Souls

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Soul Agreements

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Their blessings and challenges

Many spiritual teachers say that every person’s soul purpose is nothing more–and nothing less–than to experience joy, expansion and the growth of wisdom and compassion, lifetime after lifetime. Exactly how that joyful expansion and growth are accomplished, however, is up to each individual, evolving soul.

It’s important to remember that there’s a big difference between soul purpose and life purpose. Your soul purpose is conceived of and directed by your eternal self, your Soul, and usually unfolds in stages that can last several lifetimes. You could call each stage the Soul’s “current mission.” Your life purpose, on the other hand, is basically a set of goals and objectives which were developed by your Soul specifically for this present incarnation, with the intent of furthering your Soul’s current mission.

And when you, as your Soul, sit down at the Big Conference Table in the Sky to plot out your next lifetime’s goals and objectives, you’re not alone. With you are usually many members of your soul family, individuals who have traveled with you through several lifetimes, or a few, and who join you in plotting an intricate web of interconnecting life threads, encounters that will assist or challenge you, and them, to make the most of your coming incarnation.

Together you plan when and where you’ll meet. You cheerfully build in obstacle courses and synchronicities to keep things interesting. You decide on gifts and difficulties for your individual personalities, and whether you will take the role of friend, lover, family, Spirit Guide–or even enemy–this time around. And just to keep things suspenseful, you give each Soul’s incarnated personality the free will privilege of “opting out” of any Agreement, at any time, perhaps with karmic consequences, perhaps not, depending on how you make your choices, and why.

Your Soul Agreements are the result of all this creative brainstorming among Eternal Beings. And, while it’s is not true for everyone, many people discover that nearly every one of their important relationships has a Soul Agreement.

There are a number of ways to recognize the existence of a Soul Agreement in a relationship, although the specific parameters of the agreement aren’t always so easy to pinpoint. Always, the relationships are intense and full of meaning. Usually, when you meet there’s a sense of recognition that’s irresistible, and that can be misinterpreted by your personality or ego, especially when the possibility for romance exists. Often the relationship has built-in challenges or obstacles that require effort and commitment to overcome. Conversely, it can be so easy in the beginning that when obstacles do appear, it’s shocking, and can cause the relationship to collapse.

What if the parent or sibling who caused the most difficulty and heartache in your youth is actually a friend from prior lifetimes, one who agreed to take on the unpleasant task of helping you build your emotional and spiritual strength through challenge? Or to help you to balance karma by learning to treat them, in all their awfulness, with forgiveness and unconditional love?

Or perhaps you and another member of your soul clan will decide to spend a few lifetimes meeting and loving, but unable to find your way to happily ever after. Perhaps this choice will help you each develop your capacity for faith, your trust in the long-term, many-lifetime promise of consummated love, or your ability to give and receive wholehearted, unconditional love in spite of conditions. Or so that at least one of you will be forced to develop self-reliance or the ability to commit fully to the greater good of spouse and children rather than personal gratification.

It’s not always easy to divine the intent behind Soul Agreements, especially the ones that are painful, usually because when you’re focused on the personality level, you lack the necessary perspective. But your Angels and Spirit Guides can often help you at least understand what your Soul wants you to learn from the experience. Astrology, numerology and psychic readings can also help.

When you look at each of your relationships as though they contain a Soul Agreement, you get a whole new perspective about the purpose and meaning of what’s happening between you. When you look at it from a Soul perspective, even when you haven’t figured out the details of a particular Agreement, suddenly things become less personal, the drama that accompanies personality conflicts dissipates magically, and you are freed to learn the things that your Soul had in mind when it created the Agreement before you were ever born.

Soul Friends

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

How to recognize them

“Soul friends” are among life’s greatest gifts, partly because soul friendships just aren’t as fraught with challenges as “soul mate” relationships can be.

True soul mates often have to overcome obstacles like family disapproval, substance abuse, early life traumas leading to emotional problems, existing marriages and even careless indifference on the part of one mate.

But soul friends always seem to appear magically just when you need them most. When no one understands or supports you, when you’re facing a challenge you don’t think you can handle alone, that’s when a soul friend will show up, just in time, with exactly what you need.

How can you recognize a soul friend?

Usually when you meet them, something inside of you smiles and says, “There you are! I’ve been waiting for you to appear!” That sense of delight and recognition happens for two reasons: first, because soul friends are almost always people you’ve known and cared about in many prior lifetimes, and second, because the two of you got together before you incarnated this time and decided when, where, how and why you’d meet, so you truly have been expecting them, and they you.

And soul friendships are always balanced. You’re there to help, motivate, support and unconditionally love each other equally, and, over time, you find you always receive as much as you give. Yeah, you’re both human, and occasionally there can be friction, but it rarely lasts.

Another giveaway that someone is a soul friend is that they understand something about you that no one else understands. You’ve been teased all your life for being too emotional? Your soul friend is either just as sensitive or sees your sensitivity as a gift that they admire and respect. Or you’re mystical and psychic, but from a family of pragmatists, and married to a pragmatist, and suddenly a soul friend who has even more far-out gifts than yours makes a special effort to meet and befriend you just when you’re about to go through major life changes.

There’s another kind of soul friend who isn’t as pleasant to acknowledge, although if you look back, you’ll probably remember having that same sense of recognition when you first encountered each other. This soul friend sees through your facades (i.e. also really understands you), and prods you to learn and grow by challenging your beliefs or pointing out where you’re achieving less than you can. This kind of soul friend pushes your buttons and sometimes makes you mad, but somehow you still admire and respect them. You even find yourselves motivated by the same kinds of goals, and discover you’re on the same page regarding what needs to be done so often it’s uncanny.

Soul friendships can begin in high school or grade school and continue throughout your life, or they can last just a few months or weeks before they’ve run their course. They can be in your age group, or much younger or older. Soul friends are sometimes lovers who help you recover from a divorce or abuse. Or you meet in a situation which requires exactly the skills and gifts that you have as a team, and you find yourselves working creative and/or organizational miracles, producing more work together than any ten individuals could do alone, and having an absolute blast while you’re doing it.

Soul friendships seem almost always to involve service, too, and often soul friends help each other clear karma by doing service projects together. You and your best friend from high school end up being the people everyone in your small town turns to for help and advice. Or perhaps a number of soul friends meet and are jointly inspired to create or expand an organization that serves a very timely need for hundreds or even thousands of people, helping others evolve or learn important new skills.

Soul friend relationships are life-affirming, positive and growth-oriented. They incorporate healing, expansion, inspiration and a sense of connection and bone-deep mutual understanding that is priceless. When you’re with a soul friend, your horizons expand, you realize that there’s more to you than you thought, and you suddenly discover you have more than enough energy, hope and motivation to meet any challenge life sends your way. And even when a soul friendship is short-lived, you’ll remember that friend with a smile for the rest of your life.

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