The Real Story on Finding Your Soul Mate
I made you take time to look at what I saw, and when you
took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations
with flowers on my flower, and you write about my flower as
if I think and see what you think and see—and I don’t.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Be yourself.” Your mother and anyone else who’s ever counseled you on love have probably told you this. It’s straightforward advice that most of us take as useless, empty flattery, as in “You’re great just the way you are, and if people don’t recognize that, they’re fools.” Yeah, okay. Thanks, Mom.
Until you’re ready to look deeper, such advice can seem impractical: Be myself? What does that mean? Don’t wear makeup? Belch at the table? Tell someone all about my last crummy relationship and then yawn when they say something that I find boring? I don’t think so.
All right, I get it—you want to put your “best” foot forward when you’re meeting people and developing connections. That’s great. And once you’re in a relationship, there are some social conventions that you might agree to continue to observe. But let’s dive below the surface: If you’d truly love to “find” and create a lasting bond with a soul mate, and not just have a few dates (or decades of wedded mediocrity), it’s best to start with yourself.
Examining your inner self means acknowledging what you’ve read throughout this book and what you’ve experienced, too, if you completed the exercises from the previous chapters. There’s nothing missing from your life. You encompass all things, and so does everyone else. You’re a microcosm of the infinite, expressing this limitless potentiality in a particular human, finite form directed by your unique set of values. You’re kind and cruel, generous and greedy, boring and exciting, and so on—one and the other for as far as the mind can reach.
If you’re single and want to be with that “special someone,” you might find yourself thinking that you’d prefer it if I got down to business. Why don’t I just tell you how to get the universe to cough up the man or woman of your dreams?
If you’re without a mate and unhappy, take this as an opportunity to exercise your insight and patience. Remember that trying to “get” or “find” someone or something in life is futile, but it’s a sign of maturity and wisdom when you prepare for a loving connection by realizing your own wholeness. That’s your first step—not scouting the best bars or ramming your shopping cart into good-looking prospects at the grocery store. When you focus on yourself first, you can walk into a relationship empowered and aware of your own fullness, instead of being driven by a sense of need or desperation. A soul mate isn’t someone who gives you what you lack, but instead is a person who can share your life, for whatever period of time. Together, you can explore something magical that transcends comparing similarities and differences and enters into the realm of true love.
Movies and fairy tales aside, the great beauty of recognizing a soul mate isn’t the moment of “You complete me,” so much as “You see me.” That could be short for You see me in my entirety, including what you perceive as good and bad, and you appreciate all of it. You love me for every facet—not just the parts that I think are “acceptable” to show the world, but for the complete depth and breadth of my soul.
Examine my answers to these questions as you begin to focus on your inner self:
• What are loving relationships? Ones that help you see yourself.
• Who attracts them? People who care for themselves.
• Where do you discover bonds of affection? Within yourself.
• How do you find lasting connections? By being yourself.
When you’re being true to your heart and to what you love, you increase the probability of attracting those who are also committed to living in that manner. You can know the real person instead of falling for a facade, and in turn, be cherished for who you really are. When you appreciate that you and others have a balance of all traits, actions, and inactions and that their forms are determined by each individual’s values, then you can set reasonable expectations, which is essential to initiating steadfast and loving relationships.
Finding Your Soul Mate Right Now
In my seminars, I meet plenty of people who are seeking soul mates, hoping to find that special someone who will “fulfill their destiny.” I also talk to couples who feel that whatever spark that once burned between them has died, and they want to revive it or get out.
In either case, I use the same process. For example, if a woman feels that she’d dearly love to have a new man in her life, I’ll ask her to describe this fellow.
She might say, “I’d love to be involved with someone who’s kind, wise, funny, creative, family oriented, financially successful, generous, and handsome.”
The list could go on for much longer, but we’ll start here. So, I’d then inquire, “Who in your life exemplifies kindness to you right now?”
There’s certainly someone: a friend, relative, colleague, client, or mentor—a specific person who’s already exhibiting this trait to her on a regular basis. Next, I’d ask her to identify those who demonstrate each of the attributes she’s looking for, being detailed and listing as many people as she can for each one.
You can see where this is headed: It will soon become apparent to her that what she’s seeking has already been abundantly supplied. Just as she encompasses all traits, so do those around her, and the features that she thinks are attractive currently exist in her life, displayed in the form of many people instead of just one. Her soul mate will have already manifested in her life, surrounding her with the qualities that she cherishes.
Of course, in addition to all the admirable or “positive” things she might be looking for, there will also be their complementary opposites or “negative” traits. These will be demonstrated or exhibited by one or many individuals in her life to synchronistically maintain the ever-present and soulful harmony. Beware of seeking one-sided mates, for this will be futile. It’s wiser to honor nature’s law of balance in your expectations and dreams.
