Tag Archive: relationships


Healing Romantic Obsession

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Healing Romantic Obsession


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC, 2011. All rights reserved.  
 All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’ve been seeing this man for about nine months. We had an open relationship. At first I was totally against it, but I felt like this was the only way I could be in his life. He has guided me on becoming more spiritual. (I think I have always been spiritual but now I’m not afraid to embrace it.) He is almost like a mentor to me. Now it seems he has fallen back in love with an old flame with whom he has children. It hurts that he just dropped me and committed to her. I want to disconnect from the spiritual connection we share. It’s like he is with me wherever I go. I love him but the pain and torment is something I can live without. I’m scared he will know and try to put a spell on me. He has done this in the past, and while it did not work on me, it was effective on others. I want to be free of this spiritual connection. It is very powerful and like nothing I have ever felt before.

Ameerah

Dear Ameerah:

Your question reveals what is happening on a metaphysical level. I find it particularly interesting that even though you say this man dropped you and committed to another, you write about your relationship in the present tense as though it is ongoing. In fact, you go back and forth between present and past tense when describing this relationship, which reflects how it’s both over and not over at the same time for you.

I’m wondering how you know about him putting spells on other people; I can only assume that he actually told you that he has done this. You imply that he tried to put a spell on you and that it didn’t work. Whether he overtly tried to influence you in this way or not, it’s pretty clear that you are “under his spell,” at least in the conventional sense of the term. This saying reflects our awareness on some level that it is possible for someone who is very magnetic and charismatic to influence people to feel as you are feeling.

Breaking free of a charismatic lover is in some ways similar to breaking free of the influence of a cult leader. In both scenarios, the “follower” gives their power away to someone they perceive to be somehow extraordinary. In order to reclaim your power, you have to begin to know YOURSELF to be just as special, lovable, and wonderful as the one you’ve been worshipping. When you make another person your God, you set yourself up for anguish and disappointment. It’s time to stop making him so special and begin to look for the divine within yourself and everyone else.

To be immune to the influence of charismatic types, you have only to own and exercise your power to consciously create what you want in your life. This is all about taking your power back. To have influence over us, a person must have stronger will/chi than we do. In order to break free, you must summon enough will power and desire to match that person’s energy or supercede it. This means you have to want to be free even more than he wants you hanging on. You also have to believe in your power to be free and to create what you want in your life even more than he believes in his power to influence you. This is definitely a battle of wills.

He may be the sort of person who wants as many admirers as possible, or who wants to have a back-up lover waiting in the wings just in case his current relationship doesn’t pan out. The good news is that he is focused elsewhere right now, and it will be impossible for him to summon enough desire to keep you if you begin to take your power back. This just makes sense, for your desire to have your life back will be much stronger than his desire to keep something he’s not focused on or attached to hanging around in the background.

Following are four ways you might go about ending this obsession. Allow your intuition to illuminate the best remedy for you by choosing whatever you feel drawn to. Please keep in mind that any of these options can instantly work for you if you bring your whole being to it.

Ways to End Romantic Obsession:

Guided meditation to cut psychic cords: Set aside special time for this exercise, then get quiet, close your eyes, and visualize the connection between you as a cord like string, linking you together. If it feels right, mentally explain to him why you are cutting the cord. If it doesn’t feel right, then explain to the Universe what you are doing and why, and ask for your guides and angels to help you. Focus on the positive: on what you want and the good that you expect to come from this. Be very clear that you are now taking conscious control of creating what you want in your life. You may perceive something in response from him or the Universe. This may include impressions, insights, ideas or solutions, so pay attention and allow whatever comes to you to lead you to new awareness and healing. When the time feels right, cut the cord by visualizing yourself with scissors or a knife cutting away whatever connects you. As you do so, say out loud: I cut this cord so that we may BOTH be free to find greater love and happiness. The more you can embody the feeling of love and happiness you desire for yourself and everyone involved, the more powerful the ritual will be. Afterward, get rid of anything he gave you, and remove all traces of him from your world.

Direct healing from Spirit: If you are adept at prayer and meditation and have a strong relationship with your spirit guides, you can enter into a deep meditation and simply ask Spirit to heal you of this obsession. Ask to be set free, for all thoughts and feelings about him to be taken away, and to feel the way you want to feel: free, at peace, and hopeful about the future. Ask to be guided to something new to pour your love and passion into. Pay attention to what happens, especially in your body. If you are strongly connected, you’re sure to feel something shift or change within you, and afterward, to notice that you feel profoundly changed on an inner level by this exercise.

Spells and rituals: There are many “spells” and rituals you can perform to break free of obsession. Given the space limits of this column, I don’t have room to offer one here for you. The subconscious mind loves ritual, for it’s a way to communicate with your deeper self about what you want and to rally the forces of the Universe to help you achieve your aim. If this idea resonates with you, I encourage you to search the internet for an appropriate spell/ritual, and devote all of your being to it.

Hypnotherapy: Hypnotherapy is a very fast and powerful way to heal and release the past and program yourself to move forward to create what you want in your life. If the above methods don’t appeal to you or leave you somehow wanting, don’t give up hope: I’m sure a skilled hypnotherapist will be able to help you.

A final note: the surest way to release an obsession over something that has ended is to find something new, wonderful and fulfilling to get “obsessed” with. Whether it’s a new relationship, an exciting project, a pet or some endeavor you’re passionate about, if you choose something that blesses you in equal measure to the psychic and emotional energy you pour into it, you will wake up one day and realize that you can’t even remember the last time you thought about old whats-his-name.

To help you with all of this, I recommend you check out some of the great deep trance processes in the spiritual toolbox at Soul Arcanum. :)
– Soul Arcanum

 

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Further Healing Old Emotional Wounds

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Karma, Relationships, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Further Healing Old Emotional Wounds

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. :)
 

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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He’s Angered by Others’ Lack of Enlightenment

Filed Under: Relationships, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on He’s Angered by Others’ Lack of Enlightenment


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’m 19 years old and I feel like the luckiest person in my community, for I’ve been blessed with the power of peace and love. It’s never been this way for me before. I struggled to graduate from high school because I wasn’t in harmony with today’s materialistic focus and crazy ideas about what really matters in life. To overcome insomnia, I started experimenting with marijuana 16 months ago, and I’m still using it while attending a local college. It is obvious to me that marijuana is what enlightened me. I now feel compelled to share these thoughts of love and awareness with the spiritually blind people around me, including my mom. Here’s my question: how do I INFLICT others with the same insights I’ve received? I do educate my peers on human nature and how it’s not right to hate anything or anyone, from spiders to other races. This sort of ignorance stirs up great anger inside of me.

