When we meet someone who stirs us to the core, we feel vulnerable. Then we will go to great lengths to protect ourselves, even do stupid things, or things that are inadvertently cruel. Even the most reasonable, dignified, respectful person will falter when feeling vulnerable. The eyes of a soul mate unravel you, make you feel naked. When your humanity is exposed, your animal instinct is to protect it.
If you’ve been perfect in romance, and treated your partners perfectly, you haven’t loved. You haven’t confronted your humanity. If you confront this only in private, you haven’t made yourself vulnerable to someone else. To make yourself vulnerable to someone else is to expose your weaknesses, fears, shame and rage, bare for them to see. To accept theirs in turn. To follow them to the darkest, most frightening, torturous corners of their psyche. Mentally, this is to dive into lava and tornadoes, to stand naked in a snowstorm, to follow them into the void, to their fear of death, to their childhood traumas, just to be with them, so they won’t be alone there. To open yourself up to chance; to surrender control.
After experiencing various levels of surrender and openness, one may feel that a soul mate truly knows them, and has seen them bare. There may be love, honesty and mutual acceptance. Ideally that would be the case in any relationship or friendship. But what separates a soulmate from the regular companion or lover is that a “soul mate” would not be dependent on a relationship. It is an unbreakable bond. It just is. A soul mate just is. You can fight as hard as you want to break the bond, you can walk away for years, you can marry someone else, you can deny it to the skies, but still, your soul mate just IS. To use a word like “soul,” one implies transcendence of desire, lust, and fear. Of course, those human elements are real and will never disappear, but when we truly accept and recognize a soul mate, the bond is beyond that. Frustrations and fear of loss will be there, but the outcome becomes irrelevant because the soul is stirred by something beyond. In recognizing a soul mate, we recognize ourselves, here and now. The synchronicity between you will push you both to grow, just as watching yourself in the mirror pushes you to pose in a more beautiful way. If your mirror had an emotional reaction, posing would not be enough. You would work out, eat right, care for your skin and hair, change your lifestyle just for that smile. The difference is, for a “soul mate,” this person mirrors your innards. Your mind, your soul, your humanity.
When someone sees you, watches you, unravels you, exposes you; you want to give, to grow, to be better in order to inspire that person, because you will see yourself through their eyes. You will never wonder whether that person is doing it for you in return, because it just is; expressing yourself to this person is being true to yourself, and it feels natural. Giving them anything less than your all feels unnatural; it feels like trying to stand still while the tide is pushing against you. Most people will do this for some time, resisting the forces of nature to try to feel like they are in control, to feel a sense of free will, to take a stand. But once you have recognized and accepted that you have met your soul mate, and grown enough to surrender to that force, you work with the tide without losing your own will. Your will is the will of the world. Giving your all is a natural process of revelation and growth, and all that matters is that this process is happening. It is honest, true; it is now, and it is infinity. With or without labels, commitments, sex, promises, or expectation, it simply is.
The trials and tribulations of corporeal life cannot touch something that is truly sacred. But we cannot recognize what is truly sacred until we, ourselves, have evolved. To recognize something greater than ourselves requires humility. Meeting a soul mate is not an easy, happy ride. It is a life changing experience that digs up all of our demons and fears, and forces us to face our humanity.
