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I have a hot and heavy confession burning like coal on the tip of my tongue.

For the past several months, I have tried, with due diligence, to control the fire or, better yet, to extinguish it altogether.

Instead, that fire in me multiplied, fed by the branch that is experience. Once ignited, it cannot be put out. Still, I feel the root that is pride waste away beneath the sturdy ivory tower I’ve built in order to keep people from digging too deep into the ground, in fear that once unearthed, they may discover and taste my forbidden fruit—only to spit it out like tobacco.

Here it is:

I believe in the Twin Flame phenomenon.

As I write this, I kneel and assume the liquidation of all of my leftover credibility. I melt rapidly as my bones soften and my heart spills out on the floor. My ego crashes and burns.

Speaking of which, that right there is the sole purpose of the Twin Flame encounter: to cause the breakdown of the ego and remind you of who you really are. Nothing more.

One of the many reasons I felt so hesitant to write an article on the topic of Twin Flames is because there are so many myths and false assumptions floating around in cyberspace. And almost everyone believes them. These myths are based on a plethora of misunderstandings and what I now call “Pop Culture spirituality,” thanks to a spiritual teacher whose explanation of this I now firmly believe in.

Another reason is that those who are not interested in anything remotely spiritual often shrug it off and dismiss this phenomenon as being “New Age,” and therefore rather flaky. When I admit to people that I do believe in Twin Flames, I can’t help but begin my rant with a disclaimer or two (or three). I fully expect the person I am speaking with to roll their eyes, shake their heads with a crooked half-smile, yawn, and say: “Yeah. Okay. Whatever,” and then mock me silently under their breath.

If one were to type “Twin Flames” into the Google search engine, they would inevitably come across a vast amount of garbage on the subject. They’d have to be prepared to read about various stages on the so-called “journey,” the importance of healing childhood wounds, divine feminine versus divine masculine counterparts (by the way, Twin Flames has nothing at all to do with gender or its various, interchangeable expressions) equating to a notorious “runner and chaser” twin entangled in a web of an apparently endless dysfunctional dynamic, and so on.

In addition, you will almost always read about Twin Flames being “destined to be together”—that is, after they’ve completely healed all of their childhood wounds and severed karmic ties. After that, it is said that the two will come into union and embark on some common ethereal mission in order to service and awaken humanity.

The truth in all of that? Well, there really isn’t any.

Our culture has us believing that Twin Flames are either similar to soul mates or, what’s more, soul mates on steroids. This, in my view, exposes a deeper misconception: the idea that there is a one-and-only person we are meant to be with for the rest of our lives for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, both literally and figuratively speaking.

Almost every single person on the face of this planet equates love with ownership. You’re mine because I love you, or I love you and desire you, therefore we must be together. We must label ourselves a couple and tell each other and the rest of the world that we are in a committed relationship. We must then move in together, spend nearly every waking moment with each other, set up joint bank accounts, agree to divide household tasks, and perhaps get legally married and start a family.

After all, isn’t that what love should look like?

The way I see it, your Twin Flame is simply another incarnation of your soul (which is limitless) having a different physical experience in a different body while co-existing in the same earthly period. That’s it. While I believe everyone has a Twin Flame, most people never meet them. Furthermore—and this might blow people away—your Twin Flame more than likely isn’t the person you’re married to or will be with forever.

We will most certainly fall deeply and madly in love with this person, but the more attached we become to them, and to some kind of outcome, the more they will eventually feel compelled to run from us. Often, they won’t even understand why they feel the need to run in the first place. But what they are, in fact, responding to, on an unconscious level, is our metaphysical energy being directed toward them. The harder we push, the harder they pull—and we don’t even have to say anything to them to cause this to be so. Energy is its own language; it speaks for itself.

The reason for this, from what I’ve learned, is that you and your Twin Flame are polarized. While it can feel like you share the same core energy, your mind is the opposite of their mind. And in order for your “shared soul” to exist on this physical plane of duality in separate bodies, this polarization between minds is absolutely necessary and quite frankly inevitable.

