Dancing in the Light by Shirley Maclaine

carefully. I wanted to convey what I was thinking as succinctly as possible even though I realized there were not many words that could define what I felt.
    “Well,” I began, “since so many new ideas are surfacing these days, I’m wondering whether they are, in fact, new , or instead are really rather ancient. I’m wondering if all the old masters weren’t actually more in touch with the ‘real’ spiritualization of mankind, meaning that they understood that the soul energy of man is eternal and infinite. That they knew that the soul goes on and on. That it never dies and in fact cyclically reembodies itself in order to learn and grow while alive in the body on the earth plane.”
    “You’re talking about reincarnation, then,” said Dad.
    “Yes, and if the soul is the repositor of all its accumulated knowledge and experience, then education is only the process of drawing out what it already knows.”
    Dad flicked some lint from his shoulder, a ploy to give himself time to consider a point.
    “Well,” he said, “I understand that nothing ever dies. High school chemistry proves that. Matter only changes form. So I could even go along with your belief that the body becomes the eternal soul after death, but I don’t know if I can go along with reincarnation.”
    “But Dad,” I said, feeling my voice rise as it had whenever, as a child, I wanted to get a point across to him, “you actually had the experience that yoursoul was separate from your body. How can you say the body becomes the soul?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, if you have already experienced death, then you know that death is only the experience of the soul leaving the body, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Then if the soul is separate from the body, why not stretch a little bit further and contemplate what the soul does after it’s been out of the body for a while. Or if there’s no old body to go back to.”
    “Well, Monkey, the way I felt about that white light that Ï saw, I’m not sure I’d ever want to leave it to come back again.”
    “Oh,” I said, understanding that his version of the white light was so glorious, there would be no future necessary after that.
    “So, you’d just hang around up there basking in the glow forever?”
    “I think so, yes.” He laughed. “I certainly wouldn’t have to worry about the dust in my room, would I?”
    “Oh, Ira, be serious now,” Mother chimed in. “Shirl,” she said, “if you believe that we have all lived before, then you and your father and I have lived before too?”
    “Yes,” I answered, “that’s what I believe. And I think that our family, and every family for that matter, is a group of souls very closely connected because we have been through many incarnations together. I think we choose to be together, to work out our drama. We choose our parents, and I think the parents choose the children they want to have before they ever come into an incarnation.”
    “You do?” said Mother, astonished at the thought and realizing, at the same time, the implications of what I’d said. “You mean you believe you chose to have your father and me as your parents?”
    “Yes,” I answered, “and I believe that we all agreed to be a part of this family unit before any ofus were born. That’s why I feel your marrying Daddy seemed inevitable to you. Your higher self knew as soon as you met him that you had already agreed to have Warren and me for children with him.”
    “Oh, my goodness,” exclaimed Mother. “You believe all of this was preordained?”
    “Yes, and not by God, but by each of us.”
    “Oh my. I have to fix myself a drink,” said Mother. “Ira, do you want a glass of milk?”
    “Look at that,” said Daddy. “The boss won’t even let me share in a drink with her after we planned our lives together from the spiritual plane.”
    I laughed and thought of all the incarnations they must have had together. If there were ever two people who were joined at the hip,