Soulmates

I've been thinking a bit today about soulmates. In my mind, there are different kinds of soulmates and luckily, Wikipedia backs me up on this:

Spiritual and religious - concepts of reincarnation and karma. Soulmates have spent many previous lifetimes together.

Karmic soulmate- someone who has a special mission or influence on one's life.

Companion soulmate - people with whom one has made a connection.

Twin soulmates - very close friends with whom one has strong bonds

Twin flame soulmate - a popular romantic belief that there is only one true soulmate

I feel as though I have and have had a few soulmates in my life, covering many of these different categories. One of them is my husband - and marrying one's romantic soulmate is not something I think happens to everyone, so it's not something I take for granted. I'm not sure anyone understands - or tolerates - me the way he does.

One of them was my best friend in college. By the definitions listed above, he was either karmic or a companion soulmate. He was not a romantic soulmate, though I suppose under different circumstances and timing in our lives, it might have been possible. But in the life we did live, it was never a thought beyond "what-if." Our friendship ended rather abruptly six years ago and I didn't get a chance to say good-bye the way I wanted to.

The truth is I didn't want the friendship to end at all, and it's been an open wound in my heart ever since. I vacillate between missing that friend and being angry at him, and I often wish we could have just one more conversation to forgive each other.

Elizabeth Gilbert describes a similar longing in her book, Eat, Love, Pray (which I am still reading, yes still.) Her emotional journey was sparked by her divorce and during her time studying spirituality at an Indian Ashram, she was struggling with the letting go.

"So what I asked of God that night on the Ashram roof was - given the reality that I would probably never speak to my ex-husband again - might there be some level upon which we could communicate? Some level on which we could forgive?" she writes.

She goes on to explain that she dropped into meditation and soon found herself inviting her husband to join her on the roof. 

"I asked him if he would be kind enough to meet me up here for this farewell event. Then I waited until I felt him arrive. And he did arrive."

And then, she describes the vision she saw.

"...they were just two cool blue souls who already understood everything. Unbound by their bodies, unbound by the complex history of their past relationship, they came together above this roof (above me, even) in infinite wisdom. Still in meditation, I watched these two cool blue souls circle each other, merge, divide again and regard each other's perfection and similarity. They knew everything. They knew everything long ago and they will always know everything. They didn't need to forgive each other; they were born forgiving each other."

I read a few more chapters, but this one was still resonating in my head when I went to bed. As I laid there with my eyes closed slipping into that state of mind between awake and asleep, I suddenly saw this flash of cool, blue light and heard a voice telling me that I too, could let go. I could call that friend to me in the same way, and finally be free. But it was so overwhelming and such a shock to my system that before I knew it, my body involuntarily snapped to attention and this thought crossed my mind: "I'm not ready."

Which was strange, because I thought I was. 

It was very intense, and kept me awake for a while longer. I tried to relax myself enough to see if it would happen again, but instead my mind kept flipping through other images, like a movie suddenly in fast forward. It was crazy... the restless brain at its best, I guess, and I finally fell asleep before I could find the "stop" button.