Sacred Contracts - Why We're Here

If you know the contracts you made before you were born, you will find it easier to discern your life's purpose.
E cerpt from the !ook" "Sacred Contracts" by Caroline #yss. Copyri$ht %c& '(() by Caroline #yss.

* contract isn't about sayin$ what you mean. It is about meanin$ what you say.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes (physician, poet, and humorist) When I was a young girl, my father always told me, "I don't care what you do when you grow up, so long as you're a nurse or a teacher." I can still remember my fury when he would say that, because I was interested only in writing. The ery idea of teaching school was out of the !uestion. "et today, in spite of all my efforts to a oid life in the classroom, I am a teacher--of wor#shops, of theology, of moti ation--and what's more, I lo e it. I feel distantly connected to the nursing part of my dad's directi e too through the healing effects my wor# has had on many people. $y father passed away in %&'&, and in the early %&&(s, as my mom and I were discussing my wor#, I said to her, "Well, he won after all." Then I reali)ed that *ad hadn't "won" some sort of game or struggle to control what I did with my life. $y +ontract had won. $y father had been able to glimpse aspects of it, as many parents can, although their ision is often clouded by their own e,pectations and wishes for their children. - en without #nowing about archetypes, *ad had seen something in me that e o#ed his understanding of the greater function and meaning of a nurse and teacher, and he related it to the career choices that were common for young women at the time. .till, my +ontract does contain the archetypes of the Teacher and /ealer, which ha e manifested through the e ents of my life, e en though I ha e ne er formally studied healing or teaching. $y higher education has been in 0ournalism and theology, but my wor# in medical intuition simply "happened." I did my first intuiti e reading almost by accident, and then another, and another. Word spread through the neighborhood, and soon I was doing ten to %1 a wee#. $y growing reputation led to in itations to lecture on my wor#, which in turn led to in itations to teach wor#shops.

The most e,traordinary feature about how I learned energy anatomy was the precision with which my education was organi)ed. 2gain, it simply "happened." Within a period of se en to ten days, three people with the same illness would approach me for help. -ach one would pro e to be coping with similar but slightly different life problems that had contributed to the de elopment of their illness. 3y the time I read all three indi iduals, I felt I had grasped the ma0or energy stress factors behind their conditions. .hortly after I completed one trio, another three people in !uic# succession would contact me for help. 2gain, each would pro e to ha e the same illness. 4radually my understanding of energy anatomy led me to reali)e that our biography becomes our biology. 5nce I understood that principle, my education seemed to mo e in another direction. Whereas my pre ious readings had focused on assessing an indi idual's physical and emotional chronology, I suddenly began to percei e images that had no apparent connection to the person. In reading a woman who wanted to understand her nec# pain, for instance, I got the image of a pirate in her energy field. .he was a housewife from the $idwest, so this information meant absolutely nothing to her. "et while subse!uently undergoing rela,ation and isuali)ation e,ercises with a hypnotherapist, she also sensed the pirate energy in her field. .he "saw" him slashing her throat with his sword. +uriously, she also felt more positi e associations, including wild lawlessness and liberated se,uality. These conflicting impressions of the pirate energy indicated to her that she was being cho#ed or controlled by her life circumstances while yearning for a freedom that she could not consciously oice. 6eading another woman a short time later, who complained of se ere arthritis in her hands, I #ept seeing the image of an artist. When I mentioned this, howe er, she was baffled, insisting that she had no artistic talent whate er. 7onetheless I suggested that she ta#e up pottery as therapy for her arthritis. .he began by ma#ing simple clay ases and in time flowered into a gifted potter who now produces artistically sophisticated pieces. 8inally, while reading an 2ustralian salesman named 9immy who had been seriously depressed for se eral years, I saw a strong actor in his energy field. 3ut 9immy had ne er done any acting e en though he did want to, because, he said, he was still "in the closet" and was afraid that if he acted, it would "come out" that he was gay. /e was, in fact, already acting--as if he were straight--but the bloc#ing of his talent and identity had made him implode emotionally. 2 few years later I was than#ful to hear from 9immy that he had pulled out of his depression and now acts in summer stoc#. /e ta#es his stage wor# seriously, and he is no longer hiding his se,uality.

