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Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have searched long and hard for a true blue psychic, and something just led me to you. I love a man whose name is Jimmy. We broke up last March over a misunderstanding, and it has been an extreme emotional roller coaster ride ever since that day. Since our breakup, I have sent kind, loving correspondence to him to let him know how I feel. I even remembered him on Christmas and sent him a gift and a card. Life has truly been a struggle. I know that one should not just wait around for love, but having someone special is extremely important to me at this time in my life. I can’t imagine life without this man, for I have always felt that he was the one for me with all of my heart. I know that he has issues when it comes to showing and expressing his emotions, but it never hindered me from pursuing him the past seven years. I do not push him in any way; I give him space to follow his heart in his own time. I have even prayed that God would take my life now and allow me to come home, because I really do not want my life to go on without this man. This is how much I truly love him. Last night I even prayed to God many times to allow this to happen if Jimmy was not going to come back to me. He may be a self-centered pig at times, but this does not diminish my love for him, because I have seen a beautiful side of him that not many people get to see. Will Jimmy come back and give this relationship another whirl, a real try he truly puts his heart into? I would really love to hear from you. Thank you for your time.
– Diane

Dear Diane:

My sweet girl, I wish I could whisk you off to a beach in Mexico for a year or so. By the end of that time, you’d be so over Jimmy. You’d be happily engaged in a whole new life, with a whole new sense of hope and possibility.

First, no person is so fantastic that life is not worth living without them. Barring extreme physical pain due to terminal illness or something like that, thoughts of suicide are always very short-sighted. When I read for people who don’t see life as worth living, Spirit often suggests they watch the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano.”

In that film, Tom Hanks’ character is a hypochondriac who learns that he is dying. He accepts the offer of a millionaire, which entails becoming a human sacrifice by throwing himself into a volcano. He has to travel halfway around the world to get to this volcano, and en route, he awakens spiritually and discovers that his life is indeed worth living. We watch him blossom from a miserable, anxiety-ridden man clinging to a bleak existence, into a bright, joyful free spirit. Only when he faces his own mortality for real does he begin to fully open to everything that is beautiful in life that he has been missing.

I encourage you to rent this movie and let it speak to your heart and soul.

Now you have to realize that what you describe as love is not really love, but rather obsession. When we’re caught up in romantic obsession like this it’s very hard to see it, so I understand if you are vehemently shaking your head and saying that I don’t understand. I know, because I’ve been where you are. I believed it was really love too, and wound up wanting to die, just like you.

My own obsession was named Dan, and my entire purpose for living was for him to love me back. When we make someone the center of our universe like this, we make them our God. As no mortal can fill those shoes, we are setting ourselves up for a lot of disappointment and heartache when we do this.

It’s not that we’re fundamentally pathetic. In fact, most people who fall into this pattern have very deep spiritual natures but a lack of spiritual teaching and direct experience of divine grace. We’ve been raised to make romance EVERYTHING. Our modern holy grail is a “soul mate.” We’ve been duped into believing that romantic love is the highest thing we can hope for. When romance then leaves us in a miserable heap on the floor, it’s no wonder we decide that life is just not worth living.

The energy underlying obsession is a very powerful force. The more you tell yourself you don’t want to live without Jimmy, the more energy you send to this force, and the harder it is to break free of it. You feel incomplete without Jimmy because you’ve literally given away your heart and soul to him.

Here’s another lesson we all have to learn eventually: Deciding that we don’t want to live without someone is actually a good way to send them fleeing. It’s a pretty heavy trip to put on someone’s shoulders. Most people feel suffocated by this sort of emotional dependency.

Making someone else responsible for our will to live is never a healthy or attractive thing to do. It leaves us clingy, vulnerable, grasping and draining. We won’t find true fulfillment in love until our own hearts and spirits are whole, until we see ourselves as complete expressions of divine beauty.

I’ve seen this sort of relationship dynamic many times, and always the person who is made God is far from deserving of that honor. I could see putting someone on a pedestal if they really were Christ-like, for then it may actually be true that we may never meet another person like them. Usually, however, the thing that is most special about the people we cling to is their indifference to our feelings. At some level we believe that if we can get this cold-hearted, self-absorbed “cool” person to return our devotion, then we will have proven to ourselves that we really are lovable.

These romantic obsessions represent someone from our past – usually the parent it was hardest to win attention, love and approval from. They can also be people we loved in past lives who rejected us. By being unmovable and indifferent, they offer us another chance to prove ourselves worthy of their attention, affection and respect. Through these relationships, we try to go back and heal some of the holes in our hearts from earlier experiences.

Our true goal is not to gain their love, however, but to learn to love ourselves enough to leave this tortuous experience behind. We may think we adore a lover more than life itself, but we can only truly love another to the degree we love ourselves. When we want to die for the lack of one individual’s returned affection, we aren’t loving anyone involved; we’re just desperately trying to find someone or something to fill the empty place inside of us.

I wish I could spirit you away to that beach in Mexico, but you don’t really need me to anyway. You don’t need anyone outside of yourself to save you or make your life worth living, because it’s already worth living, Diane.

I recommend you either find a higher calling to devote yourself to, or take off on a big adventure. If you already feel like dying, what have you got to lose? You’re here – you might as well do something important or interesting. The more you devote yourself to this higher purpose or lose yourself in this new adventure, the better you will feel.

Give the best of yourself to someone or something new, and after a while, you will realize that you feel better about yourself and about life. Your energy will detach more and more from this obsessive vortex as you put your heart and soul into relationships and undertakings that actually return your energy. This will lead you not only to new peace and happiness, but to more fulfilling experiences in love too.

There are no shortcuts to true and lasting happiness. You have to stop being a slave to romance and reach for something truer and more lasting: a sense of your own divinity, a personal relationship to Spirit/ the Universe/ All That Is, a reverent appreciation of life’s endless blessings and joys.

– Soul Arcanum

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