Soul Mates

Do I believe in soul mates? No.

Do I believe that out of seven billion humans encircling the globe, God or some primordial intelligence bequeathed to each and every one of us a single human whose presence somehow completes us in a transcendental way? No.

Do I believe that there is some woman out there, chilling on the coast of Morocco, sipping Island Paradise’s from a hollowed-out coconut waiting to embrace me in some cathartic ending scene to an epic of rejection-turned-self-discovery?

No.

But, then again, this paints a very limited picture of what a “soul-mate” could be.

Recently, I have begun to become more accepting of uncertainty and complexity. Better stated, I have finally started to make sense of what comprises said complexity and come up with a rational, categorical approach to understanding humans and how they respond to their environment. I have deserted most preternatural explanations for things in favor of what could be considered materialism or physicalism, but only because I have come to terms with the realization that the physical world is more than capable of producing rhapsodic experiences without calling upon extrasensory or supernatural phenomena.

By fitting the so-called supernatural or paranormal within a material framework, the centralizing faculty becomes the nervous system. Rather than discussing the soul, spirit, or any phantasmagoric extension of human consciousness, I choose to contemplate what can be probed and tested independently, namely the brain and its peripheral apparatuses.

The unusual thing is that the nervous system, treated fairly, behaves much like a spiritualistic recounting of the soul. It longs for purpose, importance, attention, positive reinforcement and so forth…

Here is a thought experiment for you. Imagine someone who does not know you personally, perhaps they’ve only heard of you through shared associates or relatives, telling everyone they know that you are not capable of making money. You lack quality financial insight and your ideas are infantile. Imagine they get amongst people that think like them and denigrate your abilities and ascribe to you qualities that just aren’t accurate.

How would you feel? Offended? Frustrated? Disrespected?

This is the common experience with someone that has taken the time to explore the nervous system in all its splendor. Stripped of the illusion that words and imprecise concepts create, one sees that the nervous system is highly capable of exhibiting any of the quixotic, ecstatic, or fantastic experiences we in the human condition. Moreover, physicists and philosophers alike have played with beautiful equations and algorithms to link the human body back to the universe in ways that stretch the imagination.

Take a look at David Bohm’s Implicate Order…

I digress.

When one looks at the human and chooses to do away with fuzzy interpretations, one increases the probability of reasoning along the lines I lay out in this post. The brain, the CPU of our nervous system, employs a melange of biological mechanisms that render to us what we know to be reality. Moments of intense joy or intense pain can be mapped and studied and regardless if we understand every minutiae, it is a safe bet that the brain’s handling of information gives rise to our mental life.

Rage, sorrow, passion — whatever — are us operating as information processors in a massive, massive deluge of data.

To many, this simply will not do. It is far too “inhuman”, too “detached”, or too dismissive of the powerful moments that pass through our lives. Our “come to Jesus moment” or kissing our love for the first time cannot be the result of three pounds of electrified jelly with strings coming out of it. Factor this position with a belief in something bigger than we and a physical explanation of the human in the universe is untenable. “Sorry, Bryce…” they say, “God cannot be a dead, cold physical universe.”

My feelings beg otherwise.

I am not here to argue theology, but I will make mention that the Universe is certainly not dead and while cold in certain places, it is intensely hot in others. The theme of the universe is balance on a staggeringly large bases.

Just like dismissing the nervous system as incapable of amazing experiences, seeing the universe as cold or dead is a grave dishonor to the wonderful macrocosm we find ourselves in.

So, what then, Bryce? You started out this post speaking of soul-mates and somehow managed to interject physics, math, and cosmology into the conversation. What the hell does any of this have to do with finding love?

Everything.

The glue that binds us together, intra- and inter-, is our ability to put symbols, words, and signs to our mental lives. We are actively ascertaining the worlds within and without and the patterns that are used are those of vocal or visual cues. Words or grunts for vocal, facial configurations or hand gestures for visual. The words you are using give rise to to complex concepts you adopt and these mental representations will give rise to subsequent physical behavior.

Your words are everything. Your words are your reality. Choosing one set of concepts over another can literally mean success or demise. If you adhere to a set of beliefs or a set of practices that don’t accurately reflect the world around you, you may cause yourself to become inadvertently frustrated.

The most decried locations in the world are places where various cultures and ideas confront each other (think Babylon, Los Angeles, or NYC). In a strictly controlled social environment, the noise of individual opinion can be mostly dealt with or weeded out and promptly forgotten. However, in heterogenous locales, words, concepts, and meanings conflate into partial representations and fragmented ideas and cohesive traditions are stripped of their original potency.

As cohesion breaks down, the predictability promised by something like a God-ordained soul mate decimates. One is confronted with alternate potentialities and without a flexible framework, things could be bleak.

