November 14, 2009 | 1:59 pm

Soulmates

Posted by Ilana Angel

Follow JewishJournal.com on

According to Wikipedia: a soulmate is somebody with whom one has a feeling of deep and natural affinity, love, intimacy, sexuality, spirituality, and/or compatibility. A related concept is that of the twin flame or twin soul – which is thought to be the ultimate soulmate, the one and only other half of one’s soul, for which all souls are driven to find and join.

One theory of soulmates, presented by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, is that humans originally consisted of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them.

Some people believe that souls are literally made and/or fated to be the mates of each other, or to play certain other important roles in each other’s lives and according to theories popularized by Theosophy and in a modified form by Edgar Cayce, God created androgynous souls, equally male and female.

Later theories postulate that the souls split into separate genders, perhaps because they incurred karma while playing around on the Earth, or “separation from God”. Over countless reincarnations, each half seeks the other. When all karmic debt is purged, the two will fuse back together and return to the ultimate.

If any of this is true then we each get one.  There is one other person out there who is destined to be our soulmate and when you think about how many people there are in the world how are we ever expected to find that one person in billions of options?

Are there different levels of soulmate?  My ex-husband is not the person I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with but I have a delicious child who completes my life so could it be that my son is my soulmate and that is the great love of my life?

Can you go through life constantly searching for this person and never find them because maybe they got tired of searching for you and are with someone else who is really close and perhaps good enough?  Is finding an almost perfect match a more realistic way to look at love and if you do find an almost perfect match do you shut off all parts of you that are looking or do you keep one eye open?

I have always believed in the theory of a soulmate but to be honest I never really took the time to look up what the true meaning of it was and now that I have I’m thinking that it is near impossible to find.  I will keep looking of course but I must say that I’m a little discouraged.

Love is complicated and searching for it is draining but waiting for it to find you is also exhausting so where so you draw the line between hoping and searching?  At the end of the day I can put faith in God that there will be guidance in leading us to one another and faith in my soulmate that he will not settle and keep looking for me and remind myself that each day brings me one step closer if I keep the faith.

Shabbat Shalom.