Article By Bob Olson On...

Have you ever wondered why certain people are in your life? How about pets? For instance, why is your best friend your best friend? What purpose does your father play in your life? What is your son meant to teach you? What is your pet here to show you? For that matter, what significance do you have in their lives?

These are questions that most of us have from time to time, yet we tend to assume there’s no answer—only speculation. I recently learned, however, that there actually is a way to learn why particular people (and even pets) are in our lives. It’s called a “Soul Contract Reading.” And I found this reading experience incredibly meaningful.

After investigating psychic mediums since 1999—testing hundreds of psychics and mediums from across the globe—I’ve never come across any psychic medium who focused their work around the soul contracts we have with people and animals, that is, until I met Danielle MacKinnon.

I initially heard of Danielle from a friend who’s a well-known psychic medium and author. He spoke so highly of her that I couldn’t help but take notice. Yet I refused to jump right into testing her, as is my protocol. I instead chose to observe Danielle MacKinnon from a distance to learn more about her.

Over the next year or so, other friends of mine had readings with Danielle and were equally impressed with her. When they told me about their readings, I recognized that there was something extraordinary about a Danielle MacKinnon reading—something astonishingly unique—but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was because she wasn’t yet using the phrase “soul contract reading.”

I eventually had a reading with Danielle. In fact, I ended up having the equivalent of three readings. But I’ll begin by telling you about my first one.

Because I had hired her to present a seminar at a workshop venue that Melissa (my wife) and I own in Kennebunkport, Maine, I wanted to test Danielle before the event. As much as I trusted that she was every bit as good as my friends had told me, I needed to find out for myself.

I was initially misinformed that Danielle is solely an animal communicator. This isn’t true, although she does happen to give exceptional readings of animal communication—better than any I’ve ever experienced, which I’m sure is why her reputation for animal communication has spread so quickly. The truth is that Danielle MacKinnon provides equally exceptional readings for any intuitive purpose, including guidance concerning your career, finances, health, relationships, as well as emotional and spiritual growth. Nonetheless, because I had been misinformed, my first reading with Danielle was all about my pets.

MY FIRST READING

Danielle began the reading by communicating with our Labrador mix, Libby. Libby told Danielle that Melissa had repeatedly informed her about this upcoming reading.

“Libby says you’ve been telling her about the reading all week. She actually says you’ve been telling her over and over and over.” Danielle chuckled as she relayed the information—she has a fun, gentle reading style.

“That’s true,” said Melissa, laughing. “I wasn’t sure Libby understood, so I kept telling her every morning.”

“She did understand you,” Danielle told Melissa with a smile. “She says that she understood you the first time you said it.”

After a little amusement at Melissa’s expense, it was my turn to get picked on.

“Bob,” said Danielle, “Libby says you talk to her differently than most people talk to their pets.”

Oh boy, here it comes, I thought.

“She says you have a more business-like approach, which she likes. You tend to talk to her like she’s human.”

Huh? What? You mean I did something right?

Apparently Libby likes to be talked to like an adult, not a baby. Now we know.

What was important to me was that Danielle was correct on both messages. She had Melissa and I pegged regarding how we communicate with Libby. Melissa talks to Libby like a child; I talk to her like an adult. Once Danielle knew the connection was right, she fired off a list of messages—all accurate in detail.

Danielle told us…

Because I’m such a stickler when it comes to testing psychic mediums, I watch for messages that are blatantly wrong. In most test readings, there are dozens of these, which is why I have so few people on my recommended list. Danielle MacKinnon, however, fired off message after message that was bullseye accurate. Those listed above are just a small sample. I was highly impressed due to how rare this occurs. Only once did she say something that I had to question.

Danielle assumed Melissa walked Libby in the morning. When I told her it was me who walked Libby, she said she was sensing a feminine energy with whoever walks her. We all laughed that Danielle was calling me a girly-girl, at least during my morning walks with Libby. Still, Danielle didn’t backpedal; she stuck to her message. She said my feminine side must be more dominant than my masculine during these morning walks because that’s what she was sensing. I don’t refute that I’m very gentle and nurturing with Libby, especially in the morning, so it’s possible that this is what Danielle was picking up. Either way, it was the only time in the entire reading that the message was in question, which is remarkable.

