Twin flames have existed eternally, so to say they are gaining popularity is an understatement. I prefer to take the word “concept” out of the question and substitute it with “recognition.” Then I would reword the question to be:
“Why is the recognition of twin flames becoming a topic of worldwide interest?”

The answer to this question is because people have actually met their twin flames and wonder what just happened to them! It is an earthshaking experience and leaves no doubt that you have just met your own soul in another body.

This is slightly different from soul mates, who are companions through many lifetimes. The existence of twin flames validates the uncanny feeling of meeting yourself exactly but in a different form. People who have not met their twin flame or even their soul mate may feel a bit incomplete. They may go on to live and love but their whole world is rocked when they encounter their twin flame.

Some people want this experience and seek to learn more about this fascinating phenomenon. So many relationships are shallow, based on appearances and silly concerns of the ego. People are seeking more than “Am I Hot or Am I Not?” hookups that are all about the body and leave them feeling empty inside.
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People are hungering after the Soul in general, even if they cannot put it into words. This is the reason for the upswing in interest in twin flames.

Both soul mates and twin flames are very rare. They do not occur in every lifetime. Here are the essential differences:
Soul mates have been with each other from lifetime to lifetime and cycle through many different roles with each other. They are brought together to complete something left undone in a past life. Often there is a spiritual lesson involved.

Some soul mates are difficult for us because we need to clean up our karma with them. Not every soul mate brings peace and love. Nevertheless, you will always recognize your soul mate. Sometimes you can be in different locations on the planet and may not encounter them. When you meet them you will know!

Twin flames are actually the same person’s soul split off into two bodies. This configuration is much rarer than the already rare soul mate. They share many of the traits of soulmates, such as finishing each other’s sentences, thinking the same thing at the same time, and sharing many uncanny characteristics.
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Sometimes twin flames can even be born at different times but still be twin flames. That even throws more complexity into the mix. For example, I know a twin soul that recently incarnated as a baby in California. Her counterpart will be born in Texas in a few months. Many things account for this and they are beyond our human comprehension.

Fear is not a strength under any circumstance. It is always a weakness. Furthermore, the Soul does not comprehend or even recognize fear. The Soul lives in an atmosphere of love and peace. Fear is strictly a function of the human mind.

You might defend fear and say, “We need it or we would do stupid things and not survive.” No, it isn’t fear that keeps us from doing stupid things. It’s knowledge. We know that if we jump off a 10-story building, we will crash to the sidewalk. It isn’t fear that is preventing us from doing it—it’s knowing what will happen when we hit the ground.

I cannot think of one instance where fear is equivalent with strength. If we are in a dangerous situation, fear can cloud the mind in panic and we can make the wrong decision. Fear makes our lives miserable every day. Even when things are going well, fear will creep in and tell us, “This is just too good, don’t relax and get comfortable, the storm and loss are coming soon.”
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We are the only animals on the planet that live in almost constant fear of something happening in future. This is because we are the only animals who can formulate ideas about the future. And that is because we have a special kind of mind, one that uses fear as its fuel or food. So, actually, fear is never a strength of the Soul, or even an attribute of the Soul, and it is always a destructive weakness to humans.

Yes, fear is the root of all suffering. I discovered this when I gave birth to my daughters. I saw that what gave pain its unbearable aspect was fear. If I detached myself from the fear and just experienced the strong sensations, I was able to handle it. The women all around me were screaming out in misery and fear. I stayed silent, observing that if I removed the component of fear, I was OK.

If we take all unhappy emotions and sensations down to their roots, we will see that it is fear, not the actual sensation that is the cause of all the trouble. We slam our finger in the door. No one will deny it hurts. But if we start picturing a broken finger, how impaired our action will be, the expense of going to a doctor, time off from work with possible financial consequences, being sidelined from fun activities, then we add even more to our misery. Now we are entering the territory of suffering.

If we take away all the fearful thoughts and just experience the pain for what it is: The body’s perfect warning system that something isn’t right—then we can deal with it. We can take measures to heal it, to ease the pain, and to learn from the whole experience. But if we descend into fear, not only will the healing process be delayed (due to the secretion of stress hormones) but the pain will be accentuated.
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Suffering is prolonged misery. If we are fearless and trust the process of life, we will still have the ups and downs that are normal—but we won’t suffer through them. This is a function of the Soul and not of the ego-mind, which is a fear-based entity whose natural milieu is worry and fear. It thinks we need fear to survive and therefore we are doomed to suffer if we listen to it.

Every person has a soul, is a Soul. But Narcissists are what could be called “lost souls.” They have not discovered their own inner being and continue to seek validation for a purely external illusion they create about themselves. They know they are impostors and can never really trust the praise they receive, and so remain insecure and not at home in their own Being.

If they could make contact with their souls, their behavior would change immediately. Narcissists would then not care so much about the superficial impressions they make on strangers. Feeling their own authentic selves, they would fundamentally care about not hurting others—because they would feel a union with others on a soul level.

