Soulmates

by Jessica Grose

  “You’re all set.” It was only when he spoke that I realized the person behind the desk was Janus. Seeing his familiar face snapped me back into the present. “I was just talking to Lo about the progress you’ve made here,” he said. “We are all so proud of you.”

  “Thank you,” I replied as Janus rounded the Ganesha desk and wrapped me in a hug. I had to admit I had never been so earnestly supported by a group of people before. The only person in my entire life who had been such a full-hearted cheerleader for me was Ethan, before our relationship went downhill.

  “I hope we see you again soon,” Janus said, waving me off.

  Ethan

  DAILY AFFIRMATION: When you love yourself, you are wealthy in spirit.

  Making a break from your old self is not without jagged rifts. It’s not an easy process, but as you will see from my rupture with who “Ethan” was, the experience was worthwhile. It was the chrysalis I had to wrap myself in so that Kai could emerge into his full spiritual persona.

  I got home from work one morning at four A.M. Dana was awake, sitting at the kitchen table. Her shoulders were so tense they were nearly at her ears. As I approached I saw a stack of paper laid out in front of her. I sat down across from her at the table. Her eyes were rimmed with red. The papers were our bank statements, and they were dotted with tears.

  “Hi,” I said gently. Quietly. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was going through our finances tonight. I noticed that after I paid our bills last month we had a lot less in the bank than I thought we did,” Dana said. Her voice was quavering. “Do you have any idea how much fucking money you have spent?”

  Before I had a chance to open my mouth, she went on, “You. Have. Spent. More. Than. Twenty. Thousand. Dollars. In. Six. Months.” I could tell she was measuring out each word, trying not to raise her voice.

  I didn’t realize I had spent that much money at the Urban Ashram. I was just trying to master each level of the courses Yoni offered. Money was merely the worldly metric by which one could judge everything I’d learn from Yoni. In terms of my spiritual progress, those classes were priceless. “That’s a lot,” I said.

  “Duhhh ‘that’s a lot,’” Dana said, imitating me in a nasal stoner voice.

  “Let me explain,” I said.

  “Explain how you spent twenty thousand dollars in half a year?” Her tears were flowing freely now and her face had contorted into a grimace. Her hands shook as she picked up a bank statement and shoved it in my face.

  “Well, some of it has been on yoga classes.” I waved the papers away and tried my deep breathing to keep me calm.

  “Will they be giving you a degree? Is there a master’s in goddamn headstands?” Dana shrieked. I’d never seen her quite like this before. I wanted to calm her down, but obviously I couldn’t tell her what was really going on at the ashram. I had been sworn to secrecy.

  “Dana, you don’t need to be snide.” I worked on keeping my voice even, which I had learned to do in one of Yoni’s advanced-level breath awareness classes. I would not let this descend into chaos, even if I couldn’t be completely forthcoming.

  “How dare you. How dare you condescend to me. You have spent more money on your yoga than we have spent on rent this year. We are supposed to be a team, Ethan.”

  “You haven’t been acting very generous lately. I hardly see you,” I said. I wanted her to know that her emotional absence had been wounding to me, just as my spending had been wounding to her.

  “You can’t turn this around on me. I work ninety-hour weeks, Ethan. I’m trying to provide for our family while you figure your shit out, which, by the way, is taking years longer than you said it would. I’m supporting us and you’re pissing our money away on God knows what.” She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m not getting any younger,” she said quietly. “I thought we were going to start trying for a baby soon.”

  I didn’t respond for what felt like a long time. Dana couldn’t look me in the face. I tried to find the right words. I knew she wanted kids soon, and I hadn’t been fully honest with her about my reservations. Yoni would not have approved of my concealing such a deep truth. I finally came up with “I don’t think it’s the right time. I’m not spiritually evolved enough to create another life yet.”

  “Fuck your spiritual evolution! What does that even mean? Who are you?” Suddenly Dana was yelling again.