Then Danielle said something that nobody in the entire world knew.

“Libby says some walks are better than others because Bob is often in his head so much that he’s not present with her. Bob, you need to make a conscious effort to be present during these walks,” said Danielle. “Libby knows when you’re not fully present and you’re thinking about other things.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught myself at the end of a walk with Libby realizing that I had been consumed in thought the entire time. I don’t do it consciously. It’s just an automatic tendency for me to think about an article I’m writing, a speech I’m soon to give or a recent phone conversation that’s replaying in my mind. Then, at the end of the walk, it’s like driving my car into my driveway and not knowing how I drove home—I recognize that I totally missed the journey.

I’ve felt a sense of guilt about this many times, though I’ve never shared it with anyone. Nonetheless, Danielle MacKinnon laid it on the table during this reading like it was common knowledge.

This led into my soul contract with Libby.

“Libby’s soul contract with you, Bob,” said Danielle, “is to keep you in the present moment. She often takes you out of thought by walking over to you just long enough to get your attention, then she walks away.”

She was right. Libby often gets out of her bed in the middle of the day, walks down the hall to my office and stands beside me at my desk just long enough to break my concentration and notice her. Once I notice her and say hello, she turns and walks down the hall and lays back into her bed. Until now, it’s always been a bit weird. Now I understand it.

Danielle added, “Libby’s soul contract with Melissa is to be a listener. Melissa has challenges with communicating her feelings, so Libby’s contract with Melissa is to be another individual other than Bob with whom she can share how she’s feeling. The problem, Libby says, is that Melissa tends to hold both sides of the conversation when she talks to Libby. So Melissa needs to learn how to give Libby space to respond, and learn how to receive it.”

This, too, was quite factual. Ever since Melissa and I first began dating over 30 years ago, we’ve worked on getting Melissa to express her emotions. She tends to keep her feelings bottled up inside. For Danielle MacKinnon to pull this out of a hat the way she did, and just state it as if everybody knows it, was actually quite impressive. And it made sense that Melissa’s contract with Libby would be related to this.

What I found especially interesting was just how simple, yet helpful, this soul contract information can be. Since this reading, Melissa and I have both worked on these issues related to our soul contracts with Libby and have experienced profound benefits.

I, for one, have learned to stay more in the present moment during my walks. After all, I shouldn’t be thinking about work when I’m out in nature trying to rejuvenate. Nor should I be thinking about work while I’m connecting with my wife and dog after work hours. This has really improved the benefits of these walks, which includes feeling more physically refreshed and mentally peaceful after each walk.

Of course, overcoming issues is a process and not an event, so Libby continues to awaken me out of my occasional thinking comas by walking up to me at my desk and even barking at me at times. I always laugh when she does this and then just turns and walks away. It’s like she’s saying, “Okay, I snapped you out of it. Now I’m going back to sleep.”

Towards the end of our reading with Danielle, there was still time for questions, so we asked about the meaning behind Libby’s partially torn ligaments in both knees. Thanks to acupuncture and homeopathy, Libby is walking and even running like normal, though she still can’t overdo it. But there were times when I was carrying her up the stairs in our home and her care took a lot of time and extra attention. So we wondered how all this played into our soul contracts with her.

The way I understand it, and I’m paraphrasing here, is that there are primary and secondary themes within our soul contracts with people and animals. I described the primary soul contracts we each have with Libby above, but her knee issues are related to a significant yet secondary theme—learning how to deal with the stress in our lives.

Libby’s health issues were a way of reducing the stress in our lives. While this might seem contradictory in nature (since it would seem to add to our stress rather than reduce it), this actually makes a lot of sense once you think about it. By focusing our attention on caring for Libby, we inadvertently lost our focus on the external factors related to our stress. Her health needs diverted our attention from whatever other problems we were facing. Therefore, she helped me get out of my head (where my stress lives) and focus on the present moment—Libby’s health needs. There’s no arguing that I wasn’t thinking about my stress-related issues while carrying her eighty-pound body up our steep stairway to the second floor.

