It is likely that you’ve heard of the Twin Flame experience, if only in passing. Referred to as the union of the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine, the ultimate lovers experience is very on-trend, with thousands of people identifying with this story.
Twin Flames, we are told, are profound spiritual partnerships marked by deep psychic connection, bizarre synchronicities, with multiple intersections over timelines revealed. For instance, realizing you crossed paths before, knew each other from decades ago or were drawn into the same place at the same time. There can even be connections to past lives that come forward. There are also reports of a significant age difference (not always, but often) and cosmic, earth-shattering sexual connection. We are told we are the same soul, a division, yearning to become complete.
One important marker of the Twin Flame connection is the Runner/Chaser dynamic. One soul is ready for this connection, the other is not and hides in relationships that do not serve them. As such, there is a lot of pain involved in these connections, characterized by periods of separation and eventual reunion.
My Twin Flame Experience
When the Twin Flame journey entered into my consciousness, I believed I was the Chaser, ready for the profound connection in front of me. This love was the most intense loss of control and it ravaged me while being the impetus for immense psychic advancement and spiritual healing. This on again/off again secret relationship looked terrible from the outside, a burning building I kept running into. Eventually, because I kept working on myself, the need for the lesson faded, but I had a hard time shaking him psychically from my energetic field.
To heal, I needed to cleanse. I remained single and abstinent for a year. I started to learn about karmic relationships and wondered if that better fit our description, because through our connection I broke a long ancestral legacy of intensity, addiction and betrayal. The work of healing prompted me to tie up loose ends and get curious about the obstacles I needed to clear in order to receive a healthy, spiritual connection. That led me to reconnect with my first love.
We knew each other as children. We went to grade school together and I couldn’t stand him. He lost his mother at a very young age and I lost my mother through addiction in my teens. We met again years later as we had an unexpected mutual friend, but we weren’t struck with a true connection until our early twenties and fell madly in love. It was mystical, consuming, wonderful. We both chose to stop drinking on our own, were both interested in political revolution and actively involved in activism, both obsessed with Japanese horror. We each had our own trauma and obstacles to connection and unfortunately, there was behaviour that was emotionally abusive. The more I seemed to come back to life, the more independence I had, the more control I was met with. I ended the relationship and there was a lot of fear for my safety at that time. Walking away was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.
To deal, I just cut him out of my life and jumped into another relationship. He did the same. We both had a lot of pain and trauma surface over our separation that brought him into a healing meditation practice and myself into addiction recovery. He would try to reach out over the years to make amends and I shut him out. I wouldn’t lose myself in him again.
This separation was necessary to our individual recovery. I didn’t know he was doing his work at the time, I just kept the focus on myself. It took nine years for us to meet again and only when I realized my refusal to forgive kept me tied to the situation. This meeting brought us both a deep healing. We shared a tea, reminisced, and then he said something profound through a harmless teasing tone, “you’ve always been running away from me.” At that moment I had a massive spiritual download. My true twin was sitting across from me. Right under my nose, the one I pushed away. I was the runner. I was the avoidant. Even while I was chasing someone else, someone who would never be available for true intimacy, I was running away from really showing up in love.
You Can't Heal It Until You Reveal it
The weeks that followed I felt an immense spiritual release, but forgiveness came in waves and brought up all the hurt and all the love I had pushed away to survive. I experienced the emotional pain of separation all over again, confronting the grief that I couldn’t handle at the time. As a result, I assumed this meant we should be together - wasn't this why I was hearing all about Twin Flames? Wasn't I told this would happen? Reality was he was in love with someone else and I was still dating people who treated me like shit.
That pain broke me open and I had a spiritual awakening. I could suddenly see how I shut down when we fell apart. I moved forward by picking partners who couldn’t hurt me because I wasn’t really in it and I kept drama and tension between us to keep us tied.
I had to feel the bewilderment of desperately wanting to forgive him and not knowing how to. I had to admit I still loved someone who hurt me, and had to feel the shame and regret that flooded in around that. Thankfully, it all came to the surface and I didn’t numb the pain. I didn’t rush to someone else to take it away. I sat with it. I really wanted this special connection, this Twin Flame experience and perhaps it was too late. Maybe I ruined everything. I just sat with the possibility of that and once I was willing to face all of that pain and truth about myself, something incredible happened. I felt absolutely at peace. All is as it should be. I awakened again, only deeper. The desire to be with him left me, almost instantly. Love tied me to the lesson until I got it, then it was gone.
