posted July 28, 2009 02:32 PM            

Linda Brady & Even St. Lifer

Chapter 2

Soul Mates and Soul Contracts

The contemporary surge in spirituality and New Age philosophy has ushered the term soul mate into our culture’s lexicon primarily as a term of endearment. Some of us consider our soul mate to be a partner to whom we are bound by a love and understanding that transcends our material world: our ultimate relationship. I have a more in-depth explanation of that a soul mate is.

All the relationships we enter into-including those involving soul mates-are karmic. By initiating a relationship, we set in motion a soul contract with that soul to learn a lesson and resolve an issue from a previous life. A soul mate represents a karmic relationship that we have resolved: a deep conflict that has been settled, an obligation that has been fulfilled, and love that has replaced fear and anger. We recognize a soul mate by the supreme level of comfort and security we feel with that person. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues that remain to be ironed out. Rather, it means we know intuitively that we can resolve issues with our soul mate without losing his or her love and respect. When feelings of abandonment and betrayal arise with a soul mate, they do not last. Once soul mates achieve an ultimate level of symbiosis and serenity with each other, it remains forever.

”We should help people discover their vocation in life, their calling, fate or destiny. This is especially focused on finding the right career and the right mate.”

Abraham Maslow

Having a soul mate is not necessarily a rare occurrence. It’s just that few of us have the understanding or the tools to recognize whether the significant person in our life is indeed a soul mate. One must be evolving spiritually to have this awareness: cognizant of love as the basic fabric of life. Soul mates tend to find each other during their perspective pursuits of their soul missions. Creating a soul mate could be seen as a spiritual reward that we give ourselves, after pursuing many soul contracts rife with discord.

A soul contract is an agreement we make with souls whom we’ve known previously from other lifetimes to work through situations in this life that need special attention. Soul contracts occur between all of us, all the time. We incarnate with a certain group of people, who represent different things to us, from one life to the next. They are companion souls off whom we can “bounce” our life’s experiences. They agree to “play” with us to help make us aware of the lessons we need to learn. As part of the contract, we agree to do the same for them. Some of these people are closer to us than others, but all are important in helping us discover who we’ve been and how to learn our next major lesson.

Edgar Cayce, renowned in spiritual circles for creating a better understanding of reincarnation and psychic healing during the post-Depression era, said souls reincarnate with others to whom they are closely related for three reasons:

• To overcome conflict
• To repay an obligation
• To perpetuate love

Lee came to see me as a last resort. She had undergone a lot of psychotherapy but still could not overcome her guilt over her brother’s death. She was jaded by the counseling process, having been to more than her share of therapists and psychologists. She told me matter-of-factly that her brother Dan had committed suicide ten years before, at the age of 17. it had come as a complete shock to Lee and the rest of the family. Each member of the family, in his or her own way, had assumed blame for his death, preventing them from resolving the issue and moving on with their lives. Lee, who had been 14 at the time, had loved her older brother but was very jealous of him. Dan had been active in sports and had won the admiration of her father in a way Lee could not. She remembers hating Dan for “taking her father away” from her. The day before he died, he had won a state-level tennis competition. Lee had left Dan’s celebration party upset and angry because of the attention he received from her mother and father. The next day Dan shot himself in the head. He left no note, gave no explanation. Lee blamed herself for it. She felt that her jealousy and anger had driven him to take his own life.

When Lee was finished telling me this story, I asked her why she would create a soul contract with a brother prone to suicide. My question visibly jolted her. I explained that through the contracts that our souls forge with each other, we create the experiences and relationships from which we need to learn. Lee, who was just getting started in social work, was already adept at controlling her emotions, but I could sense her anger and disbelief as she pulled a couple of pillows up to her stomach, barricading herself. “Why would my soul do such a thing to me or my brother?” she asked. “That would be so unfair-worse, it would mean that I really did kill him,” she said, tears now streaming down her face.

I explained to Lee that on a personality level, she had nothing to do with her brother’s suicide. Making a contract with someone else’s soul to learn a lesson-even if it included an aspect of death-did not make her or her soul an accomplice in a criminal act. On a soul level, she knew before she and Dan incarnated in this life that he could choose to end his life. She had decided to be his sister for her own reasons. In essence, they had to agree to go through this tragedy together.

As Lee listened, she started to calm down. “Do you mean that my brother knew that he was going to kill himself when he came into this world?” Lee asked. I answered carefully, telling her that her brother’s personality had not known. His soul, however, knew that suicide was a possibility and his soul also knew the reasons why it might happen.

