What is a Soul Mate?
I guess at some level I’ve always felt a bit removed from the “mating” concept. Of course, it’s easy to point to me being gay and say, “well, no wonder it didn’t add up in your head!” I’m not sure it’s that simple. I think it really started after our class field trip to the Robert Crown Center for Health Education. It was the field trip: the one where we learned about our changing bodies and how that factored into the sexual reproduction cycle. Like most children that age, I was growing more and more curious about the relationship with my body and how it related to others, but the whole idea of my body being sexualized was brand new. I assume I don’t need to walk through what I learned that day; rather, I want to turn some attention to what happened shortly after. As you can imagine, the field trip elicited a lot more questions in my mind as I began to consider how I fit into what I learned. Ok…so I’m a man, so that means I’ll be growing hair here, here, and here…and I’m supposed to do this thing with a woman to make a baby. I was perplexed and too afraid to turn to my parents for guidance, so when we had our next family gathering, I talked to my male cousin who was less than a year younger than me about this new terminology. After we heard some crude references on Beavis and Butt-head, he asked what a few words meant, and it launched me into a whole explanation. It was later that night my father pulled me aside and told me that I cannot talk about those things with my cousin, who for all intents and purposes was like a brother, because he went to a private, Lutheran school. I shut my mouth and avoided bringing it up to anyone else despite the steady flow of questions seeping into my mind.
It was around this time that I had a crush on a girl in my neighborhood. She was beautiful, fearless, sweet, funny, and had a gorgeous voice. We laughed a lot, and I fell in love with her smile. We were good friends, and I was drawn even closer because I wanted to be like her, to learn from her expression/energy. Following the lessons at Robert Crown, I realized that my differences would separate me from that opportunity more and more over time. The only way to be like her was to be with her, so I put more effort into being around her, and this eventually lead to others’ questioning if we ever kissed. It’s not that I didn’t want to; I didn’t really know what it meant. Our strong bond shook under the weight of the tension surrounding our sexual identities, which clouded our consciousness. We were losing touch. Is this how all relationships between men and women function? Is our outer sexualization the basis of our connections? Our deepest trust? Our soul mate? Anyways, I finally asked at a later point if we could kiss, but she thought we were too young. That was fine by me; I respected her for using her voice in that moment. I wish I didn’t lose mine as a result, though. Outside, I shut down. Inside, the questions were crashing down in waves.
The next few decades saw a lot of experimentation with love, intimacy, detachment, and sexuality in my attempt to answer the question of the (every)day: what are you looking for? It took a while, but I found my answer: a soul mate. Somebody to love. Somebody to dance with. Somebody to kiss. Somebody to ponder life’s deepest questions. Somebody to laugh with. Somebody to whisper sweet nothings and bitter anythings to. Somebody who sees down to my soul. But in what shape will that “some” body be? There seems to be a pattern in my relationships. I am drawn to intimate bonds with women who channel strong masculine energies; things never progress sexually though it is often sensual. I am attracted to men with strong masculine energies, but the addition of sex into the equation increases my confusion. Emotional detachment is normalized by way of toxic masculinity, and I’m left wondering if I’m really looking for my soul mate or something more animalistic? Well…when it comes to my “mating” tendencies, it seems like God doesn’t accept my soul, anyways. “God Hates Fags” signs litter my peripheral vision, suggesting that whatever my soul feels doesn’t matter; my body does not align with the “naturalness” of creation. “Fags Burn in Hell” is even more damning…what my heart feels will land me right back in the cold, dark, isolation of hell that I’ve worked so hard to escape by accepting my soul. Again, it looks like a soul mate has more to do with the mating capacity of the bond compared to the soulful connection, that sex is key in reaching the soul while contraception serves as the divine demonstration of naturalness. Are gay men not meant to have a true soul mate?
When I opened the pages of The 72 Names of God to Soul Mate, I was immediately confronted by my shame: “When a single unified soul is set to enter into this material dimension, it is first divided into two halves—male and female. As these two halves of one soul undergo transformation in the physical world, either through suffering and ordeal or through proactive spiritual transformation, they progressively draw closer to one another” (Berg 105). Of course! Of course…it boils down to that: man and woman. The Adam and Eve arguments were right all along…there was no Adam and Steve. I guess I am destined to be forever split; my soul’s mate must be a woman even though the bond may not elicit the same level of authenticity, vulnerability, passion, trust, and acceptance I might otherwise feel with a man. Maybe the signs are right; maybe I’m damned forever because of my mating tendencies. I’ll never find my true soul mate. Geez…I can be such a drama queen. :P I’ve been here before…and in turning back to Gender Non-Conforming, I find a life vest courtesy of Robert Jensen and Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, “If men are going to be full human beings, we first have to stop being men” (143). If we remove the man from Adam, would there have been an Eve? What are we left with? The soul.
