Breaking Free
It is quite common to consider habits a normal by-product of our busy lives. Inundated with tasks and responsibilities, many of us develop routines that create efficiencies, save time, and make life easier. Simply stated, habits are formed when a behavior is repeated so frequently that it becomes automatic. Despite the benefits, some habits are limiting at best, while others precipitate life crises.
Releasing Habits
Habitual behaviors can impact our health, as is the case with smoking and eating habits. Understanding their origin and how they serve us might free us to break the habit.
During a poignant point in a Life Between Lives session that is focused primarily on healing childhood sexual abuse, Nancy leaves her body as she begins to transition to her life between lives. She notices that she is breathing deeply. The physical sensation is powerful. She feels free! She realizes that breathing deeply is a reminder of freedom, whether she is breathing in fresh, clean air or her favorite brand of cigarettes. Within an instant, she understands that in pairing the two she has developed a lifelong habit that is financially costly and will ultimately impact her health. Now she is free to make another choice—a choice to break her smoking habit. It’s one that she happily makes.
Habits are not limited to behaviors. They are also automatic reactions to specific situations. As such, they create fixed ways of thinking and feeling. Habitual beliefs solidify perspective and outlook, leading you to patterned behavioral and emotional responses. At a communal and societal level, habits that become customary practice are formalized as customs, norms, traditions, and ultimately laws.
Habitual behaviors and beliefs create both positive and negative effects. For example, if you have a habit of always looking on the bright side of things and seeing the best in others, you will likely usually find that your beliefs manifest positive feelings. You may even notice that your generally positive attitude is contagious, spreading to others you interact with. Conversely, you may have a habit of avoiding interacting with others because of your belief that people are not trustworthy and will likely betray you. Habitual behaviors and beliefs don’t discriminate; they work both ways.
Over time, habitual behaviors and beliefs are hard to change. They become almost involuntary. As such, they provide fertile ground for the soul as it seeks to learn or to heal during a lifetime on earth. In his seminal research documented in Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls, Dr. Michael Newton highlighted multiple ways that the soul is challenged through the habits it has formed.
Emily, a middle-aged woman, is stymied in her new career as a nurse because of paralyzing self-doubt about her competence. Seeking understanding of the purpose in her life, Emily learns of successive lifetimes spanning five hundred years in which she lives as priests and nuns in cloistered environments where she is insulated from the hassles of connecting with society at large. When she appears before her council in her Life Between Lives session, she is challenged about whether she is ready to break out of her rut and finally get involved with outside society. The succession of cloistered lives has served to balance what Emily described as a long prior history of excessive noncelibate lifetimes. With gentle understatement, council members remind her that too much repetition over too many lives can hold the soul back.
Testament to the patience of spirit guides, Dr. Newton wrote of two other cases in which the souls were slow to break long-standing patterns. One soul had been working on envy for lifetimes spanning 850 years. Another sought authoritative power over others, on and off. A habitual behavioral tendency can be especially difficult to give up, especially once it has shaped beliefs and character traits. Eventually the soul will be faced with balancing these propensities.
Patterns of Belief
In Lily, we see how even a behavior that has created a positive character trait can restrict the soul who is working to achieve balance. Lily is a thirty-four-year-old well-educated, professionally employed, financially secure woman. She is divorced from Robert, who has bipolar disorder. She is calm, patient, rational, and has extraordinary empathy. The latter trait is not surprising given her 752 lifetimes, most of which were dedicated to serving.
Lily has worked hard in the last decade to strike a balance between service and self. She hopes to learn how to relax more and build more pleasure and fun into her life. Surprisingly, despite the importance she places on finding direction for her career during the Life Between Lives session, her guide gives the following advice.
Her career is intended to give her stability. It is a means to an end so that Lily can focus on the other things. There is a tendency and drive to do more because that is what everyone else is doing, but balance is what her soul is seeking. She is not living to work but is working to live.
During her return to the life between lives, her guide emphasizes Lily’s habitual lives of service. He points out that Lily’s drive and tendency to prioritize the needs of others comes from many lifetimes when serving others did not allow for the luxury of focusing on herself.
