Soul Mate Process

[Steven Barnes]

So. Let's do a recap: I have, for seven years, been married to the love of my life. there is no doubt in my mind that I will never, in this life, find another woman as suited to me as Tananarive. We went through processes similar enough in finding each other that, in combination with both observation and questioning of other couples, I believe that it is possible to optimize your own chances to find and hold a partner who is actually y our soul mate. What is T's definition of that term? Someone who, when you meet them, represents a pathway to yur future, to the rest of your life. It is simple, and profound, and deep, and makes all other emotional attachments seem like so much tissue paper, so much marking-time. It is real, and I think that the majority of people want such a relationship. For those, I offer what seems to me, at this time, to be a pathway.
1) Be clear on who you are, and where you are going.
2) Be certain thatt you love y ourself. Not just like--love. Be certain you have internal permission to be ecstatically happy.
3) make a list of the qualities you desire in a partner. find the person you know, or can find, who comes closest to that list, sit them down and ask them what they are looking for in a partner. Look at the gap between what they describe and where you are. To the degree that those changes are positive, incorporate them at the rate of about 1% per week.
4) As you head toward your dreams, make it clear to the people around you who and what you are, what your dreams are. Walk your talk. Begin to eat, sleep and breathe your intentions in the world. Make them positve, and loving, and powerful.
5) Don't settle for less than you are worth. As you begin to express your beauty and power, people will be attracted to you. Be choosy. Be certain to spend your intimate time with those who actually match your values, needs, and desires, and empathize with your goals. Don't waste your energy.
6) If necessary, celebacy might help you concentrate your energy.
7) Be honest, and kind. Treat prospective lovers and partners the way you would want someone to treat your brothers and sisters, your mom or dad, your own children. There is enough pain in the world. Don't add to it.
8) have faith. Believe. Love is real, and powerful, and transforming.
9) Be certain that you are heading in the direction of the values you want in a partner. Want a tight body? You'd better have one. Want someone successful? You'd better be manefesting. Want someone emotionally healthy? Lover, heal thyself. Remember the saying "you can't have a relationship with someone crazier than you"? Well, you can't have one with someone saner, either. If you want to go old-school, guys may well be able to trade a higher level of power for a greater amount of beauty in a lady. this has worked for thousands of yearsa, and will likely work for a thousand more.
10) If your aspirations are higher than your accomplishment, be willing to partner with someone else who is "becoming". After all, if you want someone to overlook your flaws, you had better the hell be ready to overlook someone elses. Be brutally honest with yourself. If you wouldn't want to jump into bed with you, live with you, love you, you've got your work laid out!
11) The meditation, goal-setting, exercise and self-reflection tools on this blog can help you. there are other tools scattered around the world. Find and use them. But start by loving yourself, and giving yourself permission to have a passionate, committed, long-lasting, healthy, supportive, bountiful, sexy relationship. It's worth it!
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[stormy]

This is a very nice way to end the journey. Thanks for sharing your experiences. It takes a lot of heart to be reveal your more private self and I appreciate it.

Here's to you having an even greater 77 years with your wife and family.

Stormy

[Tibo69]

To para-/rephrase Plato's Apology, "The examined life is worth living." At least that seems to be a golden thread which runs through your blog comments and observations. (Incidentally, I have to briefly digress to say that I enormously enjoy and appreciate reading your material; it's so refreshing to read something from someone who actually has some wisdom to impart.)

To return to the soul mates process topic, I am reminded of an exchange reported on pages 227-229 of The Center of the Cyclone: An Autobiography of Inner Space, by John C. Lilly, M.D. He described meeting his then-future wife at a Hollywood Hills party at 1:30 in the morning. Let Dr. Lilly describe it in his own words:

"Just before I met Antonietta (Toni), I had just given up all hope of ever finding the right woman. She, also, had just given up finding an appropriate man. At that point we met. Giving up, allowing, no longer striving for something, allowing it to happen, going with the flow, it happened to each of us.

"The meeting took place in a house in the hills near Hollywood at 1:30 A.M. I had been invited to a party after an Alan Watts lecture at this house. The car I was riding in had a flat tire---hence the late hour. Alan had left the party---in fact, there were few survivors. As I walked in the front door I noted a dark-haired woman seated on the floor in the large entrance hall. After meeting the host and the few remaining guests, I went over to her.

"As I moved closer, I saw and felt her aura of love and beneficent influence. Her face is striking and unusual: there is an eaglelike quality to her gray eyes and classic nose---a sharp penetrating dispassionate, analytical quality, with awakedness and lively interest showing frankly and directly. I felt her centered, grounded, trusting, confident self sitting there watching me approach her from across the room.

