 Each soul comes to the Earth with gifts. A soul incarnates not only to heal and to balance its energy, to pay its karmic debts, but also to contribute its specialness in specific ways. Each soul brings the particular configuration of the Life force that it is to the needs of the Earth school. It does this with purpose and intention.
Before it incarnates, each soul agrees to perform certain tasks upon the Earth. It enters into a sacred agreement with the Universe to accomplish specific goals. It enters into this commitment in the fullness of its being. That is why when a soul succeeds in accomplishing its goal, in fulfilling what it has agreed to do, there is a richness and a specialness to the lifetime of that personality that is recognized and honoured by its fellow souls, both physical and nonphysical.
Different kinds of task
Each soul takes upon itself a particular task. It may be the task of raising a family, or communicating ideas through writing, or transforming the consciousness of a community, such as the business community. It may be the task of awakening the awareness of the power of love at the level of nations, or even contributing directly to the evolution of consciousness on a global level. Whatever the task that your soul has agreed to, whatever its contract with the Universe, all of the experiences of your life serve to awaken within you the memory of that contract, and to prepare you to fulfil it.
Authentic empowerment
An unempowered personality cannot complete the task of its soul. It languishes in an inner sense of emptiness. It seeks to fill itself with external power, but that will not satisfy it. This sense of emptiness, or something missing, or of something wrong, cannot be healed by satisfying the wants of the personality. Gratifying needs that are based upon fear will not bring you to the touchstone of purpose. No matter how successful the personality becomes in accomplishing its goals, those goals will not be enough. Eventually it will hunger for the energy of its soul. Only when the personality begins to walk the path that its soul has chosen will it satisfy its hunger.
Authentic empowerment and the fulfilment of the soul's task upon the Earth, therefore, are not separate dynamics. Authentic empowerment is necessary to accomplish fully the mission of the soul, yet as you move into authentic empowerment, you move toward the fulfilment of your soul's agreement with the Universe, and as you move toward that fulfilment – as you move consciously toward the energy of your soul – you empower yourself. You and the work of your soul upon the Earth expand together. As one grows and develops, so does the other.
How we remember our soul’s task
When a soul incarnates, its memory of the agreement that it has made with the Universe becomes soft. It becomes dormant, awaiting the experiences that will activate it. These experiences are not necessarily experiences that the personality would choose. They are nonetheless necessary to the activation of the awareness of the power and the mission of the soul within the consciousness of the personality, and to its preparation for that task.
What does it feel like to remember your soul's task? When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what you are doing, when your activities and actions become gratifying and purposeful, when what you do serves both yourself and others, when you do not tire within but seek the sweet satisfaction of your life and your work, you are doing what you were meant to be doing. The personality that is engaged in the work of its soul is buoyant. It is not burdened with negativity. It does not fear. It experiences purposefulness and meaning. It delights in its work and in others. It is fulfilled and fulfilling.
Interactions with your parents, and with those whom you have chosen to share intimacy, and with those with whom – out of the billions of souls upon our planet – you share parts of your life, serve to activate within you an awareness of who you are and what you are here to do. The pains that you suffer, the loneliness that you encounter, the experiences that are disappointing or distressing, the addictions and seeming pitfalls of your life are each doorways to awareness. Each offers you an opportunity to see beyond the illusion that serves the balancing and growth of your soul.
Exorcising our own demons
Within each experience of pain or negativity is the opportunity to challenge the perception that lies behind it, the fear that lies behind it, and to choose to learn with wisdom. The fear will not vanish immediately, but it will disintegrate as you work with courage. When fear ceases to scare you, it cannot stay. When you choose to learn through wisdom, to evolve consciously, your fears surface one at a time in order for you to exorcise them with inner faith. That is how it happens. You exorcise your own demons.
