Wednesday, August 24, 2011

surviving the twin soul

(end of 2012 Note: this post has turned out to be so pivotal, with many people contacting me about it. I have thus gone back to clarify the terminology a little. Twin soul, twin flame, and soulmate get used different ways by different people, and that's fine as long as we know what kind of relationship each other is referring to. Here then are the definitions that I've settled on, although my older writings may still blur the distinctions. Also, some friends of mine perfectly switch the terms around for the same concepts, which makes it tricky to quote their ideas. For example, Ahtun Re calls a soulmate a twin soul, and a twin soul a soulmate! That's why we have to think about what we mean when we say the words, to hold the vibration and not just sling jargon.

Soulmate = Any significant other soul, probably from many past lives together. We meet them again and again to exchange gifts and hopefully improve the relationship, which could be smooth or rocky in emotions, short or long in duration. If the word "mate" throws you into romantic illusions, think more "crewmate" or "shipmate".

Twin Flame = A parallel soul, someone who has become very compatible by their own evolutionary choices. We may or may not have had many past lives together, but they definitely would be wonderful to meet and work with now. A serious candidate for lifelong mating and partner growth! Just don't forget to respect freewill choices and perceptions, as the human personalities get involved. Even the best twin flame potentials can come and go, at least until a fully conscious shared commitment is attained.

Twin Soul = The one other soul with whom you were originally created by the infinite mother/father God, who creates souls in perfect pairs so they may learn duality in harmony. You and your twin soul will always balance off each other, so that even though you two share values and goals you will represent opposing views and complementary methods. (My friend Walter Semkiw refers to twin souls as dipoles, to emphasize the perfect polarity which must be resolved for better or worse.) When twin soul incarnations meet there is an explosion of self-realization and growth, but any assumptions that this makes you ideal mates or colleagues will be tested and probably prove false. Most twin souls do not and cannot stay together long, which will result in hard feelings only as much as the wholeness and balance within each twin is not cultivated. We are after all each complete divine eternal beings.

And if I just say twin, I'm probably referring to the twin soul, but context should make it clear. Now back to my original post, with terms corrected for consistency according to the above definitions...)

I am relieved to know – definitely not happy, but relieved – that untimely separation from the ultimate mate of the soul (the so-called twin soul, that unique companion of eternity with whom we were made by God) can and will be SURVIVED. Since I opened just last year to the magic and miracles of actually meeting my own twin soul - the embodied twin of my immortal soul, the one my dreams had long foretold and I’d been praying for! - I have wondered a) why there was a deep recurring agony in me of something broken that wasn’t getting healed though it could and should be any day now, and b) how I could ever hope to reach and inspire all these people who seem tragically alienated from the infinite joy of the twin soul experience which I could not cease from recommending and describing.

It turns out that it’s actually very rare for twin souls to meet, and rarer for them to get along, romantically or otherwise; perhaps few were designed to be conventionally coupled, but all are most deeply born to co-create something new and wonderful for the next stage of humanity, when the time is right. The estrangement of twin souls simply cannot be divine, since these original soul comrades, these unique creation partners, are the most visible gift from God that we may ever hope to celebrate and receive as a species. Twin souls are invested with the powers to heal and change the world, as suggested by famed pairs as diverse and incomparable as Magdalene and Jesus, who most brilliantly rekindled the promise of a new human covenant with God (end of 2012 note: I now see that Magdalene and Jesus were twin flames, and Mother Mary and Jesus were the twin souls), Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa, who taught as an unexpected guru pair that spiritual evolution was now calling for our direct and conscious participation, and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who in the midst of unenviable human frailties founded a nation never before seen to lead the future dream.