This type of polarity exists in so many aspects of life. Light is understood because we experience darkness. We understand hot because we know what cold feels like. Polarities are observed everywhere in nature—it’s an undeniable law. We come to know and understand certain things because they are relative to each other. The spiritual teacher I listen to put it beautifully: “Duality is ‘God’ (the universe) wanting to experience itself as itself.”

When we talk about souls, however, we shouldn’t confuse them with the structure of a personality we’ve built within us based on all kinds of external narratives and conditions. The soul is not a collection of thought patterns, behaviors, habits, and emotions. That all comes from the mind. This explains why you and your Twin Flame can, on the surface, seem as different as night and day.

And while you can obviously find polarity with other people in your life as well, the degree to which it exists is greater with Twin Flames. Your encounter with them, along with the profound pain they ignite when they run from or reject you, is meant to be a stepping-stone to your own awakening, to who you are beyond name and form.

In the so-called “Twin Flame community” however, a Twin Flame is erroneously believed to be a “high-level soul mate” who is destined to one day be with us after a lot of healing has occurred in one or both people. In my experience, this could not be further from the truth.

If you are one of the many people who have never met your Twin Flame, my ego-aligned mind can’t help but think count yourself as fortunate. There is nothing quite like the dark night that encompasses our world after physically losing this other person. The longing, the grief, and the pain we feel from the running and rejecting cuts to the core. And while every one of us will inevitably go through heartache at one point or another, this pain feels palpable, even suffocating at times.

We may also have an inextricable “knowing,” something we can’t adequately explain. We just know there was some grander purpose to the encounter. We feel it in our bones. Several months or even years can pass and the scab wound on our heart still remains. Everyone I’ve met who believes they have encountered their Twin Flame describes feeling hopelessly haunted by the encounter. They also describe a similar feeling of deep longing, overwhelming grief, frequent dreams, and synchronicity in the timing and events of their initial encounter.

But the sheer amount of suffering we go through is generally what causes us to eventually begin to ask ourselves a series of questions. The first one being, “What the hell is happening to me?” As I’ve learned, if we feel drawn to someone or something on a visceral level, there’s undoubtedly a reason for it, though it may not be the reason we suspect. That said, I do not believe in coincidences.

In my case, it eventually got to the point where I had a breakdown—after several months had passed, no less—and this time, I decided to pray. I prayed not because I am in any way religious or believe in God as “he” is often defined, but because I was feeling especially desperate for reprieve that night. I felt I had nothing more to lose by taking a shot in the dark. I hoped that my trembling voice might reach the ears of some elusive entity through the gaps between deep sobs.

As I clasped my hands together, I asked the universe, in vain, to please heal my heart. In addition, I asked for some kind of confirmation that I was indeed on some kind of “Twin Flame journey,” as I believed it to be called at that time. Within an hour, I received the sign I had asked for in the form of an unexpected event. Months later, after I began to overthink, overanalyze, and doubt the encounter and the label I had attached to it once again, I received yet another hint from the universe—this time unexpectedly, without having asked for anything. I am grateful for these experiences, as they reawakened my faith.

Had it not been for all of the “junk food” I consumed around the concept of Twin Flames, via the internet and various support groups, I more than likely wouldn’t have had any lingering doubts about my experience. That being said, it wasn’t until recently that I came across a wise and honest man’s channel and began to understand the true purpose behind meeting this other person.

As hard as it is to accept, as soon as we understand that the intention of meeting our Twin Flame is not to necessarily be with them, the more quickly we can embrace its true intent and embark on a spiritual journey that is our own—a journey that leads us to a deeper understanding of who you really are.

We met our polar opposite in this other person because our soul was knocking at our door, wanting so desperately to be let in. It was calling us to align with our true nature and to confront the trap that is the mind, which comes with expectations and judgements and attachments to all things physical, including other people.

