Mapping and unravelling our soul contracts
Following the cracks of heartbreak toward a deeper sense of wholeness
For me, the darkness of the world (both inner and outer) tends to take shape like a dense, vast wave; and at times it’s weight and force threaten to pin me tightly to the ocean floor as it spins me around and around and around. It can feel as though I won’t catch my breath and the overwhelming nature of its vastness, and the ache of the way it wrenches apart my heart, will take hold of me in an inescapable grasp.
Until I decide that there is another way to breathe (and realize that I’ve never stopped);
until I choose to feel the depth of my roots which are anchored within the core of this beautiful Planet;
until I am open enough to feel the flow of kindness, joy, and the generous nature of the human spirit;
until I find my way back into the deepest depths of my heart and pause, rest, BE, there…
I cannot remember how to hold the light and the dark in both palms.
But when I do all of these things…I remember. And I return to the ease of such a way of being.
Drawing up the map
Have you ever heard of the concept of a soul contract? If you Google it, you’ll find plenty about it, and a wide variety of interpretations and “soul coaching” services to help you uncover yours…but that isn’t really where I learned or connected with the concept.
For me, it emerged internally, as a sense of self I connected with as I gained a deeper understanding of why I experienced certain patterns in my life and in myself. Many years ago when I began studying the realms of Archetypes, I dove deep into the work of Carline Myss and her writing and speaking about Sacred Contracts. It strung a chord of resonance within me that rippled backward and forward.
As I personally relate with the aspect of myself that has the clarity, a non-judgemental capacity to move through everything that happens in life in an “untriggerable-state” with unattached compassion and flow to be my soul, I associate my sacred contracts with my soul contracts. And as I experience them, it is essentially a service agreement you come into your life with – a theme or a pattern that has been jumbled into an extensive knot and you are tasked with its unravelling within the span of your life.
If you can discover it, and you work toward unravelling it within this lifetime, you hold the potential to break the pattern and restore flow within. If you deny it, disassociate from it, repress it or try any other method to avoid confronting it, the negative aspects of the pattern or theme will keep repeating throughout your life. It might show up in your work and the type of work you do, it might show up in your marriage/partnership, or your family and the types of relationships you form, it can really take any form or shape in any area of your life; but it will be consistent in its presence until you consciously acknowledge it.
If/when you can take a “3-D” view of your life, you can begin to see the forest through the trees.
Discovering the thru-lines that shape the landscape
Tracking and tracing patterns and themes throughout our lives can be an incredibly powerful way to know where to put your energy as you explore and integrate processes related to clearing trauma, healing wounds and severing unhealthy behaviors that do not serve the wellbeing of the whole (within the Whole Self and within the Whole World – recalling that what is in one, is in the whole).
Years ago, I discovered one of my soul contracts required me to work with consciously with heartbreak and the shadow side of humanity – particularly how it manifests in the way we make money and in our relationships with that which we love unconditionally. This contract relates deeply with my vocation and career.
First it manifested itself within the work I tended to as a child and young adult, working with horses that had experienced human-inflicted violence and trauma. Following the constant tug of love I had for the horses, I poured my heart into the resonant pull I felt to support them in a process of restoration of wholeness through kindred, quiet relationship.
Within the quiet spaces where the horses would relax and settle into relationship with me, I felt a sense of my being expanding beyond myself and an inter-relationality that defied all concepts of independence. My purpose, to be a good friend to horses, felt clear and endless with possibility. The more horses that I was able to work with and open this compassionate space for restoring a sense of trust and relationship with humans, the more clear it became that humans were ultimately the ones in need of “gentling”, “retraining” and restoration of wholeness - if there was any hope for those horses to maintain a restored inter-species connection.
The problem was the humans, and I couldn’t imagine how I, as an 18 year old young woman, could possibly change Them (us). It broke my heart to be so close to so many beloved beings that I couldn’t truly help. So, as I considered that I couldn’t “save" all the horses, I departed from my work with them and pursue another form of vocation.
The theme followed me though, and arose again within my corporate career. I had always been passionate about the environment and as I graduated early from college I was excited by the prospect that business could be used as a force for good when it came to environmental sustainability. Following my heart again toward a path rich with cross-cultural exchange, complex relational dynamics and the potential for influencing positive change in negative contexts, everywhere I looked within business I found a ripeness of possibility which excited an enlivened me as I felt myself expand into another shape of purpose. I truly felt I could build a bridge of friendship between business and the Earth whom I loved so deeply.
However, as I was led into the belly of our global economic beast in global supply chains, I was also exposed repeatedly and consistently to the damaging impacts of humans - particularly the violent treatment of humans and animals and horrendous environmental impacts - of the everyday products we make, buy and throw “away”.
