What’s your Soul contract? Find out why people come into your life?

Transcript generated by AI:

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:23

Welcome to the Shadow and the Light podcast with internationally renowned meditation teacher, davidji.

davidji: 0:29

And heart healer and psychotherapist Elizabeth Winkler, as we guide you through our unique fusion of ancient wisdom and modern psychology.

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:39

Get ready to awaken your true essence, heal your wounds and transform your shadow into.

Music: 0:49

Welcome to the deep, to take us to new heights. The shadow and the light.

davidji: 1:11

Hi, davidji. Oh, hello there, Elizabeth. Can you believe it? Here we are, season four. Some said it could never happen, but here we are sitting in the studio right now for season four. So, hello everyone, thank you for coming back.

davidji: 1:25

My name is davidji. I’m here with the amazing transformational psychotherapist to the universe, Elizabeth Winkler, and we are diving deep today into soul contracts and karmic agreements. Love it, right. Yes, so if you don’t know the format of this podcast, one of us typically springs the topic on the other one. So right before we started, I said to Elizabeth how about this? And she was like, don’t tell me, don’t tell me. But here we are and we’ve launched into soul contracts and karmic agreements. Over the weekend, I was watching Cloud Atlas with Halle Berry and Tom Hanks. Over the weekend, I was watching Cloud Atlas with Halle Berry and Tom Hanks, and that’s a deep, deep conversation. Three and a half hour conversation about soul contracts and karmic agreements, but I figure here, in just the time that we have, we could dive deep into that and explore.

davidji: 2:17

And the reason I say this is because, whether you believe or not in reincarnation, if you’re listening to this right now, there are people who’ve come into your life for a reason, perhaps a season and perhaps a lifetime. There are no random connections that we have. We’re all energetically moving together and moving apart and then bumping into each other on the other side. And not everyone who comes into your life is meant to stay, and we sometimes put just a little less importance on those people because, oh, that relationship only lasted for three months or six months or a year or something like that. Some of these interactions and relationships are not meant to stay, because they’re meant to stir. They are meant to stir things up, stir you up. They’re meant to crack you open, they’re meant to catalyze you, and the soul makes agreements. We can’t always understand until the lesson is complete, and perhaps that lesson won’t be complete for like another five years or something along those lines.

Elizabeth Winkler: 3:29

So the painful relationships that we have, the sudden endings, I’ve been stirred up this week with being a mother, the soul contracts of having children and being a meditation teacher where you know it’s all about watching your thoughts and not being reactive Very challenging with children. I’ve been witnessing my mind making up fearful stories. When my son just left and flew on his own across the country and then several flights to the. He’s in the Galapagos right now. It’s amazing what fear will do with your mind. So I do a lot of meditation, I do a lot of reflection and, yeah, still that thing is going on. So we have an opportunity to recognize where our mind goes with that habitual pattern that fear can take you to.

Elizabeth Winkler: 4:19

I think you initially think of a soul contract like people think of, like a soulmate. I mean you and I. I feel we definitely have a soul contract and when we got to know each other better, we found out that we both lost our mothers at the age of 19. It’s like these other pieces that connected our thread. This thread between us was deeper than we knew, you know, when we initially or when I initially found you. So I think a soul contract can be something like that. However, it also can be the petty tyrant. I’ll let you explain what the petty tyrant is.

davidji: 4:55

We’ll explore this concept of the petty tyrant, because they’re here to teach us lessons as well. But let’s define the soul contract so everyone really understands that this is a metaphysical belief that before coming into this world, right here into this lifetime, you and I and everybody listening entered into these sacred agreements with other souls it’s like a partnership and with the universe and I know you may be rolling your eyes and going so woo, woo, but just stay with me a little bit longer. We’ll move forward after this. These agreements are obviously not legal documents. They’re spiritual blueprints encoded with intentions, lessons and growth opportunities that shape our whole life’s unfolding, opportunities that shape our whole life’s unfolding. And we sort of at some point said, oh, I think I’d like to manifest myself between that couple, the husband and wife, or that wife and wife, or husband and husband, or I want to be part of that family, and then suddenly you’re born into that. It’s a soul contract. So, from our birth contracts were people that we would just bump into and hang out with for a week of our life. There was an agreement. There are no random synchronicities. These are dialed in and planned in advance and we could even say they’re pre-birth design and, before you were born, your soul chose the circumstances of your incarnation and even your departure from this earth realm your family, your challenges, your issues, your gifts, the people you would meet, the people who would leave you, the people who would break your heart or traumatize you, the timing of your major life events.

