A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on this deeper level. This kind of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension — seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence. This means recognizing that we both have an important part to play in helping each other become more fully who we are.
Someone who loves us can often see our soul potential more clearly than we can ourselves. When this happens, it has a catalytic effect; it invites and encourages dormant, undeveloped parts of us to come forth and find expression. Indeed, we are often most strongly attracted to those who we sense “will make us live — and die — more intensely… Sister souls recognize each other.”, as the French writer Suzanne Lilar points out. A soul connection not only inspires us to expand, but also forces us to confront whatever stands in the way of that expansion.
— John Welwood, “Love and Awakening”
I’ve known two men who I loved deeply who both told me that they did not have souls. Yet there I sat, watching their souls shining brightly within them while they denied their very presence. It mystified me, that they were unable to even see what shone so brilliantly and obviously before me. Both of these friendships ended badly, with neither one able to acknowledge that they loved me, or at least that they cared for me as anything more than a friend. But both have gone on to have deep loving relationships with others somehow after my experiences with them, after struggling to attain any intensity or intimacy in their lives for many years.
This is a fairly common theme in my life, enabling other people to find their own depths and be able to begin to pull them out and into loving relationships. I’m going through another one of these periods with a good friend now, which is why I haven’t been blogging as much here.
I can only think of a few past boyfriends who didn’t go on in their very next relationship or one shortly after to find a deep love. It seems that even if someone can’t quite connect to my soul, I can often allow them to find their own. I used to think of myself as a sort of mirror, that acknowledges deeply what is within other people, and sometimes allows them to catch a glimpse of themselves. It is something I strive for now in friendships and other relationships, often not caring what they might think of me as a person, but only caring that they are able to, or sometimes forced to, acknowledge what is within themselves.
The more we bring forth and manifest our deeper potentials, the richer our soul — our responsiveness to our own experience, to other people, and to life — becomes. And the more we can serve as a channel for expressing the larger life of the spirit. The evolving soul is like a jewel that is continually shedding its impurities and growing more lustrous as it becomes even more translucent to the sun.
Although a whole range of larger human capacities is potentially available to everyone, each of us has special access to certain qualities, as well as unique aptitudes for combining and expressing them. Every soul has its own individual, jewel-like character, its own “suchness”. And we each have our own unique path of soulwork — how we need to develop in order to manifest this deeper potential. Two lovers with a soul connection recognize that they can help each other move forward along this path.
— John Welwood, “Love and Awakening”
One Response
Sometimes the purpose of a relationship is simply to learn lessons, and I cannot speak for your experiences but there were relationships before I was married, and each of them were necessary to who I became. And I’m sure that each of them in turn became someone different than they were, and hopefully all of us have grown in positive ways.