If you don’t know what you’re living for, you haven’t yet lived.
—RABBI NOAH WEINBERG
“What is the meaning of life?” It is one of the central questions posed by philosophers, theologians, scientists and writers since ancient times. Many of us wonder about it in high school or college but soon get caught up in what we’re doing and forget to ask why we’re doing it. As life goes by, the question returns again and again. Caught up in the obligations of our lives, it is easy to lose track of what matters most to us. As we go through the motions of meeting our responsibilities, our lives can become so stagnant that the question comes back to us in various forms: Why am I doing this? Why does it matter? What do I really want? What is my purpose?
It is possible to choose a life with greater purpose by aligning with your authentic self. Every person comes into the world with a specific purpose that is unique to that individual, as well as a general purpose that we all share. These are our soul corrections, or what our soul has come into this world to correct. Often these corrections will lead to some of the most important lessons we learn in life. In fact, kabbalists believe that the “correction of the soul,” or Tikkun HaNefesh is our primary purpose on earth.1
I often tell my patients they can identify the area that is most in need of a soul correction by asking, “What is the source of greatest pain in my life?” Ordinarily, we all do everything we can to avoid pain. But when it comes to growth and healing, pain can be our best friend and greatest guide. As Joseph Campbell said, “Where you stumble, there your treasure is.”2
When recurring struggles and pain emerge that interfere with our lives, they draw attention to the types of soul correction we need. The area most in need of soul correction is the thing that keeps coming up again and again, much to our dismay. Often these patterns are what Freud called repetition compulsions—unconscious and self-sabotaging behaviors that we may feel at a loss to change. Transforming and clearing this “baggage” is precisely how we achieve our soul correction. In Part Two of this book, you’ll learn more about four of the most common soul corrections I encounter in my private practice: improving relationships, releasing addictions, transforming fears, and harnessing personal power.
There are also several soul corrections we all share. One of these is to align with our soul rather than our ego. We always have a choice to align with light, goodness, optimism, hope, love, kindness, and generosity—the qualities of the soul. We can also just as easily focus on darkness, fear, pessimism, anger, hatred, jealousy, pride—the qualities of the ego. The founder of the Kabbalah Center, Rav Yehuda Ashlag, teaches that the Universe will support the choices we make. Follow the light, and we will be pushed toward more light. Follow the darkness, and we will be pushed toward more darkness.3 One of our soul corrections is to become better able to align with light, love, and expansion rather than darkness, fear, and stagnation.
So how do we do this? We have two choices. We can either achieve this proactively or reactively. Changing ourselves proactively means identifying those aspects of our lives where we are aligned with our ego, that part of us that keeps us small and constricted. Proactive change entails first identifying the ways in which we are falling short of being the best version of ourselves. This recognition is an accomplishment in itself. Just to see ourselves clearly and make the decision to change is a huge step forward. It is our nature as human beings to be dominated by our egos at times. To depart from this mindset and commit to growth and transformation is actually quite amazing—it does not happen to everybody.
Many people never develop the inner clarity that allows them to differentiate between who they are, as compared to the person they want to be. These people too will undergo their soul corrections, yet rather than doing so proactively, they will often do so reactively. Reactive transformation occurs through pain and suffering as we react to the external circumstances of our lives. Pain and suffering are inevitable parts of life. We will all feel pain. We will all suffer. Yet the more proactive growth we are able to achieve by overcoming the limitations of our egos and expanding our consciousness, the less pain and suffering we will have to endure. A large part of pain and suffering is not about the obstacles we encounter, but our reactions to those obstacles.
So how do you enable proactive growth to occur? By identifying exactly that which is most difficult, fearful, and uncomfortable for you to do in a given situation, and doing precisely that. Comfort and complacency are the enemies of growth and transformation. Growth entails choosing the path of most rather than least resistance exactly because it enables you to expand. In this way, you grow as a person by holding back your reactive, ego-based responses and allowing your proactive, soul-based responses to emerge.
