Another amazing installment in Moore's lifelong quest towards avodacting the mysterious and unfathomable depths of the human soul and how it can possible amalgamate to another equally enigmatic human soul. Moore confronts moralism in sexuality as well as pondering the needs of soul - in that it often wants detachment just as much as attachment, coldness as well as passion. Though I consider myself a lover of soul and proponent of the soul's journey, Moore never ceases to press further into the process and combats the arid analysis of relationships and the "lets fix it" mentality through practical means, and encourages relationships to delve into every aspect of the relationship - even the vices - in an effort to hear what the soul of your being has to say. Always challenging, never simple, forever entrenched in the mythology of Jungian and Grecian archetypes, I find Moore more and more (hah) offering me a truth older and safer than I know...

If I had to sum up a few Moorian tenants:
1. Be a friend to yourself.
2. Do not repress even the slightest inkling/desire inside of you (he does not encourage acting upon every inkling but facing all the parts of yourself, the shadows as well as the sunlight, in an effort to let the soul be heard).

While I enjoy Moore's interpretation of myths into the points he is trying to make, his thesis of the soul as an individual is I think not as interesting nor profound as the myths he poses as ways to make his point. Moore's genius lies with his ability to imbue the sacred with ordinary life. Life is a paradox and the soul and its needs are unpredictable. To have a successful relationship, one has to respect the movements of the soul and allow it to go where it wants to go. To live in a soulful relationship will allow us to fail in relationships as well as succeed; that is to live life without fear. He relates relationships as imperfect manifestation of the Christians God's Grace to us. I give this book a 2.5. A 2 because the book is a repetitive nature of his thesis and 0.5 because of his overall thesis that relationship as Grace.

Thomas Moore believes that dramatic shifts in action comes in small shifts in imagination; thus the book of soulmates is meant to have a small shift imagination that may change the outcome of how one sees relationships. He decries the surface actions in relationships that we need to somehow "mechanically fix" something instead of having the soul grow into what it is going to be. He states that "religion recognizes pain and failure as important in the soul's deepening and sophistication". He states that this applies to relationship too: "pain and difficulty can sometimes serve as the pathway to a new level of involvement. He states that technology in its focus on the efficient use of communication leaves out the use of the soul in its need to have intimate relationships. He states the souls are rooted in the past and resistant change thus an attachment to past relationships, places, or ideas. Attachment also goes against the feeling of freedom that we are taught to desire in the US. He states that the spirit of freedom, solitude, and detachment goes against the souls desire for attachment. I want both intimacy and solitude to do the mission I was sent on earth to do. He agrees with me that both are important to have a fulfilling life. We need to "be both intimately connected with another, and @ the same time preserve one's integrity and individuality". Both Daphne the nymph who flees from attachment and Apollo who has an impetus desire are important in relationships.

Moore states intimacy starts with loving the self since hating oneself will spill over to any relationship that one undergoes. He states that we are all individuals with our own wants and desires and these individualism should be honored. Conversations of wonder and open is a must for any relationship to thrive and grow. A deep relationship needs the person to know oneself as well the depth of the others soul. He states that "when a relationship is soulful, the soul's irrationality will be revealed for all to see".

He talks about the influences of our parental relationships, life philosophies and past relationships in shaping our current relationships. He thinks that the soul needs imagination to think of possibilities not already realized. He states that we all need to have self-love via self-acceptance not passive resignation.

He states the key to be marriageable is to have creative individual life and the person you are going to marry has their own life and when your 2 parallel tracks are meant to be then, it will be easy in marrying. Moore states that aside from the lofty image of marriage as a union b/w two souls, marriage always has a practical/mundane/bestial aspect to it. "We are drawn into intimacy by possibilities rather than by realities, by the promise of things to come rather than by proven accomplishments, and perhaps by seduction that are darker than the bright reasons to which we admit." "It is the primary task of the marriage partners not to create a life together, but to evoke the soul's lover, to stir up this magical fantasy of marriage and to sustain it, thus serving the particular all-important myth that lies deep in the lover's heart and that supplies a profound need for meaning, fulfillment, and relatedness." Furthermore, Moore states the importance to keep a little darkness in the marriage to spice it up. He states what are the lovers deep fantasies of the married partner that are deeper than even their own conscious awareness. As he so adequately puts, "what can I hold in my subtle left hand to charm her, as my right hand goes about the mundane business of making a living and building a home?" Moore feels that feelings and imagination needs to be engaged in marriage or else the magic is gone. Moore states that marriage needs to be seen as bondage and a degree of knowing masochism in approaching the subject may be in order. He states that marriage is not an avenue for instant happiness but rather a venue for the soul's growth. Moore states that "the industrious young women desires is the one who carries black currants---the darker animal world." Furthermore, he states that the soul needs mortifying experiences for it to grow.