Kamron

Dear Kamron:

While I understand where you’re coming from, it’s important for you to understand that you are caught up in ego just as much as the people around you. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t experience negative emotions like anger about the way other people think. Negative emotions are of a low vibration, so when we feel angry, sad, depressed, or frustrated, our vibration is too low to be in harmony with our higher selves, which means we must be viewing things through the ego. Similarly, positive feelings like love, peace, joy and appreciation are of a high vibration and in harmony with the higher self. It is only when we are feeling positive emotions that we are able to view other people with divine wisdom, compassion and understanding.

There are many, many people who believe that they have found the one spiritual truth and feel driven to save others from themselves by persuading them to adopt their views. This is the path of the missionary and the Evangelist, not the path of the mystic, healer and spiritual teacher. Here’s the rub: in viewing others to be “wrong,” “lost” or “inadequate,” they reveal themselves to be just as snared by ego as the people they are trying to save – perhaps even more so.

This is not to say you are “wrong.” You are absolutely NOT wrong – but neither is anyone else. When one first begins to seek and find spiritual answers, it’s natural to pass through the phase you are currently in. There are higher levels of understanding beyond this, however. At those levels, one no longer feels compelled to change anyone or anything around them, for one can see that all is well and everyone is just where they need to be and thinking and just what they need to think and do in order to learn whatever they need to learn and fulfill their own destiny.

To become angry with people for their “ignorant” views is a bit like a senior in high school getting frustrated with kindergarteners because they just can’t seem to grasp Calculus. What the senior fails to realize is that there are higher levels of understanding beyond what they have attained. Teachers and college professors see no problem, for they know that everyone is progressing according to their own path, their own ability, and their own pace. Instead of focusing on what the younger students fail to grasp, one should look ahead and try to personally develop further.

The problem then is not the way the world or the people around you think and behave but what is causing you to judge the world as inadequate and the anger this brings up within you. To begin to work through this, I recommend you study the great spiritual teachers throughout history. Imagine what it may have been like to fully embody love and see all in creation as perfect, and then to have to put up with the rest of us as we squabble like children over the Earth’s resources and various abstract ideas. Fortunately, I’m sure Jesus, the Buddha, and our other true mystics saw all of this as perfect too, for they knew what we are all in the process of learning – that everyone is just where they need to be and all is well. I also recommend you undertake spiritual practice beyond smoking marijuana. (Meditating free of intoxicants would be a great place to start to cultivate peace, understanding and equanimity.)

As I read your question, the term “indigo child” popped into my mind. The term indigo child is based on the idea that starting in the mid 70s, a large number of children began to be born with indigo auras. Supposedly these children came in with a strong agenda: to eradicate war and teach people to better respect the planet and each other. As you did, many indigo children have a hard time in school; as they extraordinarily self-referencing, they question everything and refuse to conform to a systemn that they view to be pointless or flawed. These children are often diagnosed with ADD or ADHD because they simply refuse to give their attention to endeavors they deem to be pointless. (Most have an amazing capacity to pay attention to matters they do value or enjoy, however.) These children also show an extraordinary interest in spiritual matters; given their non-conformity, intelligence, and questioning minds, they tend to be anti-religion but ardent spiritual seekers.

The pattern of experiency you describe is very common these days, for as the planet evolves, the children being born are more spiritually evolved than their parents, teachers, governments and cultural mores. It is the young who shake up the old: as each new generation has sparked further social evolution, slavery has been abolished; women have gained the right to vote; bigotry has become highly unacceptable and all sorts of other moral progress has been made.

Of course, whenever you lecture others on how they “should” be, you just evoke their own fears and egos and turn them off. Even your greatest wisdom will then fall on deaf ears. If instead, you look for the beauty in them and you radiate love and peace yourself, you will draw people to you like moths to a flame. I recommend you look ahead of you toward what you need to learn next and cultivate inner love and peace through personal spiritual practice. Allow your own divine light to shine, for this will brighten the world around you and naturally draw those who are ready for your wisdom to you with open hearts and minds.

Can you love the people around you who don’t share your passionate ideals as much as you love spiders and other races? The key to rising in peace and awareness is to look for the beauty in everyone you meet and to keep in mind that each person is doing their best according to their unique history and destiny.


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Is Resisting Love Bad for Your Health?

Filed Under: Chakras/Auras, Energy/Vibration, Healing, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Is Resisting Love Bad for Your Health?

 

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I am a woman with a male friend whom I know loves me, but I have closed myself to those feelings. I don’t allow myself to think about him or enjoy the look in his eyes when we meet because I am afraid. Since we both have families, according to my religious beliefs, this love we feel is wrong. My question is, am I doing more harm than good to myself by blocking the energy of this love? On a metaphysical level, what am I doing by blocking the energy that’s coming my way and not letting my energy go out to him? I have started having some small twinges of pain and other sensations on the left side of my chest area around my heart. Have I blocked my heart chakra with this move? Thanks for your wisdom.

K.

Dear K.:

We can and do create blocks in our chakras all the time. We do this when we resist something out of fear of what is happening or might happen in the future. When we try to deny or repress our emotions, we constrict our life force energy. When we make a habit of this, over time we can develop all sorts of problems and issues. So in not being “open” to this man and the feelings between you, you have indeed energetically closed yourself down.

Just last week I wrote about how frequent headaches are associated with psychic development because many people feel overwhelmed and try to shut down their psychic perception. Our chakras are directly linked to our physical health; everything begins in spirit and funnels down into physical manifestation, so when chakras are forced closed or remain blocked over time, we can experience physical pain and even serious health problems. I’m not telling you this to try to scare you, but rather to emphasize that you are wise to listen to your body, for it is definitely trying to tell you something.