I am not implying here that you must repress or deny your difficult feelings. If somebody truly upsets you or pushes your buttons, you are denying your true feelings if you say, “I’m not upset” or “What they said wasn’t that hurtful.” Being proactive does not mean being in denial. Like we discussed in the previous chapter, welcoming in your difficult feelings is an important part of befriending your shadow side, the part of yourself that you may view as unlovable and therefore be tempted to deny or disavow. By learning to recognize and observe difficult feelings without reacting to them, you slowly train yourself to align with your soul instead of your ego.
If somebody does truly upset you, the proactive response would be to honestly acknowledge how you feel—”I am upset” or “What they said was hurtful”—and then not revert to your usual response. Proactive growth means going against your nature. If your typical response would be to lash out in anger, the proactive response may be to restrict your reaction, pause, take a deep breath and, once you’re feeling calmer, discuss how you’re feeling with the person involved, if that is appropriate. If your typical response would be to shut down when things get heated, the proactive response may be to restrict that reaction, pause, take a deep breath, and be open and honest with the other person about how you’re feeling. In contrast, if your typical response would be to ignore the whole thing and sweep it under the rug, the proactive response may be to restrict that reaction, pause, take a deep breath, and honestly ask yourself, “How does this really make me feel? Am I running away from my emotions? What feelings am I trying to avoid by sweeping this under the rug?” Going against your nature is not easy. It is a disciplined and concerted lifelong practice, the mastery of which requires time, patience, and maturity. While going against your nature may feel uncomfortable, it is the most effective way to transform your reactive, ego-based responses to proactive, soul-based responses.
To help you practice responding to life’s challenges in a proactive way, I’ve included an adaptation of the Kabbalistic Proactive Formula in our next exercise.4
The Proactive Formula is a powerful way to transform your response in a given situation from a reactive, ego-based response to a proactive, soul-based response. The following four steps will help you to put the Proactive Formula into practice:
1. An obstacle occurs. This could be absolutely anything that upsets you or stresses you out. Observe your reaction to the situation. How does it make you feel? Where do you feel the pain, sadness, anger, tension or stress in your body? Focus on the feeling as you breathe in and out for a count of five. Sometimes just the act of neutral observation, taking a step back from an emotional situation, is enough to release the pain, sadness, anger, tension or stress you’re feeling.
2. Recognize this obstacle as an opportunity for growth. Realize that your reaction—not the obstacle—is the real enemy. Although we cannot always change the obstacles that come into our lives, we have the free will to respond from a place of soul instead of ego. Ask yourself, “How would I typically respond in a situation like this?” “What would be the reactive, ego-based response in this situation?” “What would be the proactive, soul-based response?”
3. Shut down your reactive response and connect to your soul-based response. You could do this in a number of different ways:
a. Imagine what somebody you respect and admire might do in this situation. Usually one’s hero or role model would take the high road and express a more elevated point of view and understanding of the situation.
b. Focus on somebody or something you love and why. Hold a picture of the beloved person or object in your heart as you breathe in and out for a count of five. As you bring love into your heart, it often becomes easier to respond from a place of soul rather than from a place of ego.
c. Take responsibility for the obstacle. What role might you have had in bringing this obstacle into your life? By taking responsibility for our obstacles, we can often conquer the difficult feelings they bring up.
d. Ask for help from above—from God, a Higher Power, the Light, or the Universe—in silently saying the following prayer or request to yourself, “Please help me connect to my soul.”
4. Now with knowledge, responsibility and a higher consciousness, you’re ready to respond in a proactive way. How do you feel after having responded proactively in this situation?
Being proactive requires taking a pause, observing your feelings, taking responsibility for your response, and choosing to go against your nature. In contrast, being reactive allows you to put our head in the sand, to remain stuck, feel like victims of circumstances, and be powerless in the face of adversity. When my patients are faced with a choice, I often ask, “Which one requires the greater stretch from you?” The greater the stretch is, the greater the growth and transformation you will experience.
