Chapter
4

Akashic Contracts

In This Chapter

• Finding meaning through relationships
• Examining love relationships
• Understanding family ties
• Akashic contracts with a higher force
• Understanding your karma with strangers

Relationships are the foundation of everything in life. Nothing has meaning in and of itself; it’s only in our relationships that we find meaning and purpose in what we do. Consequently, relationships provide a unique opportunity for growth. They reflect our best and worst attributes. Whether easy or not, the Akashic Record reveals that every relationship in your life has been designed for the purpose of your growth—and you participated in choosing the roles.

Consider this vision described by a young woman regarding her family dynamics: “I saw in a trance state my entire family in our spirit bodies before we were born. We sat around a large table located in my grandparents’ living room, reading scripts of the new life we were entering. Everyone was debating the script and negotiating for the role that best fit what they needed. Whenever someone chose a character, the script was altered and tailored to them. There was one role nobody wanted. It was the part of the bad guy. We needed someone to take this role; none of us could learn what we needed otherwise. No one wanted it. It was too hard; who wants to be the cause of others’ unhappiness? Besides, it was too easy as this character to forget your light and become lost in other people’s projection of you. Finally the brightest and clearest and kindest among us stepped forward into the body that would become my father.” At this point, it’s no surprise that your job as a soul is to grow and develop. You are a unique expression in the Record, and your job is to be that expression as fully, uniquely, and authentically as possible. People and events challenge you to increase your self-awareness, to develop inner resources, to become more authentic, and—most importantly—to increase your ability to love unconditionally. How people treat you and how you respond reveals your growing edge, or where your current growth is happening.

AKASHIC WISDOM

All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.

—William Shakespeare, playwright

The Akashic Record holds the memories of all your past encounters forming the connection to the people in your life. What you learn from people is as varied as the people you know. What you learn in relationships is deeper and more personal than what you learn from events. If you consider the people in your life, you know they provoke your greatest enjoyment as well as your greatest frustrations. They can provide support, or they can bring you down. As humans, we seek contact and validation from others. Yet, relationships—even the best ones—are rarely easy!

Prior to this life, you designed the circumstances and made contracts with other souls to construct the life lessons you need. Through your circumstances, you’ve created the opportunity to correct mistakes of your past and advance the agenda of loving deeply and completely. As you confront the many relationship challenges in life, ask yourself: “What am I being asked to learn through this encounter?” “How can I use this to help others love themselves more fully?”

Whatever you are learning from the people in your life, the most important relationship you have is always with yourself. How you view and treat yourself is reflected in every relationship you have. You are a unique perspective within the Akashic Record, and it is your job to care for the inner light you carry.

Although your relationships provide you with opportunities to grow, whether you do or not is your choice. You can even fail and create more karma rather than less. It’s always your choice whether to use your life conditions and relationships to grow or not.

The Purpose of People

People are not only part of our grand performance; they’re also mirrors for our self-awareness. How you react to someone tells you about your hidden issues. For example, you may think you have healthy self-regard, yet your anger when someone holds a different opinion shows your deeper insecurity and pain.

According to information from the Akashic Record, relationships are mirrors into our own soul. Whatever you see in the people around you that makes you crazy is part of yourself that you don’t want to face. Likewise, whatever you see that you admire and appreciate are parts of yourself you’re working to express. Once you start to see relationships as mirrors, it’s easier to deal with the reactions we have and stay focused on constructive change.

The key to every interaction is respect. Each person is here to help you see yourself, just as you’re here to help them. You may be in competition for the same job, you may be lovers, you may want to impress them or win their favor, or you may be boss and employee. Whatever the relationship or dynamic, it’s not accidental. Respect that, and look for the deeper insights and higher ground.

Key Issues

As we seek to be more authentic in our relationships, there are certain obstacles that seem to crop up. The three most common issues are communication, power, and freedom. Each brings a plethora of sub-issues such as self-esteem or ego problems, how we manage anger and other strong emotions, what makes us feel rejected, our desire for admiration, and so on. How you handle these issues reveals your underlying beliefs and attitudes about yourself. Overcoming them allows you to be more fully and completely who you are.

