentioned too, is Sometimes people will say to me, when I say, you know what, I would not wish this on anybody, but who I have become because of the infidelity, I would not trade for the world. It was my biggest growth, weirdly, my biggest joy. And the thing that brought me home to myself.

Lora Cheadle [00:08:08]:
And at the same time, I am a realist. I'm, you know, my legal background makes me a realist. It's not just like this happy little story. Oh yeah, bad things happen and I guess you just planned it and it's all going to be okay. And that's what I'd like to kind of talk to you about next is where is that line between just bypassing and moving into this happy little story and that real inner knowing of, no, somebody had planned this and there is definitely a higher order to this.

Rob Schwartz [00:08:46]:
So the idea of pre-birth planning of major life challenges, it becomes a spiritual bypass if you go straight there without doing whatever inner healing work or forgiveness work needs to be done. So you don't want to rush to that. It's something that for most people, it's going to come a bit further down the spiritual path. If you've gone through trauma, which many of the people who read my books have, the first thing to do is to focus on healing the trauma. You don't have to resolve it completely to benefit from understanding pre-birth planning, but you just want to make sure you don't bypass the actual healing process. Now, when it comes to minor or moderate life challenges, that's actually a different matter. Then you can often go straight to the idea of pre-birth planning, and that will be sufficient to get to a place of forgiveness or healing in and of itself. But with major trauma, there are other things you need to do.

Lora Cheadle [00:09:52]:
Yeah, thank you for saying that because Rob's books touch on— he's got more than one— but they touch on, yes, infidelity. There's an infidelity section. Suicide, you know, being paralyzed, major health challenges, death of a loved one. There's some major things there. So thank you for saying we're still embodied. We still need to heal that trauma. We still need to address it. And at some point, this perspective can come in to help tie up the loose ends in a way and to provide a shift in perspective as to what was really going on and why you are not the victim.

Lora Cheadle [00:10:31]:
You are, I hate to even say participant, but you are somebody who has had an experience, but you are not a victim in what happened to you.

Rob Schwartz [00:10:43]:
That's really one of the main benefits of understanding your pre-birth plan. And we can talk later about how you come into that understanding. But when you realize that you yourself planned your biggest challenges and the people who have presented the biggest challenges are doing so actually at your request, that makes profound forgiveness possible. And when you ask the question, why did I plan it? Or why might I have planned it? That question will take you to the underlying lessons. And once you know what those are, you can learn them in a much more conscious and much less arduous, much less painful manner That's really what pre-birth planning will do for you.

Lora Cheadle [00:11:26]:
Yeah, absolutely. And yes, we're going to get into some more details on this. But the other question that I just want to name out front so people can hear that is, but what about the concept of free will? How does that play in?

Rob Schwartz [00:11:40]:
So we all have free will. And when we talk about pre-birth plans, it's not the case that there's only one plan and that we are just robotically going through the motions. If that were the case, no true growth or learning would occur. My wife is a channel, and she channels a collective, a group consciousness that we affectionately call the Beings of Light, or BOL. So the way the BOL put it to us, they said, imagine that you have a stack of sheets of paper in front of you. Every single sheet is a complete set of pre-birth plans. So every person who's in a body on Earth has their own stack of sheets of paper. Now, the sheets vary according to vibration.

Rob Schwartz [00:12:24]:
Sheets at the top of the stack are the highest vibrational pre-birth plans. That's where most of the learning is done through love, peace, and joy, not so much through pain and suffering. Sheets at the bottom are the opposite. That's where the learning is through pain and suffering, not through love, peace, and joy. The sheet that is in the exact middle of the stack is the set of pre-birth plans that was viewed as the most probable before coming into body. Now, since the sheets vary according to vibration, and since everybody wants a life of love, peace, and joy, what you want to do, what everybody wants to do, is move up in their stack of sheets of paper. How do you do that? You have to raise your vibration. How do you do that? Well, there are a lot of ways to do that.

Rob Schwartz [00:13:09]:
The most simple, although not the easiest, is to ask yourself the question, What would love do now? Love with a capital L. Anytime you have to make a decision, ask what would love with a capital L do now? Whatever the answer is, do that. The more consistently you do that, the more you raise your vibration, you move up in your stack of sheets of paper, and eventually you'll have the life that you would like to have.