How often are we afraid to say what we truly believe because it is all too important how the world perceives us? Sometimes we’re so busy trying to look good that we forget who we really are. As William Shakespeare said, “This, above all, to thine own self be true.”5
In this vein, another soul correction we all share, if we choose to accept it, is to live authentically and find a way to reveal our unique soul contribution to the world. Your soul contribution, sometimes referred to as your calling, is the unique way you choose to use your talents, skills, abilities, passions, desires, and experiences in the service of others. This may include choosing a profession or career which centers on helping others, fighting for a social cause, giving to a charity you believe in, improving the world, or nurturing and raising children. The possibilities are endless.
Inherent in the concept of soul contribution is the idea of giving and sharing. The more we give of ourselves, our talents, skills, and abilities, the more we are able to actualize our full potential. Because no one can be like you, it is important to develop the courage to live authentically and purposefully and, at the same time, allow others to do likewise. Identifying your soul contribution, which educator and author Katherine Woodward Thomas calls your soul’s purpose, is a vital stepping-stone to fulfillment. She writes,
Discovering our soul’s purpose is rarely an event, although epiphanies do happen. More often than not, it’s a process that requires patience and perseverance. In order to discover it, you must pay attention to what stirs your passions, lights you up, and just comes naturally. When you are living inside your soul’s purpose, you are often in flow. You lose track of time. You feel alive, useful, of service, and a part of all that is.6
Though we may not always be aware of it, I believe that the deepest craving in all our hearts is to live for something greater than ourselves. We are instinctively searching for a purpose that transcends the boundaries of our own personal lives. It is a deep, very human hunger that we can only satisfy by believing we are living in such a way that, by the end, we will have made the contribution we have come into this world to make.
I now invite you to do a stream-of-consciousness writing exercise on the topic Your Soul Contribution. Set your stopwatch to five minutes and write without stopping, beginning with the first thought, impression or vision that comes into your mind and working through as many as time allows. Do not censor any thoughts, writing down even unconnected single words that come to mind. Just keep writing! If you find yourself wanting to write for more than five minutes, continue to do so until you feel like you have written all that you wanted to say. If you get stuck on a prompt or thought, don’t worry! Move to the next one and see what emerges. Alternately, if you’d like to focus on just one thought or subject during the five minutes, that’s fine, too. You can revisit this exercise as often as you’d like and look across your writing from various sittings to see if repetitions, patterns, or contrasts emerge.
1. When do you feel most alive? What do you love to do? What are you passionate about?
2. When you were a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
3. What comes most naturally to you? What have people always told you that you’re good at?
4. What unique talent, skill, ability, or interest can you share with others?
5. What is your soul contribution?
The above exercise can be done together with the exercise in chapter 1 titled “What do you most deeply want?” These two exercises will help you identify your soul’s deepest longings, which are key to understanding how you can best be of service to others and the world.
Patients frequently come to me trying to understand what they are supposed to be doing with their lives. They may be at the beginning of their lives, having just completed high school or college, trying to figure out their life’s next chapter. Some feel extreme pressure to move forward yet simply cannot take the next step, feeling held back in their lives by an intangible yet palpable sense of fear, confusion and inner conflict.
Other patients come to me mid-life or mid-career, realizing that they are not as fulfilled in their work as they had hoped, and contemplating an important life change. Or they may feel like they’ve accomplished what they’ve wanted in a particular profession or industry and are ready for their next challenge. Making dramatic transitions mid-life almost always involves soul-searching, sacrifice, and inner conflict. But sometimes the pain of staying where you are exceeds the potential pain of uncertainty and change. Dramatic transitions do not always come into our lives by choice, either. Sometimes life hands us challenges—our company folds, we get fired, we’re forced to move—and we’re left with the question of how to make do.
