A West African story about the Soul

While creating this website I was reading Michael Meade’s book Fate and Destiny – The two agreements of the soul. In the chapter ‘The dream of life’ he shares a West African story that deeply relates to what we intend to do with Purpose Guiding. That is why I share passages of that chapter here, so that you hopefully get a taste of the mythic dimension of waking up to your soul’s purpose and it’s original dream for your life.

The original agreement for coming to life 
According to that old West African tale, the soul encounters a divine spirit as soon as it begins to move towards earthly life. This ”divine twin’ clarifies the image that first moved the soul and describes the terms through which this particular life adventure will be shaped.

Spirit and soul are on their way to join the body for the unique adventure of a lifetime. The soul has made its original agreement for coming to life. This first agreement becomes a kind of divine contract that binds each soul to a core imagination before it can enter the body and begin to live on earth.  

The human connection to the divine realm exists in the soul as a mystery that seeks its own unfolding. Any originality a person might display derives from the original agreement that the soul makes, and any enduring satisfaction a person might find will involve a reflection of the soul’s first agreement with life.

Forgetfulness in order that life on earth might begin
No sooner has the first agreement been made than the soul is in motion. In the close company of its companion and guide, the soul moves towards the womb of life. Before arriving there it comes upon a garden and finds itself standing before a radiant tree. As soon as the soul touches the radiant tree it forgets the core image that first moved it towards life on earth and the essential agreement it has just made with the divine twin. 

Only after touching the other side of the Tree of Life (which the radiant tree signifies) can the soul be born into the incarnate world. 

There is a central image and primary orientation towards life, but it has been forgotten in order that life on earth might begin. The rest of life will be a drama through which the soul attempts to remember why it came to life and what it agreed to do with its allotment of time on earth.

After birth on earth, the divine realm becomes a deep memory; something that seems left behind, but also remains buried deep within us. It is our human fate to become separated from the eternal and it is our individual destiny to search for the divine connection in the rampant confusions and strange delights of this world.

Soul waiting to be found again
Each soul has its inner imagination that tries to return to full awareness through dreams and visions, through sudden insights and strange revelations. Inside each soul the core imagination and original intention wait to be found again and the life-dream waits to awaken fully. 

Throughout the course of life the soul will create impossible dramas and persistent dilemmas in order to crack open the shell of the time-bound, little-self and reveal the living seed and the original agreement it carries within it. 

At a mythic level, true liberation involves learning the inner language of one’s soul and being able to release the inner spirit in one’s life. Until we tune to the inner voice of spirit and bend to the roots of our being we remain lost in the great forest of life. 

Once we receive a calling that resonates with the pattern woven within us we wander rightly, we find a path and enter a pilgrimage that suits our soul.

Such a life-path requires that we risk ourselves continually in order to find ourselves more fully. The path may lead us far from all that we know, yet it can also lead us to the dreams at the center of our souls.

Are you called to walk this path to discover the dreams
at the center of your soul?