Our bodies don’t lie, deny the truth, twist things or rationalize the way our minds do, so often the truth our bodies tell doesn’t match what society thinks is proper or even what we believe is right on a conscious level. When our bodies are saying one thing and our minds are saying another, we have to make a choice: do we choose what FEELS right in our hearts or what we’ve come to believe is right based on what outside influences (other people, religious teachings, etc.) have told us in the past?

My sense is that you live in a culture where breaking with tradition may be much harder and more frightening than it is for many of us these days. While I can appreciate that, it’s also clear to me that it is this outside pressure that is making this lesson so powerful for you. If your decision were easy, it wouldn’t require you to ponder it so deeply and question what you’ve been told in order to find your own truth.

I recently made the acquaintance of a minister who works with the dying. He is a true spiritual warrior who is on the front lines every day, doing his best to serve God and do what he believes is right. He is also in a situation very similar to your own in that he is married but is in love with another. So far, he too is shutting his heart down in order to do what he thinks is right, and he is totally miserable.

As he is a devoted Christian, we had a long chat about how Jesus questioned the beliefs and mores of his culture, and listened above all to the truth speaking to him through his own heart. I think we are all wise to ponder how history’s great spiritual teachers developed the truths upon which today’s religious views are based. It wasn’t by listening to what other people told them was true or what had been established as right or wrong in the past; their celebrated truths arose from within them.

No one can tell you what is right for you. In order to make that decision yourself, you must pray to be guided to clarity and listen within for that guidance. As you do this, it may greatly help you to ask yourself and Spirit a few key questions, such as:

What is the path of fear, and what is the path of love?

When we make decisions based on fear of how others may react or what may happen in the future, we put outside influences before the truth in our own hearts; constrict the flow of our life force energy, personal potential, health and joy; and make our lives smaller. When we make decisions based on love, curiosity, passion, hope, desire and inspiration, we put the wisdom of our hearts first, which expands the flow of our life force energy, personal potential, health and joy. This naturally encourages our lives to grow bigger, more colorful and more fulfilling. Though it is always more rewarding, it is often far more difficult to choose the path of love, for it requires courage as well as faith in ourselves and the divine voice speaking to us from within.

Another great question to ask yourself is: what would I want those I love to do if they were in my shoes? For example, if your husband was in your shoes, would you want him to follow his heart or would you want him to deny his heart out of a sense of obligation to you? Sometimes, it’s most telling to ask ourselves what we would want our children to do in the same situation, for many of us love our children more than we love anyone else – including ourselves. So if your daughter was in your situation, what would you hope she would do?

Finally, it’s important to realize that you can heal your life and any metaphysical problems you’re experiencing without doing anything in particular in your relationships to other people. The first step is to acknowledge the message the pain in your heart is sending you. Instead of judging yourself harshly for feeling as you do, you must give yourself permission to feel as you do and allow that energy to flow freely. This does not mean you necessarily act on those feelings; it means you allow them to be what they are without judging, rejecting or ignoring them.

There is much you can do on the inside to feel better even if you don’t change a thing on the outside. None of this is really about your relationships with other people anyway; it’s all about your relationship to yourself and the Divine. I have a free Chakra Clearing and Charging Meditation that will help you energetically cultivate inner peace and well-being regardless of what is happening in your outer experience. that will help you energetically cultivate inner peace and well-being regardless of what is happening in your outer experience. You can find it at Soul Arcanum.

Finally, I have an idea on how you can have your cake and eat it too: go ahead and act on your desires, but do so on a metaphysical level only. Many people in similar situations end up fulfilling their desires in their dreams, and some of these even go on to learn how to astral travel in order to live a “double life” on other planes. For more on this, Google “astral love” or “astral sex,” and check out D.Soul Arcanum Conway’s book Perfect Love: Finding Intimacy on the Astral Plane.

– Soul Arcanum

 

 

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She Always Wants What She Can’t Have

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Law of Attraction, Manifesting, Relationships, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on She Always Wants What She Can’t Have


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have a very bad case of wanting what I can’t have, especially when it comes to relationships. I might have a crush on a guy until he becomes a real prospect, but then I begin to have doubts and get scared off. There are two men in my heart who were boyfriends in the past. I wasn’t serious about them when they pursued me and I easily let both of them go. When I thought about committing to them, I had all sorts of excuses for why they weren’t right for me. Years later, they are married fathers leading happy lives and I am single and going through tough times alone. I am now able to see how great they were and how my excuses for not getting serious about them were poor ones. I can’t tell you how hard I kick myself for letting them go. It’s truly eating me up, loving them deeply now and wanting them back and thinking how much more meaningful and fulfilling my life would be now had I been wiser before. I don’t want to be obsessive and stuck, which is how I feel, but I don’t want to stop loving them because even with all the painful regret, the love somehow feels better than indifference and the petty criticisms I had for them when I was dating them. I want to move on, stop the cycle of running from love, and be happy. Please help!

O.

Dear O:

Thank you for doing such a wonderful job of explaining your situation. What you describe is a common pattern; in fact, I know a number of people personally who do the same sort of thing. I’m sure you’re familiar with the term self-sabotage and the idea that many people unconsciously sabotage their efforts to create what they want in their lives. As a hypnotherapist, I see this a bit differently. While it’s true that people may do things that don’t appear to make sense, there is always a good reason why people do the things they do.

For example, Joann came to me at more than 200 pounds, deeply frustrated and desperate to find a way to lose weight. She had been on countless diets in her 47 years and had lost tens of pounds over and over again. Every time she got down to a size 8, she would start putting weight back on and regain all she had lost and more. In this way, she crept from around 145 pounds to over 200 despite years of dieting.

When I took her into a deep trance and asked her to go back to a significant event in her weight struggle, she at first relayed some upsetting but relatively minor experiences such as being embarrassed of her body as an adolescent and an incident in which she couldn’t fit into the jeans she was trying to borrow from a friend. These were just the outer layers of the onion, however. Eventually when asked to go back to the next significant event, she began to cry and hyperventilate. As I walked her through what she was experiencing, it came out that she had been raped at the age of 22; it was after this that she began to put on weight in an effort to feel less attractive and thus safer. She had been a size 8 at the time of the rape, and every time she became a size 8 again, she would grow very uncomfortable and immediately try to remedy what her subconscious perceived to be a problem by gaining weight again.

