Improving your Relationships -- Relationship Dynamics From a Spiritual Perspective – Part 3

In Part 2 of this article, I discussed healing relationships and soul agreements. Please see Part 2 for this information. Let’s continue with Part 3, in which we’ll discuss Soul Connections:
Soul Connections

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."
-Herman Melville

Starting to get information on soul agreements led me to continue to explore the concept of relationships on another level and from another perspective. I next began to explore various types of soul connections. Now, the soul connection that we are generally the most familiar with – and desirous of – is the soul mate connection. It is certainly considered to be the most sought-after one, and a relationship with our soul mate is one of the major things in life that many of us yearn for and actively seek. For some, it can be a lifelong pursuit. Indeed, we tend to place so much value on the soul mate connection that we are often unaware of the existence of other types of soul connections that we may have with those whom we may know fairly closely. However, other types of soul connections do exist, at least from the information I have received. So before we discuss soul mate relationships in more detail, let's look at some other types of soul connections.

At present when I look at relationships in sessions, whether romantic or those with friends, family, work colleagues, children, or others, I will look not just at the energy dynamics or the resonating issues or lessons or soul agreements involved, but also at what the overall soul connections may be. I do this because I have learned that understanding what soul connections there may be on the soul level can give us additional insight into our relationships and their dynamics, as well as into why a relationship may have a certain feel to it or represent a certain type of challenge. I have thus far seen many different types of soul connections and combinations thereof and have been able to sense how they can color the nature of what one experiences in his/her interactions with others.

One type of soul connection I get quite commonly is that the people involved, usually in some type of close relationship, are from the same soul group or same soul family. Although I can not yet completely delineate conceptually what that means in the greater scheme of things, I intimate that the souls in a soul group or soul family may have been created as souls at the same time or in a group (although, given the nonexistence of time on the highest levels, I'm not sure that this makes complete sense) and that these souls thus share a "kinship" not unlike families here on earth. Being from the same soul group or same soul family may contribute to an underlying feeling of closeness between people or to a sense of coming from the same place, a feeling of kinship that can't be explained by other, more superficial characteristics (family connection here, or race, or background). For some reason that I do not yet comprehend, every time I get a soul group or soul family connection, I always get a visual impression of the numerous souls in the group or family arranged in a circle next to each other. Although I feel that there is some significant meaning attached to this geometric "being in a circle" configuration, I do not yet know what that meaning may be.

I have also, thus far on only rare occasions, seen a variation on this connection of same soul group or soul family. In this variation, I have sensed that two people came from different soul groups or families, but that their souls are so similar that they are like distant unrelated cousins or two expressions of the same complex vibration. Up to this point in time, I have only seen this type of connection in souls that have some sort of inherent and greater than normal complexity, greatness, or potential for it here on earth. It's as if their uniqueness or rareness meant that there were very few other souls who had a similarity. I'm still in the process of understanding this concept completely and will probably only begin to do so when I encounter more instances of it.

There are other, more common soul connections. Most of these are experienced and expressed in familial terms. I have sensed many soul connections that were those of siblings, whether brother and sister or sisters or brothers. I've seen parent to child and even uncle to niece or nephew and cousins. Other soul connections may be more non-familial. A very common non-familial one will be that of teacher or mentor and student. I have also seen soul connections that were those of colleagues, sometimes expressed in a positive and cordial manner and at other times, in a negative or antagonistic manner.

I am still not completely sure what causes or contributes to the particular type of soul connections. The connection of being from the same soul group or same soul family appears to be an inherent connection, coming from the "moment" of creation of souls, as mentioned above. Other types of soul connections, such as those of siblings or teacher/student, feel like they may have been forged through various lifetimes. Indeed, I've seen instances in which the soul connection between two people was varied, due to the different roles they had played with each other in different lifetimes; they were (or had been) brother and sister (in one lifetime), but also colleagues (in another lifetime), for example, and others who were (or had been) spouses to each other, as well as parent and child. (These varied soul connections, interestingly enough, will often be felt in the relationship of those involved, so that there is a mixed quality that they feel in their connection or an overlay of different attributes.) Sometimes these soul connections will have an added dimension of hierarchy, in that one of the two people (or souls) has traditionally been the "senior" one or the one with more clout or power.

Interestingly, these flavors in soul connections may change over time. For instance, two souls whose overall connection may have been parent-child, with one always having had power over the other, may find that their connection equalizes over time or even in the space of one lifetime, so that the sense of hierarchy evaporates.
These various types of soul connections will flavor what we experience in our relationships with others and often in a subtle manner. We may feel a particular closeness to a friend, for example, and then learn that our soul connection is that of sisters or brothers. This factor of soul connections helps to explain why we may be feeling some sort of connection with certain people that can't be explained simply by the present connection or nature of the interaction, or why we may be feeling a certain quality in the relationship that has inherently been there from the very beginning; in other words, why we've had a specific feeling from the moment we met someone who has later become a friend that she has always felt like a sister, for example, or even a rival. (It can be very perplexing at times to have a conflicting mixture of qualities in these connections. For example, I've known clients who were stymied in trying to understand why a person who was ostensibly a friend somehow also subtly felt like a rival or competitor. Once the soul connections were explored and unraveled, the mixed quality of the relationship made more sense.)