The key to caring for the soul in marriage is to honor fate, the invisible force that brought the marriage together and is causing the soul to constantly grow, honoring the genius (procreative element in marriage) in its wants and desire for the married unit to grow in a new direction. Every marriage has its unique characteristics that needs to be teased out while every individual in that marriage needs to have their moment to grow within that marriage.

Moore states that family is the interconnectedness of people in a community where one interacts with the other. For him, a family is a grounding force that gives an individual purpose. Moore states it is bad to blame the parents for ones individual failures b/c it tethers people to the parents through blame while parents should live a happy and productive life as a healthy example to their children instead of hiding behind their children success. The family contains the sacred that makes people feel calmer when they come into contact with it. By raising the Virgin Mary to a close second Jesus, Catholics acknowledges the importance of the feminine within religion. He states that family tradition helps in giving life to a person's family spirit.

He states that if our soul is sick maybe what we need is friendship b/c it offers a feeling of relatedness. Practical friendship asks for containment and confidentiality in what the friend discloses to the other. It requires loyalty and presence. He states that friendship needs a period of incubation to see whether or not the friendship will flourish and once it flourishes then cultivation of the friendship is needed to make it thrive. Friendship entails a paradoxical blending of intimacy and individuality. Whereas a family is an obligation, friendship is a choice. The culture of paranoia goes against the culture of friendliness and trust that is necessary for people to cultivate friends. Just like a culture of friendliness is important for people to make friends, Moore states that manners facilitates friendships. Moore has an interesting way of looking at a community as convivial experience that is the individual only expresses his individuality in relation to the community and thus both become alive. He cites monks vows of poverty as letting go of personal affects in order for the community to thrive, chastity as the letting go of physical love and its accompanying attachment in order to fulfill a more important love of ones neighbor not centered on one individual, and obedience to the will of God in order to better fulfill ones potential on earth as ways to foster conviviality. He cites monastic vows as a way for individuals to serve the community.

Moore states that intimate communication need not bear the soul continuously, it can be just going for a walk together or working together. He says that conversation gives shape to what we believe. Through talking through ideas, we give it shape and form. Some ideas are purely intellectual, devoid of the soul. A good conversation purposelessly meanders and is less pointed and focus and is the kind of talk in which one feels one is really living. Conversation needs a person to listen while other person to talk. He states that "conversation is the sex act of the soul, and as such it is supremely conducive to the cultivation of intimacy."

Aside from conversation to feed intimacy, other people use writing letters as a better way to create intimacy. Letters are more thoughtful than conversation since we choose our words more carefully. Moore states "the person to whom we write our letters is more imaginal than actual". Unlike a conversation, a letter lets us take everything in before responding. Keeping letters is also a great way for the soul to be part of the past. Aside from the fact that the writer writes a letter to express his feelings, it allows him to reflect on his emotions and experience them.

Moore states that sex and romance are both enticing and dangerous; the quality of ambiguity and even duplicity is inherent in their nature. He states that Aphrodite is the goddess of love and deception b/c early sexual love can be deceptively simplistic that hides the complexity of pregnancy and STD later on in the relationship. Saying yes to Aphrodite's love and exuberant life is to invite the most painful initiations into its darkest mysteries. Moore states that staying open to ambiguity in life leads to the growth of the soul. Even though romantic illusions serve to extenuate the positive sides to a person's personality and decrease their defects, too much of this in a marriage can lead to disillusion and ultimately divorce since no one can ever live up to the ideals of "the perfect spouse". Moore states the ability to deal with different issues on the soul level is to use imaginations of different scenarios and to reconcile the wants of one into excepted conventional modes of being. In other words, it is simply a shift in thinking about the problem that allows one to live ones life without the necessary conflict that comes with it. He states that Aphrodite love can be good on its own without the need to link it to lifelong partnerships.

Moore was taught as a child that sex was godly in that it was part of God's creation and thus was holy but the actual act and thinking of it was sinful. The sex figure in Hermes is a metaphor for communicating ones love for the other through the medium of sex. To evoke Aphrodite in our love lives, we have to evoke her in our lust for a life well lived in that we have to live life to our fullest potential. He states that Artemis chastity has its place in sexuality in the wide-eyed wonder of innocence and as a vessel for withholding sexuality as a way to increase erotic tension. Moore states that intercourse means physical sex as well as an intimate conversation (post-coital bearing of feelings to cement the physicality that one underwent via sex.

He states that Aphrodite is associated with Ares aggression signaling the need for an aggressor in the sexual relation (testosterone) while Eros signals desire and longing so inherent in love for the beloved. He states that sex can be an invitation for the soul to come out and play. Moralism as the enemy of desire leads people to repression and thus acting out that desire in inappropriate ways while eroticism and morality can coexist in that morality can give shape to the erotic life force for the good of the individual. I like his imagery of sexuality as intimacy in our eagerness to open our body means our disclosure of ourselves to our partner. Only through relationship sex with the emphasis on one partner can one get to know intimacy the person one is having sex with. "The soul of sex has the power to evoke relationship, to sustain it, and to make it worthwhile."

