'Soul' Mates Smack Us Awake to Change for the Better
Many people look for a mate/partner that has good physical features. Bodily perfection is a heavy attractor. But what about their psyche, their consciousness, their "mind"/"heart", their "soul"? Doesn't that matter more or less?
What is our "soul mate", really? Is it someone who is true of "mind", "heart" or "soul"? Or do we want someone who is false? I think most people want a true person. But what does that entail?
The true "soul mate" is someone who can reflect you back to yourself, to show you the falsity that you may be attached to that limits you and holds you back from actualizing greater potential ways of being. A light is sown onto the parts of ourselves we have kept in the shadows, unaware or not seeing clearly. They bring us to pay attention to ourselves so that we an change our lives for the better.
If someone is not willing to tell you the truth that can help you heal and better yourself, are they a true "soul mate"? A true "soul" is someone who will share the truth even if it might hurt because we don't want to hear it, because it breaks our selfview or worldview. Many things we believe in can keep us acting in certain ways because we derive value or meaning from remaining attached to it. Being smacked awake by tearing down those walls can be a shock and we can not appreciate the truth being given to us, or the falsity being torn down.
But someone who cares to speak truth and confront us on our falsity is someone who does care to help us move forward. They care for truth, and they care that we find the truth by letting go of falsity. Speaking truth against falsity is an act of care, of "love". The love of truth to speak truth is what can help people to change and let go of what is holding them back, what is holding humanity back from evolving to better ways.
I try to be this for people, but many have not see that truth is "love". They want to hide from the truth, reject it, and tell me I'm "mean", "unkind", "uncaring", un- this or that, "violent" or "hateful" because I speak the truth that shatters their delicate false sense of self and attachment to falsity or even beliefs they so much want to hold onto for meaning and value in their lives. If I don't let people keep their desire, want or "need" to hold onto a belief that isn't demonstrably true, then I'm "disrespecting" them and being "violent" to try to show them a belief is not truth.
Many people have issue with letting go. Many don't want to change, heal, purify, transmute, sublimate and rectify the wrongs, errors, mistakes and evil that they are a part of. Their attachments prevent them confronting themselves honestly in a care for truth. Their convenience, ease, pleasure and comfort in life supersedes the importance of truth in their lives. They value truth less than their attachments that keep them hooked on beliefs.
Beliefs often hold greater value and meaning because of how they makes us feel, by giving us a made up or fantastical answer that provide us with value, meaning and purpose in our lives. Once we are attached to that gap filling answer, we don't want to let go of that "known" to be left with a dark spot of an unanswered unknown. The belief we held with value, meaning and purpose for our lives, selfview or worldview would be missing, and we would be left with a hole and gap in our sense of self, lost and fractured from it going away.
A "soul"-psyche-"consciousness" that pokes holes in the beliefs we hold so dear to form our identity or sense of self is not usually welcome. But we must ask ourselves, do we want to have what is true as part of who we are? Or are we simply content to have whatever beliefs we want to believe that make us feel good about ourselves, about life, about existence, and gives us the value, meaning and purpose we would be lacking otherwise?
We need to be aware when we are fooling ourselves, and others can help us see that. A true "soul" can help heal us form our foolishness.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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When we speak of the 'violence of love' one aspect of it is this that @krnel discusses. The mirror and interlocutor of the soul-mate does do violence to one's ideal of himself; but in this violence there is not the callousness of raw power or the malignancy of brute force - it is a violence out of and with love for its object and victim.
To distinguish the loving violence of a friend or soul-mate is a feat learned in living together but only if you keep the harsh judgment of your external reflection from boiling into resentment - which is no easy thing, for it requires a diligent cultivation of a rare sanguineness to believe yourself capable of self-improvement and see the positives of your life, when perpetually reflected your worst self-criticisms.
It is difficult enough to live with the constant criticism of Conscience. To find criticism in the external world where you strive in hope of riding your conscience of grounds for reproach by self-improvement, or to cast conscience out of mind through distraction, cannot ever be enthusiastically welcomed. But moreover it is dangerous, since all criticism does harm but only that of goodwill, like a doctor, cuts and bleeds to heal.
Doctors are seldom friends - they are much disliked for the unpleasantness they cause us so to help us; yet in love and friendship what attracts us most is the like salubrious quality of the love's or friend's presence in our lives. As him to us, so we to him are reflections of our ideals helping to guide and spur our moral growth. We both must be true to our ideals in words and deeds and looks if we are to trust one another such as to permit each to do the other harm in order to heal.
Our ideals may differ but what matters is our commitment to mutual self-improvement by this process. Thus, conceivably one can learn to love or be friends with anybody so long as he trusts the other's gracious commitment to the process. Trust, unfortunately, is a difficult thing gained, easily lost, and once lost, impossible to receive again except by an act of love.
Well said :). Except for the word violence, it's not violence as it's not a violation, just as a doctor is not violent when cutting to heal. Truth can hurt in order to bring healing. Trust is hard to rebuild once it has been broken. Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks. There is that connotation, you're absolutely right! That's unfortunate, b/c violence pure and simple describes the clashing of a presumptuous force set against another force. This way of looking at it is how I came up with my view on the matter.