When I brought her out of trance, it was clear that a light bulb had come on: She now understood that she hadn’t been sabotaging herself – she had been trying to protect herself. The problem wasn’t a lack of self-love; it was the unfounded belief that if she didn’t carry extra weight, she would be hurt again. Once we healed and released the past trauma and put some empowering new beliefs in place, she found it relatively easy to lose the weight and keep it off.

Perhaps you’ve already figured out what this has to do with you. In case you haven’t, I’ll offer you a case that is a closer match to what you’re going through. Sarah came to me with a problem similar to yours: she was in her late thirties and had never been married because she too always wanted what she couldn’t have. She only wanted men who were unavailable for some reason. A couple of times, she did develop crushes on men who eventually returned her interest, but once she could have them, she didn’t want them anymore.

Regression therapy uncovered a number of possible causes for this pattern, such as her father abandoning the family when she was small, which led her mother into a depression from which she never recovered. From this she developed the belief that it’s never safe to give your heart completely to another human being.

More powerful, however, was the past life she relived in which her parents wanted her to marry a man of means but she chose to marry a penniless youth for love. Though he was handsome and romantic when he was courting her, her husband turned out to be a mean drunk who beat her and the children they had together. They lived in miserable destitution because he was too drunk to earn a living and would spend the money she was able to bring in on alcohol. She would sometimes see the man she had chosen NOT to marry with his wife, looking happy and prosperous, and think to herself that she had made a terrible choice. She died young in childbirth, and as she was dying, she was very worried about what would become of her young children with just their alcoholic father to depend upon. As she was dying, she was filled with regret and thoughts of how just one bad decision can ruin your life.

As a result of this traumatic past life experience, she was incredibly indecisive in this life: every time she was faced with a decision, she would get anxious and second-guess herself. She was also forever thinking that the grass must be greener on the other side. Though she consciously believed that she wanted to fall in love and get married, on a subconscious level, she did not believe this was a wise or safe thing to do. This led her to constantly chase after men she could never actually catch, and to run away from those who chased her. Within two years of resolving this past trauma and the limiting beliefs underlying her lack of fulfillment in love, she was happily married to the man of her dreams.

To resolve your pattern, first you must stop beating yourself up about it. Assume that your subconscious mind is trying to help you and that your job is to get your conscious and subconscious minds working in harmony. Imagine that your goal is to move a dresser: if your conscious mind is pushing forward on one side and your subconscious mind is pushing forward on the other side, you’re going to end up very frustrated. Now imagine that you can bring your subconscious mind over to your side to push WITH you: suddenly, things start to move forward with surprising ease.

I know of no faster way to totally transform your life than to begin to consciously work with your subconscious mind and higher self. Since every person’s story is unique, I encourage you to seek hypnotherapy so you can uncover and resolve whatever may be keeping you from a truly fulfilling experience in love.

Finally, it’s normal to continue to love people we’ve loved in the past, but that doesn’t mean we’re meant to be with them in the future. I think you’re hung up on these old boyfriends because they are symbols of the sort of man and relationship you want. Instead of lamenting the ones who got away, I encourage you to focus on the future and open your heart to meeting someone new.

Soul Arcanum

 


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Strong Attraction to Spiritual Healer

Filed Under: Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Strong Attraction to Spiritual Healer


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

For the past three years, I have felt a strong feeling of attraction to a spiritual healer. We have a strong telepathic connection. The love is unconditional love, not romantic, and we often encounter each other in the astral. Why do I constantly have him in my thoughts? I also feel a strong desire just to be physically near where he is to pick on his energy; it makes me feel content. We both avoid saying anything when we see each other but my higher self often nudges me to ask for a hug, which is out character for me. I get my hug and we both walk away as if nothing happened. I’m past looking for a partner as I am 61 and he is considerably younger. Can you explain this strong sense of physical attraction? Many thanks!

Valdie

Dear Valdie:

The attraction you describe is much like the phenomenon known in psychology as transference; it is very common for people to feel attracted to people who have the power and willingness to help them when they desperately need it, and the compassion to love and accept them for who they really are.

To me it is clear that you are not so much attracted to this man as you are attracted to his energy. As a healer, he no doubt shines with divine light and embodies a very high vibration. You don’t have to be psychic to pick up on this; on some level, we are all aware of others’ energy and are naturally drawn toward people with “good vibes.” Since we are all constantly evolving toward a higher vibration, it’s a bit like you are a flower and he is the sun; you naturally turn toward the the light that nourishes you and makes you grow.

As a spiritual healer, he is also a signpost for you of where you are heading on your own journey. He represents profound well-being and the ability to heal oneself, both of which you are in the process of developing. It is perfectly natural to feel attracted to people who display qualities we are in the process of developing ourselves. This is how we find our way in life and develop our own set of personal values: we feel drawn toward that which represents where we are meant to go and repelled by that which represents what we have moved away from.

This is one reason why we find people who are crude, rude and selfish highly unattractive. No doubt we have all behaved thus in the past, if not in this life, then in past lives. We learned not to be this way by experiencing painful lessons about how what we do to others comes back to us. When we see someone doing something we learned NOT to do, it’s normal to feel repelled. Similarly, we all have an inner compass guiding us to grow more personally powerful, wise, strong, beautiful and loving. When we encounter people who are “more” than we are in these ways – who are a little further down the same spiritual path we are walking – we naturally feel drawn towards them.

This attraction is exponentially magnified in someone like the healer you describe, for he not only embodies who you want to be, he embodies the divine love and light of Spirit. I have had a number of people I helped in my capacity as a spiritual healer/minister think they were in love with me over the years, and have had to explain that they weren’t really in love with me the person, they were in love with the energy of the divine that I helped them reconnect with.