Part of our Soul’s expression is a genuine caring for others. It is empathy for their suffering and the desire not to add to it. Narcissists are missing the awareness of that soul quality that makes people care deeply about each other. They are more interested in using or manipulating people to accomplish their short-term goals. All the while feeling empty inside and needing to fill the void.
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Part of your question with regard to Narcissists and their souls is “do they understand what it is?” No. They do not. They can give glib definitions that make them look like they know what they are talking about. But they have never experienced it and therefore do not understand it.

Being materialistic is delusional. Material things come and go. They do not last. They rot, burn, crumble away, get lost, get flooded and swept away. Time corrodes all material things and wears them down.

Therefore, we are kidding ourselves when we devote our lives to acquiring and stockpiling all the material stuff we think will make us happy. A shiny new object might give us a temporary thrill but even that can get tarnished, stolen, or just lose its novelty. It might make us feel good as others admire us with our fabulous toys.

Material objects can be beautiful. They can be symbols of creativity and ingenuity. They can be inspiring and uplifting, as are great works of art. But they are not permanent.

So why devote our lives to something that is not even permanent? Because we are frightened creatures, afraid that our death renders everything meaningless. We seek meaning in material things that offer amusement, entertainment, ego gratification, and satisfaction of our drive to acquire more, more, and more. These things distract us from the horrible thought that one day we, like everyone else, will die.
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Not knowing who we are as Eternal Souls leads to a world that spends its time frantically pursuing stuff that doesn’t last. When we discover who we really are, we can still appreciate material objects, our own miraculous bodies, and all the beauty of the world. But we know that these things are not real because they do not endure. Only our fundamental Souls are eternal and cannot be destroyed.

People on a spiritual path want to have a lot of free time to meditate, contemplate, worship, and go within in other ways. Therefore, my spiritual pursuits have determined how I’ve interacted with people in social settings. It’s not that I don’t love a good party, it’s just that superficial interactions are too much on the surface to stir any continuing interest in me. Spiritual people like to dive in deep to the Heart of the Universe.

I can participate in small talk, but eventually desire much more. I want to understand the Soul of the person I am interacting with. If I find that they are a young soul, or perhaps have not examined any of life’s important questions, I will participate with kindness send them on their way with love. But they will never be part of my life. It is tedious for me to be with people on a shallow and superficial level, whether it is in a party atmosphere or a casual encounter.

One of the reasons for this is that on my path, I have not bought into the values that so many people in my society ascribe to. The large, expensive weddings, gaudy extravaganzas and pointless displays, mass entertainments are not pleasurable. The whole medical-industrial complex, the premises it is based on, and attention-seeking social media culture mean very little to me and I avoid them.
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It is an indwelling life of great peace and freedom. But to live it, it is important to set up boundaries and not be dragged into the whirlwind of activity that characterizes so many people’s daily lives. So I have become a hermit. A happy, voluntary, and completely satisfied hermit. And that is how my spiritual pursuits have shaped my life.

Descartes’ famous statement, “I think, therefore I am (Cogito ergo sum)” could be debatable. By this criterion, a tree does not exist because it does not think. A human in a coma, who does not have the capacity to think, does not exist. So right away we get into difficulties with what exactly what Descartes was trying to say.

If he is referring to the time-bound human ego, then “i think, therefore I am” makes sense. We begin to accumulate memories and conditioning when we are babies. From this collection, we construct a person with a name, cultural background, and parental teaching and examples. We then believe that this is who are are and therefore, “I am.” We create something solid out of a constantly changing whirl of atoms and we call it “me.”
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It is more accurate to say, “I embody the eternal Soul of the Universe, therefore I am.” The smaller ego-me, consisting of thoughts, memories, opinions, fears, and beliefs is a transitory thing. It is changeable and constantly evolving. Are we going to call something that is in a continual state of flux “me?” But there is something that exists beyond our cognitive abilities: The Soul. It is the eternal principle of the Universe, contained in each one of us and it is beyond the limitations of thought.

Souls, by their definition, are eternal. That means they are never born and they never die. They do not conform to the laws of Newtonian Physics or to entropy. They are not visible and are not destructible the way matter can be. Actually, even matter is not destroyed, only transmuted into another form of matter.

Eternity also means all the time before you were born as well. It is difficult for the human mind to grasp the idea of eternity. Often people think eternity starts after they pass away out of the body, or die. No. Eternity is everything before we were born into these bodies as well.

Not every soul incarnates at the same time. Many stay in Pure Positive Energy (what some call heaven) until the setting is right for their next incarnation. This depends on the unique growth needs for that soul.
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Our souls are like rays of the sun—they all originate with the sun and cannot exist without the sun, yet each is an individual. As for the point of it all that is something each person must discover, for each soul is on its own journey and will eventually return to its Source.