Ainslie MacLeod - The Instruction: Living the Life Your Soul Intended

To Lisa, Kyra, and Lucas, with all my love

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

W hen I began asking my clients if theyd like to be in my book, the one phrase I kept hearing was, Id be honored. Well, I can truly say that the feeling is mutual. I feel privileged to be part of your journeys, and I thank you for allowing me to share your often very personal and moving stories.

I want to give special thanks to my soulmate, Lisa, and my family and friends for all their love and support.

Id like to thank my agent, Eric Myers, for his expert guidance, and my editor, Kelly Notaras, for her enthusiasm and invaluable advice. I give my thanks, also, to everyone at Sounds True for all their tremendous efforts.

Im indebted to the many psychics Ive had the good fortune to meet over the years, particularly Bettina Luxon and David Walton.

And to my spirit guides: without you this book would not have been possible. I thank you from the depths of my soul for your wisdom, encouragement, and patience.

INTRODUCTION

The Reluctant Psychic

L ike a ship without a compass, most of us sail blindly through life with no real idea of where were going.

Then, every so often, we run aground and assume weve reached our destination.

We all search for happiness. Yet few goals are quite as elusive. Often we think weve found it, only to lose it again, or to realize we never really had it in the first place. For some of us, happiness keeps turning to disappointment. For others, happiness is always around the next corner.

Well spend years getting an education and training for the career weve always dreamed of, then end up stuck in a job we hate. Well search the world for true love, only to get tangled up in a five-year relationship that shouldnt have lasted five minutes.

The problem is that most of us dont know what it is we actually want. We end up sailing from one place to the next, hoping to find who or what were looking for through luck rather than design.

The Instruction offers an alternative to this hit-or-miss approach. It explains how to create a happier and more purposeful life by finding out who you are and why youre here.

But how?

Like everyone else on the planet, you have a soul. And what your soul wants is for you to follow the life plan it created before you were born. Your life plan is the map your soul uses to help you navigate the Physical Plane: the three-dimensional world your body and conscious mind inhabit.

Your life plan has clearly defined elements, yet it allows for total free will. It includes a complete personality, a set of goals, challenges to be overcome, people to meet, fears to be faced, and lessons to be learned.

To discover who you are and why youre here, all you have to do is look at your life planwhich is precisely what this book will show you how to do. It will walk you through the ten elements of your life plan, and reveal the secrets of living the life your soul intended.

Whats the importance of living the life your soul intended? The answer is that by understanding your souls purpose, youll no longer sail aimlessly through life. Instead of being that ship without a compass, youll set course knowing your current location, your destination, and what youre going to do when you get there.

To discover what your soul wants, Im going to take you on a journey to the Soul World, a place where the answers to all of lifes mysteries can be found. As we step through each of twelve doors, Ill reveal the Instruction, a unique system given to me by elevated spirit guides. Its purpose is to help you better understand yourself and enhance your experience of life on earth.

By the time the journey is complete, youll have discovered who you are and why youre here; how to overcome many of lifes challenges; and how to use what youve learned to live the life your soul intended.

But first, a little about who I am and why Im here.

Lost at Sea

In the mid-1990s, I arrived in California amid a cloud of emotional pain and confusion. Behind me was a two-decade-long trail of drama, heartache, and disappointment. Ahead of me I could see nothing but more of the same.

Then I had an epiphany: an incident that literally changed my life.

Ten years earlier, Id been a cartoon illustrator living and working in central London. On a trip to Brighton on Englands south coast, I met a gifted psychic named David Walton. In a dimly lit shop basement, I sat opposite him as he relayed messages from spirit guides on the other side. Everything he said struck me as being astonishingly accurate. That is, until he predicted something so unlikely I couldnt imagine it would ever happen.

He said, Youre going to end up in California.

When I told him the idea didnt particularly appeal to me, he leaned forward, shook his head gravely, and added, There is nothing you can do about it. Nothing.

A decade later, I found myself in a tiny studio, nestled in an alleyway under the imposing shadow of San Franciscos landmark Fairmont Hotel. The room was eerily silentso much so that I could hear my heart beating.

I was stressed out to the point that I could barely think straight. I slumped down on the sofa and wondered what to do next. It had been years since Id meditated, but it seemed as good a time as any to start again. I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths.

That was when I heard David Waltons words as clearly as when hed first said them: Youre going to end up in California. There is nothing you can do about it. Nothing.

I shot to my feet, as a wave of adrenaline shocked me out my inertia. I looked around, half imagining I wasnt alone. After a minute or so, I calmed down enough to think more rationally. That was when I realized I was living a psychics prediction of my life.

Growing up in Aberdeen, Scotland, I had many psychic experiences, though I never saw them as such. I read newspaper articles convinced Id seen them a week before, and I often knew what would be playing on the radio alarm clock before it switched itself on.

My first impressions of people were usually right, though I always had the tendency to override my intuition and see the best in everybody. (Youre too good for this world, my favorite aunt would say.) And I often knew what people were going to say before they said it. I had to learn to bite my tongue and wait until someone had actually posed a question before I answered it.

When I was sixteen, a man in a thirties-style hat and coat approached me at a table in the reference library and, despite the no-smoking sign, asked for a light. He kept looking away furtively as if he were being followed, so I couldnt really see his face. I searched my pockets for matches, and when I looked up, hed completely vanished.

When I asked the lady sitting beside me if shed seen where hed gone, she didnt know what I was talking about. It would be years before I learned that Id seen a ghost, one whod approached me because he knew Id be able to see him.

Despite all of this, I never thought I was psychic. I didnt particularly enjoy any of these experiences; they simply left me confused and unsettled. In fact, because I could see so many things before they occurred, I used to wonder if I somehow made them happen. (If I hadnt spent the last hour thinking about the car getting a flat tire, it might never have happened.)

When it came to making wise choices, my lack of understanding and natural tendency to ignore my intuition made me quite inept. Actually, it was worse than that. My intuition might tell me one thing, but Id do the exact opposite.