Exploring Close Relationships - Exit the Soul Mate

This article, apart from the final section, is now significantly out of date, containing some distorted notions regarding soul mate relationships, which I have now straightened out, as I indicate in the final section. I have chosen to retain this page for the time being, but I do caution that if you read only part way through you may get a somewhat distorted notion of what I am really seeking to put across, although I was getting towards pointing in the right direction. I advise here therefore about the necessity to read on to the end of this page in order to ensure that you get a clear view.

A plus side of my keeping it this way is that many people will initially relate more easily to my earlier still rather distorted notions on the subject of soul mates, and then would make more sense of my current, clearer viewpoint - seeing more clearly "where I am coming from", so to speak.

Introduction

The following notes are not intended to be a lecture to people as to how they should live their lives, but are included as an encouragement and inspiration to anyone who senses that there is something inadequate about the close human relationships that are approved of in our cultures. This is a small part of my personal programme of helping to generate and cultivate the reality in which I want to live. We all have the power to do this, if only we'd give up our negative and restrictive beliefs about ourselves.

On the physical level it would appear that I myself can claim no expertise on the subject of close relationships, having had no significant visible ongoing close relationship with another person so far in this lifetime. I am, however, an explorer, who is getting inspired and relieved at what he is finding through sweeping away all preconceptions and uncovering the reality that our cultures and religions train us to deny. My own discoveries are of nothing new; many deeply aware people have found these things before and indeed find them today. However, what they have missed is the fact that their attempted actual practice of those ideals falls far short of the intellectual understandings that they have gained. My special interest here is in moving beyond that intellectual understanding and actually putting it all into practice in everyday life, so that we can  let go of our needless limitations based upon gender and sexual orientations and preferences, and instead we can be fully open to each other as loving companions regardless of how briefly and at what level we interact.

I am therefore putting these ideas out again in my particular way in the hope that they will touch people who have not been touched by them before. And yes, I do realize that my writings on this subject will probably stir up some negative and highly critical responses. At least if I do get that I can be well assured that I have done something right!

One point I want to make here is that prior to its revision in May 2007, with an update in December that year (the important final section), this article contained what I now recognise clearly as distortions that had got in because I was being 'guided' off-course by the dark force posing as my higher consciousness and other 'high' sources. I was thus making a lot of the notion that supposedly we would become very ready to get erotic with each other once we are enlightened and getting deeply self actualized. This was actually a story being given to me by the dark force, which latter was seeking to get me very preoccupied with eroticism and to get me disseminating this distortion, so causing problems for others and of course also getting me discredited in various quarters.

While I certainly want to counter the rarefaction of personal relationships that is to many people associated with almost universal images of what being enlightened is like, I also have to say that now that I am not accepting any channelled 'information' (i.e. stories) at all because all channelled information comes from or at least through the dark force and thus contains serious distortions with an agenda to mislead in extremely harmful ways, I see the correct way forward as being the way of a completely open mind about how one's relationships or potential for them would develop as one's self actualization deepens.

Yes, we would become free from inhibiting patterns and fears that currently restrict or prevent many relationships and very positive, healing interactions between people, but also we would be free from desire and attachment, and many other changes would occur in our emotional and 'energy' make-up, so that it is not possible really to know what truly enlightened life would be like, particularly in a theoretical 'enlightened' community or civilization. It is thus best for us to live in the present, not assuming anything (nor believing anyone's teachings) about how we would function in the future, because the future is only speculation; only the present - the 'now' - is what we really have. No teachings, from any source, can fully reflect 'What Is'; only 'What Is' itself can do that!

However, we can use energy testing to find out at any time what is the healthiest choice for us to make - so we do not need to be left in the dark about what is truly 'right' (i.e. most beneficial) for ourselves. This way, we as individuals each find out what is uniquely right for 'me' at this moment in time instead of somebody laying down a rule saying that everyone needs to live or should be living in a particular way. So, I myself do not have to lay down for anyone in any detail how their relationships with other people need to be, because, with energy testing, they can find out what is best for themselves at any particular time. My task, therefore, is only in giving some generalized principles and pointers and encouraging people then to get off and find their own individual best ways, bearing in mind my various cautions and caveats.