When these odd images first began to emerge, they seemed so disassociated from the people I was reading, so off, that I felt that I had somehow lost my intuiti e accuracy. "et these readings ultimately pro ed helpful for e ery person. Then one day in %&&% e erything fell into place for me. I was listening to a con ersation between two women in one of my wor#shops. Within fi e minutes of meeting, they had e,changed the ordinary details of their li es, such as where they li ed and what #ind of wor# they did. 2fter the basic physical details, they then spo#e about what life e,periences had brought them to a spiritual wor#shop. .uddenly they found a life pattern they shared, an energy lin# that was immediately noticeable in their heightened response to each other. Their children were grown, their marriages were happily established, and they had arri ed at a natural transition point in their li es--they were tired of being e eryone else's "ser ant." 7ow they wanted to ser e themsel es. 6etired and liberated, they wanted to pursue their own interests and to de elop their own spirits. 2s I listened to these #ind souls describe the pattern of their li es, I was seeing through their con ersation to its symbolic le el. 2s good mothers and marriage partners, they had acted in behalf of others for most of their li es, but ha ing accomplished this early mission, they were now stri#ing out on their own, as the .er ant of myth and legend must. When the biblical 9oseph was sold into sla ery by his brothers, for instance, he bided his time and did the wor# re!uested of him through many years of ser ice. 3ut then he used his singular gifts as a dream interpreter to earn his freedom and become a great leader in the land-going from .er ant to $aster. 2ll of a sudden the i id but mystifying images that I had been getting in my recent readings made sense. The :irate, the 2rtist, the 2ctor, and the .er ant were not part of the indi idual, physical chronology that I had been used to reading. 6ather, these images were a part of each person's spiritual chronology, a personal mythology that had begun e en before they entered their physical li es. These images were archetypes, energy guides that could direct people toward their spiritual purpose, their +ontracts. The mythic light bulb that got turned on that afternoon has stayed on e er since. 8rom that point on, e ery reading I did opened with an e aluation of a person's spiritual chronology, the archetypal patterns that e,press themsel es through his personality and life e,periences. 2nd 0ust as trios of people with the same physical illnesses had contacted me for intuiti e readings, people with the same archetypal patterns began contacting me in a relati ely short period of time, though spread o er months rather than days.

.ome of my first readings, for e,ample, were for se eral people who had the Wounded +hild archetype, a pattern of emotional scars from childhood. Then I met a few who had in common a dominant ;ictim archetype. 9ust as before, each of these people reflected slightly different aspects of these archetypes as a result of their indi idual personalities and life e,periences. 2s I began to wor# purposefully with the archetypes in my readings and to teach them in my wor#shops, I gained further insights about how they function within our psyche. When 9ung proposed his theory of the collecti e unconscious, he defined it as mainly populated with countless psychological patterns deri ed from historical roles in life, such as the $other, Tric#ster, <ing, and .er ant. 2long with our indi idual personal unconscious, which is uni!ue to each of us, he said, "there e,ists a second psychic system of a collecti e, uni ersal, and impersonal nature that is identical in all indi iduals." This collecti e unconscious, he belie ed, was inherited rather than de eloped. I ha e obser ed that some archetypes step out from the bac#drop of this great collecti e to play a much more prominent role in people's li es, and that each of us has our own personal alignment of #ey archetypes. Through a process of research, reflection, trial, and error, I ultimately concluded that a uni!ue combination of twel e archetypal patterns, corresponding to the twel e houses of the )odiac, wor#s within each of us to support our personal de elopment. These twel e patterns wor# together in all aspects of your life. They can be particularly i id and perceptible in your problems or challenges, or in the places where you feel incomplete. 2nd they can be particularly useful in healing painful memories, or redirecting your life, or finding a way to e,press your untapped creati e potential. In a sense each archetype represents a "face" and "function" of the *i ine that manifests within each of us indi idually. /umanity has always gi en names to the many powers of hea en and tried to identify the !ualities inherent within each. The multifaceted archetypal power of the feminine, for e,ample, e,presses itself within forms as di erse as the ;irgin $ary and $other 7ature. The ancient 6omans and 4ree#s saw uni ersal feminine powers in the characteristics of 2thena (the goddess of counsel), ;enus (goddess of lo e), and .ophia (goddess of wisdom). The /indu culture of India ga e the 4oddess names embodying different attributes of di ine motherhood, such as =a#shmi (prosperity), *urga (fertility), >ma (unity), and <ali (destruction?rebirth). It was as if 4od had to separate into many different aspects in order for us to begin to approach that power. "et once it was named, we could in o#e it and assimilate it and e,press it.