davidji: 6:38

According to the conversations of soul contracts, all of us did this before popping in here. No one is here randomly, and we’ve come here ideally to learn lessons or to master certain lessons, and that’s what’s referred to as the curriculum of the soul. And so, like, what am I here to learn? Might be different, Elizabeth, than what you’re here to learn. You know we’re here with our engineer, extraordinaire Mateo, and he obviously has other things that he’s here to learn. So themes such as our trust, our abandonment, our forgiveness, love, courage, patience these are all part of our curricula, and everybody’s got a different curricula that we’re all going to be, you know, moving through and expanding.

davidji: 7:28

This is important because I’ve often said the past is prep. You’re not punished by life events. You’re being given the precise conditions to transcend, to heal and to remember who you truly are. That’s the whole story of soul contracts and the sacred relationships and, of course, Elizabeth, you and I have so many different, weird, bizarre connections beyond our mothers and beyond who we were, and we didn’t grow up in the same places. We didn’t study the same things. We both had our if you’ve listened to our origin story here on the Shadow and the Light, we both had our little eat, pray, love journeys. Elizabeth was a lot more kind. My eat, pray, love journey was just a lot of prayer, not a lot of eating and not a lot of love, but just a lot of prayer.

davidji: 8:27

This should not stand in the way in any way of free will. So these two things can exist simultaneously. We still have free will. We are still making conscious choices every single moment that we are here, because our soul contracts are not these rigid fates or destinies. They’re opportunities, not obligations, and so will you seize the opportunity?

davidji: 8:52

And are there people in your life right now who are meant to take you to the next level? Are there people in your life right now that you adore and they’re just going to move on in another thing and maybe bring that love and that transformation to somebody else? And maybe, because they’ve touched your heart, now you are imbued with that same energy and you can pass that on. So, through free will, we can honor, rewrite, rewire, transcend or delay the unfolding of the contract, but the deepest parts of who you are your heart, your intuition, your longings will always whisper you back to your path.

davidji: 9:36

One of the tools that I have used for many, many years and I would encourage everyone to do it is to chronicle your journey. Write down whether you journal or whether you write, or whether you just take notes on your path, like how did I end up here? Well, all the breadcrumbs you put down to lead you to that place. Or how long will this last? Well, whatever energy you’re putting into something that’s going to allow it to unfold and blossom and bloom. So the soul contract is sort of like this cosmic spiritual blueprint for the next step of your life and all the steps that take place after.

Elizabeth Winkler: 10:13

I love that you brought up longing. For me it’s all about that. I remember having a resonance at a very young age with particular people you know. Martin Luther King Jr activated something in my heart at the age of 11. And that got me in touch with I guess you would call it a soul contract. I knew that I wanted to walk on a path of love in a sea of hate. Walk on a path of love in a sea of hate, and so I felt that when I was exposed to his incredible legacy when I was in Washington DC in sixth grade and everything changed in that moment. So it can be something like that right, it also could be.

Elizabeth Winkler: 10:58

I remember the longing also after my mother died when I was in my 20s and I was totally in resistance, not in alignment at all, and in so much pain and suffering and had this longing wanting her to still be here. When she’s not here, there was like no acceptance whatsoever, which is a part of grief, and so that was a different kind of longing you brought up. You’re not being punished by events. I talked to a lot of people who feel that way, especially in loss. I can visualize myself in this apartment in Beachwood Canyon and this longing. It was so painful for my mother and I think that I did identify with that punish feeling, punished by this event.

Elizabeth Winkler: 11:49

Now I will go way forward, but I think we should talk about the punishment to many, many, many, many, many years later, when I was listening to you, a meditation and you often say in your meditations what are you grateful for?