Healers are able to heal because they are exceptionally adept at channeling a very high level of divine life force energy. They are the opposite of psychic vampires, for they know there is endless life force energy available to them, they know how to tap into that energy, and they are clear, open channels for it. Experienced, gifted healers never worry about being drained by needy people, for they know that they have only to stay connected to Source to enjoy an endless supply of energy. This is why you never catch your healer friend asking YOU for a hug, and why he has no qualms about giving you what you ask for: he is getting all the hug energy he needs directly from Source. You sometimes need a boost because you aren’t as clear a channel for the life force energy you need. When you do this, it’s a bit like your laptop is dying and you need to plug into someone else’s outlet to get a charge.

We all get energetically replenished as we sleep at night; in fact, this is WHY we sleep – it’s like our physical bodies are laptops that perform all sorts of tasks all day; the more we do, the more charge we use up. Sleeping, resting, and meditating are ways we plug into source to recharge our batteries.

The main thing to keep in mind is that this man represents something bigger and greater to you than the relationship itself, and THAT is what you feel drawn toward. You are being called to embody more of the energy he embodies and to become better able to channel your own divine energy instead of plugging in to other people.

Of course, you two also have a personal relationship, which is why you think about him and meet up with him in the astral. It sounds to me like he is an important spiritual teacher in your life, so it makes sense that you may seek him out or he may find you when you’re out of your body to continue your work together on other planes. I’m sure there is a karmic connection between you; it may even be that in a past life, he was not embodied but was a spirit guide for you, and you are blessed to have him with you in a physical way this lifetime.

The important thing to keep in mind is that this is not a relationship of spiritual equals: He is the healer and you are the one who is healed. He has the energy and you are the one who plugs into it. As such, this is not so much a friendship as it is a teacher/student relationship. If you view this as a friendship, you may feel uneasy about how he seems to be emotionally more important to you than you are to him.

Students are naturally drawn toward the teachers with the knowledge they need to learn just like patients naturally go to the doctors and healers who can help them. This is why you feel so attracted to him while he probably has a much more relaxed, easy energy about your relationship; he’s happy to share what you need with you, but you don’t have anything he needs in return. Because of this dynamic, it would be wise for you to focus on WHAT you are drawn to in him as opposed to focusing on how you feel about him as a person.

Please note that none of the above is meant to diminish the beauty of your bond with this special person; the connection between spiritual teacher and student is an ancient, sacred relationship. This man is blessing you with healing and illuminating the spiritual path before you, so it makes perfect sense that you would feel strongly drawn toward him even more than you might to someone who was meant to be a lover or a friend.


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Can a Relationship Make You Physically Ill?

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Energy/Vibration, Healing, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Can a Relationship Make You Physically Ill?


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I married a man I had dated for eight years. He swept me off my feet and I loved him with all my heart. After almost two years of marriage and the birth of our daughter, I was diagnosed with a blood disease that causes low blood platelets. It was an awful ordeal that involved a lot of drugs and surgery, none of which helped. This disease was active for over eight years but has been in remission for the past year. During the time I was ill, I gave birth to my son and divorced my husband, who was going to school in another town. I was supporting two households while I was sick and running the family business with no support. I was in survival mode. In the past few years, I have developed a wonderful support group. The problem is that we have two kids together, so we have to be in some kind of contact. Lately, on his visits to town, my ex has become more intimidating. Last time he came into my house and started looking through the kitchen cabinets and touching everything. While this was happening, I became physically ill and felt like I was going to throw up. After he left, I developed severe lower back pain. This subsided but now my TMJ has flared up. I know that TMJ is associated with repressed anger, which makes sense since whenever I expressed anger in the relationship, the sword was turned against me so I learned to just be quiet. I don’t know if this is some kind of karmic debt or psychic attack, but I do know that I am happier and healthier when my ex is absent from my life and my mind. Do you think that a relationship can make you physically ill? If so, what do I do to protect myself?

– Soul Arcanum

Dear J:

Since stress can make you physically ill, anyone who upsets you can affect your sense of well-being. It sounds like back when you developed this rare blood disease, you were under a great deal of stress. It’s interesting that since you made some big changes in your life and developed a strong support group, the disease has gone into remission. I believe this is not so much about your relationship with your ex as it is about how you take care of yourself.

I’m glad that you shared that you learned to repress your anger. In doing this, you were not honoring your true feelings. Stifling our true feelings leads to churning energy, which can cause all sorts of physical problems from TMJ to the dis-ease you describe. If instead of “fighting” for what you believe in, you repress your feelings, that energy will fight within you. This can cause a war in your immune system that destroys your platelets and sense of well-being instead of the “outer war” that should be taking place in the troubled relationship. (I am not advocating war or fighting but rather dealing with what is really bothering you instead of repressing your feelings.)

Any emotional disharmony or discomfort will eventually filter down to a physical level if you allow it to grow severe or go on long enough. I learned this the hard way in my own first marriage. I was deeply unhappy but since I had two small children, I was very reluctant to end the marriage. The more I tried to ignore my feelings and do what I thought I “should” do, the sicker I got. For the last year of my marriage, I could literally not breathe because I had chronic sinus infections. I’m not just talking about headaches and stuffiness; I’m talking about filling Kleenex with gobs of green gunk every hour of every day and feeling like I was drowning in mucus. Nighttime was especially miserable because I could never breathe through my nose. As soon as I left the marriage, my sinuses cleared up and I’ve not had another problem since. Was I allergic to my ex? Was my constant inner turmoil causing psychic congestion? All I know for sure is that not honoring my true feelings made me very ill indeed.

I feel your journey was similar; when you began to honor your true feelings and fulfill your true needs, you healed yourself. I encourage you to view yourself not as being in remission but rather as cured. Remember: every cell in our bodies is replaced on a regular basis, so the body you have today is NOT the same body you had years ago when you experienced problems. You have recreated yourself and have every reason to expect your health and well-being to continue because you now know how to take good care of yourself.

I also feel that the extreme discomfort you experienced when your ex was in your house was largely a result of your own fear; you had already learned to associate him with not being good for you, so when he came in and started touching all of your things, you became anxious. This was also an instinctive reaction, of course: your body knows he is not good for you, but since you were trying to be nice and polite, your instincts had to shout to be heard. Imagine that you have a loyal Golden Retriever. What would she have done in that situation? No doubt she would have started barking like crazy and refused to let your ex in. This is an uninhibited instinctive reaction; instead, you stifled your bark, put on a smile, and wound up feeling ill.