Archetypal patterns awaken in us our own divine potential. They can liberate us from the limitations of our thoughts and feelings. They can help us shed light on the dark or little-known corners of our souls and amplify our own brilliance and strengths. Archetypes are a source of emotional, physical, and spiritual power and can help us free ourselves from fear, although sometimes, as we first get to know them, a few of them may initially unleash fears within us. ur spiritual challenge with any archetype--or fear--is to face it and recogni!e the opportunity it presents to learn its inherent lesson and develop an aspect of personal power. "ith an archetype that we perceive as difficult or even malevolent, our task is to acknowledge it, overcome whatever weakness it indicates, and work to make its divine potential our own. The goddess #ali, for instance, is the energy of destruction. She has the power of the Saboteur archetype, which is present in all of us. $ut what is the other side of destruction but rebuilding and rebirth% &n symbolic or Contract language, the Saboteur archetype can trip you up if you do not face its considerable power, but you can also use its energy consciously to dismantle areas of your life that you need to face or fi' or heal. There are always two sides to every archetype, and both can be made to work to your advantage. "e tend to perceive ourselves and our universe as either good or bad, internal or e'ternal, me or you, right or wrong, symbolic or literal, (oyful or sad. ur strengths and fears divide our spirit into polarities--into a duality, in $uddhist terms--which is why faith and doubt wage eternal battles in our psyches. $y identifying and working with our archetypes, however, we can learn to consolidate the faces of our spirit and bring its power into our daily life to direct our thoughts and actions. These energy guides help us act mindfully and honorably) they help us manage our power and live up to our divine potential. & myself have found that the archetypal work & have done with each reading has contributed to my own spiritual growth and development. The e'periences and insights &*ve had together with people &*ve read have helped me refine my skill as a medical intuitive, furthered my awareness of my archetypes, and even helped me through my own difficult times. & have come to believe that my encounters with my students, my workshop attendees, my readers, and so many other people are anything but casual. +ike the e'traordinarily organi!ed way in which & had learned energy anatomy and was later led to read archetypal patterns, divine order makes itself known in all areas of our lives.

Caroline #yss inter+iew on Sacred Contracts

Caroline #yss talks about a$reements we make before birth, and how reco$ni,in$ them can brin$ purpose and peace to our li+es.

Inter+iew by *nne *. Simpkinson &f you attend a workshop led by medical intuitive and best-selling author Caroline ,yss -pronounced ,ace., you*ll meet the /ueen, the 0un, and the Teacher. ,yss isn*t sharing the stage with other lecturers, nor is she suffering from multiple personality disorder. These are the archetypes--universal energetic patterns--in her life, she says, that come forward in her teaching. The Teacher and 0un were shaped by the 1oman Catholic sisters, who taught ,yss from high school through graduate school. The /ueen appears when she wants "to blast people out" of wanting a reali!ed life without accepting the opportunities for growth presented to them. "The classroom becomes transformed into my royal court," she writes, "and & symbolically *decapitate* people who are yearning for liberation yet are prevented by those very fears from moving forward." ,yss is talking a lot about archetypes these days as she tours for her newest book, "Sacred Contracts2 Awakening 3our 4ivine 5otential." The core of the book is the belief that, before we are born, our souls agree to learn specific lessons in our upcoming lifetime. &n order to fulfill that agreement, we get involved with certain people, find ourselves in certain places, and have to deal with certain life circumstances. 6ow we handle all of that is the measure of our growth and progress. ,yss believes that we can better identify our contracts -because there are many. if we understand what energies are operating in our lives. 6er book presents a very detailed program for identifying which energies are at play in our lives, and how to work with them. "Sacred Contracts" is ,yss*s fifth book) the first two, "A&4S2 5assageway to Transformation" and "The Creation of 6ealth" were co-authored with 0orman Shealy, ,.4. The other two--"Anatomy of the Spirit" and ""hy 5eople 4on*t 6eal And 6ow They Can"--both made it to the 0ew 3ork Times best-sellers list. &n addition to her books, she has created a number of tapes and C4s -through Sounds True., has appeared on prah, and was one of public television*s fundraising stars. She talks to $eliefnet producer Anne Simpkinson about sacred contracts, the eighth chakra, criticism of her teaching style, and her new program on the 'ygen channel.