Moore states that sometimes relationships end due to forces beyond our control such as fate. Although I like how he focuses on the soul, I think he blames the "souls" wants and needs too much for endings of relationships. Break-ups of meaningful relationships can signify a shift from egocentric way of looking at things to a more spiritual God centric way of looking at things in that it acknowledges there are forces beyond our control that influences the shape of our life. Moore through Eliade suggests that all endings are potential beginnings and that all beginnings carry the potential seeds of endings. He says that endings go hand-in-hand with beginnings and we have to fully experience an ending in order to be ready to experience a new beginning. He states that anger as a response to an ending of a relationship can be healthy if it provides "an opportunity to establish firmness and strength in ones own character and prepare for relationship that is well grounded". He states that we should see"an ending [as a] door opening into an unknown and promising world".

PATHOLOGIES OF LOVE: Although pathos traditionally suffering, in Greek it really means something done to the person thus inviting change that can bring in great opportunity. Even illness with bringing in pathologies, also brings with it great opportunities to grow. Love and attachment brings with it great feelings of pathologies. For example, excessive jealousy at a partners past relationship occurs. Jealousy can signal a loss of vibrancy in that individual and seeing that they need to have courage to regain the lost vibrancy. He further states that every relationship has elements of Power play in which victimization is felt. He says that obsessive love happens to people who provide idealistic love to someone who is far away and thus not known to him. The fact that he cannot have her makes him want her more. Long-distance relationship can create more of a sense of longing in which letter writing is an intimate part of it. Moore states that there is an ebb and flow to love that needs to be respected. We can use the cooling off period to ask questions of our relationships in order to reenter it into a deeper understanding. He is a big believer of pathologies of love as opportunities for the growth of the soul.

Moore states that individuality is truly wrapped in the community that is in order to have a true community it must be made up of true individuals while individuals can only arise within the context of a community. Although I respect his focus on peoples souls as the main arbiters in relationships, I reject the idea that b/c the soul wills it one can break commitments, promises, fidelities, and reliable habits. He cites a client who always was caught b/w the idealized world of the ideal relationship and the realistic world of an actual relationship. He advocates the arts to stimulate imagination over experience and facts. He states that the soul in relationship is given raw materials in which only refinement through experience can shape into a finished product.

I like this book. It's good medicine for the cynical.

I had no idea about what I would learn when I began to read Thomas Moore’s SOUL MATES. I must say, I was moved by Moore’s simple yet deep discourse, in which he entwines soul (separate from spirit and body) and mates (friendships) in a way clergy might not have adequately succeed. In his Introduction, Moore prepares the reader to accept or reject long held soul factors in unusual ways; as regards relationships, sex, and community. SOUL MATES sees issues such as; incompleteness, rough edges and loose ends as more of life's ongoing emotions, not to be rushed to conclusion but to be steeped into time for a fitting outcome. The “meat” of SOUL MATES covers friendships, intimacy, love, marriage, sex, faithfulness and much more. A good, clean read.

If nothing else, this book will nudge you towards accepting and loving yourself and the people in your life & appreciating the complex and fascinating world you are currently a part of. What more reason do you need to read it?

This book taught me that we have many soul mates, who are our true friends (not just our romantic match), and these friends bring out the various aspects of our complex personalities.

Beautifully written, yet much of this book was a challenging reading experience, until it salvaged itself toward the end. A significant portion of the book seemed to justify why people in a relationship cheat and how the partners who are left behind are "narcissistic" for finding it difficult to move on. To make matters worse, the book is interspersed with frequently meandering digressions about unrelated myths, as well as seemingly arbitrary rules made up by the author about what makes a "soulful" relationship.

However, what redeemed the book in my view is the way it connected all the major ideas presented in this book in the end to the central theme that each of us have infinite depth, which in turn makes it harder to understand the depth within a relationship and therefore requires us to accept our partners and relationships exactly as they are. Each soul and the soul within our relationships has a connection to eternity and hence, divinity; so instead of trying to solve a relationship problem in a literal and mechanical way (e.g. all women or men are ___), we can view a relationship as a poetic and imperfect entity that moves in its own uncertain ways, akin to the way divine will seems to work. Somehow the idea resonated better with me than I'm able to convey here.

Very difficult to read at times, but I've learned a lot which I will practice in my relationships

I found out that my soulmate is an Oxymoron

Don't quite know where to place this book in terms of a field of study but found the content resonated. Made me realise that each individual soul in a relationship needs to be respected and looked after and not trespassed on.

This is a great introduction to Jungian psychology and our need for love and relationship. It's not just theoretical. This book offers many practical applications. It also shows how the archetypes in mythology give insight into our dreams, fears, and imagination.

Thomas Moore is a fantastic writer, and one of my favorites. He is an extremely deep thinker and is able to eloquently put one's feelings into words. Also recommend "The Dark NIghts of the Soul."