The vastness of our global supply chains, the vastness of the sheer number of people who were unconscious of, or just didn’t care about, these impacts, the vastness of the damage already done in terms of environmental degradation and collective trauma, and the scale of the damage we were projected to do was so overwhelming.
Everywhere I looked it felt as though the work of repair would be endless, and that there were heavy, dense boulders before us and within us that we had no hope of clearing.
The pattern repeats
As with my work with the horses, within my corporate work I felt completely flattened by the fact that I could not “save the Earth” from the negative aspects of human nature, and so I left that work as well, retreating to the woods while walking along the Appalachian Trail for five months.
The pattern that was slowly revealing itself in the context of my vocation is that I would follow my heart to find my work, through the revelations of the shadow side of humanity, my work would break my heart, and then I would retreat from the work I loved because the heartbreak would overwhelm me.
“HEARTBREAK is unpreventable; the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control…
Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average life. Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity: in a love relationship, in a life’s work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is [an] essence and emblem of care… Heartbreak has its own way of inhabiting time and its own beautiful and trying patience in coming and going.”
David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
Extracting myself from the dysfunctional system of the corporate environment and global economy, and moving at the pace of nature for five months restored a sense of hope and possibility within me…however, a I remained unaware of the pattern relating to my work, and after this hike I returned to corporate work believing that if I focused on the positive changes business could do through sustainability and system change, I would make a difference.
It wasn’t until I was 30 years old that I became aware of the pattern - it was again in a moment when I was feeling the weight of the world was too heavy a burden to carry, one that I needed to put down the burden of our shadowy nature after years of working to improve business practices. Despite the tangible shifts I was seeing and perhaps even contributing to, we were still so far from radically shifting things.
As with the horses, I eventually saw the human as the problem yet again, and began to question how our efforts to make companies more sustainable could ever make any difference if the people managing them and the people buying products from them were not engaging in some aspect of conscious transformation?
Systems change is not possible without human change. But I was in the “business” of systems change, not human change/personal development, and this siloed reality began to make little sense.
Breaking the cycle in order to flow
As I retreated again from the corporate world, this time into the wild corners of southern Chile and the wild landscapes of my own heart, I began to nurture a deeper awareness of the invitation this particular soul contract was offering me.
If I didn’t want to continue repeating this pattern of following my heart toward a work I loved, only to leave it when the heartbreak overwhelmed me, than I needed to deepen my relationship with heartbreak, and learn how to allow the pain of the world, the pain of the shadow - all of the painful aspects of our human nature as individuals and as a collective - to flow through me (rather than remain stuck within me).
It was clear I couldn’t bear the burden of it all - and I wasn’t meant to.
I began to gather mentors, they found me through mysterious and synchronistic channels. Ancient mother trees that had witnessed and breathed with centuries of human development (and human violence). Courageous, gentle-hearted horses from the fiercely wild landscapes of southern Patagonia who had been trained and lived by the brutal hand of gauchos using traditional dominance-based approaches. Poets, mystics, writers speaking of the tangled and difficult essence of humanity that is both brilliant and tragic. My own soul, as I nurtured a lifestyle where it was more able to rise to the surface of my being, a life that offered more quiet spaciousness for listening.
And as I deepened my capacity to have my heart broken by whatever my work or life or self-exploration may reveal to me, I expanded my capacity to trust in the goodness of myself, and the goodness of my race.
“Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream… But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.
…. Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. It is an introduction to what we love and have loved, an inescapable and often beautiful question, something and someone that has been with us all along, asking us to be ready for the ultimate letting go.”
David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
Tracing my soul contract brought me to the confluence of these loves - where horses, the Earth, and the shadow side of humanity meet. This has taken shape as the river of love that flows through my ever-emergent work within CuraKuda.
As I follow the pull of my heart deeper into the realms where my collaboration with the horses weaves itself into these vastly dark and heavy landscapes of systems change and human change that requires us to work consciously with shadow, I find a sense of buoyancy and light carried forth by the courage, kindness, curiosity and fierce vulnerability of the human heart.
Leaning into these paths that have broken my heart, I find what David Whyte so beautiful speaks of - that the point is not to seek an alternative path, but instead, to surrender to the incredible depths of love that have led me to these paths, and allow this love mentor me in my readiness for the “ultimate letting go.”
What soul contracts have you uncovered within your own life?
I would love to hear if any have been revealed to you, and also learn of the pivotal moments of revelation when a 3-D perspective of your life shined light on them. Or perhaps this is an entirely new consideration and you have questions about the process of discovery and revelation…no matter what your experience, your contribution of thoughts and perspective and story are so welcome, so please share if you feel a pull or resonance.