Lora Cheadle [00:13:34]:
Yeah, that's a great way to do, to describe that because we do have free free will. We do have the free will to lean into things and to make certain choices. Um, and I work with a lot of women who have been betrayed by their intimate partners, but I also work with a lot of the men too, a lot of the men who have cheated. And it's interesting having conversations with them because I don't want to ever say that you don't have a choice because you always do have a choice. And yet so many of them will say it was this weird sensation of doing something that is not who and how I saw myself, and I felt weirdly compelled to do it. And I've heard that languaging over and over and over. So after reading your book, after my husband and I, we've We've done our own healing. We firmly believe we had a soul contract to do this.

Lora Cheadle [00:14:39]:
This experience has caused tremendous growth and love and forgiveness and understanding in both of us. But he had this interesting perspective afterwards, and he said, of course, I could have stopped at any time. But he said, having the understanding that perhaps there was a pre-birth plan in place to do this, he said, that brings me more peace and understanding around this almost sense of being compelled to do this because I didn't want to do it. It's not who I was. And he said, I struggled so much thinking, why would I have done this? How could I have let this happen? And he's like, again, not excusing the actions away and just being like, oh, it was all preordained. But he has had a great level of peace and understanding in the knowledge that perhaps this is something he did plan, not only for me, but for him as well.

Rob Schwartz [00:15:40]:
Yeah, that's really interesting that I did, that you've heard so often apparently that people felt compelled to do it and they're acting in a way that's not consistent with who they know themselves to be. That to me is a telltale sign that it's part of a pre-birth plan.

Lora Cheadle [00:15:55]:
Yeah, I agree. And the fact that I hear that over and over, and not only do I hear that from the men, I hear that from the women. This is not who he was. And I would have told anybody, no, Sean would never do this. This is not who he was. So I'd like you to say a little bit more about pre-birth plan. What does that actually mean? How do you get the lesson from that? Why would all of these souls agree to do it? And how does this come about?

Rob Schwartz [00:16:30]:
So pre-birth planning, for the most part, happens with members of your soul group. What is a soul group? It's a collection of souls who are more or less the same vibration or evolutionary stage. You and the other members of your soul group reincarnate again and again and again with each other, playing every conceivable role for each other. So you would be the one who betrayed and who was betrayed. You would be mother and son, father and daughter, sister and brother, husband and wife, teacher and student, even murderer and the one who is murdered. At the soul level, there is no judgment of any of these roles. The reason for that is that they are just roles. If you think about, you know, when you go to the theater, you see a play on a stage.

Rob Schwartz [00:17:17]:
If there's a murderer in the play, you don't say to yourself, gee, that guy is really a terrible human being. You understand it's a role in a play. It's the same thing here. We're just playing roles that we scripted for each other before we were born. Again, there is free will involved. There's a range of choices we can make. But the broad outlines of the lifetime are put in place in the pre-birth planning. Now, the way that I researched pre-birth plans, two ways, the form of hypnosis I practice called a between-life soul regression, and by working with mediums and channels.

Rob Schwartz [00:17:56]:
The mediums and channels get at the information in different ways. Sometimes we talk to people's spirit guides. Sometimes we talk to their higher selves. Quite a bit of the conversation was actually with Jesus through a channel who channels Jesus. Sometimes we go into people's pre-birth planning sessions. Now, when I go into pre-birth planning sessions, I hear the conversations that people had with the other members of their soul group when they plan their challenges. And in those conversations, they state quite explicitly, I want to have this experience so that I can learn this lesson and that lesson. Would you agree to play this role for me so that I have that opportunity? A lot of the lessons that people want revolve around something I call divine virtues.

Rob Schwartz [00:18:47]:
A divine virtue is a quality that is important to the soul, and the soul would like the incarnate human being to cultivate and express the virtues. Over a period of years, I put together a list of the virtues that came up the most in people's pre-birth planning sessions. I think there are now 28 on the list. It's things like unconditional love, patience, empathy, forgiveness, which would be a big one in the context we're talking about here, faith, trust, perseverance, and 20 or so others. Most people are working on 2 or 3 virtues in a lifetime. Occasionally somebody is working on 4 or 5. As far as I know, nobody is working on more than 5. That would be too much for anybody to take on.

Rob Schwartz [00:19:35]:
The people who are working on 4 or 5 almost always have a life filled with trauma. It's a very, very ambitious pre-birth plan. Now, people hear that and they say, well, why would anybody take on something like that? You have to understand your perspective in the pre-birth planning is very different than when you get here. When you're on the other side, you know that nobody is permanently harmed by anything that happens here. A lifetime is actually very brief. From that perspective, and the wisdom becomes part of you literally for all eternity. From that vantage point, it does make sense that some souls, not all, but some would plan very great challenges.

