What if I told you there was an easy way to get over anyone?
What about if you could forgive and forget about that ‘thing’ someone did to you so long ago? That thing you’re holding on to and think of each time you see them, even though maybe they’ve changed.
Or how would you like a simple way to stop feeling like you have to creep that one Facebook profile? To finally stop that shameful pang each time their picture pops up on your feed.
For me the selling statement was the first one: Getting over the big ex-girlfriend.
When you’re thinking about a girl every day, seeing her smile on every passing face, spotting her hair out of the corner of your eye in a crowd –well it’s great… if you’re together with her. But once you’ve broken up and will probably never see her again – then it becomes close to torture.
For the friend who told me about this process the selling statement was a bit different.
For him it was this: What if you could go and undo all your one night stands? Fix it so you’d never slept with all those random girls?
Growing up in a christian culture we were always taught that if you slept with a girl you were ‘giving her a piece of your heart’. This was the worst thing you could do because you only have so much heart and if you give pieces of it away you won’t have any left for your wife. I guess this implies that you’ll be less of a husband or person or something… something bad anyways.
But we are all expert mistake makers and (despite the horror) a lot of us will make the mistake of sleeping with a person that is not our spouse.
Having some experience with this (sorry mom), I had accepted the idea that there were a few girls walking around who may have pieces of my heart. But you know what? It didn’t really bother me. ‘Giving a piece of yourself’ was such an abstract notion that it held almost no power. In addition I didn’t regret what we’d done because I had learned and grown so much from those experiences.
However occasionally I would get this strange feeling that I had wronged the girl in some way. A peculiar emptiness that came after the fact, that served to tell me that something was missing from the experience. A nagging idea in my head after we had broken up that just maybe I had given a piece of my heart to this girl… and that maybe I was holding on to a piece of hers.
Back to my friend. He came to me one day on top of the world. He’d spent the evening with some exceptional guys that had taught him about something called ‘Soul Ties’. Now I hear this isn’t a new idea, but I had never heard of it so I’m going to presume you haven’t either.
Basically it’s putting a name to those invisible connectors that tie you to the people in your life. They are the spiritual threads that everyone has; the bonds of friendship, the cords of love, that weird vibe you get when someone you know walks into the room even though you aren’t facing the door. These can be thick or thin, but in my experience the closer you are to someone the more the connection grows and the stronger the soul tie.
This made sense to me. I don’t think we can scientifically measure this, but I can definitely understand the idea.
On the whole soul ties are good, (my friend explained), at least until you aren’t around the person anymore. What happens to this invisible connector then? Does it just go away because you don’t physically see them? Perhaps it fades with time until it’s just a memory of a thread?
Is there someone in your life that you still feel connected to even though you haven’t been around them in years? Maybe an old relationship that still appears in your dreams even though you’re happily married? A smile in a crowd that belongs to the person that broke your heart in university?
Or maybe you’re attached to an idea? An activity that feels unhealthy, that you need to ‘break up’ with, but you just can’t give it up.
For my friend from the beginning it was all the girls he’d slept with. Coming out of his ‘playboy’ phase and maturing a bit he now agreed with the warning we’d grown up with – sleep with a girl and you lose a piece of your heart. These exceptional guys claimed that they knew a way to get those pieces back.
Even better they claimed they could break that invisible thread for good. No more would they trouble your subconscious mind. Never again would you feel compelled to scroll through their Instagram page, each happy picture a tiny stab in the gut.
He said that he’d spent the whole evening with these guys doing the soul tie breaking process. It consisted of a fairly simple talk through of the relationship you wanted to break, a little prayer, and boom – no more spiritual connection with that person from your past.
To say I was intrigued would be an understatement.
Immediately I asked him to teach me the process. Then right there in my living room we did it, my first girlfriend being the initial subject. As I went through the steps I realized that I was still holding on to a lot from the time we’d been together, even though it had been over six years ago. Right away I found some things I hadn’t forgiven her for (mostly petty things) and those were pretty easy to look back on and forgive – but what I hadn’t expected was the discovery that I still felt guilty for some things that I’d done to her!
Can you believe that 18 year old Kyle had been an insensitive jerk to his first girlfriend?
For some reason I was surprised – I think it’s easy to overlook personal faults in a breakup – but it wasn’t until that moment that I was forced to see the relationship as a whole thing. It was the first time I realized that there were areas that I still needed to ask her for forgiveness.
So I asked. Not physically in person with her, but spiritually. Laugh if you want to, but the second you do this you feel different. Lighter.
After I had gone through all the steps I could see quite clearly that I had given her a piece of my heart. Even worse was that I still held on to a piece of hers. She’d trusted me with it and I hadn’t given it back to her when it had all ended. What had thrown me off was that it didn’t look like a ‘heart’ – it looked like trust and love.
Which is when I realized what soul ties are really about – making people whole again. It’s about putting us back to the way we are meant to be.
At this point of the process I’m sitting there, my first relationship in my hands like a tangible thing; a swirling ball of forgiveness, thankfulness, resentment, and everything else we’d had, and I knew it was complete. I’d given her back her trust and love and felt like I had received mine in return.
But there is one more step: getting rid of the relationship. Personally, I like to throw mine into space. Then I pray that God gets rid of it and severs the unhealthy connection forever.
That’s when this weird sense of calm comes over you. Everyone I’ve done this with feels it immediately at this part. Including me. Then you sort of collapse in relief, feeling accomplished and filled and great.
