Signboards along the way

Soul mate. That important person you keep bumping into time and again, life after life.

I met one 3 months ago. In Egypt. Something pulled me to Egypt. It was sudden and out of nowhere. Something pulled him back to Egypt, after 6 years of being away. And suddenly, there we were, on a train in the middle of nowhere. Me having come from the furtherest corner of the East and him from the furtherest corner of the West. And we collided on a train that ran along the Nile.

Four days later, that train really did collide. But that’s another story.

I felt like I knew him forever. I know he felt the same. But we came from two different worlds, had two entirely different lives, were two very different people, and after two days, we’d be leaving each other to go back to our own little universe.

At another point in my life I bumped into another one. He was my Frenchman from Nepal. And he came hurling into my life headfirst. I knew that I knew him. He knew he’d always known me. Our meeting was brief. Enchanting. Magical. Powerful. His eyes felt like home. I knew he was yet another reminder that I was walking down the path I had once chosen for myself.

The universe had given me another sign. Another signal to say I’m going where I have to.

For when you start walking down the path you once preordained for yourself, the universe will put up signboards along the way to show you you’re going in the right direction. Most often, these signs have been agreed upon many many eons ago, before we came into this body, a sign that subconsciously, our soul would recognize as a marker for walking down the right road.

One of the most undeniably prominent signs we get is the bolt of lightning thing. When you meet a someone you’ve bonded with over your lives, you soul will inevitably recognize that person and will give you a heads up with a jolt through your system when  you make contact with that other person.

I’ve met many souls I recognize from past lives. But only two of them have had the lightning bolt effect on me.

The first was X. The second is the stranger from Egypt. A stranger I met for only 2 days, a stranger I’ve known longer than I’ve been alive. And believe me, when we meet soul mates such as these, it’s never random. There’s always a reason.

X had perhaps the strongest lesson of my life to teach me. I had to learn about love, I had to learn about loss, I had to learn about dependence, and independence, I had to learn about lack and abundance, I had to learn about fidelity and infedility, jealousy and acceptance, about learning, growing, letting go… But perhaps the most important role he played in my life was of tour guide. He took me on one of the most beautiful holidays of my life and at the end of the trip, left me at my final destination: the road back to myself. If it wasn’t for X taking me to the lowest point of my life, I wouldn’t have initiated the conversation with my own soul. If he hadn’t touched my knee, I wouldn’t have learnt the lesson of unconditional love. If he hadn’t left me, I would never have learnt the lesson of pain. If 4 years down the line, he hadn’t been cheating on me, I would never have learnt the lesson of letting go.

The man from Egypt taught me an entirely different lesson. About survival, fear and friendship. We were paying back a karmic debt.

Every soulmate has their own reasons for being in your life. We often block out soulmates and their lessons because they may seem extraordinarily harsh to us. Take for example, a boss who makes it his life’s mission to complicate your working day. Naturally, he’s high on your must-avoid list of people. Ever considered though that that boss might just be your soulmate? He's being hard for a reason. He has a lesson to teach you, a lesson you once asked him to teach you. However, the rules of the game dictate we forget our pacts when we descend down here, right? So here on earth, we refuse to acknowledge the fact that someone we hate so much might just be a soulmate teaching us something important. People like the idea of romanticizing soulmates. And that’s beautiful. There’s nothing wrong in indulging in a bit of romance. Or even a whole lot of it. But let’s not allow the love to blind us to the facts. Every single person, past, present or future, in your life, making an impact of some sort, is a soulmate.
They're here because they love you. They're here because you love them. Because you allowed them to be here in your life. You don't always have to embrace them. Just honour their reasons for being there, And learn the lesson they've come to teach you.