It takes practice to learn to see the larger picture in these fragments, to learn to add them together to get the sum of your mission. Discovering your Contract is bound to give you surprises. You’re going to have rugs pulled out from under you and realizations that rock you. But in the process you will learn how to see symbolically, how to manage your personal power, and how to ful ll your Sacred Contract.

This book is an introduction to a mystery school. It’s the study of a di erent sense of time and space that we inhabit through our relationships, which are really our Contracts with other people. The language of this mystery school is one of spiritual alchemy. With it we’ll learn to transform heavy physical relationships and emotions into spiritual gold. This process involves prayer and contemplation, and it also requires examining all the fragments of your life experiences and relationships. You’ll be researching your archetypes’ energy chemistry—how they express and assert themselves in and through your life. By discovering and working with your individual archetypal companions, your connections to the cosmic forces directing your life, you will consciously a ect the course of your life.

By developing symbolic sight and archetypal language, you will grasp the whole of your life with a level of spiritual clarity that can heal the emotional and spiritual wounds you have accumulated and ll you with awe that your life is also of great importance to everyone you encounter. It becomes possible for you to trust that everything that is meant to come your way will arrive in due time, that you will be with the right people at the right moment, and that divine guidance endlessly ows into your soul. It can’t be otherwise: we manage our Contracts, but the Divine takes care of the Sacred.

We co-create our Contract with divine guidance, and it includes many individual agreements—or subcontracts—to meet and work with certain people, in certain places, at certain times. For that reason, I will be using the plural Contracts interchangeably with agreements throughout this book. Both terms represent the earthly commitments, the tasks you have been assigned, and the lessons you agreed to learn in this incarnation in order to fulll your divine potential.

The experiences and relationships you are meant to have are with your parents, children, close friends, and any people with whom you share a passion for something. These people—as well as your adversaries— are in your life because you made an agreement with them prior to this lifetime to support each other’s spiritual growth. Indeed, every relationship and experience is an opportunity for you to grow and transform your life. Some relationships may even offer multiple opportunities. In every one you will have to choose how to exercise your own power.

Ultimately, we make choices every day—consciously and unconsciously—that implement the terms of our Contract, keeping us on the path or getting us back on the path. We can also choose to enlist the aid of archetypes, spirit guides, and even the grace of God through prayer and meditation to attempt to fulfill our agreements more expeditiously. If you do not choose to believe in a literal prebirth contract, or in reincarnation, or even in the power of grace, you might want to view your life metaphorically, as a journey you have agreed to take.

In past-life regression therapy, for instance, patients are invited under hypnosis to reenter the events of previous existences. Yet the leading proponents of this method have shown that the vivid stories people uncover about themselves during regression do not need to be viewed as literal events in order to be emotionally bene cial, but can be seen symbolically. People who “remember” past-life wounds, beliefs, revelations, and family histories invariably feel that they have gained from the insights these memories provide into their own unconscious and their life situation.

You can also think of your Sacred Contract as your own unique contribution to life around you that arises from your particular set of circumstances, relationships, and family. Whatever interpretation you choose, the extent to which you can decode your Contract will depend on your willingness to accept that everything we do is for a purpose far greater than we will ever know, that every deed you do a ects your life and others’ for good or ill. To believe in an invisible order, a divine or implicate order, as quantum physics calls it, or the order beneath the disorder that chaos theory describes, is a healthier, more interesting choice than seeing no meaning in life whatsoever.

Discovering and working with your archetypes and other elements of your Contract will change your view of your own destiny. You will bring new meaning to your life and move from seeing it as random and haphazard to accepting that it is carefully planned and directed, with you as an active participant.

Most of us would probably admit that changing our lives for the better—as well as helping other people—is part of the reason we are all on earth in the rst place. Without the potential to learn, to grow, or to be a force for good, life would be a pretty stagnant a air. Knowing your Sacred Contract allows you to see how apparently random events and encounters—whether positive or negative—are actually part of a life script that provides you with countless opportunities for spiritual transformation.

Because life is complex and there is so much to “see”—about ourselves, the world, and the Divine—we have Contracts with many people in our lives. Imagine that upon incarnation, each soul splits into countless fragments that move instantly into the exploration of the global soul. You know when you meet people who radiate something that is deeply attractive to you, and you may feel “empty” when they are gone.

The popular term soulmate, applied to one’s ideal romantic partner, doesn’t begin to capture this truth; in fact, we all have many soulmates who play very di erent roles in our life. Perhaps noble friend is a better term. These are the people you are not simply destined but are required to meet. And no matter how many opportunities to meet with them escape you, if you have a Contract you will meet up eventually, perhaps many times, until you complete any un nished business in the exchange of your souls.

In terms of your Contract, the petty tyrants in your life are as helpful and signi cant as your most beloved noble friends. You have agreements to work with both because they each have something to teach you about yourself that you cannot learn anywhere else.

Your Contract, along with all the subcontracts that constitute it, is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end, a plan to help you develop your divine potential. Think of your Sacred Contract as a life course in which you are meant to learn many lessons. When you start out exploring any course, it’s best not to become overly concerned about de ning it in a single sentence or narrowing its purpose to a single lesson. It will take you a while to be able to say that you were born for one speci c purpose, as Mother Teresa did, since you will be trying to uncover many agreements and learn many lessons that your mission contains.