With a world as intermingled as our own, if your notion of a soul-mate is a predestined, pre-ordinated, pre-selected, magical being selected by Someone preceding the universe, with whom you will experience some type of rhapsodic bliss with, you could be setting yourself up for disappointment or ultimate failure.

Here is another consideration. I do not believe in completely free will; ergo, I do not believe in free will. Human brain function often resembles chaotic systems which are formally determined (no free will), but unpredictable given the complexity of the system. We are apt to do things in particular ways and while that specific content cannot be completely predicted, probability gives options of high likelihood. What this means for this discussion is that biological makeup constrains options and experiences constrain them even more, making some of us susceptible to matters of the heart and others not so susceptible.

Where one person might not ever believe in a soul mate and never find one because of it, another might not believe in a soul mate and accidentally stumble upon someone magnificent. The inverse is true as well. Someone may actively believe in soul mates and stumble upon someone that sets them on fire, while another may fervently believe in soul mates and become a spinster.

This is because we are a whole lot more than what we believe. We have personalities, idiosyncrasies, habits, and skill sets that interact in statistically causal ways on our environment.

We are walking balls of chance aided by consciousness, whose purpose is to make superior choices in the face of novel stimuli.

My own make up perfectly summarizes my experiences: I spent years trying to clone my parents because of my insecurities that became complicated by my charisma and ambition. I was gifted at creating fantasy worlds and by creating a make-believe, perfect partner I constructed a mental extension I could hold on to and never face reality with. I did not know how to face my own demons — demons that negatively affected how I chose the women I dealt with and the reactions I had towards them — and I inadvertently created disappointment after disappointment.

While I held on tight to the notion that my “soul-mate” existed, the real reason was because I had a deep void within me that I needed to address and fill.

Hindsight is 20/20: at the time I had no idea that I was swearing by and acting upon a mental construct out of sheer, distorted desire. I sincerely believed in what I believed. It was a perfect orchestra of fuzzy concepts: heart, spirit, soul, mates, God, and miraculous plans. To hell with the data that flew in the face of my perfectly articulated belief system. With beautiful words I had erected quite the monument to passion.

In short, I, bryce, do not believe in soul mates. This doesn’t mean they don’t exist, it means there isn’t enough evidence in their favor and my wholehearted belief in them a decade ago had more to do with immaturity than whimsy. If you do happen to fancy the notion of soul mates, this is not an indictment against you. I invite you to question yourself deeply, but if you still happen to fall in that camp, more power to you.

This post is not all doom and gloom, however. While I may not be beholden to frameworks that find strength solely upon desire and misplaced categorization, I do believe there are people out there that bring out something or some things in us unlike others. There is a woman or man that can increase your happiness, while decreasing your stress, with much more potency than others. He or she can make you a better father, friend, coworker, athlete — whatever — and you will experience legitimate happiness.

The trick is, like me, you have to do some soul (irony, I know) searching in order to gain a better understanding of who you are. Happiness cannot be given, only activated from within yourself. Sometimes, that searching requires you to try, get your ass handed to you, then learn from that pain. Sometimes it requires you being the victim; sometimes you’ll be the culprit.

No, I do not revel in the notion of a consecrated woman who will preternaturally aid me in my life journey; but I have no issue believing that there is a woman or women that I could share in happiness with. I use plural not because I’m an advocate of polyamory, but because there is no reason to believe that there’s only one person that can bring you a level of happiness above the rest. Even the slightest statistical treatment would reveal that many, many people could bring you the kind of happiness we dream of and if someone reaches you and brings you past that threshold, then you are cooking.

If you are happy with yourself and someone comes into your life that shares and eventually co-creates that happiness, what does it matter if he or she is “The One”? They are the one that is there and you are happy. Stop feeling the need to fabricate additional concepts to serve as a crutch for your commitment. If you love someone and they love you, you are soul mates by default.

No other explanation, natural or supernatural, is needed.

bryce

True Love’s, The Heart

I’ll show you yours
If you show me mine.
The Heart was designed,
For another to find.

Co-Creation

I started my first blog on the basis of love. On the heels of a rather humiliating breakup during my senior year of undergrad, I felt the need to freely express how I felt about love and how my mechanics work. 5 years later, my quixotic rantings have remained my most popular topics.

Probably because I keep the erudition to a minimum. And my love life is prettty hilarious.

Unlike years past, I don’t have any negative experiences that serving as any instantiating impetus. While the last few relationships did indeed end, they were, from my standpoint at least, positive attempts by two people exploring genuine emotional content. 

I did learn a bit about myself and I’d like to share these revelations with you this evening.

