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dualistic
November 2009 
Spiritual Partnership, Soulmates, & Duality
Posted on Jul 4th, 2009
by 
Jim
Jim
Spirituality and connection are some of the worst drugs out there. It's a funny thing that part of the spiritual path is to let go of desires, wants, and needs. Yet, connecting with someone on a spiritual and energetic level can be so profoundly gratifying and moving that it can become one of the greatest desires of all. If you taste just a little of that deeper connection that goes beyond skin and basic emotion, you never can quite go back to the alternative.
Clearing the Way for God
Which is why so many of us spiritual seekers get more than a little obsessed with the idea of spiritual partnership, soulmates, and whatever other term you care to use for the process of being able to connect deeply, intimately, and regularly with another being. In theory, it sounds like an awesome experience, but like any good drug, spiritual connection comes with a lot of unexpected side effects. Because spirit is always trying to reconnect with itself at the highest level. To do that, usually involves a lot of internal work to clear out the blocks and issues that are not allowing you or your partner to connect in that way. The deeper your connection with someone else, the more intense the pressure becomes on your issues that are in the way. It's spirit's way of trying to help you and show you where you need to grow in the space of that relationship. It is beautiful on one level, but it's incredibly painful on another.
The Duality of Relationship
I'm not entirely sure that this really is all that much different than any other kind of union of two people out there save that the term "soulmate" gets used very seriously and with a kind of reverence and expectation for all kinds of light and butterflies to be flying out of the other person. I think most married couples will tell you that a marriage is a lot of work, but I think there's a different quality of work that two people committed to spirit in their lives and in their relationship have to do. And in this world, it has a flavor of duality, I think. On the one hand, so much pressure is put on your internal blocks to spirit that it can range from discomfort to plain agony, depending on the isue. On the other hand, when a block moves, the space of light that opens up between two people can be very warm and light or intensely profound that it's almost like falling in love again.
Spiritual Partnership: Finding the Right Person
For my part, I have worked with spiritual partnership in primarily platonic ways and have seen the profound shifts that it has caused in me just through being with certain spiritual friends. When you find someone who just has the right complementing energy, whole worlds of self-exploration and understanding become available to you that never would have been available before. That's the gift of spiritual partnership, and it's why it's become so important to me not just in a romantic relationship but in as many friendships as I can find. Because I'm always looking to grow and to expand my capacity to love and understand and to heal the world. But at the same time, there's a deeper responsibility to be present with the work and the frustrations and all the deeper internal gunk that boils to the top when you're in these relationships. Without the right tenacity, it just blows apart. Without the right deftness of awareness, you blame the other person. Without the right partner, they'll do those things to you. Because this isn't the easy path around; this is the path that bores straight through all the difficulties in your heart and soul so that you can fully be with yourself, with your partner, and with God.
Clearing the Way for God
Which is why so many of us spiritual seekers get more than a little obsessed with the idea of spiritual partnership, soulmates, and whatever other term you care to use for the process of being able to connect deeply, intimately, and regularly with another being. In theory, it sounds like an awesome experience, but like any good drug, spiritual connection comes with a lot of unexpected side effects. Because spirit is always trying to reconnect with itself at the highest level. To do that, usually involves a lot of internal work to clear out the blocks and issues that are not allowing you or your partner to connect in that way. The deeper your connection with someone else, the more intense the pressure becomes on your issues that are in the way. It's spirit's way of trying to help you and show you where you need to grow in the space of that relationship. It is beautiful on one level, but it's incredibly painful on another.
The Duality of Relationship
I'm not entirely sure that this really is all that much different than any other kind of union of two people out there save that the term "soulmate" gets used very seriously and with a kind of reverence and expectation for all kinds of light and butterflies to be flying out of the other person. I think most married couples will tell you that a marriage is a lot of work, but I think there's a different quality of work that two people committed to spirit in their lives and in their relationship have to do. And in this world, it has a flavor of duality, I think. On the one hand, so much pressure is put on your internal blocks to spirit that it can range from discomfort to plain agony, depending on the isue. On the other hand, when a block moves, the space of light that opens up between two people can be very warm and light or intensely profound that it's almost like falling in love again.
Spiritual Partnership: Finding the Right Person
For my part, I have worked with spiritual partnership in primarily platonic ways and have seen the profound shifts that it has caused in me just through being with certain spiritual friends. When you find someone who just has the right complementing energy, whole worlds of self-exploration and understanding become available to you that never would have been available before. That's the gift of spiritual partnership, and it's why it's become so important to me not just in a romantic relationship but in as many friendships as I can find. Because I'm always looking to grow and to expand my capacity to love and understand and to heal the world. But at the same time, there's a deeper responsibility to be present with the work and the frustrations and all the deeper internal gunk that boils to the top when you're in these relationships. Without the right tenacity, it just blows apart. Without the right deftness of awareness, you blame the other person. Without the right partner, they'll do those things to you. Because this isn't the easy path around; this is the path that bores straight through all the difficulties in your heart and soul so that you can fully be with yourself, with your partner, and with God.
Access: PublicTagged with: soulmate, soulmates, spiritual partnership, dualistic, duality, spirit, spirituality, spiritual relationship, relationship
I see the writer in you *HAS* woken up… :)
But now, on a more contemplative note…
How do you define experiencing one sided connections? Such that one person feels 'so' connected with someone on such levels but it isn't exactly reciprocated? And I don't mean a simple sense of “someone liking/loving someone and the feelings not being returned”. I mean, someone having the deepest concern and regards for the other, something beyond simple emotion; knowing/feeling/being distracted in every day abilities just simply by a sense of worry/concern/regards for the other person…(without going into much detail) … despite being 180 miles away? Is it that the other person in the situation isn't exactly open to this state of being, per say? Just something I had observed a couple years back and never could make sense of. Its just that - usually these connections are just that; “connections” … but this was a connection with a strange sense of “dis-connect.”
Thanks for the comment. I'm going to rattle off some thoughts, and you can let me know what feels true to you.
The biggest thing that I see in relationships is that we project ourselves onto our partners. We want them to be like us, and so we often project a lot of ourselves onto others. Really we do this in almost all relationships until you learn about it. The person who we absolutely hate at work is the person to whom we've projected all our internal issues: doubts, fears, and angers. The person who we are absolutely, madly in love with is often the person to whom we've projected all of our own love, compassion, and kindness.
Romantic relationship is also often the time when we finally give ourselves the excuse to finally stand in all of our own love. When this happens, the other person transforms in our eyes because we're transforming how we look at the world. It's an important step now to delineate how much of yourself you're now projecting onto the other person, to know how much of the light we see from him or her is actually our own light reflected back. It's an even bigger step to start to allow yourself to have that love at any time and to realize that it was always there. I think the biggest step to moving into a spiritual relationship with other people is to start by falling in love with yourself, deeply and authentically.
To truly know how much of your own light you're projecting on someone else requires a lot of communication. I think communication is the key to relationships, and people have said this for countless years. In spiritual relationships, this is no less the case. You need to be able to see through their eyes and to learn how to see the person as they truly are and not as you want or need them to be. When you can do that, you can truly love the other person and open the doorways to the possibility of even deeper levels of connection.