Elizabeth Winkler: 12:07

Let the list just come through your mind. And this is many years later, after I had had a full healing of my heart around the loss of my mother, and I’m just lying there meditating and what popped into my awareness was my mother’s death. I kind of sat back and then I’m like it’s true, and from that moment on I had a picture. This is so counter intuitive, I know I, from that moment forward, I had this image. I have this image of my mother and I when I was very young and I would bow to it and thank her every day because her death was a soul contract that allowed me to do very, very deep work on myself, but also to sit with people that were dying. I worked in hospice for a long time. I was a palliative care therapist. I worked with children that were dying, babies who were dying, couldn’t have done that.

davidji: 13:03

No way Did you work in Africa with people with Ebola.

Elizabeth Winkler: 13:07

They were mostly children whose entire families were wiped out by Ebola, and that was many years later as well. But all of this I could see later, much later, as you said, the breadcrumbs. You look back on your life and you see the soul contract and how it evolved and how you grew and how you had to go through that darkness and maybe feel punished and then move beyond that and then find the light through the darkness, right when we stop resisting and allow ourselves to transcend and transform. So you know, that day when that popped into my awareness, I was like it’s true. It’s true Because had she not died, I would not be living the life, I wouldn’t be sitting here, I wouldn’t have made all of these dark, shadowy things into positive things, like pain as power, as I noticed, and fear as a friend existing as resistance, because I went to a very dark place after her death for many years and I was not reaching for tools and I was not doing these things, I was running from it all and I was in a different kind of longing.

Elizabeth Winkler: 14:14

I was longing to, in a way, not be here, in a way not wanting to be on this planet. So I do think it’s important, I want to hear your perspective on when someone is feeling punished by an event. What would you say to them, because I hear this a lot in my own therapy practice? How can I make peace with this this person dying? I was punished. What are your thoughts on that?

davidji: 14:39

Right? Well, we hear this all the time. Something was taken from me. There was an expectation. You had this understanding that here’s how your life was supposed to be. Our parents are supposed to die, but it’s when they’re in their 90s, and our children are never supposed to die, certainly while we’re alive. And you know, certain things are just supposed to unfold in. We would call this like the natural order or the rhythm. You know the rhythm of the universe, and this is not how life works.

davidji: 15:09

Life is sometimes so, so harsh, and if we could go back in time, maybe there was this deep, deep conversation that you had before you incarnated, here with your mother’s soul that said listen, the dude you’re with and you, I’m wild about them. I would love to be the daughter of you too. And your mother replied to you okay, but I’m going to break your heart and shatter it to teach you a very, very core and critical and important message, and you have a choice Go someplace else where your heart will not be broken during this lifetime, but you want us. This is the deal, just this concept of. Perhaps there was this sacred contract, but the moment you’re incarnated, it vanishes from your memory. Yes, so now, here you are, you’ve signed on the dotted line and you don’t know any of the details, right, even if suddenly you’re going to leave this earth plane early, earlier. And so this deeper understanding we on this planet earth, we are striving in every moment for certainty.

davidji: 16:19

Elizabeth was listening to Pema Chodron on her drive down here to the sweet spot. One of Pema Chodron’s her drive down here to the sweet spot, one of Pema Chodron’s deepest teachings is specifically about hopelessness. That when we live in periods of hope, those are periods of agony. We’re trying to find certainty, we’re struggling to find certainty and I know this doesn’t resonate with everybody. You may suddenly be very off-put by this, like wait, I’m not supposed to hope. Well, no, you certainly can.

davidji: 16:47

But the premise is in these Buddhist teachings Pema Chodron, the first American Buddhist nun if we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path. This is deep and this is not easy. I’m not claiming this is easy in any way. It’s agonizing and it certainly can be agonizing. But if we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hope for the alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship with our lives. An honest, direct relationship with our lives, and one that no longer ignores these deep, deep realities of impermanence, the fact that everything’s changing in every millisecond, and death. So your mom was like, hey, we’re only going to be together for 19 years, but in those 19 years I’m going to embrace you and hold you and I’m going to teach you the most important lesson of life. When I leave.

Elizabeth Winkler: 18:05

I think I’ve learned a lot more from her since her death, to be completely honest. Yes, you know, and I continue to. I mean she isn’t physically present, but she’s present. I mean she isn’t physically present but she’s present. And it continues to unfold with my ability to really turn towards fear and turn towards the pain and all of that which, as you said, is not easy.

Elizabeth Winkler: 18:28

You know the voice in your head when I was talking about my son going on a trip and I had all these thoughts of fear. This was just the other day. My mind is going to is he going to make it? Is he going to? You know, something bad going to happen? All this sort of stuff is crazy. Like cannot control that right and everything works out beautifully.

