The Question Of Soulmates

"Did you know that you often attract people into your life who look as you do in parallel or past lives? For example - you are a man seeking a female partner. You will seek out someone who looks and acts if you were a woman - like a mirror image. Your ideal partner is who you are in that physical body! We are always seeking ways to experience ourselves." From Crystalinks.com

The first evidence of the concept of soulmates appears in Plato's "Symposium", in which Aristophanes presents the theory that one soul splits in half...into male and female...in order to incarnate on earth.

Like Eckhart Tolle says, it is only natural that people would have a tendency to feel incomplete without an "other", leaving some people to search for their 'ideal' or 'perfect' mate, the one that supposedly completes them, the one who mirrors their soul back to them, who seems to understand, or 'get' them almost instantly and without effort, for their entire lives.

My Opinion: Coloured Souls

I used to believe in one perfect partner, that it was possible to find the 'one' that was an ideal match for a life partner. Being, perhaps, somewhat jaded by circumstances, I have come to believe that maybe this is just silly. I now think that people can have more than one 'soulmate', each suited to which stage one is at in their lives. Each 'soulmate' thus fulfills a purpose (ie. a life-lesson to be learned) depending on one's level of growth. My first long-term relationship (4 years, 9 months, 25 days) was with someone who was nothing like me at all, and could certainly not be described as a soulmate. However, we shared the common destiny of bringing a child into the world. With regards to my other long-term relationship (8 years, 7 months, 13 days if you don't count the two times we broke up before I actually made it final), I actually did view him as a soulmate for the first 5 years. I think that maybe he was a soulmate, but only for that time in my life. The 'soulmate' connection was severed when I grew beyond the boundaries of the relationship, and his stubborn refusal (perhaps inability) to grow limited the relationship to the same stagnant sludge that it had become over time.

Was my friend right? Do relationships always end up with the colour drained out of them, like "old socks"? I say NO, that it is possible for two people to grow together, and thus sustain the relationship by incorporating their own changing personalities. I DO think this is a rare acheivement, however, and one which can only be accomplished by people who are 'evolved'; people who are able to see and accept both the changes in themselves, and also the changes in the other. Because people WILL change.

Bringing this back to the question of soulmates, I like to use a 'colourful' metaphor. There are perhaps an infinite number of 'souls' (my post on souls will be posted at a later date), all of different colours and different shades of these colours. A soulmate could be said to be the one whose 'soul shade' most closely matches your own (at that time). When people change, not only do certain beliefs and values change, but so do dreams and goals for the future. And as the requirements of your soul changes, so does its 'colour'. Thus, I think that depending on a variety of circumstances, someone can have several soulmates in this lifetime, each one serving a specific purpose or fulfilling a karmic role.

An immense freedom is gained if one accepts the possibility of multiple soulmates. I'm not saying that everyone necessarily has multiple soulmates, simply that this is one of the possibilities that presents itself in life. It's entirely possible to love someone and have an intense connection for your whole life, its just not the way it happens most of the time. I see no reason to lose hope, however. Part of the reason I have come believe in the existence of several 'soulmates' is 1) if you love and lose it doesn't have to take away any meaning from the relationship or the bond that was shared and 2) I thought S was my soulmate at one time and I don't like to be wrong. (haha) Besides, it's a pretty disheartening thought to have loved and lost a soulmate and to thusly believe that you have lost your one chance for a deep emotional/mental/spiritual bond and a 'true' love.

Buddhist View On Soulmates

The obvious answer is that Buddhists don't believe in 'souls', per se, so how could they have an opinion on soulmates? But assuming that Buddhists must believe in some type of soul, or else what is it that's supposed to reincarnate? I think that perhaps a Buddhist would say something like 'your soulmate is yourself', or 'everyone is your soulmate'. (Yeshe...u reading this? What do you think? Scroll to end of post and click 'comments' to reply)

Nietzsche (of course) On Soulmates

First of all, if Nietzsche were to have been asked what he thought about Plato's view on soulmates, one of the first things that would have come out Nietzsche's precious mouth would have been about how "Plato is boring." Although Nietzsche thought that love is larger than the two who create it ("what is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil"), he also would have believed that the ubermensch is already complete without another.

"The things people call love.— Our love of our neighbor—is it not a desire for new possessions? And likewise our love of knowledge, truth, and altogether any desire for what is new? Gradually we become tired of the old, of what we safely possess, and we stretch out our hands again; even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession. Our pleasure in ourselves tries to maintain itself by again and again changing something new into ourselves,—that is what possession means. To become tired of some possession means: tiring of ourselves....Sexual love betrays itself most clearly as a desire for possession: the lover wants unconditional and sole possession of the person for whom he longs, he wants equally unconditional power over the soul and over the body of the beloved; he alone wants to be loved and desires to live and rule in the other soul as supreme and supremely desirable. If one considers that this means nothing less than excluding the whole world from a precious good, from happiness and enjoyment; if one considers that the lover aims at the impoverishment and deprivation of all competitors and would like to become the dragon guarding his golden hoard as the most inconsiderate and selfish of all "conquerors" and exploiters; if one considers, finally, that to the lover himself the whole rest of the world appears indifferent, pale, and worthless, and he is prepared to make any sacrifice, to disturb any order, to subordinate all other interests—then one comes to feel genuine amazement that this wild avarice and injustice of sexual love has been glorified and deified so much in all ages—indeed, that this love has furnished the concept of love as the opposite of egoism while it actually may be the most ingenuous expression of egoism.... Here and there on earth we may encounter a kind of continuation of love in which this possessive craving of two people for each other gives way to a new desire and lust for possession, a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them: but who knows such love? Who has experienced it? Its right name is friendship."

I believe Nietzsche is describing the elements of the 'evolved' relationship. The point here, is that it seems that Nietzsche would say that soulmates share an 'ideal' love that combines all the elements of sexual love, friendship, and a common spiritual desire. I think he would go on to say that soulmate relationships (or relationships that are 'evolved') could only occur between two 'ubermensches', or people who strive to 'surpass life' together, in relatively enlightened circumstances.



"A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life."

~Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever