Loving through our preferences keeps us small
It was 6:30 in the morning as the sun was rising upon Lake Atitlan. My shaman friend and 6 others were headed to climb Tolimán. An alleged 4.5 hour hike up and down with a cacao ceremony in-between encouraged us all to push ourselves beyond our preferences for physical comfort, familiarity, and otherwise spending the day laying around our homes. I quickly found myself in fractionated socializing. The women of the group coalesced around each other, leaving the men to do the same. Those familiar with others naturally preferred spending time with those who they found easy to associate with, leaving me-the newest and most unknown member of the crew-mostly alone. So I decided to ask my new shaman friend all sorts of questions about his worldview, the Mayan lineage, and his shamanic history, which I found incredibly interesting, while I alleviated him from his heavy backpack, trading his with my much lighter rendition.
4 hours into a mostly vertical hike with ~ 40 lbs on my back, I could feel my knees twinge with pain as I lost most of my leg strength. I knew I had to forget my opportunity to glimpse the majestic views that awaited us at the peak because somehow I had to make it back down without any leg strength before sunset to be safe. A tearful goodbye to my shaman friend (we had a little LSD before the hike), and there I was tumbling and lurching my way back down, barefoot, with only a large bent log to support my exhausted body with. Barefoot because the blisters my boots had already rubbed were more painful than what the rocks offered the soles of my paralyzed feet.
When I was alone, I suddenly realized I never gave Cassandra the name of the volcano I was on. Such a fact would likely be moderately frightening to her, especially because my phone had zero functionality on the Guatemala networks. My Spanish speaking skills were almost none and yet I somehow had to navigate my way back to our home address without actually knowing what that address was. After 5 hours of flopping my body down the mountain, past the trash-covered coffee fields, limping through the village of Santiago Atitlán, I happened upon the last and only boat headed to my temporary home in San Pedro, with barely enough quetzales to pay the fare.
I could have used a credit card, I could have stayed in Santiago, I could have eaten and even paid $15 to call Cass to tell her I wouldn't be home, but I wanted to keep my promise with her that I would be home that same night. I let that desire drive me beyond what I thought my body was capable of, and when I got home, Cass saw how out-of-my-mind exhausted I was. A hoveled, dirty mess of a being who couldn't really walk or think clearly. I wanted to take her out to dinner to tell her all that I realized during my 10 hours of torture. All that I had come to appreciate in her--not through our sameness but because of the differences. The elements that make her uniquely not me in any way. The same elements that had me uncomfortably questioning the authorship of what seemed like divine intervention that brought us into our union 3 months before. The elements that now seemed unlike misalignments and more like challenges perfectly aligned for the kind of work my ego has desperately tried to avoid since I became an adult. A special way the universe was extending love toward me as my evolution rather than as my preferences fulfilled.
Perhaps like you, I believed dating via strictly adhering to my list of preferences was my ticket to the romantic relationship promised-land. Not who would challenge me in just the right ways. Not who would bring cosmic balance to my character traits. But instead, who would check off my ego’s list of personal likes and dislikes most completely. What I wasn’t accounting for is how this would just make my ego comfortable and unchallenged which inhibits my growth rather than stimulates it. Loving only what I prefer leaves my ego unchallenged, unevolving, and complacent which doesn’t align with my personal spiritual growth ideals. Shouldn’t our romantic relationships both compliment and challenge us deeply if they are to be our most vital spiritual partnerships?
When we are looking for a mate or when we think we've found one who's qualified, we search for our pre-conceived lists, our values. We take inventory as we get to know this new one to ensure they match our carefully curated lists of preferences and watch for areas in which they stray from those perceived needs. Though valuable work, we do so completely blind of our bias–our tendency to want the world itself and the world of others to be and believe just like ourselves. To surround ourselves with people who just "get it" the way we do. People who share our worldview, who don't challenge us to venture too far off the beaten path of what we already find acceptable. Someone 'easy' because easy means we don't have to use effort to understand them or effort to bend and stretch ourselves to embrace their differences. We want to love what we like, what we prefer, to be made comfortable, and we think finding love is a matter of finding someone with the most closely matching list of likes and then celebrate by liking it all more intensely. But the deepest love isn't a matter of liking what we already find acceptable more intensely, it's a matter of growing ourselves. True love is a path of ever expanding embrace...
I used to date people who I liked because they were like me and because they were like me, they didn't notice my shadow. They were complicit accomplices in my crimes of keeping my shadow hidden, so to speak. They only communicated back the good they saw in me, which of course was music to my ears. It's what I thought love was about--that we find someone who simply allows us to be comfortably ourselves. Who loves us for simply being us. But, what is that self we are busy comfortably being? Is that our ego or our soul? There's a clear way to answer such a question: our egos never want to be seen and questioned to the core of their operating system and do everything they can to defend such hacks from ever happening. On the other hand, our soul wants nothing more than to completely dismantle the ego's fear-based programs to get to the core of what Love really is.
While it's important to find someone who you can share a large overlapping portion of reality with, who you can see eye-to-eye on the big issues with, who can really see you at your best, you would do well to attract someone who can also see you for your worst. Someone who brings your shadow forward rather than who helps you keep it hidden away. Someone who is willing to go beyond their personal preferences, to show you what's beyond yours, and to meet you outside of the 'known' because it's in the unknown where you'll find your greatest growth. This is a soul mate.
You can't find a soul mate, you can only be one or not. Your mate can choose to be one, or not in any given moment and there is no perfect being out there waiting for you which doesn't require hard work and love-filled effort to enact mutual soul-mateness.
A soul mate can love you unconditionally and conditionally and knows the difference.
A soul mate doesn't believe in true love, they know it is they who have to make love true. Who has to choose it, again and again in the face of what seems difficult to accept because it doesn't match their unconsciously programmed preferences.
A soul mate both compliments and challenges you, not to become worse but to become your best by helping you transmute your worst. Who knows that we all have to walk tenderly through our worst in order to redeem it, like spinning straw into gold.
A soul mate is willing to walk there and back with us, unselfishly, not because of what they gain but because it is simply what Love would have us do.
A soul mate would also not tolerate abuse because they understand everyone is worthy of kind, loving regard.
When I arrived home that night, well beyond my preferences, I found Cass there waiting with open arms of loving support. Not there to punish me for my stupidity or lambast me for not calling sooner. No, she was there to make her love true--by aligning her personal love with the Love beyond. She was there to be my soul mate by opening to attend to me and my story, not her own. A seeking to understand the choices I made which were a whole nature different from her own. Not to judge. Not to condemn, but to stay open. To be a true love, and I knew through her doing so I had truly come home.
Our Airbnb at Lake Atitlán, Guatemala where I returned home….
