[ MAUKA MAKAI ]
Rubber soul WHAT CAN YOU SAY about the overwhelming majority of young Americans -- 88 percent, according to Gallup -- who claim they believe "there is a special person, a soulmate, waiting somewhere out there" for them?
Looking for love?
There's no sure way to
find your soulmateCOVER STORY
By scott vogel
svogel@starbulletin.com1) They're in for a big disappointment; 2) you'd never know it from the extravagant claims made by psychologists, relationship gurus and Internet snake oil salesmen, many of whom promise a hasty end to all those years of loneliness the minute you hand over your chump change; and 3) they all have Plato to thank for their predicament.
Plato?
It may come as quite a shock that the concept of a soulmate existed before the debut of the "Oprah Winfrey Show" (1986) or the release of "The Butcher's Wife" starring Demi Moore as a blond clairvoyant (1991), but in fact the idea has ancient roots. In his "Symposium," Plato writes of a still more ancient day when human beings were complete entities unto themselves. Because of this self-sufficiency, the gods felt threatened, and so they promptly cleaved each human into two pieces, dooming us all to a life of searching for our other half.
"And when one of them meets his other half," Plato writes, "the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: These are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another."Plato might have been speaking of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston or Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford, such is the contemporary sound of his definition of soulmatehood. Nevertheless, the father of Western philosophy was curiously mute on the subject of how one might find one's soulmate, leaving that task to the Platos of our own time, among them John Gray (the Mars/Venus guy), Dr. Joyce Brothers and, of course, Oprah.
But for those who find the cost of a weekend relationship seminar or a trip to Chicago prohibitive, there is the Internet, where a great many of this cult's lesser priestesses are readily approachable. For a mere $20, the folks at Soulmates Romantic Realities will, given a minimum of personal information ("tell us briefly about your hobbies or interests"), steer you in the direction of your long-suffering other half. This being a worldwide search, all major credit cards are accepted (though "not debit cards at this time," sorry) and, best of all, your map to spiritual salvation arrives via e-mail in less than one hour!
But if you're too cheap for even that small investment, there's always Susan Bradley's Soulmate Checklist, at www.saveyourlovelife.bigstep.com (apt title!), where for free you can discover whether you've found your soulmate already. (Give yourself one point if you've "had an experience of spontaneous crying -- tears come to your eyes -- in each other's arms during lovemaking and it felt healing." Though, please note, "you will not feel this every time you make love.")
Further guidance can be obtained at the Soulmate Relations Research Foundation (that's www.smrrf.org), which is managed by a husband-wife team with the confidence-inspiring names of Dr. Jeff and Jody. This alliterative pair go into a great deal of detail, revealing that there are three kinds of soulmates, the karmic, the dharmic and -- most important, for our purposes -- the twin flame (the "Dharma and Greg-ic"?). Much of J and J's wisdom on this latter subject, a Platonic variant, comes from the findings of a sister institution, the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (www.nderf.org), whose "studies" show that souls do not travel singly, as had once been thought, but in groups of 10 or more, which undoubtedly saves on travel expenses.
And when souls meet, as is recorded in the site's testimonials section, the results can be volcanic. For instance, upon finally meeting his soulmate, "John" started his own business, wrote a novel, wrote (and recorded) a song, learned to operate a computer and constructed a 4,500-square-foot home almost single-handedly. (Didn't his soulmate want to pitch in?) Somewhere Plato must be smiling.
Compared to the carnival of bunk presented by the Internet gurus, the work of Dr. Alexander Avila is a masterpiece of scientific rigor. Avila, who will alight upon two local bookstores this week, is the author of "Love Types: Discover Your Romantic Style and Find Your Soulmate," which streamlines the search considerably by dividing the human race into 16 convenient categories. The system is based on both Carl Jung's theories of psychological types and the Myers-Briggs personality tests, and grew out of Avila's own professional dissatisfaction."I was initially an attorney and was very miserable in my profession," Avila said during a recent phone interview. "I took the Myers-Briggs to help me deal with my career. And from there I realized that I was an Idealistic Philosopher (one of the 16 love types), which is a person who likes psychology, philosophy and helping people. And I was really unhappy because law was conflict and a lot of paperwork and tedium. I gave up a lucrative law practice and went back to get my doctorate based on the Myers-Briggs result. And I thought, 'Well, if I can use this in my career, why can't I use it in my relationship?' because I was also in a very unhappy relationship at the time."
Extrapolating from the Myers-Briggs scale, Avila determined that his current female companion was of a distinctly different love type; hence, they were incompatible. She went on to a romantic destiny unknown, while he became a best-selling author of relationship advice.
Ever mindful of the demands of today's busy singles, Avila has devised a method for quickly determining whether one has met a potential soulmate, a system he calls "the four magic questions." The first question -- "What do you do in your spare time?" -- sounds innocuous enough but is really a thinly veiled attempt at discovering where one fits on the introversion/extroversion gradient.
"If they say, 'I watch TV all day and I'm on the Internet,' they're an introvert," Avila explained. "And if they want to go to parties with friends and dance, then they're an extrovert."
The other questions are also deceptively simple, designed, one imagines, to fit comfortably within a casual cocktail party conversation. They include "What would you do if you won 10 million dollars?" -- which determines where a person falls on the imaginative/practical scale -- and "What's your favorite movie and why?" -- a way of discovering if they're a "thinker or a feeler."
"If they say, 'I love "Titanic" because of the relationship and the emotion,' then they're a feeler. If they say, 'I love "Titanic" because of the special effects and explosions and the technical effects,' they're the thinking type." (And if they hated "Titanic"? Well, then they're just not soulmate material, period!)
From reading "Love Types" I discovered a number of things about myself. First of all, I am a Mystic Writer, one of the rarer of the 16 types (just 2 percent of the population). People like me, Avila notes, consider the written word sacred (absolutely!), disdain both loveless and soulless sex (absolutely!) and enjoy renting the movie "Ghost" (huh?). I enjoy quiet nights at home (boring!), dinner ordered in, soft music and writing my own erotic tales. ("Your Mystic Writer may pen a story in which a Viking warrior ravishes his lady love on board a mighty ship.")
As you can see, Avila's book is never less than entertaining and its prescriptions harmless, though it was a bit alarming to discover that the author himself hasn't yet found his soulmate. "Now I focus on helping others," said Avila, "and once my task is complete, I can find my soulmate and be happy, because I know what it takes. There's so many people that need help, who are frustrated and lonely, and I know about that because I've been there myself." Then again, given the burgeoning numbers of frustrated soul-seekers, will Avila's task ever been complete?
My research concluded for the time being, I can't say whether all this knowledge has brought me any closer to my soulmate. I can't even say that I believe in soulmates. But that's all right. A new and more pressing issue has entered my consciousness. Does anyone know where I can learn about the lovemaking habits of Viking warriors?
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