Twin Flames - The Surrender of Everything
Part of the process...
After my twin cut me off, one of the first things I discovered about Twin Flames was that surrender was an integral part of the process. From what I’d read, neither awakening nor reunion could take place without it, and it simply couldn’t be glossed over or ignored. To do so would be like trying to jump straight from A to C. The thing is, I didn’t want to skip it, I desperately wanted to surrender, but I also recoiled at the thought, because I was in so much pain and fear (as the little-self) that being asked to hand over my ‘destiny’ to somebody else seemed inconceivable.
Resisting surrender
The prevalent fear that tortured me was the possibility that God and I would turn out to have differing opinions about this love. The fact that I’d been divinely guided towards my twin, only to have him torn from me, had caused me to doubt – and not for the first time - whether God even loved me at all. So if there was a chance that his will and my own were at odds, I couldn’t possibly take the risk of trusting him. I felt this love as everything that I was, as my whole and utter self. It was bigger and vaster than anything I could articulate or comprehend. I knew who I was, and the thought that maybe God would disagree and say that my certainty was wrong, had started to disintegrate my mind into a state of resentment, mistrust, and confusion. Furthermore, I knew that if God did oppose this love, then I wouldn’t be able to bend to his will. I wouldn’t be able to admit defeat or concede that I was wrong, or even that I was open to being persuaded otherwise, for to deny this love would be to deny myself. Nothing would make sense. Even with the burden of having a terrified little-self latched onto my soul, I knew I could not be wrong, and so my ego continued to resist surrender, not because it thought that it was wrong, but because it was concerned that God might get it wrong.
With grace
In a way, this stubborn mutiny is a beautiful thing, as the ego is refusing to hand over its most cherished belonging. It just doesn’t believe that someone else could revere or guard this love with the same devotion and ferocity that it does itself. Also, it interprets surrender as ‘giving in.’ And in a sense, it’s right, because as long as it imagines God to be separate from itself, then it perceives a split, and this belief results in surrender appearing as something rather lowly and submissive; to be under someone else’s command; to have to hand over your own knowingness of love in order that someone else can decide what to do with it. It’s an impossible ask, surely? But eventually, over the space of two years, my previously held beliefs cracked and crumbled, as a result of which, I was able to surrender this love’s fate willingly, and with grace. I understood there could be no mistakes on this Twin Flame journey, and certainly no loss or divide, either between myself and my twin or myself and God, therefore this love had to be God's will, because our will was one and the same thing.
Even though I thought I’d surrendered every drop of this love to the universe, in the last few days I’ve recognised that I held some of it back. I handed over all the rose petals but I clung onto the thorns; all the sore points, the moral challenges, and the shadowy areas; those parts of the Twin Flame experience that we skip over or avoid because the ego says that they’re shameful. But we can’t just pick and choose what parts of this love to show the world, it is all or nothing, and when we hold the thorns up to the light; we see that they, too, are as essential to the rose’s beauty as the petals or the nectar.
Into the light
I’ve always felt that this Twin Flame journey is much like a Ghost Train ride; full of illusory ghouls and red herrings. One minute we’re travelling along quite smoothly, and the next, some dark thing jumps out at us, pitching us back into fear. And instead of shining our light on the apparition and thus seeing through it, we cover our eyes and turn back. This is our sticking point and our stumbling block; the exact place that the ego catches us out every time. And it’s only when we stop reacting to the ego’s convincing (but imagined) monsters that the train finally emerges from the darkness and into the light.
The imagined monsters that we tend to flinch from are those subjects that make us feel scared, ashamed, or defensive, but that’s exactly what the ego thrives on, because a sense of shame or denial is critical to its survival. By trying to suppress things that make us feel vulnerable or exposed, we fall back into the trap of defining things as good or bad, or right or wrong, which means that we are defining ourselves and others as those things too. In addition, all this clandestine secretiveness and false pride leads us back into identifying with the little-self.
Loving openly
This whole situation festers due to the ego’s never-ending lust for judgement, and due to society’s unconscious need to label and categorise. So as much as we want to love openly and without shame, the ego would have us crawl into a ball of disgrace since we don’t conform to society’s regular prototypes of a relationship. But why would we? Twin Flame love comes to push boundaries and break down barriers. It comes to provoke the world’s sleepers into waking up to their true selves. And it does that by choosing the most enflaming, provocative path possible.
The alchemist's fire
This love won’t be restricted or imprisoned by differences in age, race, sexuality, or marital status. It laughs in the face of religion, responsibility, and conformity. It doesn’t care if it gets persecuted or criticised. It won’t deny itself in order to adapt to someone else’s invented moral standards. It doesn’t care if your twin or yourself are already married or involved. It doesn’t even care if children are part of the picture. If this seems selfish or self-absorbed, it is, but only to the brainwashed and judgemental ego. Perfect love is never deliberately cruel or unkind. It is not thoughtless or unfeeling. It does not set out to destroy love, ever, it sets out only to destroy illusion. As it blazes its trail of alchemist’s fire through the world, all eternal love remains unblemished and upstanding. The only structures that weaken and collapse to the ground, are the temporary deceptions built by the ego.