I understood reunion from a completely different perspective. For me it was about a profound healing, about finding a resolution, not about being in a relationship. In truth, the wholeness I was looking for could never be found in another person. Plus, I had changed. What I wanted evolved. He was not my person, but certainly my teacher. And undoubtedly, I was one of his.
It is hard to define how profoundly this forgiveness freed me. I actually broke up with someone I was seeing that night, and not because I wanted to be free and clear, but because I was free and clear. For years I believed I was unlovable because of how he treated me. I made it about me, and it never was. We were lost kids with a lot of pain. We couldn’t possibly have done any better. All of that pain has now been transmuted and cleared.
Problems with the Twin Flame Experience
Soul mates, karmic partners and twins. We like to categorize and divide, don’t we? I can identify my experiences with the twin flame journey, but to signify one connection as above and beyond another misses the truth:
love is a profound spiritual experience, period.
He may very well be my Twin Flame, but we are not supposed to be together. Being my Twin means he was perfectly constructed to bring me to the pain that would teach me and I mirrored that for him. Yet, isn’t this true of all the ones I’ve loved before?
I think we have to be careful of romanticizing and normalizing the runner/chaser dynamic. More often than not, it’s intimacy avoidance rooted in trauma and addiction. It’s game playing narcissistic behaviour dressed up as a spiritual high and it holds a lot of sensitive empaths in limbo, waiting for something to occur that is not meant for them. An idea of reunion and wondering when it will happen imprisons us in the past or has us anxiously anticipating the future, never in the here and now - where true love lives. The most dangerous part of getting hooked into obsessive thinking and attempts to control the situation is that we don’t have to surrender and do our own spiritual healing.
When we are in pain and walking through the unknown, we are very susceptible to those who seem to have the answers, who have utmost confidence and certainty. We need to be very careful about this tendency, for it can leave us very lost. I've noticed how many people who were on the Twin Flame bandwagon are now rejecting it, waking up like WTF - that's so toxic! I resonate with this, but you may feel differently.
Either way, I think there are some important questions to ask in our connections.
Does this give me life?
Does it feel expansive and rooted in who I am?
Does this feel like a distraction that pulls me off the rails?
"But I've never felt this connection before..."
I felt that too, but the more my sense of self expands, the more I realize why so many of us are noticing shifts and experiencing profound levels of connection. It’s because we are transforming. There is a spiritual awakening happening not just on our planet, but entire galaxies are growing in light and we are all raising the frequency of our vibration. Part of this is raising our consciousness around wholeness and true connection. I have discovered that intensity is a clear indicator of a lesson, not a divine union. When love is scarce, when trauma is present, connections can produce extreme highs and lows. As I healed my understanding of what love is, so did I heal my need for such intensity.
The truth in our transformation is that we are psychic and growing in our power. We can have this profound connection with everyone and will notice it more in all our relationships moving forward. We think of someone and they call. We tune-in to the experience of someone we know, feeling when they are in danger. We know when someone is lying and may even receive images of betrayals as they are happening. This is happening more and more. We may feel that our connection to an individual is a cosmic connection, but only because we are ascending to higher levels of consciousness. This is our new normal.
Any traumatic separation, pain or people returning to us is happening so we can heal and be free. We are awakening to our understanding of the shadow self, that whatever we see in others is a projection of ourselves. Teachers may return so that we can forgive, liberating us from the stories we’ve held onto. This return doesn’t mean that we will be in relationship with them.
The truth is, true love connections are always available and are free from conflict or moral quandaries. Any issues of misalignment, timing, confusion, that’s not your person.
I believe Twin Flame connections are rites of passage, preparation for us to be able to give and receive pure love and true divine union. These are important teachers, because it takes a lot of love to agree to walk each other through pain. If we are left to see what we could not see, take action on our healing or change for the better, what a beautiful partnership that is, together or apart.
If you find yourself identifying with a Twin Flame path, know that it may be a special assignment, not necessarily your last stop. The work required in these connections is a deep personal healing, which is neatly avoided when you focus on the work the other person needs to do. If you’re in a Runner/Chaser dynamic, you are healing issues of control and intimacy avoidance, regardless of what role you act out. This person will remain in your energy field until you transform. The more pain you feel in this connection, the more you are being pushed to change and keep the focus on yourself.
If you want to heal from this push and pull as I did, detach from the story and the drama and seek to understand your part. Watch out for intensity, as it’s not the vibration of love, and remember: if we get too attached to the person delivering the message, we may miss the lesson.
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