by Robert Wilkinson
A recent conversation at FB reminded me that millions are “looking for love, in all the wrong places,” believing a Soul Mate and a Twin Flame are the same thing. So today, we take a new look at the differences between what a “Twin Flame” and a “Soul Mate” actually are.
I first gave you this about 10 years ago, and gave a bit more about 4 years ago. In the comment stream that brought this subject back into the foreground, there was a huge amount of confusion, speculation, and projection about Soul Mates and the Twin Flame. While this subject will be included in my coming book on “Finding Your Perfect Mate – Your Twin Flame,” today we’ll take a preliminary look at the similarities and differences between a Soul Mate, a "help mate," and the Twin Flame.
Despite the passage of many years, it seems the original question that inspired these articles is still a burning issue for millions, which is why I regard a "help mate" and Soul Mate as completely different than our "Twin Flame." The short answer is that there is a vast difference between those who help us, those who travel with us across space and time awakening the potential for us to experience and demonstrate unconditional Love, and our "Divine Other."
Throughout life, it’s a great thing to have "help mates." As I see it, a help mate is someone who is a genuine help to us. We can have many help mates throughout our lives, which is a wonderful thing.
A help mate assists our recognition of our better traits and is our genuine ally and friend, whether for an hour or a lifetime. They’re usually people who have an openness to meeting other help mates, since as the I Ching puts it, “Pleasure shared is pleasure doubled,” and truly, we’re all more capable and aware and knowledgeable together than we are separately.
Our help mates and true friends assist us to orient our view to recognize what is in our best interests, as well as the greatest good for the greatest number. Our friends and help mates call forth our heart's response in genuine love, affection, and a healthy reserve so we can dance in the relationship without going into spaces that are in no one's best interests. A true friend is a godsend, whether for a day or a lifetime.
Soul Mates
Basically, anyone who brings out your capacity to expand your lesser love to a greater love is a "Soul mate." However, a Soul mate may or may not not be the best material for a lifelong partner. Soul Mates can even break your heart so you know what unconditional love can feel like if you choose to renounce the conditions around the love inspired by that Being.
That's why I never encourage people to cling to an idea of a "Soul Mate," but rather reorient and find true friends because they are your Helpmates who assist your growth into a greater love, affection, friendship, and connectedness. Where there's an ability to make a friend who you can love and who can love you, there is happiness, connectedness, and maybe even a partner.
Our Soul Mates are many. We will dance with many sentient Beings who are our best friends and lovers across time. Hopefully we learn lots about conditional and unconditional love from all of them. We can always find the greater love we seek, but we also must have a plan and patience as we move through the various changes and lessons resulting from the impermanence of all bonds except the Twin Flame.
The Twin Flame
Now we turn to the heart of the matter. While friends, help mates, and Soul Mates are many, there is only one Twin Flame. The Twin Flame is your true other half, the “Divine Other” we were separated from at the beginning of human individuation 3 million years ago.
The reason the split occurred is because there were not enough Souls to populate the early species. We needed a certain number of Soul-infused humans to ensure the survival of the race. That required Souls to split and inhabit separate bodies.
It is safe to say that our Twin Flame is someone who will show up initially as a friend, help mate, or even a Soul Mate, but will over time be experienced to a phenomenally greater degree than any of these. It may be intense, it may be mellow, it may burst forth in a moment, or take 20 years to fulfill itself, but when we meet our Twin Flame, they will become unforgettable to us.
Our Twin Flame will be a genuine help to us, a friend who we will spontaneously love and whose company we will enjoy. This is a useful signpost. Basically, if they're not our friend, if there isn't a healthy affection, reserve, and respect so we can dance separately and together over time and through various experiences, then they're not our Twin Flame.
How Personality is related to the Twin Flame
Remember that as long as we are Eternals in human forms, we and our Twin Flame still have ego stuff to contend with, since we're all in a body with feelings, ideas, and memories that condition our behavior. We've all developed personality habits that may obscure our ability to recognize our Twin Flame. That's why we need patience, maturity, and good will toward others even if they seem not to be a "perfect fit."
We've ALL fallen into unhelpful habits of perception. Still, regardless of preconceptions and ego limitations, there will be little or no tendency to push apart once you recognize each other and resolve that old personality habits won't mess up your dance.
There seems to be a huge misconception that one can “break up” with one’s Twin Flame. Basically, if you could "break up," then s/he is not your "Twin Flame" and it's best to cut cleanly so you can move on without astral detritus getting in the way of you finding your perfect mate. Even during times of chaos when people are at odds with each other, the one heart you and your Twin Flame share would never yield to that sort of useless antagonism or invite any tension into your lives and relationship.
