Before Incarnation...

Before each incarnation, careful preparations are made in close consultation with one's spiritual guides. First, the choice is made of a suitable location on Earth, in terms of the country and community which will provide the right economic and social background conditions for the particular lessons to be learned.
Parents are likewise carefully chosen to provide the right environment for learning and soul growth; they may well be "old friends" with whom one has had a close connection in past lives, perhaps members of one's soul-group.
Essential events and "meeting points" are planned to occur along the path of one's life which will provide the necessary learning opportunities for the specific lessons to be mastered. Finally, the exact time of birth is chosen astrologically to provide the correct planetary influences in the life to come.
Not only do you choose the body into which you are to incarnate, the parents who are to conceive you, the planetary influences under which you are to be born, the country in which you are to live, your way of life and the partner you are to marry, but you also choose your moment of death and the manner in which you are to die.