Spot on! Thank you for this, Jeff Foster! The whole concept of “soul contracts” that justify the traumatization and abuse of children because they “chose” to be born into their deeply painful families of birth is a concept that I once tried on, considered, and asked is this true? Over time, I came to completely shed this belief, listen to the wisdom of my heart, and recognize that the concept of karma wrapped around "soul contracts" as being incredibly spiritually bankrupt and I believe harmful on every level.
This belief system not only justifies the abuse of children — and other horrific and traumatic tragedies — due to karmic payback from previous lives, it totally distracts from and denies the profound lessons that come with truly understanding the roots of trauma.
First of all, having little vulnerable babies born to parents who embody generations of unaddressed trauma is never the answer to healing painful legacy burdens. Trauma does not heal trauma. Full stop.
Of course, as adults these legacy burdens rooted in ancestral and cultural trauma can push us to seek help, which is certainly true for myself, and that holds the potential to radically transform the trajectory of our lives. That said, too often the wise and skilled help and support most vital to our awakening is not available and the trauma that has been perpetrated and absorbed is experienced as insurmountable. This is obvious in the epidemics of addiction, depression, anxiety, suicides, and all forms of violence that we are witness to and impacted by in our deeply unhealthy culture. So, no, trauma more often than not simply creates more trauma. And many don't survive.
My mother was a malignant narcissist. My father’s immune system was compromised after living with my mother for 27 years — and coupled with never coming out of the closet as a gay man and other unaddressed trauma — and he died at the age of 60. Because of our severe trauma, my twin brother committed suicide when he was 26. I also worked professionally with abused and neglected children for decades. Saying that any of what happened arose out of “soul contracts” is, to me, unknowingly heartless and cruel.
That said, the profound gifts that come out of a deep dive into understanding, healing, unburdening, and transforming trauma frees us to be conscious of what gives rise to generational and cultural trauma — and what we need in order to heal.
We then become empowered to truly and deeply grieve and transform and come to terms with the legacy burdens that we were blindly handed by our ancestors and the culture we live in.
On a continuum, it is my belief that we humans are all impacted by the imperialist white-supremacist misogynist capitalist patriarchy that we have been born into. Seeing and absorbing this frees us from hatred, bitterness, rage, and dehumanization of perpetrators while also refusing to minimize or enable — and all while coming to embody the commitment to holding perpetrators of abuse accountable wherever possible.
Cycles of trauma can be broken. The belief in “soul contracts” is one among many that I believe serves as a serious impediment to our capacity for deep and radical healing and transformation. This concept of karmic reality that justifies abuse and other tragedies throws up obstacles to truth and to the peace, empowerment, compassion, wisdom, and fierce love that we come to embody as we courageously do the sacred work of shedding our delusions, denials, and distractions from healing and unburdening and transforming the roots of our individual and collective ancestral and cultural trauma.
At least this has certainly been my experience. Bless us all on our journeys.🙏🙏 Molly
Fuck “soul contracts” that justify or minimise the abuse of children.
I keep hearing this absolutely grotesque “spiritual” idea that some children “choose” to be abused. That maybe they were abusers in a past life and are now “balancing their karma.” Some kind of agreement made before birth!
Let me be very clear.
If this is spirituality, I want nothing to do with it.
We do NOT know what happened in some supposed past life, if you believe in past lives at all. Nobody knows. Nobody knows absolutely. These are beliefs. Stories. Speculation.
What we do know is this. A child is being harmed in this life. In this realm. In this body. In this moment.
The moment you say a child “chose” it, even in some mystical before-birth sense, you blur the line. You weaken the rightful outrage. You shift responsibility away from the person committing the abuse and place it onto some imagined cosmic order.
It was “meant” to happen. It was “karma.” It was “chosen.”
No.
That is not depth. That is not clarity. That is not unconditional love. It is profound moral confusion dressed up as spiritual insight. It minimises the suffering of victims and it risks emboldening abusers, because now they can hide behind the idea that they are serving some cosmic order, and who is to say that is “wrong”?
(Note: If someone uses “soul contract” language to make sense of their own abuse and reclaim some sense of meaning or agency, I would never want to take that away from them. I am only speaking about the point where that framework starts to blur responsibility or excuse/enable the person who caused the harm.)
Spiritual language that cannot take a clear stand when the innocent and vulnerable are being harmed is not wisdom. It is avoidance. It is sedation. Numbness. Dissociation dressed up as love.
If your philosophy cannot say, without hesitation, that child abuse is wrong, then something has gone very wrong with your philosophy.
No comments:
Post a Comment