Soulmate Attraction for the Rest of Us

I’ve been really enjoying lately reading and listening to audio guided meditations of works about manifesting one’s ideal romantic partnership. The two best that I can recommend are the “Soulmate Secret” materials by Arielle Ford, which focus on “using the law of attraction to manifest the love of your life”, and “Attracting Your Soul Mate” a single guided meditation audio download by Sanaya Roman, who channels her spirit guide named Orin. In this single meditation, Orin teaches a powerful method to help you actually reach through space and time to communicate now with your ideal partner of the future. I find it a very peaceful meditation, and I sense that my communications are real and effective. (Complete audio course on “Attracting Your Soul Mate” also available.)

Arielle Ford has successfully used the law of attraction for decades to grow her business and develop a wonderful single life. When, in her 40s, she found herself still single, she decided to apply these laws to manifest the love of her life. Not long after that, at age 44 she met and married her husband of over 12 years, Brian Hilliard. The Soulmate Secret teaches basic law of attraction principles, as well as her own unique point of view and gifts of insight from using Feng Shui to various “feelingizations” (her coined phrase) and wonderful advice and techniques for removing blocks, healing and reversing traumas that may have you repeating unhealthy patterns in your love relationships.

As I was studying and meditating on the Soulmate Secret materials, something began bugging me a little bit. I noticed I was having some resistance to the repeated mention of the “one true love” model. In all of Arielle’s anthologies (including her popular Hot Chocolate series, in the style of Chicken Soup for the Soul...) she has been wonderfully diverse in including stories from same-gender-loving folks. In the Soulmate Secret, Ford stresses that everyone, absolutely everyone, can have a wonderful love life and partner, if they believe they can. And that is the key, they need to believe it. Ford says that no matter what your age, build, or financial status, you can have the love of your life. Gay or straight, disabled or able-bodied, thin or fat, rich or poor, you can have the love of your life.

Reading that made me feel good as a late bloomer, and I started getting into the flow of the Soulmate Secret teachings. Where I started to get stuck was maybe about the 30^th mention of having one partner for the rest of your life. At first, I took this resistance to mean I needed to expand my capacity for joy – that I hadn’t yet wrapped my mind around having a “healthy” relationship, and that this discomfort was a sign I needed to look at and change my mind, feelings, and expectations. But, when I explored this further, over several weeks, I realized something: I didn’t want what Arielle and many of her contributors wanted. Well, I wanted most things: a loving, caring partner who was self-caring and was also well caring of me, someone kind, with whom I felt safe, trusting, and cherished. I wanted those things. What I didn’t want was monogamy. I have been polyamorous my entire adult dating life. All of my relationships, with the exception of 6 short experimental months in one long-term relationship, have been open. And this opened a wide door of possibility and acceptance for me.

Yes, you absolutely can have what you want. But you have to be clear on it, decide it for yourself in your mind and in your heart, and you have to say it out loud and write it down and dwell on it and wear the energy of it, and live as if you have it and be it until you have it on the physical plane. You don’t just look at what everyone else is doing and ignore inner signs that those things may not be for your. Listen to your inner self and go where you’re led. Obey your yearnings, passions, and desires.

The Soulmate Secret gave a few examples of this: Arielle’s list of characteristics her ideal mate would have included gray hair. She had never been attracted to men with gray hair before, but something told her to write this down, and she did. Brian turned out to not only have gray hair, but it had turned gray in his 20s.

Another example of admitting to yourself and to your manifestation exercises was a woman who created a beautiful mandala of her ideal mate. Each color represented a different trait. At the very end of her exercise, she wanted to include that “he has a cute butt”. She immediately admonished herself for being what she called “shallow”, but spiritually felt compelled to continue, so she did add the “cute butt” color to her soulmate manifestation mandala. When her future soulmate walked away after their first, and excellent date, guess what she noticed? If you guessed, “That he had a cute butt?” you are correct!

I have a theory of attraction. I believe that when we want something, it is somewhere not too far from us (spiritually) wanting us, too. The reason Arielle thought to write “gray hair” was because Brian was not far away wanting a mate just like Arielle, and his call reached out to her and she felt it. She picked up the imprint of his signal and began to piece together the map they would travel to meet in the middle of.

Unlike Arielle who didn’t happen to have a gray-haired-guy fetish, I believe the woman whose guy had the cute butt had actually always had a thing for cute butts. But here’s what about that particular story really jumped out at me and confirmed for me the need for us to be true to our passionate selves, and honest about our specific desires: I don’t care about “cute” butts! I am not a butt person at all. In fact, I have always liked the opposite of “cute butts”. I like when baggy jeans hang on a guy and he’s completely flat back there. To me that is so manly and sexy! See? That’s why it was so important for Cute Butt Lady to speak her dream, because her dreamy Cute Butt Guy was out there for her – specifically for her, who would dig his “Cute Butt” and not me, because I couldn’t care less!

I love standing in line at street vendors’ carts and listen to people order their food. Everyone orders their food differently than the person behind them, and everyone is a serious and passionate about their food being prepared just right. That’s how it is in all of life. We all are wired to want exactly what we what, exactly how we want it, and it’s out there – we can have it!

Know what you like, be honest about it, and go for it, knowing that it is out there waiting for and reaching out to you. If you want to manifest not one but three ideal mates to either be involved with together or individually, go for it. They’re looking for you. If you want to be married to one person but travel the world part-time and have other lovers, go for it. If you want to have a lasting, trusting, safe relationship within the context of a kinky/BDSM relationship, go for it. If you want to have several commitment ceremonies of mixed spiritual traditions, a skyclad, Goddess-focused handfasting in the forest, or one completely atheist celebration in a Scottish castle, you can create that. The universe expands when we all live our dreams, and seek our deepest joys. As Arielle states, healthy, wonderful love isn’t just for some people but for everyone, and that includes those of us who have always been on the edge of the mass culture – lightworkers, LGBT, kinky, polyamorous, bohemian, artistic, spiritually eclectic rebels of society’s norms. We are worthy of the same kind of wonderful, lasting love accessible to everyone else, and we can make a choice to believe that and become it.

Cassendre Xavier is an award-winning, multi-media arts performer and organizer based in Philadelphia. She has released several recordings of original music described as “a cross between Tracy Chapman, Sade and Enya” (Steven M. Wilson, Borders Music), had her multi-genre writing published internationally, and is the founder and director of Philadelphia’s annual Black Women’s Arts Festival (est. 2003). Visit www.cassEndrExavier.com for more information.