posted July 28, 2009 02:03 PM
Detecting Soul Mates
Soul-mated relationships are distinguished by their deep feelings of permanence and comfort. Soul mates are secure in their knowledge that there will never be a situation they can’t handle. Another indicator is how soul mates feel when they initially meet. Instead of karmic warning bells, they feel a low-level hum. They new person in their life seems familiar; they feel that they have “known” each other before. In essence, they are saying hello again.
My interest in the distinction between soul-mated and other karmic relationships grew as a result of my clients’ fervent inquiries about soul mates. They wanted to know when they would find their own and how they could make it happen soon. As I explored dozens upon dozens of my clients’ existing relationships, I came to the conclusion that many of them already had soul mates but didn’t know it.
A story I often tell my clients is that our soul mates are waiting on our soul path. The more committed we are to what is in our soul’s best interest, the more likely we are to find them. I had known my soul mission for several years before Michael appeared. His soul path was the same as mine. Although we are socialized to idealize soul mates as the stuff of storybook romance, soul-mated relationships come in many forms.
Many years ago, when I taught school, the administrator for whom I worked was also my mentor and my friend. In retrospect, I “knew” John from the moment we met. He left the school, but he never left my memory. I haven’t talked to him in twenty years, and I probably never will again-at least, not in this life. Yet he fits the criteria of a soul mate. We were comfortable and at ease with each other. We could argue and know that we would resolve the conflict. We were constantly exploring a win-win model. He and I never had a social relationship outside the school; we were not lovers. We were two people who worked together for a common purpose, and we had a bond that I will cherish. He was one of my soul mates.
As you think about your relationships, try to broaden your concept of what a soul mate is. You may be surprised and thrilled to find you already have one or several in your life. To clarify the difference, look at the following chart and review a few important relationships in your life.
Soul Mates
Win-Win
Cooperative
Peer relationship
Comfort
Expansive
Inspirational
Stimulating
Creative
Integrated
Ease of flow
Secure
Other Karmic Relationships
Win-Lose
Competitive
Hierarchical relationship
Agitation
Constrictive
Antagonistic
Challenging
Draining
Isolative
Disruptive
Exposed
Karmic relationships are challenging and therefore offer us opportunities to ascend to new heights in our spiritual growth. We have the potential to change their inherent difficulties by understanding and being aware of the gifts they bring. Soul-mated relationships have their own share of conflicts and arguments. The differences lie in the attitude of cooperation and in the deep inner knowledge that we will resolve the problems. Soul-mated and karmic relationships are synthesized at exactly the right time to enable us to learn about those sacred truths at our emotional core. Since our soul coordinates all our relationships, it presents these situations to us when the timing is right. What we do with these situations is our choice.
Imagine yourself as a soul on the other side. You are preparing to incarnate back to the earth plane. You meet with other souls to plan the relationships you need to fulfill your life’s purpose. You talk to your circle-one karmic relationships first. Circle two and circle three come next. You speak to the soul, for instance, who is to be your father in your next earthly existence. Together you recall your previous life experiences, as well as the conflicts that will need to be resolved and the obligations that will need to be met. You acknowledge the love that has endured throughout time. You decide on the context of the relationship you will share to help both of you evolve. Your souls cocreate a soul contract. You have many meetings like this one, to consummate all the contracts you need to evolve and grow spiritually in your next life.
Your soul then integrates your soul contracts into your astrological chart. Information in the chart reminds you of the contracts and the souls with whom you’ve contracted. That vague sense of “knowing” or familiarity we experience when we meet new people can be attributed to the fact that we usually don’t recognize the personalities behind our soul agreements, but we always recognize their souls. Our soul knows the people we’re going to bring into our lives. Our astrological chart only serves as a blueprint of what our soul intends for us to help us evolve. We might not recognize someone immediately, but if we have some notion of what our soul needs us to learn in this life, the reasons for their presence in our life will become more readily apparent. This rationale also explains the common experience of meeting under the flukiest of circumstances-while asking for directions, at a school or job orientation, on the plane while traveling, in a doctor’s office-someone who becomes a central influence in your life. These “chance” meetings are not at all random.
Many people have asked me why we do not remember our past lives. The reason is that our soul has all those experiences recorded and brings them forth when they are needed. Many karmic experiences create poignant emotions that we have difficulty confronting because we do not understand where they come from. Until we have a philosophic context in which to deal with these feelings, they stay repressed.