The current state of sad affairs (so to speak) with separated twins is a symptom of the planet now, which as we all know is in the final stages of the most significant transformation in at least many thousands of years: some would say since Atlantis, others would say ever. And my encounter with the phenomenon of unhappy twins was inevitable given the nature of my soul’s essential service, which is evident from my visionary lifetimes as the mystic Hildegard of Bingen and more, in that I help to lead the manifestation. I point the way to the divine destiny which is beyond the belief and experience of most people currently alive, and my writings get fortunately preserved and only really treasured and vindicated in the centuries that follow. I’m a bit ahead of my time, much to my recurring dismay. You'd think I’d learn and be glad of it, but you can see how it can be a hardship to really know what absolute greatness the human condition is meant to enjoy and as yet has not and shows few signs of ever getting there.

It is vital now that when twin souls meet and one awakens in their heart much more or differently than the other, so that when the near-inevitable separation comes they despair of ever being fit to live again, they not die of their heartbreak but join the company of other souls in a similar predicament. I was blessed by the universe with the return of a great karmic friend, a shaman soul whose experiences so parallel my own, to nurse me from the tragedy of my twin soul not being ready to stay and grow further in my direct and grateful company, despite how much we were both so happy to have met and helped each other activate and change our lives as only twin souls can. There is a kind of purgatory for abandoned twins that is forming now, and it is not so bad, though I will warn that I had to experience a shamanic death to enter it. My heart chakra literally died and was replaced after my twin gave their final notice; I didn’t know this and it’s rare, but chakras can fall off and grow back, as one woman I know had it happen to her third.

Feel free to contact me at returnofhildegard/at/gmail/dot-com if you are in the pains of knowing who is your twin soul and not being welcome there (notice I just spelled that out a bit to stop spammers). It is essential that you receive the support you need to survive. God has not abandoned you, and in fact the future is immeasurably grateful to your sacrifice which shall be rewarded beyond your imagination, though you may rightly not conceive of a life of love again. You will survive and thrive in a whole new way that will change the course of history, for you are strong as God, and your strength is greater than any army or this most potent poison you have swallowed or the beauty of that most singular flower whose fragrance you have inhaled. You were created for this moment which remains breathlessly poised upon the threshold of eternity, and your courage to carry on will see the future dream reborn. You must believe in yourself half as much as all the angels beg you to, for they know of the depths and height of the challenge to which you have been raised. The universe is just beginning now, and you must remember that the pain you will survive is a window for the world. Your soul is in your body now.


Update 1/3/2012: I am understanding the topic better now, along with feeling healed. Because they are born from each other, twin souls are in essence each other's parent and child simultaneously. Their meeting returns each other back to the Source and retrieves each other's soul only as much as each is ready to experience, so a balance of joy isn't guaranteed even if unconsciously a mutual benefit is exchanged that will unfold in time. Free will must be respected here in order to not suffer. And then the individuation will take place, just like children growing up, so twins will part ways naturally. You're ready to explore the world with your activated soul and find your own conscious preferences after reuniting with your twin. I am going to follow now some teachings which distinguish between the twin soul as the one who gave birth to you and you to them, versus the twin flame who is any truly infinite compatible partner (you carry a torch for each other).
    So I was incorrect in my romantic assumption that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were the twin souls, no, they were perfect mates with compatible kundalinis to explore the universe together, better called the flames. Mother Mary and Jesus were the twin souls. I'm not sure about many other examples either, still researching, but I do know one rare twin soul romance was the poets Elizabeth and Robert Browning, and whether they might not still individuate apart in future lives is unknown to me.

Update 5/7/2013: For my latest blog post on this topic, see here: http://newearthlight.blogspot.com/2013/05/latest-advice-on-twin-souls.html


20 comments:

Jen said...

Carl, I think I've shared this with you before, just think it is apropos here:
http://wisp.focusphere.net/wisp/14/song-distance-relationships

Even as you feel the pain, know there is a divine alchemy at work. To paraphrase Julian of Norwich: "All is well, and all is well, and all manner of things are well."

Go forward into the New Earth Light...

Light & Love,
Jen

Heather said...

