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Love, Soul Mates, and Opening the Heart
be still, my beating heart...
Love
Love
is the most mysterious emotion in life, yet it is the most readily recognized. Love seems inaccessible, yet it is the most
common of human experiences. People write songs about love, people write poems about love, people analyze it endlessly. Everyone
is looking for love, whatever it is, and everyone is looking for their perfect partner, their soul mate. But what does the
concept "soul mate" really mean? Does it mean that there is one and only one person for each of us. Let us examine three types
of soul mates: the Karmic Soul Mate, the Task Companion, and the Twin Flame.
Most love relationships occur between
Karmic Soul Mates, people who have karmic ties, either positive or negative. In one way or another the partners have known
each other before, probably many times before. Basically, they have "unfinished business." One or both owes a "karmic debt."
Sexual attraction is one of the best ways to induce us to get involved in repayment of karmic debts. Sex is the lure, the
bait, that induces us to feel and not to think. As a result, Karmic Soul Mates can have intense, but not always positive relationships.
Usually, these relationships tend to be turbulent, even obsessive. We move through them, and sometimes we grow.
A second
type of soul mate is the Task Companion, a project-oriented partner. The partners get together in order to accomplish something.
The task may be outside the intimacy of the love relationship or it may be that each seeks to help the other. Task Companions
have positive karmic ties. When united in a love relationship, they tend to be companions and best friends. Their relationship
will be more mellow than that of Karmic Soul Mates. This type of love relationship usually provides a stable, healthy environment
for raising children and, indeed, that is often one of the shared tasks. When the task is complete, this couple may feel an
emptiness in their relationship.
The third and most sought-after type of soul mate is the Twin Flame (also called the
twin or counterpart). Your Twin Flame is the person with whom you most perfectly belong in this lifetime. Your Twin Flame
is someone with whom you have strong, extremely positive karmic links. If you are lucky enough to meet your Twin Flame, the
pull to unite in an intimate love relationship will be extremely powerful. It may be so powerful that it will transcend social
barriers of age, race, or religion. This is the most beautiful, most compelling love of all, but it also can be the most dangerous.
Twin Flames can build a relationship so strong, so all-encompassing that it becomes its own entity like a third person and
each partner is sacrificed to it.
With all the risks and dangers involved in love, everyone still wants it. Everyone
is looking for the perfect love. Why? Love integrates us. All our attention focuses on the love. The result is a deep experience
of unity, of wholeness that we long for. Love is a blissful, magical feeling. It is a feeling of being totally absorbed, of
being totally focused, of being totally present. The feeling of being totally focused in love is liberating. It frees you
from inner conflicts and fears, it frees you from tensions, it frees you from hesitation, it frees you from doubt... at least
temporarily.
Therein lies the problem. That overpowering magical feeling, that euphoria, does not last. What most people
feel when they believe they are "in love" is attraction. True, that intense attraction gives you a sense of integration, but
the integration is illusory. You will feel integrated only as long as the object of the attraction is available to you and
under your control. Basically, love that is caused by something or someone outside of you will always be complicated by issues
of availability and control. That makes it illusory and temporary, even when the object of the attraction is your Twin Flame.
Lasting love, true love is an outward expression of your existing integration within. So, in a love relationship, each must
love the other with the intention to develop and reinforce his or her own inner integration. If both partners love this way,
then the love between them becomes an ongoing, luminous, spiritual experience.
But if love is so beautiful, why is
it also so painful? In a love relationship, two individuals are merging at a very deep level. By the very intense nature of
this union, we will experience extremes. We definitely experience extremes of closeness, but we also may experience feelings
of distance and pain. In a love relationship, two separate beings are attempting to merge in terms of personality, personal
habits, backgrounds, likes and dislikes everything. The challenges of merging are further complicated by the ro
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