So, the next question would be, “If you could have this all in one person, would you really want that? Because the universe conserves its perfect proportion through time and space. If you have all these ‘good’ things in the form of one, then it’s likely that the many will disperse. Is that truly your desire?”
Her answer could be yes or no. You might be surprised how many times this one query causes someone to rethink his or her position: Do I really want these traits all in one person, or do I like that I have multiple representations of this already in my world?
One woman, a high-end interior designer I met in Hollywood several years ago, provides an interesting case study. To be blunt, she told me that she was horny, frustrated, and ready for a new relationship. “Dr. Demartini, I need a man,” she said. “I really want a guy in my life.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied, “or else you’d be dating someone. Let’s take a look at what your life’s demonstrating and get clear on your values.”
As we examined this together, she realized that the last time she’d been romantically involved with someone, her business had nearly gone under, she’d almost sacrificed some things that she’d wanted, and she endured various other “negatives.” So she’d sworn to her unconscious self that she was never doing that again—and voilà, she had no “one special” man in her life.
When we started to look, it was also clear that the experiences she desired to share with a man were already present. She was generating plenty of sexual energy—except that it was directed into and came from her work. When she walked me through a house that she designed, my response was, “My God, this is like a sexual encounter.” In addition to the layout, which was filled with male- and female-genital symbolism, she moved through the house in an incredibly sultry way.
I said, “Look at the way you lean against that table and how you hold yourself as you move up the stairs—you’re being seductive with all of your male clients, I bet.”
Up until that point, she’d been totally unaware of this and thought that she was frustrated, unable to find someone with whom she could share her sexuality. She’d allowed herself the illusion that she was missing something, but everything was indeed manifesting—just according to her values, not cultural expectation or personal fantasy.
When she saw what she was doing, she admitted, “You’re right! I now realize that when I complain about not having a man, it’s just a response to what I think I’m supposed to want, not to what I really love. I actually don’t want a man right now, mainly because of the negative associations that I have between them and my business. Guys threaten my real values. I don’t want to be dependent; I want my own money to do whatever I want, when I want. And I crave the spotlight and refuse to live in somebody’s shadow.”
Her current set of priorities, including her desire for independence from powerful and controlling males, emerged from her perceptions or misperceptions of her relationships. I then applied The Demartini Method to her emotionally charged history, helped her feel gratitude and love for it, and broadened her options for manifesting her soul mate.
She realized that she was already manifesting guys in her life, but they were clients. She could be paid for her work, receive acknowledgment, and act sensuously in front of them, and still have control. At that point, she had a choice: shift her goals (which she could do in the way I explained in an earlier chapter), or honor her existing hierarchy. Either way, she could continue to share her life with her “soul mate,” whether in the form she was currently experiencing or in a new way—one or many.
It may seem strange to include an example like this in a chapter on soul mates. You might imagine that I “should” only be telling you how to secure someone in your life instead of how you might choose another path altogether.
There’s the crux of it, however, and I hope that it’s starting to sink in: It doesn’t matter whether you’re unattached or with another person—perceiving yourself as unlucky in love or head over heels—your soul mate is already with you, manifesting as a single form or many that you may or may not be recognizing.
How to Be Sure You’ll Experience Love
In the mythical book of love, you’ll find another core tenet alongside Be yourself, which is Love yourself first. Again, this may sound as though you should be thinking, Oh, I need to build up my self-worth so that I appear confident to others, which will make me attractive; and therefore my soul mate will show up and want to be with me.
Although you’re probably more appealing to others when you’re self-confident, that’s not how I mean Love yourself at all. For you to experience the affection that someone else has for you, “warts and all,” you’d be wise to cherish yourself fully. This means choosing to see yourself in 360 degrees, with your unique expression of every character trait. It also means realizing that you encompass a truly perfect, complementary collection. When you embrace this, your dark and light, your positive and negative—in sum, your supposed duality, of which the so-called parts are actually indistinguishable—then you’re ready to experience unity.
Finding this with another person involves embracing who each of you is and what each of you brings to the relationship: two distinct perceptions and ways of thinking and feeling about the world. This is what I call the love dance, where both partners learn to embrace all parts of themselves and of one another. Think of The Demartini Method that you learned and used as Arthur Murray–style “footprints,” showing you where to step so that you dance as gracefully as possible.
You’re the Moon and the Sun
Let’s switch gears for a moment and travel back several thousand years. Have you heard the Egyptian legend of Isis and Osiris? It’s interesting to explore because it touches on this theme of “parts,” and it provides insight into our modern marriage ceremony.