Lora Cheadle [00:20:16]:
Right. I'm going to share a little bit about myself personally, because I feel like sometimes hearing all of this, people are like, Oh, I'm starting to get it. I'm starting to get it. I see it. But then when you have the story behind it, that's when the dots connect. So one of those virtues that you were talking about, and I love that you said it, is unconditional love. Okay. Think about me and my husband.

Lora Cheadle [00:20:45]:
My husband is Sean. He betrayed me. What did that do for me?

Rob Schwartz [00:20:52]:
Wow.

Lora Cheadle [00:20:53]:
It really woke me up to the ways I was betraying myself, to the way that I put everybody else's needs before me. It woke me up to the fact that I had a lot of perfectionistic tendencies that I hadn't really seen. It showed me that I was performing a lot and that I was wearing this mask and I wasn't really even admitting to myself myself that I was wearing a mask. Now I'm going to say some more stuff about that in a minute because yesterday I did a between lives soul regression with Rob. So then Sean on the other side, he has a life filled with extraordinary amounts of trauma, severe abuse, severe poverty, many different homes, foster families, like Seriously, on the Adverse Childhood Experiences test, which is scored on a scale of 0 to 10, he has 9. He has 9 of the trauma. So he has been through a lot of trauma. His— one of his major pain points was the fact that he never felt unconditionally loved.

Lora Cheadle [00:22:08]:
He was beat all the time. He was emotionally abused all the time. It was very conditional. If he did something wrong, if his mom just felt bad, like he got no unconditional love. So fast forward, why did we do this? Well, wow. I, as a soul, showed him an extreme amount of unconditional love because we've moved through the infidelity. We are closer now than before. He betrayed me for 15 years.

Lora Cheadle [00:22:41]:
With multiple women and yet still he is receiving unconditional love. Like, wow, what a soul gift that he can hang on to. And then me, mine is my own love for myself. I don't have to perform. I don't have to do all of these things. I get to have my own back. What a gift for each other. And I mean, that's just a very surface level diagram of, can you see how this all works together?

Rob Schwartz [00:23:13]:
Well, you really laid it out clearly there. And it's not so surface level. You have a great understanding of your and Sean's pre-birth plan. That I think that you just made it very clear to the audience. One of the most interesting things you said was that you were betraying yourself. And one of the things we know, a basic metaphysical principle, is that the outer always reflects the inner. So that's not a blame the victim statement. It's just a simple fact about how the universe works.

Rob Schwartz [00:23:43]:
The outer is always reflecting the inner back to us.

Lora Cheadle [00:23:46]:
Yes. Yeah. And there are mirrors going so many different ways, you know, as above, so below. Shawn mirrored things in me. I mirrored things in him. You know, those mirrors, they're everywhere. And often it's hard to to see because the ego wants to jump in and say, well, it's everybody else. They're messed up instead of looking within and getting curious and seeing where and how can I grow.

Lora Cheadle [00:24:16]:
Now, I want to just jump into this because I thought this was interesting too. Like I just said yesterday, I did the Between Lives Soul Regression with Rob. And right before we started recording, he said, well, how was your experience? And I said, it was good because I had a bad experience. And what I mean by that is when we talk about between lives or going back and being regressed, like, don't we all want to be Cleopatra? You know, don't we want to go back and be like, oh, I was this amazing person and I did this incredible things. And for me, that's often not where the growth is. Where I regressed to was kind of a medieval time frame where I was the town fool and I was male and I had these gross teeth and I irritated the heck out of everybody. I mean, I wouldn't stop. And what was interesting is I had a daughter and a son.

Lora Cheadle [00:25:20]:
Who lived with me kind of in the woods outside of town. And when I came home to them, I would let myself be seen. I would let myself be soft. I would be loving. I was very wise. I was very resourceful. And yet I would go to town and I would manipulate and I was obnoxious. And there's a whole lot that went with that.

Lora Cheadle [00:25:45]:
But my takeaway from that was, Wow. Another reason that I planned this experience for me was to let myself be fully seen, to be seen in my wisdom, to be seen as what others might perceive as foolish. Because do you know how many people have judged me for staying? What is wrong with you? Your husband cheats with you. What a fool. And that's part of this Again, this planning, this symmetry. I am now allowing myself to be seen and I let people perceive me however they want to perceive me. But I know my truth and I'm solid in that.