-ou ha+e a new book out called .Sacred Contracts.. What e actly is a sacred contract, and why is it important/ 8rom my point of iew, the leading cause of stress today is the absence of meaning in people's li es. "ou can say that stress is caused by the wor#place and relationships, but all of those are e,tensions of the struggle with direction, self, and spiritual empowerment. .o I started to wonder@ 2re we meant to do somethingA 2re we meant to be with certain peopleA 2re agreements made before we incarnateA If we belie e in life after death, why not belie e in life before lifeA Why would that be any more outrageousA I came to belie e that we ery much ma#e contracts before we incarnate. We ma#e contracts that are directed toward our personal empowerment, toward the e,pansion of our hearts, and toward the e,pansion of our contribution to the group soul of humanity. In your book, you talk about your Catholic upbrin$in$. So let me ask you, do you see this life as a one-shot deal--you li+e and then you die and $o to hea+en or hell... 7o. -ou belie+e in reincarnation/ 5h sure--and so does the +hurch, by the way. 6eincarnation was ery much a part of +hristian tradition until the belief was edited out somewhere around the B(('s, I belie e. They edited it out when they started to ta#e the formation of the doctrine seriously, when they started to pull together the oral and written traditions. Why did they eliminate this particular one/ They thought that people would not try as hard in this life if they thought that they had another chance. I noticed that when you talk about sacred contracts, you always talk about them on two le+els" contributin$ to personal $rowth and to the e+olution of the planet. "es. 2bsolutely. - erything you do affects the wholeC as abo e, so below.

When I tal# to a Western audience about a sacred contract, they thin# I'm tal#ing about a 0ob. It's so ridiculous Dto as#E where's the 0ob I was born to do, without thin#ing about the people who are unemployed. 2re you telling me that they're suddenly of no alueA .ee, people can't imagine that they could be born to become a forgi ing person. That could be the most significant contract of their li es, and, in order to fulfill it, they ha e to ha e certain people in a close relationship and they ha e to ha e this physical body. We don't li#e to thin# that our li es could be humble. 5r, that in this lifetime, our contract is to be of ser ice to others. What's hard for people to accept is what's true. Time and time again, we learn that life is not a rational e,perience. 3uddha taught us that. 9esus taught us that. "ou name the spiritual teacher, they all teach that we suffer because we want life to be something it is not. It is not organi)ed and rational. In the book, you identify an ei$hth chakra. Standard te ts usually deal with 0ust se+en. 1alk a little bit about this chakra, and why you included it. I felt that there had to be a way to discuss data that e,isted separate from biological, physiological, and emotional data. This dimension that I'm tal#ing about is impersonalC it's symbolic. It's what we call the collecti e unconscious or the archetypal dimension. 8or me, it represented the ne,t le el of our energy system, which is represented by eighth cha#ra. We ha e a physical reality, we ha e an internal reality, and we ha e a symbolic reality, and all three operate simultaneously. 5ur first, second, and third cha#ras are aligned to our physical lifeC four, fi e, si,, and se en to our emotions, our attitudes, our choices, our spiritual lifeC and the eighth to our symbolic life where our contracts are scripted. *nd it seems to relate most to what you talk about in the book. 2bsolutely. The contracts and negotiations your soul has made, in my opinion, form the te,ture of your life. "ou ma#e arrangements for certain commitments, for opportunities to meet certain people, to be certain places, but what you do and how you are when you get there, that's where choice comes in. In these days--that we tal# about as the 7ew 2ge--our ability to #now oursel es has increased ten-fold. We now ha e access to our inner world in a way we ne er did before. We need a ocabulary that can describe where we' e been. That was what moti ated me to create a tool through which people can identify their archetypal patterns.

