Twin Flames - Remember Me
The timing...
A few months ago, I attempted to write another post, driven by the urgent need to write something after such a long hiatus, coupled with the fact I felt I had something new and relevant to say. Every piece I've ever written came naturally. They flowed. It’s as though something takes a hold of me and won’t let go until it knows everything has been said that needs to be said. But this previous attempt felt laboured. I couldn’t even finish it, had to force myself to sit at the computer and write the few pages that I did. This time was different, though, and I'd almost forgotten what that felt like, to be caught in the grip of truth and creation. It reminded me that we have to trust enough to sit and wait and let it come.
Censorship...
Though I’ve written before about letting emotions and feelings rise up and express themselves in a place of loving acceptance, I hadn’t realised that in a subtle way, I was censoring certain things. I held the belief that I couldn’t be in a physical relationship until certain things were in place – these being issues relating to body image and food, as well as the belief that I had to be in a place of long-term sobriety. On one level, this makes perfect sense. How could I be in an intimate relationship with my counterpart if I didn’t feel I was in an intimate relationship with myself? I felt that these issues and other challenging areas for my character needed to be resolved before physical union. I realise now that I was wrong, because to make a mental decision to put selected aspects of our lives on hold until we're free of certain issues, is resistance (and therefore a rejection) of reality. This doesn’t mean we are escaping responsibility, it means we cease placing peace in the future. We don't have to be cured to be loved. We simply have to let our wounds and our sticking points stay until they are ready to leave. And perhaps they simply can't leave until they are loved. These things will surely fall away (or not) in their own time, but regardless of timing, we are allowed to be peaceful now, we are allowed to be free this very moment. After all, it is the egoic mind that labels our flaws and eccentricities as imperfections and longs to hide them in the darkness.
Restlessness...
Something happened that preceded the above realisations, initiated, I thought, by the lock-down taking place in England. I’m used to my own company. In fact, I like and need my own company, but after initially feeling quite settled and utilising this period of isolation, I found myself experiencing intense waves of utter restlessness. It always came on in the evenings, and it was so forceful that I really didn’t know how to deal with it. To sit with it seemed impossible, it was too huge, too powerful. I numbed myself with food and drink in order to cope with the irrepressible urge of wanting to run away or implode. I didn’t even know where 'it' wanted to run to. It felt like it wanted to run into molten lava and just return to beingness. After a few nights of this, the huge energy had not subsided. It wasn’t soothed or settled by sugar or films or long dog walks. It would quieten down when I did those things, but it never left. After a few nights, though, when I stopped and let myself listen to what the restlessness was saying, I realised I knew exactly what it was. It was my soul yearning for itself, for union. And alongside this realisation was a feeling of almost, ‘Oh god, not this again. How long will it go on for? Why do I have to live with this overwhelming and infinite connection? Why doesn't it give up? Why doesn't it go away?'
I read somewhere that when a spiritual realisation takes place in us, a light goes on, and it stays on. I had heard many times the Rumi quote of, ‘What you seek is seeking you.’ I’d thought about it and imagined two travellers making their way through a snow storm towards each other. Recently, this saying had been popping up a lot in meditations and books, like one half of a puzzle wanting to be solved. And then the other piece appeared, similar, but not actually the same at all. ‘The thing you are seeking is also the same thing you are running from.’ When I pondered these words, that was the moment a light came on. It dawned on me from that deep place that speaks only utter truth, that the restlessness that was seeking me - along with every other single emotion and feeling that rose in me - was my soul, was my twin. The only mistake I’d ever made was that I hadn’t recognised and adored every aspect of myself. I hadn’t seen through the disguises. I hadn’t seen that it was my soul, the very essence of this union, playing yet another facet. And that when I ran from anything – a craving, yearning, a flaw or challenge in my character, I was not seeing the truth before me. That it is all this love in disguise.
Without armour...
I had known this in smaller ways. I saw the feelings as being like children that needed holding, and that when I left them or smothered their voices, I left myself. But I didn’t really recognise these sensations and emotions as the core of this love, along with every flaw in my character and every challenge ever faced. Maybe this sounds like a small or an obvious thing, but there is a difference in knowing something and knowing something. My heart, my soul, just swelled with pure joy and love and acceptance. Acceptance of everything. For the first time I was meeting life, meeting myself without armour. Before this, I could always access the background peace that all the other things rose up in, I could find my beingness as the witness, but since that moment, everything that rises up in it now also turns into peace. Whether it is a sudden feeling of sadness or depression, restlessness, a craving. Whatever it is, there is a sense of, ‘Oh, of course, it’s you. It’s me. There you are again seeking me, and all you have ever been waiting for was for me to recognise you.’ And then it all collapses into pure love and surrender.
Blinded by an image...
Imagine if you woke up one morning and found yourself as the same consciousness but in another body. You approach your own mother, you’re not allowed to tell her it’s you, but you expect that she will know, but she looks past you. She is blinded by the image of her child, of what she expects to see. She turns from you. She runs from you, even though it is you that she is desperately seeking. You turn a corner, find yourself in yet another form and you seek her out again. Still, she turns and runs, blind to your presence. And this goes on and on for as long as it needs to go on, until the moment that the light goes on for you. And you stop, and you turn back and you understand, and you could laugh and you could cry at the same time, for thinking how much you have longed and loved and wanted this, and yet you just didn’t see that this was it. And now you get to meet every part of yourself. There is no resistance left to anything.
I remember you...
When we realise that our glitches and so-called-flaws are love, when we look closer and see through the disguise, we can welcome them in peace and joy, and that welcome leads to a shift. A magical shift. Suddenly it all becomes beautiful because it is all beautiful. Underneath every feeling, every costume, it’s perfect. And the shackles disappear – not because we've been eradicated of a sensation or affliction, but because acceptance and recognition dissolve the resistance. Everything becomes easier and joyous because everything knows it is loved. And when a part of you that has been hated and resisted and mistaken for something else, feels the warmth of being truly loved, it transforms – not into something new, but into something old. Into something ancient and perfect and utterly remembered.
Restlessness, I remember you. Jealousy, I remember you. Longing, I remember you. Addiction, I remember you. Fear, I remember you. Confrontation, I remember you. Shame, I remember you. Starvation, I remember you. For you are me, and I am you. And we are nothing but love.
Much like every time I've been completely centered in my soul, the universe reflected my awareness right back at me with some perfectly timed quotes.
"We say, I refuse to be happy until my neurosis goes. I have good news for you:
You can be happy right now, with the neurosis."
(Anthony DeMello)
"Is that sadness or is it love? We even misname emotions."
(Byron Katie)
And it honestly feels like this is it. It’s not that I won’t have other realisations along the way, other lights will come on and stay on, but I feel like I’ve arrived back at my own front door. And everything I ever needed is here. What you seek is seeking you. And the more it shows up for you, the more it bothers you and demands your attention, the more it is telling you that the time is now. It rises up, not to drown you out, but to get you to listen. To get you to take notice. And it is only saying two words, the most beautiful you will ever hear - ‘Remember me.’
