Understanding soul mates.
I asked you for your opinion on soul mates, and below you'll find your answers.
Read on to see if what comes changes your views.
What exactly is a soul mate?
A soul mate is someone who you have a feeling of 'deep or natural affinity' with. This means you have a natural and easy feeling of closeness and understanding of each other. This can be in a range of difference senses, from romance, love, comfort to spirituality, trust and platonic relationships.
A soul mate tends to indicate a lifelong bond, someone that makes you feel complete.
The Soul Mate Experience:
According to Bloomstein, Y. (2001) the soul mate experience can be summarised in a range of stages, gathered from common elements between different participants experiences in a phenomenological study. They broke this down into 16 common elements.
Some of the most interesting included:
Ease of adjustment: in comparison to other relationships- the relationship with the person felt easier to adjust to and get used to.
Mutual growth: you grow together and do what you can to help each other grow in different ways.
Predetermination: The feeling that this relationship was determined by an already written plan.
Soul maturation: you experience intense situations that help you develop individually , because when you become one- you have to be whole first.
All encompassing nature: The person becomes everything to you and fulfils all the different roles in your life. They're like a friend, a partner, a sibling, a parent all in one.
Do soul mates actually exist?
Soul Mates: from a religious perspective:
The Quran states:
"It is He who created you from a single soul, and from that He created it's mate: so that you may dwell in serenity with her"
In Islam, everything is predetermined- written in a divine plan. This includes your life partner, or your soul mate. The reality of soul mates is beautifully reflected in Islam in the way that everything is created in complementary pairs. From day and night, to life and death, to us and our pairs. This partnership is solidified through marriage, and carried over until the afterlife.
Soul mates in Psychology:
According to Shauna H Springer soul mates do exist but with a twist. Springer suggests that although the idealistic suggestion of someone who you are destined to be with can often be doubted, we can become someone soulmate.
Through the effort to make your relationship (whatever form of that it is) as beautiful as possible, you can become soulmates. This is because the relationship will become so intricate and deeply layered that the person becomes irreplaceable to you. At this point, it can be argued, that you have become soul mates.
The way that soul mates are interpreted will differ between people. Don't go searching for it, but beautify and develop yourself own soul first- and if your soul mate is meant to come to you, when the time is right, they will.
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