Communicating from the heart requires the genuine expression of your own needs, perspectives, and desires while respecting the needs and opinions of the other person. You may feel vulnerable expressing your needs and not let other people know how you feel. Do you get taken advantage of easily because you don’t say what you want? Or maybe you use manipulation or bullying tactics to get what you want. Communication requires a commitment to honesty, straightforwardness, vulnerability, respect, and a willingness to voice our own convictions.

Power is another difficult arena. Many interactions are power plays of one sort or another. How do you handle power? Do you share it with others and give everyone a chance to express their power, or do you demand to be top dog? What will you do, and how far will you go, in order to fulfill your ambitions? Or are you afraid of power and avoid it, using powerful people to get what you want for you? Being empowered means being in control of your life and at the same time not controlling other people. It forces you to work cooperatively instead of through domination or victimhood.

AKASHIC WISDOM

The people we are in relationship with are always a mirror, reflecting our own beliefs, and simultaneously we are mirrors, reflecting their beliefs. So … relationship is one of the most powerful tools for growth … If we look honestly at our relationships, we can see so much about how we have created them.

—Shakti Gawain, best-selling author

Freedom issues are about control and the ability to let go. Sometimes you’re letting go of other people so they can follow their own path or you can follow yours. You may need to let go of requiring other people to agree with you in order to have a relationship. Too often we feel rejected when people think or act differently than we do. If this is difficult for you, you’re being asked to develop your ability to stay connected to people regardless of whether they believe, think, and do what you think they should or not. When freedom is being challenged, you need to examine your expectations and issues of dependency. You need to discover how much you’re living your life through other people and expecting them to fulfill your needs—or how much you hold back from being yourself to appease others.

Our relationships are mirrors to our own soul. They tell us about how we perceive ourselves and what our hidden beliefs and attitudes are. The gift of relationships is that they bring issues into the full light of day, even though we would often prefer them to remain hidden. Use every interaction as an opportunity to increase the love and awareness you’re encoding into the Akashic Record at each moment.

Moving On

One of the hardest parts of a relationship is being able to let go when it’s over. Sometimes it’s hard to leave someone we’ve outgrown; sometimes it’s hard to let someone go who we still love. In addition to love relationships, we often have to move on from jobs, friendships, religions, and so on.

In the Akashic Record, we make contracts with people to accomplish certain goals and objectives. The objective may be personal or social. It can be anything—to experience something new, to create something, or to correct a mistake you made in the past. Or you may have contracted to be in a support role to help someone else in their growth. Some contracts last a lifetime, but some are over when the objective is fulfilled.

It’s difficult to know whether a contract is finished or whether you’re running out on it. Here’s the deal: how long you stay connected is a choice. The contract was to show up. What you do after that is free will. Whether you feel things are complete or whether you feel they never will be, it’s okay to say, “Time’s up!” When a relationship has reached its completion, acknowledge what you’ve learned, declare the contract fulfilled, and move on.

While it’s difficult to stay focused on the bigger picture, especially when you’re over-the-moon in love or trying to end an addictive partnership, it’s important to keep your eye on the learning process. The trick is to avoid falling into the same patterns you’ve repeated again and again. Your job is to find new inner resources, new aspects of who you are, and new solutions to your life issues.

You can certainly assume that whether your relationship is the love of your life, a comfortable companion, or a love disaster, you contracted with this person for a reason. You’ve been given a role to play; it’s up to you how you play it and for how long.

Soul Mates

Soul mates are love partners, two souls who have known each other in many lives. Soul-mate contracts offer a unique opportunity for growth. They are equally beneficial to both people, and provide extraordinary joy. When soul mates meet, they feel as if they’ve known each other before and connect on deep and immediate levels. They share the same worldview and have the same opinions on life issues. The relationship is deeply fulfilling and enjoyable.

AKASHIC WISDOM

Soul Mates are brought together for a reason. All their lives they have been preparing for each other. When they look back at different times in their lives they will see a new purpose to actions they have taken. Their lives take on a sense of oneness equaled by no other; oneness of purpose, ambition, and love which can be a beacon to others along their spiritual paths.

