AGREEMENTS: Lessons I Chose on My Journey toward the Light

By Linda Stein-Luthke

This captivating narrative tells the story of the life and adventures of a "western" woman with "eastern" experiences. Told with candor and humility, it describes the agony and ecstasy of an exceptional growth process that includes fascinating encounters with many Masters on this and the higher planes. The reader will come away inspired and encouraged to seek the personal relationship to the Light that weaves like a common thread through the author's ongoing journey toward awakening. More than an interesting autobiography, Agreements is thus a "teaching tale" with a universal message.

CONTENTS

Dedication
Acknowledgment
Foreword

CHAPTER TITLES:
Setting the Stage
"Different" from the Beginning
Little Women
A Mess and a Message
Two Fathers, no Mother

"All You Need is Love"
More Change
Elusive Comfort
One Marriage, Two Births, and Two Deaths
Orphaned, Divorced, Afraid -- and Free
A Woman's Search for Meaning
Becoming a Director
An Epiphany
Making a Fool of Myself -- Repeatedly
Forays into Metaphysics
Forays into Channeling
Ascended Masters
Growing into Becoming a Channel
Apprenticeship
Indian Adventures
Another Epiphany
The River of Life
Twin Flame
Reunited -- Torn Apart
A Mystic in Training
Meeting More Masters
More of a Mess
Return to India
Return to Ruins
Surrender
Knight in Shining Armor
Fusing Two Lives and a Spine
The Third Try is the Charm
Forging a New Path
On a Quest for Healing
Daskalos
More Lessons
Our First Book
Another Loss
Reunion in India
The Spirit of Assisi
Child in Ukraine -- Family in India
A Message from K.P.
Meeting Our Children
Becoming Instant Parents of Two
Forging a Family
Epilogue
Thoughts to Take Home

APPENDIX
Introduction to Psychoenergetic Healing
Publications from Expansion Publishing

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780965692779

Book preview

Chapter 1

Setting the Stage

We make agreements before we are born. Most of us would love to think that we are these lovely little cherubs floating around in the ethers with not a thought or care, just waiting for our debut. Not true.

You see, prior to entry into human form, we are fully engaged with what we call our Totality. Some folks may call this our Higher Self, which directly links us to God. Our Totality consists of everything we have ever been or ever will be. It exists in all time and space and in no time and space; it is eternal. It is where we came from and where we will return. The term the Ascended Masters have given us for Higher Self is Totality. The term they have given us for God is Infinite Source. They have also taught us that whatever term resonates with you is the best term for you to use.

So, this little cherub is actually part of a Totality that has already been everywhere and done everything and is planning for this aspect of itself to return once again to this planet to honor its agreements.

The term most commonly used to describe this condition of return is reincarnation. Eastern religions describe the laws governing our reincarnation as the laws of karma. What the Masters have taught us is that we choose our karma. It is neither good nor bad. We decide our karmic agenda in conjunction with our Totality prior to birth. We consciously interact with this Totality and make agreements as to what karma we will experience. We also make agreements with everyone we will connect with prior to birth.

Why do we choose a particular karma? We choose our karma so that our life experiences can help us gain wisdom and knowledge so that we can gradually awaken. As we learn life’s lessons, we can become totally aware of why we are alive and who we really are. This act of waking up is often called enlightenment.

I’ve come to realize that a major motivation for me to wake up is my desire to release my need to suffer. The confusion, ignorance, fear, and discomfort that seem a natural part of life are something I have not enjoyed. As difficult as life can still be, the fact that I’ve woken up enough to know there is a better way, is quite helpful. I am grateful for every little bit I’ve learned as I’ve honored my agreements.

And I know enough now to know there is always a lot more to learn.

*** *** ***

I waited until the day of the formal surrender of Japan on September 2nd, 1945 before I reentered the human plane. But I didn’t miss out on the horrors of the war that was ended on that day. My current husband, Martin and I remember clearly working in the concentration camps in Europe to help people with their transitions. We were disembodied spirits with a very real purpose while we were awaiting re-entry. We were there to help.

It was a pretty grim job and left me with some bad memories that I wanted to forget once I was born. When Martin and I found each other, the memories flooded back in full and we knew it was time to heal them.

