As I am sure everyone has heard, Mark Sanford, the Governor of SOUTH Carolina (not coincidentally home of the Gamecocks) recently admitted to an emotional and sexual relationship with an Argentinian woman after he disappeared for a few days from the Governor's mansion, his staff, and wife and four kids. During his ongoing mea culpa/apology tour, Sanford has said that this is a love story and not just another tawdry affair, that he has had relationships with other women that didn't cross the sex line, and that his mistress is his soul mate. The major thing I have learned from the Sanford affair is that he should just shut up. We don't need to be the forum for his public soul cleansing, and he has made a lot of us wonder more about his emotional balance than his moral judgment as a basis for whether he can continue to govern. But I digress.
The real purpose of this Carlitude posting is to explore this idea of a soul mate. In his novel Brida, when Brida, a seeker, asks Wicca, her teacher in the Tradition of the Moon, about soul mates, Paolo Coehlo writes:
And when people think of reincarnation, they always come up against a very difficult question: if, in the beginning, there were so few people on the face of the earth, and now there are so many, where did all these new souls come from? . . . The answer is simple. . . In certain reincarnations, we divide into two.Our souls divide as do crystals and stars, cells and plants. . . Our soul divides in two and those two new souls are in turn transformed into two and so, within a few generations, we are scattered over a large part of the Earth.
We form part of what the alchemists cal the Anima mundi, the Soul of the World . . . The truth is that if the Anima mundi were merely to keep dividing, it would keep growing, but it would also become gradually weaker. That is why, as well as dividing into two, we also find ourselves. And that process of finding ourselves is called Love.
(If you're interested in finding out more about Brida, click on the book cover under Carlitudinous Books in the right hand column.)
As we follow Brida's quest, we find that the essence of life is finding one's soul mate. Later, her current lover, Lorens, explains to Brida that this account of reincarnation is akin to current thinking in astrophysics by discussing the dispersion of matter and energy that occurred after the Big Bang. In his account, all that exists physically and metaphysically was scattered across the Universe at the Big Bang. And so it is likely that we encounter matter and energy, in the forms of other persons and sentient beings and love, creativity, and the virtues. If you have some familiarity with chaos theory and the new science, you probably recognize some of this theorizing.
What we have here are two understandings of soul mate. In Wicca's account, we each have soul mates in human form who are roaming reality and our job in life is to find one, fall in love, and live out our lives in a magical, romantic, happy place. Such is the stuff of novels, Hollywood epics, and the Mark Sanfords of the world.
From Lorens's account however, I take a different understanding. From the Big Bang onward, elements of soul have been scattered throughout the cosmos. Occasionally, we come upon a soul fragment that is resonant with the fragments we currently have in place. Sometimes, the resonance is overwhelming, and that's where true love comes in--again with the novels, the movies, and Mark Sanford. More often, it's subtle, as when we make as friend, create something that is both useful and beautiful, do a good deed, or feel our hearts lift. In any case, the resonance of souls gives us the energy and encouragement we need to overcome the overwhelming entropy--the slide toward nothingness--that characterizes the soulless life.
I don't think finding soul fragments that resonate with one's own is all that hard. In fact, I suspect it happens every day. Sure, there are times when we come upon some particularly powerful collections that are especially meaningful, but mostly we pick up little fragmentoids along the way to building a whole, fulfilled soul for ourselves throughout life. It happens when we pursue friends and lovers, pick up the saxophone, read a great book, mow the lawn, ride a bike, hug a child, teach a lesson, hear a song. Whenever we feel ourselves to be part of something else, we take in some energy, some connection that moves us in a soulful direction. What we make of that depends on whether we are looking to make something of it at all.
All of life contains elements of soul that have been scattered about through eternity. Our job is to put them together. What makes it hard is that they don't necessarily happen along in any sort of order or structure that we can make sense of easily. Also, not everything that is attractive is soulful. And sometimes, what we come upon is just a shiny, fantasy-filled bauble that looks and feels exciting and is presented as something we think we have to have.
And so, soul construction gets complicated--as in the very public case of Governor Sanford. The key to soul-making then becomes an inquiry into how the fragment/bauble provides spiritual nourishment. Sometimes, we have to make choices, because the constructions we
have already have a value that shouldn't be tampered with--once again,
take heed Governor Sanford. The decisions then are the soulful resonances that take us toward wholeness.
In Brida, Coelho's characters have to make tough decisions about pursuing soul mates, decisions that are cast in mystical terms but aren't very different from the decisions all of us make in our lives. How Mark Sanford constructs his soul out of his life experiences--a wife and four
kids, a successful career, the Governorship, and his Argentine
bauble--is his to struggle with. Most of us work through those decisions in quiet desperation or with close-by family and friends. I wish Mark Sanford would do the same.
