Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 1:01am
What if your tormentor is your soul mate?
Column: Writing Down Your Soul
Americans are obsessed with the idea of a soul mate. Look around. There are hundreds of books, workshops, lectures and guides all purporting to help you attract, recognize and hold onto that one perfect relationship, that one soul destined for all time to be with you and you alone.
So many are desperately seeking that soul mate. When he or she doesn't show up easily, we throw ourselves into the modern dating game, searching online, begging friends for help, and going to excruciating singles' events. Some of us are even willing to sit through fast rotation "dates" with 10 different people for 10 minutes each. We take intense personality profiles to discover who we really are and what we need in another. We chew over the problem with our therapists. We pray. We visit psychics. We make lists of our requirements and put them under our pillows. We light candles. We pray some more. And if money is no obstacle, we sign up with dating coaches, or for a few thousand more, register with matchmakers who promise to search the world for that one soul without whom we simply cannot be complete. All told, millions of dollars and countless hours are spent searching for that one perfect soul mate.
I, too, bought into the idea of a soul mate. Who wouldn't? It sounds so good. Soul Mate: The one person who understands me, loves what I love, reads the same books, enjoys the same music, gets the same jokes. The one person who connects with me spiritually. The one person who shares and supports my goals and my dreams. The one person who helps me as I help him (or her). God, how happy we could be!
Unfortunately, none of my relationships produced anything close to this fantasy. I dated a drunk or two in college, paired off with a brilliant but arrogant international student in graduate school, and damn near married a Jewish lawyer in my 20s who made Woody Allen look secure.
Then I fell in love. It must have been love, because I moved onto a 36-foot wooden sailboat with him. Trust me — you don't do that unless it's the real deal. Eventually we moved onto land, and years later, thanks to the complete failure of midlife birth control, we married. Things had been deteriorating, but they tumbled straight down a ski slope after the wedding. Marriage and fatherhood were no harbor of happiness for my husband. He had a struggling nascent business and the financial and emotional pressure became too much. As the stress built, a tendency to drink begat prescription drug use. Need begat affairs. Pain begat screaming, and screaming begat holes in the wall.
After 21 years, we divorced. All divorces, as they say, are bad. This one was a lulu, complete with death threats, injunctions, break-ins and road rage. For three years, the only things that worked were 911 and writing down my soul every day. The police did their job and kept us safe. Through my daily journaling, I discovered the map of Spiritual Geography and began writing a book proposal and looking for an agent.
I liked the way my professional life was going, but I felt cheated in my personal life. Come on, Lord, I thought. I'm smart, nice, kind, good-looking and funny. I'm a good writer and speaker. I make a decent living, put together a comfortable home, and cook a dinner that can make a grown man cry. And to boot, I'm a deeply spiritual soul. Everyone else seems to have found their soul mate; how come I got stuck with someone who is so not my soul mate? It's not fair. It's just not fair.
Then, in 2003, after a week in a coma, my ex-husband died on Oct. 6. The date his soul chose to leave matters. A lot. Oct. 6 that year was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Atonement. If ever there was a man who needed to make atonement, it was my ex-husband.
And he did. He left me, the woman he tried to run down in a court parking lot, his life insurance. With that money, I was able to devote myself to writing, fix up the house, plant a garden, buy a glorious new refrigerator, create the spiritualgeography.com website, send our son to Europe for summer vacations, and cover the astronomical tuition for a New York university.
Atonement indeed.
Last Saturday, on the anniversary of his death, I wrote to my ex-husband in my journal. I told him about Spiritual Geography. I told him that new hearts in pain discover Spiritual Geography every week and tell me how it changes their lives. I told him therapists lead Spiritual Geography workshops across the country. I told him how much I love writing my weekly columns at ReligionandSpirituality.com. I told him about my new contract to write a book on how to write down your soul.
And then I realized what I was saying: If the pain of our marriage hadn't reached an unbearable level, I would never have asked for a divorce; and if I'd never asked for a divorce, he'd never have exploded; and if he'd never exploded, I'd never have written every day; and if I'd never written every day, I'd never have connected with the Voice; and if I'd never connected with the Voice, I'd never have discovered Spiritual Geography; and if I'd never discovered Spiritual Geography, I'd never have been offered a weekly column by UPI; and if I'd never written a weekly column for UPI, I'd never have been discovered by Conari Press.
