Life Lessons From Your Soul - Soul Mates

What is a soul mate? Most people believe that it is a romantic partnership that includes a connection far beyond just having life goals in common. Some say that you can have more than one soul mate and that we travel through lifetimes in soul groups. We meet again and again to experience the lessons of life and evolution with one another. We find each other housed in new shells with our personalities getting to know one another again in each lifetime that we commit to creating with one another.

The purpose of the soul mate relationship is for evolution. We evolve through what we can teach one another. When you ask for a soul mate, you can receive one in any packaging possible. They may be your mother, your sister, your teacher, your best friend. You know them by how you feel about them. There is a depth of connection that cannot be put into words. What ever you came in to work on together will be revealed. Your soul mate may be your most difficult relationship or it may be your easiest. You may complete your agreement in a few years or five hundred lifetimes.

The soul mate relationship is just as varied as any relationship can be. The major difference is the feeling. It will be felt and acknowledged by both parties. There is an agreement that is felt and can only be identified by those involved.

My soul mate is Isabel Young Maisano. We met at a birthday party when we were four and she moved next door to me when we were six years old. She now lies in a hospital bed recovering from her heart stopping and a coma. What we agreed to is unfolding each day as my life dramatically shifts. One thing I know is that I will do anything to help her in her time of need. I will help her children and her family in what ever they need. There is a depth of love unparalled by any other relationship I have had to date. What can I say? She's my soul mate.

(the picture was taken in Central Park in October of 2004. Meg and Isabel have a great love of New York City. We cannot wait to return!)

Life Lessons From Your Soul - Personal Evolution

Personal evolution happens through the partnership between the personality and the soul. The soul is what takes the lesson learned and evolves through the learnings of the personality. It is up to the personality to make the choices that are conducive to evolution.

Certain things seem to be required to help the soul's evolution through the personality. One major requirement is the personality has to first be able to see what it is doing to keep the soul from evolving. This is where honest, thoughtful, self observation comes into play. If you are unable to truly look at yourself and see how your actions effect others, your evolution will be slow and arduous. The tests will become harder and harder until you become honest with yourself. The truth absolutely will set you free.

So, what do you do? When you are in the midst of a test, look at your part in it. Admit where you manipulated, controlled or abused yourself others in your life. How did you do it and why? Admiting is the first step. You can admit what you have done all day long but the real challenge lies in being able to change it. You and only you can make the choice to change how you do things. It is possible but you must truly see what you have done.

The changes you do make will be done by the personality through your choices. Your soul knows what you need to pass the test at hand. It knows what you need to change and exactly how to do it. Allow your soul to lead you to the people, books, information, and situations that will best help you evolve. You will know when they present themselves because you will feel it. You will know you have mastered the test because eventually you will have the people in your life responding to you in a whole different way. It may take time but you have free will and you have the gift of a personality and a soul engaged in evolution together.

Life Lessons From Your Soul - Tests

Tests and challenges will always come to us. No matter how good we are or how ideal our lives may appear to be, difficult tests will continue to present themselves to us. The personality is often unhappy about the things that are handed to us. Often it wants to avoid the test or ask to take a different one. We cannot. We are given what we are given for a reason - like the song from the 60's based on the scripture from Ecclesiastes - "To everything turn, turn, turn. There is a season turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to laugh. A time to cry."

As the elevator descended to the first floor of the hospital yesterday, I wearily laid my head against the wall and thought; "I can't do this test, God. This one is too hard." I had never had that thought before. I actually became a bit worried about myself at that thought. I am tired and scared and sad and confused and depleated from this painful test with the very best friend I have ever had.

This morning, I wondered what time it was. As I searched for my cell phone, the little voice in my head said "A time to grieve". I know. This is my time to feel grief. I just have to go through it. I don't know why. I may never know. Or, maybe one day some piece of this will become abundantly clear. I know, beyond all certainty, that equal measure of light will come to me again one day that matches and exceeds the level of darkness that I am currently walking through. I know that to access the soul lesson, my personality must let go and allow this test to run it's course. There is no control here. The personality wants that. There is only surrender. That is the soul of this test.

