endings

Some books I can only read slowly, each chapter so loaded with insights I want to sit with that I can’t rush through them, despite any inclinations I might have. Soul Mates is one of those, even as it has a noticeable touch of homophobia (fair warning). In the last chapter I read, the following quotes have been left to rumble in my head. In particular, the idea of fate having a place in endings and the feeling of when your soul is asking more from you in a relationship, including in ending your own or facing endings.

“The ending of a relationship is as mysterious as its beginning. In the origins of a relationship fate often plays a dominant role, and as time goes on fate continues to give a relationship its twists and turns. Yet when a marriage or romance breaks up or when a friendship fades, we tend to look for rational causes and to blame one of the parties for committing the crime of ending. Fate and its important relationship to the soul are forgotten, and we take for ourselves both authorship and blame for developments that are clearly the work of the soul. If we are going to honor the soul of a relationship, we will have to do so all the way, even, if necessary, through its ending. If we see soul seep into a relationship at the beginning through fate, we might watch it slip out fatefully at its end. Blaming the other party for the ending of a relationship is understandable as a way of avoiding the pain caused by the inexorable, sometimes heartless demands of fate, but by avoiding that pain we may condemn ourselves to years of being haunted by the very emotions and images we are attempting to escape.”

— Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship by Thomas Moore

“The soul in a relationship is not only contained in each individual, it is also contained in the relationship itself. Blaming the other for the end of a relationship overlooks the soulfulness that has been crafted out of the original impulse of love. The bitterness surrounding the ending of a relationship may emerge from a great struggle of ego against fate, of personal will against impersonal factors. We may think that we want more than anything for a relationship to last, but the relationship itself usually signals its limitations, as the signs of old age signal death. Part of the pain we feel at the close of a relationship is that it evokes memories of other endings, or the theme of ending itself. Understandably, we may be hesitant to enter those profound feelings that remind us of death in all its varieties.

— Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship by Thomas Moore

“To sustain an ending—a soul death—without the defenses of blame, explanation, or resolution allows the soul to achieve the new level of existence that only initiation offers.”

— Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship by Thomas Moore

“Sometimes at the end of a relationship a person will think, “There is something wrong with me. I can’t have a lasting relationship. Other people are happy together, while I’m doomed to loneliness.” Certainly the feelings of depression and disillusionment that accompany an ending are appropriate, and if they are not taken personally and literally, there is even an element of truth in these reactions. The feeling of being inadequate may be a response to an awareness of new levels of relating and being, and there are times when we may need to feel inadequate. But to sink literally into those feelings could interfere with the initiation that is offered. Rather than say “I” am not able to be intimate—a narcissistic sentiment that goes nowhere—we might say, “My soul is asking more from me in relationship. I have the opportunity now to be close to another in a more profound way.””

— Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship by Thomas Moore

I have the opportunity now to be close to another in a more profound way. Whew. I love it. I’ve been resting in an “at a loss” feeling for the last year or two with various relationships in my life and these quotes spoke to it in such a profound way. How each ending brings up all endings and very rarely does logic or blame or bitterness lead anywhere.