Rob Schwartz [00:26:30]:
See, that's really interesting. And my guess would be that what probably happened is that when that lifetime was over, when you had your life review, as we always do at the end of an incarnation, you saw the way that you had handled the way that you had not shown people who you really are other than your children. And you probably said, I can do better than that. I would like to do better than that. I would like to have the courage and the integrity to show who I really am to the world. And so that was part of the reason for planning the infidelity.

Lora Cheadle [00:27:03]:
Yes, exactly. And hindsight is always 20/20. So I loved when you described how the beings of light said there's a stack of paper with the high vibration plans, middle of the stack, most likely, will probably occur, and then the lower vibration plans. Because this is something I hear a lot too. People will Monday morning quarterback their life and they're saying, I could have done this. If I only would have known, I would have done that. Whoa, if I could have seen things differently then, This is what I would have done. So that also to me helps explain there were things, yes, had I known I could have done differently, but I also have to have compassion and grace for myself.

Lora Cheadle [00:27:47]:
I didn't know that. And oftentimes until we have that crash, that splat, that accident, we don't know, but then we can do things differently going forward.

Rob Schwartz [00:28:02]:
Well, and that's one of the reasons we plan big challenges for ourselves, that crash that brings us to our knees or breaks our heart open. That's what many people really need in order to look inside with curiosity. As you said, curiosity is really important in personal growth. There's a lot of what we could call glamour in the physical realm, you know, the shiny things and toys and things that catch our attention. We become infatuated with them. And there's nothing wrong with them necessarily. It's just that that's not why we're here. We're here for soul growth, divine virtues, unconditional love, forgiveness, that kind of thing.

Rob Schwartz [00:28:43]:
And if it's going to take bringing somebody to their knees in order to orient them toward that, then that will be part of the pre-birth plan.

Lora Cheadle [00:28:53]:
Yeah, it is worth it. Okay. So with everything that we've talked about as the backdrop, what happens when that moment comes? You have been taken to your knees and you don't rise because like my program, my favorite way to work with people is my Rise and Reign program because we go through all of this and we help them come to terms with things, manage their triggers. They rise. They reign, but there are some people who are like, no, this has taken me down. I'm bitter. I'm resentful. I hate men.

Lora Cheadle [00:29:30]:
I'm never trusting anybody. So not rising, not elevating. Is that pre-birth planning that you choose to fail? Is failure always how we perceive failure or is rising always the right option? Do you see what I'm saying? There's kind of like that.

Rob Schwartz [00:29:49]:
Yeah, I do. And I want to be really clear about this. Nothing that you do in your incarnation, and I mean nothing, will be viewed as a quote unquote failure by your soul. The soul has no judgment like that at all. What will happen is that in the life review, you yourself will assess whether or not you learned the lessons you plan to learn. So let's say that you have been betrayed by your partner. And you choose for the remainder of that incarnation to be angry and bitter. What will almost certainly happen is that in the life review, you will see that and you'll say, you know what, I could have done better.

Rob Schwartz [00:30:31]:
I could have forgiven. I could have let it go. And I'd like another opportunity to do that. But there's no judgment by your soul. There's no judgment by your spirit guides. And it's not even a self-judgment, really. It's just a clear-eyed assessment. I could have done better.

Rob Schwartz [00:30:50]:
I'd like to do better. And I will do better.

Lora Cheadle [00:30:53]:
Yeah, because I want to be clear, too. It's not karma in terms of an eye for an eye. You did this to me. So now we're going to come back again and I'm going to do it to you. That's not justice. That's not evolution.

Rob Schwartz [00:31:08]:
Karma, as I understand it, what I've seen in my research for the books, it's a feeling of incompletion. Like we were just talking about, if somebody were angry and bitter and didn't get to a place of forgiveness or unconditional love, they're going to have a sense of incompletion with that experience. And they will be motivated to plan a new lifetime with new challenges that will give them the opportunity to reach a place of completion.

Lora Cheadle [00:31:33]:
I like that term, the completion, because that is how it feels. And that's what makes more sense. And then how, because I had used the term earlier, soul contracts. My husband and I, like I said, I channel, I've done some regressions before. This is something that I have been in connection with for a while. So we've done a lot of work. It's not like I just did this once and everything became clear. It's over time I am more capable of understanding.

