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Dear Soul Arcanum:

Does our life partner change as we grow and develop on our path? As we become more spiritual, does God sometimes feel that we are ready for another partner, and is that why some marriages break? Thanks and warm regards to you!

Kiran

Dear Kiran:

I do see a strong relationship between spiritual growth and divorce. While spiritual growth can lead to incompatibility in relationships, the end of big relationships can also spark new spiritual growth. Of course, people can also avoid personal growth by bailing out of marriage or by resisting the end of an obsolete relationship.

Over the years, I’ve watched many new spiritual seekers experience upheaval in every area of their lives, and I went through something like this myself when first awakening. This is such a common phenomenon that there is even a word for it: “spiritual emergency.” It generally occurs when a person first awakens to a conscious spiritual path and begins to seek a more expanded way of being and deeper sense of meaning in their lives.

In this newly awakened state, people begin to question pretty much everything, such as who they have assumed themselves to be, what they’ve believed to be right and true, and many of the decisions they made in the past, including whether and whom to marry. As they search for an extraordinary level of experience, they have a tendency to break free of conventional occupations, lifestyles and situations.

This is all in the name of living a more authentic life. Most people go to school, pursue certain careers, get married and “settle down” simply because this is what everyone else seems to be doing. When a person awakens from this reverie, they begin to live in a more conscious manner, which naturally leads them to abandon much of what has already been established.

However, there is some danger in ascribing our feelings of attraction for others to some divine plan. Though I sense this is not what you want to hear, in my experience, when spiritual growth is behind the dissolution of a marriage, there is no third party involved. If spiritual growth is the driving force behind a divorce, a person will leave the marriage for their own true selves, not for someone else.

While it’s possible to have spiritual growth be the main cause of divorce and for there to be a lover (or potential lover) waiting in the wings, it’s generally wise to make sure that the reason for ending a marriage is not this other person. I’m even going to go out on a big limb and suggest that it’s never a good idea to leave one person for another. Statistics support me in this, for research indicates that when a person leaves a spouse to pursue a relationship with a third party, that second relationship is twice as likely to fall apart as the relationship that was ended.

Further, people who end a marriage for someone else are the most likely to regret getting divorced. This is because the divorce was not caused by spiritual growth but a desire to avoid something and unfounded assumptions. Since all relationships are important, if we’ve already made a sacred vow to someone, I believe we owe it to everyone involved to base our decisions about that relationship on the relationship itself instead of our hopes or feelings for some third party.

It is true that spiritual growth can make us incompatible with someone we used to be in harmony with. While both partners can simply grow in different directions, usually one partner awakens before the other. This can create tension, especially if partners put pressure on each other to be more like them. The loneliness of feeling unaccepted and misunderstood can lead one or both partners to search for kindred spirits, which can lead to all sorts of confusion and complications.

Since like does attract like, we are naturally attracted to people who are of a similar vibration. We are also naturally drawn toward people to whom we already have a deep spiritual bond due to other/past life experiences. This pull doesn’t necessarily mean that being with them will make us happy, however – it just means we have something to gain from interacting with them.

People often feel irresistibly drawn toward each other and end up having a tumultuous sort of relationship because big karma drew them back together. Instead of happily ever after, what they get is a whole new set of challenges. In my reading work, I often see love affairs as destined connections that aren’t meant to be permanent but are instead designed to help individuals reconnect with who they really are and what they really want. As such, they involve strong feelings of attraction, but are only meant to be temporary bridges between what has been and a more authentic future. It is foolish to expect such attractions to fulfill all our dreams for love or to allow them to affect how we feel about the other people in our lives.

For what it’s worth, I think the high divorce rate is a natural sign of the times, for life on Earth has changed dramatically since the invention of marriage. Where we used to struggle to physically survive, we now have the luxury of pursuing emotional fulfillment and spiritual growth. The pace of life has also increased dramatically, and we’ve all gained an incredible amount of freedom. Where we used to live in one place our whole lives and have few choices in terms of mates, we can now travel around the world and connect with anyone on the planet with the help of the internet.

As a result of all of these changes, people are living the equivalent of several lifetimes’ worth of experiences in just one incarnation, which means they are growing and changing at a faster rate than ever before. Given this new pace, it just makes sense that we may need several lifetimes’ worth of relationships in order to keep making progress.

I’m not suggesting we abandon marriage whenever the impulse strikes us – far from it. To determine the value of a relationship, we must ask ourselves if it is based on love or fear. If people stay together because they’re worried about how others will react if they split up, they are staying together out of fear. One might argue that they are staying together out of love for those other people, but the bottom line is that they are afraid of what will happen if they listen to their hearts. When we do anything from fear, it will eventually break down and lead us back to make a new decision.

Though we might be able to physically force people to stay together, love can’t be legislated, and hearts can’t be bound by spoken words or written contracts. We should stay with someone because we love them and want to be with them, for this the only sort of relationship that proves to be truly happy for everyone involved.

Though we tend to view the choice to divorce in a negative light, from a higher spiritual perspective, it’s more like a graduation from one phase of life and the launch of a fresh new beginning. We don’t condemn someone who has long been miserable in a particular career when they finally quit that job to pursue their dreams; we celebrate their courage and their determination to live a fuller, more rewarding life. With the right perspective, the end of a marriage can similarly be celebrated as a tremendous opportunity to expand and enrich our lives. For more on how divorce can be a positive spiritual experience, I recommend the book Spiritual Divorce: Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life by Debbie Ford.

Soul Arcanum