Even when you and your Twin Flame disagree or are at odds about something, you would never consider breaking up with them if they were in fact your Twin Flame. One breaks up with random strangers and Soul Mates, but not the Twin Flame, as it would be unimaginable to have met them and then not go through life with them. If you’ve broken up with someone who touched you deeply, or even broke your heart, they were more likely a Soul Mate who gave you the opportunity to transmute your conditional love to unconditional Love.
What To Look For
They are a complement to our life energy. That doesn’t mean they’re the same, or a mirror, of who we are. They are, however, the most natural relationship we’ll ever have, and over time the differences will merge into the pure shared love of two Soul-Spirits experiencing no separation.
Your Twin Flame will inspire the best in you, and never accompany an unhealthy dependency, manipulation, or put you down in ways that make you feel slimed or other such nasty habits. As you can see, a "Soul Mate" could teach you through both fortunate and unfortunate experiences, but your Twin Flame will always be a true friend. Hurting them is like hurting yourself.
Your Twin Flame will call forth a spontaneous joy, and an anticipation of what's to come, but not in ways that make you feel anxious or unfulfilled. We may experience these to the degree we're trapped in ego assumptions and desires. But the Twin Flame will never induce us to feel dependent, manipulated, anxious or unfulfilled.
I’ve read some people believe to have such an intense, all-consuming relationship will lead to us giving away our power to another in unhealthy ways. One never gives away power in an equal relationship, but shares it with others in a healthy way. With friends and Soul Mates, sometimes we have more power, and sometimes they do. Imagine these sorts of power sharing relationships taken to the highest level of intuitive cooperation!
Because of personality differences, we cannot expect that we will agree with others and they’ll agree with us all the time. Still, in healthy relationships there is an ease of give-and-take in how power is shared so that neither feels weakened or diminished by being with the others. I’ve never surrendered my power in a relationship, nor have I accepted anyone else surrendering their power in a relationship. If we are not whole and complete as we are, we will never know the greater wholeness of being "At One" with another. It's a dance, not a contest. We each take turns demonstrating our power to love, and it generates something more than either of us knew before then.
The Reunion of the Self with the Self
If we want to recognize our Twin Flame should we be blessed to meet them in the flesh, this consideration can help keep you clear about whether they are or aren’t your TF. We begin by stating that our relationship with our eternal Self is the most important relationship you'll ever have. We discover that dance between our lower self and our Higher Self through our interactions with random strangers, help mates, and Soul Mates.
While all our relationships mirror this to some degree, the dance we experience with the Eternal is beyond the lower nature. Here we must learn to distinguish between the impermanent desires aroused on the astral and lower mental levels of personality and the higher experience of a limitless higher Love unlike any known before. In the presence of the Twin Flame, all lesser attachments are pale comparisons.
Finding our Twin Flame (not who we assume is a TF) is best described as the reunion of the Self with the self, the Sacred Conjunctio, where both are more than they were. To describe the indescribable, I believe it's like a homecoming between true friends who have known each other since the beginning of time. Thus there will be no sense of urgency to the relationship, and probably not much of a conflict between "should I or shouldn't I?" You will both feel strengthened and whole, individually and together, once ego limitations are voluntarily renounced.
While a Soul mate will open us to many things we’ve never known before, and help us grow as human beings, we and they can still have significant differences that ultimately show us they are not our TF. In the presence of our TF, there will be a natural compatibility and easy harmony between you. Even when the personalities are not agreeing on something, there’s still an essential harmony in the important areas.
A true Soul mate is one we can have an eternal adventure with. They show up in both genders. We have many "Soul mates," and anyone we're drawn to represents those qualities to some degree if we're not operating from the lower ego. A Soul Mate may even have some qualities of your Twin Flame, but if they were truly your Twin Flame, you'd be together, of one heart instantaneously.
They could not have resisted what they would have picked up in you, and the attraction would grow over time and experience rather than diminish. The cup is always filled to the brim. So learn to take the many you're drawn to as symbols of elements of your Twin Flame, and open to whichever ones awaken your Highest Self.
No one EVER "settles for their Twin Flame." A Twin Flame IS your other half, across space and time, forever and ever. If you ever met, you could never imagine anyone else under any circumstances, since your Twin Flame IS your absolute complement.
They are everything you've ever wanted, imagined, or dreamed of, and you are the same thing for them. You are different, but perfectly complementary. I mean perfectly.
Ten Thousand Dances and An Unforgettable Union
I was asked if we could meet our "Twin Flame" and then part. I suppose Twin Flames could come together briefly, for example, if one was married to another who was not their twin flame. It could be very painful for the personality to suffer the separation, so one might withdraw or keep at a distance because of the impossibility of feeling such a strong connection without the ability to fulfill the relationship. But I would also think there would be an attraction forever that would never leave the consciousness.