For 'love' read 'attempting not to feel loneliness'!

Love is the way we naturally feel about ourselves and each other, when all emotional traumas and painful emotions are out of the way. However, the almost universal situation is that we have stored memories of painful situations such as loneliness, isolation and insecurity, which become restimulated the moment we experience a positive 'resonance' with another person, so that this becomes buried under something else, which then takes over, to give the actually extremely distorted emotional experience that people generally call love.

So, the fact still goes widely unrecognised that when we feel that we want a close relationship, or want to hold on to one, the driving force is not actually our love - that natural positive resonance and unattached delighting in each other - but unacknowledged feelings of loneliness and insecurity that spring maybe from forgotten events in our childhood, but particularly from experiences that are not of this lifetime*. This does not mean that we do not experience love too*, but it routinely gets hijacked by our compulsions. Because we are conditioned to act out of our loneliness and insecurity rather than allow ourselves to feel and release those painful emotions, we imagine that the desire and compulsions that we feel towards others, whether or not including the sexual element, are love.

* According to many, these would be experiences in one's previous lifetimes, but to my current understanding, for many people all or at least the vast majority of such issues and memories would be those of parasitic lost souls attached to those people. Thus in practice you are affected by experiences and memories that are from previous lifetimes - but quite likely most or all of them would not be your own.

For example, until at least late 2007, when I got intimations that I had finally cleared them out (but I am not sure how correct that indication really was), I myself had an exceptional load of parasitic lost souls attached to me, which caused me quite a major problem, as I recount in The Dark Force ('Astral Entities') - My Own Tough Experiences, and indeed I was carrying extremely little emotional trauma material that was truly my own (just from my childhood in this lifetime, as I had had no previous soul incarnations, apparently being a no-soul person).

** However, it is not something that is felt in the way that people experience when they believe that they are 'feeling love'. 'Feeling love' in any way that people would generally mean is all to do with underlying painful emotions, and the much more subtle-feeling underlying genuine love, which is not a transitory or fluctuating emotional state, remains more or less obscured or at least distorted out of all recognition.

The reality is that if you systematically release those various painful emotions such as loneliness, your love becomes progressively more predominant, but it also progressively becomes shorn of desire and clinging, and sexual arousal occurs under your direction in appropriate circumstances instead of coming up unbidden in all sorts of inappropriate circumstances and driving you wild with desire. It also progressively becomes less 'conditional' and more 'open' and universal, so that it progressively ceases to be an issue, for it is then taking its rightful place as simply the natural way you feel about people - any person. How different all this is from what is called love in most close relationships, which involves a clinging-together that to a considerable degree shuts everyone else out and stunts each other's opening-out and self actualization process into the bargain!

Most of the time, in our relationships we are seeking to make ourselves feel comfortable and good, rather than giving our full attention to the other person and considering his/her needs. If you think you love a person because (s)he is one way or another, then that is not really love but a desire of yours to be comforted by the particular way the particular person is or probably looks. You would find it difficult to allow or encourage that person to change from that way, even if it is what (s)he really needs. Similarly your partner would reckon (s)he loves you because of the way you are, and would resist any change affecting that. Such mutual restrictiveness is what I see going on in most marriage and similar relationships. This sort of restrictiveness in relationships, where perceived needs are attempting to be fulfilled to the advantage of neither partner, is what we commonly refer to as a codependent relationship.

However, what is almost universally not recognised is that co-dependency is not restricted to those relationships that are really brazenly co-dependent and which would widely get recognised as co-dependent ones. So, it is not enough to think "That's all right - my own close relationship isn't co-dependent and is perfectly healthy!". The reality is that almost all people's very concept of a 'close relationship' is actually an attached relationship - and if it is an attached relationship, then, whether you recognise it or not, it is in some way co-dependent, albeit in a more balanced way, for otherwise there would be no attachment. So, basically, the very use of that notion of 'a close relationship', as generally understood, is a sham and self deception, because it is putting a fig leaf over the co-dependency and attachment that is really implicit in that notion.

