“According to a beautiful legend from the Jewish tradition, the fetus in the womb has a light that shines above his head that sees from one end of the universe to the other. This light encompasses the unborn’s own deep past and his ultimate destiny. Just before birth, however, the angel Lailah comes to the unborn babe and lightly strikes her finger on his upper lip. This act extinguishes the light and causes the child to take birth in total forgetfulness of all he has known during his prebirth existence. The purpose of life is to recover this light. It’s said that this is why we bear a little crease in our upper lip called the philtrum: This is the mark of the angel.”
(excerpted from Thomas Armstrong, The Human Odyssey: Navigating the Twelve Stages of Life
, New York: Ixia Press).
This article was brought to you by Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D. and www.institute4learning.com.
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