  I tried to stay calm, but I was getting upset, too. “It’s not my fault you haven’t been listening to what I’ve been trying to tell you about my yoga practice for months now. It’s important to me. It’s changing my life in a positive way, if only you could see that.”

  Dana sank deeper into the wooden kitchen chair. “I don’t know what to say, Ethan. I love you, but I’m not interested in spending my precious little free time and hard-earned money on self-indulgences.”

  That annoyed me. “It’s not a ‘self-indulgence.’ It’s really helping me be a better person. If only you opened your mind a little bit, you could see that, and maybe start to change yourself.”

  “I can’t even process that right now,” Dana said. “This is much more about your spending that money in secret than what you’re spending it on.” She sounded exhausted. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second and I thought she might fall asleep sitting up. But then she got up abruptly and went to our bedroom. “I can’t think here,” she shouted. I could hear her rummaging around, and when I went to go stand in the doorway, I realized she was packing a small suitcase.

  “I’m going to stay with Beth,” she said. “I need to calm down and you need to figure out what you want.” She was throwing her fancy work clothes into the case, not even caring if they got wrinkled, which meant that she was really upset. She disappeared into the bathroom and came out with her bag of toiletries. “You cannot keep spending this kind of money.”

  I kept standing there silently, observing. She needed to process this in her own way, and I had to respect that.

  “The money is not even the biggest problem,” she said, zipping up her suitcase. “The biggest problem is that we’ve drifted apart without my even realizing it. The things that are coming out of your mouth tonight sound like they’re coming from someone else. They don’t sound like they’re coming from the Ethan I married.”

  “I’m still the same person,” I said. “Just better.”

  “I really want to believe that,” Dana said. She breezed past me with her suitcase and walked out the door.

  DAILY AFFIRMATION: My lovers should not judge me any more than they would judge themselves.

  After Dana left, I sat in our empty apartment for a while trying to collect my thoughts. I still loved Dana, but my feelings toward her were more like a baby’s blanket, an old talisman I kept around for security and comfort. I was starting to wonder if I had outgrown it.

  When Dana and I got married, I felt like I was ahead of my peers. I had found my life partner way before the rest of our college friends, and it felt like the relationship part of my life was settled and secure. But now I realized our relationship was just a way for me to avoid grappling with being my own person, developing into my own self. Dana’s financial support had become a burden instead of a gift. That’s not to blame her. I let it happen.

  Part of me felt relieved. I think I knew that this was bound to happen eventually. Did I really think I could absorb Lama Yoni’s teachings while still being Ethan Powell, Dana’s husband? Dana would never, ever understand.

  When the sun rose, I decided to go to the nearest hotel and try to get a room. I couldn’t think straight in the apartment, and I didn’t want to face Dana if she came home. I needed to separate to clear my head.

  The first rays of the morning were warming my back as I walked into a modern Midtown hotel that was usually a bustling scene of Silicon Alley twenty-four-year-olds pounding away on their laptops while drinking overpriced coffee. But all those twenty-four-year-olds were still in bed at six A.M., and the lobby was empty.<
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  I walked up to the front desk, where a sleepy but fresh-looking guy about my age said, “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, I’d like a single room, if there are any open.”

  “I think I can make it work,” he said with a big smile. “We have a medium queen open at three hundred and ninety-nine dollars a night.”

  “Great.” I realized how tired I was when he mentioned the queen-size bed. I pictured myself flopping down on it the second I entered the room.

  “Can I have a card for incidentals?”

  “Sure.” I handed over my debit card, which drew from our joint checking account. My account was empty. I’d spent the last of it at the Ashram six weeks prior.

  The clerk ran my card, and then his face clouded over. “I’m sorry, sir. Your account has been frozen.”

  At first I didn’t understand. “What?”

  He said it more slowly, as if I were foreign, or hard of hearing. “Your account has been frozen.”

