Soul Mates

“People can leave each other, cross continents, sever ties. But if they are meant to be together, then time and distance dissolve, and they are reunited.” -- Yitta Halberstam & Judith Leventhal, Small Miracles

Once, long ago, a lifetime, or yesterday, an ancient voice whispered, “I am your Soul Mate.”

We are born with a hole in our heart in the shape of our one significant other, our Soul Mate. Love is truly all that matters; it is the final piece in the puzzle that is our life, without which we remain incomplete. We spend the majority of our lives searching – consciously or unconsciously – for the One who fills that hole completely and seamlessly. They are out there. Sometimes our orbits come close, within a whisper of contact, almost there, yet gaps remain; other times we remain lifetimes apart. The search is often long and difficult, carrying us over unfamiliar and sometimes rocky terrain in our own heart. We grow weary of the games, of dancing around the edges, of the search itself and so we compromise, settling for the one who closest fills the hole instead of waiting for the One. We do this because we are lonely, or impatient, or simply because it is easier; and it is easier because we convince ourselves over time that, having chased after smoke and shadow for so long, if we haven’t found our Soul Mate yet perhaps we never will. We would do anything, including stopping short of our One True Love, to avoid the despair of being alone.

And yet, in my heart, I believe that our Soul Mates are out there, waiting. Or could they be engaged in a search of their own … looking for us? Some of us may be lucky: we find that elusive Other with whom our very souls are aligned for eternity. Still, others among us are deceived, though perhaps not deliberately: we may find someone we genuinely care for, even love, and yet there may remain a grain of doubt and we go on asking, “Is this the One? Is this the love of my lifetime?” And so again, we settle for what we feel may be the closest we may ever come to our ideal; we settle for comfort, safety, routine, and partial love instead of inviting risk and passionately pursuing the all abiding, life-encompassing Love that we so richly deserve and that awaits us, hidden just around some corner. We luxuriate in the familiar because it is familiar. Within our hearts continues to beat a distant longing, an age-old knowing that not only must there be more but that without doubt there is more and that it is real. For any question there is also an answer; when you find your Soul Mate doubt vanishes; there is only an ancient knowledge that there are many levels, many shadings of love. And while you may love the one you are with … well, lowercase “love” is not the Love that stirs to the deepest part of ourselves, and to love is not the same as to be in Love. With our Soul Mate we are more fully ourselves than at any other time in our life because they are quite literally the missing piece of ourselves. We are at last complete. They fit the shape of our heart. The truth is that the heart is never wrong, and it sees clearly that which is invisible to the eye; it understands more assuredly than the brain. Every step … every passing moment … every doomed relationship … or failed marriage has inexorably drawn us closer and closer to this one person … and in turn, lead them to us. A grand design, it leads to this: Apart, the two are but mere fractions; together, each filling the other’s heart, they cease to be simply two, apart, becoming One. Forever joined in Spirit and Soul. Inseparable. Even if they are driven apart by distance or circumstance, there beats in the heart of the one the soul of the other.

In a feeling that approaches the Spiritual, we are aware at our core, maybe even down to the atoms that make up our bodies, that that missing element of ourselves, our Soul Mate is most certainly out there. Funny thing, though, the harder we look the more difficult it seems they are to find. The paradox: we search by letting go, we draw nearer by releasing, we find by not looking. And they find us when and maybe where we least expect.

It is with our Soul Mate that we truly reveal – perhaps for the first or only time – who we really are, the best and worst parts of ourselves, honestly, with no veneer. Together, we are able to weather the fiercest storms of life, yet whose absence causes storms within. Only with our Soul Mate can we feel … experience … know … live True, life-changing Love.

Soul Mates are forever bound, a fragile spider web weaving throughout separate existences, leading one to the other … eternal … each a dream, a hope in the shape of the other’s heart … destined.

“When Love beckons to you, follow him, though his voice may shatter your dreams.” – Anonymous

“When Love is strong and runs deep, it pulsates with an energy that cannot be stopped, not even by death’s grip. When two souls are connected and then separated, the separation may seem final, but in truth the relationship transcends time. Love, like a river, flows eternal and it embraces all who swim in its waters.” -- Yitta Halberstam & Judith Leventhal, Small Miracles

“Death cannot stop true love; all it can do is delay it a little while.” – Westly to Princess Buttercup, The Princess Bride