The steps for breaking a soul tie are at the end of this blog. I find it helps to speak this out loud to someone else – it makes the whole thing a lot more real. You don’t have to be an expert to do this, you just have to be honest.
It must also be said that the prayer part isn’t mandatory. For me it helps make it more real and permanent, but the choice is totally up to you. My friends and I have found it works equally well with or without.
Now for the testimonies… starting with mine.
I’ve done this with every girl I’ve been intimate with. I’ve also done this with some friend relationships that I felt had gone sour. But my most difficult one was with the girl I described at the beginning, the girl for whom I first felt real love.
She was tough because I was scared that if I broke the connection with her I would forget what that love felt like.
Guess what? Breaking that connection didn’t make me forget anything. I still have all my memories and feelings. The difference is that now instead of grasping onto that idea of love for fear of losing it, I can stand back and examine it from a healthy vantage point.
The most intense soul tie I’ve ever witnessed was a girl breaking the unhealthy relationship she had with her father. What started out as a way to get over her ex-boyfriend became her forgiving her father for molesting her as a child. She didn’t ask for her heart back – she asked for her innocence and purity. And she got it.
Sometimes soul ties are surprising and they come out of nowhere. The winner of the most surprising soul tie I’ve witnessed was a guy realizing he still had a connection with his unborn child. His relationship with his ex-girlfriend had been unhealthy and when they mistakenly got pregnant, they decided to abort. What he didn’t know is that the guilt of that child was like a disease in him. He released the soul tie, forgave himself, asked for forgiveness and gave everything else to God. He told me his life changed that night.
A more abstract one was a friend of mine who just broke her soul tie with gaming. She still enjoys gaming, but now that she has an understanding of how the relationship looks as a whole she says it’s a lot easier to treat it as a hobby and less as a lifestyle. She doesn’t feel like she ‘has’ to play anymore.
Occasionally soul ties are sort of strange and painful. Which leads to a confession on my part – I lied before. I said the most difficult soul tie was with the girl from the beginning.
The actual most difficult soul tie for me to break was with pornography. Yes as I said earlier, you can have spiritual connections with things other than people. I’ve had to do it multiple times because I keep falling back, but severing the connection to pornography is the most liberating feeling I’ve ever experienced. Realizing it’s a relationship, and an unhealthy one, makes it so much easier to get away from. And even though you may go back a few times for that old comfort (just like a real relationship) it’s that much easier to see it for what it is afterwards.
I’m happy to say that the last time I broke the soul tie with pornography I felt like an uprooting had occurred. It’s hard to break a relationship that you’ve spent most of your life feeding into, but I feel like I have finally managed to break it once and for all.
The idea of soul ties has been revolutionary for me. I’ve taught them to tons of people I know and those who decide to take it seriously and try it for themselves have always gotten something positive from the experience. I’d encourage you to give it a shot if you feel like there’s someone coming to mind right now. Maybe it’s an ex-lover, maybe an old friend, maybe a boss, I don’t know. It only takes a few minutes but has radically changed my life.
Hopefully it’ll help you out.
The Steps for Breaking a Soul Tie:
- Picture the Relationship. How you met, the good times, the memories you treasure, the things you’ve learnt and how you’ve grown.
- Describe the bad times. The moments that hurt you, but also the things you feel might have hurt the other person, the things you feel bad about – feel the hurt, picture those moments, remember them from both sides.
- Ask to be forgiven for what you may have done. Then forgive them for hurting you. This can be done to an imaginary version of them or a real version if you want. Remember that at the time you thought you were doing the right thing, that you can’t really be blamed for not knowing what to do in life. Then remember it’s the exact same for them.
- Ask to get back what they’ve taken from you. Then give them back whatever you may have taken from them.
- Remember the end. Go over how it felt then, how it feels now.
- Picture the relationship as a whole thing, from start to finish. This is where I see it as a ball in my hands.
- Make a choice to let it go. Send it into space!
This is where I involve God in the process. As I push it away I ask God to sever the connection and to make sure that it doesn’t return. If you don’t feel comfortable with that it’s cool, I think the process works if you believe it’s from God or not.
One thing that helps me is to visualize the relationship as a swirling ball in my hands that grows and changes as I go through the process. The reason I do this is that it’s hard to visualize throwing away a relationship. It’s easy to visualize throwing away a ball.
You may need to write the person a letter, or talk to them, or apologize – some form of closure – but it’s entirely up to you. Personally I’ve written letters to a few people but never sent them. Oftentimes putting the words onto paper is enough.
Hopefully now you’ll feel like your heart is somehow fuller, fresher. Like you’ve got one less thing to worry about in life.
I know each time I feel like I’ve regained a piece of my soul. It’s a wonderful feeling.
Thanks for this post Kyle. “I was scared that if I broke the connection with her I would forget what that love felt like” – a lot of people I know, myself included feel this, a huge reason it’s hard to let a lot of things go. Will try “Steps for Breaking a Soul Tie” out 🙂
Just wanted to commend you and salute you for being so open and honest. Any time we do that we make ourselves vulnerable, and I think you’ve shown a tremendous amount of courage by being as real as you have been. Glad that breaking soul ties has made such a positive impact too! XO
Kyle, Thanks for your honest and generous post. I greatly appreciate the potential this has to make a positive impact on so many. Forgiveness is an allusive mystery for me. I will attempt to put this principle into practice in my life. Again, thanks for sharing this!! Cheers! Bruce