You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 15, 2011.
Do you believe in soulmates?
I did. I don’t know if I still do or not.
My dear friend sent me this quote:
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…”
It’s from Eat, Pray, Love – a book my former flame bought for me and encouraged me to read. I started it on a plane with him, but felt it wasn’t the right time for me to read it. It’s still on my shelf. My friend who sent me the quote and I laughed about this because she’s done the same thing. Neither of us like hopping on bandwagons when they’re at their most popular.
I did feel like I had found my soulmate. As I’m emerging from the exquisitely painful and pleasurable ether of that lost relationship, trying to come to terms with loss, and trying to make a fresh start, I am thinking a lot about that feeling.
I was a dream. I was a breaking away. I was a fantasy come to life. I opened doors and souls and possibilities that had only lived in dreams before. I was ready to be a partner.
And BAM.
I didn’t fit into the real world, the world as it stood. I had to be hidden. I was a living symbol of a loss of honor and an established way of life. I was a reminder of shame and devastation and confusion - instead of what I truly was – a breath of change, an awkward angel, a chance to pursue something brave and beautiful and risky and scary in the company of an equal partner. Great change requires a journey of the soul, and it is not always fun, easy or comfortable. But in the end, it is always rewarding.
Enough people in the old life thought of me as a bad, evil person – and these are people who had never even met me. I guess if you hear that message enough, and if your fear is great enough, you come to believe it. You no longer see with your own eyes, and no longer feel with your own heart (thanks, Einstein). Sticking up for me was not an option. And so you take the easy, safe route. You take the interstate instead of the road less travelled. Because you cannot bear to dive into the reflection of your own soul that a soulmate offers you. Yes, there are things you did not expect to see there, and things that are hard to deal with, but being human and growing means that you do deal with those things, do accept your own faults and the faults of others, let go so you can open up to your own inner and outer worlds when you have the chance before you. And do it with your truest friend and staunchest supporter by your side.
You no longer believe in yourself or in the potential that life offered you. Instead of leaping, you retreated back to a safe distance from the edge, now never to experience that joyous, floating, drifting, falling, hand in hand with someone with whom you could explore the world and yourself, someone open, someone who, when you hit that net together, would be laughing with you from the deepest recesses of your shared spirits.
That’s what you chose.
And that’s why I’m not sure I believe in soulmates any longer.
But then again — it’s all a leap of faith.
Photo Title: The Coconut…But Where Is The Lime?
Somewhere in the Caribbean.
Quote of the day: “The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells.” – Edward Bulwer-Lytton