Lora Cheadle [00:32:06]:
And then I understand and I assimilate, and then I get some more information and I understand and I assimilate. And what I did, the between-lives regression yesterday, there were other people on the call and it was a very similar situation. People will get some information years later. Sometimes they'll come back months, whatever it is, because you assimilate a new process as you continue to grow and as you continue to learn. So I have believed I have a soul contract with Shawn. We believed we were contracted with each other to do this. What do you think about the term soul contract? How is that with pre-birth planning? Is it just different terminology? Could you say, share your thoughts on that?

Rob Schwartz [00:32:52]:
Soul contract could be misinterpreted to mean some kind of legally binding agreement. It's not an actual physical contract that you sign on the other side. There are no lawyers involved. It's not a legal, yeah, it's not a legal process. But if we understand soul contract means verbal agreement, shared intention, then it's an accurate term. It's the same thing as pre-birth planning or soul planning.

Lora Cheadle [00:33:18]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there's so much I want to say. What I want to share I want to take a break. I want to give everybody a pause because it is my guess that your head might be spinning and that you might be thinking, okay, this is a lot, or I haven't thought about it in terms of this. So I just want to give everybody kind of the somatic pause to breathe, to move your shoulders, to shake your arms. Shaking is one of my favorite ways to process. And to just give yourself a minute to chill and to also give you permission to figure this out later, to let it percolate, to let it simmer and not to judge it. Robert said earlier, you know, there's no judgment on the other side.

Lora Cheadle [00:34:11]:
It's not like, oh, I really messed this up. It's just that sense of incompletion. So whether this is right in line with what you're thinking or this is new, don't judge it. Just feel into it. Does it, does it feel like there's some truth to this? Does this feel like, huh, maybe this could answer some things? And, and if it does, lean in. And if it doesn't, that's okay too. It's not like you are spiritually better or less or higher or lower. We all were where we're all are where we're at.

Lora Cheadle [00:34:45]:
So just breathe. Feel it. And then let's continue the conversation a little bit. You have talked with a lot of people. You've used, you know, like you said, mediums. I work with Jesus a lot. I channel. What is the difference between information that somebody else gives you and the information that comes up with you? And how do you reconcile if something does or does not feel quite right for you?

Rob Schwartz [00:35:22]:
Well, the mediums and channels who are my collaborators in the 3 books, I had personal sessions with them before we started working together. So I know from those sessions that they're good at what they do and they're bringing through accurate information. The information that comes through in the between-life soul regressions that I do, that's a form of hypnosis. So I'm not acting as a medium or a channel, I'm a hypnotist. So I'm facilitating a process in which the client or the group, if it's a workshop, retrieves their own information directly from spirit. There's no medium between them and spirit. So they would assess for themselves, is the information I'm being given resonant to me? And that's really what you want to do if you're working with a medium or channel as well. You don't automatically believe something just because somebody else tells you.

Rob Schwartz [00:36:19]:
You run it past your own intuitive filter and you look for that feeling of resonance.

Lora Cheadle [00:36:24]:
And one of the questions that you ask often in the books, and I'm I'm paraphrasing, but it's, what am I learning? Like, why did I do this? And what is this giving me? And I think that's always really important. It's not just a fun parlor trick that, oh, hey, somebody told me this, or, oh, hey, I made this up in my mind. There's always a reason why. And it's really important, at least for my linear logical mind to understand why, why this matters, why this matters, and how it can change me and how I can show up differently because of it.

Rob Schwartz [00:37:09]:
Yeah. And that's really the focus of everything that I do. I'm also a pretty linear, analytic, intellectual kind of a person. And I think that's part of my own pre-birth plan. The plan here was for somebody like that to bring through information that If it were coming from a different kind of source, it would be less palatable to the mainstream audience. And this was intended to go mainstream, I believe, as part of my plan. So I'm always asking, as you said, you know, what is the underlying lesson here? Why was this challenge planned? What are these souls hoping to gain from the experience? The focus is very pragmatic. What can you find in this story of pre-birth planning that you're reading that you can take and apply to your own life.

Rob Schwartz [00:37:58]:
And what's interesting is that, you know, very different kinds of pre-birth plans are often chosen for the same underlying lessons. So people, you know, the books are organized by type of life challenge, and people naturally go to the chapter that's about whatever they're experiencing. And that can be helpful. But you might go to another chapter that's about something that you've never experienced. And you think at first this has nothing to do with me. And then you find out the underlying lesson is the same lesson that you're working on, albeit through a very different kind of challenge.

