Dear Soul Arcanum:
I need some advice on a situation that doesn’t seem to want to finish. I had a short but cataclysmic relationship with a young man a few months back. We were both in places in our lives at the time that drew us to one another very quickly and intensely. Things progressed rapidly then suddenly blew up. It was devastating to me, but I’ve done a lot of work around this and have come to a pretty good place. I finally allowed myself to be angry with him, and then I forgave him and it felt wonderful. Since he teaches at my daughter’s school, I see him in the mornings, but the kicker was getting an email from him telling me that he is looking at an apartment in my building. I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of the Universe, yet the old wounds began to open up. Part of me isn’t the slightest bit surprised that he is marching back into my life, for I’ve always believed we had more stuff to work through. I try to feel loving toward him as I know he is going through some challenges himself, yet I need to resist getting sucked into the cycle of putting his needs above my own. How do I gracefully accept the possibility that he can be my neighbor as if nothing ever happened between us? I want to tell him to get lost and go live somewhere else, yet I wonder why he is coming back (or being sent back) into my life. What do you think?
Loretta
Dear Loretta:
Before we delve into your personal spiritual lessons in this situation, I think it’s important to contemplate the possibility that he is missing you and was either feeling you out by telling you he was thinking about moving closer to you, or is indeed planning on moving into your building because he hopes that with time and effort, he may be able to rekindle your romance. (If he was as anxious to put your relationship in the past as you seem to be, instead of emailing you, he would most likely either look elsewhere for an apartment or at the very least, avoid telling you about his plans.)
This possibility aside, let’s explore the deeper spiritual issues at play here. Your reaction to this situation indicates that you do indeed have more healing and growth to accomplish. This is something of a spiritual test of your healing status. Given your panicked reaction, I think you’d be wise to view this situation as a wonderful opportunity for you to heal more completely from this very intense emotional experience. (If this process was complete, hearing from him and seeing him wouldn’t faze you any longer.)
Your situation illustrates one of the strange but beautiful things about the Universe: anything left unfinished naturally comes back up for us time after time until we master it. It may not seem like the time is right for you to deal with this yet, but these things also tend to happen when we’re ready to take our learning and growing to the next level.
Further, our feelings are very clear road markers regarding where we are vibrationally in relationship to other people, relationships, issues and experiences. When someone from the past comes back into our lives and we’re overjoyed, then clearly, there is nothing troublesome that was buried under the carpet that needs to be brought out into the open and cleaned up. When someone shows back up and we feel wary, anxious, angry, upset, etc., it’s a sign that there is great potential for further personal growth via this situation.
This doesn’t mean that we have to welcome everyone we’ve ever been involved with back into our lives with open arms. In fact, I often read for people whose lesson is to love themselves enough to learn to say no. Being confronted by people to whom they’ve given their power away in the past tests their resolve to create something better in their lives, and until they find the strength and self-love to choose what is really good for them, those people will keep coming back. So though we naturally want to run away from people who have broken our hearts
in the past, they are often our greatest teachers.
Of course, people keep coming back into our experience in order for karma to be worked out as well. It’s my understanding that this doesn’t happen due to some grand elaborate plan. Instead, the force behind it is more like gravity: our intense emotional connections to people are like elastic bands, so whether we love them or hate them, when people evoke strong emotions in us, they will keep coming back into our experiences time after time, lifetime after lifetime.
Sometimes, even after we’ve personally made peace with the past, people come back into our experience because they still have karma or issues to work out. I don’t feel that this is the case for you, however, because if you were fully at peace with this whole experience, you wouldn’t be afraid of getting sucked back into things with him.
You mention being afraid of putting his needs before your own, and it sounds like this may be the big lesson in all of this for you. What better way to learn (and practice) honoring your own needs than by being in a situation that challenges you to remember? We don’t learn anything by avoiding challenges, which is no doubt why we subconsciously create and recreate the perfect situations in which to master whatever we need to learn.
As for trying to be neighbors as though nothing ever happened, I don’t see the point. Why pretend that nothing ever happened when it did? The more real you can be with your own true feelings and the truth of the situation, the faster and more directly you will be able to get to the heart of things where you can unravel anything that is tangled and move on to create the love, peace and happiness you long for.
I assure you that your situation holds nothing to fear and lots of blessings for you. Even if you do get sucked back into some sort of relationship with this guy, it will no doubt lead you either to the fulfillment of some desire or greater peace and clarity, after which you will be more empowered to create what you want in your life. If you strive to approach this situation with love and wisdom, it will also improve the karma between the two of you, which means the next time you reconnect, instead of feeling anxious, you may feel delighted and go on to enjoy all the love and harmony you’ve cultivated between you.
My advice on how to make the most of this situation can be summed up in one line: attitude is everything. This is true with spiritual lessons and with all of life’s challenges, for that matter. When we sink into fear and resist whatever comes our way, we make everything so much harder for ourselves. When instead, we stretch to be our very best selves, and we relax and choose to trust that one way or another, everything will work out fine, life begins to just flow. In fact, it does better than flow: it grows brighter and more beautiful every step of the way.
How you approach this will absolutely determine the quality of your experiences. If you can embody love and trust and let yourself shine, this situation may not affect you one bit as you sail forward to your dreams. If you really pour your best self into it, you may even be able to cultivate a deeply beautiful, rewarding experience for all involved.
– Soul Arcanum
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