Thank you - this was heartwarming to read as I have recently found and lost my twinsoul. I feel my heart has been ripped out - I'm interested you say your heart chakra can die and be reborn. It's good to be able to share with someone who is going through the pain of the loss. well wishes, Heather

Carl J. Schroeder said...

Thank you Heather for sharing as well. I've made an update at the end of the entry that may help a little more, God bless and good luck to you in love.

Jen said...

Of course it is painful to lose a loved one and I've certainly "been there." At the same time, I know that we never lose something that is for our highest good.

I was pondering this from Emerson recently, think it fits here:

"I know how delicious is this cup of love–I existing for you, you existing for me; but it is a child clinging to his toy, an attempt to eternize the fireside and nuptial chamber; to keep the picture alphabet through which our first lessons were prettily conveyed. This early dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our life-play. In the processions of the soul from within outward, it enlarges its circles, like light proceeding from an orb. It passes from loving one to loving all; and so, this one beautiful soul opens the divine door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. Thus in our first years are we put in training for a love which knows neither sex, person, nor partiality; but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom.”

-Emerson

Carl J. Schroeder said...

Thanks Jen. I certainly intend to feel and develop the proper love for every living thing. Each relationship is unique. I find the calls to feel universal love alarming if they imply that we are to not only love all but to love all in the same way. Emerson sounds a little judgmental toward those who would cherish a most precious companion, which is a divinely romantic goal for many, and indeed I would argue stems naturally from having a self to love so intimately that we simply are that self ever more deeply in perpetuity. At the other end of the spectrum, the best love to give some people is a distance, which is why God is absent for many.

Jen said...

I don't feel Emerson was being judgmental, Carl. I think he was speaking from experience: "I know how delicious is this cup of love..."

You may be interested in this story of his own love and loss:
http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/emerson/Marriage.php

Carl J. Schroeder said...

The remarkable intellectual and emotional growth that Emerson enjoyed during just 3 years in deep doomed love with sickly teen Ellen Tucker whom he met on Christmas Day may have been a twin soul experience. After she died he had an existential crisis that propelled his individuation into his own philosophical identity separate from all conventions of the ministry that he had entered. Years later his happy marriage to Lydia might then exemplify the kind of preferred partnership we are capable of developing after the tragic sensation of growing apart from the twin soul origins. Still, his quote about love comes from Representative Men, 1850, well into that marriage, and he sounds scolding toward anyone who holds onto an earlier idealized affection, calling it a child's toy and just a lesson to love everything, which suggests to me a lack of compassion and full integration for the depth of what he experienced. That remains my opinion and sense of it, because I know how hard it can be to grow beyond that first eternal paired peer love that created us. It becomes a joy when we realize our full destiny in human divine consciousness, which more are achieving now.

Heather said...

Hi Karl and Jen,

- Interesting posts. From my limited research both into myself and outside of myself, it seems twinsouls meet in a number of lives in order to expand eachother and get ready to fully return to source, to become ready for eachother. I have read that twinsouls need to meet in 11 times before being reunited. Also that twinsouls meetings often end in tragedy before the final reunion. Romeo and Juliet and many operas are apparently based on twinsoul relationships.
- Interesting Carl how you differentiate twinsouls and twinflames. I haven't come across this before. Twinsouls feels more apt for me for what I am referring to but perhaps this is just individual preference. The topic is quite new to me.
- Emerson - from my first reading of what he wrote, I felt that there was a lot of pain there for him..like he hadn't healed from his experience or fully accepted it..we can't replace our twin but we can love others...ultimately we have to heal and forgive from the first separation from our twin..which was very painful.
- twinsouls, I think help to end duality, to get ready to return to source and to oneness - to our twinsoul, our soul family and then source. This process can be painful, at least from my experience it isn't all plain sailing. I think we (each twin) needs to repay karma, learn life lessons and ultimately learn to accept and love oneself, which is easier said than done. Meeting ones twinsoul helps in the process, I think. From my experience I knew my twin before knowing him in traditional sense - I saw all my "good" traits and "bad" traits - in my twin I loved these things and felt and thus learnt that there is no differentiation between these in him and thus me - so called good and bad. All is me, makes me - like maybe a big part of the journey is not always self improvement but self acceptance and not seeing good or bad/end of duality. So I feel very blessed. However this process can be very painful. The twinsouls aren't always ready to meet or be together and hence why it can end tragially. Not to say it's not meant to happen - I guess it's all part of the expansion process. But haven't come to the point to accept fully that things couldn't have gone another way - it felt to me they could. Right now I believe things can go a number of ways but eventually get to the same ending. I still have regrets and there is much pain. These things aren't bad, they are what they are. The job is to accept more than "get over" and of course to forgive.
- Also from my research, twinsouls often need to learn a lot from other relationships - from soulmates. Often twinsouls journeys on earth in different lifetimes can be quite separate, I think.
- this had been a bit of a case of thinking our loud so I hope that it makes some sense.
With well wishes and feel free to comment/add etc. Heather