One good indicator of how much the 'love' in a relationship - and indeed the relationship itself - is off the rails is, to what extent the relationship is based on a sense of need. If even one partner is 'loving' or otherwise entangled in a relationship on the basis of need, then that is not what is meant by love in any deeply aware and human way, and thus it is not compatible with any genuine self actualization process, but instead it is just the gratification of one's own wish-fulfilment urges without regard to the true needs of the other person.

The 'need for sex' deception

How many people have you encountered who claim that sex is a need (and usually they 'need' quite a bit of it)? Or who brag, discreetly or volubly, that they are satisfying such a 'need' - even perhaps calling it an appetite, almost implying that one consumes one's sexual partner? Perhaps you are one of them, in which case you may find the following note to be uncomfortable or infuriating reading.

The truth is that unbidden sexual arousals, and hankering after sex, are the product of emotional hurts from early in our lives and, particularly importantly, from extraneous sources such as previous lifetimes or attached 'entities', thought forms or, particularly, dark force interferences, and are NOT our natural sex drive. Virtually all of us carry these interfering emotional 'energies' and the behaviour patterns that they cause, but most people, particularly in the area of anything to do with sex, prefer to live in denial of the underlying cause of their feelings, hanging onto the compulsive desires and behaviour, defending them as though their whole identity and indeed existence depended on them. Typically they will insist that their own sexual feelings are 'normal' or 'natural sex drive' and anything different is unnatural or abnormal (and therefore implicitly bad).

The truth of my conclusion about this was brought home to me when I was active in the Re-evaluation Counselling community, and learnt that a small but steadily increasing number of people had used the procedures of Re-evaluation Counselling to release and heal what they took to be all their emotional hurts and tensions relating to sex and sexuality. I learnt that in every case where people had seemingly fully worked through and released such material they no longer had sexual arousals coming up unbidden, and neither did they have sexual arousals when they were not in a situation of physical closeness and it was clearly not appropriate to do so. In appropriate situations, however, they could choose, with full command of themselves, in a relaxed way and with the agreement of the 'partner', to allow arousal and 'consummation' to occur, and this could then be a truly magnificent experience. I can vouch for this challenging scenario on the basis of the remarkable changes that have occurred within me relating to my sexual feelings as I have continued to clear out the old emotional issues and dark force interferences.

So, what are these hurt feelings that we hang on to and which manifest as sexual desires? Among the various loneliness and insecurity issues mentioned previously, more precisely we need to look at early deprivation of aware, warm physical contact, especially in our first few years of life*. Virtually none of us had enough of that when we were very young, and at that stage, when we were so emotionally vulnerable, it was a real, present-time need. Undoubtedly some parents manage to give a lot of warm and loving contact, but in few cases indeed is even the most loving, caring parent sufficiently deeply aware and clear of their own emotional hurts to give sufficient closeness and contact, and of sufficient quality, to prevent some of these deprivation hurts from occurring. The occurrence of such hurts wouldn't be any great problem, if only the parents also had sufficient understanding and awareness to encourage the child's natural emotional healing processes - particularly crying, trembling, laughing and bright angry tantrums.

* Actually, as already intimated, that could be only part of it, for often and probably generally there is a bigger underlying factor of various separation traumas prior to the present lifetime. These may include actual past life experiences of one's own, but typically they belong mostly or entirely to parasitic lost souls that are attached to one, and for very many people they are actively exploited and manipulated by direct interferences from the dark force, which latter is constantly seeking to cultivate attachment in people's life experience.

Because full healing is rarely allowed, the child accumulates more and more of these deprivation hurts, the old ones actually getting restimulated every time some new situation - even an intrinsically unhurtful one - reminds it of a previous situation which was experienced as hurtful. When this happens, the new situation also is experienced as a hurtful one, and once again full release of the feelings is not allowed, so that the growing child becomes more and more disposed to experience that feeling of deprivation in many or all areas of her life. When sexual feelings start to occur, they are at once hijacked by the dark force, which interferes with everyone (whether directly or via programming held in the soul), which combines a measured quantity of painful emotion - particularly fear - into the sexual feelings in order to give them a strongly compelling and addictive quality that they would not have otherwise.

