Still Searching For Your Soulmate?23:11 Sep 27 2015
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Still Searching For Your Soulmate?
By Janice Holly Booth • February 22, 2015
Maybe it’s time to stop believing in fairy tales
ARTICLE TAGS:
Love, affinity, Romance, Intimacy, engage
I blame a lot on Walt Disney, who led several generations of young girls astray by convincing them that their prince was on his way. Films like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella set the relationship bar ludicrously high. And yet there are thousands of people who still cling to the notion that somewhere out there exists their one true love.
The idea behind soul mates isn’t new. The oldest recorded reference is the legend of the Egyptian Gods Osiris and Isis. Plato wrote about soul mates in his philosophical text The Symposium around 385 BC. Religious texts make reference to seeking another to make oneself whole (Adam lost his rib and the rest is Biblical history). In all of these stories, there’s a common theme—a search for the one person who can complete you.
That’s a mistake says Karen Black, MBA and creator of The Soulmate Site. “Perhaps we can forgive ancient writers with ancient ideas—probably quite modern for their time—but 2,300 years later, it’s time to wise up. I mean, really. Some of us think that our parents have outdated ideas. Why do we listen to 2,000-year-old dead men instead of ourselves?”she quips. Black has dedicated more than a decade to studying the practical and spiritual meaning of soul mates. “Yes I do believe in soul mates,” she tells Life Reimagined. “No, I don’t believe in the magical aspects—i.e., that a soul mate is someone who completes you; or that we only have one soul mate; or that finding a soul mate is the solution to all of our problems. I think a soul-mate relationship is a growth relationship. In other words, simply being with that person gives us a reason to keep growing ourselves. It can be not just unhealthy but in the end disappointing if we keep looking at soul mates from the fantasy point of view.”
Black shares with Life Reimagined three mistakes even smart people make, along with advice on how to overcome them.
Mistake 1: You know what you want your mate to be—but you ignore who you need to be. Chances are good that if you’re looking for your soul mate, you’ve completed a long list of must-haves: a certain education and income level; a love of food, music and dancing; kindness; good parent material; loves kids and animals…you get the picture. Putting too much focus on the mate you want takes focus away from you becoming the person you need to be to attract the right someone. Ask “Who do I need to be in the world? What is my purpose?” “In a soul-mate relationship, you’ll be equals,” says Black. “This equality doesn’t refer to money, status or title. It refers to a deep sense of yourselves.”
Mistake 2: You live in your vision board and ignore today. “Since The Secret, vision boards are all the rage,” says Black. “The mistake I see many smart, spiritual women making is visioning without action. Our ability to imagine our soul mates and create rich, varied vision boards may energetically kick-start things, but we must be active participants in the process.” Do you say you’ll travel/learn to cook/go back to school once you meet your beloved? Do all those things now and put yourself in a place where you’re most likely to exude the kind of energy you want to attract.
Mistake 3: You know what you don’t want—but not what you want. “Fear-based lists of what we don’t want are energetically ineffective. What we focus on expands [so] focus on the love you want,” says Black. “Instead of focusing on past relationship failures or getting caught up in a laundry list, get clear about how you want to feel in a relationship. Nurtured, supported, safe or inspired for example.”
Hollywood continues to tease us with love stories and promises of ever-after. “It’s dangerous to be too literal about this because let me tell you: no one can complete you,” says Black. “I’d also add, if you meet someone who wants to complete you, my love advice is: Run!”
However, Black says, don’t give up hope. “Keep searching, keep learning. Give the nod to ideas that make you bigger, and throw away everything else.”
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