On a pastel-colored Instagram slide, a wellness influencer tells their million followers: “Your soul chose this life, including every challenge, to help you grow.”
It’s a comforting thought when you’re dealing with a career setback or a messy breakup. It provides a sense of order in a chaotic world. But what happens when we apply that logic to a child in a war zone? To the victims of state-sponsored violence in Iran? To the survivors of predators like Jeffrey Epstein?
When we claim that every human “chose” their circumstances before birth, we aren’t just sharing a spiritual theory. We are engaging in a massive act of cosmic gaslighting. We are telling the most vulnerable people on Earth that their suffering isn’t an injustice—it’s an agreement. And in doing so, we shift the blame from the perpetrator to the victim’s own soul.
1. The Allure of the Soul Contract
The “soul contract” is the ultimate psychological safety net. It is rooted in the Just-World Fallacy, a cognitive bias where we desperately need to believe that the world is inherently fair and that people “get what they deserve”. If we can convince ourselves that everyone “chose” their hardships, we don’t have to face the terrifying reality that life can be random, cruel, and profoundly unfair.
Psychologists describe this as a defense mechanism to preserve a sense of invulnerability. If you believe that bad things only happen to people who “contracted” them for spiritual growth, you can convince yourself that as long as you have the “right” mindset, you are safe. This suggests that if you just have the “right” spiritual mindset, you can manifest a better reality. But this safety is a luxury. It’s a narrative usually pushed by those in positions of relative privilege, for whom “challenges” are obstacles to be overcome, not systemic erasures of their humanity.
2. When Spirituality Becomes an Eraser
The internal logic of pre-birth planning collapses the moment it touches real-world atrocity. Think about the ethical flaw: How can a “contract” be valid if the participant is forced to forget the terms? Legally and ethically, a contract requires informed consent. In the “soul contract” model, the person suffering has no memory of the agreement, making it a form of spiritual entrapment rather than a choice.
This is the height of spiritual bypassing—a term coined by psychologist John Welwood to describe using spiritual ideas to sidestep or “bypass” painful emotions, unresolved wounds, or basic psychological needs. By jumping straight to a “higher soul lesson,” we bypass the messy, agonizing human emotions of grief, empathy, and outrage. When we tell a survivor of systemic abuse that they “signed up for the experience” to learn a lesson about strength, we aren’t helping them heal; we are erasing the crime. We are turning a horrific violation into a “curriculum,” effectively telling the victim that their pain is a pedagogical tool rather than a tragedy.
3. The Dark Side of “Creator Consciousness”
The “you create your own reality” movement has a predatory underbelly. It mirrors the rhetoric of abusers: “You asked for this,” or “You brought this on yourself”. This mindset can be weaponized into toxic positivity, where any expression of pain or anger is dismissed as “low vibration”. For survivors of trauma, this is deeply damaging, as it forces them to suppress the very emotions—like righteous anger—that are essential for their recovery.
Worse, it absolves the oppressor. If a victim “chose” their experience for spiritual growth, then the perpetrator is no longer a criminal or a tyrant—they are merely a “soul mate” fulfilling a contract. This logic stalls the pursuit of justice. Why fight to dismantle oppressive systems, or topple a regime, or prosecute a predator, if the victims are simply playing out a script they wrote for themselves? This isn’t enlightenment; it’s a social justice nightmare. Historically, spiritual and religious doctrines have often been used to justify discrimination and maintain the status quo by framing suffering as divine will or spiritual necessity.
4. Philosophical Failures and Moral Injury
Philosophically, the idea that atrocities happen for a “reason” is a form of teleological fatalism—the belief that all events are predetermined toward a specific end goal. Critics argue that this view erases moral accountability. If a horrific act is part of a “divine plan,” then the act itself is neutralized of its evil. Philosophers like Susan Neiman argue that some evils are “gratuitous,” meaning they serve no greater good and are purely destructive.
Attempting to find “meaning” in mass violence can lead to moral injury—a rupture to the soul that occurs when our core values are violated. When we force a spiritual meaning onto a victim’s trauma, we compound this injury by invalidating their reality. As Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, noted: meaning is not “pre-installed” in trauma. It is not the event that is meaningful; it is the individual’s freedom to create meaning in its aftermath. This is a crucial distinction: the event didn’t happen for a reason, but one can find a reason to keep going.
5. Moving Toward a Grounded Empathy
We have to stop prioritizing “cosmic plans” over human rights. True healing doesn’t come from pretending a trauma was a choice; it comes from validation and the recognition that some things are simply, objectively wrong. Survivors of cultic abuse and spiritual trauma often emphasize that the first step to freedom is deprogramming the belief that they were responsible for their own mistreatment.
Instead of looking for a “reason” in the wreckage of a tragedy, we should be looking for accountability. We should support organizations like the Rainn (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) that focus on real-world justice and support for survivors. We don’t need a spirituality that makes us feel safe by blaming the victim. We need a worldview that prioritizes empathy and the courage to sit with the fact that bad things happen to good people for no reason at all. True liberation requires us to confront systemic injustices—from racial and gender inequality to state violence—rather than “bypassing” them with metaphysical abstractions.
Conclusion: Reality is a Kinder Balm than Fiction
It is far more compassionate to admit that the world can be cruel and unfair than to tell a survivor they “signed up” for their pain. Real growth doesn’t happen because we chose the trauma; it happens because we survive it despite never having asked for it. True spiritual growth is found in the ability to acknowledge suffering without looking away, and in the commitment to building a world where such suffering is no longer tolerated.
True spirituality shouldn’t require us to close our eyes to injustice. It should give us the strength to open them wider.
Join the Conversation
I want to hear from you. Have you ever felt silenced by “good vibes only” or told that your most difficult moments were a “soul contract” you signed before birth? How did you reclaim your story from that narrative?
Let’s hold space for the truth: some things are not lessons. They are simply injustices. Share your thoughts in the comments below.