In my work with patients at this stage in life, I have seen senior executives become college professors and stay-at-home moms, investment bankers become actors and writers, teachers and consultants go back to school to become healers, to name a few. I’ve seen patients take big risks and reap even bigger rewards. But I’ve also seen failure, loss, and people recognizing that things weren’t really so bad after all, but only after they had made their transitions.
The potential for failure is the undeniable price of risk. But choices of this nature are never truly failures or mistakes if you learn from them and gain a sense of clarity about your soul contribution in the process. Sometimes you can only know what you’re supposed to do or where you’re supposed to be by going in the “wrong” direction. We learn about what we want by experiencing the opposite. These are our blessings in disguise.
Even if we find a purpose that feels meaningful or is what we’d love to do, we can easily talk ourselves out of it, or get distracted and move on to something else. As Henry David Thoreau famously wrote in Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”7 It’s true of most people, even today, but if that kind of life was enough for you, you wouldn’t be reading this book. You sense, as I do, that there has to be so much more to life than that.
Pausing to question the path you’re on is a vital part of living a fulfilled life. The key is to let the process of questioning, and the subsequent answers, matter and to take the answers to heart. Your mind may argue against it, but our minds do not always know what’s best. It’s better to open your heart and listen for that still voice that answers from your soul. Poet and novelist Hermann Hesse said it best:
Everyone had only one true vocation: to find himself… to discover his own destiny, not just any destiny, and to live it totally and undividedly. Anything else was just a half-measure, an attempt to run away, an escape back to the ideal of the masses, an adaptation, fear of one’s own nature.8
Until Joseph Jaworski found his genuine vocation, he lived life in the fast lane as a top international corporate lawyer. Living in a huge house, making loads of money, earning a great reputation, having girlfriends in every city, and gambling, he blindly believed that he was making his contribution. The day his wife asked him for a divorce was the beginning of his “dark night of the soul.”
Darkness ultimately led to his renewal as he began to see the world anew and open himself up to a form of universal guidance of which he was previously unaware. The moment this universal guidance entered Jaworksi’s life was the day he quit his law firm to follow his heart and actualize a dream to start the American Leadership Forum (ALF), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to join and strengthen diverse leaders to better serve the public good. The interesting part of Jaworski’s journey is that when he finally decided to start the ALF, he knew nothing about leadership curriculum and development. He had much fear and uncertainty. Yet he forged onward and succeeded, with a little help from above. In his book Synchronicity he writes,
If we are truly committed to follow our dream, there exists beyond ourselves and our conscious will, a powerful force that helps us along the way and nurtures our growth and transformation. Our journey is guided by invisible hands with infinitely greater accuracy than is possible through our unaided conscious will. [Joseph] Campbell says it is the “supernatural assisting force…”9
What is this “supernatural assisting force” about which Joseph Campbell speaks? Is there really such a thing as guidance from the Universe? Or is our wish for guidance merely an embodiment of our desire to forsake our free will once and for all and be rescued by a supreme being? Can we ever know for certain? If so, how? If not, then what are we to believe?
An interesting answer to this oft-pondered question comes from seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Blaise Pascal. Pascal’s Wager posits that we as human beings base our lives, to some degree, on whether or not God exists. For our purposes here, God may be interchangeable with any Higher Power. Based on the assumption that the stakes are infinite if God does in fact exist (for instance, the promise of eternity in heaven and the possibility of infinite guidance from a Higher Power) and that there is even a small probability of this, Pascal argues that the rational decision is to live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, the losses are finite. Whereas if God does exist, the gains are infinite. Rationally speaking, it pays to be a believer.
Many physicians have sided with Pascal. In her book The Fear Cure, Dr. Lissa Rankin writes: “The universe may be orderly and meaningful even if we don’t understand how it operates, and we may be protected by a loving Universal Intelligence that guides us through outer signs and inner knowing.” My life and the lives of my family, friends, and patients have been filled with guidance in the form of outer signs and inner knowing.
