Chasing Our Souls?

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Additional excerpts from "My Soul Said to Me."
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(Page 264) "Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone knew by the age of fourteen who they were and why they are here? If indeed we do have souls, it represents a great failure of Western culture that the question of who we are and why we are here is either never asked or that it requires fifty years to answer instead of fourteen. That is how great leaders wind up never running for president, how poets wind up on academic committees, how spiritual leaders wind up in dentistry and how men like Dan Quayle wind up in the White House."
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(Page 265) "On this subject, Martin Prechtel says that in the Mayan culture, the boy must first marry his soul before he is ready to marry a woman. Bly says that when this does not happen, a man will look for his soul in a woman. I have asked many groups of men what feelings accompanied the times they fell in love, and their answers always include that sense of wholeness and completeness. I personally found that the ecstasy and sense of wholeness I had when I finally connected with my soul felt incredibly similar to the times I had fallen in love. No wonder we get so mixed up. Perhaps this difference between being connected with the soul and looking for our soul in another person defines the difference between WANTING as opposed to NEEDING a partner. The women in my classes at Project Return and at Tulane have always said they could tell the difference between a man who wanted them and a man who needed them."
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For any raging co-dependents out there (like I used to be . . . I'm getting better . . . I think . . . I hope), wanting is GOOD --needing is BAD. Can you imagine saying (or hearing) this
statement? "I want you but I don't need you." Yet -- from a
relationship perspective -- that's the healthiest place to be.
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I went through an extremely painful phase in my life where I wanted -- needed actually -- a relationship in the most desperate way. And it just wasn't happening! It was as if I was invisible! In my classes, they were saying "you don't deserve somebody until you don't NEED them" and I thought, "What possibly compares to that in the rest of life?" You don't get a house until you don't need one? You don't get a job until you don't need one? You don't get a raise until you don't need one? I did find one analogy that made perfect sense -- confirmed by personal experience -- you don't get a loan until you don't need one.
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At some point -- after enduring this pain and anguish for so long and worried that I might spend the rest of my life alone and die alone -- I came to a place where I got comfortable with a thought, "You know what? I just MIGHT spend the rest of my life alone and I need to REALLY be okay with that!" I determined to make ALL my decisions from that point on as if that was to be the reality of my life = single, alone. I was going to float my houseboat at the lake and -- in the summers -- commute to work from there. In the winters, I was going to live in my camper for free and save money to fix up my camper, my truck, my houseboat. Nothing grand or glorious to "save" the world or anyone else, just to save myself -- indulge and nurture my own soul -- who I was and what I wanted to do . . . for the first time in nearly fifty years of life.
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Almost immediately, things began to change. People of the opposite sex were beginning to SEE me again! It was the most incredible feeling. ALL that BS they were saying in those classes was proving to be true. Now that I NEEDED no one, my options were unlimited!
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I learned later that "needy" people are only attracted to and found attractive BY other needy people. It's as if someone who is needy enters a room of 100 people partying and 99 of them are healthy and one is needy. For the two who are needy, it's as if they're both wearing huge, flashing neon signs that only they can see. They'll find each other in five minutes or less. This is why folks in unhealthy relationships have a history of unhealthy relationships. If they were to end their current relationship withOUT taking that excrutiatingly lonely and painful time to discover their soul and make peace with IT and marry IT, odds are almost certain they will end up in yet another dreary and miserable and unhealthy relationship. Turns out folks who are healthy in this department are actually REPULSED by folks who are needy and co-dependent.
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Harry Browne once wrote "there is nothing more lonely than being in close proximity to someone who doesn't understand you." This has become a defining guide to health in relationships for me. No matter how wonderful I might THINK someone is; if they don't know me -- understand me -- SEE me with perfect clarity -- and STILL love me? Then I'm still alone, regardless of feelings expressed or how many times they say they love me.
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In the final analyis, our own soul -- our own SELF -- is the only
person we can know with absolute certainty will be with us until the day we die. It's imperative we get to know that elusive persona and love them best and FIRST and then share the surplus of that great and growing love with someone else. It's not about what they can give to you. It's all about the surplus of love you already have which you want to share with them. We must put the wood in the stove (no pun intended), nurture the flame, and THEN get warm instead of stomping around, cursing and glaring at the stove, "Make me warm so I can put some wood in ya'!"
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sail4free
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