Although aspects of Lee’s and Dan’s story have the trappings of fatalism, the truth is their souls did give them choices. Soul creation and fatalism diverge at one of the fundamental tenets of soul creation: that ultimately, the choice of which path to follow lies with us. The older we get, in fact, the more choices we have. Dan had choices, and suicide was one of them. Perhaps he was too young to see the other possibilities that his soul was showing him. Many souls deliver people into this world, aware that suicide may be a potential event from which they will need to learn. But plenty of them choose a different path perhaps because their soul determined that they had already learned the desired lesson from another experience or relationship.

Lee and I reviewed Dan’s astrological chart and found some possible reasons why he might have chosen to leave the earth plane early. His chart was dominated by female energy. He was sensitive, creative, emotional, and spiritual. Even though he was a natural athlete and competitor on the tennis court, he was gentle and compassionate. He would often agonize over how his opponents might feel after losing to him. After a tennis match he would go to his room and stay there for hours, refusing to eat or talk to anyone. He had wanted to quit sports and concentrate on writing but was terrified to confront his father, who strongly supported his tennis career. After his death, his mother found a journal of poems he had written. In several of them he wrote of a palace that was white and crystal, with fountains surrounded by white marble courtyards. Beautiful music and tinkling bells made this palace truly magical. The family saw these poems as a manifestation of a side of Dan that he had kept hidden: I saw them as a description of the other side beyond death and as evidence of Dan’s yearning to go home. I believe-and I shared this with Lee-that Dan longed for the other side and never felt comfortable with his life. Before I even knew of the content of these poems, I had described the other side similarly to Lee, so she was able to truly believe that her brother had chosen to return to his spiritual home.

Lee now began to look at death in a more secure, thoughtful way. As a small child, she had been terrified of death. She had always hated the nightly prayer she was required to say: “If I should die, before I wake…” conjured up dreams of dark places with eerie monster. At 14, Dan’s death had brought back the fear and the nightmares. Her religious training was spotty, and she did not have a spiritual base to help her deal with death or offer her an afterlife. The only thing she could relate to was the darkness and the monsters. One of her first thoughts after Dan died was that he had gone into “that black hole and was living with those terrible monster.” Talking to me about the soul, the other side, and soul contracts helped diminish her terrible fear of dying. She began to see the real possibility that her brother had gone to a peaceful and beautiful place.

For the first time in ten years, Lee could have a conversation about her brother’s death without feeling guilty. Guilt no longer interfered with her grieving process. Now she is able to help her family deal with it on a different level. In fact, Lee now volunteers at a hospice and helps other families deal with the death of their loved ones. She is able to love Dan and honor him for helping her to transform her own fear of death. His death, Lee learned, enabled her to discover and utilize her ability to help others learn about the dying process and share her own life experiences, the essence of her soul mission. That experience, for Lee, was the basis of the soul contract she had made with her brother’s soul.

One day Jill, a woman in her early forties, called me from Seattle in tears. Carl, her husband of fourteen years, had just told her he was leaving. There was no other woman, and he said he still loved her. He told her that he “needed to be free,” to relieve himself of the collective burden of all the responsibilities they had accumulated during their marriage. As Jill and I worked together on her problem, I found information in her astrological chart that indicated that in another life she had been very commitment-phobic. By doing a chart comparison, (in which I analyze one person’s chart against another), I discovered that in another life she had a relationship with a man (probably a previous incarnation of her present husband) but felt she could not marry him. She had left him abruptly and never given the relationship the closure it deserved. In fact, she hadn’t even said good-bye.

Because Jill had an unresolved issue with Carl left over from that previous existence, her soul brought them back together in marriage in this life so she could experience him leaving her and learn from it. She was able to see that she needed to repay this old obligation by dealing with Carl’s needs. After a few sessions she decided to “let him go,” to allow him to find the freedom he craved with impunity. This decision helped her eschew anger and blame, our most common reflexive tendencies. She refused to consider herself a victim. A few months later Carl came back, Jill’s old karmic obligation having been paid in full. The two of them were now free to explore the next level of their relationship.

Cayce’s law about needing to resolve left-over conflict sounds similar to his law about needing to meet a remaining obligation, but there is an important distinction: a conflict need not create obligation and demand repayment; rather, it may require some form of resolution. The conflict can be anything from a personality conflict where two people simply do not like each other, to a couple of colleagues vying for the same promotion.

Tom knew the moment his son David was born that something was wrong. The unadulterated joy that most fathers experience upon witnessing the birth of a child, the sheer euphoria, was absent. It wasn’t the prospect of impending parental responsibilities and commitments that overwhelmed him, nor was he worried about what kind of father he’d be. Instead, Tom felt a deep, visceral, free-floating paranoia.

