In the middle of the night, I am roused by a knock on the door. I go reluctantly to answer, and find a smiling man with a strangely innocent face standing outside in the moonlight.

He says, “I come from my father’s house.”

I am confused. What does he want with me? Has he come peddling religion, at this unlikely hour?

Still smiling, he hits me hard, with these words: “What is your contract with God?”

I wake shaken to my core. The question implies that I must have such a contract. But if I have a contract with God, how could I have forgotten it?

This was one of those big dreams that brings you awake. My dream visitor came many years ago, when I was living on the farm where I learned the ways of the deer and the hawk and the red fox, and spoke in other deep dreams with a Mohawk woman of power, a master shaman who lived centuries ago. The simple question put to me at my door deepened and accelerated my personal quest for spiritual meaning. I was reminded that the most important knowledge is attained through soul remembering.

The essence of soul remembering  is to recall the assignment you may have accepted before you entered this life experience, and its basic terms and conditions. For me, the idea that we entered into a sacred contract before we came here is a potent myth, one of those myths we can live by in the sense that it adds sense and drama to our everyday existence, and sometimes the courage and driving purpose to get us through.

Let me offer a simple exercise to take you to a place where you can remember these things. Picture this:

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You are going upriver, hovering like a bird above the stream. The river below you is the river of your life. As you travel towards its headwaters, you may notice people and places that have been important in your life.
At last you come to a high waterfall. You leap up, over the falls, and slip into the warm waters of a deep lake inside a cavern. You are now in the waters of the amniotic lake. You rest here for a while, safely contained, listening to the sound of a heartbeat.
Then you are ready to travel further. You find a passage at the back of the cavern and you speed through into the space you were in before you entered the body, the space between lifetimes.
At first the forms may be blurred and indistinct, but as your perception shifts, you will find yourself in the presence of a guide who can help you to remember and study the terms of the mission you accepted before you entered your present life.