Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential [Paperback]

Caroline Myss (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 28, 2003

New York Times bestselling author and medical intuitive Caroline Myss has found that when people don’t understand their purpose in life the result can be depression, anxiety, fatigue, and eventually physical illness—in short, a spiritual malaise of epidemic proportions. Myss’s experience of working with people led her to develop an insightful and ingenious process for deciphering your own Sacred Contract—or higher purpose—using a new theory of archetypes that builds on the works of Jung, Plato, and many other contemporary thinkers.

Myss examines the lives of the spiritual masters and prophets—Abraham, Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad—whose archetypal journeys illustrate the four stages of a Sacred Contract and provide clues for discovering your own. Myss explains how you can identify your particular spiritual energies, or archetypes—the gatekeepers of your higher purpose—and use them to help you find out what you are here on earth to learn and whom you are meant to meet. Exploring your Sacred Contract will shine a light on the purpose and meaning of your life. You are meant to do certain tasks, you are meant to have certain relationships.

In coming to know your archetypal companions, you also begin to see how to live your life in ways that make the best use of your personal power and lead you to fulfill your greatest—in fact, your divine—potential.

Both visionary and practical, Sacred Contracts is a bold, powerful work of spiritual wisdom. Without a doubt, your most intriguing challenge in life is to recognize your spiritual commitments and live them to the fullest.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

We all come into this world with "Sacred Contracts," according to bestselling author Caroline Myss. Some know it as a calling. Some see it as a life mission. "In short, a Sacred Contract is an agreement your soul makes before you are born," Myss explains. "You promise to do certain things for yourself, for others, and for divine purposes. Part of the Contract requires that you discover what you are meant to do." Herein lies the rub. Decoding our Sacred Contract requires us to become fluent in the language of symbols and archetypes so that we can interpret dreams, understand the meaning behind "coincidences," and learn to follow our intuition. This is why Myss (The Anatomy of the Spirit) offers an extensive lesson on helping readers recognize their personal archetypes (we have about 12 of them), such as the Avenger (righteous activists), Networker (journalists, messengers), or Prostitute (someone who "sells out" easily). Myss then goes on to help readers create their own "Chart of Origin" (which profiles your "spiritual DNA"), using the teachings of the chakras and astrology. Part science, part ancient tradition, part magic, this book will gratify readers who are prepared to study the fine print of their Sacred Contracts. --Gail Hudson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

As incongruous as it may seem at first glance to her legions of fans, Myss, a popular intuitive healer and teacher, and the bestselling author of Anatomy of the Spirit, thinks it makes perfect sense to describe her approach to spirituality as that of an archetypal "Saboteur." After all, it takes a thief to catch a thief, she explains in her latest work. In her workshops and readings, she goes "on a search and destroy mission to find my students' spiritual panic.... Deep in the unconscious, our spiritual potential lies in wait for us to release it. Sometimes you will have to blow things out of your own way to get to it." Here, Myss offers her readers a new system for blowing away pedestrian notions of their purpose on the planet. She espouses the ancient notion that our souls enter into a kind of contract before birth that we agree to have various human experiences and even (in Myss's version) to encounter certain people in order to learn lessons. The author includes a technique for arriving at 12 archetypes that rule different areas of our life from career to sex to our highest aspirations. While each of us is controlled in different ways by four "survival" archetypes Child, Victim, Prostitute, Saboteur the other archetypes that flavor our relations to the world are up to us and as richly different as Vampire and Messiah. One value of Myss's ingenious system is that, like the I Ching, it teaches readers to use symbols not as one-dimensional descriptions but as a call to reflection and imagination and a means to see ourselves in a greater light. 18-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 442 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (January 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609810111
• ISBN-13: 978-0609810118
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (152 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,097 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #35 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > New Age > Mental & Spiritual Healing

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

695 of 717 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Multiple Mirrors to See Your Soul and Its Commitments! December 30, 2001

By Donald Mitchell HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio Cassette

Sacred Contracts engages you in an extensive, self-exploring expedition to unearth the core ingredients of your unique, spiritual identity. Because there are so many assignments to do in the book and it is so detailed, I suggest you get the hardcover version rather than one of the audio versions.

Of all the many books I have read about finding and following the dictates of your own true self, Sacred Contracts is by far the most unusual and detailed. The author calls upon major religious traditions, Eastern ideas about energy centers in the body, Jungian psychological archetypes, and astrology among other sources as context for seeing yourself as unique. Although few of these references are ones that I relate to very often, I was impressed by the way that they centered my focus by helping me see what life roles are not important in my life, as the contrast for seeing what is important. In my past experience with increasing self-understanding, the focus was on what was important. Cutting away the unimportant makes those important areas stand out much more clearly.

This is a book that can help you learn for the rest of your life. Unlike many books that are aimed at helping you find "the answer" and then getting you off working with "the answer," Sacred Contracts is designed to help with new challenges and issues in the future . . . as well as the ones you have today.

I found myself particularly enriched by reviewing the very long list of potential archetypes that are developed in the book. These are explained by stories of individuals, references to popular books and movies, and examples of how one archetype differs from other, similar ones. As a result, the archetypes and my own reactions to them came into much clearer focus in my mind. When I had read about these in Joseph Campbell's work, I often found them to be distant. Here, they are immediate.