Elizabeth Winkler: 18:49

The fear is never the reality. We have these huge corners of our house of the self that fear tells us not to enter. Do not go there Because if you do, terrible things will happen. And when you allow yourself to just knock on that door, open it, bring in a light. There’s beautiful things in there. It’s not what you think, and think is the important word, it never is.

Elizabeth Winkler: 19:23

And when you can face death and I think the reason I was able to do. A lot of the things I was able to do at a very young age was because I faced literally faced death in front of me many times, and so I had to have a lot of conversations with myself, and I talk to people about death a lot. I think it’s an important thing for us to talk about because it defines our life and we don’t know when we will die right. So Carl Jung had a statement I’m not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become. So what are you going to choose to be with what has happened to you? You have a choice. One of my lemon mantras. I have these mantras on lemons, on lemon cards.

davidji: 20:09

Lemon stickers, lemon stickers, lemon stickers, not actual lemons. She doesn’t take a Sharpie and write on her lemons.

Elizabeth Winkler: 20:15

Well, I actually do. Okay, I have a choice. That is a good mantra people can take. We like to have takeaways from our episodes. Remember that you always have a choice. Sometimes we feel lost, we feel totally insecure, we feel like we’re a victim of a situation or a victim of our own mind. I certainly felt like a victim of my own mind when I was in a fear spiral the other day. Right, I always have a choice. You always have a choice. You can do a pattern, interrupt, take a nice deep breath, do some kind of meditation practice, go outside, put your feet on the ground, just to break that spiral right. And then, what do I want to choose? Once I get present, what action do I want to take? What is the next right action? Instead of looking at the mountain in front of you, break it into bite-sized choices, what’s the next right step? This is Yoga, stah Kuru Kermani, right.

davidji: 21:16

Establish yourself in the present moment chapter 2, verse 48 of the Bhagavad Gita and then perform action. Establish yourself in the present moment and then perform action. Essentially, get still and then be brilliant.

Elizabeth Winkler: 21:32

So if you’re spiraling, you’re not present. I was spiraling, I was thinking all these things, making up all these imaginative, creative, fearful thoughts, and that’s what we’re doing with these rooms in our house of the self Catastrophizing.

davidji: 21:45

Totally totally, and it happens.

Elizabeth Winkler: 21:49

Let me think of the worst thing that could possibly happen, yeah right, but when we can allow ourselves to face something in our lives that maybe we’ve been avoiding, and many people to go back to soul contracts bring that into us, bring that to our lives. They bring some subject matter that you don’t want to talk about, they ask you a question or they activate something in you that you didn’t even know you were avoiding, or that you wanted to activate it could be a positive thing, or that you wanted to activate it could be a positive thing. So who in your life is bringing up a different part of yourself, and are you allowing yourself to kind of embody that or understand that better?

Elizabeth Winkler: 22:31

Neil Donald Walsh wrote a children’s book called the Little Soul in the Sun, so it’s an amazing book. It was a book I wrote about when I was in graduate school and it’s all about soul contracts and it has this story about the souls are all one, they’re in union. You know they don’t know anything about duality. Duality is something that we experience here to learn things, and so create here right.

Elizabeth Winkler: 22:57

So so this one soul says I want to know what it means to be forgiving, because I don’t know what that is, I’m just pure light. And so another soul comes to that soul and says I will happily help you learn forgiving. And then they go through this whole conversation, which I highly encourage people to get that book. And the other soul says but you’re not going to remember this. Get that book. And the other soul says but you’re not going to remember this. I’m going to become so dense and so dark that I will do something to you. That is so unforgivable.

davidji: 23:26

I will break your heart so deeply that you could never forgive me. But don’t worry, you’re not going to remember any of this.