We did remember working closely with the Light of Infinite Source to help people during their transition. This same Light then helped us heal what we experienced prior to birth. It is my understanding that many who are alive today have similar memories of aiding others during World War II or other wars that have occurred prior to their births. Since all who intend to be reborn are drawn closer to earth before reentry, they encounter whatever terror is already occurring. Many spirits in waiting then choose to help those souls who are on their way out while they are getting ready to take new bodies.

After helping in the camps, Martin chose to be born in Germany and I was born a Jew in America. This is one of the ways we sought to further heal ourselves and the planet of the terror we had all experienced. We wanted to be a bridge of Light between these two factions that had experienced so much suffering. Martin delayed his birth to give his parents time to find each other in Germany. He’s eleven years younger than I am.

We met in this lifetime in 1992. Martin came to America to find me – which, of course, he did not know at that time. No one could understand why he would leave his girlfriend and his newly formed practice in Germany to travel all the way to the U.S. and return to school once more. It didn’t make sense. Most of the agreements we make don’t make sense to us while we are living through them. It is only after we go through them that we gain perspective and see why we’ve chosen a particular experience.

The Masters say we never make a mistake. All is perfectly designed to help us awaken to the Light. I have to admit that this truth is still hard for me to embrace. This awakening can be a slow process!

In this lifetime, Martin and I had a lot of other agreements to take care of before we could finally meet again. And so the story begins.

Chapter 2

Different from the Beginning

It seems that from my first cognizant moment, I had questions -- and they weren’t easy questions! I wanted to know, Why is Mommy crying? - Why are we in the car and leaving our home? - Why are my sisters bigger than me? - Why doesn’t Mommy like our new home and our new neighbors? - Why does she say, ‘we are different’? - What is Jewish? Why are we Jewish? - Why don’t we like Jesus the way my friend Susie does? - Why is her big family so happy? - Why do they have a tree at Christmas and why don’t we?

All of those questions arose before the age of five. We had traveled cross-country from Mother’s family in California to Ohio so that Daddy could take over a diaper service business. His older brothers set him up in Akron after he had lost his money in a failed business venture in California.

I was the youngest of three girls. Shortly after I was born, Daddy moved the family from Pittsburgh, where they had lived in a tight-knit Jewish community, to California. Mommy was longing to be near her mother, brothers, and sister who had all left Pittsburgh for California a few years earlier. Unfortunately for our young family, the move to California didn’t work out, and now the family was exiled to Akron, Ohio. There, we had to live among Christian neighbors, without the tight-knit Jewish community of Pittsburgh, or the family ties in California.

My parents had, in a way, been casualties of World War II, even though Daddy was lucky enough to never fight a day on account of hemorrhoids. (The humor wasn’t lost on him. He was saved by his ass!) But every Jew in America had been horrified by the war, and terrified thinking of what might have happened if the Nazis had won. Feeling like a fish out of water in Akron, my mother became agoraphobic -- a captive of her fears which were totally unfounded. In fact, her neighbors adored her and appreciated this quiet, soft-spoken, shy woman that she had become over the years. What they didn’t know was that this woman had changed quite a bit from the gregarious, bright, witty girl who had once stolen my father’s heart.

I, however, only knew the frightened woman who was secluding herself in the home we moved into when I was three years old. That was when the questions started forming in my mind.

By the time I was five, and once my Catholic friend, Susie had explained Jesus to me, I asked the question that horrified my mother the most: Why don’t we like Jesus? I told her I did like Jesus from everything I’d heard about him and wanted to keep on liking him. Was that okay? She immediately called for my father, and asked him to help me understand that we couldn’t be like those people. We were different!

Now I was to accept that I could play with all my little friends in the neighborhood, but I could never, ever really be friends with them. That would be impossible. We were all different.

My parents enrolled me in Sunday school with my sisters to begin my Jewish education and to make Jewish friends. In the fall of my first year, around Halloween, all the children were taken to the small sanctuary to see a movie about Youth Aliyah. It was 1950, and we were to take little blue tins to our neighbors’ homes on Halloween and ask for money to bring the children who had survived the Holocaust in Europe to Israel.

