Soul Ties

It Takes One To Know One

I've had about 5, and a 'possible', serious romantic relationships in my life. Out of those, a couple stand out a lot more than others, and that is wholly because they were with people whom I consider to be soulmates. The idea of 'soulmates' is ancient and, like most other sacred words, it has been thrown around so loosely in modern times that it no longer carries much meaning. Many people want to believe that they are with soulmates because it sounds exclusive and romantic, but the thing is, in order to recognize a soulmate, you first have to recognize your own soul. Which is why, for most of my life, I didn't believe in soulmates. In my teens and early 20s, a woman's soul was the furthest thing from my mind when meeting her. And the quality of the relationships I had during that period of my life was a reflection of this sad truth. That's not to say that those relationships were meaningless to me, because that's not true at all, but they were certainly lustful, ego-centric, shallow, and ultimately, pretty empty.

When my mom got sick, I became more focused on my soul, and suddenly the souls of others came into my awareness as well. This alone made me a much more compassionate person because I no longer just saw women as a body and brain for me to use for my pleasure, at my leisure, but instead as souls who were likely lost in the world, like I was, and who were looking to be loved and cared for, like me. This opening up to Spirit also made me more open to the interconnectedness of all things and to how the Universe speaks to us. One of the ways that the Universe speaks to us is through dreams. I used to suffer from a phenomenon called 'sleep paralysis' regularly, for many, many years. Sleep paralysis happens when your brain wakes up before your body does, which means, while you feel conscious and aware that you are 'awake', you can't move, so it feels like you're trapped in your body. What's worse is that this paralysis is usually accompanied by some sort of lucid nightmare. This could range from some dark or demonic figure standing over you menacingly to just simply dreaming that you're being attacked and can't fight back, drowning and can't swim, or my least favorite, not being able to breathe no matter how hard you try. So, it's kinda like a lucid dream where you feel like you have absolutely no control over your body or what's happening around you.

In the fall of 2015, I had a lucid dream experience unlike any I'd ever had before. Prior to that night, I had been reading up on 'out of body experiences', and one night, due to insomnia, I found myself attempting to induce one of these experiences. I was laying on my back on my bed getting close to sleep when I noticed that I began being able to 'see' my room through my closed eyelids. Suddenly, I found myself in complete darkness, being lovingly held in the arms of someone I'd never met before. I could not see her face or anything physical about her, but I did feel her arm across my body, holding me close, and it felt so real. I heard her voice say to me, "Micheal? Babe?", with concern, as if she was trying to wake me up from a bad dream. Her energy felt so familiar. It felt like I was home for the first time ever. At this point, I realized I must be dreaming because I didn't have a girlfriend at the time but decided to just surrender to what was happening and let it unfold.

The next thing I knew, I was transported back into my room and everything in it, including myself, was either floating around the room or stuck to the ceiling, being held up by this invisible force. This sensation of floating was accompanied by the most intense, euphoric 'high' that I'd ever experienced in my life at that point. It literally felt like the force of gravity had been reversed or removed, and instead of pulling everything towards the ground, it was pulling everything towards the sky. What was so bizarre about the whole experience is that it didn't feel like I was dreaming at all. I was fully aware of what was happening and I was fully aware that I was 'Micheal', that I was in 'my room', and that I'd just been trying to fall asleep. I distinctly remember seeing my glasses floating in the air next to me and thinking to myself that I hope I don't land on them and break them when/if gravity returns. After what felt like many minutes, though it was probably several seconds, I noticed that my body was still in my bed and I gained the wherewithal to place myself back into it which woke me up.

When I woke up, to my surprise, I was alone. Though I checked and double-checked, I couldn't find any evidence that any object in my room had just been floating around moments ago. Nor could I find any evidence that some loving woman had been holding me. Despite the lack of evidence, I was so disturbed by this experience that I immediately opened the notes app on my phone and did my best to write down what happened so I wouldn't forget it. It was so far outside of the realm of what I believed was possible or how I understood 'dreams' to work. And it felt so real that I couldn't just dismiss it as a weird dream because after I woke up, the feelings from this 'dream' lingered for days. The feeling that lingered the most was the connection I felt to this invisible woman. From that day on, the idea of soulmates didn't seem so far-fetched to me. It felt like there was someone out there who really cared about me on a soul level. I became very open to meeting this 'woman of my dreams' in reality, and less than two years later, I thought that I did.