Elizabeth Winkler: 23:33

Right and so, oh, and that’s how you learn forgiveness, that’s how you learn forgiveness, and so, oh, and that’s how you learn forgiveness. That’s how you learn forgiveness.

davidji: 23:39

So let’s come back to this. People come into your life it was actually James Van Praag, the great medium, who mentioned this to me many, many years ago that people come into your life for a season, a reason or a lifetime. So maybe look at your life right now and I think this would be helpful for everyone to. You may even even want to journal on this, because I think writing this down and journaling like who’s in your life right now for a very specific reason, like suddenly you realize, wow, lessons are happening here and this person is here to teach me or to make something happen, or to amplify me, or to heal me, or to forgive me, or to whatever that looks like. Who’s here for a season, just as the landscape you know, like driving, taking the scenic route from one place to another. Who’s here to provide context to you or a little background information, and who’s here for a lifetime Maybe theirs. And who’s here for a lifetime Maybe theirs, maybe yours. Again, we don’t know what that is, but perhaps, if you can look at that and this is maybe identifying three different people, or maybe you think it’s one person who’s inhabiting all of those aspects, but one of the cool things supposedly in the land of bracelets.

davidji: 24:58

I wear lots of bracelets. I wear mala beads wrapped around my wrist. I wear a lot of that kind of stuff and supposedly in the world of spiritual bracelets or malas when suddenly you’re hanging out and your bracelet just falls apart. It’s happened to me so many times because I’ve been wearing bracelets for 20 years now. Rather than you sobbing tears because the bracelet has now popped and all the beads have dropped all over the airplane floor or wherever you are, it’s complete, supposedly. When the bracelet breaks and some of these are threads, they’re not even beads, they’re just threads that we have wrapped around it’s like all right, the teaching is done, it’s done its work, it’s done its magic.

davidji: 25:36

So this is where we could ask that deep question Is there anyone in your life where you feel the contract is complete? I think I’ve got everything that I could, or I think I’ve shared everything or helped or nurtured this person to my best ability and now I will release them. So asking those deep questions who’s in your life right now for a season? Who’s in your life right now for a reason? Who’s in your life right now, perhaps for a lifetime? And is there someone in your life right now where you’re like I think we’re complete, I think we’re good, and it doesn’t mean you have to say, hey, I think we’re good. Let’s never speak again. It’s let me put my attention now, let me move forward into another connection, another interaction and forge another relationship as I continue to walk on this path.

Elizabeth Winkler: 26:29

I feel that with my mother, I feel that that is complete, but I feel like I continue to learn from it, even though the contract is so obvious to me and it was in that moment when you asked what are you grateful for? But it still continues to open and blossom, but become a gift. Right, because it becomes a gift. It’s something that you are here to learn of how to heal through loss or heal through feeling abandoned or whatever it was for that person, for myself. And how can I help now? How can I be of service to others who feel that? How can I be a conduit of that expression? So we get the contract, but then what do we do with it? And, of course, there’s more along the way, but I think that we also can become expression of it.

davidji: 27:18

I have so many friends and relatives who’ve lost one parent or the other parent, or both parents or a child. The initial conversation is always that if they’re God-believing or God-fearing, how could you, you know? Why would you do that? There’s a God. Why would a God create such agony, such pain? But it comes back to that concept is life happening to you or for you? And it’s a perspective, it’s a mindset, it is a choice.

davidji: 27:43

In all those understandings as well, you can take the longer view. What have I come here to learn? What have I come here to teach? What was this incarnation about? Was it for me to fall in love? Was it for me to have a miserable, horrible, traumatic existence so nothing worse could possibly happen to me so that I could live with a wide, open heart? Would it be to hold grudges or grievances?

davidji: 28:10

I know a lot of people who’ve lost their parents or their children or their siblings, and it’s 20 years now or 35 years, and they are still holding that grudge against something. And, of course, part of that is feeling abandoned. Yeah, feeling abandoned. So a lot of people have this like abandonment complex, and it could be.

davidji: 28:30

Maybe your parent left the house when you were at a tender age, for whatever reasons. Maybe they were struggling in their life and they had to leave or felt that was their path, or maybe they just left and you feel, you know, wounded or damaged from that. How long do you want to hold on to that? How long do you want to hold on to that grievance when there’s so many lessons and there’s so many opportunities in your life? And so I think the deeper question when your heart gets shattered is and maybe not in that moment, because we all need to grieve, we all need to make some kind of peaceful understanding with what has happened in some way. Closure is overrated, maybe it doesn’t happen, but what did my soul learn from this? Closure is overrated, maybe it doesn’t happen, but what did my soul learn from this? And how will this help me in the next not in your next rebirth, but in the next 10 minutes and in the next days, weeks, months and years?