Carl J. Schroeder said...

Hi Heather,
Thank you for thinking out loud and sharing your heartfelt experience, that is perfect! My twin and I met for the 13th time now according to her, which felt true to me, and we're not all happily in union, sorry to say. No big karmic drama, we were simply totally nice to each other and supportive of our growth and healing from what others did to us, before gently sadly splitting. The result of our meeting was a returning to source and nondualistic acceptance of how she and I are both always connected and always separate; we do not make a perfect couple in the full human manifestation of personality based on life choices. It's a very very hard concept that twin souls are not made to be the preferred partners in romance or otherwise, though they seem to be the perfect destined one we were looking for. A part of me still can't believe it and wishes she could change, another part is relieved because it was so not working out. Ahtun Re, as channeled by Kevin Ryerson, clued me into the twin soul vs flame distinction, that the twin soul you are born from and with is like the parent you need to leave to find the preferred partner your own age who really matches you in all of your free will evolution in parallel. The terminology of twins, souls, mates, and flames can get confusing, people mix the words in different ways, but the concepts are clear. Embracing the twin soul separateness with togetherness is harder for some than others, depending on the nature of your destiny, like which of the 7 rays you are from, etc. I'm in the second ray and very romantic, so I need to find my twin flame and let go my twin soul as a major part of my path. Good luck on your own way Heather, it definitely calls for greater self-love and self-knowing to heal what you've been through!
peace,
Carl

Heather said...

- Thanks to you too! I don't know how many liftimes me and my twin have met. I feel I know we have met in many lifetimes. Yeah I guess everyone needs meet different number of times..makes sense...we are not all the same. I do believe that we will all eventually be united with our twin when we are both ready.. Then re-unite with our soul family and then all soul families eventually re-unite together to source. I'm not too clear on all this - just have a general picture, which I'm sure can grow. Yes my separation from my twin had resulted in returning to source and nondualistic acceptance as you say but I guess I'm not completely there yet.
- I thought me and my twin were to heal with eachother in this lifetime. He is now in the spirit world so that cannot be - at least not in the physical sense but perhaps in other senses.
- Re different types of twin. My twin is the one that's the twin of my soul. Would you have any insight into which ray that is?...I haven't heard about 7 rays.
- when you say you wish your twin could change..this perhaps a mirror of what you haven't yet accepted in yourself?...there are things in my twin I haven't fully accepted..I think I haven't accepted them in myself, that's why I suggest this?
- and what you say about not making the perfect couple...is there such a thing?...maybe it's just a case of not being ready yet?
- thank you for the good luck message :) and well wishes to you too

Carl J. Schroeder said...

