Your Spiritual Authority

The belief in “sacred contracts” or “soul agreements” is widespread within the New Thought movement. In her book, Sacred Contracts, bestselling author, lecturer and workshop facilitator, Caroline Myss, explores the idea that our lives are guided by a contract that our soul makes prior to incarnation. She says that this contract affects every aspect of our life experience. Myss asserts that this concept is an ancient one which is supported in the writing of Plato. In the final book of his work The Republic, Plato relates the Myth of Er about a man who experiences this realm between death and rebirth.

In his book, The Little Soul and the Sun, Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God, tells the story of a little soul who realizes that he is “the light” and then chooses to be incarnated in the physical in order to experience being forgiveness. He makes a pact with another soul who agrees to come to Earth to be with him and help him experience what it means to be forgiveness. The other soul’s only request of the little soul is that he always remembers who he really is no matter what he may do in order to facilitate the little soul’s learning.

I honestly don’t know whether this ideology is true. I have heard it from the time I began exploring New Thought, and many people subscribe to it. It certainly offers the potential to help us feel better about our life experiences when they are less than ideal. If we believe that, from an expanded awareness, we chose our life lessons including our closest relationships, we might approach life with greater understanding and compassion for ourselves and others. However, it also offers the potential for engaging in what we lovingly call “spiritual bypass.”

We engage in “spiritual bypass” when we use spiritual practices or beliefs to avoid facing painful or scary situations from our past or in our present. Rather than learning from, or growing through them, we reply on our belief in spiritual teaching to help us understand and feel better about our life experiences.

Author and Unity Institute faculty member, Robert Brument, in his book, Living Originally, refers to these spiritual teachings as “translational.” He says that translational spiritual teachings “often provide a source of comfort and consolation amid the difficulties of life.” These types of teachings have become prominent in the New Thought movement.

Brumet further states that while translational teachings can be helpful, “complete freedom, unconditional peace of mind, and the experience of a deeper reality” can only be realized as we embrace transformational teachings which challenge our perspective of reality.

It is my hope and my intention that rather than relying on translational teaching, we are instead choosing to go deeper and explore transformational teaching. It is my desire for us to come together and engage in spiritual practices that, as our mission statement says, “Inspire spiritual awakening and personal transformation.”

In order to do so, we must be willing to grow in spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is a process through which we increase our understanding of and capacity to embody, express and use our spiritual faculties, thereby claiming our spiritual authority.

I am not suggesting that we are in control of everything that happens in our lives. We are not. I am also not suggesting that we can undo past experiences. We cannot. Nor am I suggesting that we deny that painful experiences occurred. They did.

I am suggesting, however, that we are in authority over everything that happen in our lives. We have the power to decide how we will perceive and interpret events and how we will respond to them. We have dominion over what we believe about ourselves and others. We have the power to choose how we will treat ourselves and others.

It may be true that we execute “sacred contracts” on a soul level before taking on these human forms. It may also be true that every aspect of our lives is affected by the contracts we make. I don’t claim to know.

I do know that regardless of the agreements we may have made, it is essential that we do not use this teaching to abdicate our responsibility to respond to life as it happens now. In order for us to truly transform our lives, we must realize that the full power of God is present and available to us right here and now. We must claim our spiritual authority in order to demonstrate it.

As we claim our spiritual authority and live it, our lives are transformed.

Please join us on Sunday for our 10:00 service as we explore more about claiming “Your Spiritual Authority.”