Elizabeth Winkler: 29:29

that follow through spiritual teachings or listening to a podcast or whatever that may be. There’s nothing wrong with that, but what we absolutely what I learned, because I did a lot of that you have to embody this for yourself and see what the truth is for you and in your own body and in your own reality, rather than comparing to others, because you’ll get lost and you’ll be like, well, I don’t have what he has, or I didn’t get that lesson, or that doesn’t really resonate, but I’m supposed to let go right, I’m supposed to do it this way, right, and it’s like maybe that way doesn’t work for you. You need to find what works for you. Follow what is happening inside of your heart, inside of your being, now, wherever you are. Start there and begin again. And you can always just start with your breath, start with what’s activated inside of your heart, whatever energy is here. That is all you need.

Elizabeth Winkler: 30:33

And teachings help, meditation helps, therapy helps, but you got to work with yourself, you got to work with your inner environment, because if you’re not doing that, you’re just going to be more in your head about it and you don’t really fully heal Because it’s all like mind stuff, it’s all just thought, it’s all just regurgitated stuff you’ve read or heard and you feel like a fraud. Basically, you know, and that might be part of the path, by the way, it can become like spiritual ego and things like that. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not putting it down. I just want to bring back to the embodiment of real healing and to me, that’s why I said mindfulness is the bullet train to freedom, because I saw that when I’m working with the energy that’s inside of me, whether I’m in traffic or I’m listening to someone that’s annoying me, my mind is going to Hopefully that’s not me right now.

Elizabeth Winkler: 31:31

No, my mind’s going to have a lot to say about that. That is not the place to go. Work with the activation inside of your body. What are you noticing? What is happening inside of your heart, inside of your belly? That little fluttering of energy or that swirling, you know, hurricane inside. Be with that, just be, with that.

Elizabeth Winkler: 31:55

Allow that to be as it is. I have this mantra welcome energy, allow kindness when you feel weak, welcome the energy and allow kindness inside of you or for the other person. This brings a sense of acceptance and love.

davidji: 32:12

I was doing a webinar just like two days ago. There’s, like I don’t know, 400 people on it and I said everyone type in the chat what your favorite mantra is. And this one person typed in my week practice, so you obviously had inspired them. That’s their favorite mantra on the planet.

Elizabeth Winkler: 32:29

Oh good, I love it. Well, it really works, because welcome energy is acceptance, which resistance is the opposite of that, and what we resist persists.

davidji: 32:39

Acceptance is what helps us transform and heal and allow, Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don’t just rush through these profundities. Back it up and just share that in a little more detail with everybody.

Elizabeth Winkler: 32:48

Welcome energy. Okay, basically, I was in a group and someone was talking about their husband being weak and so I wrote it down. I’m like there’s something here W-E-A-K. I know it. And then I came up with the acronym Welcome Energy. The reason it works, I think, is because it’s welcoming the energy whatever that is inside of me or outside of me, whatever Painful, loving, sweet, dark. So I just say Welcome Energy. And that brings acceptance.

Elizabeth Winkler: 33:13

What does acceptance do? It allows everything to be as it is, and when you accept things as they are, they can move more easily. If we resist, what we resist persists. It will be trapped. Okay, maybe you’ve noticed patterns when you resist. Okay, then allow kindness brings in the energy of love. So, welcome energy. Allow kindness brings acceptance and love.

Elizabeth Winkler: 33:36

Or Ram Dass called it loving awareness. Same thing, right. So it’s a way to activate that, and so you just repeat that with someone that’s bothering you traffic or within your own body. If something outside is bothering you, it’s inside of you, by the way. So it’s always happening in both places.

Elizabeth Winkler: 33:54

So this is something that we, if you really want to work at the root of your grief or whatever it is, you need to be working with energy in your body, and if you do that, you are deepening and widening your capacity to handle life, whatever it brings. And if you work with low hanging fruit, a little bit at a time little irritations, a little bit at a time, little irritations, whatever it may be you will in time be building this reservoir. And then the big things you’ll all of a sudden be like oh, what used to bother you doesn’t bother you as much. So this is how we grow. So, whatever our soul contracts may be, you can become a master at it. Whatever you’re challenged by right now, let yourself use that as something you’re going to work with, and then you can become. As you said, it’s a teaching that you’re learning, and then you become a teacher of it.