A therapist friend of mine had a patient, William, who discovered her practice through a “sign” of this nature. While William was looking for a therapist, he brought home a book from the local library and found the therapist’s card between the pages. Interpreting this as a sign, he called her to book an appointment the next day. He’s now been working with her for two years. How her card got inside that library book, the therapist has no idea. I was so taken with this story that I considered a new marketing strategy for my own practice: leaving business cards in random library books!
I received a “sign” of guidance after a particularly grueling overnight shift during my psychiatry residency. As I left the hospital beyond exhausted, I wondered yet again if I had made the right decision to be a doctor. I loved the study of medicine and I loved working with patients. But whenever I was squeezed between the chaos on the ward and utter sleep deprivation, I had my doubts.
A few months earlier, I had my first encounter with Kabbalah. The pursuit of spirituality was still new to me, but walking home that day as the sun was just beginning to rise, I decided to embrace my spiritual self and ask the Universe for a sign. Under my breath, I silently asked, Universe, please give me a sign that I am on the right path in life… that this is really what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.
Just as I turned the corner at the next block I saw a small crowd of neighbors huddled over a crumpled body on the street. At this hour, the street was mostly empty except for the occasional taxi. I ran to the scene and saw an elderly woman who had fallen out of her wheelchair when it inadvertently crossed over the curb. The few people on the street had all rushed to help. As we straightened out her wheelchair, I started asking her a few questions to assess her state of mind: Was she okay? Was she in pain? Had she hit her head? She said she was fine but had hit her head slightly. We erred on the side of caution and she agreed to stop by the emergency room, conveniently located a block away, to make sure there was no damage.
“Thank you!” I said to the Universe, as I headed home. Although tentative, I was blown away at how quickly I had received what clearly qualified as a “sign.” It was my first test of this new spirituality. Encountering and being able to help this woman was the confirmation I needed at that moment to quell my doubts. Despite the grueling nature of residency, this moment energized me and helped me keep going when future doubts arose.
Sometimes, guidance from the Universe may take an unexpected form: something that appears quite negative may turn out not to be so. Correctly interpreting this kind of pattern once saved my friend Patrick’s life. In the summer before he started law school, Patrick got into two freak car accidents in close succession, which left him wondering why death seemed to be following him.
In the first accident, Patrick was driving at the speed limit on the highway in a small compact car, and out of nowhere, a driver lost control of his car and slammed into Patrick’s car head-on! About six months later, Patrick was a passenger in a car, and as the car accelerated to merge onto a highway, the steering wheel mysteriously malfunctioned and the car swerved haphazardly across several lanes of high-speed traffic, ultimately falling into a ravine and flipping several times. It was a well-maintained car, and again, the accident seemed like a total fluke.
In the two incidents, Patrick suffered some minor injuries, but overall he felt very lucky the injuries weren’t worse and he was grateful to be alive. Beyond the physical damage, he did feel quite shaken. These accidents left him fearful of driving, given that injury and the potential for death now seemed like unpredictable and real possibilities around every corner. It also left him asking, what is the Universe up to? Is it my time to go soon? What is going on?
One week after the second accident, Patrick had been planning to travel by plane with several others to a developing country to do volunteer work. Although he was physically intact after that second accident and really didn’t like to disappoint others, he decided uncharacteristically to cancel the trip because he was still feeling a bit shaken up. Although he tried to find a replacement, no one was available to go in his place.
Then Patrick heard the most devastating news. The plane that he would have been on had crashed and everyone on board had died. He was shocked, saddened, and dealing with grief, yet also was in disbelief that the second freak car accident had, ironically, saved his life!
Things are not always what they seem. As Patrick’s story illustrates, what causes us pain can work to our advantage, even though we cannot always appreciate or understand it at the time. My patient Ilse’s story illustrates this principle in a slightly different form.
