I   remember as a child of 5 or 6 years old, sitting alone in a tree in our back yard. It was a beautiful summer day, warm with a slight breeze and the sky colored with shades of pale blue.White tufts of clouds were generously scattered as far as the eye could see. I could no longer hear the neighbors lawn mower running but the smell of fresh cut grass still lingered in the humid air.  I was lost in thoughts of where I came from before I arrived here in this place.I recall looking at my feet hanging from the branch I was perched on and thinking that, “Yes, I can feel them. Even so, I  know they are not a part of me. It is more like they are  part of some type of container.”  My eye’s continued on their journey up.  Up toward, what I perceived as being the area where “I” was located. As my eyes neared the face they crossed and came to rest on my nose.  Now  “I” was viewing the shell from the position closest to were “I” am. Then I wondered to myself, “How did I get in here and how do I get out?”
From my earliest recollections I have known with out any doubt what so ever that “I” live inside this shell, “I” lived before this shell and “I” was placed in this shell. I know that unlike the shell, “I” do not die.  That is to say, “I” cannot die.  Not in the manner that the shell dies.  Why? Because, we are not made the same. The shell is physical I am not.
I remember trying to explain this to my grandmother once. Telling her what I had come to understand, that we were put in these shells by, “The One” who loves us, that we were with him before we came here and that he took that memory from us, keeping it for us until we return home. She asked, “Why would he want to keep us from remembering if we had been with him before?” I explained what I assumed would be very obvious to anyone, “If we remembered all the love, we would free ourselves of the  shell to go home!”. “Is that what you want to do!?” my grandmother asked in an alarmed tone.

It was at that point that I began to notice something about adults.  As the years passed the truths we come into this world with are some how lost or become invisible to them. That revelation scared me more than anything I could think of. In my minds eye, it was as if the shell were walking around and talking, but the one who lived inside the shell was gone. All because they had forgotten the tiny yet important memories that are so clear to a child. I decided I must protect myself from this loss of memory.  I would think about all that I “know in my heart” and say I cannot forget this. When my mind was thinking of the important things I would take a ‘time picture’. That meant, making your thoughts be still for a moment,then take in everything, the sight, sound, smell, taste and feel of the moment, taken in from the inside, bypassing the shell.
It is not as though I wish any harm on the shell, but it was pretty obvious that it had thoughts of its own. Maybe instincts would be more accurate a discription. The way I see it, for now we must co-exist, but to let myself forget that the shell is not me would be an example of death for you or I, but this is not the kind of death the shell would suffer. You see, we are different.     
To make a long story short, I have spent most of my years here
searching for an answer to the question of why we where put in these shells. And I have basically learned two things.

1. I sometimes have trouble seeing things that are right in front of me.

2.The answer to the question has always been the search for the answer itself