Searching for a Soulmate? Seek no further.
People are always writing articles on how to find your “soulmate.” Seeing yet another one of those articles and listening to some interviews with spiritual teachers prompted me to write a little bit on this subject.
Who longs for a soulmate? Why do we look outside of ourselves? After all these years, I realize I am my own best friend, lover, and soulmate. I am my own best company–keeping good company with myself, entertaining and amusing myself (if not others) with my unique creativity, witticisms, passion, and desires.
But, still, after losing a few soulmates in my life and plenty of heartbreaks–and as I get older and grayer–I do desire that deep, intimate relationship with another again in my life. However, overthinking and obsessing about it doesn’t make it happen.
In her latest book, The Ecstasy of Surrender, popular author, speaker, and psychologist Dr. Judith Orloff encourages us to get out of our obsessive minds, our linear thinking, and get back to the heart. “Obsession is a constrictive energy,” whereas the heart is open and expansive. How do we get out of our heads and into the expansive heart? That is the practice!
Acceptance of and gratitude for what is, and trust and surrender into the unknowable future are essential to our heart-opening healing practices. I believe surrender is about letting go of control, surrendering “my will” to “Thy will”–letting Higher Power take the wheel. “Surrender will bring you happiness if you trust,” said Dr. Judith Orloff in a recent interview on New Dimensions radio. Trust is where you believe that right relationship is out there for you, even in the absence of evidence. (And the absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.)
As The Secret and the teachings of Abraham-Hicks remind us, everything we desire is already there for us; we just need to trust and to become a vibrational match for that which we desire. Our thoughts create our world…intention and attention…energy flows where our thoughts go. That is why our spiritual practices include nurturing and self-loving exercises, for we need to become and be the lover that we wish to attract.
Every breath in every moment is a chance to detach and surrender. Focusing our attention and concentrating on our breathing brings us instantly back to the heart. Trust is the bliss place where worry cannot be.
Believe me, there are many distractions all day long which keep me in my head and not my heart. How about you? The phone ringing, the dogs barking, the emails, the Facebook chatter, the clutter, the bills to pay, this person wants this and that person needs that. How to carve out some quiet time to be still and surrender to the breath, the heart?
Getting out in Nature is vital to balancing our head and heart. Here are some tools from my personal toolbox that have worked for me over the years (in no particular order and some less quiet than others):
- yoga asanas and pranayam
- chanting
- singing
- drumming
- polarity therapy
- Reiki
- sound healing
- swimming, floating in the ocean
- walking/hiking in Nature
- biking
- sweat lodge
- ritual
- sauna
- tapping techniques
- hypnotherapy
- writing, journaling
- sitting in silent meditation
- creative visualization (ala Shakti Gawain)
- counseling
- hypnotherapy
- sound bath
- cranio-sacral therapy
- massage
- firewalking
- Holotropic breathwork
- Zero Point Balancing
- Twelve Step support groups
- prayer!
Loving yourself, taking good care of yourself, is work! Loving yourself and truly loving others requires a warrior spirit according to Susan Piver, author of Wisdom of a Broken Heart.
“Love is the least safe thing there is. It is fierce” (Susan Piver). In yoga, the warrior poses are the most open and vulnerable. Our only way forward is to be authentic, genuine, fiercely open and heart-centered.
Be a Love Warrior today. Open your heart, allow yourself to be vulnerable with another. Let Trust replace fear and worry. Let people see your authentic self. We are radiant beings of Light and Love and we need to shine on. . .like the moon and the stars and the sun.
“I will be gentle with myself, I will love myself. I am a child of the Universe being born each moment.”