You could go one of two ways with this: you could nicely refuse to allow your ex anywhere near you or your things, or you could stop giving him so much power over you. (Personally, I would opt for the latter!)

In the situation you describe, your ex had more power than you; his chi was stronger because fear/negative emotions made you weak and vulnerable. Whenever we succumb to negative emotions, we become vulnerable to negative experiences. No one can create in your experience unless you let them; people can only negatively affect you when you are not consciously creating what you want and your own vibration is not soaring. If you are aligned with peace, love, joy and well-being, people can knock themselves out trying to upset you or control you but they will have no emotional power over you whatsoever.

There are many things you can do to reclaim your power. First, cultivate a high, fearless vibration. Assume that all is and will be well. Send positive thoughts and feelings out. Develop greater chi through practices like meditation, martial arts, yoga and prayer. Consciously channel your energy toward what you desire through various rituals like surrounding yourself with protection and cleansing your environment.

For example, you could erect a force field around your space to keep your ex from wanting to come in or touch your stuff. Have fun with this; play at it. Wouldn’t it be amusing if, after you erected this psychic force field, he stopped at the threshold and kept his hands in his pockets? If you lighten up and exercise your own power, you’ll feel better whether you work obvious magic or not.

Finally, try to send your ex love. Whether he chooses to bless you back or not, you will brighten your own world. Begin by silently saying the divine in me greets the divine in thee whenever you see him or think about him. Remember that you are both more than your personalities this lifetime, and that your souls are part of a very old story. By reaching for this higher, more loving attitude, it won’t matter what he does; you will set yourself free from any icky old karmic patterns and align with the peace and well-being you desire.


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Relationship Still Haunts her Many Years Later

Filed Under: Destiny/Higher Plan, Emotional Well-being, Healing, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Relationship Still Haunts her Many Years Later


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I am wondering about a relationship that started when I was 20 and ended three years later. It was very rocky and passionate; it still haunts me to this day. I am married to a wonderful man who is in many ways the opposite of the man who left me to pursue his dream career. Despite my best efforts to get over it, this haunts me daily. Is this unfinished business, some sort of karmic destiny, or am I obsessed by what I can’t have ever again in this life? When I found out that he got married five years after we had broken up, I felt like someone had winded me. It was one of the worst and most embarrassing moments of my life, since our mutual aquaintance assumed I was past all of this. I’m hoping you have some insights for me. Will we ever meet again to put this to rest? Will we be together in the next life?

Anne

Dear Anna:

You are not alone; I receive many questions like yours at Soul Arcanum, and also do many readings for people who have similar issues. You’ve asked if this is unfinished business, karma or obsession, and I think all three are going on. You have a strong karmic connection to this individual, which means your relationship never really ended – it just went dormant on a physical level for a while. There is a lot of unfinished emotional business here, which is causing you to obsess about him. Though we tend to view obsession as something that is unhealthy, obsession is really a call from our subconscious that we are missing something important. In this case, it’s a sign that you have a deep wound that needs more healing.

Many people continue to have dreams about important people from their past for the rest of their lives. I often dream about my ex-husband; in fact, I probably dream about him more than I dream about my current husband, which feels strange and unsettling. In these dreams, I am usually hoping my ex will be “nice” to me. At first, I never had dreams in which he was kind to me, but over the years, the dreams have gotten more and more positive. I always wake up from those dreams feeling ridiculously happy that he bothered to give me the time of day.

These dreams have led me to realize that I still feel guilty about our marriage ending and some of the choices I made when we were together. I feel bad that I was unable to fulfill my vow to remain married to him until death. While I am very happily remarried, my ex doesn’t seem happy in his own life, so I still have a strong desire to make sure he is okay. Every time I interact with him in some way, I am reminded that he may still be hurting because of choices I made in the past. Though I may have moved on in my physical life, on a metaphysical level, I am still a few decades back, trying to find a way to make everything all better.

I also often think about a boyfriend I had in college who hurt me very deeply. As he was an angel when he was sober but a devil when he was drunk, I just can’t believe some of the things he did when he was drinking. There is a part of me that still seeks to understand and make peace with it all. Whether we are dreaming about someone from the past or they keep popping into our minds when we’re awake, it’s a sign that we have some unfinished business with that person or a wound that needs more healing.

The feelings you describe are both normal and very common. Just as the body is constantly seeking to return to balance, the soul is constantly seeking to work out any kinks or issues in order to find new peace and understanding. On a conscious or physical level, we may have moved on, but if there is debris from the past that has been swept under the proverbial rug, our subconscious mind will keep trying to drag it out so we can deal with it more appropriately.

This is what is happening when someone from the past pops into our minds. Usually, the feelings we last experienced in relationship to that person come with the thought of them; at the first hint of emotional pain, most of us stuff our thoughts of that person back under the rug. Thus we may go through years of having someone pop into our minds, for if we keep pushing them back under the rug, they remain where we may trip over them every time we pass through that inner room.

As we move through life, we are constantly growing in strength and wisdom. When we become more capable of dealing with something that happened in the past, we tend to notice thoughts about it more because we aren’t so quick to shove it back under the rug. When we finally become capable of truly dealing with something, instead of pushing those thoughts away, we begin to turn toward them with curiosity, as you are doing now. We begin to ask why this person keeps coming to mind and perhaps drawing correlations between what we’re experiencing, the patterns we’ve experienced over the years, and this old wound or issue from long ago. Instead of shoving thoughts of that person under the rug, we hold them up to the light and ponder the best way to deal with them.

It is highly likely that you will be drawn back into relationship with each other in future lives so that you can work through the karma between you. Further, whether positive or negative in nature, strong emotions create a gravitational force that draws us toward the object of those feelings. However, it is important to keep in mind that these relationships are ultimately not about the other person; they are about our own personal lessons and issues. While we may have karma with someone, we don’t actually need to interact with that person to learn whatever that relationship may have to teach us or to make peace with that individual. All of that can happen on a metaphysical level.