While the mating concept has been a stumbling block throughout my life, “soulfulness” is even more foreign. I mean, there is a pretty obvious marker for my maleness…my soul is buried under layers of skin, blood, and bone so it’s difficult to make out what exactly it is. Is it…human…? I mean, I can’t imagine that my soul has a penis. What does it have and how can I be sure it’s prepared for it’s mate, because, as Berg reminds me, “When the time is ripe, true soul mates find one another, even if they are worlds apart—whether physically, on opposite sides of the globe, or spiritually, with contrasting lifestyles and backgrounds” (105). What if my soul mate is already in my life? See…it’s like a tsunami of questions, and they can only be answered if I go back before Robert Crown. Before I saw my penis as the manifestation of my masculine energy. Before my feminine energy began to waver and dissipate due to the social reality of maleness. Before I began to separate from my soul.
As I’ve referenced throughout this journaling process, I would sometimes identify with and/or portray female characters while growing up. I remember one of the last times I did it in the presence of others. My male friends and I went and saw The Santa Clause. It was magical and goofy, everything kids our age needed to launch into a new creative dimension of our own making, borrowing on the fantastical elements and characters from the movie. When deciding who would take on each role, I proudly stood up as Judy, the female elf who was around my age. I can’t say for certain what motivated me to be her…her poise? her cute smile? her subtle wit? I do know that I didn’t let any self-destructive judgment cloud my enjoyment. Mind you, this wasn’t far from the field trip to Robert Crown, probably within the same year. Soon after, the weight of masculinity (and a penis) clung to me, bringing shame and confusion whenever that feminine energy surfaced. I tried to bury that part of me deeper to avoid the labeling. The rejection. The burning in hell. But it kept popping up and forcing me to choose whether or not to be honest. Whether to share my soul. And more often than not, I chose to lie, too afraid to express my heart because I struggled to accept it myself.
When I inevitably hit rock bottom due to the separation between my heart and my mind/body, I recognized a need to rediscover my soul. To reclaim the buried authentic voice inside. To forgive the deceit and silence. On this long, strenuous path toward the light, I began to put the pieces of my soul back together. It had no particular shape at first, but over time, I recognized it as the outline of a web. Soon, I was learning about the threads that connect each of our souls together, about ways to communicate my soul, but there was still an issue…I wasn’t sure what my soul was. I proceeded to test my physical, emotional, and spiritual limits unlike I ever had before. The soul I was weaving represented my whole self, both feminine and masculine qualities, much like the dual energies of Adam and Eve. Eventually, my web was complete, or at least my soul had been revealed: Fearless, Mature, Sensual, Joyful, Confident, Peaceful. There it was…a map to a one-of-a-kind universe. And it’s not based on just my mating tendencies. I don’t have to burn in hell, after all.
So if I have a soul and accept that soul whole-heartedly, how do I go about finding my mate? Is it the person crazy enough to believe this stuff I’m spewing out here? The person who shares my posts the most? :P How do I finally find what I’m looking for? Well, in part I need to continue growing in my integrity and learning how to live the aspects of my soul openly. As much as I feel centered in my heart, I have reactive moments that can turn negative when I’m not sure how to be myself in the presence of others. Interestingly, when I consider the relationships I have now, I see how they are impacting my soul. I am learning how to be more fearless, mature, sensual, joyful, confident, and/or peaceful from those around me. Moreover, I believe I reflect aspects of others’ souls in a similar way. Suddenly, soul mates is like a game of chess; testing one anothers’ trust across an expansive field, moments of mercy, destruction, compromise, and heartache intermixed as we explore the boundaries of our physical, emotional, and spiritual connection. Check mate!
Does that make us soul mates…because we touch each others’ souls? Does it alter my identity if my soul mate is a specific gender? Even if we don’t fulfill the mating part? Though Berg makes it seem as if we only have one true soul mate, he concedes that the strengthening of all our bonds will benefit our well-being: “Moreover, the concept of soul mates does not refer only to marriage. The concept of soul mates also applies to relationships with friends, business colleagues, and partners in every sort of shared endeavor” (105). I must say, finding people to talk to about soulfulness in relation to all else is a perfect opportunity to develop soul mates…it practically does the work for you as you share in your experiences with love, intimacy, detachment, and death. Tough conversation pieces, I realize, but you begin to see beyond the limits of sexualization and grow even deeper in the bond. It takes time and patience, but as you proceed, your values are tested and strengthened, bringing you closer to actualizing your whole self. You don’t feel split into halves; you realize you don’t need another half to bring your life meaning. Because that’s what a true soul’s mate does, right? They give guidance and support along our journey toward unconditional soul acceptance…toward our universal wholeness. Why couldn’t they teach that at Robert Crown? :)