Dreams and Nightmares

Our first date was at the Smelly Cat cafe in Charlotte, NC. This came after a brief convo on Tinder that was short-lived because we both had a feeling that we'd found what we were looking for after we matched. From our very first meeting, there was this ease, this comfort, this familiarity, and this safety between each other to the extent that she came back to my place after we left the coffee shop where we talked for hours and did nothing more. That might not sound so crazy considering many people go home with strangers on a weekly basis, but this was right around the time that the "Me Too" movement was picking up steam. I'd actually just attended the Women's March in Charlotte a couple of months before we met, so the collective consciousness was on high alert about the dangers that women face when isolated with men. Though I knew mentally that I had no intention of hurting her, there's no way that she could have known that. But the reason why she felt safe to come back to my place is that her soul knew my soul.

We connected on so many levels. We had so many things in common and shared uncanny similarities in our histories that seemed impossible to be mere coincidences. We were both very spiritual, which was a new experience for me because up to that point in my spiritual journey, I'd felt super alone. It felt like we'd shared past lives together. At the time, my license plate read 'IQA 444'. The idea of synchronicities was still new to me back then, but not to her, and she told me that she'd been seeing that sequence of numbers over and over before we met and when she saw it on my license plate, she just knew. She said that she'd manifested me — that she'd written out in her journal the qualities of the man she wanted to be with and I was him.

Within two weeks of meeting, we were a couple. And the first six months of our relationship were pretty much bliss. I became certain that I had met my soulmate; the woman from my dream. I remember thinking to myself at times, 'What did I do to deserve this?', a sentiment that would repeat itself throughout our relationship though, unfortunately, it later was posed from a place of pain instead of pleasure because, it turns out, we both were very unhealed people when we met which meant that we spent a lot of time projecting unresolved pain & trauma onto each other. Which eventually led me to doubt if this was the 'woman of my dreams' after all. A big part of my beef with the way 'soulmate' is used in the common language is that it carries with it the idea that a 'soulmate' means a perfect, pain-free, or ideal relationship. That the point of meeting your 'soulmate' is to live happily ever after in marital bliss with no major problems.

What I learned through my experience with this soulmate and with soulmates that I later came into contact with is that the purpose of a soulmate is to assist in the evolution of your soul. What makes a soulmate connection so special is not that you would perpetually feel good with them but rather that you come in contact with a soul that is so similar to your own that they can trigger you in a way that no one else can. And through this triggering, they provide you with a mirror and an opportunity for you to see yourself from a totally new perspective. Through meeting a soulmate and seeing ourselves through them, we are provided with an opportunity to heal trauma from childhood and past lives and for our souls to grow and expand in a way that would not have been possible had we not encountered them.

The three years I spent with this particular soulmate were filled with some of the highest highs and lowest lows that I've ever experienced in my life. And though ultimately the purpose of our coming together was primarily to learn karmic lessons, I still see her as family and hold our time together in high regard because our relationship really taught me what it meant to love myself. This soulmate spoke life into me in a way that I have not experienced again since, but she also cursed me in a way that I have not experienced since, and quite frankly, would not tolerate again. The sense of familiarity between our souls and the commonality of the experiences we had in childhood meant that we triggered each other deeply, often. And because we were both so damaged at the time, this constant triggering and the toll it took on us eventually meant that staying together was not healthy or sustainable.

I remember after a particular argument she said to me, "I don't want to love you anymore," and it simultaneously broke my heart and triggered a sort of enlightenment in me to the fact that I can only ever expect unconditional love from myself. Not in a sad, "woe is me," kinda way but more in a "oh, I get it!" kinda way. Experiencing such intense love with someone, only to hear them express a desire to withdraw it, awakened me to the fact that dependence on others for love only breeds anxiety and a fear of losing that love if I fail to live up to their desires and expectations of me; a similar wounding that I had experienced through my relationship with my mother as a child. Though my experience with this soulmate was intensely painful at times, our connection served as a catalyst for unprecedented growth and led to one of the most fruitful periods of my life. And though neither this romantic soulmate nor my mother have a physical presence in my life currently, they are still very much my family and are integral parts of who I am today.

