On my Inner Truth Healing Facebook page I asked my audience for blog topic suggestions, and a friend asked me to write about the energetic freedom of “letting go” of the expectation of a certain type of relationship with someone else, in particular with a family member. This is a multifaceted topic, which I feel ultimately reduces to those first two words: “letting go.” First, let me clarify that when I say “letting go,” I do not mean you should, in anyway, let go of your personal power, quite often this is what is creating the imbalance or perceived difficulty in the relationship.

Energy is able to flow freely when we let go of attachments or constrictions. This, in the broader sense, is the concept of letting go. The ability to allow the universal life-force energy to flow in and out of you without the limiting factors of fears. Easier said, than done, I know.

Most of us come into the world with past-life fears bundled into our soul energy, and in our present lives our fears are wrapped-up in different forms. A pattern develops, and it is up to us to find out how to unweave the threads and set the energy free. We are, like my friend Karen Kubicko (who is writing a book on her past lives) likes to say, living in a classroom called Life.  When we master a lesson, or fear, we let go of the restrictions it creates. Sometimes this takes many lifetimes.

For example, I have had several lifetimes (I currently know of at least 4), where I have experienced disempowerment on a fairly large scale. In one of my earliest lifetimes I was a male healer in a clan where my abilities were a threat, and jealousy also arose regarding my love interest. I was murdered by a severe blow to the head. Later, I had a life as a male eunuch, literally emasculated via castration. In my most recent past life (that I am aware of), I tried to flee from, and was eventually caught, and likely killed by the Nazis in WWII. The trauma of this ordeal used to haunt my childhood dreams in the form of a reoccurring nightmare of trying to flee from an unseen monster in a dark forest of pines. In my child-mind, I formed new characters based on my present life fears.

In one of my lives as a writer, my written words were used against me. In this current life, it took me years to garner the courage to write and share my words, and, to this day, I have no urge to keep a daily journal.

We carry not only our past lives with us, but also the lives of our ancestors. I come from a lineage of women (and some men) afraid to speak their truths, unsure of their voices because they have learned to doubt them, and have often been harmed when they have tried to speak with the conviction of their hearts.

With just this information, you could hardly be surprised to learn that one of my challenges in this life is using my voice/personal power with assertion and confidence. I chose as a young child to err on the side of silence, and still try to avoid conflict whenever possible. Yet, despite my best efforts, I still sometimes attract what I most fear. We all do.

Bullies have appeared in my path since before I was born, happy to take the power that I too freely give away. We get back what we send out. If we live in a state of victimhood, people projecting an over-abundance of masculine energy will cross our path and happily take away our power. They may not project this “bully” behavior towards everyone, but they will when they meet someone who is an energetic magnetic to this energy.

I’m not such an easy target as I used to be, but this stepping into my personal power has not occurred without effort and much healing work. In this process of healing, I have learned to look at people differently.

Most of us, at some point, or at various points in our lives, have a desire to change another person so that s/he will love or like us more, or vice-versa. When I am honest with myself, I can think of few people whom I have not wanted to change in some way, and at some point during my relationship with them.

When we have a desire to change someone else, our soul is really asking for us to change, or heal, something within ourselves. This relates to the idea that those who live peaceful lives of acceptance, like the Buddha, have no need or desire to try to change the world around them, including the people they encounter. Peace comes from within.

So how do we let go of that need/desire for change in others? Usually what we want to change in one person is repeated in another form in someone else. A pattern develops, and just when we think we’ve rid ourselves of a particular type of person/problem, that person/problem appears in another form. This happens because you have agreed to work on that challenge in this life, and it will not disappear until you have mastered it.

Often, those people who are triggering a negative reaction in you, have made a soul contract with you to help you over-come, or release this challenge, and your contract will only be released when the lesson is learned, and the energetic attachment is set free. Sometimes you both need to learn from each other.

This idea has helped me immensely, and has caused my perception of “difficult” or “challenging” people in my lives to change. I, in essence, view everyone as a teacher, sometimes I know I am their teacher, and accept this as my role in their lives, but most often I see how I can learn from my experiences with the energy they project that is challenging for me. Now, I ask myself what the lesson is for me, and how can I garner the most learning from a particular experience or interaction.

When I react impulsively, in a way that I will later regret, I look at the fear-based energy that is restricting the flow of freedom within me. Why is it still resisting this flow? Usually, more internal work needs to be done, but I have been given a gift. The gift of another try. We need not beat ourselves up when patterns repeat, instead we should remember the difficult challenges/lessons we have agreed to take on in our lives.

What happens when you have a family member who serves as a difficult teacher for you in this life, causing your relationship to be strained. It can be like a constant reminder of your fears, which isn’t always pleasant for both parties involved. I have two children, and, if you ask my daughter, my eldest, who I favor, she would tell you her brother. Perhaps not an easy concept to admit as a parent, as I believe most of us like to think we love and treat our children in an equal manner.

Although my love for my daughter knows no bounds, she is, without a doubt, one of my greatest teachers in this life. We made a soul contract going into this life, she didn’t have to reincarnate again, but she did, for me, my husband and my son. She is an incredible gift. Yet, she is infinitely challenging for all of us! Her power center and voice are strong and sure, she speaks her mind with conviction, often relentlessly. She tests my patience and my strength daily. I need her in my life, and she knows it. I can’t imagine a greater gift of love.

If our teachers were always kind and compassionate, would we learn to over-come our deepest struggles? Although my daughter is still a child, she knows, in the way she can understand, that she is a teacher for me. It can be frustrating, I realize, when the other person does not remember their soul-contract with you in this life. I have those people around me too, and sometimes my contract with them has been filled, but they have not fulfilled their contract with me.

Should this change how we perceive challenging people, or how we interact with them? Probably not. We have two logical options: we can free them from their soul-contracts in this life by cutting our energetic cords with them, or we can keep them as teachers. Ending our present-life contracts often result in ending our present day relationships with these people, and we should not view this as a failure, as our soul will know that this is what is best for both parties involved. We have simply done enough, it’s time to move on, it’s time to release the strained energy.

Or, we can choose to continue to teach and learn from them. Even though I have fulfilled my soul-contract obligations with some of my family members, I still learn from them, and I am hoping they, in their way, learn from me. They still serve to remind me of what I need to heal within, and where my energy tends to constrict.

I believe that when we learn a life lesson, the triggers for it abate. A pattern of “challenging” encounters with people either go away, or the effects they have on us change. When the peace within us is bright enough, nothing can take away its light.

Please feel free to share your own thoughts and experiences, and if you have a healing-related topic you would like me to blog about, please let me know.