What if you made an agreement with another soul before your birth that you would be born into your current life, grow up with your chosen family and then depart your body once you reached a certain age so that the other soul could take over the living of your life? That’s what many of those who accept the notion of walk-in spirits believe.
The phrase is self-explanatory. A spirit does not want to go through childhood or other portions of a particular life so they walk in to the life at a particular point that serves that soul’s purpose. Most believers in the concept stress that the walk-in enters the body with the permission of the soul that originally was there. The idea that a soul would hijack another soul’s body without its permission is not popularly believed, and if it does occur, it wouldn’t fall under the concept of walk-in spirits but rather some type of spirit possession.
Why would a soul allow a walk-in to take over its body? Some believe that it is an arrangement that the souls had all along and the original host never had any intention of staying in the body past a certain point. Perhaps the most important lessons for that soul in this lifetime were to take place during childhood, while the most important lessons for the other soul were to take place later in life. Some believe a soul that is disenchanted with life and contemplating suicide could call on a walk-in to take over so that the soul could be free.
Some don’t believe walk-ins exist
There is some controversy within the New Age Movement about whether such a phenomenon exists. Many believe that our lives are classrooms designed to help a particular soul evolve. If you believe that, do you think it would be fair for a soul to walk out of a body and allow another soul to experience the karmic repercussions of the first soul’s actions? Or would the fact that the new soul took over change the karmic footprint of that particular person?
Some believe that a walk-in spirit can live in a body along with the original spirit. They point to channeling as an example of two souls inhabiting one body for a certain purpose. Under that belief system, the walk-in soul often enters the host’s body to help the host to do something such as write a book or share spiritual truths with others.
Have you ever come across someone who seemed to change overnight and did a literal 360 in their lives? Perhaps they really did evolve and change. But some would point to the phenomenon of walk-in spirits as a possible explanation, as well.