All karmic relationships are familiar to some degree. We have known the person for whom we’ve developed strong feelings many times before. That’s how we know we are entering into a relationship to complete what we failed to complete before.
It is important to distinguish between comfort and familiarity. The comfort of a soul-mated relationship is different from the familiarity of a karmic relationship. Familiarity could involve myriad types of relating. For instance, if in previous lifetimes you created abusive relationships, then an abusive relationship will seem familiar to you now. Falling back into the well of familiarity is the easiest thing for us to do. Being in a relationship created by old behavior characteristics is like being on automatic pilot.
Unfortunately, many people repeat the same behavioral patterns countless times without alteration. I’ve seen it over and over again in my practice, and it truly saddens me. Ultimately our souls do give us opportunities to alter our lives. If we ignore these opportunities, we end up taking these unresolved issues into our next life. We will learn sooner or later-our souls are infinitely patient.
The Gift of Reflection
Knowing this truth has helped my clients-as well as myself-make tremendous inroads into learning more about themselves. Yet we all have painful memories that we consciously do not want to unearth. Scores of my clients have undergone extensive past life therapy and remember lives where they were persecuted, victimized, and betrayed. But few remember lives where they were the persecutor, the abuser, or the betrayer. We wish to bury these memories, and we do.
Some of my clients create major cosmic two-by-fours over and over again. They get increasingly stronger until sooner or later we can no longer ignore them. The more blocked we are, the stronger the two-by-fours. Consider the statements you make repeatedly: they reflect an unconscious memory, waiting for you to interpret and understand it.
All significant relationships provide us with information about our blind spots. Jung thought that the more deeply we repress our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, the more intensely we create them outside ourselves as conflict and chaos. We will attract another person to show us precisely what we don’t consciously know about ourselves. Once we understand that we bring all our relationships to ourselves for learning and balance, we can alter and transform the behaviors that need changing.
Take a moment to think about an important person in your life. Now isolate a behavior from that person that irritates you, scares you, or causes you pain. That person’s action may cause irritation or fear in you, but it may hardly bother another colleague, family member, or friend. If this is the case, could it be that you actually behave in that irritating or painful way yourself? If so, my guess is that you’ve experienced an extreme reaction to that behavior before. Try claiming that behavior as your own, and make a commitment to change. Suddenly you may find that it alters the reaction you have toward that other person. That person may not change what he or she does; what has changed is your perception of that person’s behavior by changing your own.
Big Souls and Little Souls
God and the universe have a perfect order, and that perfect order filters down through us. We don’t have to strive for perfection, because we share the energy of God. Most people scurry about trying to prove that they’re perfect, but they don’t see that they are part of God, and that God has already given us the greatest gift he can give us: our soul.
When we are in communication with our soul, our relationship with it exemplifies growth and healing. But people who are not in sync with their soul are more often sick, tired, angry, frustrated, frayed, and jaded than those who are. We’ve all encountered people who are jaded; they seemingly have everything but sound as if they have nothing. They don’t have spirit, they don’t have joy, they don’t have drama, and they don’t have the zeal to celebrate life. Above all, they don’t believe in their soul. I’m better today than I’ve ever been because I’m in concert with my soul, and this sacred connection is bringing me to personal and professional heights I never thought possible twenty years ago. My soul helps me do more important things, endeavors that have significant meaning not only for me but for countless others.
We all have a big soul and a little soul. Our big soul is connected with God. In fact, God and the big soul are one. The big soul is our container for the total human condition, our orchestrator of life’s events, our community expert from one life to the next, our total awareness and knowledge as a people. For those who believe God “keeps track” of our lives, the big soul is his reference point. The big soul knows everything about us, everything we have done, and what we will do in the future to learn and evolve. It creates our experiences here on this material plane.
The big soul, in its infinite wisdom and love, gives to each of us a little piece of itself, which I call the little soul. The little soul is our spiritual companion, a function of our daily existence. It is the essence of God that is within each of us, as if he were holding each of our hands. It aids our personality, pushing us to fulfill our potential, and helps us evolve by confronting us with the encounters and relationships from which we need to learn. Our little soul is the impetus behind our realizing our soul mission and our porpoise in life. It is our deepest strength and our greatest joy, and with it we are never alone. The little soul and the big soul are always connected, and the big soul is always connected to God.