Most of her lives have been lives of service, taking care of people. Newer experiences take her out of her comfort zone. In this life she needs to set boundaries.
Marrying Robert, who struggles with bipolar disorder, provides Lily with the impetus to practice taking care of herself. During the planning phase before this current lifetime, Robert agreed to a role that would help Lily transition from service to self-care. He has not reneged on their agreement. The guide explains further.
His behavior is so extreme. He makes it so difficult for her to take care of herself that she has no choice but to set boundaries. That triggers her learning more about setting appropriate boundaries. She hadn’t really heard of boundaries until then. It isn’t a concept that she was taught growing up. Her soul plan for this life is meant to set boundaries, and being married to Robert gives her a perfect setting to learn and practice prioritizing herself. He pushes her to where her only choice is to focus on self-care. And now she is learning to balance self-care and serving others.
The guide stresses how once the pattern started, repetition reinforced it time and again.
She wanted to be of service in all those lives. Caring for others was easier. She’s used to it. It was more natural. It was a habit to care for others. She wanted to be of service. She was motivated to change because she got tired of serving others, but she really couldn’t keep doing it without constantly recharging energetically. She was getting burned out. The plan that she developed for this lifetime was to break this habitual behavior out of necessity.
The guide elaborates, striking a hopeful note.
Through this session, Lily is learning that she has been overly devoted to service in these many lifetimes. This insight will help her put things in perspective in this life, but the change will not come overnight. And it will not be automatic. It is something that Lily will need to work at for some time.
The guide’s realistic evaluation is a reminder to us all that insight alone does not change behavior. Change requires determined focus and a willingness not to give up, especially when there are setbacks. It requires reinforcement. Changing habitual beliefs requires new beliefs to be formed and acted upon. Breaking habitual patterns takes considerable work, whether those habits are positive, like Lily’s devotion to others, or negative, as is the case with addiction to substances, sex, or gambling. As we see in the following cases, even negative behavioral patterns offer the soul and their loved ones opportunities to grow spiritually.
Addictive Echoes from the Past
Those addicted to drugs and alcohol have developed a habit with an impact that is far-reaching. In fact, the widespread availability of drugs and alcohol, and abuse of them by young and old, has made addiction one of the more common problems people struggle with today. Drug or alcohol abuse may greatly impact your life even though you might not be personally suffering from the addiction. It exacts a heavy price on the one trapped in its grasp and has a major impact on family, friends, job, and community, as well as society.
The personal costs of addiction are enormous. It robs a person of health and vitality, contributes to accidents, disease, and, if left unchecked, death for those under its control. It affects daily functioning by obscuring judgment and clouding the memory.
Addiction strips people of their ambition and damages reputations, costing many their jobs, livelihoods, and careers. Financial hardships often leave individuals and families bankrupt of financial savings and stripped of security.
In the case of Baldwin, we see a crossover between habitual beliefs and habitual behavior. Baldwin is a thirty-eight-year-old draftsman with deteriorating health due to chronic alcoholism. Although schooled in architecture, he has never felt confident enough to seek commensurate employment. He is not married, acknowledging that he never quite learned how to overcome his insecurity about dating. He shares that his low self-esteem and self-doubt have been debilitating for as long as he remembers.
During his sessions, Baldwin re-experiences several lifetimes in which his dreams are short-circuited by his low self-esteem and self-doubt. He dreams of marriage and a lifetime of shared love, financial security, professional success, and recognition.
In an emotionally charged return to one “failed” past life, he sees himself dying alone at a young age of liver disease, having developed an addiction to alcohol in his teens in order to cope with paralyzing insecurities. As his body transitions to his soul state, his guide reminds him that, despite his best efforts, he still needs to work on changing his beliefs and habitual behavior.
You will have to try again. You cannot give up, either on life or yourself. You already know that the path you travel is not easy, but you must continue to seek the confidence and success that you deserve.
Later in his session, the same message repeats when Baldwin meets with his council.
I have the sensation of being wrapped in their love. It feels warm and reassuring. I am being told that they have confidence in me. I am blocked by my lack of love for myself. They will never give up on me. I need to learn to not give up on myself, to value myself and to build confidence and a sense of my worth.
