Soulmates
Soulmates. In the dictionary, it means one of two persons compatible with each other in disposition, point of view or sensitivity; someone for whom you have a deep affinity. This explains the basic qualities, but we all know reality goes far deeper than that. I’m an ordained minister and I’ve been performing a lot of weddings recently. I was asked to give a talk on this topic and was very surprised at the lack of useful and inspirational information when I started researching the subject. Mostly I was directed to dating sites. Ultimately, I went to the stories I knew of and broadened my search from there. There also are various theories on soulmates, twin souls and karma. It seems that we may have various karmic connections to other souls in order to help each other in the learning process in this life. They may or may not be sexual relationships in this lifetime but they are often key relationships. A good introduction to information on these relationships can be found here. LegendsIn the dictionary, “soulmate” means one of two persons compatible with each other in disposition, point of view or sensitivity; someone for whom you have a deep affinity. This explains the basic qualities, but we all know the soulmate theory goes much deeper than that. In every tradition, every culture
there are creation stories. A time when the world was perfect and in all these
traditions in the process of creating humanity there was a split from the
divine. The divine separated into
portions or parts to create humanity. Every culture treats this differently
but many make these different parts masculine and feminine and the making of
humanity a sexual process. The first reference I found to the word soulmates,
outside of dating sites was Aristophanes at Plato’s Symposium. He tells a
story about the gods making the first human beings. They had two heads, four
arms, four legs (Hedvig and the Angry Inch has a great song in it that depicts
this entire story). Zeus became frightened that these new humans were too
powerful and could get out of control so he splits them in half and they are
destined to live their lives looking for the other part of themselves. Other legends of soulmates
include: Chinese: The story of P`an-Ku, separating the
unity of yin and yang principles. Egyptian: The Atum myth where
the air God Shu separates Geb and Nut from their initial
love embrace. Sumerian: The story of
creation and the uncoupling of the god An and goddess
Ki from their commingled state. Mesopotamia: The Akaddian story of Marduck splitting the goddess
Tiamat. New Zealand: The Maori story of
creation and separation of Rangi
and Pappa. Jewish: An old Jewish legend tells us that when two certain
souls are created in heaven, an angel cries out, “this man is made for this
woman!” It is said this if these people meet on earth and recognize each other
for who they truly are, they will fall in love and become as one, working
together in unison. And it’s completely indefinable. Words fail to express it well enough. I love you while tradition doesn’t even begin to touch the depth and breadth and truly mystical connection you feel to this other.
When I feel this, I fall back on Woody Allen who put it very well when he said.
"Love is too weak a word for what I feel - I lurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes I have to invent.” |
