“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?” Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall”
I’ve just published my fourth book, Banish the Blues Now.
Not like I know anything about writing, as I still consider myself very much in the discovery process, but today I was chewing over a thought that keeps bothering me.
What if every author has a soul contract to write about certain subjects?
What if, as an author, your soul contract to pour your heart out on these topics had such force and binding that you could not, would not, receive permission from the universe to scrawl your thoughts on any other motif until you had fulfilled this spiritual agreement?
In my case, what if I had a soul agreement to explain how to heal depression without drugs – how to banish the blues now – that I would not be able to write books on any other subject until this theme had been fully explored?
Frankly, the entire manuscript process remains a mystery to me.
Sometimes I look over even simple blog posts I published and think, “Did I write that?
“I must have authored that post because it’s on my blog with that picture I took. Hmmm.
“Where was I, actually?
“I must have been there, I feel certain, but can’t actually recall how where or why. It’s almost like the whole damn thing – whether it be a book or a blog – just happened, like I came around a corner one day and all of a sudden there leaps up this marvelous monument to words, thoughts, feelings and ideas.”
I’ve been having this bothersome thought about soul agreements as an author frankly because my new book, Banish the Blues Now, covers the same subject matter as my very first book, Healing Depression: A Holistic Guide.
It took me three years to write Healing Depression, and I felt like I had literally conquered Mt. Everest when it was done.
Just driving through Atlanta traffic, parking, walking 10 minutes to the Emory University Medical Library, being allowed to check out no more than two books, walking back to the parking lot and slogging home through the masses of cars took a massive amount of rigid determination.
In recent years, it occurred to me that I had learned so much more about natural healing remedies for depression that it was time for me to update my thoughts on the subject.
My experience as a healer has taught me that the entire vibration of the planet has speeded up.
What worked in 1997 may have some validity now, in this day and age, but the truth is that current vibration must be used to address present issues.
My knowledge on nutrition alone – all the supplements, all the herbs, all the flower essences, all the amino acids, all the vitamins and minerals – needed to be brought up to current availability for the reader.
Meanwhile I had several important people asking me for an update who could not be ignored.
I felt like I had to swallow the collard greens and wash it all down with a big gulp of milk of human kindness for myself and others before I could be allowed to move on to what I have thought might be juicier topics.
So it’s done. Banish the Blues Now is available as an audiobook, as a paperback and last but not least as an ebook for all those who would prefer to read on electronic devices.
Just the audiobook alone took months to complete, with all the back and forth between myself, the producer, Steve Piper, and the reader Holly Parsons.
You have got to be as pigheaded as hell to be an author, if I can be brutally honest here.
My fiancé Ken Holmes likes to call me stubborn although I sometimes prefer to think of myself as tenacious.
Either way, the truth remains.
Lightweights don’t make it as published authors.
But I digress.
Your soul contract as an author – the thing you agreed to write about no matter what – that’s what I’m talking about.
So here’s what’s interesting.
Now that I have published my second book on the topic (my fourth book overall), my fifth book has been flowing out of me relatively painlessly.
In the middle of the night, in the wee hours of the morning, I receive guidance what to write and I get on my laptop and things happen. To the tune of more than 17,000 words so far happening!
It’s been so easy I feel like I am onto the dessert phase.
So now I am going to say it outright:
A, It is my belief and experience that we authors have soul agreements to share our knowledge about certain topics.
B, When we authors tune in, figure out what it is that our soul agreed to communicate, we can fulfill our soul contracts and then be allowed to flow through other wisdom but not before or until we have met the terms of our initial agreement.
If you are an author, or would like to be an author, I recommend you ask yourself these questions:
- If I actually had a soul agreement to write about a certain matter, what would that topic be?
- If I am trying to write about something else but it’s not happening, what obsession has been getting in the way that I need to address before I can move on?
- If I were to die tomorrow, what message would I need to share before my soul could rest at peace?
Once you answer those questions, you know what you must write about.
In the dark,
On a lark,
Make your remark,
Light the spark.
Then, finally, your soul can move ahead with confidence, knowing and experiencing you have fulfilled your spiritual contract.
