that readily come to mind until you reach your life at the present time. You’ll probably end up with quite a list! Then, entry by entry, go back over your list and ask yourself how you would handle each dilemma if it were to occur today. This is the fun part!
Although it might initially sound like a depressing exercise, it is actually one of the most emotionally reassuring tasks you’ll ever perform. I promise that once you start examining how you would respond to the exact same set of problems today, you’ll be amazed at how differently you would react to many of them. You might even find yourself chuckling at imagining how the others involved in these past issues might be affected by your newfound assertiveness and maturity if the same situation presented itself today. You’ll learn how wisely you’ve been investing your time and energy and how much you have actually learned from the accumulation of all those experiences.
Upon reflection, you’ll discover that you’ve grown into a completely different person than you were even a year ago. This encouraging realization will allow you to acknowledge that as long as you work on your issues, you’ll continue to evolve and be able to create a far better quality of life.
You can take stock as often as you like. It’s an extremely important exercise because without it, it’s difficult to objectively measure how successfully you’ve been moving forward with your issues. All of the lessons you will encounter during this earthly incarnation are the learning experiences you intentionally chose while mapping your current spiritual agenda. If you’re beginning to wonder why you should address issues that are hurtful or time-consuming to resolve, consider the alternative.
Ignoring or avoiding issues will ensure that the quality of your relationships, levels of professional achievement, and financial abundance will remain exactly where they are right now. Are you satisfied enough with your current quality of life to envision yourself in the very same position one year from now? Five years from now? Ten years from now? That’s exactly the life you’ll be creating if you procrastinate. One element of predictability on the earthly plane is that the issues you planned for this lifetime that remain unresolved will always be there—hovering—no matter where you go, what you do, or with whom you interact.
Although I resolved the childhood issues I had with my father by the time I was in my early twenties, I was bombarded with a series of different issues in a terrible marriage several years later.
Besides being in a chaotic relationship, I felt clueless about my purpose and direction. Out of ignorance, I fervently denied that I had any responsibility for the state of my life, and instead, I blamed everybody else. I deluded myself by thinking, “I’m a good person. Don’t I often put other people’s feelings before my own? I haven’t done anything to deserve this unhappiness. Why are all the people in my life so impossible?”
As the years went by, I became even more miserable. When I finally realized that the people in my life weren’t going to do anything to change their behavior, I came to understand that I would never have their cooperation to make improvements in my life. That acknowledgment hit me like a ton of bricks. If they weren’t interested in improving our relationship, then was I trapped where I was?
It occurred to me that perhaps I really didn’t need their cooperation to be able to change my life. Maybe I couldn’t improve any of my existing relationships, but I could certainly work on myself. After all, even though my father and I had not been in contact and he did not get involved in my therapy, I was still able to resolve all the issues connected with him.
That moment was like an epiphany for me. I finally began to understand the issue of accountability. I decided to explore my responsibility for the challenges in my life, and I realized that I had been unknowingly perpetuating those problems by denying I played any role. When I started slowly working on them, one by one, I couldn’t believe what I discovered.
All the anger, frustration, insecurity, and unhappiness I’d created by avoiding and denying my issues had been much harder to deal with than the actual process of working through them! Never mind all the precious time and energy I had wasted! Little by little, I could feel my life improving. On a daily basis, the heavy weight of dysfunction I had carried for so long was remarkably dissipating, and I sensed a remarkable, new lightness of spirit that I wanted to share with everyone. I came to an awareness of what it means to release the struggle.
So what happened to the people with whom I had the difficult relationships? What was their response to my work on self? My newfound enthusiasm for becoming emotionally healthy was incredibly threatening to some people but served as an inspiration for others to start their own work. I learned that it didn’t really matter how the other people in my life reacted. Ultimately, as individuals, we are in control of what we decide to do with our lives. I couldn’t nag, push, cry, cajole, coerce, encourage, or coldly withdraw from people in my life who were choosing to remain where they were in terms of their issues with me. I discovered that by doing so, I was being presumptuous, judgmental, and controlling, in spite of what I considered to be good intentions.
The people in your life who are ready to work on their issues will show positive interest in the spiritual work you are doing. They will want you to share what you’re learning and discovering and will encourage and support your progress. If they’re not ready to work on certain issues, they’ll likely be disinterested, negative, threatened, angry, or even sarcastic about the effort you are making.
Again, remember that their response is a decision they are making about their own lives, which they have a right to do. Nevertheless, it’s important to recognize when other people are attempting to make you feel guilty or manipulate you into derailing your progress because they are intimidated or threatened that you might evolve into a different person. Isn’t that the whole purpose in doing the work in the first place?
We all have a personal responsibility to discover exactly what issues we still have to contend with and to resolve them as quickly as possible in order to move on to a future that is happier and more secure than the present. To that end, I strongly recommend that if you’ve been attempting to work through an issue for some time and have been continually unsuccessful, you might want to consider visiting a good therapist who will help to speed up your progress.
Principle Three: Spiritual Contracts
A spiritual contract is an agreement, or commitment, reached on the heavenly plane between two or more souls who plan to interact with each other during an upcoming earthly lifetime.
Have you ever wondered about the purpose behind all your important relationships? Have you considered that each family member, friend, colleague, and acquaintance has entered your life for a very specific reason? All of the significant people in your life have a commitment to fulfill with you, as you do with them. You may even have a spiritual contract with someone who is meant to pass through your life in mere minutes, hours, days, or weeks!
There are basically two different types of human interactions that exist on the earthly plane. First, there is the learning-experience kind of relationship in which two people come together to learn from one another through adversity and hardship. Second, there is the soul-mate type of relationship in which two people come together to provide one another unconditional support and encouragement.
In a learning-experience relationship, you will connect with another person to address a particular issue, or group of issues, until the issue is explored—or in the best-case scenario, completely resolved. Learning-experience relationships may emerge quite pleasantly but in time always erupt into various levels of confusion, miscommunication, loneliness, and frustration. In some cases, these spiritually important relationships begin with immediate turmoil and continue to boil explosively.
There are other instances in which your learning