The big soul guides the little soul in its respective relationship with us. It deals with issues of a larger scope, like choosing a particular generation with a specific path to significance and a large group karmic track. Each generation is different, but a common thread runs through it, a similarity of karmic lessons and a major need to transform them. Each generation has a larger purpose to fulfill that will advance its evolution and awareness. The big soul also coordinates the massive number of soul contracts into which each of us has entered. For instance, my interns are part of my own karmic group, each for their own individual reasons. Some come to learn from me and stay connected; others decide to separate from me. I know that I have created meeting all of them to push me toward a better understanding of my soul’s work. The big soul is more connected to the bigger picture.
Karmic Amalgams: Your Karmic Jigsaw Puzzle
Karmic amalgams are aggregate images of people who are most meaningful to us. Drawing a karmic amalgam is a dynamic process that helps us figure how to learn from the new, interpersonal situations we are constantly creating in our lives. They are effective because we’ve already known the people we attract from other lives, having entered into soul contracts with them. A karmic amalgam gives us the opportunity to see ourselves through the people we create. For instance, if I had a dogmatic father in another life and my soul needed for me to understand the devastating effects that being dogmatic had on my family, I would likely ask my son in that life to be that kind of father to me in my next. If my “son” takes on that contract, he is helping me by being dogmatic and unrelenting. Then we can resolve the conflict we had in our last life.
Whenever we experience a new, important relationship, we must adjust and revise our karmic amalgam. Adding each new, essential relationship as it evolves enables us to understand what that relationship symbolizes and provides us with insights to learn form it. Once we understand that our souls seek to confront us with all our own relationships as a learning experience, we can alter and transform the behaviors that need changing.
In workshops I conduct to help people glean powerful information from their relationships, I use an exercise based on a theory that we enter this life with a jug saw puzzle without pieces. Every karmic relationship we create becomes a pertinent piece of the jigsaw puzzle. The completed puzzle shows us in a very profound way who we have been and what memories we may have hidden from our conscious understanding of ourselves.
Circle-one relationships are our biggest jigsaw pieces. Your mother and father may encompass as much as one-third of your puzzle. Your soul has chosen them to provide you with very significant karmic information. Understanding how your parents serve you through their reflections back to you is the first step in cobbling together your karmic amalgam. The power and importance of a reflection is judged by the emotional impact it has on us. I always admired my mother for her compassion, her deep desire to serve humanity, her charm and graciousness, her love of books, and her writing skills. She was a career woman who worked her way up the ladder. Having had a major influence on the evolution of volunteerism in this country, my mother was an inspiration for me. She was open-minded and totally supported my need to leave the traditional world of education and become the holistic teacher that I am today.
Still, as a young girl, it used to frustrate me when my mother was committed to her work responsibilities at my expense. I felt abandoned and scared. As a teenager, my frustration and fear turned to anger. It upset me that she could so easily sacrifice herself and her role as my mother for her career. But as I got older, I saw that I was doing the same thing. I was a workaholic. I sacrificed myself for my work. I had chosen my mother to show me myself.
Our parents’ interactions with us help us to remember the soul contracts we have made with them. This Parents Exercise will highlight the important role your parents played in helping you learn more about yourself and the “perfection” of their service to you.
Parents Exercise
• Think about your mother. Write down in your journal five things that you admire about her.
• Now write down five things about her that frustrate you.
• Do the same thing with your father.
Often in our previous incarnations, we were much more extreme versions of our parents. In essence, we make our parents bigger than life so that we can get in touch with that karmic part of us. We create a soul contract with them to show us that part of ourselves.
Nadine, a 43-year-old writer from Hercules, California, was able to come to terms with her mother only after realizing that their volatile, angst-ridden relationship was providing her with a life-altering lesson:
You picked your parents.” Linda’s words ricocheted off my ears, only to boomerang back later. Instinctively and almost defensively, I felt a chill and thought to myself: “No way in hell.” And then I thought, “Maybe that accounts for all of my previous poor judgments and decisions.”