—Edgar Cayce, clairvoyant akashic reader

On the other hand, just because you’ve met your soul mate, don’t think there won’t be challenges. In some ways, there will be more challenges than in a less-charged relationship. The intensity of soul-mate connections can bring many issues to the surface for healing and growth, as we’ll explain in Chapter 12. Soul-mate relationships may last a lifetime or be temporary. The length of time you stay together doesn’t determine whether the relationship is with your soul mate or not. Soul mates may contract to be together for one particular purpose. When that purpose has been completed—or if it can’t be completed for complicating reasons—the relationship will end. Although heartbreaking, from a higher perspective the love you feel will always be there. No love is ever lost in the universe. And don’t forget, you can have more than one soul mate in a lifetime.

Twin Souls

Twin souls, also known as twin flames, are just that: literally, the other half of your soul. It is the strongest type of soul-mate relationship, but unlike soul mates, you have only one twin soul. The idea is that at the time souls were created, they were split into two complete and whole parts. Like human twins, each twin soul is complete in itself, not half of its twin. At the time twin souls are created, the twins separate and go their own way. They typically don’t meet again during their various lifetimes as each is involved in gaining independent experience to share with the other in their reunion. When they do meet, it’s usually at the end of a karmic cycle, when completion is at hand.

Finding your twin soul is the ultimate love relationship. When you meet your twin, you enter into the most fulfilling connection it’s possible to have. You are met on all levels—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. These relationships are characterized by huge leaps forward in spiritual understanding and ability to love. When you reunite with your twin, you may find yourself catapulted into a teaching arena as people around you want to understand the growth and upliftment you represent. Your spiritual path will be accelerated.

If you have met your twin soul, you’re at the end of your karmic cycle. Each of you has completed your task in becoming more whole and accepting your spiritual identity. It doesn’t mean you’re perfect; it means you’ve stopped resisting and are ready to heal. According to the Akashic Record, this is the time of ascension when you return to the source, enlightened and consciously creating conditions on Earth.

Unrequited Love

Perhaps the hardest of all relationships is when the person you love doesn’t return your feelings. As hard as it is to understand, you contracted this relationship, too. The best approach is to practice gratitude and use the gift of this experience for learning. There are two ways you can do this. First, notice what you feel and ask yourself the following questions:

• If you contracted this to learn, what resource is this experience challenging you to develop?
• Are you being asked to develop your own inner self-love and validation?
• Are you being asked to develop your self-reliance and resiliency? Or does loving someone who doesn’t return your love represent a deep belief that you don’t deserve love?
• Are you meant to heal your own self-love?

If you take the time to examine how you feel and what you need in order to come to terms with your feelings, you can move beyond this situation.

Second, work on the three key issues that relationships bring up: communication, power, and freedom. Challenge yourself to communicate with total honesty and an open heart, even though you’re not getting what you want. Don’t allow resentment and jealousy to taint your feelings. Be empowered. Stand up for yourself while maintaining respect for the other person’s choice. Then finally, let him or her go. It’s important to respect the person’s right to his or her own path, no matter how hard it is. Don’t send letters and phone calls and barrage the person with your desire. It isn’t for this lifetime. Respect that and move on to a fulfilling relationship. As long as you hold on to this relationship, a new one can’t come.

ETHERIC ADVISORY

If you have difficulty letting go of unrequited love, it’s because you’re still plugged in to this person. You haven’t processed the feelings from the experience. Remember, your karma is not with this person, it is with yourself and the Akashic Record. You will continue to draw the same unfulfilling experience over and over with different people until you learn what you set out to learn.

It can be very hard when you truly believe this person is your soul mate and you don’t want to let him or her go. Maybe the person is your soul mate; it’s just that you didn’t make a love contract with him or her in this life. Maybe you’ve been together in a past life and will be again in a future life. What’s important to remember is that you have more than one soul mate. You have more than one opportunity to find a wonderful, fulfilling relationship—and after you’ve learned what you need to with your unrequited love, you may be ready to fulfill your real love contract for this life. With this person, its time to acknowledge what you’ve learned, declare the contract fulfilled, and move on.

Difficult Relationships

Another type of relationship we may contract is one that’s actually harmful. Maybe your partner is abusive or negligent. Perhaps you’ve tried to leave but are always drawn back. Or maybe you leave one bad relationship only to enter another one just like it. It’s easy to lose sight of greater growth when you’re immersed in this type of drama.