This is less than half of what we gained from our animal soul contract reading with Danielle MacKinnon, but it gives you a sense of what it is like. Danielle also talked about our cat, Max, discussing his health and nutritional needs, as well as our soul contracts with him. This too was significant and meaningful, but I want to tell you a little about my second reading with Danielle, so I’m now going to skip right to that.

MY SECOND READING

As I mentioned earlier, Danielle MacKinnon’s abilities are about much more than animal communication. So my second reading with her was intended to focus on my soul contracts with certain people in my life. At first I thought the entire reading was going to be about these soul contracts, but something interesting happened first. Since I allowed Danielle to take the reading wherever she felt it was supposed to go, I was pleasantly surprised by what showed up as we got started.

Considering the reading I had regarding my soul contract with Libby, it wasn’t a shock that Danielle’s first message was about my need to get out of my head.

“Wow, grounding is a big issue for you,” said Danielle. “You’ve found ways over the years to compensate for it, but there are even better ways to ground yourself that I can teach you.”

There was a pause, and then she said in her light-hearted, easy manner, “This is amazing. Just by my talking about your need to ground your energy, I’m feeling a lot of resistance from you, as if every part of you would prefer to stay up in the cosmos of your thoughts.”

She and I both laughed knowing it’s common for people to resist change. And I’m certainly not immune to that. In all honesty, I really had no desire to change. First of all, this was just a reading for me to test Danielle. I wasn’t intending to improve my life here. Second of all, I like living in my thoughts. It’s what I’ve always done. It’s the only way I know to be. I had already learned to be grounded during my walks with Libby and Melissa. Now Danielle wanted me to be grounded at other times of the day, too?

“This is really funny, Bob, because you know about all the tools to help you do this, but you don’t use them.”

Guilty.

Danielle continued, “The problem with this is that you aren’t working as efficiently as you could be. By learning to manage your energy, you’ll be surprised how much more you will accomplish in the same amount of time. This will mean that you can work less and enjoy life more. And this will also mean that you’ll have more energy to do things all day long.”

The more Danielle talked, the more I recognized that this reading, which I originally thought was all about testing her ability, actually held the potential of teaching me how to accomplish more in my life’s work. By learning to stay grounded, I would achieve a lot more in less time in comparison to my norm of exerting all my energy mentally. Accordingly, Danielle taught me the significance and meaning behind the intuitive guidance she provides by helping me to recognize the importance of my need to get and stay grounded.

Danielle then gave me some techniques to help me get grounded. And I was happy to learn that writing was one of them.

“Bob, some types of writing take you out of your head. But some writing puts you right back there. If you’re writing an article about a person related to your work, that’s not grounding for you. But if you are writing about your own life—about an introspective experience that you had and want to share with people through your writing—that kind of writing grounds you,” she said.

Danielle MacKinnon then gave me an exercise to bring my energetic self back into my physical body. It took more time than either of us expected—I was dreadfully resistant—but I eventually grounded myself and it did make me feel more empowered. Said another way, it made me feel more control over my life, my focus, my energy, and even my time.

BREAKING CONTRACTS FROM PAST LIVES

This is about the time that Danielle recognized that I had some old contracts from past lives that I was continuing to honor. And these were in direct conflict with what I came into this life to achieve.

Say what? Old contracts? Past lives? What you talkin’ about, Willis?

It turns out, according to Danielle MacKinnon, that soul contracts aren’t just about our relationships in this lifetime. We also have soul contracts from other lifetimes that continue to affect us, both positively and negatively.

So if you have soul contracts from a past life that are blocking you from something you’ve been trying to accomplish in this lifetime—such as a healthy relationship, career or financial success, health or fitness goals, or even creative fulfillment—Danielle can help you break these contracts in one simple and easy procedure, and right over the phone. She did this with me in my second reading and it took only eight minutes.