Life Lessons From Your Soul - Mothering

Mothers come in so many different packages. They don't have to be the traditional wife who carries a child in her womb and gives birth. They can come through the caring woman in your life who will do anything to help you in your time of need. They come through the person who gives a smile or a hug right when you need it. Moms can be store clerks who help you out or the nurse at your bedside who wants to know what the comatose patient in the bed is ike so she can bond with her.

Isabel is one of my favorite moms. She has a rare ability to just allow her children to be who they are without telling them how they should be. She says what she needs to when she fears they are going down a path she can see may not be the primrose one but she always manages to pull back and allow them to make thier own choices. Her strength and steadiness teaches the soul quality of surrender combined with the personality's need to live consequences for choices.

Isabel's daughter Kathryn threw her arms around me today and said "Happy Mother's Day. You are my other mom you know." Tears welled up in my eyes. For years I ached to hear those words. I wanted a child so deeply. Now, I have three to help through a difficult time.

The soul knows what you need. When you ask for what you truly desire, it answers the personality's wish. You just don't know how the answer will come to you. It just does. Gratitude for how ever your soul brings it to you is the lesson. When you can be grateful despite the worst of circumstances, you have mastered a deeply meaningful life lesson.

Life Lessons From Your Soul - Life's Tragedies

You never know when you will be asked to meet a huge challenge in your life. There are so many possibilities that can result in huge emotional upheavals that leave one questioning the meaning of horrifying circumstances. Why do we have to go through these trying events - sudden death, catastrophic illness, accidents, natural disasters? The answer lies within the individual who expereinces the event. The lesson is different for each of us.

I have had the honor of being best friends with Isabel Maisano for 34 years. We met at a birthday party when we were 4 years old and she moved next door to me in Arlington, Virginia when we were 6. Our friendship has withstood being parted by oceans and opposite sides of the continent. Physical distance can never part what lives in the hearts and souls of beings that have agreed to create lives together.

Isabel had a seizure on May 4, 2006, went into cardiac arrest and has been in a coma since. The prospect of losing my best friend is certainly a grim one. The lessons have been flowing like water ever since. They come so fast that I can hardly descriminate. My perception is muddled and I am emotionally spent after 5 days of taking care of her husband and three children - whom I love with all my heart. As I write this, thier oldest daughter, Kathryn emerges from her room late at night in tears, in need of a hug as she deeply misses her mother in the night. God, I want her to come back to us . . .

I have seen a depth of love that just is not witnessed on an ordinary day in the life. I have watched hundreds of people coast to coast who are sending her love for her recovery. I feel so moved to watch the kids, their friends and family spend countless hours in the waiting room deepening their bonds, laughing, crying, hugging and loving one another. I am learning perseverance, strength, and that's it's fine to let go and cry - even if it's in the milk aisle of the grocery store.

I miss my Isabel. I pray she comes back soon. I pray that she fully recovers and will be reading this blog one day with tears in her eyes just like the tears I have in mine. I pray that the best thing will happen for all involved even if it takes us decades to see it. I pray that I can let go of the result that I want to see happen and just trust in the soul to know.

So many lessons. Thank you to Isabel's soul for profoundly enriching my human experience here. You have taught me about the illusion of goodbye and here we go again . . .

Life Lessons From Your Soul - Dreams

What are dreams? If we really only had five senses, it makes no logical sense that we can close our physical eyes and 'see' the movies that play within us that we call dreams.

To the personality, dreams are the ideas and thoughts we have around what we want to create in our lives. You may have the dream to be a famous writer or the best math teacher on faculty. Dreams of the personality are wishes we have for the things we want in our human lives.

Our dreams as we sleep come from a different place. They come as symbolic messages from the soul. The soul works in symbolism, metaphor and feeling. Perhaps the most important aspect of a dream is what feeling it invokes in you. How you felt in the dream is what stays with you after you awake - especially when you have the most vivid of dreams. The lesson lies in the feeling. The feeling is experienced through the emotion that the soul communicates to you through the personality.

Pay attention to your dreams - both waking and sleeping. They can hold the keys to your life lessons.