I couldn't miss the pattern. So I began to write about our son, connecting the dots as I went. Thanks to the life insurance, I told him, our son was able to go to Europe the summer of his freshman year; and because he discovered that he adored England on that trip, he went to Oxford the next summer; and because he went to Oxford, he took an SAT review course; and because he took that class, he got eye-popping scores on his first attempt; and because he got those scores, he was able to get into a great school with a huge scholarship despite hating high school and dropping out his senior year, and now he's in New York, having a life-changing education.
We are safe because of you, I told him. We have beautiful adventures ahead of us because of you and the gifts you have given. You have atoned, I told him. With the money, yes, but with so much more. You have given us profound spiritual gifts. I have a new life as a spiritual writer — a life I could not have if I'd stayed married and stayed in my former profession. Our son has a new life as a student, a protester, a thinker, a writer — a life he could not have if he'd stayed in the United States and stayed in high school and stayed in Florida. We are both walking forward on the bridge you provided for us.
My ex-husband, I realized, is my soul mate.
You want to know who your soul mate is? Quit looking for Mr. or Ms. "happily ever after." Look, instead, for the person who pushes your soul forward. We've got the language all wrong. It isn't "soul mate," it's "mate of your soul." Big difference. If the mate of your soul also turns out to make you happy, well, hooray for you! But for many — perhaps most — the mate of our soul is our tormentor. We won't know till we die, but I'll bet the mate of our soul made a pact with us before we came, promising to push our soul forward into new possibilities, new depths, new dimensions. The mate of our soul doesn't have to be the sweet, loving person who smiles warmly and hugs tightly. The mate of our soul might be the one who snarls and scares. The mate of our soul might be the one who pushes us out of our comfortable life and forces us to dig deep to find the loving sustenance within.
Find that sustenance, that strength, that divine love, and one day you too will turn and say "thank you" to your mate — your real soul mate.
(Next week: Uncertain about a tormenter as soul mate? Next week, eavesdrop on the séance where my ex-husband came through unannounced and unbidden.)
— — —
Janet Conner, S.E. (Spiritual Explorer), is the creator of the Spiritual Geography map and book series. She is currently working on a new book, "Writing Down the Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," for Conari Press. The Spiritual Geography books are available through Amazon or Spiritual Geography. Contact Janet at {email janetconner@tampabay.rr.com}janetconner@tampabay.rr.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Janet Conner.
So many are desperately seeking that soul mate. When he or she doesn't show up easily, we throw ourselves into the modern dating game, searching online, begging friends for help, and going to excruciating singles' events. Some of us are even willing to sit through fast rotation "dates" with 10 different people for 10 minutes each. We take intense personality profiles to discover who we really are and what we need in another. We chew over the problem with our therapists. We pray. We visit psychics. We make lists of our requirements and put them under our pillows. We light candles. We pray some more. And if money is no obstacle, we sign up with dating coaches, or for a few thousand more, register with matchmakers who promise to search the world for that one soul without whom we simply cannot be complete. All told, millions of dollars and countless hours are spent searching for that one perfect soul mate.
I, too, bought into the idea of a soul mate. Who wouldn't? It sounds so good. Soul Mate: The one person who understands me, loves what I love, reads the same books, enjoys the same music, gets the same jokes. The one person who connects with me spiritually. The one person who shares and supports my goals and my dreams. The one person who helps me as I help him (or her). God, how happy we could be!
Unfortunately, none of my relationships produced anything close to this fantasy. I dated a drunk or two in college, paired off with a brilliant but arrogant international student in graduate school, and damn near married a Jewish lawyer in my 20s who made Woody Allen look secure.
Then I fell in love. It must have been love, because I moved onto a 36-foot wooden sailboat with him. Trust me — you don't do that unless it's the real deal. Eventually we moved onto land, and years later, thanks to the complete failure of midlife birth control, we married. Things had been deteriorating, but they tumbled straight down a ski slope after the wedding. Marriage and fatherhood were no harbor of happiness for my husband. He had a struggling nascent business and the financial and emotional pressure became too much. As the stress built, a tendency to drink begat prescription drug use. Need begat affairs. Pain begat screaming, and screaming begat holes in the wall.
After 21 years, we divorced. All divorces, as they say, are bad. This one was a lulu, complete with death threats, injunctions, break-ins and road rage. For three years, the only things that worked were 911 and writing down my soul every day. The police did their job and kept us safe. Through my daily journaling, I discovered the map of Spiritual Geography and began writing a book proposal and looking for an agent.