More Than Happiness, Love Wants Growth

Romantic connections are just one form that a soulmate can take in our lives. Soulmates can also appear in the form of platonic friends, business partners, co-workers, teachers, etc. Because souls exist outside of time and space, some soulmates don't even have a body. I eventually realized that my mother and I are soulmates too because her battle with cancer and ultimately passing is 100% the reason why you're reading this today. My mother's life, but more so her death, has assisted in the evolution of my soul more than anything else that I've ever experienced and likely will ever experience in this life. There is absolutely no way I would have had the strength to change by my own volition. But because our souls are so deeply intertwined, her death and the subsequent expansion it brought her soul meant that my soul had to expand as well.

I feel similarly about the spiritual teachers that have had the biggest impact on me, particularly a man named Ram Dass. Though I never met him in the flesh, I am certain that our hearts are connected because his words, or rather, the vibration behind his words, touched, consoled, and nurtured my heart in a way that nothing else could when I was losing my mind over the potential of losing my mother. I feel similarly towards other teachers that I've never met. I see them all as soulmates, as family members, whom I am connected with in a place that is beyond space and time. And please believe, just like real family, I did not like many of them when I first 'met' them, lol; specifically because of how they triggered me. But now, I have such a deep reverence for them because of how they triggered me and because of how that triggering eventually led to my healing and liberation.

Family is not just the people we grow up around and share physical traits and DNA with. Ultimately, we are all family as we are all connected and derive from a single, solitary Source. But in my experience, there are certain souls whose vibration is so similar to your own that you are destined to come into contact with them in some way, shape, or form. And the connections we have with our soul family are often more intimate, more impactful, and more 'real' than the relationships we have with earthly family.

As for the woman of my dreams, maybe I'll never meet her in person. Maybe I already have. Maybe I don't need to. Maybe the purpose of that experience I had was not to make me obsessed with the idea that there is some physical person out there that I'm destined to be with but rather to wake me up to the reality that there are souls around me all the time watching, assisting, and supporting me to realize my highest good. Perhaps that experience was to teach me that I'll know when I've come in contact with these soulmates through the intensity of the force that attracts me to them and because I'll be inspired to grow and expand in a way I never have before after meeting them. Perhaps that dream was to reveal to me that a true soulmate is not someone who you are physically bound to for eternity but rather is some being that helps you come into closer alignment with your own soul.

If you're reading this, we are likely soulmates too because I seem to repulse people who don't feel some sort of spiritual resonance with me. Please trust that I am forever grateful for our connection, that this newsletter is a manifestation of that gratitude, and if you're interested in attracting connections with other souls that you are 'tied' to, all you have to do is continue to wake up to the reality of your true identity as a soul and of the fact that separation, no matter how painfully convincing, is just an illusion.

What's Up With Me?

I've been spending a lot of time lately reflecting on just how far I've come since this time last year. Believe it or not, around this time last year I was so apathetic about the world, and my place in it, that I didn't really see a point in sharing my voice anymore. I felt like pretty much anything I had to say had already been said so what's the point? But I've been reminded that the messenger matters. A message can only be as clear as it's channel and so who delivers the message is of the utmost importance. Not only that, in the spirit of the topic of this week's newsletter, certain souls can only pick up information from certain other souls. When it comes to growing and understanding, the teacher, the lover, the mother, or the friend who is assisting with your growth definitely does matter. So, I am grateful for the people and the experiences that have reminded me that my voice matters and that have inspired me, given me a space, and a reason to share my voice again. And I hope you know that your voice matters too. We are all One soul and we are all working together to 'walk each other home' ,as Ram Dass says. And in order for that to happen, we all have to play our parts and serve each other in the way that our souls call us to.

With gratitude that our souls are eternally tied,

Micheal Sinclair 💜