Soul Mates Read Online Free PDF Page B

luxurious with hand-stitched leather and oil-finished African mahogany.
    As she walked up the steps to the main doors, she was reminded of the fellow she’d run into the previous day and sincerely hoped she wouldn’t see him again. She considered herself easygoing, but occasionally she came across a person who, like that man, pushed her patience to the limit—someone whom she suspected was capable of good manners when it served him yet made a habit of being impolite and disrespectful. She hoped he would treat her aunt with more courtesy.
    Taking a moment to breathe deeply, she swept the unpleasant thoughts from her mind. It was ten o’clock, and she knocked on her aunt’s door, excited to begin.
    “Cassandra, my dear.” Sophia sounded surprised. “How lovely to see you.”
    “Aunt Sophia,” Cassandra frowned. “You asked me to come by this morning. You said you had something you wanted to tell me. I’ve brought a computer so I can take notes.”
    “Yes. Yes, of course,” Sophia shook her head. “Shall we have a cup of tea?”
    “Sure…” Cassandra began to wonder whether her aunt was as clear about what she wanted her to write as she had been the day before. She’s eighty-seven, after all. Maybe she’s starting to lose her memory. I hope not. It’ll be a shame if she can’t recall her past clearly. With that, Cassandra began to think how she might fill in missing details. I could interview people that knew her, look up articles about her in newspaper archives, maybe see what information the local library has on Port Hayden and its residents.
    Sophia poured their tea and invited her grandniece to join her in the living room. Once seated, she looked Cassandra in the eye. “I haven’t always had an easy life.”
    Not wanting to miss anything, Cassandra reached into her jacket pocket and discreetly turned on the voice recorder.
    “I always believed that my life was what I made it,” Sophia continued. “But I thought the making of it involved hard work, pain, and sacrifice.”
    “Should I be taking notes?”
    “Oh, no dear.” Sophia sat back and sipped her tea. “I’m just telling you what not to do.” She laughed softly and turned away for a moment, her eyes gazing upward. “But you’ll make your own mistakes. That’s how we learn, how we know what we want in life. My mistake was to fight against what I didn’t want. I didn’t know that pushing against problems only makes them bigger. I was an activist—that’s what they called me. It sounds virtuous and valiant, but it was just me trying to change the world by my own puny efforts. There’s a better way.” She smiled at Cassandra. “Write this down.”
    Opening the computer, Cassandra felt a tingle as her hands hovered over the keys, poised and eager to begin typing.
    “We’re all part of a great big universe. It’s an organized system, a well-oiled machine with perfection and order at the heart of it.” She nodded as if to affirm her own statement and then added, “The only reason people run around helter-skelter is that they believe they’re separate, and they’re trying to control their life or change their environment by hard work.”
    Cassandra was glad she could type fast; she didn’t want to ask her aunt to slow down or repeat herself. It wasn’t what she’d been expecting to hear, yet she was spellbound as she listened.
    Sophia explained that the universe was governed by basic principles. “The first is that all things are one. Everything originates from a powerful Source, is made of the same substance, and reacts the same way. Each of us is part of that Source, and all that we do is regulated by that power.”
    Cassandra stopped typing. She didn’t want to interrupt, but she was curious. It was obvious her aunt wasn’t talking about a traditional God or organized religion. “Aunt Sophia, I don’t understand. If a power like that exists, why are so many unaware of it?”
    “More people are aware of it than you may