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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?
