Search for the Soul Mate

The Astrologer is often asked: “When will I find my Soul Mate?”… or, its less optimistic version: “Will I ever find my Soul Mate?” What are we talking about when we use the term ‘soul mate’?
All of us share the common desire to achieve some form of ultimate satisfaction in our lives. This longing we all have gets unconsciously projected onto the world of form, and so we seek perfection through union with some imagined thing or person or process that attracts us.
From the spiritual perspective, this longing for completeness is actually synonymous with complete dissolution, because only through completely loosing ourselves can we dissolve into the world of God, the world of perfection, and so experience the ultimate satisfaction.
This experience of ultimate satisfaction then requires the ultimate surrender of the ego, the separate ‘I am’ self, that we each commonly identify with. This type of surrender makes us feel tremendously vulnerable, totally naked, and if it is another person who is being surrendered to, that will have to be someone ‘special’… or so we imagine. Actually, for the spiritually evolved individual, the surrender can happen with anyone. But for the rest of us, who wish to use relationship as the ‘vehicle’ for our journey into complete dissolution, someone who can be completely trusted is a requirement. This person is the ‘soul mate’.
Can Vedic Astrology offer us anything in our quest for the soul mate?
The 7th house of the astrology chart is field on which the partnership, marriage, one-on-one relationship, are hashed out. Each of us is born with our own relationship karma. From the Vedic Astrology perspective, this relationship karma, like everything else in the chart, is a product of the experiences of past lives. In other words, we are each ‘conditioned’ by the past, a past that sets up a certain destiny for this lifetime. The Astrologer analyzes the 7th house and evaluates the karma for positive and negative experiences connected with partnership. The presence of one of the benefic planets of guidance, Jupiter or Venus, would tend towards more positive experiences in relationship. Likewise, if the 7th house is occupied by a malefic planet such as Saturn or Mars or the Sun, the karma for happy relationship is suspect.
There are other chart factors that help to ‘elevate’ the karma for an ideal or spiritual experience of partnership. The 5th house is the house of Romance in a chart. The involvement of the 5th house ruler (planet ruling the sign in the 5th house) with the ruler of the 7th house, or the 5th house ruler occupying the 7th house, or vice versa, signifies a ‘love marriage’ (a term used in traditional India which indicated something other than a normal arranged marriage). The 5th house is also the house of Spiritual Practices, and in a chart that so inclined, the involvement of the 5th and 7th houses can signify relationship as a spiritual path. This would qualify as ‘soul mate karma’.
Similarly, the 9th house is considered a highly elevated part of the chart; it is the part of life that is Good Luck, as well as Beliefs, and Meritorious Deeds. Any involvement of the 9th house with the 7th house, or each of their rulers, is considered auspicious and helps to raise up the experience of partnership.
The 12th house of the chart is considered the house of Loss, and any connection of the 12th house with the 7th house is traditionally thought to be bad, leading to the loss of the partner. But another meaning of the 12th house is spirituality and meditation. If the 12th house ruler is a planet that is otherwise benefic to the chart, the result can be an ideal, spiritual partnership. For instance, for Gemini rising charts, Venus is the ruler of both the 5th house of Love and the 12th house of Spirit, and its placement in the 7th house or with the 7th house ruler indicates an Ideal Love.
Then there is the question of Timing. Through the various ‘clocks’ that are set in motion upon our birth, the astrologer seeks to determine when the 7th house karma will be ‘turned on’. The dasha system (planetary period system) is one of the most reliable of these clocks. The dasha of the 7th lord (planet ruling the sign in the 7th house), or the dasha of a planet occupying the 7th house, are periods in a person’s life when partnership karma will be notably activated.
But when looking at partnership, there is another chart, the partner’s, which is equally important. So the two have to be considered together. Now we have the combining of two karmas, and the plot thickens. Do the charts have individual astrological factors that augment each other’s positive inclinations? Or are the negative factors enhanced? Can the astrologer find spiritual connections between the two charts? Are there beneficial planetary connections that would activate houses such as the 5th, 9th, or 12th with respect to each other’s charts?
The astrologer looks for positive connections between two charts whenever partnership is contemplated, but when the ‘soul mate’ question comes up these connections need to be between partners who already are primed by their individual karma for true spirituality. The desire and ability to surrender the ego, to loose oneself in the other, has to be present in each person’s chart. Otherwise the relationship will focus on the mundane, the material and sensual satisfactions, and result in the normal projection of expectations onto each other that ends in the dissatisfaction commonly found in partnership. To reach the ultimate satisfaction, there needs to first be the capacity for complete surrender. So the question “When will I find my Soul Mate” has to be first answered with “Am I prepared for the Soul Mate?”