One day a soft-spoken, no-nonsense Swedish woman who was the CEO of a nonprofit organization to help children with cancer came to see me for an evaluation. Ilse had been suffering from such terrible stomach pains that she had been forced to miss a week’s work every few months for years. Despite an extensive medical evaluation, the cause of her symptoms couldn’t be identified. After her fifth visit to the gastroenterologist all the lab results were still negative, so she was sent to me for a psychological evaluation.
Ilse was the very opposite of the people who feign an illness to take time away from work. She prided herself on having an iron will that allowed her to accomplish anything she set her mind to. Her superiors agreed. Her reputation at her nonprofit was stellar. She had raised more money and advanced the mission of her nonprofit more than any other CEO in the organization’s thirty-year history. Ilse was always the first in the office and the last to leave. Having to take time off for a stomachache was almost as onerous to Ilse as the stomach pains themselves!
As you can imagine, for a woman who had managed to take complete control of her life in every other way, feeling powerless was completely unacceptable. She was determined to get to the root of the problem.
We first discussed the possibility that her stomach issues could have had their roots in her travels. The summer before her symptoms began, she contracted giardiasis, a parasitic infection, while establishing a cancer program for children in India. Even though Ilse had received the appropriate treatment, her stomach was never the same again. However, giardia alone could not explain why Ilse’s symptoms were particularly bad in times of high stress, with months of symptom-free periods in between.
Ilse and I began to consider the possibility that perhaps her stomach issues had some sort of adaptive value. What if they were somehow providing her with relief from an emotional conflict?
In exploring this possibility, we talked about a concept that medicine calls primary and secondary gains. A primary gain gives us something we want. But as human beings, we are often conflicted about what we want. We may want one thing, but also want its opposite at the same time. As Freud observed, sometimes we can be completely unaware of many of our deepest desires.
It’s not uncommon for a patient to initially deny that they are getting any benefit from an illness whatsoever. After all, who wants to be sick? The truth is, sometimes it’s worth it, especially if it gets us something we want or need. This is often something we may initially believe is unacceptable to us or those around us. This could include permission to slow down, make lifestyle changes, reduce stressors, and remove ourselves from relationships and situations that are harmful to us and our well-being.
Secondary gains are the benefits we get by sidestepping challenges until we are ready to face them. If a first-time father who feels anxious about interacting with his children finds he doesn’t have time anyway, because he has to work through the weekend, then working weekends is reinforced. He may genuinely want to spend time with his kids and genuinely have to work, but the situation helps him avoid his anxiety. Secondary gains are rarely conscious. It doesn’t mean people are faking it or trying to manipulate the situation. It’s simply the way our minds and bodies work together to get us what we need precisely because we may not be consciously aware of what we most deeply desire.
Ilse strongly identified with her self-image as an iron-willed, ambitious hard worker. What she needed was more time and space to care for herself. But that was not a part of her master plan. Needing care connoted weakness to Ilse. And she was not weak!
Only through debilitating stomach pains could Ilse justify the need to take care of herself. From her body’s point of view, it was a brilliant solution. It allowed her to avoid guilt and offered the secondary gain of allowing her to give herself the rest and care she needed.
Growing up in Sweden, Ilse had lived in the shadow of an older brother who was the “golden child.” In the parents’ eyes, he could do no wrong. To make up for it, Ilse worked twice as hard and accomplished twice as much to get her parents’ approval, but they never noticed. They had already decided how they viewed her and had no intention of changing their assessment. It was as if they were saying, “Don’t confuse us with facts. Our minds are made up!” Finally realizing she was never going to get their approval, Ilse moved to the United States when she was thirty-two. She pushed herself to achieve great things, and kept her foot on the gas at all times. Except when she got sick.
“Is it possible that this stomach pain is the only excuse you’d accept for taking your foot off the gas?” I asked her.
“These pains aren’t imaginary,” Ilse insisted.