  I couldn’t believe Dana had done this without telling me. I muttered something to myself that is too unevolved to repeat here. “Sorry for wasting your time.” I took the card and shambled out the revolving door.

  I walked down Fifth Avenue, which was still empty but for a bodega owner pacing outside his store and a few white-collar slaves rushing to their offices. I took my phone out of my pocket and looked down at it. A part of me wanted to call Dana and explain, in harsh words, how wounding her actions had been to me, but that didn’t cotton with Yoni’s nonviolent teachings. And what was I fighting for anyway? I couldn’t even answer.

  Once I had the phone out, my next step was obvious. I called Amaya. Who picked up on the second ring.

  DAILY AFFIRMATION: A port found in the dark is often the most welcoming one.

  I took the L train to Amaya’s, which was in a part of Bushwick I had never seen. She lived in a somewhat dilapidated freestanding house. When I rang the doorbell I heard a harmonic trill instead of the familiar shrill doorbell sound and knew I had come to the right place.

  Amaya floated up to the door wearing white linen pants and a white tank top. She looked concerned for me. “Come in, come in. How are you doing?”

  “Not so great,” I told her.

  She opened a door that had an enormous blue glass eye on it. “To ward off the bad spirits,” she said, smiling.

  Inside Amaya’s apartment, the parquet floors were bare but for a few kilim rugs. Every other available surface was covered with various African-looking gourds, bulbous fertility goddesses, and fat golden Buddhas. Her walls were plastered with batiks of sunsets and moonscapes and dream catchers.

  Looking around, I felt a sense of peace I hadn’t felt for weeks. Now that my life had imploded I felt free. No more pretending that I hadn’t radically changed, no more convincing myself that my marriage was anything but a broken shell of its former self.

  Amaya motioned for me to sit next to her on a futon covered with a red-and-gold Indian print. Once we were next to each other, she took my hand and smiled. “Yoni will be so pleased you’re here. We talked about this happening. We both knew you were ready to get to a higher level in your practice.”

  I paused for a second to process this. I was flattered that I was important enough to Yoni that he talked about me when I wasn’t around. And then I was embarrassed that I was flattered. But I wanted to hear more. “How do I get to a higher level at the ashram?”

  “It’s not at the ashram,” Amaya explained. “An amazing thing has happened recently, something Yoni has wanted for decades but didn’t have the resources to see happen before. It was only after he accepted that it was not fate for us to move forward that we received an exceedingly generous donation from the heavens. Yoni was an early investor in a Chinese Internet search company. He only gave a tiny fraction of capital, but when they had their IPO, he made enough money to buy the Zuni Retreat. It’s in New Mexico. Yoni bought the land two years ago, and we completed building on the compound last month. It’s our heaven. And our haven.” She closed her eyes in near ecstasy. “We are leaving tomorrow to live there, and we want you to come with us.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot to take in.” I wanted to refuse, to say that my life was here and I had to honor it, but what life did I really have left? A dead-end job that I hated. No friends who could emotionally support me. A wife who didn’t understand me and didn’t care to. No money to keep me afloat while I figured out my soul.

  “Okay,” I said quietly. “I’ll come with you.”

  Amaya smiled. “Fantastic. I will call Yoni’s assistant now and make the necessary arrangements. They have your name and driver’s license on file at the ashram, so they can get you a plane ticket. Our flight is at five forty-five tomorrow morning. We’ll rendezvous at the ashram at midnight to spiritually prepare for our journey.”

  “What should I bring?” I asked.

  “Just bring your robes. You don’t need anything else.”

  Amaya leaned over then and gave me a kiss. “I can’t believe you’re coming. I sent out positive vibes into the world for months, hoping that we’d be making this journey together.”