I know I've opened the door to ten thousand questions. Please re-read and meditate on what I've written here, and welcome insights based in past relationships (male AND female) to show you elements of what your heart desires more than you can describe. The good news is that almost all human Souls attached to this Earth are incarnated, and thus our Twin Flame could very well be alive almost anywhere
With instant communications and extraordinary mobility unlike any other time in history, there's a greater chance we could find our Twin Flame if we cultivate personality traits that could attract them. That's why fear, clutching, confusion, doubt, and attachments won't help. Nor will believing that someone in our past we’ve parted from and not heard from since is the Twin Flame. If they are our Twin Flame, then we must be theirs as well.
Once united, we can never part. We may wind up friends, co-workers, colleagues, and even lovers, but once we find them and they find us, neither wants to be apart and always welcomes the presence of the other.
Only when we open to the highest can the highest manifest. We must be operating from our Higher Self for that which is our perfect complement across infinity and eternity to manifest.
Consider that your life's homework. There are no failing grades for your efforts, but at some point there will be the perfect manifestation of your Highest Self and heart's desire. It's called the Twin Flame.
In part 2 we’ll explore some great questions from the original comment stream about everything discussed here, and more!
Since I originally wrote this, I incorporated all this and more in my book The Magic of Venus: Friendships, Soul Mates, and Twin Flames. It is the most comprehensive book on Venus ever written, and offers a multi-faceted view of why we attract the people we do, as well as how to re-shape our inner Venus to create more satisfying relationships in the future.
This work is an in-depth examination of the psychological dimension of Venus, the spiritual dimension of Venus, and the astrological dimension of Venus. It offers practical techniques for changing your image of what you want to attract your heart’s desire, and how to make your relationships more fulfilling because you are living a Soul-ful life. You’ll find out about why you like or don’t like people and things, why you’ve attracted who you have in the past and present, and how to make those attractions more aligned with your Soul purpose in the future. A major theme weaving the various dimensions together is understanding why Soul Mates come into our lives, and how to know the difference between a Soul Mate and our Twin Flame.
It has chapters on the qualities of each sign’s natural mate, the qualities of Venus in each sign, Venus retrograde, and when crucial choices and changes are made, affecting who we attract in the future. It was written for both astrologers and lay people, and as it has a thousand gems for better relationships, with self, others, and Source, please consider getting your copy by going to the link above! (And when you’re done, please leave a review on Amazon, since it helps the book and all other books on astrology as well!)
© Copyright 2018 Robert Wilkinson
This proclaims a duality factor as the only way to wholeness..One should not live their life in desire and want of fulfilling themselves through another.
Posted by: Myself | June 27, 2018 at 07:55 PM
Hi Myself - Not exactly. This literally has nothing to do with the kama-manas (desire mind), and has everything to do with recovering the wholeness we lost as a life species.
The split was part of the universal duality we all exist within. It's called "Maya." Existence in a material frequency implies duality, since there is separation. Otherwise we would literally have no conception of the separate self. Since we have abundant evidence of life forms living in and identifying with a separate self, that is de facto evidence that we in fact do live in a dualistic existence.
This doesn't in any way imply we are trapped by, or even limited by, the apparent duality of this system. If anything, the fact of the TF and our ability to find such a thing is proof of the existence of a system that despite all the duality, it leads us to unity.
Posted by: Robert | June 27, 2018 at 08:27 PM
Hello Robert-in Oct 2010 during Venus in Scorpio retro I met this person who touched me to the core and indirectly changed the course of my destiny.It is a long and winding story- both our marriages irrationally ended and here we are today-me happier stronger and unconditionally loving towards All There Is and him on the brink of another failing marriage - our souls have been in a love story ever since, our bodies hardly touched...I feel simply blessed to have encountered such a feeling and have come to trust the Divine unconditionally...
Posted by: Vera | June 27, 2018 at 10:27 PM
It's interesting that you believe in the twin flame concept. I'm skeptical. Plus, everything I've read says that, unless both parties are VERY enlightened, the energy is often too much to handle.
Posted by: Diana | June 28, 2018 at 05:33 AM
Hi Vera - It sounds like an evolutionary wild ride in relationship! Glad you came through the ride happier, stronger, and more loving. That was worth the price of the trip.
Hi Diana - Well, in my experience, most who write about it don't know much through direct experience or observation. What you read is ridiculous. It's a reunion, not an exercise in the "glamor of enlightenment." Most of the couples I've met along the way who fit the description of Twin Flames weren't "enlightened." Just very much in love, even in their elder years, living as complementary Beings in the wholeness of that love.
How could experiencing an endless love be "too much to handle?" If it were, they wouldn't be Twin Flames. This is about love, not some random person's idea about enlightenment. If anything, every other intense relationship that breaks up is "too much to handle." The Twin Flame is like coming home to the oldest best friend you ever had. That is certainly not "too much to handle" and doesn't involve enlightenment; it's all about a loving reunion.
Posted by: Robert | June 28, 2018 at 06:03 AM