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*Dear elephant reader: if you’re single & looking for mindful dating or conscious love, try out our lovely partner, MeetMindful.

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“Important encounters are planted by the souls, long before the bodies see each other.” ~ Paul Coelho

Have you ever met someone that you feel an instant connection with, where the connection is so strong it takes your breath away?

It’s almost as if a vibrational energy is pulling you towards the person, and no matter how hard you try you can’t stay away from them?

Yep, that’s a soul contract in your path—for sure.

I recognized my soul contracts with certain people pretty early on in my life. I didn’t have a language for it back then, or even know how to describe it, but I definitely knew when I had met someone significant that was going to have a big impact on my life.

In my younger years, I would have told you that every feeling I had of “knowing” with a man meant I was supposed to be in a relationship with them. And most of the time, it did.

What I didn’t know was that the experiences that were deeply painful and difficult were exactly what my soul had requested before coming here so I could learn and grow.

Damn soul, always taking the bumpy route to enlightenment.

Our souls know when we come here what our life purpose is, and they plant lots and lots of people, experiences and lessons in our path to get us there. Those people and experiences are always leading us to our higher self, but there are tons of lessons we need to learn in order to reach that final destination of spiritual enlightenment.

This is where our soul contracts with other people come into play.

We make them before we come here and those people are incredibly important to our soul’s growth, no matter how brief our encounters with them may be. They present opportunities that push us further towards where we are meant to go.

Without them, we may not have made it there.

If you are deeply intuitive, you’ll recognize these people immediately when you cross paths. The energy between you will feel intense, magnetic and powerful. You may sometimes even see images in your mind of the future or glimpses of something that is going to happen with them.

As I became more tapped into my own psychic abilities (which basically means my inner knowing that somebody I’ve met is supposed to play some important role on my journey), I became impatient when the other person didn’t recognize it.

Not everybody is in tune with the contracts we’ve made with each other, and everybody has free will. At any time, we can meet someone, feel the pull, know on some level our souls are meant to do some work together, and then pull away, scared of what may happen.

I met a man last year with whom I felt an instant “recognition.” It wasn’t just that he was attractive; I simply “knew,” with 100 percent certainty, that I was supposed to connect with him.

It felt at the time that it was meant to eventually be a relationship of some sort. Most likely brief, as I was not in a place in my life where I wanted anything long-term. But it was so clear to me that I was meant to teach him something and he was meant to teach me something.

As the months drew on, and we did nothing more than touch base via the occasional phone call or text message to see how the other person was doing, I grew impatient. My soul insisted this man was important and kept pushing me towards connecting with him. Ego prevented me from doing it. I told myself that if we really had a sacred contract together, the universe would conspire for us to cross paths again, as we did not run in the same circle of people.

Well, wouldn’t you know, about nine months later, our paths did cross again unexpectedly. This time the pull was even stronger (on my end) and my spirit told me he needed me to help him and to remain open to whatever happened.

This time, we did connect for a brief period of time in a semi-romantic way. It felt to me that it had the potential to be something really beautiful and loving.

But free will is part of every soul’s journey. We are presented with opportunities aligned with our life’s purpose and we get to choose whether we want to take them or not. I sensed he wanted to take it. But there was something holding him back. He still wasn’t completely ready.

So I didn’t force it. I released him knowing that another opportunity will present itself to him by someone else. And maybe he won’t turn away from it like he did from ours.

What he doesn’t realize is that through our brief encounter with each other, he helped advance my soul in many ways. What I saw as his “rejection” of me revealed to me how I continue to go into my story of not being enough when a man decides he doesn’t want to stay.

This time I got it! I got that I am more than enough. And his decision to not pursue anything deeper with me had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him and where he is at in his own journey.

Thank you, my soul screamed. I got the lesson; I don’t need to live in that story anymore, which means I don’t need to repeat it.

Karma can also play a part in our contracts with people, both in this life and the next. When we don’t learn our lessons, the universe conspires to bring us another experience to learn it, often with the same person.

This is why you’ll notice the same patterns around relationships and circumstances in your life that keep repeating. If you see the same patterns repeating, ask yourself, “What can I do differently this time around so I don’t have to keep repeating this lesson?”

Remember that the contracts we make with people, whether they be our family members, friends, business partners, colleagues or romantic interests, are all intentional and absolutely meant to be, even the ones that feel “wrong.”

None of them happen by accident; you’ve chosen them to advance your soul.

So when you are particularly challenged, ask yourself: “What am I meant to be learning here?” “What story in myself is getting triggered again?” “What experience don’t I want to attract to myself anymore?” Then you can be on the lookout for people with similar energy that you naturally draw in.

Buckle up! Our soul contracts are like little twists and turns, dips and elevations on the roller coaster of life.

At the very end, when we have survived the fear, the unknown of what’s around the bend, and the exhilaration and joy of making it to the final stop on the ride, we can rest knowing we have ended up exactly where we were always meant to go.

“Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” ~ Pema Chodron

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Relephant Read:

8 Common Misunderstandings about Soulmates.

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Author: Dina Strada

Editor: Toby Israel

Photo: Dr. Wendy Longo/Flickr // Pixoto

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