Too ashamed to tell his wife, Tom tried for several months to deal with his ambivalence toward David on his own. Finally, as a last resort, he came to me. An investigation of both Tom’s and David’s charts illuminated a past life conflict between the two of them. David had been in a position of great power and had had control over Tom’s very existence. Tom had lost the only security he had, land, which had taken him years of hard work to acquire. The culprit had been David. In that past life Tom had died an angry, frustrated man, never recovering the land that he felt was rightfully his and blaming David for his misfortune.

Thus Tom’s conflict in this life centered on his inability to control his fate, sense of feeling victimized-and his real desire to love his child. But now, in this life, through his newborn, he would have an opportunity to resolve the conflict by loving and caring for him. By being in control of his relationship with his son in this life, he was resolving that past life experience of powerlessness and, in effect, creating a karmic symmetry: just as Tom’s fate had previously been in David’s hands, David’s fate was now in Tom’s hands.

How did Tom and I know this past life experience was legitimate? The only way we ever know is by sensing how it feels. When we began talking of his possible karma with his son, Tom began to cry. The information felt right, and his body was responding to the truth. The most powerful part of the session was its result: Tom left no longer feeling conflicted, no longer afraid of the feelings that his little boy had catalyzed within him. Once he understood the soul contract he and his son had made-to overcome his feeling victimized by resolving the conflict and creating a life of love-he was free to be the open, generous, loving father he had always wanted to be.

Resolving major conflicts and fulfilling obligations leaves us with unconditional love, a hallmark of a soul-mated relationship. Discord will continue to surface periodically-our soul ensures it-but love and commitment become the prevailing tools of resolution.

posted July 28, 2009 02:32 PM            

While we enjoy karmic relationships with all the various souls with whom we share soul contracts, they are not necessarily our soul mates. However, just because two people in a relationship aren’t soul mates doesn’t render their soul contract any less important.

Most of us have experienced the heady emotions, the passionate rush, that accompany our initial foray with someone special. All the signs are there: the energy, the sexual electricity, the infatuation. While these symptoms are commonly known as emotions of the heart, I refer to them as karmic warning bells. Upon meeting someone to whom you are attracted, you may really be falling in love-or you may be getting a wakeup call. What feels like love in many cases is really a cosmic two-by-four meant to get our attention and prepare us for a major karmic insight. In such cases we create the intensely amorous feelings in order to keep the relationship going long enough for us to discover the past life connection, alter it, and change ourselves. The relationship ends once have the reflections we need. Sometimes it’s difficult to draw a distinction between love and a karmic warning bell. Usually, with the latter, one feels a vague sense of familiarity and a strong “here-I-go-again” dread.

When Olivia came to see me, she was totally stressed out. At 42, she was happily married and had two young children, but she had fallen in love with another man-despite knowing that the relationship imperiled her marriage. While she loved and respected her husband, Olivia found the appeal of a younger, good-looking man intoxicating. He was arrogant and indiscreet-and to make matters worse, he worked wit her husband. Olivia was putting her whole life on the line, and she couldn’t figure out why. She said she “couldn’t help it.” She felt like she was “addicted” to this person, a rare emotion for her, considering that she exhibited not even the slightest indication of addictive tendencies. Her lust for George allowed her to overlook the fact that he was a heavy drinker.

We needed to find out the karmic implications between her and George, and we needed to do it quickly: Olivia was terrified that George, in a drunken stupor, would tell her husband what was going on. When I explained to Olivia that she was in a bizarre relationship with George in order to learn something important about herself and that these intense feelings were her soul’s way of keeping her in the relationship, it was the only thing that did make sense to her. As a matter of fact, it was the only thing that did make sense. From looking at Olivia’s and George’s astrological charts, we learned that in a previous life George had been in Olivia’s employ. Her arrogance had demeaned and threatened him, but as a subordinate, he had felt powerless to confront her. As a result, Olivia now had an obligation to repay, and George had a conflict to resolve. They had come together in this life to balance their karma. As soon as Olivia recognized her previous ties to George and the need balance their karma, she was able to talk to him, and end their relationship. She even convinced him to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Her karmic warning bells stopped ringing, and the intense feelings dissipated. This obsessive kind of falling in love is particularly intense, yet its intensity can be altered just as quickly when it is understood. Olivia was able to preserve her family and move on with her life.

