What Are Soul Contracts And How Do They Work?

Soul contracts are agreements we enter into for the purposes of learning and spiritual development. Most of these contracts are unconscious, so we often don’t know we’ve made them.

A soul contract might reveal itself when you start noticing the same relationship patterns over and over in your life. Or when you experience a very intense – whether positive or negative – relationship with someone. Or when you start noticing a specific, repetitive behavior or thought pattern that always seems to come up.

Compulsions, addictions, unhealthy attachments, and issues that you just can’t seem to heal also point to the possibility of a soul contract (more specifically, a past life contract).

Soul contracts can be positive or negative. This post will cover 2 different types of positive and negative soul contracts:

• past life contracts or vows (made during a past lifetime)
• in-between life contracts

I will also explain what you can do with these contracts, how they affect you, and how an Akashic Records (or soul) reading can help you identify and deal with your soul contracts.

Past Life Contracts or Vows

The first type of contract we’ll explore is called the “past life contract” or “past life vow.”

These are unconscious contracts we make in past lifetimes, often as the result of trauma or negative experiences. Past life contracts are often made in a moment of reactivity, so they’re not made intentionally. This means they can cause problems for us in current and future lifetimes.

One of the most common past life contracts for people with spiritual gifts is a contract of blocked intuition. This might be related to a contract of renunciation of intuitive abilities. So what does this mean? As an example, let’s say that you were an intuitive, healer, witch, medicine woman, or mystic in a past life. Let’s also say that you were punished, persecuted, burned, or banished for your gifts and your ability to see beyond the material world.

As a result of such trauma, many of us renounced our intuitive gifts in past lifetimes, vowing or promising to never use them again. Vowing to shut off our intuition. Vowing to keep our third eye closed. Vowing to never be successful again as a healer or mystic. (Often, this is at the root of financial struggles and self-sabotage for healers and intuitives.)

In response to that past life trauma of being persecuted or killed for your gifts, you reactively made this contract to never use your gifts again. You made this contract out of fear and as a way to avoid suffering in the future. But, of course, this is a negative and counterproductive contract because it causes limitations in your current lifetime. It might prevent you from fully claiming your intuitive gifts and developing yourself as a healer. It might even get in the way of you healing yourself.

Another example of a negative past life contract is a contract of servitude. Many of us have made this contract in past lifetimes, often as the result of a failed relationship or as a way to make ourselves feel useful and loved. If you find that you tend to give, give, give without getting much in return, a contract of servitude might be at play in your life. If you’re always the go-to person for everyone and you always put your needs last, you might be acting out of a contract of servitude. This type of contract is also negative and needs to be revoked. You can be of service without being in servitude to other people.

Here’s a list of other past life contracts or vows you might have made at some point (these are the most common). Scan the list and notice if any of these feel “familiar” or if they trigger a gut reaction in you:

• vow of poverty/scarcity
• vow of obedience
• vow of putting yourself last
• vow of self-punishment through unfulfilling jobs
• vow of self-punishment through illness
• vow of isolation (resulting in inability to have long-term or fulfilling relationships)
• vow of disconnection from God/Source (you might feel lost or aimless or unable to fully connect to Spirit)
• vow of loyalty to a specific religion (you might feel guilty or conflicted by exploring spirituality outside of this religion)
• vow of renunciation of sexuality (shutting down your sexual nature to keep yourself “safe”)

Overall, past life contracts are negative and counterintuitive. You make them in a moment of intense emotion (fear, distress, trauma, anger, disappointment, etc) without really meaning them. For this reason, past life contracts and vows tend to cause problems in your current lifetime. They fuel unhealthy behaviors, patterns, and compulsions and keep you stuck.

The good news is that, since this is a free will universe, all of these contracts can be revoked. You don’t have to continue living them out or suffering through them.

Often, you might also be carrying contracts, vows, or burdens related to your ancestral or family lines. This is where ancestral and family lineage healing can help.

I’ve created a comprehensive 40-minute guided healing journey where we sweep through each of your energy centers, or chakras, to clear and revoke any ancestral contracts, patterns, or burdens held there. To access this healing journey, go here: Clearing Ancestral Contracts, Patterns, and Burdens

In-Between Life Contracts

In-between life contracts are much more intentional agreements that we make in between lifetimes. Before our souls choose to come down to earth and inhabit a physical body (i.e., become “incarnated”), they also make intentional choices about the life lessons we’ll embark on, the experiences we’ll have, the people we’ll meet, and many other details of our next lifetime. You might think of this as the “council between incarnations,” where our souls gather to make choices for our next lifetime on earth.

(If this topic is really interesting to you, here’s a great book on how the in-between lifetime process works: Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives).

In-between life contracts are always about healing and spiritual evolution. These contracts are helpful and purposeful. They’re not like past life contracts at all, because past life contracts are made by us in our human form, while in-between life contracts are made by our souls. As you know, our souls are infinitely wiser!

As an example, an in-between life contract might be about healing a fear of intimacy. Or reclaiming your authentic voice. Or healing abandonment issues. Or healing your karmic relationship with someone from a past life.

Just because they’re intentional, it doesn’t mean that in-between life contracts won’t be challenging. In fact, these types of agreements to learn specific lessons will definitely challenge us. It’s not easy to heal these deep issues, but our souls embark on these contracts joyfully and with a great sense of purpose. It’s up to us, in our human form, to do the spiritual work required to heal these issues or to just try to cover them up… which means they’ll recur in the next lifetime! (So, best to do the work.)

In-between life contracts are sometimes closely related to your life mission and soul purpose. For example, one of your in-between life contracts might be to reclaim your authentic voice, as I said earlier. If you’re able to heal this issue in your current lifetime, this might lead you to discover your soul purpose of helping other women reclaim their voices as well.

Soul Contracts and the Akashic Records

The Akashic Records can give us clear information about your past life experiences and the root of your current issues. An Akashic Records reading can also help identify any past life and in-between life contracts you’re currently playing out. (If you’re new to the Records, you can learn about how I work with them here or read my full guide on them here.)

Through an Akashic Records reading, we can identify any soul contracts that are limiting you or causing suffering in your life. We can extract the lessons and wisdom from those contracts (they’re always there for a reason, even if they’re negative) and then revoke them through a specific protocol.

Since revoking a contract creates an empty space or a vacuum, we must then create an intentional, much more empowering contract to put into that empty space. The process of revoking an old unhelpful contract and establishing a new intentional one might look like this (just a few examples):

• from a vow of poverty to a contract of abundance/generosity
• from a vow of isolation to a contract of healthy, empowering, fulfilling relationships
• from a vow of putting yourself last to a contract of healthy self-care and clear boundaries
• from a vow of renouncing your spiritual gifts to a contract of fully reclaiming and embodying your spiritual gifts and connection
• from a vow of self-punishment through bad jobs to a contract of fulfilling, exciting, rewarding work that gives you financial freedom

Through the Akashic Records, we can also identify your in-between life contracts. This can help to figure out your current life purpose, the lessons you’re meant to learn through your experiences, and how specific situations are either contributing to or distracting you from your soul purpose.

The most important message here is that you’re not stuck with any of these negative contracts. You don’t have to put up with them or suffer through them… or wait until your next lifetime to be happy and at peace. You have the right and free will to revoke any unhelpful contracts that are getting in your way, and to move forward more intentionally.

Ready to explore and clear out your limiting past life contracts and vows? You can request an Akashic Records Healing Session with me right here. I’d love to work together!