Here’s the legend in a nutshell: Osiris and Isis were deities of the Nile Delta, children of Geb (Earth) and Nut (Sky). They ruled Egypt together as husband and wife, and they were constantly on guard against their brother, Set, who was jealous of them.
They were smart to be nervous, because the minute that Set got the opportunity, he had Osiris murdered; specifically, the god was drowned in the Nile in a golden coffin. Weeping, Isis went in search of her brother-husband, hoping to resurrect him. Although she did find him, Set devised another way to keep Osiris from coming back: He had his brother chopped into 14 pieces and scattered across Egypt. He knew that Isis couldn’t perform her ritual without finding all the parts of her beloved. [Nice metaphor, right? You can’t unite with your loved one until you discover all of their aspects and honor them.]
So Isis went on a quest to find every piece. Each time she recovered some part of Osiris, she set up a shrine, and then carried it with her. Eventually, she found all but the phallus and resurrected Osiris. [I wouldn’t put much emphasis on the missing bit; I can’t quite see how it’s relevant here, except that, miraculously, Isis conceived her son, Horus, without it. Perhaps we can say that she was divinely fertile and creative with or without a penis in her life, not unlike the interior designer I told you about earlier.]
This legend has been around for ages, dating to before recorded history. And Isis had an incredibly long run as the principal feminine deity. Her mythology influenced many other cults and religions, including Christianity. The oldest church in Paris (Par-Isis, “the grove of Isis”) is Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which was built over a former temple of Isis, and a black statue of her was worshipped there as a Virgin Mary until 1514.
Isis represents the female aspect of the divine, and she has morphed into many goddesses and symbols through time. She’s strong and integrated. Take note of these words of power attributed to her in The Metamorphoses (taken from The Transformation of Lucius, Otherwise Known as the Golden Ass, by Lucius Apuleius):
I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are. My nod governs the shining heights of Heaven, the wholesome sea-breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below. Though I am worshipped in many aspects, known by countless names, and propitiated with all manner of different rites, yet the whole round earth venerates me.
Add in astronomy, and the legend gets even more fascinating. My late wife and I wrote a detailed account of this in our 1993 book, The Sacred Journey of Soul Mates. For purposes of this chapter, I’m going to give you an overview so that you can get a sense of how this works.
Remember, Isis was the daughter of Earth and Sky, and people made her their moon goddess, the archetypal female: cool, white, moist, receptive, and reflective. The sun, not surprisingly, was associated with Osiris, the archetypal male: hot, red, fiery, active, and projective.
If you consider the 28 phases of the moon, you can translate some of astronomy into the love dance between the moon goddess and her cohort, the sun god.
Figure 4. Phases 1–3, New Moon: From Earth, we don’t see the moon, except perhaps an outline of it against the dark sky.
Figure 5. Phases 4–7, Waxing Crescent: The moon is less than half illuminated as we see it.
Figure 6. Phases 8–10, First Quarter: Now we see half the moon.
Figure 7. Phases 11–14, Waxing Gibbous: More than half the moon is revealed to us.
Figure 8. Phase 15, Full Moon: Now that the moon has come into full illumination, it begins its waning cycle: it will wane to a crescent; move into the last quarter (half revealed again); decrease to gibbous; and then go to the first phase again, the new moon. The entire cycle takes approximately 28 days.
Since ancient times (before the idea of solar calendars), people have examined the movement of the moon across the background of fixed stars and made calendars based on this study. The month started with one new moon and ended with the next. Since this orb moves across the fixed stars in a time period of 27 or 28 days (a sidereal month, which is actually 27.321661 days), its zodiacal path in the sky was divided into 27 or 28 parts; and each of these lunar asterisms was named after a prominent star in it, each conceived of as a wife to moon.
During this time (a month according to the ancient calendars), Earth shifts in its orbit around the sun, and the period between new moons is 29 or 30 days (a synodic month, which is 29.530589 days on average). This results in the asterism in the background of the full moon advancing by two or three steps each time. So months were named after the background constellation on the full-moon night, and these are still the labels we use, even though they’re now defined in terms of the position of the sun against the fixed stars (a sidereal year of 365.256363 days).
Figure 9.
|
Left Male Side Sun = Osiris Seven Groomsmen |
Right Female Side Moon = Isis Seven Bridesmaids |
Three steps to the altar (realm 4, the sun) from the earth (realm 1)
The legend states that when the moon is dark, Isis is closer to Osiris, facing him and turning her back on the earth. To Osiris, she’s completely unveiled.
As the moon goes through its first seven phases, Isis becomes less and less “seen” by Osiris. These stages are therefore also called the seven veils of Isis. For a time, she’s hidden from her husband-brother, veiling herself and returning to her offspring, Horus, the earthly king. With the waning of the moon, Isis unveils herself (the seven asterisms of the last quarter) and becomes naked before her lover. With the new moon, Isis turns her back on the terrestrial world and embraces the immortal lifegiver, Osiris, the sun.