Baldwin’s emotional Life Between Lives session has helped him to understand why it has been so difficult for him to realize his dreams and why he has again chosen to dull these painful thoughts with alcohol. He has come face-to-face with his truth. Until he changes his opinion of himself and his view about his talents, skills, and lovability, he will return time and again to the destructive pattern of addiction that has gripped his life.
Armed with this profound insight and carrying forward the acceptance and unconditional love of the higher beings, Baldwin is ready to embark on a different path. As his Life Between Lives session concludes, Baldwin affirms both his desire and commitment to break the patterns of the past and to write a different ending to his current life on earth. He knows that he has much work to do but is ready to abandon the patterns that have not served him.
Addiction tests and challenges relationships. Over time, drugs and alcohol become more important to the addicted individual than their loved ones or associates. Deceit becomes commonplace, fracturing the trust that is foundational in healthy relationships. In advanced stages, addiction causes blackouts, dangerous enough for the one left with significant gaps in memory while also being disastrous to relationship longevity. Unresolved, these relationship cracks ultimately destroy friendships, partnerships, and families.
Habits That Limit Growth
Bret is a tall, athletic, forty-five-year-old dentist. Since his early teens, he has been gripped by anxiety and a profound sense that he is not in control. At age seventeen, he discovered that marijuana calmed him. In his own words, he became addicted to this chemically induced tranquility.
Despite this, Bret has managed a highly successful dental practice, employing a staff of eight, including another dentist. While marijuana does not lead to addiction, his use of it has become a habit that limits his growth, and it is illegal where he lives. Thus, he uses it behind closed doors, and his sense of integrity is affected. His capacity for appearing to have everything under control seems to help him fool most who know him, including his colleagues at work.
Bret decides to schedule a Life Between Lives session after he is broadsided by his wife’s decision to divorce only a few months after they purchased their dream home. He describes Gena, his wife, as a weekend binge drinker. He credits her with having greater control over her habits than he does. At the same time, he blames her behavior as the cause of their marital problems.
At the outset of his work with the Life Between Lives practitioner, Bret shares that he cannot imagine being able to forgive Gena for her decision to leave him. He finds himself bouncing back and forth between rage and crippling numbness. He and Gena have been married for seventeen years. In addition to his anger, her decision leaves him feeling abandoned and betrayed. Understandably, he describes that he’s floundering about what direction to take in his life.
Early in Bret’s Life Between Lives session he sees himself as an officer in the Army prior to and during the American Civil War. His wife in that life is now in the role of his wife in his present life.
Bret sees how his military responsibilities kept him away from his wife and child for long periods of time. Despite his wife’s fidelity, he recalls betraying her numerous times by having brief affairs with prostitutes while on leave. On one visit home, he infected Gena with gonorrhea, which in those days was deadly. Eventually, it weakened her so much that she died at the age of forty. He was not with her at the time because he was leading his company during a decisive campaign of the war.
Bret learns when he comes home after his wife has died, that their thirteen-year-old son has been sent off to an orphanage. Despite a frantic search, no one knows where his son is. He is devastated by both losses but can’t let anyone know how sad he is. It would be a crack in the persona he has created to bolster his authority. Any sign of weakness would damage the image that he has projected to the outside world, particularly with subordinates.
This reflection back in time leaves no doubt about the issues of integrity, abandonment, and betrayal that characterize Bret’s current situation. Even within his hypnotic trance, he clearly sees an old pattern being played out in his relationship with his wife. He is now on the opposite side of the dynamic. And, from this expanded perspective, he will now be in a better position to achieve the learning that his soul desires.
When he taps into the between-lives realm, he hears the same message repeatedly from different spiritual sources.
You are here now in a place of unconditional love and acceptance. Allow yourself to unburden yourself from these difficult emotions. Release them, free yourself. Have compassion for yourself. Learn to accept yourself without judgment. Learn to love yourself deeply as we do.
Bret’s Life Between Lives session helps him to understand that while protecting him on several fronts, his marijuana habit is limiting him. His use of an illegal substance is making it impossible to be fully present for his clients, causing him to fail to act with integrity. He worries that over time his dental practice may suffer.