That being said, if you keep thinking about someone from the past and longing for closure, I think you’re wise to honor those thoughts and feelings as signs from your inner being regarding something important that you need in order to feel the way you want to feel and create what you want to create in your life. In many readings on such matters, Spirit has encouraged people to act on such feelings by seeking the person involved out and meeting with them. This can be very powerful, for it almost always leads to a far different experience than the person expects. For example, when the person who has felt “in love” with a certain individual for many years meets them in person again, they may realize that the person they have been in love with no longer exists and perhaps never did. In other words, they’ve been in love with an idea of a person, not a real individual. If someone has <q>hated</q> someone for years, they may realize upon meeting them again that they are not the monster of their memory and imagination. Such meetings can spark sudden and lasting change as they lead the sufferer to let go of fantasies rooted in the past and move on to more fully enjoy present realities.

When the individual can’t be met in person for some reason, meeting on a metaphysical level can be just as healing. This is especially helpful when the individual who is “haunting” you has died. While these encounters can be affected via meditation, a hypnotherapist would be able to guide you into a deeper level of experience and help you work through any strong feelings that come up so that you can achieve lasting peace and freedom from obsession.

Soul Arcanum

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Healing Karma with Father who Abused Her

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Karma, Past Lives, Reincarnation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Healing Karma with Father who Abused Her


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I “divorced” my father when I was in my late 20s because he was a pedophile who refused to acknowledge the harm he’d done to my siblings and me. I pressed criminal charges against him when I was in my early 30s and he went to jail. My brother kept in contact with him until a few years ago when he took a sexploitation trip through Thailand. I’ve been through 12-step programs for incest survivors and have done a lot of inner work. My children know why they don’t have a second grandfather. I consider myself a full survivor but want to know if there are ways to complete the emotional healing process so I don’t carry unfinished karma into my next incarnation. Thank you for the great work you do through your columns. My friends and family appreciate them too.

Moneca

Dear Moneca:

First I have to commend you for all the inner work you’ve already done to heal from the past and empower yourself for the future. I also applaud your foresight, for you are right in assuming that until this experience is fully healed, it will come up again and again for you, if not in this lifetime, then in future lives.

My sense is that you’ve pretty much made peace with this on a personal level; what’s left is to make peace with your father so you can align with a higher level of experience with him in future lives. On the other hand, you may already be at the point where you can look at the blessings that came from this experience and give thanks for the unique journey that has been yours, which is a sign that you’re at peace and ready to move on.

Before those readers who can’t see how such an experience could possibly involve any sort of blessing start sending me hate mail, let me explain. I’m sure this difficult journey made you question life and become a deeper thinker, that it stretched you to find inner strength you didn’t know you had, and that it led you to develop compassion for everyone who suffers abuse. We tend to view painful experiences as curses, but in my experience, the more life stretches our capacity to endure, the stronger and wiser we grow.

There is a key turning point in the spiritual healing process where one who has been abused begins to find compassion for the abuser. Let me share my own experience to demonstrate that I know what I’m talking about.

When I was a teenager, I was stalked and eventually raped by a crazy guy in his twenties. Though I was too young to fully realize it at the time, I have come to understand that our meeting was destined and that we already had a strong but troubled karmic bond.

His mother cut and styled hair out of her home, which is where we first encountered each other – at least, in this lifetime. When I saw him, every hair on my body stood up at attention. There was a sense of instant recognition I’ve come to associate with reuniting with someone from a past life, only this time, the feeling was far from positive. In fact, I was inexplicably terrified.

Since there was no logical reason to feel this way, I pushed the feelings aside. It’s too long a story to go into in detail here, but this guy must have felt something strong too because he began to stalk me. I would be driving home from work and see him in his car, following me. When I left school for the day, he would be in the parking lot, leaning against his car, just staring at me. He began to call me every night. When I tried to shake him off, he began to threaten to harm my little brother or my friends. I had learned that he had a number of friends who were convicted felons, so I decided to take his threats seriously.

He stalked me for months before he managed to get me alone; that’s when the rape occurred. I guess I was naïve, but I was truly shocked at how violent he became. It was following that experience that I took my power back, shed my fear of him, and took a stand by telling him that if he ever contacted me again, I would go to the police. (I know I should have gone to the police anyway, but I was sure my father would kill him if he found out, and I couldn’t bear the thought of my dad spending the rest of his life in prison.)

The turning point in my healing process came when I realized that I would rather be me and be raped by this man than to be him. As I struggled to understand why he had done what he’d done, I realized that his inner world was a really twisted, ugly place. I only had to live with his ugliness for a while; for him, it was a constant and inescapable prison.

As I had karmic encounters with other people from past lives, I also realized that I must have some history with this guy. I don’t know what happened back then, but I came to understand that we were both unconsciously acting out some old patterns. I also realized that if I didn’t want to keep circling this enemy throughout future lives, I would have to consciously change things for the better.

This is where your own story comes in. While I am in no way suggesting you try to find a way to justify what your father did or equating an attack by a stranger with the profound betrayal of a parent, it’s nevertheless true that in order to fully heal and set yourself free from this for all time, you would be wise to try to find compassion for your father.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be him? There is a lot of wisdom in saying to yourself, There but for the grace of God go I. While people like to tell themselves that they could never be as selfish or cruel as the individuals they most despise, in my view, that sort of thinking is a good way to be born as just such an individual because walking some miles in their shoes may the only way to develop compassion and understanding for them.

On my own quest for healing, it occurred to me that I may have hurt this man really badly at some point. As I pondered the karma between us, I also imagined him being raped or abused in a future lifetime in order to learn some compassion, and that’s when it occurred to me that perhaps this was why I had been attacked – to develop greater kindness and compassion than I had embodied in the past. (To better understand karmic relationships and why we reincarnate with the same people over and over again, you might want to explore the research of Michael Newton, Ph.D.)

