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Here are some gorgeous thoughts for you to sit with until tomorrow....who is your anam cara?
From Anam Cara, A Book of Celtic Wisdom, by John O'Donohue
All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes into your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow. Possibility is the secret heart of time. On its outer surface time is vulnerable to transience. Regardless of its sadness or beauty, each day empties and vanishes. In its deeper heart, time is transfiguration. Time minds possibility and makes sure that nothing is lost or forgotten. That which seems to pass away on the surface of time is in fact transfigured and housed in the tabernacle of memory. Possibility is the secret heart of creativity. Martin Heidegger speaks about the "ontological priority" of possibility. At the deepest level of being, possibility is both mother and transfigured destination of what we call events and facts. This quiet and secret world of the eternal is the soul. Love is the nature of the soul. When we love and allow ourselves to be loved, we begin more and more to inhabit the kingdom of the eternal. Fear changes into courage, emptiness becomes plenitude, and distance becomes intimacy. Love is our deepest nature, and consciously or unconsciously, each of us searches for love. We often choose such false ways to satisfy this deep hunger. An excessive concentration on our work, achievements, or spiritual quest can actually lead us away from the presence of love.
The Umbra Nihili
In
a vast universe that often seems sinister and unaware of us, we need the
presence and shelter of love to transfigure our loneliness. This cosmic loneliness is the root of all
inner loneliness. All of our life,
everything we do, think, and feel is surrounded by nothingness. Hence we become afraid so easily. The fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart
says that all of human life stands under the shadow of nothingness, the umbra
nihili. Nevertheless, love is the sister
of the soul. Love is the deepest
language and presence of the soul. In
and through the warmth and creativity of love, the soul shelters us from the
bleakness of that nothingness. We cannot
fill up our emptiness with objects, possessions, or people. We have to go deeper into that emptiness; then
we will find beneath nothingness the flame of love waiting to warm us.
The Anam Cara
In
the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and
friendship. One of the fascinating ideas
here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam cara. Anam
is the Gaelic word for soul and cara
is the word for friend. So anam cara in the Celtic world was the
"soul friend." In the early
Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide
was called an anam cara. It originally referred to someone to whom you
confessed, revealing the hidden intimacies of your life. With the anam
cara you could share your innermost self, your mind and your heart. This friendship was an act of recognition and
belonging. When you had an anam cara, your friendship cut across
all convention, morality, and category.
You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the "friend of
your soul." The Celtic understanding
did not set limitations of space or time on the soul. There is no cage for the soul. The soul is a divine light that flows into
you and into your Other. This art of
belonging awakened and fostered a deep and special companionship. In his Conferences,
John Cassian says this bond between friends is indissoluble: "This, I say, is what is broken by no
chances, what no interval of time or space can sever or destroy, and what even
death itself cannot part."
In everyone's life, there is great need for an anam cara, a soul friend. In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul. This recognition is described in a beautiful line from Pablo Neruda: "You are like nobody since I love you." This art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person. Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person's individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin; it can decipher identity and destiny."
"A friend is different from an acquaintance. Friendship is a deeper and more sacred connection. Shakespeare has a beautiful phrase for this: "The friends thou hast and their attention tried, grapple them to your soul with hoops of steel." So a friend is incredibly precious. A friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you."
"Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition. This metaphor of friendship can be grounded in the clay nature of the human body. When you find the friend you love, an act of ancient recognition brings you together. It is as if millions of years before the silence of nature broke, your friend's clay and your clay lay side by side. Then in the turning of the seasons, your one clay divided and separated. You began to rise as distinct clay forms, each housing a different individuality and destiny. Without even knowing it, your secret memory mourned your loss of each other. While your clay selves wandered for thousands of years through the universe, your longing for each other never faded. This metaphor helps to explain how in the moment of friendship two souls suddenly recognize each other. It could be a meeting on the street, or at a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is the flash of recognition and the embers of kinship glow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing. Love opens the door of ancient recognition. You enter. You come home to each other at last. As Euripedes said, "Two friends, one soul."
In the classical tradition, this is wonderfully expressed in the Symposium, Plato's magical dialogue on the nature of love. Plato adverts to the myth that humans in the beginning were not single individuals. Each person was two selves in one. Then they became separated; consequently, you spend your life looking for your other half. When you find and discover each other, it is through this act of profound recognition. In friendship, an ancient circle closes. That which is ancient between you will mind you, shelter you, and hold you together. When two people fall in love, each comes in out of the loneliness of exile, home to the one house of belonging....each recognizes the other as the one in whom their heart could be at home."
"One of the deepest longings of the human soul is the longing to be seen. In an ancient myth Narcissus looks into the pool, sees his own face, and becomes obsessed with it. Unfortunately, there is no mirror in the world where you can catch a glimpse of your soul. You cannot even see your own body completely. If you look behind you, the front of your body is out of view. You can never be fully visually present to your self. The one you love, your anam cara, your soul friend, is the truest mirror to reflect your soul. 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."
Love,
Catherine xoxo
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ReplyDeletelove,
Catherine