"I sat down with her, looked directly at her looking directly at and into me. Instantly I knew her and she knew me. We went into a sparkling cosmic love place together. I asked her name, age, attachments, and all the necessary "48" information---she did the same.

"I felt we had been together in previous lives and said 'Where have you been for the last five hundred years?'

"She answered, 'In training.'

"We both found this same feeling---our lives had been a training for each of us to meet the other. We were to meet to do a work of some sort together---work yet to be defined.

"Four days later I went to a party at her house. We began to realize our new reality, a real together reality. We have not been apart for more than a few hours since."

Apart from the lyrical and almost poetical description of their meeting, Dr. Lilly's main point seems to be that there was an implicit and immediate sense of KNOWING OF THE RIGHTNESS of the two souls being together, transcending bounds of space and time (very similar to the Vulcans' mind-link of two spouses). The corollary point is that there is an implicit sense of purpose ("We were to meet to do a work of some sort together...")

Indeed....

And it is that sense of shared purpose, shared objectives, that colors the relationship with its particular hues of love, commitment, satisfaction, value, joy and the like, and that infuses each partner with a sense of fulfillment, provided that the values are really shared and lived with gusto.

Or so my experience suggests.

Thoughts? Comments? Brickbats?

[Steven Barnes]

Beautifully phrased. John Lilly was one of my heroes, back in the day.

[stormy]

Well, I don’t really sign off on the whole Soul Mate thing. I do believe there can be more than one person who speaks to your soul.

THIS IS JUST MY OPINION!!!!! Although others have written about this such as Edgar Cayce, Joseph Murphy, Charles and Myrtle Filmore, the bible, I came to this conclusion through my years on this earth....

The soul is that part of you that has travel during your many lifetimes. (If you believe in reincarnation) It carries with it all your habits (good or bad), talents, lessons, etc. There is a spirit, separate from the soul, in you that seeks to find its Christ (more enlightened ;D) self that yields you to connect, see and become one with all of nature.

I think people choose who to love for some of the same reason Steve outlined in his article title Mirroring and even more than that. Some people choose to love in the pre-described way such as the Beauty/Power Axis and feel their love is a real and powerful as any other love on this planet. Some people find love in the most unusual places and people and are convinced that their love is real and powerful as any other love on this planet. Its all relative..

Different people can give a person the same emotions, feelings, actions and the receiver will love one and not the other. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder so is love…

Love is universal and constant. If a person opens their hearts and mind to receiving love and recognizes that love comes in all different forms, they will see the love in their lives and attract the person they want to share that love with.

Having Love or finding a soul mate is not complicated. It is as simple as breathing. Exhale and release all pre-describe, conformist thoughts about love and who is right to love, who is beautiful to behold, etc. Inhale all the love that is around you, the sun, the rain, the trees, the people, etc. Once you are at peace with being apart of the love and happiness around you, the people/person will come. Even if you don’t choose to love them, respecting and valuing their love allows you to find that person. Because when you reject their love, you reject all love.

Just my opinion.

[Steven Barnes]

And it is a good opinion, Stormy. Let me make my own value position clear: one should only bond to someone it would be safe and healthy to have as the parent to your child. This is, in my perspective, true whether you intend to have children or not. This is admittedly a conservative view, but I don't apologize for it. I've seen too many situations where a man or woman fell in love, married, had children, and it turned out to be disastrous--and the ones hurt worst were the only ones who had no say in the matter--the kids. "But I saw his wounded heart" they say. "But she needed help" he says. "Our spirits joined" they say. And so they ignored the signs of dysfunction, addiction, anger management problems, inability to hold a job--and their families crumbled. And the children were devastated, literally damaged for life.
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There are many, many people we could have wonderful relationships with, for many different reasons. But I find that people who get into relationships with unstable or damaged people are themselves unstable or damaged, and lack sufficient clarity to see it. They think they are helping others, when in truth they are avoiding the work they need to do on themselves. Of COURSE this isn't true in 100% of the cases. But in every single instance, I will side with the safety of the children, or the child within you. And in all honesty, I see the "mirror" everywhere I look. Healthy people with healthy people, damaged people with damaged people. "You can't have a relationship with someone crazier than you." We've all heard that. Well, the corollary is true as well: "you can't have a relationship with someone healthier than you." Painful as it may be, wrong as I may be, I absolutely believe both sayings to be true.