Twin Flame Research, Part One: Why??

Welcome to my unofficial and unscientific “research” project about the topic of Twin Flames, Part One!

Let's start where we need to start: Why the heck am I doing this?

The topic of Twin Flames came to my attention several years ago when someone told me about her “Twin Flame” relationship. Having no idea what this was I asked her to explain, and something about her description struck me. I had to know more. Perhaps there was a soul level recognition right from the start.

Google helped me skim through what I would consider some really airy-fairy websites. Don't get me wrong, I love fairies! It's just that I approach my spirituality in as much of a grounded way as possible. It is important to me that I don't blindly accept spiritual information to be true unless it really hits home... and I generally only read websites that look appealing to me.

Yep, I admit it. I am a website snob. I am a website-ist. I need a clear, professional looking website to even read a few words. Why is it that some many people in the spiritual world set up websites with endless text that scrolls on for days and generously use multiple font types, sizes and colors?? Finding information from a source that felt comfortable for me was slightly difficult, as is investigating anything spiritual that doesn't come from an organized religion.

What I gleaned as my unofficial, unscientific, and un-thorough google-search about Twin Flames is the something like the following (and I generalize and paraphrase here):

1. Twin Flame is a reference to the other half of your soul, different from a Soul Mate.

2. A Soul Mate is someone from your Soul Group. Soul Mates have a more natural flow and easy compatibility while Twin Flames stir some shit up but promise some really awesome awesomeness if the two are able to work through the shit.

3. Meeting your Twin Flame is an experience that leaves a mark. It is often life-altering, unforgettable, or changing to you in some way.

4. Twin Flames probably have an instant familiarity or recognition when meeting.

5. Your Twin Flame may show up in opposites to you, age difference, religious difference, ethic differences, and may even show up already in a relationship or marriage.

6. There are often roles of the Twin Flame “Runner” and Twin Flame “Chaser”. The Runner is the person that has a hard time fully settling into the relationship (or idea of the relationship) and instead finds ways to leave, deny it, or sabotages it. The Chaser is the person who feels clear that this relationship is something special and continues to try to work to make it happen.

7. If able to 'unite,' there may be an immense amount of work that happens for each person: spiritually, mentally, emotionally. The Twin Flame relationship facilitates each person coming back to their truest version of self and the process can be uncomfortable and down-right not pretty for some. Many Twin Flames are not able to sustain a relationship because of this.

8. If the Twin Flames are able to make a relationship happen, and can do the work, the outcome is an incredibly fulfilling and “blissful” relationship which includes two human beings that have become better versions of themselves and therefore, are much more able to help this earth in the way their soul's have decided to.

9. There may be many more pieces that I didn't grab here, so please know this I am not claiming this to be an exclusive or thorough list. I just needed enough to work from...

After reading through several sites, I was undecided for myself if I was in a Twin Flame kind of situation...

Is this my marriage or isn't it?

Is this why we struggle in certain areas, but others come so easily? Some parts of the definition fit and felt like a complete validation, while others, I was not so sure about.

Yup, so here I am coming clean: My marriage is not perfect. Nor has it ever been.

I know this is probably bursting a bubble of what you thought my life looked like, with me being a therapist and an intuitive, and my husband, an acupuncturist and meditation teacher. My clients often say to me “Your house must be so cool! Are you, like, constantly giving each other reiki??”

And while I leave it open that some day I may come home to an incense-filled room, with a calm peaceful Dave in full-lotus position “Om-ing” his way into full enlightenment, that's just not our life right now. Right now, we are regular, normal people with regular, normal problems.. and we had some problems that didn't seem so regular or normal, which lead us both to seek some help.

I started out asking for help the same way each time, “Ok, so we have some problems, but this is my person. He is the one. I feel it, deeply. I just don't understand why its not working in the way I feel it can.”