And if we’re the chaser in the relationship, our mind is what becomes addicted to the energy of our Twin Flame, otherwise known as the runner. It’s important to understand that they will not feel what we feel. They will not suffer the loss of the physical connection like we do. They may not even recognize the encounter for what it was. They will not reminisce, pine over us, or feel inspired to dig for answers. Nor will they share in or validate our metaphysical experiences, which often include frequent moments of synchronicity, even during the dark nights we wander through after losing them.

Their awakening process will be different from ours. Often, this is difficult for the ego to accept; we want the other person to feel pain over losing us. We don’t want to feel disposable or forgotten. Believe me, I’ve been there. However, in truth, we don’t need their validation. We are whole. Nor do we need them to confirm all that we’ve experienced. We know what we know now. In fact, we don’t really need anyone, but our cultural conditioning has us believing that we’re in need of healing, fixing, or validation from others, and that we’re ultimately fragmented and incomplete. And these voices become louder with time. But we don’t have to listen to them.

Once we radically accept and embrace our call to awakening, with time and practice we eventually become acquainted with a deep and lasting sense of inner peace. At that point, we have no time for people or things that do not feed and nourish us. We are grounded in the present and feel a oneness within. Yes, we still have thoughts and play a role in the world, but we learn not to merge our identity with what we do and how we think or feel at any given moment. We become the observer of our thoughts and take enjoyment in the journey of life without taking every little (or big) thing that happens to us too seriously. Once we’ve experienced this state, known as satori, no one has the power to take it from us.

My encounter with my Twin Flame has undoubtedly changed me. The pain I felt over losing her rattled me to the core, but slowly and with time, it also shook me out of my own self-imposed prison, the one I call my ego. Now, I cannot and do not approach love and relationships the same way I used to. My so-called “twin” set my former hut on fire, metaphysically speaking, and forced me to find a new place to inhabit—one that feels like inner peace.

And as much as it still hurts at times, I am forever grateful for the encounter. I am not the same person I once was.

Thankfully, I also have a current partner who tries her hardest to accept my pain and is willing to listen to me talk about Twin Flames from time to time, without being jealous. She understands that our connection is different, that we are two souls inhabiting two bodies. Last summer, she even helped me write the music to a song about my pain. It is one that I will never play for anyone, even for myself. I wrote the lyrics, sang them, and recorded the song. However, it will never reach anyone’s ears.

My girlfriend met me shortly after the physical loss of my Twin Flame, when I was like a broken-winged bird. I told her she could leave me, that I would understand if she wanted to do so. But she stayed, holding me against her chest as I cried. Her devotion to me has been a light in the tunnel of my sometimes-limited vision, showing me that angels do exist in human form. On paper, someone might read this and think your poor girlfriend. But once again, love is not ownership over another person. True love is free and unattached to outcome.

I used to be the kind of person who clung to relationships with a life-or-death grip. I used to become jealous easily. The former me couldn’t handle being in a connection and not knowing what label to give it. I took it personally when someone was unable to love me the way I wanted to be loved by them. To be honest, I still sometimes find myself struggling with fragments of this former self, but I nevertheless now realize that I am the watcher, the observer of these thought patterns.

Sometimes, I still think to myself, “What good is love if it doesn’t stay?” Then, I counter that with, “What good is love even if it lasts?”

My girlfriend even asks me about my previous relationships with no other intention than to allow me to process them more fully and to learn more about me. She implicitly understands that we do not belong to each other. Instead, we are simply sharing in this part of each other’s journey through life, just as we are with every single person who comes into our life, without exception. We travel and create together. We enjoy our freedom. We enjoy each other in that freedom.

In truth, no one belongs to anyone. We’re all just walking each other home for various lengths of time. Nothing lasts, and anyway, would we really want it to? And if it did, what purpose would it really serve?

~