The idea that we have life lessons and “tasks” that we are assigned to complete is an ancient one. In short, a Sacred Contract is an agreement your soul makes before you are born. You promise to do certain things for yourself, for others, and for divine purposes. Part of the Contract requires that you discover what it is that you are meant to do. The Divine, in turn, promises to give you the guidance you need through your intuition, dreams, hunches, coincidences, and other indicators.

Legal contracts hold us accountable for the multiple terms and clauses that are part of the overall agreement. Even in taking out a mortgage to buy a house, for example, you are required to do more than simply make a monthly payment. You have to keep the house and property in good repair, pay taxes, insure it, and usually, in order to accomplish all this, deal with numerous other parties. You also agree to abide by the law of the country and state in which you sign the agreement or take out the mortgage.

Your Sacred Contract too subjects you to the laws and order of a greater state—that of the Divine. The whole of creation, in fact, follows rules that govern and maintain the ow of energy and life, from the law of gravity to those of thermodynamics. From the earliest days of civilization, humanity has been given rules to follow and has accepted the need to abide by them. Among the most widely accepted of these, which can be considered subclauses of your Sacred Contract, are the Ten Commandments.

Even before Yahweh handed those codi ed rules to Moses, however, He had made other covenants with Noah and Abraham, promising to protect their o spring and help them prosper if they met certain terms. For the rst time the scriptures used the word covenant, a term that originally meant a legally binding agreement between two or more parties—in essence, a contract. As a visible symbol of His covenant, God put a rainbow in the sky to remind Himself to uphold His end of this agreement. In return, he required that Noah and his descendants “be fruitful and increase in number.”

More significantly, Yahweh commanded not only that they procreate but also that they respect the sanctity of life, saying that “from each man … I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” God established His covenant with Noah and his descendants “and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth”

(Gen. 7–9). In other words, we are to be stewards and caretakers of the planet.

God later established a similar covenant with Abraham, o ering to preserve and multiply his o spring in exchange for Abraham’s agreement to have all the male children of his people circumcised. Although both Abraham’s and Noah’s Contracts were established in what we might call the spiritual realm, they speci ed particular terms of action in the physical world, compliance with which would yield great bene ts to all parties.

Here are some other comparisons between earthly and Sacred contracts:

• In a legal contract, two parties agree to participate in some task, or to hold themselves accountable to the same commitments, for a mutually bene cial reason.

In a Sacred Contract, an individual and the Divine commit to a mission that promises to expand that individual’s spiritual consciousness as well as further the expression of the Divine on earth.

• In a secular contract, you commit to doing what you must to ful ll the terms of the contract legally. You may also agree to work with subcontractors or obtain raw materials you need to complete the agreed-on tasks.

In a Sacred Contract, the Divine guarantees that all materials or energy that are essential to the completion of your task will be provided. These provisions can include anything from receiving necessary earthly capital to being guided into certain relationships or developing an illness.

• A legal contract holds you responsible for the quality of the project or product. You warrant that you are quali ed for the task.

Although you have everything you need within you to fulfill your Sacred Contract, you will not be provided with everything you want. You will probably have to learn that you have the inner resources to do what you need to do. You will have to learn your strengths and capacity to push yourself beyond your apparent limitations.

• In a business contract, work is offered in exchange for some kind of support, usually nancial, often in the form of an advance or binder. Some contracts provide regular payments throughout the term of the contract as certain subclauses are ful lled. You may be promised certain future bonuses, such as royalties, residuals, or stock options, and you may receive certain secondary advantages, including on- the-job training, expenses, insurance, and other fringe bene ts. In addition to nancial remuneration, one party may o er to help in other ways. In a deal between a writer and a publisher, for example, the publisher may also agree to promote your book in a number of ways, with advertising and a publicity tour.

In a Sacred Contract, your payment is in spiritual capital—in insight, purpose, self-understanding, and the attainment of spiritual attributes such as compassion, sel essness, and faith. Your Sacred Contract is supported by divine guidance, what we might call a “heavenly bank account” on which you can draw for inspiration and energy to complete your assigned tasks. In addition, you may receive unexpected infusions of grace from time to time to help you complete your tasks.

• Although a legal contract can be broken, there are often severe consequences, including legal and nancial penalties, which can extend for years.

A Sacred Contract is a learning process and therefore cannot be broken. It commits you to developing your inner consciousness and your understanding of how to work with forces greater than your own personal will. Our personal and spiritual growth bene ts others around us. We learn, among other things, that we are here to help each other. Because a Contract is an opportunity to empower your spirit, you are bound by higher laws to pursue that process. You are often given more than one opportunity to complete a learning process. Each time you try to avoid an opportunity or challenge, the consequences become more severe.

• If conditions change over the course of a business contract, you may be able to renegotiate its terms in good faith. If, for example, your expenses exceed expectations for reasons beyond your control and keep you from ful lling your agreement, you may be able to request some form of nancial relief. Professional athletes, among others, renegotiate long-term contracts if their market value is perceived to have increased significantly.