If you find yourself staying in a bad marriage or attracting the same type of difficult partner, explore your hidden beliefs about yourself and what you deserve. The key is to become more conscious of the dynamics at work. Examine the three prime issues of relationships and how you’re doing with each of them. And remember, seeking external love at the price of your own self-love is destructive. This may be what you are trying to learn: self-love.

In order to make a real change, you may need help from friends, counselors, or medical professionals. You may need to cut all ties with the person and clear yourself of all attachments. Remove all pictures, get rid of gifts, change your phone number, change your environment, move the furniture in your house, start over, and shift the energy.

The purpose of relationships is clear. They’re meant to help us develop our ability to love, and that begins with self-love. Standing up for yourself and leaving may be what you contracted to learn in an abusive relationship. What you can be sure of is that it was not accidental. It was prearranged before you entered this life.

ETHERIC ADVISORY

Understanding why an abusive situation came to be doesn’t excuse the abuser or the act of abuse. Don’t stay with an abuser because you think you have a contract. Just get out, get safe, and get healthy. Your contract with them is over.

Lack of Relationship

There are many reasons why you may not have found your soul mate in this life. You may be blocking a relationship until you learn to love yourself. You may have issues of self-denial and deserving, or maybe it isn’t meant for this life. You may have a different goal to pursue.

If you’re seeking a love connection and not finding one, it’s hard to consider, but you may not have contracted for one in this life—or at least not until you’ve experienced certain things. You may have an agenda to complete with yourself before you’re ready to put energy into a relationship. The best approach is to grow and find happiness within. Increase your self-validation and self-esteem. Stay focused on what is in your life rather than on what’s missing. When you’ve fulfilled your agenda, one day a person you were destined to meet will walk through the door. It won’t happen until you’re ready.

Of course, you may not want a primary relationship in this lifetime. You may be perfectly happy developing your own skills. Not everyone is learning through partnership; there are many relationships to learn from, and this is only one of them. You may be perfectly happy without a primary partner and can’t understand the pain and suffering your friends go through.

Family Ties

The conditions we need to create our life experience are found in our family circumstances. Through our family, we set in motion the major staging for our lives. Family members are people who have been with us through many lifetimes. We switch the type of relationships we have with them and change the roles we have with each other but still share the same commitment to help each other fulfill our karmic directives. The script we enact is recorded in the Akashic Record.

Family is essential in setting up the dynamics we came here to resolve. As children, we assume the attitudes and beliefs that form us. Of course, these attitudes are not new to us; we chose this family because it provided the mindset we needed. In most cases our families are people we have reincarnated with many times. We chose our families for a variety of reasons, as we will see in Chapter 11. Maybe we resonate with the beliefs of our parents, or maybe we need to see these beliefs up close in order to reject their validity. Sometimes we set up conditions that support us as we grow; other times we set up conditions that we must overcome in order to grow. Usually, it’s a little of both.

Our family relationships are as important as our love relationships—maybe even more so. How we approach love is learned in childhood. The major issues we’re here to confront are established in childhood. We spend the rest of our lives working through, or with, the conditions set in motion in our family interactions.

Parents

We have a very special relationship with our parents that reflects the karma we came here to address. They give us the tools for our partnerships, both good and bad. We watch our parents’ interactions and observe how they relate to each other. We learn how men and women communicate and how they treat each other. We learn how to manage power in a relationship and how to get what we want. We learn how much freedom is acceptable. In your life, all of your relationship expectations are set in motion through your parents. Some of what you learn is affirming, and some is not. It’s part of your karmic task to sort out the gifts your parents have to teach you from the problems they are sorting out as they strive to grow.

Love connections are not the only type of relationship engrained by your parents. Your response to authority figures and how you behave as an authority figure are established with your parents, too. Do you get unreasonably angry when confronted by authority? Are you afraid of people who have power over you? Do you feel safe and able to communicate with authority figures? It’s amazing how often we sabotage our goals by reacting inappropriately to authority. A big part of growth in this life is involved with creating and fulfilling our goals. Changing our karmic patterns with authority can go a long way toward meeting our goals!