“I know that,” I assured her. “I’m just wondering what other choices your body would have if it needed you to take a little time off? Would you do it for anything less than the most debilitating illness? What other choices did you leave yourself?”
Ilse shifted uncomfortably in her chair, realizing that the very pride she took in pushing ahead no matter what had cut off her options. There were few reasons she would accept for missing work. Her love of work and drive to excel had painted her into a corner where only abject sickness could get her to slow down. It was an important realization.
Over the coming months, Ilse and I worked to bring more balance into her life. It was perfectly all right to keep her foot on the gas most of the time, as long as she gave herself time to relax with a leisurely lunch in the sunshine or a stroll through Central Park once in a while. Otherwise, frankly, she’d face the consequences. Her unconscious mind was at least as strong and determined as she was. If it had to intervene to get her to slow down, she knew it would.
As Ilse’s life became more balanced, her gastrointestinal symptoms slowly began to recede. In times of extended stress, she still has occasional symptoms, but their frequency and duration is much improved. And Ilse’s degree of understanding of the nature of the problem is much greater.
This case is another example of where things are not always what they seem. Debilitating stomach pains were actually the cry for help from Ilse’s body and unconscious mind that finally led Ilse to slow down and lead a more balanced and, ultimately, more fulfilling life. In this way, Ilse’s pain was guiding her to accomplish one of her soul corrections—cultivating self-love and self-care.
It helps to have faith in the friendly Universe described by Einstein, though faith is not something that always comes naturally, especially in the face of pain—our own or that of others. Yet even the pain we experience and witness around us can be seen as part of our healing and growth process. When it is hard for us to appreciate or understand the guidance we are receiving from the Universe, we may frequently misunderstand and/or resist this guidance.
I have certainly experienced this many times. After I ended a five-year relationship in my early thirties, I began to develop a pattern of drawing into my life single men who were interesting, intelligent, charismatic, successful and, like clockwork, emotionally unavailable. They all truly believed that they wanted to marry the right woman, but deep inside they all had a deep-rooted fear of commitment. As you may know, these kinds of men are excellent pursuers. As long as I was not fully available to them, they were eager to pursue me. But as soon as I raised the question of a relationship, they ran like the wind.
Had I been really listening to the guidance the Universe was giving me, I might’ve known that I was drawing in the wrong kind of men. But, like Ilse, when I became fixated on something, I wanted it with all my heart, mind, and will. While my heart was gently coaxing my mind to let go of my plans and surrender to what was naturally unfolding in the relationship, my mind fought to retain control of the situation. I can tell you, I wasted a lot of my extra energy on this inner conflict. Telling me to let go of this obviously self-sabotaging pattern was like telling an addict to stay away from a drug. I was addicted to the drama, the excitement, the anticipation, and the pain that these men created in my life. And it seemed like there was nothing I could do, despite my best efforts, to kick the habit.
In time I realized that I needed to carefully reconsider my soulmate selection criteria. In certain areas, I needed to make it more stringent—no more ignoring red flags that signaled emotional unavailability! In other areas, like the long checklist of qualities I expected every man I dated to possess, I needed to loosen my grip.
After having my heart broken time and again, a deeply spiritual man with a beautiful soul and open heart walked into my life and swept me off my feet. At first I was confused by the experience. It felt very different from my prior dating history. Jesse was kind, generous, straightforward, and comfortable with his emotions. He did not play games. He was honest with me about how he felt and what he was looking for in his life.
At first it was a little overwhelming. Then I realized that was actually a good sign. It meant I was outside my comfort zone. Something had shifted. I had finally drawn in a different kind of man!
When we started dating, I was thirty-seven and Jesse was fifty-four, which is older than the men I had typically dated. He led a fascinating life as a model, photographer, and filmmaker that enabled him to live, work, and travel all over the world. I loved how his mind worked. He was a brilliant man and an original thinker. Having been on a spiritual path for his whole life, he was dedicated to growing as a person as opposed to being satisfied with a life of creature comforts and complacency. Most importantly, he had a deep capacity for love, which, truth be told, was quite frightening to me for some time.