  After we had sex, connecting our minds, bodies, and souls for the second time, I fell asleep. When I woke up it was already ten P.M., which didn’t leave me much time to get back to my apartment and get my robe and an extra pair of shoes for our trip. On the subway back I kept rehearsing things to say to Dana if she was there. Did I want to come completely clean? Did I want to go for maximum hurt, since she had so little trust in me? What would Lama Yoni counsel?

  When I arrived at our doorstep I was covered in sweat. I trembled at our door, wondering if I would have to have a difficult conversation. I tried to remember Yoni’s teachings about radical honesty. He had said that people aren’t always ready to hear your truths, but that sharing them is the noblest action in the world. Then I threw open the door, and the apartment was pitch-black, just as I had left it. I flipped on the lights and started furiously pacing the apartment, wondering what to do first.

  Yoni always says that a clear mind is an uncluttered mind, and I didn’t want to be clouded when I reached the ashram. He would know. So I decided to write Dana a letter, revealing my journey to her in its fullness. For those of you leaving relationships, you need to learn how to be honest with yourselves and with your former partners, just as I have learned. I know it’s not easy. But secrets cheapen our practice, according to the guru.

  Since I left my old life and the shell of my old “Ethan” self, I have learned that after honesty, the most important thing is spiritual support. When you have a partner who supports you fully, you can go places—physically and metaphysically—that you did not think were possible. You can walk right up to the edge of darkness, stare into the abyss, and know someone is there to catch you if you fall.

  If your partner doesn’t love your soul in all its fullness, that is not a partner who you want to take with you on your life’s journey. You may regret shedding those negative souls, but remember, they are just hindrances, potholes on the road to enlightenment that need to be paved over with positivity.

  I hope that Dana learned to forgive me, in time. I truly believe that if she’d let the honesty of the world in, she could be free.

  Dana

  I got back to our apartment late at night. On the plane ride back I had tried to make sense of everything that happened at the retreat. I had learned more about who Ethan had become, and a bit more about the woman Amaya had been. This knowledge comforted me, kept me warm in the recycled air. I was already less angry than I had been a few days ago. Still, I had no idea how they died. I wished I had pressed Sylvia more about what she knew, but I liked her and her friends so much. I didn’t want to upset them with morbid questions when they’d made it clear they didn’t want to talk about the deaths. They were having such a good time together.

  I went in to work the next morning extra early so that I wouldn’t chance seeing angry Phil in the elevator all hyp
ed up from his morning workout and full of coconut water. I also wanted to get a head start on what I had missed. But I couldn’t concentrate. Katie kept coming in and dumping more files on my desk. “Sorry, Dana. Here’s another,” she’d chirp, ever cheerful. I’d open one and end up reading the same sentence over and over again, not comprehending or absorbing any of it.

  What I kept coming back to was this: I needed to find out more about Yoni. Whatever had happened out there in the desert had to be connected to the “enlightenment” Yoni was peddling. I had read about the changes he’d made while we were still married in his book, but after years at the Zuni Retreat, there had to be even more profound shifts that I didn’t know about.

  I considered calling Beth for a reality check—she’d certainly give me one. I had texted her to tell her I was back in New York, so she wouldn’t worry. I saw that I had a missed call from her. But I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be talked out of my thoughts. Of course Ethan’s death was horrible, and it had brought up all the things I had spent so much time and money working through. But these thoughts, and the renewed sense of mission I had about figuring out who Ethan had become, were more vital and exciting to me than anything I had experienced in years.

  I finally pushed my work aside. I wasn’t getting anywhere with it. I had long feared that I would lose my ambition and my competitive drive. You needed to be unendingly motivated to make partner here, and I’d seen so many people, especially women, lose that push when they hit their thirties. But now that the desire to work was missing, it wasn’t scary; it was tremendously freeing.

  I took out a legal pad and started listing everything I had learned about Ethan from his book, from the sheriff, and from my time at the retreat. It was like working on any other case. I suppose I’d thought I might do something like this, because I had put my copy of Ethan’s book in my briefcase right before I left the apartment.