Finding a Soul
Mate:
The Failsafe
Method
For Finding A Soulmate
Julia Jablonski
1999
When I saw him for the first
time, it was as if time stood still. The air became
thick and hazy with an almost tangible frenetic
energy. My heart seemed to stop beating, my breath
caught in my throat, and a tingle shot through my
body like liquid fire. I was fourteen years old at
the time, and he did become the first great love of
my life. If he had not died at the age of 18, he may
have been my only "true love," though time and
experience have taught me that this is rather
unlikely. The fact that he did die young and I did
go on to another similar experience of love taught
me a few things at a young age about the nature of
"soul mates."
All the cliches about love at
first sight arise from the real experience of
recognizing someone we love from a past life. The
intense and immediate sense of intimacy in such a
connection is powerful, and throughout the years it
has become obvious through my spiritual reading work
that everyone wants to have a magical soul mate
experience. The usual questions cover a range of
course, from, "Will I ever find my soul mate?" to
"Is he my soul mate?" to, "I thought she was my soul
mate, what happened?"
We all share a deep, primal
inner longing for a sense of perfect union that has
taken on the label "soul mate" in recent years. This
driving "romantic" urge has been examined from all
kinds of perspectives. Physical scientists attribute
it to biochemistry and hormones. Anthropologists
explain it by examining cultural myths, procreative
instincts and mating behavior. Psychologists
attribute it to deep-seated issues arising from
childhood and our desire for reunion with our
mothers, our first and "perfect" loves. None of
these are exclusive or necessarily contradictory
theories. As with all experiences in the physical,
beneath them lies a spiritual root or reality from
which these manifestations of desire arise.
Desire makes the world go
around. It is desire that fuels all life and all
creation. Desire leads to procreation, new life,
ambition, all creativity, and every kind of union.
It is desire for union or a divine sense of
"Oneness" that inspires our fantasies for a soul
mate experience. Our Western obsession with Romance
has perhaps led to a distorted quest for that sense
of Oneness in another person; our new holy grail is
the "soul mate."
The problem with this is that
what we truly seek is unlimited and unconditional,
and Romantic love falls short of that ideal. We do
long for the unconditional love that most of us have
only known from our mothers. This experience of
unconditional mother-love most closely resembles the
sense of total peace and wholeness that can only
truly be found in "God," or the Divine. Romance by
its nature, however, is not unconditional or
unlimited.
In Romantic love, our feelings
are dependent upon what we receive in return. A
mother, for example, will continue to love her child
even when the child grows up and leaves her, or when
her child loves another (such as a step-mother). In
Romantic love, we tend to get very fearful and angry
if our lover wants to love another the way they love
us, or if our lover wants to (heaven forbid!) leave
us and go off to explore other experiences. We are
more concerned with what we are getting and a sense
of "security" than with the other's happiness.
In seeking unconditional love
through a limited model of Romantic love, we are
never really fulfilled. When our real experiences
fall short of our dreams, we assume we just haven't
met the "right person" yet, and when we do, then we
will finally be satisfied. We go from relationship
to relationship, seeking something unlimited through
a limited model.
The soul mate experience
offers us the opportunity to begin with perhaps
Romantic love and grow and stretch our very hearts
and Spirits toward something higher. We are drawn
together on the tails of magnetic romantic
attraction, yet it is when our deepest hearts and
souls extend themselves for another that a lasting
and powerful spiritual bond begins to form.
"A soul mate is someone to
whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the
communication and communing that take place between
us were not the product of intentional efforts, but
rather a divine grace. This kind of relationship is
so important to the soul that many have said there
is nothing more precious in life." (Thomas Moore).
This sense of immediate
connection arises from unconscious or soul memories
of previous loving experiences. A "soul mate," then,
is someone with whom we have shared many loving past
life experiences. If we look at all the people we've
loved long and well in this lifetime alone, it
becomes clear that we are not limited to just one
"soul mate" for all eternity, or even for each
lifetime.
How can we then tell the
difference between an "ordinary" past life
connection and a "soul mate?" I believe that the
label of "soul mate" here limits our ability to see
all of this clearly. There is no one "soul mate"
we're seeking, so there is not a black and white
delineation between who in our lives is a "soul
mate" and who is not. It's all a matter of degree.
Sometimes we meet someone from
a past life and have an immediate and strong
negative impression. This has happened to me twice
in my life. I knew upon meeting both people that
they were familiar, and I felt an immediate unease
or fear. In both cases, this first impression was
played out dramatically by my experiences. In the
first situation, the young man I met by
"happenstance" through my hair stylist became
obsessed with me. He stalked and eventually
physically attacked me. In the second case, I had
the initial feeling of unease, yet a strange dark
sort of attraction for a young man that I "fell in
love with." That relationship was so painful it took
me to the brink of suicide.
I believe that my soul
recognized both young men from the first meeting,
and at some level I knew that there was challenging
karma to be worked out. I learned more from those
challenging experiences than from many other
pleasant ones however; it is said that our greatest
enemies are also our greatest teachers. In this
light, I can see how even these men could be said to
be "soul mates" of mine.
Meeting someone and having a
very positive and powerful attraction to them right
away is a sign that this is someone we have loved
well before. This is of course all a matter of
degree. We might define a soul mate as someone that
we feel a very positive immediate attraction to, AND
someone we feel compelled to be with or know better.
It's almost as if this connection takes on a life of
its own, and we get swept up in its undeniable
magnetic force.
The main point I wish to make
is that these loving "soul mate" relationships must
be founded some time. Just because a loving bond was
formed in a past life does not make it any more
powerful or important than the loving bonds we form
in THIS life. We are in the process TODAY of
creating our soul mate relationships of the future.
Examine your life and your
relationships. Think about your family, your
children, your lover, your friends, your coworkers.
How are you likely to feel upon meeting them in
another life? Will you feel an immediate rapport?
Will you feel wary or untrusting because of
experiences you're creating now? We can create a
soul mate experience today, and reap the positive
benefits of this connection forever more.
We are creators. As creators,
we are not so much here to discover or "find" our
fates as we are here to CREATE our destinies. We
have free will. We are inventing new possibilities
with every decision we make, every idea we imagine,
every desire we allow to flow through us. Rather
than trying to recreate a type of relationship we've
read about or seen in the movies, we might aim to
create new levels of intimacy, deeper throes of
passion, stronger bonds of Love.
For those who want to love
deeply, passionately and well, I recommend we spend
less time "looking for" our soul mates, and more
time CREATING them. These spiritual bonds must begin
somewhere and somehow. Why not here and now?