Attracting a Soul Mate

Do you have any questions about healing, intuition, or guided imagery? Ask our expert, imagery pioneer Belleruth Naparstek, the creator of the Health Journeys tape series and founder of The Guided Imagery Resource Center. Contact her at columnists@staff.beliefnet.com

Listen to a heart-centered audio clip.

Q: My question is on intention. I feel that as a massage therapist and a hospice volunteer, I have a loving, caring intention. I work with cancer/HIV patients to ease their pain through bodywork. However, in doing this work I realize that I need emotional balance. I can't work with sickness and pain without also experiencing happiness and joy in my life.

I am a single parent with grown children and am seeking a mate with whom I can travel the journey of life, someone to share experiences and blessings with. However, I keep meeting men who are emotionally unavailable and narcissistic. I wonder what that says about my intention and about who I am and what I am conveying. How can I learn to heal my soul so that I attract more loving, giving men into my life?

A: First of all, let me just say thanks for the work that you do and the spirit with which you do it. Your clients are lucky. And yes, of course, we all need love, joy, and balance in our lives--with or without difficult, demanding work with sick or dying patients. I hope you don't think you need to do heartbreaking work in order to justify your desire for love and support!

Lots of people ask some variation of your question, so I'm very glad you asked it. It's an opportunity for me to rant a little (always a treat) and to take a crack at correcting what I find to be a common distortion of "new consciousness" thinking. And although I'm using the masculine pronoun here, because you're talking about men--this is not about "men." It applies to any relationship, straight or gay, men or women.

Just because you've had your share of emotionally unavailable narcissists in your love life doesn't make a de facto case for your having an unhealed soul or a perverse intention to have screwed-up relationships.

It means you've had a lot of jerks in your life, and the pattern is worth looking at, for insight and a little course correction on your compass. Outcomes do not necessarily infer intention, although a pattern of the same outcome, over and over again, does act as a very worthwhile heads-up.

Sometimes, this is an expression of a behavioral habit, or low expectations, or a naiveté in the discrimination department--or all the above. Maybe your father was a jerk. Maybe your mother told you this is all you can expect from guys. Maybe your mother was a narcissist, and you loved her and wanted to make her happy. Maybe there's a trait buried in all that narcissism, like apparent confidence or leadership, drama or excitement, that turns you on and fools you about the rest of the character that configures around it.

But this doesn't mean that a jerk is what you are after. That is a dangerous simplification of a very complex set of spiritual teachings. It's the "you-brought-that-cancer-on-yourself" school of thought, to which I say, Oh, puh-leeeze!

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