In this way the feeling of a deep need for warm and aware physical contact becomes ingrained in the system, and all tied up and confused with sexual feelings that have been made addictive by the dark force interference, even though during the growing-up process the original need for such a high level of physical closeness has fallen away because as we grow up we understand the world around us (well, to a point!) and, at least theoretically, do not any longer need all that very close contact to convince us that our surroundings are safe. You could call this feeling of need a 'frozen need', in the sense that it is all the feelings of an early need and deprivation, just lodged there, stuck in the mind, pretending that it is still a current need. But because it is just stuck there as a repetitive pattern of feeling, to get close contact now does not meet the need because there is no such need at all at the present time! That is part of the reason why so many of us have constantly felt the need for more and more, or again and again, when it comes to sex - though the primary reason is the dark force interference that is always seeking to cultivate attachment and addiction. Gratifying the feelings does not clear the perceived need, and neither does it clear the dark force interference, so we continue to feel the desire for 'it'. In fact our true natural sex 'drive' (which is not a drive at all in fact) and sexuality has been hidden from us by all these compulsive feelings.

There are very many people who would claim that their own 'relationships' or erotic feelings are not 'needy' at all, and are fully healthy. However, in virtually all cases the matter here is unawareness. It is by accepting and acting into their actually distorted notions and feelings of 'love' without proper scrutiny, that these people keep themselves oblivious to what is really going on for them and thus never come to see how dysfunctional their lives really are. Then, when they do get separated by a death or the other person simply splitting up with them, they almost always experience very major upset, which takes some time to 'get over' (not that they really get over anything because they are taking no actions that would actually heal the emotional issue(s) involved.

That upset or 'bereavement' is such a big deal for these people NOT because it is intrinsically a very major upset to suddenly become permanently parted from somebody who one was living with, but because they are suddenly faced with the feelings of loneliness and grief within the buried emotional traumas that they are carrying, which all along had been the major part of the basis of the particular 'relationship'. That would be a great opportunity to recognise what is really going on and then get to work using proper emotional clearance methods to dissolve that crippling emotional baggage that they are carrying, but instead people generally keep firmly in denial and so actually believe that they are experiencing such a big and horrible upset because they were so much 'in love' with the parted or deceased person.

So, when a person believes that there is no sense of neediness in any particular close 'relationship' that (s)he has, that person is being dishonest with him/herself and to anyone else to whom (s)he communicates that belief. Such people never experiment in any meaningful manner, nor put themselves through the deep and thorough scrutiny, that would actually show whether their belief was actually based on fact.

That may all sound rather depressing, but the good news is that it is possible to release ourselves from these compulsions and reclaim our wonderful, relaxed non-compulsive, non-addictive natural sexuality - which is not at all like the 'drive' that most of us experience - and, most importantly, the genuine love that is a fundamental and intrinsic aspect of every person, albeit usually well hidden. Read on...

The 'I love you' myth

A conspiracy of circumstances caused me even in early childhood to wall myself around to avoid close relationships of the sorts I could see around me. I longed for a degree of shared awareness, acceptance, openness and total trust that seemed to me so simple and natural, yet was not in evidence in people's relationships around me. Everyone was manipulating each other, playing all manner of role-play games, mostly quite unaware of what they were doing. I myself was tormented by longings that made my own loneliness particularly difficult to bear, and it took me many years to work through my confusions - not helped by the fact that I had no contact at all for my first 30 years with any model or description of what in my mind's eye would constitute a healthy and fully nurturing relationship. At first it seemed to me that some spouse-type relationships theoretically could be such, but I did not observe this working out in practice, even though many people around me blandly accepted the limitations of the relationships they got into and thus could claim that they were living happy lives. You do not miss what you are not aware of.

It is an old and ubiquitous trick, to shut down your self-awareness to whatever level hides most of your discomforts, so that you can then seem to be more or less satisfied with life. Healers have an apt term for that behaviour - living in denial. One trouble about living that way is that you unwittingly water down your positive experiences as well as negative ones, so the 'happiness' of living in denial bears no comparison with the deep inner security, joyfulness, creativity and sense of loving power (not power that one wields over other people!) that can be opened up by facing and releasing all the painful emotions and limitations.

