Soul Mates and Twins Souls
What are Kindred Spirits?
Soul Mate
Richard Bach describes soul mates as "A soulmate is someone who has the locks to fit our keys, and the keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we; we can be loved for who we are and for who we're pretending to be. Each of us unveils the best part of one another. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person were safe in our paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life. "
Thomas Moore, in his book Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship, page xvii, describes a soul mate as "someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communication and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace. This kind of relationship is so important to the soul that many have said there is nothing more precious in life."
Kindred spirits are people that you connect with on a deeper level than just basic intellectual and emotional interaction. They are one who you have a unique spiritual connection with. That feeling that somehow you must have known them in a previous life and you've finally reunited.
“Kindred Spirits” is a hard term to define. There is no real description for it; just like “Soulmate,” it has many meanings. The most common meaning for it is to havea bond with someone whom you share the same interests, personality, character, etc. Each can be “themselves” around one another and open up fully. The probable difference between “soulmate” and “kindred spirit” is that as we go through life we do come across many people who resemble our own nature. Another description of a “kindred spirit” is to find a rare bond with a friend; that “hard-to-find rare friendship.” These friends are usually referred to as the constantly-spoken of, “best-friend.” Platonic friendship sometimes grows from these, and things can be very complicated. Like most say, your worst enemy is the person who knows you best. They know how to hurt you because they know your strength and your weaknesses. How it sometimes mixes with the “soulmate” term is because both are somewhat seen on a spiritual level.
However, I like to make the distinction between terms, as I like to refer to soulmates as a spouse or lover and all other very close relations as being 'kindred spirits'-those with whom we've spent many lifetimes together and who share a close bond, but have no physical intimacy with.
There are actually three kinds of soulmates: karmic, kindred spirit, and twin flame (also called twin soul or divine complement) soulmates. The second kind of soulmate is the kindred spirit soulmate. These are wonderful, really fun, like a best friend and great team mate in life.
Kindred Spirits are two people that make a special connection by sharing a bond that has joined them by the means of an experience that has drawn them together on a higher level of consciousness. This connection can be from the same experience at the same time or two separate experiences similar in nature.
The Celtic understanding of friendship found its inspiration and culmination in the sublime notion of the anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul; cara is the word for friend. So anam cara means soul friend. The anam cara is a person to whom you can reveal the hidden intimacies of your life. This friendship is an act of recognition. When you have an anam cara, your friendship cut across all convention and category. You are joined in an ancient and eternal way with the friend of your soul. Central here is the recognition and awakening of the ancient belong-ing between two friends. Since the human heart is never completely born, love is the continuous birth of creativity within and between us.
The anam cara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance. Such friendship can remain alive even when the friends live far away from each other. Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed. When the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured. Even across the distance two friends can stay attuned to each other and continue to sense the flow of each other's lives. With your anam cara you awaken the eternal. In this soul-space there is no distance.
- (Extract from Anam Cara)