In contrast to connections that may remain somewhat consistent, I will also see, as I mentioned, combinations of these types of connections. For instance, two people may be from the same soul group or same soul family and also be brother and sister or cousins or teacher and student.

The types of soul connections I've mentioned tend to be between those we know and interact with over and over again in different lifetimes. This continual interaction over different lifetimes tends to forge a sense of connection that is generally stronger than that which would be felt from interaction in perhaps just one lifetime. This soul "familiarity" may also enable us to feel somewhat safer working out some of our stuff in the framework of a learning relationship that is based on these close connections.

Soul agreements may be made both with people with whom we have soul connections, as well as with others to whom we feel no deep connection. And we may have both pleasant and unpleasant soul agreements from one lifetime to the next with those with whom we have soul connections. The variety and combinations appear to be limitless. Certainly if a person we're interacting with closely comes from our same soul group and is also someone with whom we've had both pleasant and unpleasant soul agreements, we may therefore experience mixed feelings about that person, while at the same time feeling a strong connection with him/her. And, similarly, having a same soul family connection with someone with whom we’ve had problematic or antagonistic soul agreements may help to take the sting out of the overall connection or absolve the more problematic flavor.

Understanding what some of the soul connections and/or soul agreements may be operating in the background, so to speak, between people in relationships can enable us to begin to understand why certain mixed feelings may exist in different relationships and how we can best handle the relationship or interact in it. Interestingly, I have seen several cases in which two people had a general soul agreement to always come together in different types of relationships in order to stimulate each other's growth, without any residual blame or "hard feelings." (It's almost as if there were an agreement to have a built-in "eraser" to eradicate any of the residual mutual bitterness that any of their difficult relationships might engender.) The potential is endless for the variety and types of combinations of connections and agreements we may have with other souls, including what the residual effects may be.

We will usually experience a deeper feeling of connection to someone with whom we have a strong soul connection and, concomitantly, less so to someone with whom we may have a one-time soul agreement. This may explain why we feel an instant connection to or bond with someone we meet or an instantaneous sense of familiarity — that feeling that somehow we know this person we're meeting ostensibly for the first time. Interestingly, it will often happen that we will meet someone for the first time and feel a very strong soul connection — and then, over time, as we continue to get to know and interact with this person in real time, experience the feeling of the soul connection subside, while the present connection takes precedence.

The soul connections that can encompass diverse types of connections can really complicate some of our relationships. For example, I've read clients whose soul connection to one of their children was that of student. In other words, the child was their teacher (over and above the usual way in which one's children can teach one lessons). This adds another element to the usual relationship of parent-child, with the parent trying to be the wiser and nurturing one!
On the other hand, a combination of soul connections can also add a richness and texture to some relationships that might not otherwise have been there.

Such soul connections generally underlie our relationships with those with whom we interact closely, for example family, friends, co-workers — not to mention romantic relationships. I've seen clients who've had wonderful relationships with their bosses or supervisors — only for me to find a positive soul connection with the boss as benevolent mentor in previous lifetimes. Conversely, I've also seen some difficult work relationships, only to discover an overriding soul connection of antagonism or unpleasant rivalry. I've even seen instances of two people whose connection was that of always and consistently being rivals or competing with each other. This is apparently the means that they have chosen on another level to consistently stimulate each other's growth, which, again, may tend to remove any bitterness.

Soul connections like these can also be confusing in romantic relationships. We will sometimes meet someone with whom we feel a strong soul connection and interpret that to mean that, because there’s a strong soul connection, we're supposed to be together as romantic partners, whereas the actual soul connection may just be that of being from the same soul group or same soul family. I've seen clients who were strongly motivated to be in a particular relationship because they had felt a strong soul connection from the outset with the other person and for this reason thought they were supposed to be together. All the more reason why it's helpful to know what type of soul connection it may be.
On the other hand, it can also happen that we may sense an initial aversion to someone we meet, just because of an unpleasant soul connection — and this sense of aversion may shift over time as we interact with and get to know the person in the here and now for their present persona and essence. I've seen one case in which a client had a strong initial dislike for someone with whom he later became romantically involved. As his initial dislike mutated into a romantic interest, he found himself having dreams of the other person, in which he felt that he was exploring his past life connections with her. In every case, he dreamed of her abusing him in various ways. Interestingly, the present relationship between the two of them was somewhat dysfunctional, but was also a strong learning relationship as well. He ended up learning strong lessons from this relationship that stimulated his personal growth. In this particular case, his initial feeling of aversion was indicative of a difficult soul connection and a foreshadowing of painful interactions. However, he was able to mine great jewels from the experience, even though the other person was not his soul mate.