On the extremely rare occasions I mentioned to anyone what I really wanted in a relationship I was at once criticized for being naive, unrealistic, idealistic (using the latter as a term of abuse - the fools!) , and out of touch with the 'real' world.

It was in the 1970's, when I took up Re-evaluation Counselling, that I learnt about how hidden painful emotions distort all 'normal' relationships and hide the real nature of love, which latter is the way we would naturally feel about each other without exception if we released all our painful emotions. But then, when in 1997 I recognised my innermost nature (crossed the threshold of enlightenment), I perceived directly that love was in fact not something you do at all.

If I told you "I love you", in a sense it would be true. But yet it would also be a nonsensical statement. What I discovered was that love is simply a particular aspect of my true nature. This love is simply an intrinsic delighting in all that one experiences, and thus in all people. That is actually just as true for you. Your true nature is love. Loving is not something we do, because love is an intrinsic aspect of us anyway. How can you 'do' what is simply an intrinsic aspect of yourself - any more than you could talk of a tree treeing? What we are doing, indeed most or all of the time, is hiding or at least distorting our love, our true nature, because we have forgotten who and what we truly are! When we are being truly loving, it is because we are temporarily trying less hard to stifle it!

You would be astounded if you perceived all the work and energy you have been habitually expending - indulging in fantastic feats of complexity - to hide and stifle the healing and inspiring qualities of the love that is your true nature. If you were not doing all that you could easily actually be a distinct advance over Jesus, Buddha or other reputedly 'great' people who were supposedly open manifestations of universal love, because even those people were all displaying evidence of distortions of their own awareness and manifestation of love, thanks to the dark force interference that each of them was getting.

How, then, can we learn to stop doing all this that gets in the way of our true nature manifesting? - In fact there are many ways, but undoubtedly the most powerful methods that I am currently aware of are those that I present in Healing and Self Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way. If these or other suitable methods are used thoroughly, then all those compulsive patterns relating to closeness and sexual feelings would progressively weaken and eventually dissolve, leaving us free.

I find that, nowadays that the very concept of 'I love you', with all its connotations of exclusivity and very likely desire and possessiveness, is abandoned in favour of simply opening to the wonderful experiences of closeness, however simple and transient it may be on the physical plane. The only words I can find to replace 'I love you' are expressions such as 'Wow, this is beautiful!' - but essentially the experience of a deep mutually delighting resonance between two energy-compatible people is totally beyond words or even worldly concepts. Without desire and clinging, it is the easiest thing in the world to accept not only the beauty and power of aware closeness but also to accept each other's free will to develop and change, and for any close friend or partner to move away, developing in different directions. This way, the present cannot be clouded by hurt feelings nor emotional after-tastes from what is past; there can be no significant 'separation blues', and jealousy is meaningless.

So, you think that at least your own close and more or less exclusive relationship is based on healthy and pure love? Well, then, in your mind's eye just try separating, or have your partner involved in an additional close relationship or become stronger, more upright and independent, and see how you feel then! That would be when you come face to face with the feelings that have caused all that clinging and exclusiveness, and you then have a golden opportunity to recognise those feelings for what they are and start releasing them, so that your future close interactions with people can be freer and more aware.

On being HONEST with yourself!

One important guideline to use when reviewing what you imagine to be your love for another person is, to consider carefully to what extent you are seeking to bend the will of that person to meet your desires. If you are doing that at all, you are not in the healthiest possible relationship, and genuine love (which always respects other people's freedom) has been consigned to the back burner. If you are already in a close relationship with the person, consider carefully - are you at ease with that person changing according to his / her needs? Indeed - more to the point - are you positively supportive to such changes in the other person, even if it could mean your both eventually going off in different directions? If you are not, love is not your primary motivation, never mind that your feelings are masquerading to you as 'love'. Similarly, if you are seeking a close relationship with a particular person, consider carefully what is going on for you. Are you seeking a close and even physical relationship with that person regardless of what his / her wishes and needs are? Indeed, are you actually intruding on that person's space and right of self-direction by pestering that person with your unsolicited attentions?