Lora Cheadle [00:38:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you said that because in one of your books, there's a suicide story. No, not a suicide story. A paralysis story. And it was like, I think it was the son wanted to experience what was out what that was like. And the soul who came in as mother said, yes, but not until after you are, I can't remember if it was 18 or 21. It was like, not during the childhood, but later on.

Lora Cheadle [00:39:03]:
And what I really appreciated about that was it's not just me, me, me, me, me, me, and my lessons and you, you, you, you, you, it's all of us. There's an ecosystem. There's an environment. And my experience, most of you know, being my listeners, I found out about my husband's infidelity on the eve of my youngest graduating from high school. And I feel like that's no accident. In my mind, it was like, why now? I'm about to be free. He's leaving. I'm about to be able to delve into my own business.

Lora Cheadle [00:39:43]:
I'm about to be able to travel. Woo-hoo, we're going to be empty nesters. Why now? Well, when you think about the interplay of not only our four souls and our four pre-birth plans, but everybody else's in our extended family, wow, it makes so much sense.

Rob Schwartz [00:40:02]:
Yeah, the pre-birth planning is coordinated among everybody involved, and it's to the benefit of everybody involved. That doesn't mean that there aren't sometimes sacrifices that are made. There are souls who agree to sacrifice something in order to play a certain role in somebody's life. But the big picture is that there's a coordination and ecosystem, like you said, such that the plan is to benefit everybody who's involved.

Lora Cheadle [00:40:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. And along those same lines, yesterday when I did the between-life soul regression with Rob, Sean also did one too. And it was interesting because I'm not naive enough to think that we would go to the same life and the same experience. We had very different experiences. He had a good experience too. And it was interesting talking about it and figuring out what pieces of him and his soul and his journey and what pieces of me and my soul and my journey how they all fit together because it is an ecosystem. It is a puzzle.

Lora Cheadle [00:41:07]:
And he also had some information on one of our sons and I had some information on the other son. And it's just interesting to talk about it. And what I also want you to know is this isn't a right or wrong thing. I can experience things one way. He can experience things another way. You can experience and have insight and your partner or ex-partner might experience completely differently. And that doesn't matter. This is for you and your growth and whether they're on board with you or not, or have a different interpretation.

Lora Cheadle [00:41:43]:
It's about you. And I just want to give you permission and power to own your story, to own your narrative, and to take what you need and to leave behind what doesn't align. I would love for you, as we're getting close to the end of our time together, to share a little bit more about what you have seen, because you've worked with a lot of people, what you have seen that this process can do to help people understand and just share any insights that might be beneficial for this audience who has been deeply hurt, deeply betrayed, not only because of the infidelity, but usually there's financial betrayal, there's emotional betrayal. And what wisdom do you have personally and professionally to share with them?

Rob Schwartz [00:42:47]:
Well, let's start by describing the process of the Between Lives Soul regression. So it starts out with what you've described, which is the past life portion. The past life that people are shown, it's almost always a past life that had a big impact on the plans for the current lifetime, which is true in your case, uh, and/or is thematically related to the lessons in the current lifetime, which is also true in your case. Uh, people experience 4 different scenes in the past life. The last is the death scene. They leave the body in the death scene and cross back over to the other side, which is very easy and gentle. When they get there, they're usually greeted by a spirit guide. The guide explains why they were shown that past life and how it's relevant to the current lifetime.

Rob Schwartz [00:43:32]:
And then they're taken by the guide to what is called their council of elders. The council consists of the very wise, loving, and highly evolved beings who oversee their personal evolution. So your counsel knows literally everything about you. When you get in front of the counsel, I prompt the client or the group to ask a long series of questions that is essentially asking what was planned, why was it planned, how is this person doing in terms of fulfilling the plan, and how can they better fulfill the plan. Those 4 questions encapsulate the whole experience. The council is completely unconditionally loving and nonjudgmental. So you don't ever have to worry that they're going to judge you in any way. They will tell you honestly, you're learning what you came to learn or you're not.

Rob Schwartz [00:44:24]:
But there's no judgment involved in that. It's just a statement of fact. They are very pragmatic. They will suggest ways to fulfill your pre-birth intentions. Their Unconditional love is extraordinary. And people often come out of that experience and they say things like, I could tell that the council knew literally everything about me, including all the bad things I've done in my life, and yet they loved me unconditionally. For the average person, that's the first time they've had that experience since they came into body. So it really feels like a homecoming to most people.

