The biggest gift you give anyone (including yourself) is to see with clear fresh loving eyes every moment. It's a two-way street. My friends see the best in me and coax me back there even if I myself am feeling in a blind funk and vice versa. (This is Part 2 of this post, see also Hugh's How to Be Creative and the impetus for this post Ignore Everybody.)
My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me. - Henry Ford
The 'wee voice' as Hugh calls it - what I call my authentic voice - sometimes comes through in others. I gotten so that I can recognize my wee voice regardless of the source.
In the last post, I spoke of perceiving people and things anew and not relying on stale images - the past concepts you hold of them. For friends, this is a...
...coming together and meeting each other as if for the first time. That isn't even relationship any more. Who is relating to who? It is a being together. - Weavers of Wisdom: Women Mystics of the Twentieth Century, by Anne Bancroft
I recently thanked one of my anam caras (recently returned from Ireland and am obviously on a Celtic kick; anam cara is Celtic word for a 'soul friend') for getting me back on track. In John O'Donohue's book it seems that your anam cara is confined to one person - but I don't take that stance.
The anam cara was a person to whom you could reveal the hidden intimacies of your life. - Anam Cara: The Book of Celtic Wisdom, by John O'Donohue
We were sitting at the Dutch Goose in Menlo Park last week and I going off about one of my tangential moneymaking ideas du jour. He patiently listened. And listened. When I was finished speaking, he jolted me back to reality. Why had I tabled the book? He reminds me how much I love writing and how much I am called to do this book. Oh yeah.... (But it also scares the shit out of me.) He gently calls me on it - without ever using that language. It's as my wee voice is speaking through him. As I listen to him you'd think I was depriving the world of my gifts. And he makes a good case for depriving myself.
The reality is I'm more anxious to drown out my wee voice than anyone else is.
The Buddhist tradition has a lovely concept of friendship. This is the notion of the 'Kalyana-mitra', the 'noble friend'. Your Kalyana-mitra, your noble friend, will not accept pretension, but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness. No-one can see their life totally. As there is a blind spot in the retina of the human eye, there is also in the soul a blind side where you are not able [or as I say, willing] to see...The honesty and clarity of true friendship also brings out the real contour of your spirit. It is beautiful to have such a presence in your life. - Anam Cara
The key word above which is often neglected is gentle - gentle with loving-kindness. We all beat ourselves quite enough thank you - we don't need collaborators. The paradox is that we are perfect and whole as we are right now. So a friend doesn't just love the "potential" you. They see you with fresh, loving eyes - beyond all the walls you have erected to hide behind. I remember the feelings of frustration and of being stifled because it appeared my ex-husband was enamored of my "potential" while obviously disgusted with "me" right then and there. (That was all way before I practiced what I'm now saying - my image of him was also of someone that was extremely judgmental.) It is acceptance that gives people the space to be more fully themselves - not you riding on them to be "better".
It can be hard to hear the strains of your wee voice. Yet we know the wee voice wherever we hear it.
From what I've read of successful, creative people they do surround themselves with select anam caras and kalyana-mitras. Friends who can hold the vision steady of our highest selves even as we ourselves go through our own roller-coasters of self-doubt. Andrew Carnegie had a close group he called his Mastermind group, as outlined in the book Think and Grow Rich. (Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad, Poor Dad also speaks to benefits of friendship but cautions you to choose wisely. He says something to effect: Show me your six closest friends and I'll show you who you are.)
No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind. - speaking of the power of a Mastermind group, Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill
This same week a different anam cara or kalyana-mitra tells me (among many incredibly insightfully beneficial things) in a dialogue I initiate:
Don't worry so much about being a guru and telling people what they need to do. Just tell your story and people will glean the lessons from it...It's just one woman's story.Now this doesn't sound startling to an outsider. But it's what I needed to hear. I was stuck thinking this was a heavy responsibility - they would look up to me as some sort of "role model". It seemed a lot to live up to. It was a huge relief to hear those simple words above. And he asks: Why do I care so much about other's approval? (I agreed: So what! So what what they think!) Why is it important for me to be perceived as a continually positive, optimistic, grounded, "together" person?
It clicked - it resonated with my wee voice - and explained the primary reason I was stuck in moving forward with some ideas - particularly the book.
In short, anything which shakes us out of our ongoing slumber and creates an opening to a vista beyond our narrow image or experience of ego-self [identifying ourselves as our illusory walls], is a spiritual friend worthy of our gratitude. - one definition of Kalyanamitra, but I'm not focusing on the rest of their definition
The love in friendship allows for total freedom - never confining either of you to prisoners of your own making or to agreements to keep each other stuck in old images. Friends don't hold friends back - either you are subtly using them as a justification for being stuck or you're committed to seeing only the past. In rare cases, they may truly not be your friend.
"You are now able to come close to the Other, not out of need or with the wearying apparatus of projection, but out of genuine intimacy, affinity and belonging. It is a freedom. Love should make you free. You become free of the hungry, blistering need with which you continually reach out to scrape affirmation, respect and significance for your own self from things and people outside your self." - Anam Cara
Search for in all major search engines simultaneously on the site http://www.iknowall.com.
Simultaneous search on Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search.
Try http://www.iknowall.com
Posted by: iknowall | Jun 01, 2007 at 02:20 PM