Since we were too young to know what the Holocaust was, they showed us a movie about it with footage of little children just like us, dressed in striped pajamas in freezing weather, standing behind barbed wire fence. The children were hollow-eyed and skeletal. The Christians had done this to the Jews, they said.

I was stunned. Horrified. I came home and asked my parents what this all meant. I have no memory of what they said -- but I hid my blue tin. I couldn’t ask all the nice people in my neighborhood for money for these children. I was too embarrassed and afraid they would think I was blaming them for what had happened to these other children. I was also afraid the blue tin might give them ideas.

I pushed the horror from my mind. But it wouldn’t leave. How could the Jesus my friends were telling me about want this to happen to children just like me? This made no sense, and no one was answering my questions. All I heard was that this was true, it did happen, and we must always know it could happen again. We must never forget.

I formed a protective wall around me. I now adopted the wall that made me different from my friends. But even as I hid behind it, I stubbornly kept my friends and kept pushing my mind to find what was similar. Weren’t we all just children? Didn’t we all like to ride our bikes, roller skate, play tag, put on talent shows, play cowboys and Indians, and ‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours’?

So, I had an idyllic childhood in Akron, Ohio with all my Christian friends, but I never forgot.

Chapter 3

Little Women

When I was ten, I opened the well worn copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott that both my sisters had loved. Sandy is six years older and Bobbie is three years older. I loved to read the books they had read, (including Peyton Place!) but this book really changed my life.

Although my father made it clear that he’d have preferred that one of his offspring had been a son, he worked with the material that fate had dealt him and encouraged his daughters to use our minds. We were his little women. Our dinner time was filled with discussions about what my older sisters were learning in school. (As the youngest, I was relegated to active listener!) Daddy had never finished college because he had not wanted to take on the assigned role of an accountant in the family towel supply business. As the youngest of nine children of immigrant parents, he wasn’t given another choice. His family put an end to his tuition payments, and thus his academic aspirations.

This did not stop his love of learning. I thought he was a wonderful teacher, just as I was told his father was, who had been a professional tutor in Russia before he came to the U.S. So, we learned to appreciate great music, literature, philosophy, and the finer grammatical points of the English language.

Our father instilled in us the understanding that a woman’s mind was a terrible thing to waste. Louisa May Alcott only reinforced this belief in me. Her Little Women were accomplished and developed. I loved everything about the book and when I learned that Madame Alexander made Little Women dolls, I wanted those dolls! Well, I did.

My tenth year offered several occasions for my parents to acquire these dolls for me. Beth came at Chanukah followed by Meg when a boy from the neighborhood, who was a good friend of mine, took very bad aim with a sling shot and a stone lodged in my right eye. I had to lie in the hospital, flat on my back with sandbags on either side of my head for one week while my eye healed – a torturous experience which saved my vision. My eyes were covered with bandages, but I could hold Meg and feel her beautiful dress and hair…

Marmee came when the Weiner twins -- who swore they loved me but only tormented me -- broke one of my fingers during ballroom dancing class one Sunday afternoon.

I worked in Daddy’s office to earn Jo and Amy. My set was complete!

One day in Brownies I realized that two other girls also had sets of the dolls and we formed a club to have all the dolls play together. We celebrated all the March family birthdays, sewed wardrobes, built elaborate residences on our bedroom floors, and had a marvelous time enacting various scenes from the books.

Our Little Women club offered wonderful friendships based on something that transcended the divisions that Mother continued to remind me were very real. I ignored her words of caution: When you are all older and must be more active in your own faiths these friendships will end.

Three years later, we were still friends. My club sisters were among the more popular girls at junior high, and by default, so was I. It was a wonderful time for me. Since I was still on my quest to see where our differences lay, I attended their Christian Sunday schools where I, apparently, asked far too many questions. After a few of those visits, I was not invited back to the Sunday schools!

But I did have my curiosity satisfied in other ways. My parents subscribed to Time, Life, and Look magazines and I devoured each issue to learn about the world. Then Daddy invested in a subscription of the big Time/Life books. When the one on Religions of the World arrived, it was the most fantastic gift. I still have a copy of this book and treasure it even now. I loved every word, every picture. Here was proof that there was more than one way to view God. All that I read made perfect sense to me. Why didn’t others see how similar all these beliefs were at their core? They all believed there was a God that created our world and wanted to acknowledge that God. Each religion just chose different ways to do it. What was the problem?

