Soul Contracts

I'm currently listening to Caroline Myss's recording, Sacred Contracts (from Sounds True). Myss is so great for sound bites. Though she sounds as if she's inventing the material, the issue of Soul Contracts is very old.

The idea is that during our interlife (the period before we incarnate in this existence) we make contracts with other souls about what we will be for them. Therefore, if you have an issue with someone in this life, it may well be a soul who contracted with you before you were in a body.

For instance, someone who breaks your heart might have contracted to help you find your true voice. What changes did you make in your life as a result of having your heart broken? Hopefully, it wasn't to simply become cynical and embittered.

If we look at all our relationships through this archetypal light, we can actually save ourselves a lot of pain and resentment; we simply take the lesson for the upset, make whatever changes to enhance our own lives, and move on, trusting that this soul had volunteered to be our "judas."

Myss also directs the listener to create an archetypal map of her own life and cast it along the astrological wheel.

To do this, one lists the different archetypes on small sheets of paper, and makes another list of the astrological houses. Then the direction is to draw a house card with your left hand and an archetype with your right. The process is intended to be synchronistic.

Hence, you'll have the first twelve archetypes to connect with before moving on to a wider arc. So, as an example, if you drew the prostitute archetype in your 7th house of relationship, you would ask yourself where you were willing to sell yourself out for love? Or for another kind of relationship.

Myss came to work with archetypes after decades of doing psychic readings. As a reader she observed certain patterns people were dealing with and it became clear that she could share some powerful ways in which clients could become exceedingly conscious and transformed.

Her method as a reader is to offer guidance rather than answers. I certainly relate to this. We want to know if we're going to get what we think we should have this week or by tomorrow but there's a much bigger soul process at hand.

Sometimes that kind of guidance is entirely overlooked by a client who is struggling with looking for an answer in the wrong place. I've certainly been on both sides of that dilemma. Ultimately it's the higher guidance that leads one out of the problem because the problem may be there so we will have to seek guidance.