Q: You speak often about our lives bringing experiences needed by our souls. How can I know what my soul is trying to get out of this life, and how it fits into the bigger picture of its evolution?

A: Great question. To put this life into context, it helps to step back from the energies of the moment and consider what you know about yourself through your observations on this life.

What patterns have played out so far? What kind of challenges have you created? Did you accept them willingly? Did you go kicking and screaming? Were they thrust upon you?

What have you learned from them? Do you still act within them as you did, or has your response or acceptance of them changed? What have they shown you about yourself, and how have you used it?

Don't think challenges only present themselves as problems. Recognize that even the good times may present a challenge as they bring forth feelings of unrest within you, of needing to stir up the status quo.

Now sit quietly and connect with your soul. Ask it to show you where this life fits in to the totality of experiences gathered across all your lives.

Each experience has an energetic charge that is reflected within your personality. Look at the energy. Where does it flow easily and smoothly? Where is it stuck or imbalanced. How do your current experiences help you to see and address these energies?

It may be that your soul has little need for a current life of ease and plenty, where everything unfolds smoothly with little difficulty or hardship for you. It may very well show you that the obstacles in your life are there to offset stuck energies caused by repetitive choices in other lives where you were presented with a chance to explore another side of a situation, but responded in the same way as you had in life after life before -- but this time you accepted the challenge and went into them.

Understand that you may have intentionally (at a soul level) created or held onto the inner conditions you see as weaknesses and imperfections that need to be purged so that you could create and experience the very challenges you are now facing.

Now try to see these situations within the totality of your lifetimes and how they are balancing your energy and expanding your awareness of all aspects of your being.

It may not be easy at first, but keep at it. Your soul wants wholeness, and it will not let the opportunity pass to show you a little more of who you are and what you're life is about.

God bless you indeed. Go with love.