Category: sacred contracts

Sacred Contracts

Christina BruniLeave a comment

My mentor stayed clean for decades. I think he was motivated to live drug-free because he wanted more than anything to help people.

If you ask me figuring out your Sacred Contract–essentially your life purpose–can give you the motivation to stay healthy and care for yourself.

Caroline Myss believes our sacred contracts are life assignments given to us to carry out in this lifetime.

A client of hers is quoted in the book Sacred Contracts. Liza had dreamed she was in a small rowboat going in circles. She could see an ocean liner in the distance and wanted to be on that ship not stuck where she was. Liza had been paralyzed in an accident and had to makeover her career and her life.

To quote Liza: “The key is to learn to row the boat you were given.”

I recommend you buy these two Myss books. Any kind of self-improvement project that is healthy shouldn’t be frowned on. We should only be competing against how we were yesterday–not against what other people can do today.

I say: “No thank you” to critics who compare peers to people who don’t have MH issues. The size of another person’s ocean liner shouldn’t concern us.

In a coming blog entry I’m going to talk about The Myth of Competitive Employment.

The Life Work of Caroline Myss

Christina BruniLeave a comment

Years ago I chanced upon the life work of Caroline Myss.

A book she wrote was reviewed in a women’s magazine. Archetypes: Who Are You? intrigued me after I bought and read it so I then bought her book Sacred Contracts.

Her discovery of a condition she called woundology has been accepted in the medical field. I wrote about woundology circa a year ago.

You might be skeptical of all this like a friend of mine was. I urge you to suspend your disbelief. The life work of Caroline Myss I’ve found to be as good as taking a career quiz in helping a person live authentically and thrive beautifully.

Everyone has four of the same archetypes: child, prostitute, saboteur, and victim. Each of us has eight unique archetypes for a total of 12 archetypes. You can cast a Chart of Origin where each archetype is inserted in one of the 12 houses of the zodiac.

Your 12 archetypal patterns are used to carry out the terms of your Sacred Contract. You might think this is all speculation or hooey or some kind of parlor trick.

Yet I’ve found this study to be immensely helpful. You might also think that limiting yourself this way is restrictive. It’s not because who among us would really want to spread our energies thin trying to do things we’re not suited for or that amount to busywork?

Homing in on your archetypes can actually bring emotional freedom if you ask me.

It might come as no surprise to loyal followers that three of my own archetypes are Author Advocate and Visionary.

You can go on the Archetypes website and take the quiz to discover your Top 3 Archetypes. The founder of the Archetypes website has changed around things a bit. Fashionista has been renamed Tastemaker.

So I wouldn’t rely totally on this website for an in-depth analysis of your archetypes. The woman who created the website linked to the Myss Archetypes: Who Are You? book has turned the site into a forum for selling products.

The woman who founded the archetypes website had originally founded philosophy the beauty products company years ago.

In the next blog entry I’m going to continue this talk with information about figuring out your sacred contract. This is the plan for your life’s purpose.

This kind of self-improvement project if you ask me can be an effective recovery tool as an adjunct to traditional treatment.

You can use this information along with taking a career quiz if you think it would help you.

Having a Plan B (And Plan C)

Christina BruniLeave a comment

Your life can change after you get a mental health diagnosis. I’m here to say that though your life is different it can be better.

Having a Plan B when your Plan A doesn’t work out  is critical. You should also have a Plan C and D. Heck, you can have two plans going on at once.

In my twenties I had the dream of rising up to be a corporate Executive. That didn’t happen. So I went back to school to get a library degree. Now my goal of publishing the second book is taking longer.

No one has ever talked about how to proceed after a setback when you have a mental health thing. I’ll tell you here: you have to figure out if it’s the goal itself that is not right–or if the method for achieving the goal is wrong.

A nifty way for figuring out the life path you should go down might be met with skeptical response. Yet I firmly recommend studying the life work of Caroline Myss. She created a philosophy of Archetypes and Sacred Contracts.

Like what happened when I was in my twenties a lot of us pine to be someone we’re not. No–I wasn’t cut out to be an Executive–I didn’t have that archetypal pattern.

My theory is that when a person understands how their archetypal patterns interact they are better able to figure out what the right goals are to have if they want to succeed in life.

I’m going to talk about archetypes and sacred contracts in a coming blog entry.

Casting your Chart of Origin and analyzing how your archetypes express themselves through you might just be as helpful as taking any career quiz.