If finding compassion for your dad proves too difficult, hypnotherapy may be just what you’re looking for. A gifted therapist can guide you in hearing your higher self so you can determine what needs to be done next in your healing process, help you heal and release any issues that are still sore spots for you, and empower you to move past any beliefs that could be preventing you from fully resolving all of this. For example, if you believe it’s not safe to forgive because you could be hurt again, working with a hypnotherapist can help you reprogram your belief system so you can bless yourself with greater peace and healing.

You will know that you have completed the healing process when you can give thanks for the wisdom, strength, compassion and other benefits you received from this experience, and when you can feel compassion for your father and sincerely hope he finds his way to the same peace you hunger for in your own heart.

Soul Arcanum

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Can Spiritual Growth Lead to Divorce?

Filed Under: Relationships, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Can Spiritual Growth Lead to Divorce?


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Dear Soul Arcanum:

Does our life partner change as we grow and develop on our path? As we become more spiritual, does God sometimes feel that we are ready for another partner, and is that why some marriages break? Thanks and warm regards to you!

Kiran

Dear Kiran:

I do see a strong relationship between spiritual growth and divorce. While spiritual growth can lead to incompatibility in relationships, the end of big relationships can also spark new spiritual growth. Of course, people can also avoid personal growth by bailing out of marriage or by resisting the end of an obsolete relationship.

Over the years, I’ve watched many new spiritual seekers experience upheaval in every area of their lives, and I went through something like this myself when first awakening. This is such a common phenomenon that there is even a word for it: “spiritual emergency.” It generally occurs when a person first awakens to a conscious spiritual path and begins to seek a more expanded way of being and deeper sense of meaning in their lives.

In this newly awakened state, people begin to question pretty much everything, such as who they have assumed themselves to be, what they’ve believed to be right and true, and many of the decisions they made in the past, including whether and whom to marry. As they search for an extraordinary level of experience, they have a tendency to break free of conventional occupations, lifestyles and situations.

This is all in the name of living a more authentic life. Most people go to school, pursue certain careers, get married and “settle down” simply because this is what everyone else seems to be doing. When a person awakens from this reverie, they begin to live in a more conscious manner, which naturally leads them to abandon much of what has already been established.

However, there is some danger in ascribing our feelings of attraction for others to some divine plan. Though I sense this is not what you want to hear, in my experience, when spiritual growth is behind the dissolution of a marriage, there is no third party involved. If spiritual growth is the driving force behind a divorce, a person will leave the marriage for their own true selves, not for someone else.

While it’s possible to have spiritual growth be the main cause of divorce and for there to be a lover (or potential lover) waiting in the wings, it’s generally wise to make sure that the reason for ending a marriage is not this other person. I’m even going to go out on a big limb and suggest that it’s never a good idea to leave one person for another. Statistics support me in this, for research indicates that when a person leaves a spouse to pursue a relationship with a third party, that second relationship is twice as likely to fall apart as the relationship that was ended.

Further, people who end a marriage for someone else are the most likely to regret getting divorced. This is because the divorce was not caused by spiritual growth but a desire to avoid something and unfounded assumptions. Since all relationships are important, if we’ve already made a sacred vow to someone, I believe we owe it to everyone involved to base our decisions about that relationship on the relationship itself instead of our hopes or feelings for some third party.

It is true that spiritual growth can make us incompatible with someone we used to be in harmony with. While both partners can simply grow in different directions, usually one partner awakens before the other. This can create tension, especially if partners put pressure on each other to be more like them. The loneliness of feeling unaccepted and misunderstood can lead one or both partners to search for kindred spirits, which can lead to all sorts of confusion and complications.

Since like does attract like, we are naturally attracted to people who are of a similar vibration. We are also naturally drawn toward people to whom we already have a deep spiritual bond due to other/past life experiences. This pull doesn’t necessarily mean that being with them will make us happy, however – it just means we have something to gain from interacting with them.

People often feel irresistibly drawn toward each other and end up having a tumultuous sort of relationship because big karma drew them back together. Instead of happily ever after, what they get is a whole new set of challenges. In my reading work, I often see love affairs as destined connections that aren’t meant to be permanent but are instead designed to help individuals reconnect with who they really are and what they really want. As such, they involve strong feelings of attraction, but are only meant to be temporary bridges between what has been and a more authentic future. It is foolish to expect such attractions to fulfill all our dreams for love or to allow them to affect how we feel about the other people in our lives.

For what it’s worth, I think the high divorce rate is a natural sign of the times, for life on Earth has changed dramatically since the invention of marriage. Where we used to struggle to physically survive, we now have the luxury of pursuing emotional fulfillment and spiritual growth. The pace of life has also increased dramatically, and we’ve all gained an incredible amount of freedom. Where we used to live in one place our whole lives and have few choices in terms of mates, we can now travel around the world and connect with anyone on the planet with the help of the internet.

As a result of all of these changes, people are living the equivalent of several lifetimes’ worth of experiences in just one incarnation, which means they are growing and changing at a faster rate than ever before. Given this new pace, it just makes sense that we may need several lifetimes’ worth of relationships in order to keep making progress.

I’m not suggesting we abandon marriage whenever the impulse strikes us – far from it. To determine the value of a relationship, we must ask ourselves if it is based on love or fear. If people stay together because they’re worried about how others will react if they split up, they are staying together out of fear. One might argue that they are staying together out of love for those other people, but the bottom line is that they are afraid of what will happen if they listen to their hearts. When we do anything from fear, it will eventually break down and lead us back to make a new decision.

Though we might be able to physically force people to stay together, love can’t be legislated, and hearts can’t be bound by spoken words or written contracts. We should stay with someone because we love them and want to be with them, for this the only sort of relationship that proves to be truly happy for everyone involved.

Though we tend to view the choice to divorce in a negative light, from a higher spiritual perspective, it’s more like a graduation from one phase of life and the launch of a fresh new beginning. We don’t condemn someone who has long been miserable in a particular career when they finally quit that job to pursue their dreams; we celebrate their courage and their determination to live a fuller, more rewarding life. With the right perspective, the end of a marriage can similarly be celebrated as a tremendous opportunity to expand and enrich our lives. For more on how divorce can be a positive spiritual experience, I recommend the book Spiritual Divorce: Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life by Debbie Ford.

Soul Arcanum

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