davidji: 34:50

Every soul that crosses your path is carrying a mirror, holding that mirror up to you, and they’re going to hold that mirror up not to fix the past but to free the future. This is so we can suddenly be like oh okay, let’s open up this path and move in that direction. I would invite everyone right now to ask this question, because this is how we liberate ourselves. Think of one person who has changed you, positively or painfully. They actually changed you. Their presence in your life influenced you, made you think differently, speak differently, act differently, plan differently, feel differently than you thought you were otherwise on a trajectory to experience, and once you’re clear on who that person is, you can ask what did my soul learn from them? So, even if this is your traumatizer and your abuser, there’s a lesson there. There’s a deep, deep teaching. Do we want to accept the teaching or do we want to hold on to the emotional charge? Do we want to accept the teaching or do we want to hold on to the emotional charge? Again, it’s not like we can wish it away or snap it away. Grief takes time and healing takes so much time it can. We have to give ourselves permission to journey as long as that is. So, even if your grief trajectory is 10 years, as long as you’re feeling or thinking I am on a path to healing, then let it take 10 years. How beautiful and magnificent is that. But if you’re like, oh no, you don’t understand my past, you don’t know what happened to me, if you’re going to hang in that space for 10 years when we get to year 11, you’re not going to be freed. You’re still going to be a prison of whatever you projected in that process. So maybe whoever whomever this being is in this moment we could rest a hand on our heart to this traumatizer, abuser, or kind lover or nourisher and say thank you so much for teaching me and you fill in the blank I can allow you to get so much clearer and really begin the process of healing. Just these little tools that we can have in the moment that Elizabeth shares and she shares this every day with all of her clients and I get to share them with you here on the Shadow and the Light podcast. But I think now it’s time. Today’s takeaway Living the light. So today’s takeaway is you can understand the sacred role that people play in your awakening. You can actually put your attention on that premise and we can recognize that there’s a teacher in every tension. If there’s just a little bit of tension, a little bit of friction, a little bit of conflict, there’s a teacher there. There’s a gem resting inside there. We know how pearls are developed.

davidji: 38:02

A teeny grain of sand gets inside the oyster. The oyster is so uncomfortable and it doesn’t know how to spit out that little grain of sand, but it knows how to build some kind of smooth sweater around the grain of sand. Then it weaves another covering on top of that, and another covering on top of that, another covering, and it gets to a certain point where it’s like, ah, that grain of sand does not irritate anymore. And then someone comes to the oyster and kills it to get the pearl, and so we could say that this is our life’s journey as well. So we could say that this is our life’s journey as well. You know, you want to spend your entire life trying to wrap your little irritating grain of sand in something, and then you’ll die. Or shall we say hmm, grain of sand, what’s it teaching me? Let me move forward based on that. That’s today’s takeaway.

Elizabeth Winkler: 38:58

Love it, pearl of wisdom.

davidji: 39:01

Right, the pearl of wisdom From the sweet spot of the universe. My name is davidji. I’m here with Elizabeth Winkler just such an amazing transformative healer, Such a joy to be in her presence and we are launching season four with a little deep dive into your soul contract and perhaps some of your karmic agreements, into your soul contract and perhaps some of your karmic agreements. And if you’d like to take it further, please comment and please reach out to us. Please visit our website, theshadowinthelightpodcast.com, or feel free to visit us on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple Music, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast. Come on, Jamar. It’s been so long Just been waiting for you to sing your lilting magnificence into our hearts.

Music: 39:57

Take it away, the dark. They will lead the way to the hidden pathways of the heart and that secret place. That is where I find my start the light. It is here to remove all my fears and to bring new sight. The light. If you’re gone, I will go to the deep To take me to new heights. The shadow and the light. There’s hope out in rock bottom. You hold it as you’re holding me, but don’t rush past this moment. The darkness can become a friend. Love will come by your side. Thank you. All your fears in the ring, new sight, the light. It is not able To go to the deep. To take you to New heights.

Music: 41:14

The shadow and the light has come because it loves us. The light has come because it loves us. The light has come to set us free. The light has come to set us free. The shadow comes to set us free. The light is here to remove all our fears and to bring new life. The light it’s here to remove all our fears and to bring new life. The light, the light. It’s the light that will go on to the deep to take us to new heights. The shadow and the light.