Soulmates: The Timeline

I’ve got soulmates on the brain.

Soulmate essay 1 – the overview

Soulmate essay 2 – Intro to Richard Bach

So now I’m gonna talk, briefly, about how I got sucked into Richard Bach’s world (before I escaped, thank goodness.) There’s a timeline to the whole thing. His books, for the years that I was into them, were coming out at what felt like exactly the right time. Like – there was something in sync between his experiences and my own. I know I’m not alone in feeling this way – a lot of Richard Bach fans had identical experiences as mine, which is why I think his books hit it so huge, and made him a millionaire many many times over.

I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull in high school. Whatever. It is an 80 page book about a seagull who decides to push his own limits, and refuses to accept that he must only fly like a seagull, but he can go beyond … he can fly like an eagle, hawk … he can transcend his own body. I don’t even know how I came about reading it – but I did. It’s okay. It didn’t make a huge impression on me or anything. I still have my original copy, which I had bought second-hand.

The guy who had owned it before me has written his name on the front page:

Lt. DJ (something … illegible)
GT Jackson, S.C
17 Mar 73

He wrote his name there in purple pen, and has made his mark underlining passages throughout the pages. I was 5 years old in 1973. The book, obviously, didn’t get into my hands until much later. 10 years later. So even though normally I don’t like to have books marked up by strangers before me, I held onto this one. I felt, weirdly, close to the Lieutenant. Like – I could completely tell his concerns from what he underlined.

“For in spite of his lonely past, Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way of demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself.”

The Lieutenant underlined these words. Why, I wonder? I wonder where that Lieutenant is now. If he learned to “see truth for himself” by “demonstrating love”.

That’s one of the things that hooked me in to the Richard Bach book thing – a sense that there was this vast family of readers out there, people who also were looking for something, looking for truth, searching, looking for others like themselves. (Naturally, this is pre-Internet. Now, this whole Richard Bach thing might not have taken off so enormously because … we CAN find others like ourselves. By clicking around on the Web. We don’t have to learn how to astral travel. Who knows, just a theory).

At some point, during high school, I read Bach’s next book: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. Perhaps it was recommended to me. I don’t think I would have just picked it up myself. I’m too practical, too pragmatic. Because of my practical bent, I never gravitated towards all that new age stuff, it just … it’s not that it didn’t appeal to me. It did, on some level. It’s just I never succumbed to it completely. I don’t succumb to ANYthing completely. Maybe that’s just the part of me that always retains its critical thinking powers, and there always seemed to be something a little brain-less about the New Age stuff. Like: Don’t think so much, stop thinking, let go, stop thinking …

Tangent about the brain-less New Age ideal: The movie The Legend of Bagger Vance – while I love a lot of it – is a perfect example of this anti-brain philosophy. “Good things only can REALLY happen when you STOP THINKING. True wisdom is NOT IN THE BRAIN.” Now we could argue about whether or not my perception of the New Age stuff is true or not, but … I never want to get rid of my brain. I never want to stop using my brain, and not only that – but I don’t think I COULD stop using my brain, if I tried. That’s one of the many reasons why I’m so fascinated by cults and brainwashing and Patty Hearst and stuff like that. Where IS thought? Where IS self? If someone locked me in a closet for 5 weeks, what impact would that have? Etc.

I think that our ability to think, critically, is one of our most important assets, as a race of beings. NOT the fact that we can “let go” and “stop thinking”. I had NO words for any of this stuff in high school. I just knew I couldn’t accept the New Age stuff completely. I maintained some distance from it.

Also, I was pretty seriously Catholic in high school. I mean, I’m Catholic always and forever, but I was really INTO it in high school. So … there was THAT holding me back from leaping off the cliff with Richard Bach into New Age waters.

Illusions, though, in my humble opinion, is really the book of his to read.

Weird thing: Yesterday I went back and re-read many of his books (a lot of them are only 100 pages long or so). And I was doing so because I have all these OPINIONS about the soulmate garbage he has put forth … but then, ha ha ha, I found myself getting sucked into his stories again.

However, this time – there was that critical eye. I was reading through Illusions and a couple of times I thought: “Damn. This is pretty good.” I went back to the books expecting to SCORN. Some of it I did scorn, but my response was more complex than that.