In my past blog posts, I’ve been tentatively open about my twin’s situation, but I’ve not been blatant, and I’ve definitely not been courageous or fearless. I’ve alluded. I’ve hinted. I’ve skirted around the edges. I’ve shown you the rose petals at the exact same time that I hid the thorns behind my back, but the simple truth is that he’s in a relationship, he has a child, and there is a fourteen year age gap between us. And yet none of these things succeeded in intercepting or dissuading our love, because it was never about the shallowness of temporary costumes or temporary lifetimes. It couldn’t be defined as a sweet love or an ordinary love. It was nothing less than the extraordinary force of pure love. And love, like a river, flows where it is meant to. It cannot go where it is not intended. It cannot exist where it does not belong. It sets its own course, and it has no other agenda than to fulfill its own calling.
All that matters
The ego, of course, would have me play a game of justification. It would be intent on spilling the beans in order to incite support. But the truth is that the details don’t count, no matter how intriguing or complicated they may be. The only thing that matters is that God sent me here, and there is no ego alive that can tell me otherwise, not even my own.
Society is a strange and misguided creature; it focuses on the narrowest of paradigms and refuses to see beyond them. This brainwashing has led us to being ashamed and afraid of so many things. People are murdered for loving outside their own culture, often by their own families; such is the extent of fear that pervades the earth. We’ve been compartmentalised by our age, our skin colour, and our sex. We’ve been taught to care only for outside appearances and not to prioritise our inner world. We’ve been coerced into valuing the temporary over the eternal.
A higher love
Society can and will judge us for loving someone who is ‘taken’ or ‘different’ from us. It will say we should walk away and not look back. It will say that this love is ‘wrong,’ but what is right about staying in a relationship out of fear or obligation? I know many people will balk at that. They will say that a father or mother should stay for the sake of the children. They will say a lot of things, but by limiting our own self-worth and right to divine love, we limit our children’s. Every time we put ourselves last, we put everyone last. How can this love be selfish when perfect love is sent to free everyone? It’s meant to stimulate conflict between the mind and soul as that’s the exact catalyst we need to awaken. The fact is that many of us don’t know that we deserve a higher love until we learn of its existence. And since the ego will cling to anything rather than be alone, it will often be the case that one or both twins will already be in a relationship.
The universe didn’t drop us here by accident. The divine cosmic intelligence did not suddenly screw up. We collided with our twin because the universe wanted us to wake up, and it wants us to help others wake up too. We don’t need to care for the threat of consequences anymore. We don’t need to care because we know that nothing really matters. We’re starring in a film. It’s part-action, part-adventure, part-love story, but we know that only the love part means anything.
Bound by fear
Fear is the ego's biggest weapon. It says one thing in a lot of different ways, but all it’s really telling us to do, is to live fearfully, to lie down, roll over, and fall back asleep, that way everyone’s happy, except that they’re not - not anymore.
At the end of the day, we can waste another lifetime cowering down to fear. We can delay our own, and everyone else’s awakening, but to what achievement? Do we actually think that a life sacrificed is a life well-lived? Do we think that playing the part of an illusory yet obedient character to perfection counts for anything? We can go along with the masses, we can choose to stay in ego-based, farcical relationships, or we can break out and sing from the top of our lungs. We can look fear in the eye and be released from it. We can choose ourselves by choosing love, no matter what other egos might say. We can refuse to see them as their little selves, and we can decline their offering of words that seek only to encage us.
A faraway land
We can stand tall in the face of ridicule or judgement, and we can be brave. Above all things, we need to be brave, because this love demands it of us. And we won’t let it down. We will heed its call, because this aching, illogical, exquisite love will simply not let us go. It will have us running through the streets at midnight. It will follow us into the stillness of a cool, ancient church. It will confront us time and time again, urging us not to forget a promise once made in a faraway land.
A nameless beach
This morning, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, when I heard love’s irrefutable call. A song was playing on the radio, a gentle, whimsical song about being on a beach, unusual for that particular singer, but pretty and invoking. Then she sung a certain line; a line about not having had a clue three years ago that she would end up here. Without warning, a strange sense of absolute assurity flooded into my chest, saturating me with its truth, so that I, too, was transported to the nameless beach. Only it’s not just a meaningless lyric in a song anymore, it exists. It’s real.
I’m sitting next to my twin on the sand, our feet in the surf, our bodies wet and glistening. The sun shimmers on the ocean before us. His hair falls the way it always did, dark, tousled and lovely. It ripples in the breeze. If I reached my hand out, I could touch his ivory skin, feel the warmth and realness of his flesh beneath my own. But I watch him instead. I can't take my eyes off of him. There is an indelible peacefulness all around us, a bubble that can’t be broken, and a sacredness that has walked through hell to get here, yet emerged unscathed.
The world blurs in the distance; chaotic, vibrant, and alive. Our presence is unquestionable, really. We were always going to end up here, and I know that this memory - for that’s what it is - a future memory, has already taken place.
And suddenly, reunion isn’t something taunting me from afar, like an inaccessible melody. It’s here, now, in my hands.
Pieces of us tumble eternally through the universe, like blossom petals blowing in the wind. And just for a moment, I caught one. I caught one of those fragile petals and I disappeared into it. I tasted the salt on our lips. I heard the sound of the ocean’s sweet roar. I felt the quiet contentment of being together, the awareness of how far we had travelled in order to be there; the knowledge of knowing that, in the end, we chose love over fear, that we surrendered everything.
And although, after a second, the blossom slipped from my trembling hand and was gone, I know that somewhere, someplace, my twin and I are still sitting on that beach, living a humble life; one that is overflowing with reverence and serenity. And all is well.