There are hundreds of thousands of archetypes, but each of us has only a do)en that, in this lifetime, form the closest, most intimate connection to the e ents as they unfold in our li es. .ure, you can relate to all of the archetypes in some way. I'm not a physical mother but I can relate to motheringC I consider that I birth my boo#s. 3ut I'm not a physical mother in the same way DasE women whose whole li es are about raising their children. I would loo# and find the %F archetypes that are direct influences in your life, and from that I would say the most important thing you can do is to learn the meaning and the guidance from those archetypal patterns. The tool I de eloped is all about helping you disco er that. 1he bulk of your book describes the sacred wheel, this tool you're referrin$ to. Why did you choose the wheel, and how does it relate to the horoscope and to archetypes/ I was teaching a group of students--this was years ago--and I was trying to e,plain to them that they had influences around them at all times. I said, "=oo#, 0ust imagine that you are sitting at the center of a wheel and imagine that each of the spo#es was a different influence on you." I loo#ed at that image and reali)ed that I had drawn an astrological chart. Then when I was doing the archetypal research, I wondered what it would be li#e if I found a way to help people locate each of their %F archetypes--one per astrological house--in a way that would combine the meaning of that house with the meaning of an archetype. 6eading the two together would enhance a deeper iew of the 0ourney of one's life. That sounds li#e a mouthful, but I did the same thing in "2natomy of the .pirit." I too# +hristianity, 9udaism, and -astern religion, and combined all three systems. I said, "=oo# at how all three are written in the spine, and how all three spea# of human biology." The astrological wheel, the %F houses, represents the %F areas of life from relationships to home to marriage to money. - ery one of the aspects of life is represented on this wheel. When you do this wheel in the system that I de eloped, it helps you locate your archetype for each house respecti ely, so you ha e %F archetypes and %F houses. What you' e got are two different cosmic systems operating as a team in a way they ne er did before. When you combine them--and isn't the world of consciousness all about combining and ma#ing things oneA--the insights you ha e are positi ely incredible.

How does it work/ =et me gi e you an e,ample. The first house of the astrological chart tal#s about your persona, how you present yourself to the world. 7ow let's say that you had the Gueen archetype in that house. When people meet you, there will be something about you that stri#es them as being royal, entitled, gracious, bene olent, or in command of things. 3ut belie e me, the common image that people will ha e of you is that you fill the room much more than someone who has a +hild archetype in that house. That person would stri#e people as being ery immature, fragile, magical, innocent, or playful. -ou su$$est relyin$ on our intuition for findin$ our archetypes and fillin$ in the +arious houses. !ut you also say that sometimes we can't hear oursel+es because there are so many other +oices in our heads. How can we 2uiet those +oices/ What I tell people is that you don't ha e to be a master of intuiti e calmness to discern your archetypal patterns. The first and most important thing is that you are willing to be open-minded and honest about your own life. In the book, you write" .I often $i+e the appearance of bein$ nearly ruthless onsta$e when I'm interactin$ with certain people.. 6uthlessA -es, I'm 2uotin$ from the book. I was wonderin$ how you respond to the critics who say that this is not a helpful approach. =et me say that than# 4od the people who say that are in the minority. .econd, I #ind of laugh because I thin# that there must be something people li#e about being ruthless because my wor#shops are enormous. Third, I thin# that I'm not ruthless. I'm ery direct and I'm bold. Which one's going to help--someone saying to you, "/ere's the bottom line@ -ither you get bitter or you get better." 5r do you want me to sit there and be yet the %1,(((th ear that you weep inA 8rom my point of iew, people need bac#bones, not wishbones. We' e gotten much too indulgent about healing. When I'm with people who tell me that F(, F1, H1 years later, they still can't release the fact that their mother wasn't there for them, I cannot loo# at them and say, "Why don't you tell me again and I'll be another indulgent shoulder." I want to say@ "/ow come you don't tell me how many people you' e hurt, and how many li es you' e made miserableA"