Even now, I can still see the appeal of his ideas.

Illusions tells the story of a guy who drops out of society to go be a barnstormer through the Midwest. (The lead character’s name is Richard. The lead character in Richard Bach’s books is ALWAYS named Richard. So he is ASKING you to identify with him, he is ASKING you to say: “This is all true”.) And Richard, while barnstorming, meets another barnstormer, a mysterious guy named Donald Shimoda. Donald Shimoda, it turns out, is one of many “reluctant Messiahs” – people who have been given wisdom to impart, and insight … and yet, in Shimoda’s words, “couldn’t take the crowds”. So Shimoda, instead of wandering the world to share his message, flies a plane from field to field in Illinois, taking people up for rides. Illusions, a short book, is the story of this friendship, which quickly takes on a Master-Pupil vibe. Donald Shimoda has things to teach. Richard Bach wants to learn. (Richard Bach most certainly does not lack an enormous ego. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to realize that Bach also sees himself as Donald Shimoda – the “reluctant messiah” – who has wisdom to impart to the masses.)

I read that book and liked it very much. I was about 16, something like that. The Richard Bach thing hadn’t really “hit” me yet, though.

That happened a year or so later.

I’ll skim over this part a bit:

When I was 17 years old, something horrible happened to me. It was a human event – brought about by humans – but it had the effect of a natural disaster. I won’t say too much more about it. This horrible thing happened to me when I was 17 – and I woke up the next day an adult. I had, indeed, led a pretty sheltered life, and was allowed to be a child, and have a childhood. Not like many of my friends who were thrust into adult situations WAY before they were ready. I was 16, 17, but I was still, in essence, a young girl. And then – no more. Buh-bye childhood. Nice knowin’ ya.

I don’t want to dwell on all of that, because that’s not the point. It is, though, part of the timeline, and part of why Richard Bach was able to WEASEL his way into my heart. (heh heh heh) I was vulnerable. Not even vulnerable. That’s not the right word. Vulnerability implies emotion. I was raw. I was in shock. It’s like how people describe getting a horrible gunshot wound, or something. At first they don’t recognize how bad it is. They might even be able to walk, talk … but then the reality starts to dawn …

That’s what it was like.

And a friend of mine gave me The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story to read – Richard Bach’s latest book. It was published in 1984. So in looking back on it, it came out at JUST the time I would be PRIMED to hear his message of hope.

I can’t even say I “read” that book. I devoured it. I finished it. And then I started from the beginning again. Immediately. High school was over, I was now in college, but I was still reeling from this thing that had happened to me – I couldn’t even feel emotions yet, nothing like that. I was just surviving.

And then along came that book. Bridge Across Forever tells the story of Richard Bach’s eternal search for the perfect woman, what he calls a “soulmate”. It starts during his barnstorming days. And every day he lands in another field, and a crowd gathers … and he wonders if today will be the day that he meets “her”.

You could always see the word in capital words, in Richard Bach’s world. “Her”.

Now I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. That book got me through the roughest couple of months in my life. And I’m gonna give Richard Bach the props he deserves for that. At that point in my life, I was going to church every day, before class. Praying to God for help … stuff like that. Couldn’t recover. But God wasn’t there. At least I couldn’t feel Him. Richard Bach was.

That book is a message of hope, and eternal love … it’s got so many elements to it. Fear of committing, fear of saying ‘yes’, that whole perfection thing we do to one another (Richard Bach had a long list of SHE-MUST-HAVE-THIS requirements … and if any new woman in his life didn’t fit PERFECTLY, she was out…) All that stuff.

But indeed, he does find love. With the woman he ends up marrying at the end of the book. They do not have an easy time. Back, forth, commit, back off, this, that … SHE’S not his perfect woman either. She is (horrors) a living, breathing, three-dimensional, unexpected woman … who doesn’t fit into his nice little boxed-in ideas … and who actually says and does things that he sometimes finds offensive – or at least, doesn’t fit in with his “imaginary woman”, his “dream girl”.

The book’s romantic, yes, but there’s more to it than that. I’ll get into Bridge Across Forever later. (Oh God, no, you must be thinking).