More importantly, his marijuana habit numbs his emotions. Not only has he buried emotions from the loss of his son and wife in the Army officer life so long before, but Bret has been burying his emotions in his current life as well.
At seventeen, Bret’s decision to begin using marijuana allowed him to feel more in control. Ultimately, it worked in just the opposite way. From a higher perspective, Bret can understand how issues of integrity, abandonment, and betrayal are influencing him. Releasing these subconscious memories through his sessions brings a sense of internal power, resolving the need to numb himself and manipulate others. From this perspective, Bret can see how he and Gena have been mutually responsible for their pattern of interaction.
He comes to understand how he and Gena enabled each other’s limiting habits, keeping them both emotionally stuck and contributing to their breakup. In addition to insight about how his marijuana habit helps him cope, he now understands that on a spiritual level, Gena is assisting him in growing spiritually.
Bret has now not only forgiven Gena, but he appreciates the gift she gave him as she kept her part of their soul agreement. The breakup and divorce forced him to look deeply within himself, to release the pain from the past, and to heal his heart. Embedded within the experience is the opening for self-forgiveness that will serve him in this and many future lifetimes.
Limiting habits and addictions take over lives, destroy happiness, and shatter dreams. The damage is far reaching and long lasting. And yet for the one struggling to break free of its grip, it can eventually become a pathway to great insight and personal growth.
Like many other problems that exact great personal and interpersonal costs, coping with the addiction of someone you care deeply about presents an opportunity for tremendous spiritual advancement. Because the soul learns through upheaval and opposites, we are led to establish a new pattern of thinking and behavior.
Addiction in Families
Another way that the soul chooses to grow is to place itself in life circumstances that are opposite of an earlier life. This provides an opportunity to see and experience the very same circumstances from the opposite perspective for learning purposes. Doing so offers the soul a chance to balance the impact of earlier decisions and actions.
Samantha’s experience coping with a loved one’s addiction illustrates how this plays out. Samantha is a sixty-year-old married mother of three adult children. She comes in for a session to gain some insight into problems she is having with her youngest daughter.
Karen, a beautiful, talented, and intelligent young woman in her mid-twenties, is seriously addicted to drugs. During her childhood, Karen became an accomplished ballet dancer, but started taking pills she obtained on the street at about age sixteen. With support from her family, Karen managed to graduate from high school and college despite actively using drugs.
During those years, Samantha, a nurse, did everything she could imagine to help Karen. She exhausted her retirement savings and ran up huge credit card debt paying for counselors, rehabilitation programs, bail, and attorneys. Nothing worked. This all put a tremendous strain on her marriage as well. Now Karen is using cocaine and heroin and living a very chaotic life.
Samantha knows, from all that she has been through, that she is enabling Karen by continually rescuing her. She realizes that it is time for her to let go and show some “tough love.” However, she is having a very hard time doing so, and is plagued with guilt and fears about how all this has happened to her daughter and what might happen to her in the future.
During her session, Samantha finds herself as a samurai warrior in feudal Japan. In response to questions regarding the situation with Karen’s addiction, Samantha describes the following past-life experience.
I am a great warrior; my name is Miamoto. I follow Bushido, the honor code for samurai. I fight bravely and gain much respect. I am rewarded well and now retired; I have nice home and servant.
Miamoto goes on to describe that his servant’s daughter dies, and she is left to care for her daughter’s baby. The live-in servant has no choice but to bring the baby to live with her in Miamoto’s home.
The baby cries, and the servant does not do the work right. The baby must go away! I am very angry and I lose patience. I tell her the baby cannot stay here. I tell her to get rid of the baby!
Due to Miamoto’s decision, his servant is forced to sell the baby. Although this is possible to arrange, the transaction is shrouded in secrecy. Nothing further is known of the infant girl’s whereabouts or fate. The infant’s grandmother is devastated. Despite living a life of honor, Miamoto’s insensitive and self-centered action causes great emotional distress for his servant, and likely much more suffering for the infant girl who is dispatched so callously.
As Samantha recalls her prior action during the life of Miamoto, she recognizes the servant’s baby as her daughter Karen.