Hmmm, this is getting to be more of a discussion for email than a comments page, you can contact me carl (at) soulstirring (dot) org. 7 rays is a system of soul service types in theosophy, it's not about twins but twins would be of the same ray, you can google it. To other points I'll say briefly: I think when we enjoy a karma-free happy twin reunion then it is done, whatever it was is all there is, time to move on to other soul connections. The twin soul connection is always there, whatever more we wanted is found with other people starting in ourselves. When I said a part of me wished she could change, I just meant the impatient me that isn't accepting human individuality which takes time to appreciate and satisfy. She will be happier with other people, I will be too, it's a big universe. It was a great gift that we met, because our relationship explained the patterns of my life and gave me a new start on everything. I was stuck on her for centuries without even knowing it, I have a chance now to go beyond my old limitations. You can hold onto your twin soul until you are ready to accept what they have already offered.

Jen said...

Carl and Heather,

Just wanted to address your comments re the Emerson quote on love. For the sake of general readability, here is that quote again (I fear this is going to be another long post!):

"I know how delicious is this cup of love–I existing for you, you existing for me; but it is a child clinging to his toy, an attempt to eternize the fireside and nuptial chamber; to keep the picture alphabet through which our first lessons were prettily conveyed. This early dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our life-play. In the processions of the soul from within outward, it enlarges its circles, like light proceeding from an orb. It passes from loving one to loving all; and so, this one beautiful soul opens the divine door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. Thus in our first years are we put in training for a love which knows neither sex, person, nor partiality; but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom.”

Carl, you wrote in part:

"He sounds scolding toward anyone who holds onto an earlier idealized affection, calling it a child's toy and just a lesson to love everything, which suggests to me a lack of compassion and full integration for the depth of what he experienced. That remains my opinion and sense of it, because I know how hard it can be to grow beyond that first eternal paired peer love that created us. It becomes a joy when we realize our full destiny in human divine consciousness, which more are achieving now."

For my part, I see Emerson's perspective there as being perfectly representative of Transcendentalism. Since he identified himself as a transcendentalist, it is only to be expected that he would express their views. Transcendentalism is a close cousin of cosmic consciousness, and Emerson was held up as one of the examples of cosmic
consciousness in Richard Maurice Bucke's classic, Cosmic Consciousness.

I think it is precisely because Emerson knew the ultimate pangs of love and loss, that he was able to come to the perspective he voiced in that quote. Naturally it took a while for him to get there.

Someone asked a spiritual teacher about soul mates. The teacher said that everyone on the planet is our soul mate. That if we have a moment with the guy selling newspapers on the street, that guy is our soulmate in that moment. He says, "I don't mean to destroy dreams, but to expand them."

Heather, you wrote of Emerson:

"Emerson - from my first reading of what he wrote, I felt that there was a lot of pain there for him..like he hadn't healed from his experience or fully accepted it..we can't replace our twin but we can love others...ultimately we have to heal and forgive from the first separation from our twin..which was very painful."

I feel Emerson did go through the healing over the years, in regard to his lost love. He moved on, he married again, had children, wrote his masterpieces of philosophy and literature. As a Transcendentalist, he exemplified a transcendental view of love, one more in sync with cosmic consciousness, where the love of one expands to embrace all.

Having said all that, I agree that Emerson's tone may be a tad dismissive of romantic love, but like the other spiritual teacher I quoted, he was really about expanding rather than contracting our experience.

Thanks for sparking my thoughts guys!

Jen

Jen said...

I meant to include this from Emerso's poem "Give All To Love":

"Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho' her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive."

Carl J. Schroeder said...

Thanks Jen for the poem and further comments. I like the point that defenders of Cosmic Consciousness hopefully don't mean to destroy dreams but rather expand them. I think everyone should be able to pursue their entry into love without degrading any other, just like the spiritual path itself. Romance works for a lot of people as initiation into higher states of love, and if they continue to hold their personal beloved more closely than the corner guy selling newspapers well, who is anyone to disagree, I certainly don't. Romantics didn't say they don't have a love for everyone, in fact people in personal love usually overflow with love for everything. It's the brokenhearted and superior to that experience who can sound less generous. I almost like Emerson's poem, but then he implies that his lost beloved is only a half-god and he's better off without her. Why isn't everyone a full god, why doesn't he just honestly miss her? He still sounds in denial of hurt and not wholly healed to me.

