Rating: 
Summary: Marketing Genius
Review: I've read and listened to Caroline Myss over the years. I found some of her earlier books interesting but her personality was a turn off. For someone in the field of helping people, she seems to have little compassion for others.I listened to the tapes of Sacred Contracts and thought it interesting. However, it seems to me that there is little original thinking. Much of it is Jungian psychology with a twist of New Age religion. I was completely turned off by the fact that in order to get a picture of the various archetypes, I would also have to buy the book. In the tapes, Caroline is speaking to an audience. She relates a story about how we need to take credit for our strengths. She tells us that she is "great at Marketing." I agree. Forcing someone to buy both the tape and a book is a great Marketing gimmick. Too bad it backfired with me. My suggestion is if you really want to know what she's preaching, read the book. At least you get the complete picture. Better yet, buy Carl Jung's book Man and His Symbols. You'll get a better idea about archetypes.
Rating: 
Summary: Psychobabble not spirituality
Review: I am a physician who has read thousands of pages of spiritually enlightening books in the last three years. I feel every book has come to me at the perfect time with the perfect message including the CWG series, Celestine Prophecy Series, and many more. I found no redeeming take to heart message in the hours I painstakeingly spent listening to the audiotapes. I am normally so enthralled in my spiritual path I often rewind to absorb a point. In this case I constantly fought the urge to fast forward. Her symbolism, archtypes, and profiling is so psychology based it makes them all seem crazy or delusional-something at $150/hr might take years of appointments to work through....... The real message here for me was, not everybody gets it. I understand the perfection of everyone in my life and eternal path, but it isn't a reason to rationalize every bad choice in one's life.
Rating: 
Summary: Pleasant but not practical reading
Review: The title and editorial reviews made the book very difficult for a self-help junkie to avoid. The idea of sorting our self-image via archetypal models isn't really very new, but it seems to me that Ms. Myss has brought it to the market in an understandable and very readable way. In that sense, she has adapted information palatably for a mass market. I consider her book to be a very pleasant and entertaining read. In engineering, people talk (endlessly, but usefully) about "convergent algorithms." The idea is that they want to design some way to arrive at an answer that they know to be reliable, and they want to arrive there in a finite length of time (even if the finite time is rather long). Ms. Myss offers very many exercises to the reader, and I have no doubt that different people might find one of them or even many of them both entertaining and useful. I found essentially all of them entirely frustrating because I wasn't able to arrive at any new insight that was recognizably valid in a finite length of time. So, I consider her exercises to be "non-convergent" and therefore useless (to me). From my point of view, Ms. Myss has written an excellent book, but she has written it for herself and not for the reader. The book will show that she is herself a clever and interesting person, and I suppose there's a point to that. However, I don't think it helped me much to become a more clever or a more interesting person. So, for me there was no point to it at all. If I gained anything from it, it was Ms. Myss' description of her own "shadow queen" paradigm. I have gotten along very poorly with female humanity for a long time. I recognized the "shadow queen." I know her well, although that doesn't help much. If I could simply "undo" reading this book and reclaim the time that I wasted on it, I would certainly do that. I recommend against even cracking the cover of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing tool for self discovery!
Review: The idea is that we made "contracts" before coming to this earth, and we play them out every day. When we feel a "zing" of recognition at meeting someone, or feel like we'd like to choke them, we are experiencing animation...a divine connection that says "Hey, I have a contract with you!" I enjoyed how Myss weaves together Christian, Buddhist, and other traditions, and shows how the central religious figures (Jesus, Buddha, etc.) walked out *their* contracts on the earth. The most interesting part, for me, was the discovery of personal Archetypes and the casting of the Wheel. I could see myself and others in the "Fab Four" Archetypes common to all (Victim, Saboteur, Child, and Prostitute), as well as the individual Archetypes that we draw on most in our life. Archetypes are energies and characteristics we us to fulfill our specific contracts in the world. We use archetypal language every day: "I'm tired of fighting this!" (Warrior), or "She acts like the Queen of England" (Queen) etc. It's not hocus pocus...it's the realization that we take on certain energies and dramas in our life that assist us in our individual Who and Why. Many Archetypes "dance" with each other...Knight with Damsel, Rescuer with Addict, Student with Teacher... I'm a Christian, and I wasn't at ALL put off by the fact that Myss believes in reincarnation; whether we live once or many times, it's a feasible theory to believe that we've made agreements with God, and perhaps others, to live out certain dramas in the journey of our soul's wisdom. When casting the Wheel, Archetypes land in 1 of 12 Houses...each House corresponding with the Astrological Chart Houses and what each entails. It's amazing to see where Archetypes land, and in which House! For example, my Queen landed in the 1st House of Ego and Identity, and if you'd see the jewelry I wear, how "commanding" I am, and how I carry myself...you'd suspect Queen energy! Myss also teaches about the 7 chakras, including an 8th chakra that deals with "symbolic sight", or, seeing things from a God's eye view. She also correlates chakras with the Houses, and what issues fall in which chakras. It's not confusing at all, even to the uninitiated! I HIGHLY recommend this book to understand yourself, your purpose, others and *their* contracts, and how our relationships relate to our Archetypes.