We spent a few sessions figuring out why her soul had needed her to understand her arrogant behavior from the past. We discovered more about who she had been in that life: she had been autocratic and had misused her power. She also felt that her life had been ended rather abruptly either by accident or murder at the hands of someone she had abused. A deep-seated fear had plagued Olivia for years: she had always been afraid of being center stage, and dreams of being assassinated, and on several occasions had a paranoia about someone being “out to get” her. Understanding this past life helped her make some sense of those fears. Her karmic relationship with George had given her the opportunity to discover herself at another level. At my suggestion, Olivia wrote George a thank-you note explaining all she had learned.

Too often our friends and family members, we ourselves-even society’s most notable and accomplished people-engage in behavior that seems unexplainable. They make seemingly bizarre choices that defy their better judgment. Even the most emotionally grounded, commonsensical person you know could be drawn into a relationship completely incongruent with their sapience. But although this behavior is incomprehensible to our personalities, our souls understand it. Olivia knew George acted like a “jerk” but was able to stop seeing him when she realized that the relationship was showing her issues about herself.

Karmic Versus Soul-Mated Relationships

The distinction between soul mates and other people with whom our souls have contracted relationships is that the issues between ourselves and our soul mates have come to some form of resolution, while issues in karmic relationships have yet to be resolved. Soul mates tend to cooperate, while those in karmic relationships tend to compete. Still, we can learn just as much from our experiences in both types of relationship. Conflicts among soul mates are more stimulating and creative because there is an attitude of expansion and a knowing that the conflict will be resolved. Often a soul-mated relationship serves a spiritual purpose. As soul mates, we sometimes help each other explore and find our own spiritual missions. Sometimes we work together to accomplish important life goals.

I know that if I had not been spiritually prepared, I wouldn’t have attracted my husband into my life. Michael’s support and unfailing generosity have aided me in becoming the person I am and given me the time to dedicate myself to my work, even time taken away from our relationship. Years ago I was caught in an emotional quagmire. I knew that I had old anger festering within me. I knew it was unhealthy to bury it, but I couldn’t find a way to express it. The morning after Michael told me about his affair, we were in the kitchen arguing. For one instant I literally saw red. For the first time in my life, I lashed out. Shoved him up against the refrigerator. When I finally stopped my raging tirade, I looked at him, and he was smiling. It was so incongruent: I was angry; I was close to be abusive; and he was smiling. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. At that moment I knew I had broken through my inability to vent-I had actually gotten angry. Only a soul mate would have smiled.

Soul Circles of Life

Some people are disappointed to learn that our soul mates are not the only people with whom we have shared our past. In fact, we each have a very large group of people, hundreds or more, who are linked to us from one life to the next. Some relationships are closer than others, and their type may vary from life to life. You could be married to the person who was your mother-in-law in a previous life; your child could have been your father in another life-the combinations are endless. The homeless person now asking you for some change may have been your boss in a previous incarnation.

Soul Circles of Life
Circle 1 Relationships

Spouse
Child
Parent
Sibling
Aunt/Uncle
Close Friend
Grandparent

Circle 2 Relationships

Roommates
Friends
Co-Workers
Teachers
Club Members
Neighbors
Cousins

Circle 3 Relationships

Passing Acquaintances
Cab Drivers
Store Clerks
A Person on the Street

Imagine yourself in the middle of three concentric circles. The first circle contains the people whose karmic relationships with you are most important for your growth in this life: your parents, children, lovers, soul mate, husband, wife, beloved pet, counselor, spiritual teacher, or any other family member or intimate who has played an important role in your life experience. These circle-1 relationships are intense, passionate, powerful, and sometimes disruptive because they are formative.

The second circle, one step removed from the intimacy and intensity of the first circle, comprise people whose karmic relationships with you have provided some interaction but are less significant. They could include an important teacher who helped you realize your career, a teenage romance that began an important relational pattern, a boss who challenged you, or possibly a friend who left your life after several years of an enriching relationship.

The third circle comprises people whose karmic relationships with you have been punctuated with some poignant moments but lack the sustained potency and vitality of the first two. Circle-three-type relationships could involve a sales clerk with whom you shared a profound, intimate moment; the man who ran into your car; the doctor who operated on your gall bladder. One of my circle-three-relationships was with a postal clerk. I was at the post office last spring talking with her, and she helped me decide what mode of delivery would be best to deliver my book contract to my agent as quickly as possible. As she was stamping the mailing envelope, she looked at me and said, smiling, “Now I’m a part of your book too,” People in circles two and three can have a very powerful impact on you in the midst of an experience with them.