*** *** ***

Then, when I was twelve, my life took a tremendous turn. Mother and Daddy informed us that Mother had become pregnant. It seemed that they had had a romantic interlude after dropping Sandy at college in Cincinnati. Daddy was thrilled. Maybe this child would be the boy he’d always wanted. -- It was not difficult to see that Mother was despondent. She was not healthy and took many medications for her depression. The bathroom cabinet was full of labeled bottles. Most of them had her name on them. I never asked what they were for. I also knew she had varicose veins and that carrying a child would not help this condition. I knew these things because I listened very closely when my parents talked and thought I wasn’t listening.

This was the age when I should have begun puberty in earnest. I didn’t. One by one, my friends began their periods. My parents were so preoccupied with the pregnancy that now entailed a move to a bigger home so that Mother and baby could be on the first floor, that they never noticed or seemed to care what was happening to me. I didn’t bring it to their attention either. If being a woman meant being as sick as my mother, I didn’t want any part of it. I’d pass on that one.

In the spring of 1959, my brother Howard was born by C-section. My sisters Sandy and Bobbie had come home to help care for him initially because mother was just too sick. We took turns caring for our baby brother at night. One night, I heard him cry, but was just too tired to go to him. When I fully awoke I realized that I had gathered my blankets into a bundle and was rocking them like a baby. I fell back asleep, thankfully aware that it was Sandy’s turn to care for my brother that night.

My thirteenth summer was spent with a baby on my hip. Both my sisters returned to their other pursuits and left me home to care for this lovely infant. I groused and complained, but actually grew to love caring for him.

Then one day, when I was feeding him, Mother passed out on the kitchen floor. Daddy raced home from work after I called him. An ambulance came and took Mother to the hospital. I was left with the baby. Even though they had no explanation for why Mom had passed out, somehow I knew that the baby was really mine to care for from that moment on. I was angry, but there was no choice. Toward the end of summer I was sent to camp for two weeks for some R and R. The whole time I worried about my little brother and my Mom. Could she handle things without me there? Not for much longer.

Chapter 4

A Mess and a Message

Daddy was a great believer in psychiatry and decided that both Bobbie and I were in need of therapy. Bobbie never complained. I complained too much. So, once a year he sent me for a checkup. The diagnosis was always the same. She’s fine. She’s the only one with her ego intact. Her demands and complaints are actually rational. Leave her be.

You see, Daddy thought I should be happy to want to help with the needs of the family. After all, that was how he was raised. He had to sacrifice for the sake of his family. Mother also had to sacrifice after her father died of alcoholism. She was the oldest of four children and the responsibility of the children’s care thus fell to my mother when my grandmother went to work to support the family.

I didn’t see it that way. What I did see was that my oldest sister went away to college. My middle sister was about to leave for school and I was left at home to care for my brother. Not only was I wearing all their hand-me-downs, now I was to quietly accept that they would have all the freedom they needed to pursue their goals while I remained compliantly at home to take care of my mother and brother.

What was fair about that? My school activities and partying were drastically curtailed because of the family demands. I just wanted mother to get well and take care of the baby she had chosen to have.

My parents sent me to a lake-side camp at the end of that first summer. There, some kids and I were asked to move a few big stones from the shore of the lake. I picked up a stone and collapsed in a heap with a searing pain in my back. The staff took me for x-rays. At the hospital the doctor found I had a spinal deformity stemming from a birth defect that impacted on my spinal cord. No more heavy lifting for me!

I came home and rested, and was told I should wear a brace and take extra care to help straighten and strengthen my spine. The brace was out of the question in my mind. It would only make me look even more different from the other kids than I already did. The fact that my back curved in a bizarre way had not escaped my attention. I had already decided that I was deformed and wore my clothing to cover this deformity as much as possible. The brace would only make matters worse. I refused. And, as soon as I felt better, the baby was back on my hip. My physical condition was largely ignored because my parents were too absorbed by their own needs. They conveyed the message that they needed me more than I could need them.

