Sacred Contracts

Have you ever wondered what your mission in life is supposed to be? You probably know people who seem to have had their entire life mapped out from the day they were born. You may have envied their sure sense of what they were born to do -- their work, career, marriage, and personal goals. And yet you have probably also wondered whether that was really all there was to it. So have I. The answer I found is that there's much more involved. I believe that each of us is guided by a Sacred Contract that our soul made before we were born. That Contract contains a wide range of agreements regarding all that we are intended to learn in this life. It comprises not merely what kind of work we do but also our key relationships with the people who are to help us learn the lessons we have agreed to work on. Each of those relationships represents an individual Contract that is part of your overall Sacred Contract, and may require you to be in a certain place at a certain time to be with that person. This doesn't mean, of course, that free will plays no role in your Sacred Contract. At any given moment -- or "choice point" -- your Contract may provide you with an opportunity for growth. It can come in the form of a challenge at work, the dissolution of an old relationship or the formation of a new one. As you work with my book "Sacred Contracts," you will keep notes on each of the significant Contracts in your life. I recommend that you keep a notebook or journal for just this purpose. (I've designed a Journal of Inner Dialogue to help you organize all the information you'll accumulate as you review the key relationships in your past and present by answering the many questions in my book.) Your Contract is made up of all these components of your life, yet it can't be reduced to any one of them by itself. One way of viewing your Contract is as your overall relationship to your personal power and spiritual power. It determines how you work with your energy and to whom you give it. Finding and fulfilling your Sacred Contract also depends on how much you are willing to surrender to divine guidance. The Basis of Sacred Contracts I believe that we each agree to the terms of our Contract before entering the physical realm of this world. This applies whether you accept the concept of reincarnation, or believe in a single lifetime followed by heaven or hell -- or neither. I go into the background for my beliefs in much greater detail in "Sacred Contracts", but one fascinating parallel occurs in the writings of Plato. In the tenth and final book of his great work The Republic, Plato relates the Myth of Er. In brief, the story concerns a Greek soldier named Er who is left for dead on the battlefield. Twelve days later he awakens on his own funeral pyre, and later tells a remarkable tale of what he observed while he was suspended between life and death. Er found himself in a kind of way station between heaven and earth where souls were passing from one plane to the other. Dead souls were waiting to be judged and assigned to their reward or punishment, while other souls prepared for their journey to earth. Some were old souls returning for another go-round; others were freshly minted and awaiting their first life on Earth. At one point the waiting souls are presented with many possible life scenarios, and are advised to choose from these "samples of lives." Plato informs us that "there were many more lives than the souls present, and they were of all sorts. There were lives of every animal and of man in every condition," including tyrants. Before entering life on the Earth plane, however, the souls were led to the plain of Forgetfulness, a barren waste with no vegetation, where they were required to drink from the river of Unmindfulness. They then promptly forgot everything that had just happened to them. The reason should be obvious: if you know in advance exactly what's going to happen in your life, you would have great difficulty making decisions or taking actions that are intended to teach you something, often through painful experiences. You might naturally be reluctant to begin a relationship with someone who you knew would hurt you, even though you needed to learn a valuable lesson from that person. Whether we take this myth literally or simply as a teaching device of Plato's, we can use it to gain a higher perspective on our life. If you think of your life's direction as something to which you have agreed, then what formerly seemed like arbitrary or even absurd conditions can be seen in another light. They are part of the roadmap that you've agreed to follow. Each event, each person of any significance whom you encounter, has an agreed-on role in your learning experience. Sometimes the learning is difficult because you don't always surrender to the situation. It may take time for you to see the reasons for it. But the sooner you do, the less painful it becomes. In time, you can learn to accept each event as it happens without struggling against it and prolonging your psychic -- and physical -- suffering. To have a serious illness or injury is difficult enough; seeing it as a punishment or the cruel caprice of fate only makes it harder to bear. The resulting stress will probably also make it worse, and you will take longer to heal or recover. Naturally, you can't be expected to see everything immediately, or in advance. But if you have a way of looking at the symbolic meaning of your experiences, you will be better prepared to accept the inevitable changes to your life. Fighting change builds up emotional scar tissue. Surrendering to divine will allows you to accept the changes, and get on with your life. To help you understand and fulfill the terms of your Sacred Contract, you have been encoded with a set of 12 primary archetypes. Four of these are universal archetypes of survival: the Child, Victim, Prostitute, and Saboteur. The other eight are drawn from the vast storehouse of archetypes dating back to the dawn of human history.

To Overcome Your Fears, Know When You're Projecting Whenever you have a harsh judgment of another, you're projecting. This means, according to Webster, that you're unconsciously "ascribing to another [your] own undesirable ideas, impulses, or emotions." In other words, you're criticizing in others whatever you're afraid to look at within yourself. Projection is an insidious tendency in humans. People feel so righteous when they're doing it, not even realizing they're projecting. So how do you stop it? How can you control something you don't even know you're doing? Just go back to sentence one up there: Whenever you have a harsh judgment of someone else, you're projecting. In this context, judgment is different from discernment. Judgment condemns rather than simply observes. It's one thing to discern that someone is lying, and it's quite another to want to punish the person for it. If you have an overwhelming urge to punish someone, you are projecting. Period. Someone else's words or actions can trigger your self-doubt and unresolved fear from the past. Know that the force of your fury isn't driven by what's taking place right then, but by something that happened in the past—and you're afraid it will occur again in your future. The next time you catch yourself criticizing, punishing, projecting, take a breath and observe your own mind. Ask yourself, "Is it possible that my reaction is really a reflection of my own dislike of something in myself? Is it possible for me to see this situation in a different light, one where I can bring discernment instead of judgment to my conscious thoughts?" Be honest with yourself. In a close relationship, it's also wise to explain. You can tell the other person, "I reacted so strongly because what you said brought up my (fears, judgments, etc.) about myself, and I feel upset when that happens." Then apologize sincerely, and make it clear your reaction was really about something that happened in your past rather than about what the person said or did.