Is there such a thing as unconditional love? Should there even be? Surely all love comes with conditions. When we marry we promise to “love, honour….. and keep me only unto thee” which are all conditions of the marriage partnership. And while most parents would say they unconditionally love their children, this changes as the child matures into an adult when there are behavioural conditions within which our relationship functions.

I’ve written previously that all beings are simply vibrating balls of energy and the law of physics dictates that energy cannot be destroyed, it merely changes form. I strongly believe we have a Soul, that this is the container for our energy and unique spirit, and that our Soul re-incarnates in different human bodies in order to evolve – into what I have no idea. I have no idea about many things.

I also believe that we agree Soul contracts with other Souls before we embark on each human life and that these Souls are vital to our spiritual growth. These are our ‘soul mates’ if you will and are often the same Souls throughout different human lifetimes, though they take on different forms depending on the lessons we need to learn. In one lifetime a Soul might be our parent, in another a close friend, in another a child.

We don’t meet all of our Soul Mates in every incarnation, just those with whom we have contracted and who have specific roles to play or lessons to teach us.

I’ve encountered two Soul Mates in this lifetime so far. My Mum and a former boyfriend.

My Mum and I shared an exceptional bond. She had a troubled life and died a troubled Soul. She was a source of deep love for me but also a source of deep pain – the knife and the band aid. Yet no matter the anguish she caused me, and no doubt the pain I unwittingly caused her, we had a loyalty and love for each other which was unbreakable. I absolutely would not be the Soul I am today without my Mum who, in this lifetime, has been my biggest teacher.

Our love for each other was truly unconditional. I would have walked over broken glass for her and actually suffered physical and verbal assault to remain as her care giver. However, that doesn’t mean I condone the immense pain she caused me. At times she was an exceptional parent and at others she was anything but and it’s taken me years of therapy to undue the trauma she either caused or did nothing to prevent. Yet my unconditional love for her remains. It is possible to love her with my whole heart while not condoning her behaviour or forgiving the damage she caused.

My ex-boyfriend and I were in an 18 month on/off relationship, yet I knew the day I met him that we were Soul connected. I felt like I’d come home. Not that I told him this at the time and it was over a year later that I finally explained the significance of our connection, which he didn’t feel in any way. In this lifetime he’d chosen to wall himself off and the fact I might see past the fortress he’d built around himself actually made him angry.

I cried more in the first year I met this man than at any time in my adult life. The grief I felt was completely irrational, until I realised it was due to one of our past lives together when he had been killed as a young man leaving me a Widow bringing up our two young children. Whenever I saw him I had the overwhelming urge to run to him, fling myself at him and never let go in the way you’d hold someone who had returned from the dead – just thinking about that makes me tearful even now.

He treated me appallingly. I was merely an object to him. A toy he played with. Routinely discarded for other, shinier toys and eventually thrown away and promptly forgotten about the same day. And yet I love him unconditionally, while not forgiving him or excusing his abuse in any way.

My over-riding feeling is that of sadness……for him. I feel the anxious void within him which he had been searching to fill all his life. In his rare moments of vulnerability he admitted he was lonely on a Soul level and, yet, presented with a Soul Mate he couldn’t bring himself to “dive in” as he would put it. He has a Soul worthy and capable of so much more than he’s allowing himself to be in this life.

We simply have to accept that while we are on our own unique Spiritual path, others are also on theirs. Like a patient parent, we have to watch on as our Soul Mates make mistakes because this is the path they have chosen, all the while knowing that growth is not achieved through a fear based life. We can’t hurry them along or point out what they’re doing wrong, tempting as that is. We simply have to let go because we have our own love based path to tread.

I’ve had other very significant people in my life, such as my biological Father, my Brother and best friends of decades, where love has not remained. When our relationship came to an end I was simply able to let them go without much thought. Our journey together was over, in this or any other life. It is absolutely not the same with Soul Mates whose energy remains connected no matter where they are in space or time. This is a love which transcends and to them I say: until we meet again and I love you.