Is it normal to firmly beleave my deceased x wife came to me to apoligize

You're quite at liberty to believe anything you want to believe if it makes you feel better, but personally I'm sceptical about such visitations.

However, I don't understand the concept of being soul mates with someone who's no longer alive and I think you need to be careful not to hold on to this past relationship to the extent that it prevents you forming something new with someone who's alive.

If it's real for you then go with it. However is all this preventing you from having a new relationship with a live person?

I'd like to believe there is an afterlife and some essential aspect of us survives the death of the body, but I can't buy it. So I think that the only sense in which some part of us survives death is in the memories of those who knew us and the consequences of our actions.

You seem to be a religious person, and so I guess you believe that the soul exists and it can survive death. You're obviously free to believe that, and if your experience in the cabin has helped you get past any lingering bitterness about what happened with your ex-wife and move forward in your life, that's fine. The objective reality of what happened is irrelevant. You experienced what you experienced, and nobody has the right to deny that you felt what you felt.

However, like Ellenna, I think that the result of you deciding that a dead person is your soulmate could be very negative. Leaving aside the question of whether soulmates actually exist - and I don't think they do - the implication is that you've decided to dedicate the rest of your life to a dead person who, when she was alive, didn't have much respect for you or your relationship and hurt you deeply. That says nothing good about your level of self-respect. The other implication is that you believe that any relationship you could possibly have with a living person would be second-best, and therefore not really worth having.

If you choose to believe that your ex-wife's soul did survive death and she did indeed visit you, consider the possibility that her intention wasn't to be helpful but to relieve her guilt while she screwed with your life again. If she was truly as nasty and selfish as your story suggests she was, maybe she still is, and maybe she wants you to believe that you can never find happiness with another woman.

I think the belief in a soul is wishful thinking, but it seems to me utterly illogical to believe that the core essence of people is fundamentally transformed at the moment of death. It makes no sense at all to believe that, for example, the instant Hitler died he immediately became a sweet, loving incorporeal being who wanted only to do good.

You can believe whatever you want. It doesn’t make you any less of a delusional idiot.

Your delusional.