Rob Schwartz [00:45:04]:
Very often, loved ones who have passed on will come into the meeting with the council. So if the betrayal is with somebody who's back on the other side, you can actually talk to them and you can discuss what happened, what was the plan with them. You can offer forgiveness. You can ask for forgiveness. It can create quite a deep healing. If the person is not back on the other side and the betrayal is with somebody who is still here, then you talk to the council about that. You tell them how angry you feel. You tell them how betrayed you feel.

Rob Schwartz [00:45:42]:
You can tell them you feel like you're never going to get over this and you can't imagine how you will. And with great, great compassion and great love and total non-judgment, they will suggest, well, Have you thought of it this way? Have you tried this healing modality? Have you said this to your partner or have you asked them about that? They can walk you through this in a way with a level of wisdom that is beyond ordinary human wisdom. It's really an extraordinary opportunity to gain insight into what it is that you're doing here in this lifetime.

Lora Cheadle [00:46:17]:
Yeah. You know what's really interesting about that? And I hope Listeners, I hope you take this in the right way. I said Sean did this with me. When he talked with his counsel, he was, and I hate to say, that's why I hate to say it like this, but he was reassured that what he did to me, he's okay. They told him, you did the hard work. That was hard work to go against being this beautiful soul, this beautiful being of light. And now it's time for you to enjoy. And I know sometimes that's hard to hear on a human level because we think, but I want to punish them.

Lora Cheadle [00:46:57]:
But they did this bad thing. They deserve to be hurt. He was smiled upon. Yay, you completed this mission. Now you get to go enjoy your life. Now you get to have fun because what you did was hard on a soul level.

Rob Schwartz [00:47:15]:
You know, I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation I grew up in a very abusive household. My mother has significant mental illness and was quite abusive to me for the first 16 years of my life. And through my research into pre-birth planning, I knew that we had planned this. I always had the intellectual understanding since I started on this path. But a few years ago, I had an experience in which I actually crossed back over to the other side. And when I was there, my mother's soul appeared in front of me. And there was nothing but pure unconditional love between us. I felt this overwhelming love right in the heart chakra area.

Rob Schwartz [00:47:58]:
And I kept saying to her, I love you, I love you, I love you. It was just a spontaneous outpouring of how I felt. And I didn't hear words in response, but I could feel this great unconditional love wave after wave after wave. Coming toward me from my mother's soul. That confirmed to me experientially what I already knew intellectually, which is that this abusive role that she played was played at my request, at some sacrifice on her part. I don't think it was something that she really wanted to do, but she did at my request. And on the other side, there is nothing but unconditional love between the two of us.

Lora Cheadle [00:48:36]:
Yeah. That's a great experience. Thank you for sharing that. And what I also want to say to listeners around that, yes, we are souls. Yes, there is unconditional love. And if you are being abused, you can still leave. You know what I mean? Rob is not saying, I'm not saying, nobody is saying just go stand there and take it because it's all souls and it's all good. If you need to leave and make yourself safe, please leave and make yourself safe.

Rob Schwartz [00:49:03]:
I want to say something about that. In my second book, Your Soul's Gift, there's a story about the pre-birth planning of an abusive relationship. And the soul that becomes the woman who is abused is told very clearly in her pre-birth planning, it's very likely that this man as your partner is going to be abusive to you. And the plan that they come up with is that she's willing to endure the abuse for a limited period of time in the hope that she can help him to heal past life trauma that he's bringing back into the body for the purpose of healing. But the plan is, if he chooses not to heal, and it is his choice, the plan is for her to leave eventually. The soul does not want anyone to stay permanently in an abusive situation.

Lora Cheadle [00:49:51]:
Yeah, absolutely. I read that book too, and that resonates so strongly because same thing, you know, when women see me, they'll say, I'm willing to try again, but if something ever happens, if he doesn't fulfill his end of the bargain, if he cheats again, I'm out of here. And it's like, yes, absolutely. And you can exercise that free will at any time. And understanding is one thing, but you are never being tasked to be a sacrificial lamb for your entire life and to take abuse.

Rob Schwartz [00:50:19]:
That's exactly right. Ultimately, your soul wants you swimming in joy. That's where your soul would like you to get.

Lora Cheadle [00:50:26]:
Yes. And I'm so glad that you wrapped that up because I feel like our society has this puritanical work ethic that we all need to suffer and that we all need to be sad and deprive ourselves. And that's just not so. It is about joy. It is about love. It is about peace and understanding. And what can you do to bring that about in your own life? Not again in a performative way, but in a way where I feel love. I feel in my heart chakra.