What we learn from our parents is what we came to experience—what we needed to set in motion in this life. It’s easier to blame our parents for all the things that are wrong than to credit them with giving us what we have. Gratitude for the role they play in our development is more productive and honest than blame. When we come to a place of love and empowerment in our parental relationships, we’ll also find better and easier interactions with our primary mates. Authority will take on different meaning to us, and the ability to manifest our goals will be enhanced.

Siblings

Siblings are another of the important connections we chose in the Akashic Record. Our siblings have a strong commitment to our path as we have to theirs. Often, however, it doesn’t look like that. Some of our most poignant conflict is with our siblings. Through them, we work out ancient conflicts within ourselves.

In sibling relationships, we learn how to relate to peers. Our professional colleagues, business partners, co-workers, and classmates are reflections of the dynamics we developed with our siblings. Some of what we learned was useful, such as how to share and play together in the sandbox. Some isn’t, such as developing competitive patterns and intimidation tactics, and learning how to manipulate. What is certain is that charged peer relationships are reflections of unresolved sibling patterns and remind you to attend to a very specific lesson you came to learn.

Peer relationships take on special meaning when you have no siblings. An only child learns peer interactions in different ways, through cousins, playmates, and sometimes adults. In this case, the emotions generated by having no siblings are reflected in the quality of peer interactions.

This doesn’t mean that if you can’t have children or choose not to that you aren’t living up to a karmic contract. Everything has its own time and place. If you’re missing the parent-child connection in this life and are longing for it, look around. Where can you be a positive influence in the life of a child? The fact that you have the urge to love a child means something. The fact that you don’t have your own children means something, too. Follow your instincts and find a way to make a difference in some child’s life. You may be the guiding force that changes their direction forever. This may be your contract this time.

TIMELESS TIPS

How we parent our children is more than a personal issue—it’s our greatest contribution to society. How we raise and regard our children determines our planetary future.

Spiritual Contracts

The agreements we make before we come into this life go further than individuals. We have agreements with institutions, groups, nations, and religions as well as thought streams and assumptions. We’ll talk more about this in Chapter 5. You may not have thought about it, but you have spiritual as well as social contracts.

In our society, we tend to think of spiritual guides and guardians—if they exist at all—as being present to help us. They are our personal support team in the spiritual realms. There is evidence in the Akashic Record that we are also working for the goals and objectives of our spiritual guides. This is not a new idea; religions all teach that people can “do God’s work” in the physical.

Yet for many people this is a groundbreaking idea. The Akashic Record confirms that contracts with your guides, guardians, and angels were set in motion long before this life. You may have been working with the same guide for many lifetimes. You may even receive guidance in the form of messages and dreams from deceased loved ones who are committed to helping you achieve a higher good. We’ll talk more about this in Chapter 14.

Guidance from Above

There are many different types of spiritual beings—some more prominent in specific cultures than others. They include angels, archangels, saints, ascended masters, guardians, guides, animal totems, and deceased loved ones. Your spiritual helpers are assigned to you before you’re born, and the terms of the assignment are agreed upon. They assist you by offering guidance and support, and you represent their spiritual ideals in the physical world. It’s an agreement that requires connection and a relationship to carry out.

The relationship is one of mutual respect. Your guides can’t assist you unless you connect with them and ask. People do this primarily through meditation and prayer. Asking creates an open door. It allows spiritual energy to flow into the earth realms and shift the dynamics of specific conditions. However, conditions cannot shift unless you have learned something from them and are ready to let them go. At that point, higher forces can help bring positive changes into effect. Until then, your guides will help you change your perspective so you can achieve the learning you set out for.

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, is a good example. Each person who takes the position as Dalai Lama is chosen as a child by Tibetan monks. Through a series of esoteric tests, they identify him as the reincarnation of his deceased predecessor. This is a 600-year-old system.

You may be wondering whether you have a spiritual agreement of this kind. Do you feel such love for a particular way of worship or spiritual path that you want your life to be a witness to its principles? Do you feel so strongly about a social issue, such as animal welfare or civil rights, that you devote your life to it? Then yes, you have this type of spiritual contract. The purpose is to increase the capacity and expression of love in the world on a larger scale.