The concept of group karma explains why certain people are linked together to experience poignant life situations together. You may have ended up in one history class rather than another, or been stuck in an elevator with certain people. Maybe you, or someone you know or read about, missed that doomed plane, while several other passengers went down. Or perhaps you sere stranded at a diner in a snow storm and had a meaningful interaction with a stranger. Try to recall an event in your life when you ended up with a group of people, even strangers, who seemed vaguely familiar to you. Try to envision it as a group karmic experience. Think about what you learned from it and how it affected your life.

I will never forget getting caught in a terrific hailstorm on the Southern Illinois University campus in Edwardsville, Illinois, in the summer of 1973. I was close to finishing my master’s degree and was in the process of deciding whether to join my husband, who had been transferred to the Philippines, or to return home to Baltimore. About ten of us were waiting out the storm, making idle chatter. I mentioned that my husband was serving a two-year tour in the Philippines. One person in the group related a story about a friend in the Philippines whose dog had been stolen and was later found skinned in a marketplace in Manila. That was all I needed to hear. My dog’s safety had always been an obsession with me. I did not go to the Philippines but came back to Baltimore-and began the most significant transformational period of my life.

posted July 28, 2009 02:33 PM            

Soul-mated relationships are distinguished by their deep feelings of permanence and comfort. Soul mates are secure in their knowledge that there will never be a situation they can’t handle. Another indicator is how soul mates feel when they initially meet. Instead of karmic warning bells, they feel a low-level hum. They new person in their life seems familiar; they feel that they have “known” each other before. In essence, they are saying hello again.

My interest in the distinction between soul-mated and other karmic relationships grew as a result of my clients’ fervent inquiries about soul mates. They wanted to know when they would find their own and how they could make it happen soon. As I explored dozens upon dozens of my clients’ existing relationships, I came to the conclusion that many of them already had soul mates but didn’t know it.

A story I often tell my clients is that our soul mates are waiting on our soul path. The more committed we are to what is in our soul’s best interest, the more likely we are to find them. I had known my soul mission for several years before Michael appeared. His soul path was the same as mine. Although we are socialized to idealize soul mates as the stuff of storybook romance, soul-mated relationships come in many forms.

Many years ago, when I taught school, the administrator for whom I worked was also my mentor and my friend. In retrospect, I “knew” John from the moment we met. He left the school, but he never left my memory. I haven’t talked to him in twenty years, and I probably never will again-at least, not in this life. Yet he fits the criteria of a soul mate. We were comfortable and at ease with each other. We could argue and know that we would resolve the conflict. We were constantly exploring a win-win model. He and I never had a social relationship outside the school; we were not lovers. We were two people who worked together for a common purpose, and we had a bond that I will cherish. He was one of my soul mates.

As you think about your relationships, try to broaden your concept of what a soul mate is. You may be surprised and thrilled to find you already have one or several in your life. To clarify the difference, look at the following chart and review a few important relationships in your life.

Soul Mates

Win-Win

Cooperative

Peer relationship

Comfort

Expansive

Inspirational

Stimulating

Creative

Integrated

Ease of flow

Secure

Other Karmic Relationships

Win-Lose

Competitive

Hierarchical relationship

Agitation

Constrictive

Antagonistic

Challenging

Draining

Isolative

Disruptive

Exposed

Karmic relationships are challenging and therefore offer us opportunities to ascend to new heights in our spiritual growth. We have the potential to change their inherent difficulties by understanding and being aware of the gifts they bring. Soul-mated relationships have their own share of conflicts and arguments. The differences lie in the attitude of cooperation and in the deep inner knowledge that we will resolve the problems. Soul-mated and karmic relationships are synthesized at exactly the right time to enable us to learn about those sacred truths at our emotional core. Since our soul coordinates all our relationships, it presents these situations to us when the timing is right. What we do with these situations is our choice.

Imagine yourself as a soul on the other side. You are preparing to incarnate back to the earth plane. You meet with other souls to plan the relationships you need to fulfill your life’s purpose. You talk to your circle-one karmic relationships first. Circle two and circle three come next. You speak to the soul, for instance, who is to be your father in your next earthly existence. Together you recall your previous life experiences, as well as the conflicts that will need to be resolved and the obligations that will need to be met. You acknowledge the love that has endured throughout time. You decide on the context of the relationship you will share to help both of you evolve. Your souls cocreate a soul contract. You have many meetings like this one, to consummate all the contracts you need to evolve and grow spiritually in your next life.

