There is a huge bias in the spiritual community towards soul groups, soul mates, and having known people for many previous lifetimes. We all want to be appreciated, to feel connected, to be unconditionally loved, to be approved of and to have relationships which are alive and active and easy. No one likes to work at relationships, even more so in the difficult times, and it’s a lovely dream to have someone who just “gets” you and that’s an end to it.
So we seek for a soul mate, try to categorize our relationships by who is in our soul group and who is not, and somehow weight the relationship as more valuable and richer because of the amount of time we’ve spent in it. Basically the spiritual community has come to a shorthand, bordering on bigotry, which says that relationships based on long-term soul connection are better than any other kind. All other relationships are less than, are less trustworthy, less steadfast, less spiritual, and doomed to struggle. They are only as important as this lifetime and for the most part can be seen as mundane tools to get us from here to there.
I get it, but it’s a blind spot that really needs to be brought out into the light. All relationships have a beginning. The most significant relationship for a soul may not have started yet. The most meaningful connection we will ever make as a soul in our entire eternity may not yet be ready to begin. That person who changed our life at a really pivotal time for us might not be a soul mate or a soul group member or someone we’ve worked with for hundreds of incarnations, but someone new that we just met in this lifetime and our soul journey with them begins now. If we are only judging the relevance and importance of relationships by previous connection, then we are limiting ourselves in a very arbitrary way that is unnecessary and irrational. We are ignoring the fact that familiarity breeds contempt. For all the relationships in our lives that are old and still rich and meaningful, how many have ended? Why do we not even consider how much we have learned in the disconnections and the endings of relationships? How much are we running from the fullness of life by looking at only one thread in an amazing tapestry?
It’s true that we learn so many foundational truths in kindergarten such as this one: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.”