Jen said...

Hi Carl,

In the poem "Give All To Love" those lines "When half-gods go, the gods arrive" may refer to the realization that the girl he loved was not the right match, since she apparently wasn't that into him:

"But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young,
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free"

Another meaning may relate to the 'early dream of love' as a half-god.
From what I've read of Emerson, he is opposed to burdening the objects of our love both culturally (he objected to the structure of marriage) and personally, focusing our expectations on them.

Pondering this subject, I am reminded of W.B. Yeats' poem, "Speech After Long Silence," wherein he speaks of "the supreme theme of art and song":

"Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant."

I am sure it is true that it is easier for one who is more advanced in years to resonate with and embrace the Transcendentalist attitude about love. I don't at all agree that bodily decreptitude equals wisdom, and it doesn't seem to me that this is the "supreme theme of art and song," but those are still great lines!

Heather said...

Hey Jen & Carl,

I had a look at 'Give All to Love' - he sounds pretty cynical? And even damn scornful? I was thinking Hey Emerson isn't it great that your bird is so full of life and happy and free - you don't need to own her! Rejoice in her freedom! But yeah then the bit about flinging the rose - guess she rejected him but he was trying to trap her...she needed to escape! And then the half god bit and god's arriving - yeah seems he's trying to offer comfort to others who experience what he experienced.
Hmm interesting you say Emerson opposed to burdening the objects of our love. Don't you think the saying 'objects of our love' relates to trying to control love/objectification of love or even of our 'love object'. It sounds like a case of the head trying to control the heart...As for embracing Transcentalist attitude about love...what is that exactly? clearly showing my ignorance here! But although i don't know what it is exactly..I do have a comment. Love isn't an attitude...it comes from the heart....true wisdom comes from the heart not the head. You may learn something with your head but until you feel it with your heart, do you really know it?

I clearly am not becoming a particular fan of Emerson!

Haven't looked at other poem.

Carl J. Schroeder said...

I don't know where Emerson was coming from, this is why I like an artist to explain what they meant by their art. We can all infer and project from our own experience, and it starts to say more about us than anyone else. I assumed Emerson was still painfully processing his lost young true love Ellen, who did not reject him but died after just 3 years of bliss together that inspired the rest of his career. I can relate to that from my short romance with my twin, which is where this blog started.

Jen said...

Heather, you asked:
"As for embracing Transcentalist attitude about love...what is that exactly?"

K, maybe Emerson just isn't your thing, and that's fine. It's pretty well expressed here, I think:

http://www.michaelteachings.com/transpersonal_love.html

Unknown said...

So tf is some obscure person you create with like using a pen or pencil to write poetry with.... Helper, assistant. Nice. Also ts is romantic partner, so theoretically TF can be the doormat for relationships with ts. Like TF takes all the abuse, insults etc you live out your dark side with TF so you become a better person for ts. Nice.mits nice to be used like a shopping bag then discarded!

Audrey said...

Thanks for sharing your perspective on this. I met my twin soul almost 18 years ago. Lynx. I met him at a rainbow gathering and shortly afterwards ran from the situation, because I didn't know what was going on. I saw something that I can't describe the first time we made eye contact. I saw that we were one being. One soul. I saw something so divine and holy and beautiful that I can't describe it and ultimately is scared me. I was agnostic at the time, I didn't know what was happening to me or why. I thought maybe I was crazy. Divinely, blissfully crazy but crazy none the less. It was only years later that I learned that there was a word for what I had experienced, and that others had experienced it. I wish I'd known then. Lynx if you read this I hope you can find me some day.