Your soul then integrates your soul contracts into your astrological chart. Information in the chart reminds you of the contracts and the souls with whom you’ve contracted. That vague sense of “knowing” or familiarity we experience when we meet new people can be attributed to the fact that we usually don’t recognize the personalities behind our soul agreements, but we always recognize their souls. Our soul knows the people we’re going to bring into our lives. Our astrological chart only serves as a blueprint of what our soul intends for us to help us evolve. We might not recognize someone immediately, but if we have some notion of what our soul needs us to learn in this life, the reasons for their presence in our life will become more readily apparent. This rationale also explains the common experience of meeting under the flukiest of circumstances-while asking for directions, at a school or job orientation, on the plane while traveling, in a doctor’s office-someone who becomes a central influence in your life. These “chance” meetings are not at all random.

Many people have asked me why we do not remember our past lives. The reason is that our soul has all those experiences recorded and brings them forth when they are needed. Many karmic experiences create poignant emotions that we have difficulty confronting because we do not understand where they come from. Until we have a philosophic context in which to deal with these feelings, they stay repressed.

All karmic relationships are familiar to some degree. We have known the person for whom we’ve developed strong feelings many times before. That’s how we know we are entering into a relationship to complete what we failed to complete before.

It is important to distinguish between comfort and familiarity. The comfort of a soul-mated relationship is different from the familiarity of a karmic relationship. Familiarity could involve myriad types of relating. For instance, if in previous lifetimes you created abusive relationships, then an abusive relationship will seem familiar to you now. Falling back into the well of familiarity is the easiest thing for us to do. Being in a relationship created by old behavior characteristics is like being on automatic pilot.

Unfortunately, many people repeat the same behavioral patterns countless times without alteration. I’ve seen it over and over again in my practice, and it truly saddens me. Ultimately our souls do give us opportunities to alter our lives. If we ignore these opportunities, we end up taking these unresolved issues into our next life. We will learn sooner or later-our souls are infinitely patient.

The Gift of Reflection

Knowing this truth has helped my clients-as well as myself-make tremendous inroads into learning more about themselves. Yet we all have painful memories that we consciously do not want to unearth. Scores of my clients have undergone extensive past life therapy and remember lives where they were persecuted, victimized, and betrayed. But few remember lives where they were the persecutor, the abuser, or the betrayer. We wish to bury these memories, and we do.

Some of my clients create major cosmic two-by-fours over and over again. They get increasingly stronger until sooner or later we can no longer ignore them. The more blocked we are, the stronger the two-by-fours. Consider the statements you make repeatedly: they reflect an unconscious memory, waiting for you to interpret and understand it.

All significant relationships provide us with information about our blind spots. Jung thought that the more deeply we repress our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, the more intensely we create them outside ourselves as conflict and chaos. We will attract another person to show us precisely what we don’t consciously know about ourselves. Once we understand that we bring all our relationships to ourselves for learning and balance, we can alter and transform the behaviors that need changing.

Take a moment to think about an important person in your life. Now isolate a behavior from that person that irritates you, scares you, or causes you pain. That person’s action may cause irritation or fear in you, but it may hardly bother another colleague, family member, or friend. If this is the case, could it be that you actually behave in that irritating or painful way yourself? If so, my guess is that you’ve experienced an extreme reaction to that behavior before. Try claiming that behavior as your own, and make a commitment to change. Suddenly you may find that it alters the reaction you have toward that other person. That person may not change what he or she does; what has changed is your perception of that person’s behavior by changing your own.

Big Souls and Little Souls

God and the universe have a perfect order, and that perfect order filters down through us. We don’t have to strive for perfection, because we share the energy of God. Most people scurry about trying to prove that they’re perfect, but they don’t see that they are part of God, and that God has already given us the greatest gift he can give us: our soul.

When we are in communication with our soul, our relationship with it exemplifies growth and healing. But people who are not in sync with their soul are more often sick, tired, angry, frustrated, frayed, and jaded than those who are. We’ve all encountered people who are jaded; they seemingly have everything but sound as if they have nothing. They don’t have spirit, they don’t have joy, they don’t have drama, and they don’t have the zeal to celebrate life. Above all, they don’t believe in their soul. I’m better today than I’ve ever been because I’m in concert with my soul, and this sacred connection is bringing me to personal and professional heights I never thought possible twenty years ago. My soul helps me do more important things, endeavors that have significant meaning not only for me but for countless others.

We all have a big soul and a little soul. Our big soul is connected with God. In fact, God and the big soul are one. The big soul is our container for the total human condition, our orchestrator of life’s events, our community expert from one life to the next, our total awareness and knowledge as a people. For those who believe God “keeps track” of our lives, the big soul is his reference point. The big soul knows everything about us, everything we have done, and what we will do in the future to learn and evolve. It creates our experiences here on this material plane.

