Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential

by Caroline Myss

Book Overview

As a medical intuitive, Myss has found that people often don't understand their purpose in life. To help people find this purpose, she has developed a process for deciphering one's own contract using a theory of archetypes that builds on the work of Jung, Plato, and contemporary thinkers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609810111
• ISBN13: 9780609810118
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

This book was listed as good condition.

Book was worn and corner of spine torn off. Written all over including margins, highlighted and comments penned in. Unable to enjoy material.

Sacred Contracts is a brilliant!

Sacred Contracts is a brilliant synthesis of spiritual insight and psychology. Presumably based on the author's well known workshops of the same name. Sacred Contracts takes Jung's concept of archetypes beyond anything Jung himself might have imagined and brings the notion squarely into the 21st century. The author developed an enjoyable and ingenious process for deciphering your own Contract using a new theory of archetypes that builds on the works of Jung, Plato, and contemporary thinkers. This book is genuinely transformative in understanding the why and what of your inner self. I bought the audio version after reading the written version. Really use both. When I work I use Neurosync behavior modification software to make other improvements. I enjoy self improvement and self enlightenment and I highly recommend both the book and audio versions.

Immense achievement ... archetypes and divinity

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.

A Seekers Guide to the Soul

"Sacred Contracts" is a textbook, a workbook, a seekers guide to the soul. Rich with stories and anecdotes, it moves easily from information to example. Questions are anticipated, answers are provided. Concepts move from the cosmic level to the practical; theory to practice. Information for today; guidance for tomorrow. Exercises for self-discovery are thorough; instructions clear and precise. On the subject of "Sacred Contracts," Dr. Myss' says "...my belief (is) that our life is laid out in steps and stages arranged in such a way that we always have the opportunity for spiritual transformation..." She goes on, "Your Sacred Contract allows you countless chances to grow and change, dependent only on your willingness to pick up subtle clues and cues that appear along the way." (p.39)After exploring all the components of a Sacred Contract, Dr. Myss provides a set of tools to uncover the "clues and cues" that lead us in the direction of our own Sacred Contract. She gives examples of how others have used these tools to gain a deeper appreciation of the meaning of their life, their Contract. Dr. Myss' even uses herself as an example, explaining both her Contract and how it plays out through various experiences of her life. "Sacred Contracts" is both the icing AND the cake. It is far more than I imagined.

Multiple Mirrors to See Your Soul and Its Commitments!

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