“Integrity is important to you,” said Danielle. “So when you make a commitment, you’ll sacrifice yourself to uphold it, even if it’s a commitment from another lifetime. As a result, over many lifetimes, you have a lot of contracts that you’re still committed to that are holding you back.”

I really wasn’t sure what to think. This is one of those situations in the psychic medium field where there isn’t evidence to prove that what she’s saying is absolutely true. That’s always an issue for me. However, Danielle had already given me enough evidence between the two readings I’d had with her—plus during the workshop that I watched her give—so I knew her gift was legitimate. Thus, it was reasonable to believe that this information, although not provable, was likely true as well. I had to just go with it and see what resulted.

Danielle then described some of the contracts I was continuing to honor from past lives.

“You have a vow of invisibility,” said Danielle. “For whatever reason, you made a vow to not be famous or well-known. You’ve vowed to stay out of the public eye. Considering your line of work, this is a biggie…this is a major obstacle.”

I suspected this was why most of my work in this field has been done via the Internet. By writing and working on the Internet, I’ve done my best to spread my message while remaining virtually invisible.

She continued, “You have a vow of suffering. This vow prevents anything from coming easy to you. Everything you do has to be a struggle; there has to be a level of suffering in order to accomplish your goals. Whatever happened in a past life to lead you to make this vow, you were punishing yourself for something. This is another important one to remove.”

I knew that if what she was saying held any truth to it, it explained a lot about my life.

Danielle added, “You also have a vow of failure.”

Oh that doesn’t sound good, I thought to myself.

“Three lifetimes ago, you had a life of power where you abused that power. Worried that you would abuse this power again, you vowed to never be successful again.”

Normally I don’t favor when a psychic tells me about a past life. I prefer to experience it myself in a past-life regression, an experience I’ve had three times—very cool stuff. But I didn’t mind Danielle telling me about this because it helped to explain the vow. I didn’t need to experience the past life in order to understand the reason I made the vow.

Ironically, what I’ve learned about past lives from my experiences with past-life regression is that we generally do not repeat the same mistakes. Instead, we learn from the mistakes of our lives and rarely repeat them again. Yet it never occurred to me that we might create vows like these during our life in order to prevent against making these same mistakes again.

“Bob, it’s amazing to me that you’ve accomplished all that you have and had the success thus far considering these vows have been working against you. That says a lot about you. But just imagine what it’s going to be like after removing these vows. I can’t wait to see what you’ll accomplish.”

Yeah, me too, I thought.

Danielle MacKinnon took me through a brief exercise that took only eight minutes, which she said removed these vows and others from the Akashic Records (where memories, lessons, karma and vows accumulate on the spiritual plane). It was not something that Danielle did herself, but rather, an exercise that she walked me through—something I did to release myself from these vows.

Whenever I’ve done these types of exercises in the past, I have rarely ever experienced any feelings or physical manifestations as a result. Not so this time. Danielle said that it would take three days for all the contracts to be fully broken. And for the next few days, I had a slight lower backache and I felt totally unmotivated. I wasn’t sure if these minor-yet-annoying symptoms were due to the contract breaking or some physical issue I was experiencing, but I considered that it might be due to my work with Danielle.

Danielle assures me that most people don’t experience physical symptoms as a result of contract breaking, just in case you were wondering. But mild symptoms can result temporarily, she admitted, mostly due to the energetic cleansing of these cellular-level vows. Personally, I saw my physical symptoms as a good sign that I was letting go of old, self-defeating vows.

On the fourth day, the backache was gone and I was motivated to begin working again. Interestingly, there were a few projects that I previously thought were important to me that no longer felt important anymore. I was also now thinking in new directions. And some unexpected, although amazing opportunities suddenly fell into my lap, one that involved a life-changing career deal. Was it all due to the contract breaking exercise? I can’t tell you for sure, but it was quite serendipitous that it all happened right after the reading.

Grounding my energy and breaking the past-life contracts took the entire session, but I still wanted to experience what it was like to learn about soul contracts with people, not just animals. So Danielle and I continued the session because she didn’t have another client booked after my reading.