Guides and Teachers
Your guides and Teachers continually offer you Light. They encourage you in each moment to your fullest growth and development, yet they cannot prevent you from your learning or your growing or your moving through your experiences and letting your experiences influence you. This is so even if you are able to communicate with them consciously and directly. Your experiences will move you right or left, and you will ask your Teacher this question or that. If you move left, your question will be entirely different than if you had moved right, and the reality that you open by that question will be entirely different.
There is no single optimal path for the soul. There are many optimal paths. With each choice you immediately create numerous paths within a choice, one of which is then optimal. In other words, the optimal path of your soul is the choice of awareness, the vertical path. Once you have made that choice, then come the various forms of enactment.
In what way, therefore, does nonphysical guidance serve you? It is a partnership of challenging you to come to terms with the full width and breadth and depth of authentic power and responsible choice. It is not that you give permission to be mindlessly manipulated. It is that you give permission to be shown the fullest of your power and guided to its use.
Getting out of our own way
When you depend entirely upon the ability of your personality to determine what is best for you, you may stand in the way of a richness that is waiting for you. How do you know what the Universe has waiting for you if you take off your restrictions? If you are determined to have your life unfold in a particular way, and none other – if you have your heart set on using your creativity only to accumulate money, for example - consider that you build your entire reality around that. The Universe cannot help you in the same way that it can if you are trusting of it, because it can neither overshadow nor penetrate your choice. Yet what if what you are doing is more appropriately regarded in a social sphere rather than an economic one? In other words, what if the enterprise that you seek to develop is more appropriately a way to an avenue that you have not yet recognized? It is now deadlocked because it cannot go down its appropriate path, for you have your hand on a door that you insist upon opening that will go nowhere.
Can you see? Let go of what you think is just reward. Let go. Trust. Create. Be who you are. The rest is up to your nonphysical Teachers and the Universe. Take your hands off the steering wheel. Be able to say to the Universe, ‘Thy will be done,’ and to know it within your intentions. Spend time in this thought. Consider what it means to say, ‘Thy will be done,’ and allow your life to go into the hands of the Universe completely. The final piece of reaching for authentic power is releasing your own to a higher form of wisdom.
A beautiful bond
Long before we, as a species, became aware that there is such a dimension as the realm of nonphysical guidance and Teachers, each human being was guided, and beautifully, by many nonphysical Teachers. Even though unseen by us, this guidance happened nonetheless in its perfection and in its balance. That is what is happening now. It is just that for the first time, as we become multisensory, we are aware of it, and can put names with nonphysical Teachers and have a sense of personal relationship with them, yet still it is that what you experience is always appropriate and will always move toward the greatest wisdom of your development and guidance.
Remind yourself that you are supported, that you are not going it alone upon this Earth. Dwell in the company of your nonphysical Teachers and guides. Do not discriminate in terms of what you can and should ask and speak about. Just assume and live in the beauty of the bond. Do not fear dependency. What is wrong with being dependent upon the Universe, whether that is your Teachers or Divine Intelligence? You do what you do for yourself and the Universe and your nonphysical Teachers and guides are there in assistance. They will never do it for you. It is not possible for them to do it for you. Delight in the dependency. Give your guides and Teachers permission to come closer.
When you ask for guidance and assistance, simply assume that it immediately is pouring forward. You may need to work a while to relax your mind into receptivity, or you may need to have lunch, or drive into town or do whatever it is that you need to do in order to relax your mind to hear or to feel, but live in the total assumption that the moment that you ask for guidance it is pouring in.
Trust
Try looking at life as a beautifully well organized dynamic. Trust the Universe. Trusting means that the circumstance that you are in is working toward your best and most appropriate end. There is no when to that. There is no if to that. It is. Release your specifications and say to the Universe: ‘Find me where you know I need to be.’ Let them go and trust that the Universe will provide, and so it shall. Let go of all. Let your higher self complete its task.
From The Seat of the Soul, © 1990 by Gary Zukav, published in the UK by Rider.
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