I agree with everything you just said there, SQ - but I also think there is a difference between unconscious triggers which cause us to repeat lifelong patterns and the experience of true soul connection with another being.

What that limbic response describes to me is attraction, attachment and compulsion toward loyalty that most humans equate with love. But I think a soul mate can actually "wake us up" from this unconscious approach to life and relationships.

I also think there is a difference between rewiring the brain to respond to a different set of non-verbal cues and developing spiritual consciousness and depth of relationships. I feel particularly qualified to observe the difference, because I spent more than 10 years healing myself from these destructive patterns and had come to a place in my life where I had successfully rewired my brain in the ways described above.

Yet, since I began to cultivate a more spiritually minded lifestyle, my entire perspective on human interactions has changed profoundly. It is as though I became aware of a vastly greater aspect to human connection that pre-exists emotions, intellect and physiology.

I can say that my growth, development, awakening... whatever you want to call it, has happened so exponentially fast that I have periodically contemplated that I might actually be insane. And this transformation has completely altered my energetic frequency. How is it (and I think this goes to BL's point) that my counterpart, with whom I am not even particularly friendly in the external world, has been going through the same process at the same speed and has remained a perfect energetic complement every step of the way? That is fascinating to me.