In a sense this was like getting another reading. I mention this so that you don’t expect to get the same amount of information I’ve described in this article in a mere, one-hour session. My animal soul contracts reading, my grounding and contract-breaking reading, and now what I’m going to tell you about my soul contract reading regarding people in my life was more like two-and-a-half or three sessions, so keep this in mind if you get a reading with Danielle yourself. My experiences certainly show the benefit of working with her more than once.

MY THIRD READING

In this third segment, I learned about my soul contracts with one relative and one friend. To be respectful of these people, I’m not going to identify them or get into much detail. However, what Danielle MacKinnon conveyed to me was dead-on accurate about my relationships with each person and indispensably helpful.

If you can just take what I shared with you about my reading regarding my dog, Libby, and imagine that same type of reading in relation to a person, you’ll get a sense of how beneficial a soul contract reading can be in relation to your friends and family members.

What I loved most about the information I was given in my soul contract reading was that it helped me to better understand these two people and my relationships with them. In one case, there was a level of emotional abuse perpetrated against me. Yet Danielle taught me why this person acted abusively toward me, which allowed me to be both forgiving and compassionate regarding their behavior. And she helped me see why I chose to have this person in my life (from a soul level); that is, what I gained from the abusive relationship.

Furthermore, due to what I learned, I discovered how to better deal with this person in my life so that I was no longer affected by them. And the next time I saw this person, this guidance worked brilliantly. I was friendly, even loving, yet detached from the emotional aspect of our past relationship. Instantly, I knew our relationship had improved due to what I learned in the reading.

In the second case, what Danielle told me about my relationship with this person was so very precise that I couldn’t have described it better myself. And when she explained how I was acting when being around this person, it was like she shined a light on something that had been hidden in the darkness. And it helped me to take responsibility for how I was acting when around this person, rather than blame the whole situation on them.

One the wonderful things about taking responsibility is that it gives us power. If we had the power to cause something to occur in the past, then we have the power to change it now. Yet if we place the blame on other people, then we give them all the power to change things, which deprives us of this ability.

I suddenly saw my relationship with this person from an entirely new perspective, one that would change how I act when around them. It would also strengthen my bond with this person and advance what we came here to teach one another. The insight I gained from Danielle will now help me to fulfill the purpose of this relationship.

I apologize for the cryptic vagueness of these descriptions, but I hope I have still communicated the value and benefits that a soul contract reading can provide. Naturally, every soul contract is going to be different, so some will be more profound than others. I know that my soul contract with my dog, Libby, for example, held more significance than my soul contract with my cat, Max. Still, every relationship holds meaning, and it’s a powerful experience to learn the purpose behind a relationship. So a soul contract reading is an experience I would wish for anyone.

CONCLUSION

Having a reading with Danielle is like having a reading with a friend who makes even the most serious of situations enjoyable. She knows how to goof around appropriately and she knows when to be serious. She has that light and fun personality; but when she gives her intuitive insight, I'm always amazed at the depth of wisdom that comes out. I was absolutely impressed by the level of meaning and significance that I gained from my reading with her. And, as a result, I feel like I have experienced accelerated growth—both personal and spiritual—in a way that I might not have accomplished on my own for years to come. For this I am grateful to her.

If you’d like to experience a reading with Danielle MacKinnon, I recommend calling her before her reading fee increases (which often happens after I add people to my recommended list) and to avoid a long waiting list. Be sure to tell her that you read about Bob Olson’s readings with her, and tell her what you liked about my readings that you would like to experience yourself.

Danielle gives readings by telephone or SKYPE to anyone around the world. To schedule your reading please call her office at (866) 883-2280 (toll free in US and Canada). International clients can also schedule by emailing admin@daniellemackinnon.com. To learn more, please visit 
http://www.daniellemackinnon.com/services/session-preparation.

Danielle MacKinnon’s website is http://www.daniellemackinnon.com.

Warmly,

……………………………….

Danielle MacKinnon
(866) 883-2280 (toll-free)