Clearing Mass Karma

Another type of spiritual contract is to help in transmuting accumulated karma. This concept is a little harder to grasp. Every time a person commits a harmful act, it’s stored as a vibration in the Akashic Record. When another person repeats this type of act, the vibration becomes larger. As a harmful vibration becomes stronger, more people are influenced by it. As much as individuals are growing and healing, so is the Record.

Some people agree to be born into specific difficult situations, or to take them on during their lifetimes, for the purpose of healing the vibration in the field of the Akashic Record and transmute the social karma. Just as every harmful act increases the harmful vibration, every healing act reduces it. Here’s an example.

Anne was abused as a child. Through hard personal work, she was able to process the events she experienced. She was able to shift her internal pain and anger—emotions that fed the harmful vibration—into self-love and forgiveness. In doing so, she reduced the strength of the abuse vibration in the Akashic Record. She then felt called to found an organization to help abused children. Every person whose life was improved helped clear the vibration a little more.

AKASHIC WISDOM

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.

—Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, psychiatrist and author

When Anne had a past-life reading, it indicated that she hadn’t incarnated to learn the lessons of self-love and forgiveness. She already knew them. In fact, she agreed to be born into the situation in order to fulfill a spiritual contract to heal this vibration. Of course, there are many ways she could have done this without being abused herself—but she agreed to do it this way in order to act as a reflection for the abuser. This doesn’t mean she was meant to stay and be abused; in fact, quite the opposite. She was meant to leave and demonstrate self-love.

Strangers and Journeymen

As hard as it is to imagine, even strangers are part of our stage play. Strangers can impact our lives in both profoundly negative and positive ways. Firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, and helpful passersby can not only change your life but save your life. On the other hand, the bureaucrat who denies your application to college seems to ruin your life. Somewhere in the middle is the stranger who just lets you see yourself a little better. In all cases, valuable lessons are underway.

Never forget the impact kind strangers have had on your own life. Many people can relate to the teacher or neighbor who showed interest in their path and offered assistance through kind words and support. We all have been in high-stress situations where one person we didn’t even know made the difference between us falling apart or making it through. Be resolved within yourself to be that kind of stranger, rather than the one who purposefully obstructs simply for the enjoyment of feeling powerful.

TIMELESS TIPS

An excellent source for information on relationship contracts is the book Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss (see Appendix B). She explains the types of relationships we have and the archetypical roles we play for each other. You can learn more at www.myss.com.

Interactions with strangers are orchestrated to show us specific patterns of behavior. We can use these interactions to find nuggets of gold. With strangers, we often let down the masks we wear with those whose good opinion we seek. We may not hold strangers with the same regard that we do people we have a relationship with. This provides an opportunity to see our true behaviors and our deeper patterns. On the other hand, we might put on our public face with strangers and hide our true selves. Either way, they are mirrors for our learning.

Although there are many types of stranger relationships in life, here are two we have a lot to learn from.

In the workplace, our authority issues and sibling rivalries are fully reflected. If you have any doubts about whether you’ve gotten over your family issues, just look at how you relate to co-workers and bosses. You may find it easier to shift dynamics in the workplace than in your family; however, once you’ve seen a pattern, it’s not going away until you address it at its origin.

You can’t change another person, and your desire to shift a problem may not be sufficient to change it. If you’ve done your part, it’s fair enough to acknowledge the learning, call the contract complete, and move to a more distant relationship with this person.

Petty Tyrants

Petty tyrants run rampant in the world. Having no true power, they use what little power they do have obstructing others. They may appear in your life as the planning and zoning commissioner who stands in the way of your architectural genius. You may meet them at the Department of Motor Vehicles, where your desire to register your car takes eight hours of line changing. You may find them in the bank, the grocery store, or the school nurse’s office. Wherever you find them, you can be sure of one thing: you will feel frustrated.

Petty tyrants are great at showing us how we waste our energy. They show us where our emotional triggers are and how much it takes to get us angry. They teach us how well we manage obstruction and how we sabotage our results through temper or manipulation.

The next time you meet a petty tyrant, observe how you react. Move the focus away from what you’re trying to do, such as get through customs or apply for a loan, and find out what you’re trying to learn. You’ll be surprised by how much petty tyrants can teach us. Also, don’t forget to ask yourself how and when you behave as a petty tyrant and why.