The big soul, in its infinite wisdom and love, gives to each of us a little piece of itself, which I call the little soul. The little soul is our spiritual companion, a function of our daily existence. It is the essence of God that is within each of us, as if he were holding each of our hands. It aids our personality, pushing us to fulfill our potential, and helps us evolve by confronting us with the encounters and relationships from which we need to learn. Our little soul is the impetus behind our realizing our soul mission and our porpoise in life. It is our deepest strength and our greatest joy, and with it we are never alone. The little soul and the big soul are always connected, and the big soul is always connected to God.

The big soul guides the little soul in its respective relationship with us. It deals with issues of a larger scope, like choosing a particular generation with a specific path to significance and a large group karmic track. Each generation is different, but a common thread runs through it, a similarity of karmic lessons and a major need to transform them. Each generation has a larger purpose to fulfill that will advance its evolution and awareness. The big soul also coordinates the massive number of soul contracts into which each of us has entered. For instance, my interns are part of my own karmic group, each for their own individual reasons. Some come to learn from me and stay connected; others decide to separate from me. I know that I have created meeting all of them to push me toward a better understanding of my soul’s work. The big soul is more connected to the bigger picture.

Karmic Amalgams: Your Karmic Jigsaw Puzzle

Karmic amalgams are aggregate images of people who are most meaningful to us. Drawing a karmic amalgam is a dynamic process that helps us figure how to learn from the new, interpersonal situations we are constantly creating in our lives. They are effective because we’ve already known the people we attract from other lives, having entered into soul contracts with them. A karmic amalgam gives us the opportunity to see ourselves through the people we create. For instance, if I had a dogmatic father in another life and my soul needed for me to understand the devastating effects that being dogmatic had on my family, I would likely ask my son in that life to be that kind of father to me in my next. If my “son” takes on that contract, he is helping me by being dogmatic and unrelenting. Then we can resolve the conflict we had in our last life.

Whenever we experience a new, important relationship, we must adjust and revise our karmic amalgam. Adding each new, essential relationship as it evolves enables us to understand what that relationship symbolizes and provides us with insights to learn form it. Once we understand that our souls seek to confront us with all our own relationships as a learning experience, we can alter and transform the behaviors that need changing.

In workshops I conduct to help people glean powerful information from their relationships, I use an exercise based on a theory that we enter this life with a jug saw puzzle without pieces. Every karmic relationship we create becomes a pertinent piece of the jigsaw puzzle. The completed puzzle shows us in a very profound way who we have been and what memories we may have hidden from our conscious understanding of ourselves.

Circle-one relationships are our biggest jigsaw pieces. Your mother and father may encompass as much as one-third of your puzzle. Your soul has chosen them to provide you with very significant karmic information. Understanding how your parents serve you through their reflections back to you is the first step in cobbling together your karmic amalgam. The power and importance of a reflection is judged by the emotional impact it has on us. I always admired my mother for her compassion, her deep desire to serve humanity, her charm and graciousness, her love of books, and her writing skills. She was a career woman who worked her way up the ladder. Having had a major influence on the evolution of volunteerism in this country, my mother was an inspiration for me. She was open-minded and totally supported my need to leave the traditional world of education and become the holistic teacher that I am today.

Still, as a young girl, it used to frustrate me when my mother was committed to her work responsibilities at my expense. I felt abandoned and scared. As a teenager, my frustration and fear turned to anger. It upset me that she could so easily sacrifice herself and her role as my mother for her career. But as I got older, I saw that I was doing the same thing. I was a workaholic. I sacrificed myself for my work. I had chosen my mother to show me myself.

Our parents’ interactions with us help us to remember the soul contracts we have made with them. This Parents Exercise will highlight the important role your parents played in helping you learn more about yourself and the “perfection” of their service to you.

Parents Exercise

• Think about your mother. Write down in your journal five things that you admire about her.
• Now write down five things about her that frustrate you.
• Do the same thing with your father.

Often in our previous incarnations, we were much more extreme versions of our parents. In essence, we make our parents bigger than life so that we can get in touch with that karmic part of us. We create a soul contract with them to show us that part of ourselves.

Nadine, a 43-year-old writer from Hercules, California, was able to come to terms with her mother only after realizing that their volatile, angst-ridden relationship was providing her with a life-altering lesson:

You picked your parents.” Linda’s words ricocheted off my ears, only to boomerang back later. Instinctively and almost defensively, I felt a chill and thought to myself: “No way in hell.” And then I thought, “Maybe that accounts for all of my previous poor judgments and decisions.”