A couple years ago, I divined from my twentysomething angst, that what I ultimately wanted in my significant other was someone that loved me for me. Not someone that cared about my height, family upbringing, what I do in life, or what I look like but, someone that took the time to actually get to know me on a level beyond a dalliance or fantasy. Ephemeral trysts are fun — its great to have a passing fancy for a stranger or spend an evening flirting with a mysterious someone you may never see again — but, of course, these wouldn’t be classified as “intimate” moments by most definitions. 

Many of us are attracted to traits in people or, more appropriately, we are attracted to the perception of traits and how those might make us feel. We “see” something that is intriguing to us and decide to look into it, measuring our emotional responses against the experiences shared with that individual. For those that “click”, the measurement and the experiences were congruent and a burgeoning relationship followd; however, for those that have idiosyncrasies to their personality, these complexities can quickly become problematic.

I have never been blind to my own self-absorption and I continually warn those that deal with me that I can be a lot to handle. You can go through my posts and see just how many times I use the self-reflective “I” as a rule of thumb testament to my ego strength. Thusly, I can come off as insensitive or flat out arrogant depending on the dynamics that we find ourselves interacting.

There has been one woman that has pierced through my arrogance and brought me to a knee and she’s someone that I will cherish for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, her victory had more to do with her own pathology than any sort of laudable talent. Frankly put, we were two sides of an equally broken coin.

No one will ever consider me an optimist, but I do know when an opportunity for learning presents itself and I understood these lessons as vital to my own progress.

This young woman loved me for me, maybe not for the best of reasons or through the best of expressions, but she did indeed care for me like no one else. 

Not too long ago, I was meditating on where my life has been in 2015. I went from virulent uncertainty and instability, to longlasting satisfaction rooted in fertile ground. I am supported in my professional craft, supported in my home life, and supported in my social life. The key difference between each of these arenas and that of romance is that at work, with my family, and with my friends, we co-create beautiful experiences. No one is attempting to make anyone else “fit” into a mold that they consider a priori. Instead, it is a dialogue of interpretation, a dance of opinion, that continually evolves until all parties are fulfilled.

Not all personalities can engage in that dance.

There are certain folks who are hellbent on seeing a particular reality precipitate. They see things a certain way, like things in certain ways, and view you in ways that relate directly back to that specific set up. 

As I stare into my mid-to-late twenties, still very much wet behind the ears, but trying to make sense of my neurotic ways, I realize that my second request of my significant other is someone that understands co-creation.

I can be relentless in my criticism and as a result, very demanding; this doesn’t mean I’m right, only that I can insist on whatever I think is right. I can feel that the exact trappings I desire in a woman are the end-all, be-all and act accordingly. However, this does not correlate with human interaction. We each are these unique universes that tangentially interact via communication; ergo, I am more interested in someone that I feel an attraction to help draw a dually conceived “rightness”.

 I want someone that comes to me eager to share in a beautiful co-created fantasy. 

I don’t want to be a series of characteristics or traits that conform to your version of lovw, but someone who you explore and wish to synthesize a new type of satisfaction. In the same form and function that I wish to explore her and derive new insight, I want her to do the same.

Loving someone for who they are, then jointly creating a dream world sounds sickeningly idyllic. I know. But chalk it up to the hopeless romantic in me.

Perhaps its my need to balance out the empiric obsession or rather connect the veracity of validity with the ubiquitous experience of rhapsody. 

I have created a life for myself that while not complete, has led me places that few my age have been. I believe in the power of possibility actualized through ambition, strategy (creativity), and analysis. With a little bit of patience, you can find your Promised Land.

The person or persons that we all desire is (are) out there and many of us, like myself, will go through continuous revisions as we work on ourselves and ascertain what works best for us. 

In my latest revision I understand that I’m interested in a woman that wants to create miracles in partnership, not fit me into preconceptions she already had.

Thats a recipe for friction.

Get to know me. Really know me. Create something beautiful with me. I’ll love you forever.

Desideratum

Sweet words offered from soft lips;
Susurrant assurances, sylphic occurrences;
I am yours in your arms.
Your charms, deeply engulfing, intoxicating inundations,
I am one with your vibrations,
Your blessed undulations, wavelengths that I drink to quench…
Such thirst, I’ve suffered such thirst, your ambrosia is Empyrean nectar,
I’m a collector of all your Divinely sanctioned sectors.
I take in deep gulps of what I feel you to be,
You are healer to me, you are realer to me,
Than my deepest reverie,
Sweet fantasy, I am ensconced in your rhapsody,
And if I happened to be dreaming of your essence,
Then I hope I never wake that I may be lost in your presence,
Lost in the present, I am a peasant;
A lowly pauper;
I am a troubadour m’lady, may my mellifluous melody bring you proper;
Happiness, rapturous, ecstatic type of passion;
For you are my desire and I am glad it truly happened…