This is the first of a series of monthly articles that I will be contributing to Lightworker. It is indeed a blessing and an honor for me to work with Steve and Barbara in this way! I welcome questions and comments, as well as suggestions for what you would like to have addressed in this offering. Feel free to email me at www.jeanadrienne.com!

The whole concept of soul contracts got in my face when I reviewed my recent journey to France. I traveled with 140 spiritual people on a metaphysical tour. I never believe anything happens by accident; there is always an underlying purpose. It’s just that most of the time we are so caught up in our daily lives that we don’t take the time to analyze an occurrence long enough to figure out what the underlying purpose might be. Too much happened on this trip for there to have been any chance that this wasn’t the case, so I began on the plane back to the USA journaling, meditating and attempting to figure out just what this trip was all about!

My lifelong quest has been to know and understand the “TRUTH”, what ever that means. It’s been my journey for the last 15 or 20 years actually – my personal quest for the Holy Grail. Along the way I have had so many interesting adventures that I could write a column on each and never run out of topics!

And so it was with this particular adventure! Any time you mix 140 people from different backgrounds and lifestyles, regardless of whether the mixture is of a spiritual nature or not, you are bound to have opportunities for what I like to call “mortal moments” with personal opportunities for conflict and growth. And, what one should do when having a “mortal moment”? Stand very still and do absolutely NOTHING!! On a tour with a schedule, that just wasn’t an option!

We all chose that trip – we elected to come together, but we probably forgot about the “setup” and we might not actually have chosen to do it if we had remembered consciously that this journey was probably about going back and changing karmic debt from lifetimes ago! It’s a scary thought, but I think that is exactly what it was! It will take time for me to fully process through it all, and I am only just beginning, but I have learned enough so far that I have to share my ideas so that you might see how it is possible to get clarity for yourself when similar options come up in your life. These are times for great leaps of consciousness if we choose to actually jump into them. DO IT with gusto!

Situational Deprogramming is similar to what we learned in grammar school language class where we were taught how to diagram sentences – it’s logical and quite simple actually!

1. First sketch out the situation that punched you up. Just a phrase describing a brief blush of what occurred is really all you need. For example – “this person was pushing their belief on me. I didn’t agree with what they were saying, didn’t resonate with it as truth. I was also observing another individual at the breakfast table and felt that that person might be having incorrect data thrown at them as fact, and might not have enough background information to be able to discern truth from fiction.
2.  How did you FEEL and how did you REACT to what happened? At first, I felt defensive, argumentative even. This quickly moved to a realization that the “antagonist” (for want of a better title) couldn’t hear my point any more than I was able to hear theirs. We were at a standoff. I felt suffocated, and I had to leave the situation.
3.  What Universal Laws can you perceive to be at work in this? First and most obvious is the Law of Non-Interference. We are not supposed to interfere in the path of another. The antagonist was trying to force me to believe something I knew in my heart not to be truth. I was interfering with the other person who was listening to the interplay between the antagonist and me.

Non-Interference works both ways! The antagonist violated it, but so did I. I felt I had to protect the “innocent” 3^rd party, thereby judging this person to be a “victim”, so the 2nd law that comes into play is the Law of No Judgments. Here have a perfect example developing of the Triangle of Fear and Control – a persecutor, a victim and a rescuer! This is a great segue into the next step of diagramming this situation out because this scenario means that we are out of present time and into either the past or the future.

4. When has this played out before for me (and how many times?) What is the lesson that is meant to be learned? Here is where the rubber meets the road! Many times this isn’t intuitively obvious and might require meditation and processing to actually get down to the truth – and the truth might have many – or several- layers. Maybe the more layers you find through this analysis process the fewer times you will have to deal with this issue again. I have a theory that these lessons are presented to us over and over, and each time we miss the point, the stakes get higher and the lesson gets more painful.

This was a big lesson for me and it did have many layers. On the surface, I have realized over time that I tend to attract “master manipulators” into my life to help me to learn my primary life lesson – that of defining my boundaries. The first and best of these was my own mother. I didn’t get it then, so I have had many more of these folks wander through my life to help me. It’s a Matrix lesson as defined by Steve and The Group in his book, Spiritual Psychology. I am wired this way. This lesson is never going to go away, but as I master it I learn to recognize these master manipulators more quickly. Hence the reaction, “talk to the hand!”  This is why I had to distance myself from that situation. It is the easiest way for me to define my boundaries when I am feeling threatened or invaded. But, resolution can’t come until there is no further charge, no resentment, around this issue.

The second aspect to this situation was my need to interfere and protect. What was THAT all about? It was probably part of my definition lesson as well – my boundaries weren’t strong enough to know what was mine and what belonged to the other individual. It wasn’t my lesson and by fighting that person’s battle as well as judging them as unable to fight it themselves, I violated the Law of Non-Interference. I even judged that individual as not being wise enough to figure out what was happening to them. I was totally wrong on that point too!