Suffice it to say, that that book was a life-preserver thrown to me in the night. At a time when I really needed it … that book showed up. I was not well. I was half a person. That book gave me something to hope for. (Which, in and of itself, is quite dangerous, if you think about. No book, no author, should have that much power).

The crisis passed. I recovered. Mostly.

College went on. I had no boyfriends, no mates, no hook-ups, nothing like that. I had no one night-stands – I never could do stuff like that. I was waiting for “him”, I guess. Maybe not. I mean, yes, I wanted a boyfriend, I guess – but also, I always had some self-preservation instinct about the college social scene. I would go to frat parties and stuff, but I never ever got sucked into some of the nightmare scenarios I heard about from girlfriends. I never put myself in sketchy situations, I was never promiscuous … There was something in me that always resisted that stuff. I guess what I’m trying to say is: unlike a lot of other girls in college, I NEVER looked for love or a mate at a frat party. Thank the good Lord.

When I finally had a relationship, my first relationship, it was with a guy I had already known for years. I had been friends with him since I was 17 years old. And suddenly, when I was 21, 22 (he was older than me) – we became inseparable.

Now … I loved this guy. He was awesome (he still is, actually). But I never ever got the “soulmate” feeling from him. I didn’t fault him for that … the whole “soulmate” thing just never came up, because the REALITY of our romance was much more exciting, at least initially. There was no ‘dream man’, no “He” with a capital H. There was just this dude, the dude I was having an adventure with right at that moment. I think I made him read Bridge Across Forever and he didn’t really get into it, but other than that … he and I were boyfriend/girlfriend, in the basic way that people are boyfriend/girlfriend. We did not astral travel. No. We went to the movies. You know. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with the movies. I don’t think I could astral travel anyway. I would have a hard time taking it seriously, in any way, shape, or form.

But he and I weren’t meant to be. Buh-bye.

It wasn’t until years later, long after he and I broke up, that I found someone who … fit the soulmate bill. Now this guy is really hard to talk about … but it was the kind of relationship where we literally didn’t have to speak to one another. We had complex conversations, all through ESP. One glance told 1000 words. Basically, we did not need to speak. Now this guy, being Irish, and big and goofy (and blurpy), was SO not into the “soulmate” thing … he had to make fun of it. All sentiment must be mocked. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it all deeply, but to TALK ABOUT IT? No. We had a good balance, come to think of it. Mockery can be quite healthy.

And in looking back on that whole thing with him, my experience with him is what convinced me that this “soulmate” thing is a bunch of crap. What I did feel with him? It was a chemical reaction, it was the pheromones, it was his chemistry meeting my chemistry … and it was crazy. We had crazy chemistry. I am not talking about sex here. Not at all. I’m talking about brain-chemistry, and the chemistry of sensibilities. The chemistry of personalities combining. It’s not even that we were the SAME in all things. It’s just that he and I, within 5 minutes, instinctively knew one another. We knew how to talk to each other. We KNEW each other. I KNEW him without even knowing a damn thing about him. And I now think that this was just a matter of an intense chemical response to one another, the likes of which is very rare.

But it wasn’t the way Richard Bach set it up in his book: In his world-view, he and Leslie (his wife) have been through many lifetimes, and have always encoutnered one another in those lifetimes … sometimes they are together, sometimes not, sometimes they take other forms … but that he and she have been SEARCHING for one another forever, have been SEARCHING for “the” lifetime where they get to hook up, and not “miss” each other. A very compelling and hypnotic world-view, I must say.

But me and blurp-boy didn’t have that going on … I didn’t feel that he and I had been searching for one another … through multiple lifetimes … cavorting through the space-time continuum … Oh look, there you’re the Viking and there I’m the Druid … Whatever.

(This, by the way, is what Richard Bach’s One is all about. One was his follow-up book to Bridge Across Forever. In One he and Leslie, his wife, travel through time, backwards and forwards, meeting alternate selves – who they were in long-ago times, meeting themselves in the future, meeting themselves on alternate planes where they DON’T hook up … Gotta say it: One is a DEEPLY boring book).

Maybe I’ll write more on that later. Not sure.

I think that’s enough for now. I’m just gonna keep blabbing on about this, because … I’m not even sure where this is all going, but for whatever reason, it’s what I feel like talking about right now.

Thank God for blogs.