Sometime after the humor wore off, I finally understood. Ironically, what has taken me almost my entire adult life to understand has left me feeling grateful that I finally “got” it. No I can spend the rest of my life making a real difference. This coming to terms-or maybe better, coming of age-happened after three years of living with my mother in a volatile relationship, then not speaking to her for another three years after that. After more than six years of external and internal turmoil, I finally came to terms with…me.
First I realized that a gift is not only what we have been given but what we ultimately do with it. Since the gifts my mother gave me were not conscious and certainly did not come from a loving place, it took me a while to validate them. The gift became my own growth out of a fiery place.
I have not only reconciled her back into my life, I have clearly gained more respect for her journey. The added benefit is that my compassion for others is now more evident in my daily life.
We all have a profound need to look deeply inside-to go beyond the conventional rhetoric and teaching, to find our own truth and accept our appointed tasks, our purpose for living. But before that, it’s really only about love. Once you give yourself compassion, you see the world through loving eyes. That moment of understanding transformed the course of my life forever.
Traits we display in our significant relationships show us not only the behaviors we tend to repress but the jigsaw puzzle pieces of ourselves as we were in other times. The following exercise will walk you through the process of finding the personality pieces that will allow you to learn about the puzzle that is you.
Exercise: Karmic Amalgam for Female Energy
This exercise will provide information on characteristics you have had in the past as a woman. If you are a woman in this life, it will supply you with more information about your past. If you are a man, it will inform you about your female side as well as provide you with insights about what qualities you are attracted to in women. The female amalgam you “create” will give you important insights into your hidden female side.
STEP 1
Choose and list in your journal five women with whom you have had an important relationship. (Always include your mother as the first one, since she is a circle-one soul contract.) If you don’t have five, list as many as you can. Here are five examples: your mother, a childhood friend, a supervisor, a professor, and your grandmother.
STEP 2
Examine the personalities of the five women you’ve chosen. Look for their attributes that have deeply affected you. Identify and journalize roughly half a dozen strong and weak or challenging characteristics for each of the women you’ve chosen. Your selection of attributes as positives or negative should not imply a judgment about them. What is significant is how you view them and the effect that their behavior has had on you.
STEP 3
List the strengths that most of the five women have in common. These strengths now can become pieces of your jigsaw puzzle: they are characteristics that you may not have realized that you have yourself.
STEP 4
List the weaknesses that most of the five women have in common. As with your strengths, you can now add your aggregate weaknesses to your karmic jigsaw puzzle. Chances are these weaknesses are aspects of yourself that you’ve chosen not to identify. They could offer a glimmer of information about who you’ve been in past lives.
Exercise: Karmic Amalgam for Male Energy
This exercise will provide information on characteristics you have had in the past as a man. If you are a man in this life, it will supply you with more information about your past. If you are a woman, it will inform you about your male side as well as provide you with insights about what qualities you are attracted to in men. The male amalgam you “create” will give you important insights into your hidden male side.
STEP 1
Choose and list five men with whom you have had an important relationship. (Always use your father as the first one, since he is a circle-one soul contract.) If you don’t have five, list as many as you can. Some examples: your father, your uncle, a first love, your husband, a married lover.
STEP 2
Examine the personalities of the men you’ve chosen. Look for their attributes that have deeply affected you. Identify roughly half a dozen strong and weak characteristics for each of the men you have chosen. Your selection of attributes as positives or negative should not imply a judgment about them. What is significant is how you view them and the effect that their behavior has had on you.
STEP 3
List the strengths that most of the five men have in common. These strengths can become pieces of your jigsaw puzzle: they are characteristics you may not have realized you possess yourself.
STEP 4
List the weaknesses that most of the five men have in common. You now have six more characteristic to add to your karmic jigsaw puzzle. Again, the weak or challenging traits you’ve elicited may indicate parts of yourself that you’ve chosen to repress. They could also offer you some insight into the type of person you were in previous incarnations.
Your karmic jigsaw puzzle will ease your heart, expand your consciousness, and give you a sense of continuity that you have never before experienced. It will give you vital information on why you’ve chosen your soul contracts. You will be free to love and honor your parents and all the others who have joined with you on a soul level to teach you what you have needed to know. You will feel more empowered because you will no longer need to create others to show you what you already know. You will be able to put karmic memories in perspective and discriminate their value. You will be less vulnerable to the chaos created by unconsciousness. Finally, you will be operating in partnership with your soul.