This latter phenomenon is a very common compulsion among men towards women, and unfortunately in our deluded culture it is often regarded as chivalrous and even noble to behave in such inconsiderate and unloving ways. Think how many instances there are in our literary and operatic heritage of such behaviour being portrayed as noble and heroic! The 'chivalrous' man keeps pestering some frightened and insecure woman with gifts and 'love' messages that simply frighten her more and deny her personal stature and dignity. The 'chivalrous' man decides out of his own egotism what he thinks the woman needs, and of course also 'knows' that he is the answer to those 'needs' that he has decided that she has... And because most women have had patterns of passivity or/and diffidence towards men's advances ingrained into them during their upbringing, the chivalrous man will take any diffidence or uncertainty in a woman's rejections of his advances as an invitation to continue his pressure upon her, with the aim of 'conquering' her...

Conversely, the kindest thing the woman could do in such circumstances would be not to be 'a nice little girl' and let the man continue like that, but instead to stand her full height and say a firm NO!, in thought, word and deed. If her suitor doesn't take 'No!' for an answer she may need to give up any allegiance to the 'niceness' that she was taught in her childhood and show a responsible hard edge toward him.

It is not my intent simplistically to paint men as the 'baddies' and women as the 'goodies', for all manner of manipulative role-play games can occur one way or the other between the genders. A favourite women's ploy is to pester and burden the man of her desire with acts of helplessness, or / and to keep presenting herself to him when dressed and made-up in such a fashion as to arouse his desires. It is a bit disingenuous of her then to complain of unwanted attentions, or indeed even being raped, when at least part of the answer is in her own hands!

To these deluded people my message is clear. The way out is to STOP and give yourself time and space to look deep within yourself where the root of your compulsive feelings lies. There you will find pain. You will find loneliness. Take courage and recognise it! You can gradually release these hurts through the natural release processes of crying, trembling, laughter, etc, but that could take a long time to clear everything, so the best way is to use one or more fast-track emotional clearance methods, such as I present in Healing and Self Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way. In this manner you get progressively recovering your true humanity, clearing out dark force interference, and become clearer in thought and perception. This way you can become more respectful of another's space and needs - and, in so doing, you are uncovering the true, unconditional, love that was hidden by your compulsions before. Are you man (or woman) enough to be that honest with yourself?

The importance of physical contact - how well do you hug?

This section has now been moved and adapted to be read as a separate page - Hugging Is For Everybody.

Forget the spouse - Enter the Soul Mate!

It was really when I started involving myself in spiritual healing* late in 1998 that I found that the ideal close relationship that I had always longed for in my heart of hearts was recognised by many people on 'spiritual paths', and particularly healers, who would use the expression 'soul mate' rather than 'partner' or any of the other familiar terms. Just to confuse us all, there is also a common loose usage of the term, simply to mean an ultra-compatible partner in a conventional sense, with whom one could supposedly live happily ever after in a stultifying state of attachment. That is emphatically not what I was concerned with. No doubt different people would have their own idea of what would constitute a soul mate relationship in my sense of the term, but in my view when I originally wrote this article it had the following characteristics, as described in my rather confused understanding at that time. I have added some more recent comments in square brackets.

* Yes, and that eventually proved to be one BIG problem for me! What I did not know then was that all those healing traditions are distorted by dark force permeation, and the very concept of 'soul mates' was sourced from the dark force for the purpose of further cultivating attachment and keeping people firmly directed away from genuine self actualization, which latter is always blocked by attachment. Also, the very notion of 'spirituality' or 'being spiritual' is sourced from the dark force for the same general reason, as is the extremely limiting notion of a 'bond of love' between two people. Genuine love has nothing to do with bonds between anyone. So, the following list is actually something of a museum piece, actually including my confusions of that period before I came to recognise and start filtering out all my dark force sourced confusions.

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Gain clarity: forget the soul mate - enter enlightened living!

I now have a significantly different view of the situation, because I have let go of the distorted notions that have tended to get associated with healing and indeed the whole so-called New Age movement. I had got things right in many important respects, but had also taken on board the odd highly problematical distortions that are widely being cultivated in people by the dark force.