Sometime after the humor wore off, I finally understood. Ironically, what has taken me almost my entire adult life to understand has left me feeling grateful that I finally “got” it. No I can spend the rest of my life making a real difference. This coming to terms-or maybe better, coming of age-happened after three years of living with my mother in a volatile relationship, then not speaking to her for another three years after that. After more than six years of external and internal turmoil, I finally came to terms with…me.

First I realized that a gift is not only what we have been given but what we ultimately do with it. Since the gifts my mother gave me were not conscious and certainly did not come from a loving place, it took me a while to validate them. The gift became my own growth out of a fiery place.

I have not only reconciled her back into my life, I have clearly gained more respect for her journey. The added benefit is that my compassion for others is now more evident in my daily life.

We all have a profound need to look deeply inside-to go beyond the conventional rhetoric and teaching, to find our own truth and accept our appointed tasks, our purpose for living. But before that, it’s really only about love. Once you give yourself compassion, you see the world through loving eyes. That moment of understanding transformed the course of my life forever.

Traits we display in our significant relationships show us not only the behaviors we tend to repress but the jigsaw puzzle pieces of ourselves as we were in other times. The following exercise will walk you through the process of finding the personality pieces that will allow you to learn about the puzzle that is you.

Exercise: Karmic Amalgam for Female Energy

This exercise will provide information on characteristics you have had in the past as a woman. If you are a woman in this life, it will supply you with more information about your past. If you are a man, it will inform you about your female side as well as provide you with insights about what qualities you are attracted to in women. The female amalgam you “create” will give you important insights into your hidden female side.

STEP 1

Choose and list in your journal five women with whom you have had an important relationship. (Always include your mother as the first one, since she is a circle-one soul contract.) If you don’t have five, list as many as you can. Here are five examples: your mother, a childhood friend, a supervisor, a professor, and your grandmother.

STEP 2

Examine the personalities of the five women you’ve chosen. Look for their attributes that have deeply affected you. Identify and journalize roughly half a dozen strong and weak or challenging characteristics for each of the women you’ve chosen. Your selection of attributes as positives or negative should not imply a judgment about them. What is significant is how you view them and the effect that their behavior has had on you.

STEP 3

List the strengths that most of the five women have in common. These strengths now can become pieces of your jigsaw puzzle: they are characteristics that you may not have realized that you have yourself.

STEP 4

List the weaknesses that most of the five women have in common. As with your strengths, you can now add your aggregate weaknesses to your karmic jigsaw puzzle. Chances are these weaknesses are aspects of yourself that you’ve chosen not to identify. They could offer a glimmer of information about who you’ve been in past lives.

Exercise: Karmic Amalgam for Male Energy

This exercise will provide information on characteristics you have had in the past as a man. If you are a man in this life, it will supply you with more information about your past. If you are a woman, it will inform you about your male side as well as provide you with insights about what qualities you are attracted to in men. The male amalgam you “create” will give you important insights into your hidden male side.

STEP 1

Choose and list five men with whom you have had an important relationship. (Always use your father as the first one, since he is a circle-one soul contract.) If you don’t have five, list as many as you can. Some examples: your father, your uncle, a first love, your husband, a married lover.

STEP 2

Examine the personalities of the men you’ve chosen. Look for their attributes that have deeply affected you. Identify roughly half a dozen strong and weak characteristics for each of the men you have chosen. Your selection of attributes as positives or negative should not imply a judgment about them. What is significant is how you view them and the effect that their behavior has had on you.

STEP 3

List the strengths that most of the five men have in common. These strengths can become pieces of your jigsaw puzzle: they are characteristics you may not have realized you possess yourself.

STEP 4

List the weaknesses that most of the five men have in common. You now have six more characteristic to add to your karmic jigsaw puzzle. Again, the weak or challenging traits you’ve elicited may indicate parts of yourself that you’ve chosen to repress. They could also offer you some insight into the type of person you were in previous incarnations.

Your karmic jigsaw puzzle will ease your heart, expand your consciousness, and give you a sense of continuity that you have never before experienced. It will give you vital information on why you’ve chosen your soul contracts. You will be free to love and honor your parents and all the others who have joined with you on a soul level to teach you what you have needed to know. You will feel more empowered because you will no longer need to create others to show you what you already know. You will be able to put karmic memories in perspective and discriminate their value. You will be less vulnerable to the chaos created by unconsciousness. Finally, you will be operating in partnership with your soul.

posted September 25, 2017 10:56 AM            

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Originally posted by starr33:
Thanks for having me.

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