I actually think the connotation of violation is only slightly too strong, b/c the force in question is only not violent whilst it is not accepted. Such is how we know sex and other acts of intimacy. "Violent love" is violent whilst unrequited. "Spurned love" is notoriously ill-humored. And you do not ask, "May I kiss you?," or if you do thus spoil the spontaneity, you spoil also the kiss, the emotiveness of the moment's meaning. Acceptance comes after the fact, comes after the advance, - proposition, - violence; and until accepted (if ever) it is a violation, but once accepted the violence is transformed into love.
[Just for everyone's edification: the word "violence" comes from middle Latin {vim} like the contemporary English word "vim", Latin {ius} meaning use of strength against someone, and an Indo-European root giving the sense of "rape."]
Man... relationships overall are so devastated by mind control, it's probably the saddest part of all this - people are so desperately lonely. Not because they're not surrounded by people, but because those people don't really see them; there's no real connection. People must choose between being themselves or having a hobbled abomination of "connection" with others.
Everyone says they want honesty. Oh, is that right? Well, you've got to be able to handle honesty! You don't just get it because you want it; that's not how it works. If you're going to bite someone's head off and emotionally black mail them into jumping through your hoops, they're not going to be honest with you. They're going to defend against your aggression with deception. You don't even want true honesty, you want them to honestly be what you want them to be. Take my desired image of you and make it real.
"Relationship anarchy" is a perspective that tries to deal with these problems, but it's a huge challenge for all of us because of the cultural conditioning. Just think of how deplorably insecure and unloving you have to be to insist that your "partner" not express love and experience naturally-occurring connections with other people just so you can feel secure! My God, what have we become?!
Think of that common scenario whereby one person "steps out" and has sex with a person outside the relationship. After the initial shock, what's the first question asked? "So, do you love him/her?" Of course the desired answer is "No! I love you!" As if that makes it better! Oh, thank God you don't feel a loving connection with that person, you were just using them for physical gratification, thank God. It makes me want to spit.
Sorry, this is a bit tangential, but it breaks my heart to see how oppressed and limited this perverse mutation of "love" leaves people. Then we wonder why the world is f'd up.
Powerful. People have definitely twisted the sense of love, commitment and honesty lately.
I don't know that it's ever been where it needs to be in the modern world. I think we're leaving 90% of what's possible on the table. Imagine relationships without any feeling of self-consciousness from fear of judgment, without any feeling of obligation to live up to expectations. I'm talking about family, friendships, romantic, whatever.
Imagine undefined relationships that could just be whatever they are in the moment. People feeling free to be totally open with no defenses up. Letting go of needs, and just sharing what's there as long as it lasts. And when it doesn't last, not desperately grasping to hang on.
As usual, it all begins with individual growth; having the strength, self-worth and confidence to handle what would typically be deemed rejection or disappointment, but in a fully actualized being would just roll off their back with neutrality. Very tall order, given the current cultural paradigm.
Yes, relationships are built on what we don't say, it's a lot of fakeness. I've talked about that before :/ We fear losing our connection to others, so be aren't real, we aren't honest, and we talk about trite trivialities rather than deeper meaningful issues that can contradict people's false perception of the world or themselves.
Yes, pleasure gratification of stemming from lower consciousness unconscious desires overrides many people, where loyalty, faith and trust between two people matters less, because acting on carnal base lower desires runs their higher order consciousness, and not the other way around. We live in hedonistic society in many ways.
Utter degradation. It’s so common to be a bad person, that we call bad “good” as long as it’s to a “normal” degree. It seems extreme to say the average couple are bad people, but consider the following:
”Hey guys, I better get home or I’ll get an earfull. You know what they say - happy wife, happy life!”
This phrase makes me want to wretch. What’s being suggested is that giving in to emotional terrorism is the path to happiness! I mean, for the love of all that’s holy... I won’t belabor the point, but the average couple is engaged in continuous appeasement of insecuritues, bargaining, and emotional black mail. And we call it love.
Evil is nothing if not a perversion.
A man or women can be unhappy with the behavior of their SO, such as staying out too late. People can feel what they want. If you don't care about how they feel, then that's your problem. If you want to have a good relationship, you need to take into account how the other person feels. A happy partner makes a happy life indeed. Doing whatever you want doesn't tend to lead to that.
I agree that doing whatever you want doesn't lead to a happy partner in our current environment, though I don't see this as a reason to abide such dysfunction. A lot of people hung from the gallows for speaking truth; it doesn't mean they should have just went along to get along.
Considering that feelings are responses to thoughts, if the thoughts generating those feelings are misguided, then to "take into account how the other person feels" implies factoring in erroneous thinking into your decision-making process.
Now, there's a certain amount of patience and compassion one may choose to employ to facilitate another's learning process, but if the person stubbornly holds to false beliefs in the face of sound reason, I don't think it serves anyone - especially them - to enable their ignorance by acting in accordance with it.