I liked the way my professional life was going, but I felt cheated in my personal life. Come on, Lord, I thought. I'm smart, nice, kind, good-looking and funny. I'm a good writer and speaker. I make a decent living, put together a comfortable home, and cook a dinner that can make a grown man cry. And to boot, I'm a deeply spiritual soul. Everyone else seems to have found their soul mate; how come I got stuck with someone who is so not my soul mate? It's not fair. It's just not fair.
Then, in 2003, after a week in a coma, my ex-husband died on Oct. 6. The date his soul chose to leave matters. A lot. Oct. 6 that year was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Atonement. If ever there was a man who needed to make atonement, it was my ex-husband.
And he did. He left me, the woman he tried to run down in a court parking lot, his life insurance. With that money, I was able to devote myself to writing, fix up the house, plant a garden, buy a glorious new refrigerator, create the spiritualgeography.com website, send our son to Europe for summer vacations, and cover the astronomical tuition for a New York university.
Atonement indeed.
Last Saturday, on the anniversary of his death, I wrote to my ex-husband in my journal. I told him about Spiritual Geography. I told him that new hearts in pain discover Spiritual Geography every week and tell me how it changes their lives. I told him therapists lead Spiritual Geography workshops across the country. I told him how much I love writing my weekly columns at ReligionandSpirituality.com. I told him about my new contract to write a book on how to write down your soul.
And then I realized what I was saying: If the pain of our marriage hadn't reached an unbearable level, I would never have asked for a divorce; and if I'd never asked for a divorce, he'd never have exploded; and if he'd never exploded, I'd never have written every day; and if I'd never written every day, I'd never have connected with the Voice; and if I'd never connected with the Voice, I'd never have discovered Spiritual Geography; and if I'd never discovered Spiritual Geography, I'd never have been offered a weekly column by UPI; and if I'd never written a weekly column for UPI, I'd never have been discovered by Conari Press.
I couldn't miss the pattern. So I began to write about our son, connecting the dots as I went. Thanks to the life insurance, I told him, our son was able to go to Europe the summer of his freshman year; and because he discovered that he adored England on that trip, he went to Oxford the next summer; and because he went to Oxford, he took an SAT review course; and because he took that class, he got eye-popping scores on his first attempt; and because he got those scores, he was able to get into a great school with a huge scholarship despite hating high school and dropping out his senior year, and now he's in New York, having a life-changing education.
We are safe because of you, I told him. We have beautiful adventures ahead of us because of you and the gifts you have given. You have atoned, I told him. With the money, yes, but with so much more. You have given us profound spiritual gifts. I have a new life as a spiritual writer — a life I could not have if I'd stayed married and stayed in my former profession. Our son has a new life as a student, a protester, a thinker, a writer — a life he could not have if he'd stayed in the United States and stayed in high school and stayed in Florida. We are both walking forward on the bridge you provided for us.
My ex-husband, I realized, is my soul mate.
You want to know who your soul mate is? Quit looking for Mr. or Ms. "happily ever after." Look, instead, for the person who pushes your soul forward. We've got the language all wrong. It isn't "soul mate," it's "mate of your soul." Big difference. If the mate of your soul also turns out to make you happy, well, hooray for you! But for many — perhaps most — the mate of our soul is our tormentor. We won't know till we die, but I'll bet the mate of our soul made a pact with us before we came, promising to push our soul forward into new possibilities, new depths, new dimensions. The mate of our soul doesn't have to be the sweet, loving person who smiles warmly and hugs tightly. The mate of our soul might be the one who snarls and scares. The mate of our soul might be the one who pushes us out of our comfortable life and forces us to dig deep to find the loving sustenance within.
Find that sustenance, that strength, that divine love, and one day you too will turn and say "thank you" to your mate — your real soul mate.
(Next week: Uncertain about a tormenter as soul mate? Next week, eavesdrop on the séance where my ex-husband came through unannounced and unbidden.)
— — —
Janet Conner, S.E. (Spiritual Explorer), is the creator of the Spiritual Geography map and book series. She is currently working on a new book, "Writing Down the Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," for Conari Press. The Spiritual Geography books are available through Amazon or Spiritual Geography. Contact Janet at {email janetconner@tampabay.rr.com}janetconner@tampabay.rr.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Janet Conner.