Sacred Contracts focuses on "what is our mission in life?" This includes both "where am I going?" and "who will go with me?" The answer is unique for each person to each of these questions. A sacred contract is "your overall relationship to your personal . . . and spiritual power." The contract is "a plan to help you develop your divine potential." This is to fulfill "an agreement your soul makes before you are born." As I read these concepts, I found them to be most closely identified in my mind with the beliefs of Buddhism as they relate to the reincarnated soul. The author takes care to show that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam also contain these points of view.

The book contains a lot of material to help you absorb the context of these perspectives. In that sense, I felt a little like I was reading a condensed version of The Golden Bough.

After you understand the archetypes and their manifestations, you are directed how to engage in an extensive mental dialogue with and write about the positive and negative forms of each important archetype for you. These will include the four universal ones (child, victim, compromised person, and saboteur) as well as your selection from dozens of others for the ones that seem most important to you (such as addict, angel, bully, gambler, Midas, poet, and thief). For example, you will ask, "Why did I choose this archetype?" "In what way do I feel the archetype serves my Contracts with other people?"

The focus of all this remains on keeping "your attention on reaching your highest potential." To do this, you must "surrender to self."

Most people will find the list of what to think about and the exercises to do to be a bit intimidating. I certainly did. The work is based on a successful seminar that the author has been developing over many years. So it is intended to take quite a bit of time to do and implement. I suggest that you find blocks of time of at least two hours in length to work on these assignments when you will not be disturbed. If you are single, you might go someplace where you can be alone but see the splendor of nature. If you live with your family, early morning or late at night would probably be the best time . . . while others are at rest. Naturally, if you like what you read here, you could also consider doing a seminar with the author. I'm assuming that that is much more expensive than working with this book on your own. Some people might find it helpful to find someone to do this with, so that you share your results with one another. This could help provide the discipline to keep working on discovering your sacred contracts.

May you fulfill your highest purpose in ways that bring great joy and benefit to you and all whom you meet! God bless you.

106 of 109 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Immense achievement ... archetypes and divinity January 7, 2002

By Sylvia Hawley

Format:Hardcover

Maybe it's just me, but I'm finding this book the most fun in the author's library of excellence. Sacred Contracts is an immense accomplishment, well written, with admirable scholarship and clarity. Myss addresses the roots of archetypal thinking, most especially in Plato and Carl Jung. She adds her own, unprecedented, contribution and details her history, as a medical intuitive and psychic, of working with the archetypes. She offers solid definitions, a fascinating list in the appendix, of archetypes, and provides workshop techniques for learning consciously with the guidance of archetypes.

I don't want to define archetype because she does it so well. Suffice me to say that these are, as in Jung's view, energy bundles of symbolic qualities that live in the collective unconscious and offer guidance to human beings through various life challenges. Jung defines archetypes such as the Shadow, Trickster, Child, and Mother. Myss adds a few hundred more and suggest that we all have four in common and eight electives, 12 archetypes for each lifetime, a zodiac of chosen lessons, challenges, and life adventures.

Myss suggests that these archetypes, universal and personal, can be discovered as a way to consciously work with the commitments we make (our sacred contracts) before entering each lifetime. That we've made promises to ourself and God, come to life, and then forget what we intended to do is not a new idea. It is well detailed in works of Sylvia Browne and in many ancient texts. Myss explains that when doing medical intuitive readings for people she began seeing the symbols for universal and personal archetypes in the energy field of people getting readings.

In this book, she shares this gift and tells us how to find out what our own Sacred Contracts are through discovering our archetypes, and, o yes, interviewing them ... by having a dialog with these energy bundles, we learn our divine intentions and can work with our challenges, setbacks, and opportunities to fulfil our divine purposes.

This book is good enough, rare enough, and a stunning achievement to own it in hardback. For those who cannot, and cannot wait, there is the library ...

I know this is a work of solemn importance but that doesn't keep it from being great fun ... getting acquainted with the archetypes is a little bit like a class reunion ... sounds impossible ... try it ! It's fun.

105 of 110 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars mixed feelings April 19, 2005

By Samantha L. Gibbon

Format:Hardcover

Well, straight out I will admit that I am only half-way through this book, but already, I feel really bogged down, and slightly confused.

Ms. Myss seems to take a rather overly authoritative tone in this book, as she mixes Jungian psychology, Eastern religions and divination, all in an attempt to convince her readers that through her guidance they can come to know the destinies chosen for them before their birth, their "Sacred Contracts".

I feel that the author tends to over simplify the concepts of destiny, and pre-destination, as well as the nature of evil, and does so through a rather verbose, and strangely vague text. I think that my eyes were really opened when I visited Ms. Myss' website and read the answers she had given to questions by her readers. Her arrogant attitude and insistance that her way is the only way, left a sour taste in my mouth, I must say. Many asked questions such as, "I can't narrow my personality down to only 8 archtypes, no matter how hard I try," and, "You insist that there are four archtypes that everyone has, no matter what. I don't feel that I have all of these." These questions were met with the insistance that there were only 8 archtypes, and that everyone has the four, no matter what. Ms. Myss makes her "theory" sound like it is academically proven fact, which it is absolutely not. I'm not sure that even Jung would agree to the way that his concepts of the archtype have been used in this book.

In summary, I am not sure that I will finish reading the book. I want to, just to see if there is something that I am missing closer to the end, but from many of the reviews that I have read here, I'm not so sure it's worth it. I suggest taking the book out from the library before you purchase it. Some may like the authoritative tone, and complex theories of the book. I did not.