I sought out help and guidance from a lot of people, from traditional helpers to spiritual healers to intuitive and psychics. The consensus was a very uninspiring: “Nah..time to leave this marriage. This isn't going to work.” I guess they disregarded my “This is my person, he is the one, I feel it deeply” sentiment. I often felt like my helpers brought a millennial-type mentality of: “Having problems? Just move on, find someone else! You don't need to deal with that.” This was not what I was looking for. I wanted answers. I wanted to know why it wasn't working. And if we knew why, then maybe we could find the solution to make it better.

(Artist credit for sculpture featured, right: “Love” by Alexandr Milov)

Interestingly though, each time I asked for help and was given some version of “Nah, its not going to work out for you,” I was left with a new burning fire inside me that retorted, “Who the hell are you to say?? I make the rules on my life!” I found myself with a renewed commitment to the relationship. I figured that since I didn’t feel relief in so many people giving me permission to end this relationship, that I really do want to work this out. After all, I felt it was right to be here. I always felt it was right. I just couldn't understand why the relationship wouldn't behave. I couldn’t understand why we weren't understanding each other. I couldn’t understand why what I knew was a really awesome relationship was not able to just be flat out awesome.

I found myself in the position to do this Twin Flame investigation because my relationship has taken on probably its seventh iteration in the ten years we have been together. This version we got going on now is like smooth sailing.. almost unrecognizable to the relationship we had several years ago. We work on the same page, we speak the same language, and we support each other. There is an ease of understanding, a baseline acknowledgment of each other, and a love for the other person's awesomeness.

So now with the brilliance of hindsight, I look back and ask myself, what would have been helpful to us? Instead of us trying to figure it out all on our own, what kind of support would or could have made this easier? Other than our pure will and shear stubbornness, how the hell did we make it through all that relationship-misbehavin' to find the awesome-awesomeness that I always knew was here?

And truly the only source of outside support came via the Akashic Records. The Akashic Records saved our marriage time and time again and without it, I am not sure where we would be. The only source of support both my husband and I received was soul level support from our friend, former coworker, mentor, guide, spiritual-supporter, cheerleader, and assistant marriage-saver, Seana Zelazo.

Seana introduced me to the Akashic Records and blew my mind when I had my first reading with her. Seana has received many desperate texts from both myself and my husband at various times in our time together asking for some new understanding as to why the humans in this really cool, soulful relationship weren't behaving. And the Akashic Records via Seana always found a way to help us see what was happening, give us tips on how to work through it, and reminded us of the awesome that we have always felt was here, somewhere, buried deep beneath multi-layers of ego, human experience, and societal norms that had been placed upon us.

I had received a reading from a Not-Seana Akashic Reader that gave me the same bullshit answer everyone else did. She kind of shook her head “no” and once again, I essentially was told to leave the relationship and was coached on how I could start the separation. So, it wasn't just the Records that was helpful to us, it was Seana too. Seana believed in us. She could see and feel the connection between us and she supported us finding ourselves in a way no one else did. Seana, as part of her deep understanding of people and all things spiritual always gave us options. She always gave options of how we could work this out, and gave options of how it may not. There was something so powerful in hearing all the options, that my husband and I kept choosing the option to do the work.

The work became less and less about how to stay together, but much more about how we were helping each other grow. By being in each other's lives, we placed a spotlight on the other's wounds, on the other's egos, and to the all the places where we needed to get closer to our truths. We ended up doing the work because we both saw value in doing it for ourselves. We both agreed that we needed to look at our respective “stuff” because we just needed to look at it. We needed to each heal, because each of us needed to heal. If it kept us together, great, and if not, great. We found a new space of healthy un-attachment from each other to do the individual work that we needed, and in doing so, we were able to see each other in a much clearer way.

So, as you can tell, this was a deep and vulnerable and sometimes scary venture. And I could only wonder, is this what other Twin Flames are going through? Because, damn, who would ask for this??

And so my research begins...

Stay tuned for Twin Flame Research Part Two: How does one "research" this ??