This covers the “this lifetime” part of the lesson. What about other occurrences? It just so happens that our group was headed to the land of the Cathars, right into a brutal example of religious persecution which ended with the bloody massacre of over 200 people. But that wasn’t the only pot of “stuff” we were riding into. We were also going to the seat of the persecution of the Knights Templar as well, the murder of hundreds on Friday the 13^th by the Church and the Crown. Persecution for power. Persecution for money. As the group left Paris and flew south to this region I started to become ill. Not just a little bit ill, but I developed a full-blown sinus infection – bad pain on the right side of my face, right ear and throat and a raging fever! Irritation at the male aspect and burning anger if you follow the teachings of Louise Hay… It didn’t start to let up until I left the area and acknowledged what was going on. The 3^rd piece of this puzzle and my own grail quest was the side trip we took to Rennes Le Chateau and the search for the truth about the nature of the relationship of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. This trip for me was truly Holy Blood / Holy Grail! And the 3^rd piece of my lesson in boundaries was that I forgot one of my big axioms, “my body is not the battlefield!” I absolutely allowed this war against repression to play out in my head – literally and physically! Until I decided that “enough was enough! I get it!”

   5.      What do we do now to ensure that we don’t continue to play this lesson out? First, you have to GET it! This tool of diagramming will help you there, but you have to clear away the charge from it – the “forgive and release” part.  For the “this lifetime” layer, that is fairly straightforward, although not necessarily easy. You must just realize that the antagonist is a mere mortal, like you or me, see their intrinsic nature, their God self. You must acknowledge that you created the situation to heal the part of yourself that they are mirroring for you, forgive and release. If you can get to the other layers, forgiving and releasing is what is required there as well.

I have no clue as to what part I played in the other life scenarios. I could do a bunch of InnerSpeak sessions on each of them – finding them all and letting them go one by one, or I could just do one session with the intent of clearing them all. That is what I chose to do. It was an ancestral thing, and I let it go at that. As soon as I did, I began the physical healing part as well. So what if I was one of the martyrs or one of the persecutors. Maybe I was the one who signed the death warrant of the Templars, or maybe I was just an innocent bystander who was duped into participating in the massacre. Maybe I just didn’t know enough, or wasn’t smart enough to be able to discern truth from falsehood and got swayed into following the wrong cause. It doesn’t matter. I chose to forgive all aspects, in all times and let it go, once and for all! It is done! It is done! It is DONE!

Bottom line – great trip! I learned a lot, but I will think long and hard before choosing to journey with such a large group again because I am not sure that I personally want to learn my lessons in such an expensive manner going forward! Remember, my mantra is “If it is easy for me it is right for me!”

What did I gain from this experience?

CLARITY – I now see clearly what I want to do with my life. My picture frame has expanded. I have gained a new tool to assist myself and others in moving more quickly through our life lessons in order to grow our consciousness.

RELEASE FROM FEAR – I am no longer afraid to express my inner feelings. In fact I want to shout them from the rooftops! I have nothing to fear. Nothing can hold me back. I am free to manifest the destiny I desire and deserve.

FREEDOM – I am now free from the constraints of the past. All the old paradigms that were never appropriate are now gone. The archetypal beliefs I have been wearing like vintage clothes burned on the pyre at Montsegur. All that matters is the here and now.

PAIN IS GONE – All the places where I have stored pain in my body are now free from it! It’s amazing! My body is youthing at an incredible rate, healing itself from the inside out and re-shaping itself to its own Divine blueprint. My energy level is through the roof. There is nothing I can’t do.

Many years ago, when I was doing post-graduate work though the University of the South’s Education For Ministry program, we used a tool called Theological Reflection. It worked in much the same way. A student would bring to class a topic or event to dissect and we would pick it apart to see “where was God in all this”

As my understanding of God has grown in the 15 or so years since that time, I now realize that the question really is – “where is God in all of this!” The answer has never changed. God is right in the middle – holding me up, raising me up, lighting my path, pushing me to greater and greater expressions of the facets of the Divine that are uniquely mine alone to display. Without Divine guidance and intervention, I would be stuck in the Dark Ages of my soul, asleep at the wheel driving aimlessly to nowhere in particular.

One of the lessons I have learned through my studies is that evil, or negative aspects which look like evil that we find in these lesson teaching situations doesn’t come from God or Cosmic Consciousness, but rather from our own free will. God is never accountable for what we choose to do – good, bad or indifferent. This is the planet of free choice – the game board we elected to play on to help ourselves to Re-Member who we really are and why we are here.

This is the challenge that faces each of us: wake up to our unique power or give it away and sleep through the most awesome and exciting time that has ever been. What are you going to do??