Dear Julia:

My mother got an email reading done by a psychic, and she was able to ask three questions. Mom's final question was if my new natural soap and skincare business would be a success. The psychic responded, "As it's being planned at the moment, it doesn't seem to be the biggest success, but if she could either sell the idea/ brand to a bigger company or work as part of a bigger brand, she'll achieve happiness in her profession." I emailed her regarding why I would have to do that when it's not what I want to do, and her response was "I just gave you the answer I got - that's how it works. It's not my opinion." This whole experience makes me think that readings can do more harm than good. It's like psychics are playing God with your life and deciding your future. How can I discard the bad feelings I have from this reading? I'm using the LOA and creative visualization, and so far things are going great. I refuse to let this psychic tell me my efforts are all in vain.

Paulette

Dear Paulette:

I'm not crazy about the term soul contract; it could be misleading by causing some of us to feel like our loved ones somehow owe us something, and if they don't do what we think they should do, then somehow they are failing us or reneging on some cosmic deal. When we talk about working on karma, we are wise to always focus on what we can do to make things right with others, not what we think they need to do to make things right with us.

Many people assume that finding a soul mate is the answer to their lifelong prayers for love, but this is often far from the truth. Soul mate relationships tend to be intense, passionate and often volatile because they are ripe with learning and growth opportunities. Further, many people view divorce or the end of long-term love affairs as the failure of those relationships, but in truth, those endings always propel us forward into new lessons and experiences, so they facilitate new growth and the potential for greater love.

I would keep an open mind about the deeper nature of your relationship, for no one can say for sure what the higher plan for you all may be. Even if your assumptions are valid, then the three of you all have strong soul connections to each other. It may be that your man has chosen to fulfill the contract he has with this younger woman and to tackle the lessons involved in that relationship instead of focusing on the lessons that your relationship may have to offer.

This brings us to the wisdom of remembering that we all have free will. Life puts before us an endless smorgasbord of learning paths and potentials, and we get to choose moment by moment what we will savor next. It's entirely possible that your man is following his heart and in line with fulfilling his destiny, and is therefore not really avoiding anything. When we assume that we are right and others are wrong about deeper truths such as the soul nature of a relationship, we are almost always stuck in ego.

It's also possible that you are caught up in a vow from a past life that is no longer valid or beneficial. When we make sacred vows, they can follow us from lifetime to lifetime until we consciously withdraw them and tell all levels of our being that we are free to move on. When we are caught up in an old vow, we often experience just what you describe: a tumultuous roller coaster of passion and conflict, union and separation, followed by reunion and another round of drama.

It's clear to me that you have lessons to learn from the situation exactly as it is, and that it would be wise to smile upon all that happens with trust in a higher plan. It may be, for example, that your soul agreement was to come together in just the manner you describe: to return together lifetime after lifetime and feel that sense of connection, only to have him be pulled away or choose another path, and for you to learn to make peace with his decision and not having things go the way you think they should go.

Not even the greatest psychic can say for sure exactly what has been happening throughout your lifetimes together, and more importantly, WHY. One thing I do know is that any perspective that blames one party in a situation as wrong and the other as somehow unfairly victimized is very limited and distorted. On a soul level, you are agreeing to go through all of this too, so there must be a good reason for it. Given your inner conflict and turmoil about it all, it clearly holds powerful lessons for you personally.

All of this being said, I do understand how you feel. I had a similar experience with a woman I remembered having a very deep and troubled past life history with. I wanted us to do everything we could to make peace with each other and cultivate new love so that the next time we meet, we would have lots of good karma going in instead of repeating the same old patterns. She, however, demonstrated no interest whatsoever in working on our karma together. It became clear to me that I was far more troubled about the state of our relationship than she was, and perhaps there was great wisdom in simply letting it all go. Certainly it made no sense to insist on dancing with someone who clearly didn't want to dance with me. To my great surprise, I eventually realized that I had learned and grown more from her refusal to "love me" as I wanted to be loved than I would have from working on the relationship with her.

What did I learn? I learned that I can't always bend my spiritual path in the direction I think it should go. I learned to surrender with trust that everything happens for a good reason. I learned that I don't need anyone else to do anything in particular for me to feel better - that I can reach for a high vibration and cultivate love and joy in my heart all on my own. I learned to trust even more in the law of attraction, and to keep in mind that when relationships go against nature or a higher plan, it's like swimming upstream to try to keep them together. Perhaps most of all I learned that I don't have to get a certain person's love or approval to be happy and to love and approve of myself.

This is a really huge lesson to learn, for we all hunger for love, and we also tend to value the love of people who are hard to win over more than the love of the people who already adore us. We can thus spend lifetime after lifetime seeking the love of one particular individual obsessively, when deep down, what we really hunger for us a sense of wholeness and well-being in and of ourselves. All these relationships, soul agreements, soul contracts, karmic entanglements and the like are just dramas through which we work out the love within us and between us and the Divine, which means we can get what we need through an endless number of experiences. We don't need any particular individual to soar free and clear of old issues, wounds and hang-ups, for everything is ultimately about us and our own journey to Divine Grace.

I recommend you let go of making this guy so special in your mind and heart, and begin to look at all of this in a more general, symbolic way. What does this man symbolize for you? What are the lessons and issues you've been working out through this relationship? If you focus on those deeper personal issues, you can set yourself free of this drama and move on to new lessons and more fulfilling connections. Your own heart and soul determine the quality of your experiences far more than your history does; if you are at peace and full of love, you can soar free of old patterns to cultivate much higher levels of experience.

- Julia

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