Soul Cycles and Soul Contracts
There are chapters in every human life when a stage of our journey ends and a new one begins. These may be marked by the beginning or ending of a significant relationship; by a move to a new neighbourhood or country; by a new stage or form of work; by the onset or healing of an illness; or by a significant spiritual awakening, for example.
Then there are Soul Cycles. These may be identified by the first stirrings of awakening or by common transition points such as the Saturn Return, around 28 years, or the Uranus opposition or midlife crisis around the age of 42.
I believe, at this moment, we are at the ending and beginning of a collective Soul Cycle. Many of us – and I doubt you’d be here reading this if this didn’t include you – have been on a conscious spiritual path for decades, or life times. In the 7 decades of my lifetime there has been growing cultural support for making the hidden, inner life of the Soul Journey conscious. Some of us have been pioneers, diving deep into our often confusing experiences to find meaning and then sharing what we’ve discovered to create a common language. The process of coming to understand ourselves as spiritual beings having a human experience is accelerating markedly now at this crisis point in human destiny.
If you can identify with what I’m saying you’ll know the Soul Journey has been a long process which has included moments of illumination, realisation and deep soul remembering, followed by deep healing. As you’ve committed to stripping away the layers of cultural conditioning you have discovered who you truly are. You may have discovered that following intuition and taking risks to step into the unknown can result in an immensely exhilarating and deeply challenging adventure. As you’ve aligned more and more with your higher values and purpose you have been willing to do the humbling work of dis-identifying from ego. When you’re highly motivated to be all you can be and to make your best contribution you gladly undertake to use every opportunity to upgrade and fine hone your skills. You’ve come to know that the Soul Journey is a story that has to be lived before it can be understood and there are many paths to Truth.
Crossing the Great Water
Now, you and I are arriving at the gateway to a new stage of consciousness. We have, to use a metaphor from the I-Ching, Crossed the Great Water. And we are landing on a new shore that, I for one, was never really sure I would reach in this lifetime.
I have been sharing this experience of homecoming with others and, people are nodding and saying, yes, me too. So let me make this a bit more concrete by describing how this adventure of Crossing the Great Water and arriving on a new shore has been playing out in my life.
I could go way back, but I’ll start in April 2015 when I decided to leave New Zealand where I had made my home for the last twenty years. I returned to the UK to support my brother who was going through a difficult transition following the death of his partner. That was the end of a life chapter and the beginning of a new one for me. I knew deep down I would not be going back to live in NZ but I hadn’t yet made that decision consciously and of course I had no idea how it was all going to unfold. On the way back to the UK, I stopped off in Virginia USA for a beautiful visit with my soul friend, Woods. That was the last time I ever saw him as he died at the end of that year. And then, six months later, my brother died too, having accomplished a transition which was very challenging for him – to step out of a life of compromise and follow his dream.
By serendipity I came to live in North Wales in a little cottage with spectacular views and deep peace. I thought I would only be here for a few months yet three and a half years later here I am. This cottage has provided a sanctuary in which I can focus on the two things that are most important to me – spiritual and creative freedom. Back when I was going through my Uranus opposition (aged 42) I made a soul choice to follow my creative process wherever it would lead me. That was a bold choice and Soul has led me on some fabulous adventures and, in these last few years into deep healing.
Grieving and Deep Healing
My brother was my last family member and as I grieved him I also grieved my whole family. I grieved the loss of them and the fact that I never really had them when they were alive. I grieved for my suffering within the family and for their suffering too. As I did so, I was able to reach a place of forgiveness and compassion for my father who died in 2011. His tyranny in the family traumatised and negatively impacted my mother, my brother and myself. I had done my best to find peace with him while he was alive, including two lengthy visits to take care of him after my Mum died. Although the visits were valuable I fell short of my own wishes to clear all accumulated familial pain in one overflowing of forgiveness. Now, in this recent healing process, I dug deep down into ancestral roots to understand how my father had been formed and how trapped he had been in his own conditioning, and his father before him, and back and back. I came to understand that the grieving and healing I was undertaking was not only personal but transpersonal. By being willing to sit here alone on a hill, cocooned in the Welsh mists, feeling deeply, transmuting my own suffering, and discovering the gifts within it, I was contributing to a collective healing process.
Caught in a Groundhog Day
And yet, the healing seemed to go on and on. It wasn’t new to me, I started to train as a Gestalt therapist back in the early ‘80’s, at the same time I began to connect with Soul, and I’ve been on a healing journey ever since. But this last phase was particularly intense. I seemed to be going round and round the same old patterns in some perpetual Groundhog Day until I got to wondering if it would ever end. I began to think maybe I was stuck in the birth canal or in some unhealthy misunderstanding. Maybe it was necessary to get so disillusioned and weary that in the end I simply let go.