Samantha next ventures to a life in England in which she finds herself as a female ruler. Her husband dies, and since she has only a daughter and no sons, Samantha inherits responsibility for the land and its workers.
I am now the queen and the responsibility for the land is mine. We have rich land, many workers and a fine village. The guards protect the castle and patrol the borders. There are many who would take this land if they could. They see me as weak, because I am a female ruler. But the people are loyal to me.
Things are peaceful for many years, but then the ruler from a neighboring kingdom becomes more aggressive, threatening to take over her land.
Things are getting more and more dangerous and my advisors feel that an attack may be imminent. I make a visit to that kingdom to try to form an alliance. We agree that my daughter will marry his son and then we will be allied. That will bring peace. However, when I return home and tell my daughter, she is angry and wants no part of it.
Samantha realizes at this point that the daughter in this lifetime is again her daughter Karen.
Things keep getting worse, so the pressure mounts. Eventually my daughter agrees to the marriage, although she is not happy about it and resents me for it. The wedding takes place and she moves to his land. Things are peaceful for some years, but I hardly ever see my daughter. She doesn’t answer the messages I send her.
Trouble starts brewing again. I try to reach out to my daughter, but it seems she has joined her new family and turned her back on me. Soon we are attacked by them and we cannot hold them back. They storm my castle and I am killed in the battle.
Samantha is weeping now. She feels guilt over how she has treated her daughter in past lives and sadness over how her daughter has betrayed her. She fears she may lose her daughter again in her current lifetime.
Now I see why I have been feeling so guilty and have had so many fears about the future, given how I’ve treated Karen in the past. No wonder I have not been able to let go even though it is draining me physically, emotionally, and financially. I am trying so desperately to help Karen, to assuage my guilt.
As Samantha moves into the spirit world, her guide addresses her question about how to handle the situation with Karen.
You must remember that she is on her own path and has her own lessons to learn in this life. You have been repeatedly rescuing her and robbing her of the opportunity to find her own way. Just love her. Love is always the answer.
Remember your own path and your own self-care. Love yourself.
Inspired by the revelations and the loving acceptance of her guide, Samantha went home after the session and, as she described it, did some powerful soul searching.
Samantha concluded that it was best to stop rescuing Karen, even if that amounted to letting her go. She later reported the following experience.
The decision did not really make acting any easier for me, but I knew in my heart that it was the right one. It was the most loving thing to do for Karen.
When Karen showed up the next time at her house, high on drugs, broke, wanting to come back home to stay for a while, Samantha mustered all her strength and courage and said no. Not surprisingly, the following weeks were filled with anxiety and doubt. Given her history and not knowing what was happening with Karen, Samantha imagined the worst and struggled not to accept responsibility for the decisions that Karen might be making and the danger that she might be in.
When she finally did hear from her daughter, Karen was living with a new boyfriend. Samantha’s decision had been a turning point for both her and her daughter. Karen’s new boyfriend was supporting her in her efforts to get off drugs, and she seemed to be doing much better. Eventually the two married.
Samantha’s decision and action had a positive effect on her daughter’s life and a major impact on her own. Her days are no longer filled with drama and
worry. Life for Samantha has become much more peaceful, enjoyable, and free. She is trying to consciously love and care for herself.
A follow-up several years later finds Karen married, off drugs, and expecting a baby. Samantha’s days are now filled with a new excitement as she prepares to welcome a new baby into the family. Sadness and angst have been replaced with joy and anticipation.
The clues to your soul’s intention for a lifetime lie within your patterns of thinking, your behavior, and your relationships. If you struggle to resolve life problems and to achieve a sense of inner peace, you will find that your habits offer a road map to your future. Your challenge is to decode the clues and then to use this understanding to make the needed changes—to break free.
We have seen how Nancy, Emily, Lily, Baldwin, Bret, and Samantha used the wisdom gleaned during their Life Between Lives sessions to do just that. They broke free of the patterns of the past. Each achieved the learning, balancing, and healing that their soul yearned for by breaking free of the patterns that had long held them captive. Each reached a place of inner joy and serenity through the spiritual work they undertook to cope with life’s suffering. In doing so, they answered the whisper of their souls, which sought problem resolution through spiritual growth. Their lives improved while their souls advanced.