A Twin Flame, A Soulmate, and A Karmic Walk Into a Bar.(They All Look Exactly The Same)
Trying to determine the type of soul connection you’re experiencing can be maddening.
In my first piece about Twin Flames here, I discussed what a Twin Flame is and how important intuition is in recognizing one. This can’t be overstated. There is no knowledge more important than your own intuitive hits on any spiritual journey, but particularly on a spiritual journey that’s catalyzed by another person. People have on-again off-again dynamics, have toxicity in relationships, are unable to move on, have love that lasts years after a break up…none of these things means you have a soul connection. None of them means you don’t.
If I didn’t trust my intuition and seek ways to further connect with it regularly, there is absolutely no way I would have come to understand what I do about soul connections. I’m not saying you can’t get help or guidance from mentors or healers you trust and that resonate. I’m just saying your intuition needs to be the predominant guiding force for truth in your life, or you will veer wildly off course (although, sometimes a detour is needed and okay, so let’s not judge that process as entirely negative).
All of that said, what I didn’t get into was the varying soul connections that exist, in my own experience. I didn’t explain that trusting my intuition, fully believing that my first soul connection was my Twin Flame, led me to the ultimate realization that he wasn’t.
Yes, I had what some in the spiritual community call a “False Twin Flame” experience. I don’t like this term because I think it does some nasty things. It makes it seem like the Twin Flame is all that matters. It creates a dichotomy, a firm line between the almost mythical, untouchable, ever-venerated Twin Flame and everyone else we ever meet and have relationships with. That dichotomy is useless. No one person is our Hail Mary and Hallelujah. No one person should be put on that kind of pedestal.
It also lessens the profound importance of other soul connections. If I had an experience that was so cataclysmic, so destructive to my ego as to make me believe this person is my Twin Flame, that connection is sacred in its own right. Whether they stay or go, whether my feelings for them remain or dissolve, whether we date for a year or high-five once, that experience is invaluable — there’s nothing false about it.
Instead I like to call this person, the person who triggered my Dark Night of the Soul and broke my heart open, my heart catalyst. I also believe that he and I shared past life karma. And he definitely felt like home, so familiar that I could never not know him, and so I would call him a soulmate. That’s right, I think this person was a Karmic, a Soulmate and did what many in the spiritual community say only Twin Flames do, kickstart my awakening.
If you’ve found yourself having an experience that’s made you dive into the world of soul connections and you’re familiar with these terms you’re likely to be scratching your head in confusion right now. You probably, just like I did, learned that these were all distinct connections. Something along the lines of:
Karmic relationships are toxic and cyclical, they never stick around and they’re not meant to. Twin Flames are better than soulmates, the holy grail of relationships, and you’ll skip through the daisies and float through the rest of your lives together, blissfully happy. Soulmates are, like, a chill second choice if you can’t find your Twin or you and your Twin can’t stand one another. False Twins are probably karmic; you’re dumb for thinking it was your Twin.
I find the ways people have managed to distill thousands of years of philosophy, religion and profound unexplainable experiences into the above explanation both horrifying and hilarious.
Our need to categorize and understand everything (and I say our because we’re all human, we all have this urge) creates boundaries where there are none. It creates separation where separation shouldn’t exist. It demolishes nuance and makes people who don’t have a particular experience feel theirs is small and insignificant.
But what else is new.
To help break down some of the perceived boundaries between these categories, let me drop a few truths right here.
- The person who catalyzed my spiritual awakening is not my Twin Flame.
- I’ve met two people who I suspect I share karma with, neither of which I’ve shared a toxic dynamic with.
- One of them, that catalyst, I will never meet again. The other, I expect, will be in my life for a very long time.
- The person who catalyzed my spiritual awakening, I had dreams and visions about — this is meant to be one of many signs that you’re experiencing a Twin Flame connection. It wasn’t.
- I have never had a dream or vision about the person I now believe to be my Twin Flame. I wasn’t sure I believed in Twins at all when we met.
- There’s someone I might call a soulmate I’m not sure I’ll ever see again. Occasionally, that makes me sad, other times I figure it just wasn’t meant for us to know each other.
- Every person who has resonated with me at the soul level has, at one point or another, seemed to be “running” from the connection. Triggering happens in every single soul-based relationship.
I think when a lot of us are asking “Is this my Twin Flame, my Karmic or my Soulmate?” what we’re really asking is…will they stay? How important am I to them? Will they be with me forever? Are we meant to come back together?
The only true indicator I’ve found to distinguish between connections is my intuition. But sometimes, I’ve just had to release the need to know entirely and let it be enough that I care for them deeply. I’ve had to let the labels go. These experiences are beyond the body, beyond the mind. Trying to make sense of them with the mind inevitably leads to frustration.
The indicator for whether someone will stay, though, is much simpler. Someone who is meant to be a companion on my spiritual journey will be well-matched, they’ll shift as I shift, they’ll grow as I grow. Like most other relationships in our lives, if there’s resistance to change, odds are they’re only in our lives temporarily. And the best way to move forward if that’s the case is to accept it for what it is, be grateful for the experience and let go with love. If they’re meant to come back into our lives…they will.
❤
If you have questions about soul-based relationships because you’ve had an experience you can’t explain away, feel free to DM me on IG @Blaqueyerish.
