My answer was always the same: “I’ve lived in big cities all my life and never met anyone there. Plus, I’m sure if there’s someone I’m meant to meet, we’ll find each other.” After meeting him, I realized how much work work it took to allow myself to open to the opportunity of finding my soul mate. Had I met him even just six months prior, I would’ve been a different person. I might’ve looked the other way or shut down our conversation when he started it one day after we played softball on a local farm together. Taking the risk to move to such a remote place brought me to the edge of what I knew about myself. I found myself exploring parts of my soul that were still untamed. It was then that I found the complement to my soul, tamed and untamed parts alike. From the day we met, both of us knew. Three weeks into the relationship, we discussed starting a family. Four weeks in, I was pregnant. Four months later, we were engaged. And two months after that, we were married. People say that when it comes to soul mates, you know when you know. Now that I’ve found my soul mate, I realized it’s like understanding a common language, unique only to you and one other person. Here are five realizations I had after finding my Great Love that confirmed to me that this was really “it.” My soul had a certain set of lessons it needed to learn that revolved around discovering real self-respect; I had to learn that love isn’t finite or in limited supply, but actually abundant. Looking back, my past relationships were definitely not soul connections, but teachers toward finding my great love. From there, I was able to foster a new sense of acceptance. I really did have to learn how to love myself first and foremost before I could find someone to love me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have recognized real, great love when it was offered. The hard part about being human is that nothing is ever completely black or white, good or evil. So after I went through my list, I practiced forgiveness using the simple and powerful Hawaiian Ho’oponopono technique (“I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you” on repeat). Afterwards, I realized I had made peace with my past, and that forgiveness is a practice of strength. It is a practice that we can come back to again and again. However, when I underwent my own personal journey and finally started to see that I actually did deserve goodness, my expectations about almost everything in my life shifted. In so doing, I attracted a partner who did the very same thing. And finally, I stopped pushing away the very thing I was asking for all along: a good kind of love. Sometimes what we think we “should” have or do just fits into old patterns, and keeps us stuck. When it came to meeting someone new, I pulled myself back from jumping years ahead and became more present to the moments unfolding before me. Through this practice, I enjoyed discovering who my Great Love actually was without expectations or a rigorous checklist of traits he had to meet before I’d allow anything else to continue forward. It was as if the very moment I tuned into the present, I found him. May meeting your Great Love happen just as it’s meant to, whether right around the corner or in a remote corner of the world. And, more importantly, may you be ready to receive him or her.