I also noticed I was swinging between the experiences of expansion and contraction daily. One day I would feel light, peaceful, fulfilled and inspired and then the next day I contracted back into the grips of limitation and suffering. This pattern had been happening for some time but now it intensified. I began an inquiry into how I could stay in the more expanded state as a daily reality. I understand it to be a choice and a series of many small choices made every day. I created some learning programmes and invited others into the inquiry and we explored, experimented and practiced together. Sharing our unique yet common experiences of being on this journey was immensely encouraging and uplifting, I think it’s true to say, for everyone in each group.
I was doing a lot of writing and creative work alongside the healing and a year ago I began writing a new book. The writing gave me both a conceptual framework and confirmed my inner knowing that a completely new and higher stage of consciousness is opening up now for humanity. Some people call it integral, holistic or unity consciousness, some call it 5D. I call it Whole Mind Whole World. I’ve been experiencing, feeling into and writing about this new consciousness for the last fifteen years, now with this book I came into a much clearer seeing of the map of human consciousness. Through the writing I traced some of the significant events and people who contributed to the birthing of this consciousness within me.
The Darkest Hour
And yet, despite the encouragement and the excitement of doing the creative work I’m passionate about, over the summer I reached a place of deep weariness and “what’s the point?” I felt I would never free myself from the cycles of suffering and the shadow side of human nature. I was committed to getting to know human-ness through and through and to welcome all aspects into the community of my being. Yet, as the chaos and crisis on the planet deepened, I was being shown states of human corruption and ignorance that sickened me and made me feel quite hopeless about the human condition and our future. In the light of all this I began to question the value and truth of what I have to offer others. I was in the darkest part of the creative cycle and I could identify with how a neonate might feel just before birth – my feelings about being here on Earth were deeply conflicted. I had expended so much energy getting this far, I didn’t know if I had the desire or the will to move through the birth canal and reinvent myself once more. I felt I was at a choice point – did I want to live or to leave my physical body and the planet?
Approaching the Doorway to the New
And then, in early September everything changed. Nothing in particular happened to tip the balance as far as I’m aware, it was just another ordinary day. My being relaxed and lightened up, I experienced a letting go. I had that anticipatory feeling of “schools out for summer”. I put aside my focused work and took off on a trip across country to visit my evolutionary co-conspirator, Maggie. We entered into a process of inquiry together that I have called, Pausing at the Portal.
It seemed to me that I had the opportunity now to go through a doorway, not just into a new chapter, but into a whole new Soul Cycle. And that being the choice, then I wanted to go through as clearly and consciously as I possibly can. It appears to me that if this truly is a new Soul Cycle and an entry into holistic, unity consciousness, then I don’t want to take with me any of the old limiting conditioning, I want to be as free as I can possibly be. The intense healing process I’ve been through in the last three years has been a closet cleaning, an opportunity to shed old limitations and untangle from old unconscious patterns. And I’ve been doing this, not just for me, but as a contribution to healing and uplifting the collective consciousness. This was work I agreed to do at a soul level as part of my last Soul Contract. As I got more into the process of healing and letting go, I realised with huge excitement that I don’t have to wait until I die to renegotiate my Soul Contract. I can do so now. Even that deepest part of my identity is up for revision and redefinition. And as soon as I got to that point I was so excited any resistance I’d had to moving through the birth canal evaporated. With a much clearer sense of who I am and why I’m here and what I have to offer than ever before, I stepped through the portal into a new Soul Cycle with joy, peace, love and overflowing gratitude in my heart.
Pausing at the Portal
I have found this process of pausing, reflecting back on the last ten years from a soul perspective, harvesting the fruits of experience, and consciously stepping forward, immensely liberating and enlightening. I have just taken a first group through Pausing at the Portal and I would love to share it with those of you who resonate with what I’m saying and who feel it could support you in your conscious forward movement.
A vital aspect of the new consciousness is the realisation that nothing is personal, that we are each an embodiment of spiritual being having a human experience at this particular moment of humanity’s development of consciousness and culture. Coming together in transformational learning groups and communities to find a language to express and share our inner world journeys helps to create a common language and shared understandings that map the territory and lay conscious tracks into the future. This is what I’m committed to. Will you join me?
Your Next Steps
As a next step, for those of you who are part of the Tribe in Transition facebook community, I would love to meet you for a Soul Sanctuary Conversation to explore what I’ve written here. This conversation will take place on Monday October 28th at 4.00 pm BST. To join the community please go here and then friend me on facebook.
I am offering two new groups for Pausing at the Portal, beginning the week of November 4th. One group will meet on Monday /Nov 4th/ 11th/ 18th at 4pm GMT. The other will meet on Thursday 31st/ November 7th/ November 14th at 7.30pm GMT. For this later group priority will be given to people from the southern hemisphere. Go here for more information and to book
Rose Diamond
Great Blog post ~ Thanks you Rose