Lora Cheadle [00:50:59]:
I feel in my whole being washes of love and peace and joy because that is what it is all about.

Rob Schwartz [00:51:07]:
Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, people ask me all the time, well, what are the lessons we plan to learn before we're born? And there are many, but they all have a common denominator. The common denominator is that we are learning how to give and receive love more fully and freely. That is the bottom line purpose of everybody's incarnation.

Lora Cheadle [00:51:29]:
I love that. Hang on to that bottom line purpose to give and receive love more freely. Yeah, I love that. So where can people get your books, learn more about you, read about pre-birth planning? I know you've got a discount code for a one-on-one session. Say more about that.

Rob Schwartz [00:51:52]:
Yeah, so the website is yoursoulsplan.com. I would invite everybody, as soon as you get to the homepage, sign up for the email newsletter. That'll keep you posted about what's going on. If you click on events in the main menu, you'll see all the upcoming workshops. We've got another group between lives regression in Maine. We have something special in June called a Star Souls regression, which is for people who have extraterrestrial origins. We explore where they came from, why they're here. It's probably the only time we'll do it this year.

Rob Schwartz [00:52:26]:
So that's a special event for us. If you click on sessions in the main menu, you'll get to the Between Lives Soul Regression page. You can actually watch a video of a private session on that page. And for people who would like to do a private Between Lives regression, if you purchase it, the code to enter in the coupon box that will give you 20% off is SOULGIFT20, all one word, all capital letters, SOULGIFT20.

Lora Cheadle [00:52:57]:
And I will put that in the show notes as well. And listeners, if you have questions about me and my experience, let me know. You know, I love it when you send me emails. I love it in the Facebook group. Where we connect every Monday. I'm there if you've got questions, let me know. As you know, I do channel. The group, the collective that I channel is called The Librarians.

Lora Cheadle [00:53:19]:
I release a monthly video, coffeewiththelibrarians.com. That'll put you on the list to get your monthly video. Same thing, just like all over my YouTube channel, I've got many channelings on betrayal and the gift of the betrayal and the soul lessons around betrayal. And then like Rob said, his book does have a specific section on infidelity. So check it all out. Read, ponder, think. Your Soul's Plan for information on Rob. Coffee with the Librarians if you want channeled information.

Lora Cheadle [00:53:56]:
And I'll put everything in the show notes. So is there anything you want to wrap up with? Any piece of wisdom or thought that you think we might have missed?

Rob Schwartz [00:54:06]:
Well, just quickly, the chapter on the pre-birth planning of infidelity is in the third book, which is called Your Soul's Love. And the books are available in the store on the website and of course on Amazon. The thought that I would leave your listeners with is this. It's my understanding that Earth is literally the most difficult planet in our universe on which to have an incarnation. So not every soul has the courage to come here. Most don't, actually. And the ones who do incarnate here are considered among the most courageous souls in the entire universe. This is a school, and it's a really tough school.

Rob Schwartz [00:54:48]:
So if you are here, you are among the most courageous beings in the universe. But remember, so is everybody else. That person that annoys you, that person you don't like, the person who betrayed you, they're equally courageous too. I say that as an invitation to honor and respect everyone. You may not like someone, you might not agree, but honor and respect them for having the extraordinary courage like you had to come into a body on planet Earth.

Lora Cheadle [00:55:18]:
Yeah, I thank you for saying that because it is so easy, especially when we've gotten hurt, to be like, everybody else is mean and awful and stupid and I hate them. But no, we're all in this together, and we're all a part of each other's stories, often in ways we don't know. So thank you for sharing your wisdom. Listeners, I hope this has just, you know, piqued your interest in certain things. I hope it has expanded you and elevated you in some way. And again, like I said at the beginning, even if you're not sure that you really literally believe this, just be willing to listen, to read, to think, and to see what shifts for you. Have an incredible week. I look forward to connecting with you next week.

Lora Cheadle [00:56:07]:
And as usual, always remember to flaunt exactly who you are because who you are is always more than enough. Tune in next time to Flaunt: Find Your Sparkle and Create a Life You Love After Infidelity or Betrayal with Lora Cheadle every Wednesday at 7 AM and 7 PM Eastern Standard Time on syndicated Dream Vision 7 Radio Network. Uncover the truth of what's possible for you on the other side of betrayal and develop the skills and strategies necessary to embrace the future and flourish today. Download your free betrayal recovery toolkit at betrayalrecoveryguide.com.