Today, we have a ceremony symbolizing this, even if we don’t acknowledge the ritual’s basis in astronomical theology while we’re doing it. It’s our Western marriage ceremony, where the woman removes her bridal veil to become one with the man. The bridesmaids represent phases of the moon, as do the groomsmen. Anything going up toward the sun and to the left symbolizes the masculine; what goes down and to the right represents the feminine—and at the wedding, everyone associated with the groom is on the left, and the bride is on the right.
A couple exchanges golden rings, which signify the sun; and in Christianity, “Son” symbolism is identified as the love of God the Father. The bride remains hidden until she steps up and becomes one with her betrothed when their marriage has been sanctified. Then the groom lifts her veil and seals their union with a kiss.
The ritual mimes the moon facing the sun, turning its back on mortality and becoming eternal through union with it, transcending the earthly plane with its mundane perceptions and transient emotions into the infinite, which is love.
It’s not just about eating cake, dancing till dawn, and making a promise of forever. It’s about eternal, unflinching, unconditional love, being seen in your fullness, and embracing one another in moments of complete revelation.
Lifting the Veil for Good
In our culture, however, marriage doesn’t automatically lead to full disclosure. More often than not, even though a couple has both literally and figuratively seen one another naked, this doesn’t mean that the fullness of the relationship has been realized. This can only happen when both people are willing to see and embrace one another without the emotional extremes of infatuation or resentment. People who’ve “found” their soul mates are the ones who are momentarily not controlled or conditioned by their oppositional emotions.
This doesn’t mean that you no longer feel or are subject to the fears, guilt, elations, and depressions of everyday life. It does mean that you can briefly see through the veil to the real person and embrace him or her in whole in a moment of gratitude and true unconditional love. Thus, the soul becomes a Spirit Of Unconditional Love.
You won’t experience a profound connection as long as you project your values (and, therefore, conditions) onto people, judge them as positive or negative, and refuse to open your heart. Once you’ve opened yourself to all that is, as it is, you’re ready for your soul mate.
If you persist in keeping yourself veiled, you won’t move on to the next phase. Instead, if you choose to reveal your true power in all areas of your life, you increase the probability of meeting someone who can experience this with you. When you discover your soul mate in yourself, you can recognize it in the world, too.
Actions to Create More Fulfilling Relationships
—Describe your imagined soul mate in great detail. Write down your thoughts in your notebook, putting each character trait on a separate line. When you’ve finished with the list, observe where and in whom it already shows up in your life. Be sure to include both positive and negative complementary traits; otherwise, you’re hoping and searching for a one-sided fantasy.
—Use The Demartini Method with people from each sign of the zodiac. People who are seeking soul mates often turn to astrology for help. It’s an entertaining tool, but it’s frequently misdirected. Instead of trying to recognize your partner by his or her birth date (Let’s see…is it Harry from the office or that guy I bumped into at the deli? What does Zelda the zodiac queen have to say…?), use astrology to help you integrate yourself.
As you know, each body comes into this world under a star sign determined by the date of birth, which provides a list of probable characteristics for that person to contend with during life. In other words, out of a possible 4,600 traits (believe me, there are that many—I counted), each star sign emphasizes a series of positive and negative attributes that you’ll tend to admire or despise. Keep in mind, however, that you still have all the other signs’ qualities, too; it’s just that they don’t trigger a strong reaction.
So here’s a project for you: Choose 12 different people from the different star signs and apply The Demartini Method with each of them as the subject. This is a powerful integration exercise that can catapult you into new levels of understanding about yourself and others.
I believe that the more integrated you are, the less any of the star signs appears to rule or influence you. In your lifetime, you’ll be challenged to master them—not just your own, but the whole dozen, which will come to you in the form of other people whom you’ll resent or with whom you’ll become infatuated.
The more you’re able to see and embrace all the positive and negative aspects of the star signs (which are simply the possible good and bad traits that you may have labeled within yourself) the less influence the zodiac will have upon you, the more freedom you’ll have from the destiny of the heavens, and the more you’ll get to govern those stars. Astrology appears to manipulate you only to the degree that you’re not yet integrated and empowered.
How do you manifest or attract a loved one, a personification of your soul mate? Integrate yourself—know, be, and love yourself!
Words of Power
I encompass all things, and so does everyone else.
My soul mate is around me 24 hours
a day, 7 days a week.
If two people are exactly the same, one
of them is not necessary.
I let others see me in my fullness so
that I may be loved.
I open myself to all that is, as it is.
I cherish all my traits, and I use them wisely.