I had been gathering around me all those emotionally unavailable men because a part of me felt safer avoiding emotional intimacy. If I was going to be available for all the love that Jesse was able to give me—and to reciprocate in turn—I was going to need to step outside my comfort zone and slowly open my heart.
Thomas Moore, author of Soul Mates, defines a soul mate as “…somebody to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communication and communing that takes place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace.”10
From day one, this relationship was full of divine grace in the form of little unexpected coincidences or synchronicities. One of the most poignant signs was that, from our second date onward, an inner channel of communication opened between us. We finished each other’s sentences and literally read each other’s minds. Moreover, whenever I asked him a question, he would answer me honestly, no matter what. I loved how honest, real, and authentic he was.
As I slowly and cautiously eased into this relationship, I began to experience a level of comfort and familiarity I had never experienced before. The more I got to know Jesse, the more similar I realized we were on the soul level. We had similar values. We were both mission-driven and needed to make a difference in this world by helping humanity. We loved to work hard and valued originality and creativity. Quite often, the status quo felt stuffy and constraining to both of us.
Although the Universe’s guidance in my love life had been a source of great pain to me, it ultimately led me to find my soulmate. We were married on July 10, 2016. Becoming open to spiritual guidance in a friendly Universe was, in this situation, a powerful catalyst for growth, healing, and transformation—even with the many painful lessons along the way.
For this stream-of-consciousness writing exercise, bring to mind an area in your life in which you experience pain—this could be physical, psychological, or emotional pain. Begin by writing about this pain—when, where, and why does it occur? Describe it in as much detail as you’d like, using metaphors if helpful. Now, focus on the following questions:
1. What have I learned from this pain?
2. What, if anything, do I think this pain still has to teach me?
3. Am I resisting being guided by this pain? If so, how and why?
Many of my psychiatry colleagues, however, may view the stories in this chapter quite differently. From their perspective, hindsight is twenty-twenty. To them, perceiving “guidance” from the Universe is an attempt to construct a magical, sentimental meaning from a series of random, unconnected events. My skeptical colleagues would say that my desire to believe that the Universe is guiding me comes from a yearning to find order in what may otherwise be chaotic, random happenstance. My magical stories of divine guidance may actually be an unconscious defense against uncertainty and the unknown aspects of life. If the Universe is looking after me, like a loving father in the sky, I feel special and cared for. This argument speaks to the psychological benefits I receive from feeling guided.
As a psychiatrist myself, I certainly cannot discount this possibility. The two points of view are not mutually exclusive, however. In my extensive search for meaning and purpose in my own life and those of my patients, I have carefully considered Pascal’s Wager and ultimately chosen to believe in a Higher Power. The psychological benefits for me, if indeed my belief is right, include a life of magic, wonder, and guidance. If I am right and there is something greater out there, the gains are tremendous. If I’m wrong, however, I’m no worse off than where I started. As per Pascal’s Wager, the benefits of belief outweigh the costs of nonbelief.
I do not believe, however, that psychological benefits alone could account for the deep sense of fulfillment to be found in aligning with something greater than ourselves, be it God, a Higher Power, or the vast, majestic patterns that lie in the Universe. The more we are able to align with universal guidance, the more we can live from our authentic self and be guided to discover our soul corrections and soul contributions. In this way, we can move into the beautiful flow of life where random events may take on new meaning and seemingly inconsequential meetings may reveal themselves to be major turning points in our lives. As Harvard-trained author and mind-body medicine expert Joan Borysenko, PhD, wrote,
If you take a single step toward positive change, that divine energy will take a hundred steps toward you. New worlds and unbelievable possibilities will open up for you. The synchronicities that will begin appearing in your life will become a source of delight and amazement.11