For one thing, I recognise now that not everyone reincarnates and has past life connections with people in the way that channelled information generally claims, for there is a serious problem about ALL channelled information, as I point out in Better Without Channelling. So, the notion of a permanent connection or bond having been formed, which would keep bringing you together with a supposed soul mate in different lifetimes is applicable only to some people, and indeed in those cases it is nothing positive and is actually a trap set up by the dark force to keep the person away from true self actualization and thus real freedom (see further below). Undoubtedly there are particular people with whom one feels very distinct 'energy' resonances and in some cases who one seems to recognise from a long time ago, even though it is a first encounter in this lifetime, but there are alternative explanations for what appear to be one's past life memories or connections, so it is most helpful to keep a very open mind on the subject and not surround it with unverifiable 'story'.

Indeed, my current understanding is that all so-called relationship chakra cords - purported energy connections that link people who are or have been close in some way - are actually illusory and are just figurative representations of particular attachments that need dissolving - i.e. apart from an inevitable certain degree of attachment between parent and child (up to a quite young age). Those cords, then, are nothing more than a bit of 'story' given by the dark force to healers and some psychics to help reinforce the supposed validity of particular attached relationships. Truly healthy relationship between people, however deep and fundamental, would be free of such attachment. From this perspective, the New-Age-type view of soul mate connections looks to be one of the many parts of the highly problematical, dark-force sourced illusory realities that are being cultivated in the New Age movement.

Also, when you stop and think about it, the very notion of a bond of supposed love or indeed of anything else between soul mates (or between anyone else) is an absurdity, because a bond is all about restriction of freedom, and indeed about control agenda - i.e. of the dark force's if not overtly of the involved people. Indeed, the dark force cultivates in the mind of many people who are relatively 'open' and psychic the notion of this bond leading the bonded pair into an ultimate 'consummation', which is then seen as the ultimate goal of the whole life experience. That supposed 'consummation' is envisaged actually as a sort of fusion into one ("one what?", one might well ask!), which really equates with a sort-of joint self-annihilation - abandonment of the whole life experience just to be in some (actually illusory) state of Tristan and Isolde 'Liebestod'* ('love death'). NOBODY would hanker after anything like that but for the way the dark force is manipulating their stored painful emotions and directing them away from clearing themselves of that garbage and getting to live genuinely happy lives. Few people know what real happiness is - and you don't find it by abandoning the life experience for an illusory reality!

* Bizarrely, the spelling checker of my web page editor (KompoZer), upon not recognising this word (which it would not, as the word is German), offered 'asbestosis' as a replacement. Was it trying to tell me something?

A particular New Age concept is the so-called twin flame, who is somebody with whom one purportedly has a unique soul connection, and with whom one is destined to come together at some very advanced stage of one's evolution. That, then, goes beyond the normal notion of a soul mate; you could call the twin flame the 'ultimate' soul mate, perhaps. However, I see this whole notion again as being part of the illusory realities that the dark force is seeking to lure us into, via channellings from invented and indeed illusory higher beings such as the purported ascended masters and archangels.

That twin flame scenario exploits our weaknesses, for nearly all of us carry at least some level of emotional issue causing us to long for 'the ultimate' close, happily-ever-after (i.e. extremely attached and almost certainly exclusive and thus extremely limiting and stultifying) relationship with one person. All that diverts people from living fully in the present and being fully in harmony with 'What Is' - which is the true way to become enlightened or deepen your state of self actualization, and experience interactions and relationships with other people that are altogether healthy.

Actually, what the dark force is doing in cultivating the notion of the twin flame is just what advertisers of products do when in their advertisements they seek to associate the particular products with something or somebody supposedly 'ideal', such as a slick and glamorous-looking, heavily (I would say disgustingly) made-up woman or a couple in a romantic or implicitly erotic situation, or a scene depicting a supposedly ideal lifestyle in which all 'wants' are immediately satisfied (presumably by spending money) - 100% consumerist and 'appropriate' with not a hint of aware, authentic living. That sort of conduct is often euphemistically described as 'selling a dream'. Indeed, it is the dark force that has programmed and controlled people into putting out such dishonest advertising in the first place, and the twin flame is one of its multitude of dishonest 'advertising' ploys - indeed selling a most pernicious 'dream'.