As you progress in understanding the terms of your Contract and what you have agreed to learn, you may discover that what you thought was a Contract to develop your personal potential—to become better at your work, say—is actually a Contract to expand your divine potential. Although your Contract hasn’t changed, your understanding of it can, and it may feel to you like a renegotiation. The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno once wrote that as humanity su ers on earth, God su ers with us (which is, after all, the root meaning of compassion). Although we have agreed to certain terms, it may be that those terms evolve as we evolve, and that even the Divine doesn’t know exactly how things will turn out.

• A legal contract includes elements of choice. You are free to decide how to follow through with the terms of a contract, as long as those terms are met by the agreed-on date. If I’m under contract to deliver a manuscript by January 1 of next year, it doesn’t much matter whether I write one page a day in my spare time or take several months o to work intensively on the whole thing. I can write it by hand, type it, or work on the computer, as long as the nal result is coherent and adheres to the subject matter that was promised.

A Sacred Contract also includes the element of choice. For all that the Divine provides, you have complete choice about whether to view the provisions as blessings or as burdens. You may choose to delay meeting the terms, but you can’t avoid them altogether.

As a temporal example of how choice works, imagine that, before you were born, you agreed that in this life you needed to learn to master the use of a knife. Prior to your birth, your guide o ered you a piece of wisdom: “If you grab the blade rst, you will cut yourself, you will bleed, and it will take you a long time to heal. You will be angry with your knife, and thinking that it is a weapon, you will use it to harm others. If, however, you grab the handle rst, you will think of this knife as a tool, and you will use it to make wonderful creations, as a cook, sculptor, designer, or surgeon. Either way, once you come back to the heavens, you will have mastered the use of this knife. But the choice of how you do it, and with how much su ering, is in your hands—literally and symbolically.”

You can choose to learn by wisdom or by woe. Consider, for example, that learning the power of forgiveness is essential to your spiritual path. Learning forgiveness indicates that you have someone to forgive, so, say that you need to forgive your parents for pressure they put on you or demands they make of you. Or maybe you need to forgive a boss who red you from a job in which you were nancially secure but emotionally unful lled and unhappy. These people are playing a role in your life that is necessary for you to figure out. Through your interactions with them you will learn about your purpose. You have to make a conscious choice whether to forgive them. Without a doubt the choice to forgive is a greater challenge than remaining resentful, but this more di cult path will bring you peace and spiritual wisdom.

Resentment, though appealing to our sense of righteous indignation, comes with a high price in the long run—it is harmful to your physical, mental, and emotional health. When you choose not to forgive your parents, employers, and other supposed adversaries, you isolate and alienate yourself from others and from the world. You trap yourself in an unhealthy energy pattern that can even lead, ironically, to making you eventually dependent on others through illness or other life circumstances. Refusing to accept a spiritual task such as forgiveness is a painful way to learn, but learn you will. And if you refuse the lesson, you will encounter it again and again—and next time.

Jungian psychologist James Hillman o ers a cogent summary of the nal stage of Plato’s story in his book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling. “When all the souls had chosen their lives according to their lots,” Hillman writes, they went before Lachesis (lachos = one’s special lot or portion of fate). And she sent with each, as the guardian of his life and the ful ller of his choice, the genius (daimon) that had been chosen…. Lachesis leads the soul to the second of the three personi cations of destiny, Klotho (klotho = to twist by spinning)…. Under her hand and her turning of the spindle, the destiny of the chosen lot is rati ed. Then the genius (daimon) again led the soul to the spinning of Atropos (atropos = not to be turned, in exible) to make the web of its destiny irreversible. And then without a backward glance the soul passes beneath the throne of Necessity, sometimes translated as the “lap of Necessity.”

Before entering life on the earth plain, however, the souls marched to the Plain of Forgetfulness, a barren waste with no trees or vegetation, and then were required to drink from the River of Unmindfulness. As they drank, they forgot everything that had just transpired. The reason the gods ask us to do this should be obvious: if you know ahead of time exactly what’s going to happen in your life, actually living it will seem as exciting as watching a replay of last year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Many of us believe that if only we were smarter, more dedicated, or holier, we would know what we were supposed to be doing on earth because then God or the universe would enlighten us about our real mission. We mistakenly believe that the great spiritual leaders, such as Abraham, Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, had their Contracts spelled out for them. Yet none of these gures truly saw his Contract early on. Their life paths were not obvious but required that they develop the trust and stamina to surrender unconditionally to the will of Heaven. As a rule, that doesn’t happen to a child or an adolescent or even a young adult. Nor does it happen all at once.

We develop faith and other abilities in stages, and our progress becomes most obvious in midlife. Still, some people do acquire insight in a single rush, an epiphany. For instance, otherwise ordinary people who have had near-death experiences report a sudden awakening, after which they become conscious of their life as part of a larger plan, and they live it di erently from that point forward. In the Hindu tradition, spiritual and nonspiritual people alike have reported an extraordinary surge of energy, known as a kundalini awakening, that shoots up the spine to the crown of the head and often transforms the focus of their lives to spiritual service.”