WiTcHy177's blog: "love?"

Soul mates are friends and loved ones who are responsive to your love, and with whom you are deeply connected and share a common path and purpose. Your soul mate may be someone who has come to be with you and learn similar lessons. Or, it can be someone who has come to assist you in your spiritual growth by showing you more about yourself and offering you ways to open your heart. I will call these people soul mates.
A soul mate can be someone who is connected to you from other lifetimes and with whom you are continuing a well-developed past-life relationship. Or, this may be your first lifetime together on earth.

Most people have more than one soul mate. You may already be in several soul mate relationships with friends and loved ones. A soul mate can come in the form of a life partner, treasured friend, child, or lover.  A soul mate can be someone with whom you share a spiritual path, a joint work in the world, or a commitment to be parents to certain souls. It can be someone whose growth you are sponsoring, such as a child.

I will define soul age as the amount of soul love, soul will and purpose, and soul light that people are able to express through their personalities. Soul age reflects the degree to which people are living as souls and the receptivity of their personalities to their souls. The age of a soul in the examples that follow is relative. You may be a very old soul, and a soul you are with may be a very old soul, yet a younger soul than you are. Or, you may be with an older soul than you are, yet still be an old soul yourself. If you want to attract a soul mate for an intimate relationship, decide if you want to attract a younger, same-age, or older soul as your soul mate. Or, you can leave the choice to your soul.

Being in an intimate relationship with a younger soul offers you many opportunities to develop the qualities of teaching, serving, and empowering. Younger souls can provide you with a chance to pass on much of what you have learned and to recognize the growth you have gained. Being a teacher can be very rewarding when the younger soul is willing to grow and wants to learn from you. If the younger soul does not want to change or grow, you will most likely feel drained and frustrated rather than energized. If someone's soul age is a great deal younger than yours, you may expend much energy with few results.

In a relationship with a younger soul, you will have an opportunity to gain the soul qualities of patience and compassion. You will learn how to empower others without taking responsibility for their lives, saving them, or taking away their lessons. You will discover how to be in a relationship with someone whose vision is not as expanded or as farseeing as your own. You will be challenged to be loving, humble, forgiving, and kind. Younger souls sometimes feel threatened by older souls, and may try to reduce an older soul's confidence and personal power to feel better about themselves. If you decide to join with a younger soul, be certain that this person wants what you have to offer and is receptive to change and growth. When this is the case, you can find it very rewarding to be with a younger soul and watch this person evolve.

Most of you choose to be in relationships with souls who are of a similar soul age to yourself. With a same-age soul, you will often be growing at the same rate, and learning some of the same lessons. There is the potential for great joy as well as for intense conflicts in a same-age soul relationship. You will be challenged to gain the soul qualities of self-love. The degree to which you love yourself will determine your ability to love the other person, who will be reflecting back to you many of your own personality traits and qualities. A same-age soul relationship has the potential of being very intimate, for knowing the other can be like knowing yourself. You will need to be vulnerable and allow another person into your heart. You will want to love what you have considered unlovable in yourself as a way of loving the other person. You will gain by letting go of blame and self-pity, and by recognizing that you can only receive from the other person what you can give yourself. You will be challenged to calm your emotions and to know where you end and the other person begins.

Being in a relationship with an older soul brings different kinds of challenges. You might think that relationships with older souls would be the easiest, because of the compassion, understanding, and spiritual light they can offer you. With an older soul, you will be the student. You will be challenged to grow and to let go of any unevolved solar plexus reactions. If the soul you are with is too advanced, you may be called to grow at a pace that is too rapid for you. In this relationship you will have an opportunity to learn how to love yourself without judging, comparing yourself, or feeling unworthy or inferior. Older souls are often able to detach from personality reactions, offering you a more impersonal, wise love. This might not always be comfortable to you. The gifts an older soul gives may come in different forms than what you want, so you will need to focus on the essence of what you receive rather than on your expectations of certain actions, words, or behaviors. You will be with someone whose vision is more farseeing than yours, so you will need to learn to trust in yourself and develop your own inner vision. You will need to learn when to surrender to the wisdom and guidance of the other person, and when to be your own authority.

An older soul can offer much in a relationship, and can be a delight to be with. Older souls can teach you many things. They can make many valuable contributions to your life with their wisdom, insight, and perspectives. They can assist you in growing through the example of the way they live and think about their lives. As in any relationship, a relationship with an older soul has many rewards, as well as many challenges.