Rating: 
Summary: The Trial By Existence - Expanded Version
Review: In SACRED CONTRACTS, written by Caroline Myss, Ph.D., there is a poem by Robert Frost included right after Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D., attests to his appreciation of the author, his friend and former understudy. (I always liked Frost.) The name of the poem is "The Trial by Existence" and it is cleverly and artfully used by Dr. Myss to set the stage and establish the theme that runs through the entire book: We're all here for a purpose and our souls accepted their special purpose for existence in human form before we were born. There is, therefore, a "sacred contract" with the Divine, Dr. Myss says, that influences our time on earth. The health, satisfaction and happiness we experience are a direct result of how consistently we are living up to the "terms of our individual contracts". But since none of us are born with a hard copy of the contract, what are we mere mortals to do? And here's where it gets to be fun! With this question in mind, Dr. Myss reassures the reader that it is, indeed, possible to consciously discover one's purpose and discover the terms of one's sacred contract and even intuitively unite in common purpose with the Divine. She then very methodically and very skillfully blends the various religious traditions of the East and West with many new age concepts and practices as well as traditional psychological thinking, adds a few spices of her own, and comes up with a "system", as it were, to find out why we're here; what we're supposed to learn and how we can fulfill our highest calling. It's great fun - no kidding - but you have got to be willing to spend a lot of time with it. It's a "system". Even a quick reading, however, is entertaining, and there are scores of wise sayings and insights put together by a very talented journalist and writer that have the potential to inspire you. Enjoy it. If you want to explore another book that shares Dr. Myss' view, in her words, that "choice is your greatest power" (p. 17) and that "(f)ulfilling your highest potential actually means acting on your highest or deepest truth each moment of your life" (p. 361), then you might want to read and compare WORKING ON YOURSELF DOESN'T WORK by Ariel and Shya Kane. Although the Kane's book speaks to the importance of conscious choice and being available and alive and aware in each moment, that's where the similarities of the two books end. The Kane's book does not present a system to be learned but a way of being. The future always shows up in a moment of now, and how you live the moment makes all the difference. I think you will enjoy the comparison. Have fun!
Rating:
Summary: Tarot Contact
Review: Some general advice here about self discovery, but degenerates into a tarot style hit and miss.
Rating:
Summary: Don't buy this book!
Review: I read over 400 self-help books. I have a B.A. in psychology and recently wrote my own self-help book (How to love yourself when no one else does, by publishamerica.com). I ordered and bought this book, but I truly believed, I wasted my money. This book is extremely scientific, and I can see that the author analizes a lot of other books, and she knows psychology a lot. But I honestly don't believe that analizing different aspects of human psyche will help person to heal and to correct problems that he or she has in the environment that caused his or her inner state in the first place. I really didn't like this book. It directs people in extremely wrong direction. Analizing self in such manner doesn't bring practical and expected results for people. I recommend not to buy this book. If you will spend your money, buy better books than this. There are so much better books than this one. Don't waste your money!
Rating:
Summary: Sacred Contracts
Review: I bought this book, but found it too hard to follow. Gave it to my daughter who put it on her bookshelf. It was recommended by her friend. I was disapointed because I enjoy her lectures-clear and concise with good humour.
Rating:
Summary: Sacred Contracts is a brilliant!
Review: Sacred Contracts is a brilliant synthesis of spiritual insight and psychology. Presumably based on the author's well known workshops of the same name. Sacred Contracts takes Jung's concept of archetypes beyond anything Jung himself might have imagined and brings the notion squarely into the 21st century.
The author developed an enjoyable and ingenious process for deciphering your own Contract using a new theory of archetypes that builds on the works of Jung, Plato, and contemporary thinkers. This book is genuinely transformative in understanding the why and what of your inner self. I bought the audio version after reading the written version. Really use both. When I work I use Neurosync behavior modification software to make other improvements. I enjoy self improvement and self enlightenment and I highly recommend both the book and audio versions.
Rating:
Summary: incredible insight
Review: I love this book. It clarifies so many things that I have often wondered about. It is so insightful - lots of food for thought. This book is not for the traditional-minded. Very new age and thought-provoking
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