The only reason why someone would be upset by what their significant other does (barring flagrant rights violations) is because they want control:
None of this has anything to do with love. It's all slavery, as unpopular as that may be to say. A true loving relationship would stretch the boundaries of the current cultural imagination. It would be all sharing, caring, and connection, and would demand absolutely nothing from the other person (again, outside of basic morality).
And not just because it's wrong to make such demands, but because there would be a genuine desire for the one you love to live in full expression of their true self.
Like I’ve said previously, I am grateful that my wife is my soulmate. We are intellectually compatible, keep each other on our toes, usually don’t hesitate to tell each other straight when we are being foolish but have a great relationship otherwise on top of it all. She was very attractive in the beginning but as time goes on that attraction doesn’t go away it only gets stronger.
I’ve dated women that were attractive but were intellectually boring as hell and weren’t stimulating and I got bored and ended it because having a stimulating intellectual equal is also very important. We should all strive for the same because it’s what keeps us connected on multiple levels that helps make a relationship last.
Thanks for the mental stimulating post.
You're welcome, thanks for the feedback. I was thinking of that comment you had made a while back, forgot who it was or where. Do you recall? I forgot to save it ;) It's important for people to be able to speak honestly and tell their SO when they are being an idiot essentially, otherwise they have to learn on their own, and when we love someone we want to be better together.
What do you both do together? Is it talked and stimulating each other that way, or do you do activities that aren't intellectual?
The best definition of "soul mate" I have encountered goes something like "someone who inspires us — but does not force us — to become the highest and most authentic version of ourselves."
You're right, most people are very resistant to change.
Yes, speak honestly and openly, share your thoughts and feelings, and if the other person cares, they will incorporate that into their understanding of the mutual relationship to see if it's worth them changing or not.
The problem is nobody has a handle on the truth. This is a small example, but every time I take stock/trading advice from someone, it goes wrong no matter how confident, successful, all knowing they appear to be. I know this isn't quite the same, but everybody sees things through their own filter and interprets things in their own manner. There's no objectivity. In a sense, we are all talking at each other no matter how much we want to think we are talking with each other, even if there's a belief that values are tightly correlated. This tight correlation and a desire to simplify the world to have actionable information forms friendships, alliances, and relationships. The uncoupling of the perceived correlation is when static starts. No matter how much you try to convince someone that there's a tight correlation on the larger time frame, the dissonance on the shorter time frame causes emotional imbalance. If you can help the person zoom out with meditation or some other calming mechanism, you have a better chance of convincing them that the trend is up. Holy shit I've been spending too much time with the charts.
There is objectivity, although it may be hard to come by at times ;) With enough verifiable data points in common, two people can see the same thing. We can talk at, or talk with, it's not always a wall hehe.
We hear so much more about speaking the truth than we actually witnessed its practice. How many times have we heard or said one thing, but do we feel or know it is another? How many times does someone tell us that they will do one thing and do another or not? The lie is toxic and causes great damage. The fact is that a lot of people lie without knowing why and few people know how liberating and healthy it is to speak the truth.
Truth is very liberating indeed. The truth will set you free.
we need to be aware when we are fooling ourselves, and others can help us see that. A true "soul" can help heal us from our foolishness
Love that line for its speak with the truth, the whole post actually its not just an informative kind but of an open minding one, many become victims of self foolishness and being blinded by it. They need some counseling and this post will help a lot, not just by people who struggle of mistakenly believed that they found their soulmate and live with foolishness but to those who give advices and counseling also. This is a great guide and a beautiful thought for everybody. An awakening kind. Thanks for the share. God bless Sir.
I strongly believe I found my soulmate with my husband's precense, he's hurting me in a way of helping me to be a better person, he let me saw my flaws and the negative things I have in me, he's my everdearest supporting guide and a bestfriend and with those hurting time I feel I was more loved and care. I love my husband. I was never totally hurt by him but I was just guided and being loved. I feel that. And it makes me happy and so bless
Thanks for the feedback. It's good to see you have a helpful partner and taking the criticism to improve.
Great post, ultimately, are they are moral person, do they seek truth, knowledge and freedom and are they applying these to all apsects of their lives. I think things like these should be considered the most above things like physical beauty or material wealth.
Yes, truth and moral truth is the real capital and most important in life, not material things.
It's so hard to find a person today that will truly be honest with you no matter what. Physical feature is a plus but not all the time the only reason to love a person.
Yup, honesty and willing to speak openly is hard to have between two people :/ People fear the other person not liking them and leaving...
Do you find that the MOST Messed Up People With The MOST Serious ISSUES that they refuse to acknowledge, yet alone deal with- when they find their SOUL MATE, he/she just might be a PSYCHO or real bad news? Talk about having Lessons to learn. Sometimes you're better off finding someone who meets the criteria of a decent human being & who is mentally, emotionally compatible.
Yes, you always have to discern if people are true to truth or psycho / narcissists ;)