Some people experience strong and often persistent erotic feelings and/or sexual arousals relating to a particular person and thus believe, or wonder if, that person is their soul mate or twin flame. The 'sad and sorry' explanation is quite a come-down, for what is happening in virtually all such cases is that the dark force is attacking with the feelings of sexual arousal or erotic ecstasy in order to get one into an unhealthy, attached relationship with that person (or at least tormented by unrequited longings for him/her), with whom one may or may not have a true and deep compatibility but with whom there is NO actual predestination to come together*, except as engineered by the dark force for highly problematical reasons.

* Actually it is important to qualify this, because I am here referring to a clear, categorical sort of predestination to come together for a 'relationship' - that is, a seriously attached one. My own understanding, gained from inner inquiry on this issue, is that in some cases there is a subtle underlying intent or aspiration for two or more particular people to come together, but that is a very open-ended sort of thing and is still NOT about getting into actual attachment. Unfortunately, in any such case the dark force 'reads' such deeply sourced intimations - which generally the person's 'ordinary mind' fails to perceive directly - and relays them to the person in grossly distorted form, using them to underpin and reinforce its cultivating in that person a fixation the notion of their being destined to come together with a soul mate or 'twin flame' in the future or indeed to get entangled with somebody 'in the now' who is presented as being that soul mate or 'twin flame'.

In fact the notions of both soul mate and twin flame have been given to us from the dark force for one very specific reason (in addition to any others) - and that is to divert us from cultivating and opening up our one most important relationship of all - with ourselves! That is, with our own deepest aspects, which are based in 'the Ultimate'. If you really have any 'twin flame' at all, it is yourself!

Yes, the 'twin flame' concept is in fact an externalization of that relationship with ourselves (and thus 'the Ultimate'), with the aim of getting us to look anywhere but the right place to find that deepest and most fundamental harmony. It is thus another aspect of the same phenomenon as the externalization of fundamental consciousness (our deepest aspect or level of consciousness) into some external presence or 'God', in order to turn us away from enlightenment and genuine self actualization.

When all your aspects are properly open to and in loving harmony with each other you love other people and indeed the whole life experience most healthily, and then the whole notion of soul mate and especially twin flame is meaningless. You simply recognise those people with whom, in 'energy' terms, you are most compatible for any sort of close friendship or companionship, but do not actually need such relationships and do not make them actual goals of your life or things that you hang on to.

To most people the notion of actually living an enlightened life and having enlightened closeness with people appears to be a far-off ideal. It is in fact realizable, though it does require some work on the individual's part. However, that work is in itself joyful and brings about a progressive increase in health and happiness, so that you get a much more balanced outlook that is not at all constrained or preoccupied with any longing or craving for any particular type of relationship or indeed what people currently think of as a 'relationship'.

So, how then to go about achieving that surely ideal state? -- Simple! As good a starting point as any is The Guide to Complete Self Actualization - assuming you follow the links through for the various methods and practices and don't rely on the affirmations alone.

If you want to establish whether forming any specific sort of relationship with a particular person would be truly in your best interests at the present time, then the 'cool' and effective way to do this is by energy testing - the only problem being that the vast majority of people are too programmed (yes, by the dark force again!) to be able to find their own real truth by energy testing, for their deeply ingrained preconceived notions would simply direct the results and completely obscure any genuine answers that were seeking to come from their deepest aspects. However, probably the vast majority of people who would read this page would be amenable to effective energy testing, provided they observe the various cautions and caveats that I give in my instructions for using it.

Warning! Ordinary dowsing, channelling, asking a medium or clairvoyant, or divining of any kind (including but not limited to Tarot, I Ching, palmistry, astrology, numerology angel cards or runes) aligns you immediately with the dark force, and any 'information' gained from such sources, however plausible or convincing it may appear, WILL contain distortions specifically aimed to lead you away from what is in your best interests. I say this not out of belief but out of hard personal experience and aware observations of what is going on for others. The dark force is unscrupulous and unremitting in its trying to get people into inappropriate and unhealthy relationships to an extent that is beyond most people's wildest imagination. Forewarned is forearmed!

Now we can altogether drop the weary notion of the soul mate, and the so-called twin flame too, and breathe one mighty sigh of relief - and then really get living!