Then, just when I thought matters couldn’t get worse, Daddy lost the business and our new home, and Mother was going to have to go back to work.

My social circle simply couldn’t hang on to me while my life was changing so dramatically. I had two Jewish friends who stayed with me during this period, but the Christian friends were gone. Mother felt her prediction was validated. I was devastated.

We rented a home in a less desirable neighborhood. Mother took tests to become a licensed RN and returned to work on the night shift so she could be home with the baby during some of the day. I took on more responsibilities and basically had the baby most evenings; Daddy did home sales while Mother worked as a nurse. Both my sisters were still away from home. My oldest sister, Sandy was now married and Bobbie was in her freshman year at school.

I picked up my two year old brother from the babysitter every day, took him home, did homework and made dinner. After the baby went to bed, I finally had time for me.

I buried myself in books and romantic love songs. I escaped any way I could.

And then I met the love of my life. There was a real escape!

Barry was a blind date. A friend had fixed Bobbie and me up with two guys from Cleveland who had come to Akron for a party. When the boys walked through the door, even though I’d never set eyes on either boy before, I knew instantly which one was my date. And I heard, "He will be the father of your sons."

This was the first time I’d heard any kind of voice. But silly as it was in the current context of my life, I quietly responded, "Okay."

I then allowed myself to be distracted as I examined the young man standing before me. He was breathtakingly handsome. It was the end of summer, and he was deeply tanned. His jet-black hair hung over his forehead and highlighted his startling green eyes framed by thick black lashes. I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life. He was charming, adorable, and Jewish!

We went over to our friend’s house for the party. Since Sandy was home visiting, I had the evening off. How luxurious! We danced and talked and then he kissed me. I knew I heard bells ring in my head.

I didn’t care that he’d flunked out of his first year at college or that he was about to join the Navy since he’d been in ROTC and there was no way out. I didn’t care that he already had a girlfriend and that this night was just to be a fling, nothing serious. He was mine. He was mine. He was mine. And he was going to save me from all the unhappiness of my life. I was going to be 17 in less than a month and I was as sure as any young woman could be that I knew the rest of my life’s story, and he was in it.

Chapter 5

Two Fathers, no Mother

I am writing this chapter after I’ve just returned from a visit to my brother and sisters in California. We were celebrating my sister Sandy’s 70th and my brother Howard’s 50th birthdays.

Sandy created a photo album in honor of the occasion. There were many pictures from our childhood. Two pictures in particular caught my attention. We were at an airport awaiting our flight to California where Daddy would start his new business. Sandy is seven, Bobbie is four, and I am fourteen months. The man holding me in his arms is not my father. He is my father’s nephew, Irwin. Since Daddy was the youngest of eleven children, and many of his siblings were much older, his nephews and nieces were his playmates and friends during his childhood. Irwin was very close with my Dad.

When I was a child, Irwin was very fond of me and would often remind me that it was he, and not my father who had taken Mother to the hospital when she went into labor with me. Dad had worked the night shift on the railroad during the war and Irwin drove a cab at night, so that was the rational for Mother summoning Irwin instead of Dad to take her to the hospital. I never liked it when he would hold me on his knee and cuddle me as he repeated this story. I was always glad when I was free to run off again.

As I looked at those pictures of me in Irwin’s arms, I studied my face and saw that my expression was sour while he beamed at the camera that my father was clicking as Dad captured these moments forever.

Then I remembered that shortly after I’d learned that Irwin had died, he had come to me on the higher planes and informed me that I was his baby. I didn’t understand his message and sent him away, dismissing the words and the thought.

However, this night in California, Irwin came to me again and told me once more that I was his baby. He showed me visions of the time prior to my birth. Mommy was lonely and miserable and seemed to be questioning her decision to choose Daddy for her husband. While Daddy worked at night, Irwin became a comfort to her as he drove his cab to our home to visit between fares. He was sweet and kind. I knew this. I just never liked him. According to Irwin, Mommy eventually succumbed to his charms, and I was the result of this liaison.

When I awoke the next morning, I shared Irwin’s message with my sisters. They didn’t seem at all alarmed at the news and said it