The Blessing of Soul Friendship
by Tony Cuckson 30.08.2006, changed 31.08.2006

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To meet with your Soul Friend you have to be a Soul Friend. This means that the focus of your life situation is the focus of deep friendship with your Self. This is not the self that we call the ‘little me.’ This is the Self that is referred to as ‘I am’ in Christianity and one’s Buddha nature in Buddhism. In Celtic Spirituality the poet Amergin speaks about this universal connection when he recites what is considered the first poem in Ireland when he says

“I am the wave on the ocean,
I am the wind that blows across the sea…………….

Amergin knows that he is in everything. This is a poem about the transcendence of the illusion of separateness. Here in this poem Amergin affirms that he is and never has been separate from Sacred Unity, God, the Beloved or whatever name you care to use.

Strange to say but an Anam cara is selfish. They know (which is not the same as belief) that the greatest gift they can give is to be who they are. This is to recognize that they and the oneness of all creation are one and the same. This recognition is in this present ever-becoming moment that never began and never ends.

This is a state referred to in Irish mythology as Tir Na Nog – the land of the forever young which is the experience of the eternal in the here and now. This is the experience of being a child of the Goddess Danu – one of the Tuatha de Danaan. Danu represents the eternal experience of un conditionality that is Love only it is not the love associated with ‘little me’

A Soul Friend is only a mirror. When you are with a Soul Friend you are assisted in recognizing your true self. To often we think that they are the source of our delight when in fact they are only the mirrors of the delight that we have allowed to arise within us. They assist this arising by being the delight – the light that they are.

You have met with an Anam cara, who is never ‘your Anam cara’ when your heart is expanded and you enter the knowing that you and they or any one of us is never separate from all that is. An Anam cara will focus you on transcending the core illusion that causes all suffering. This is the illusion of separateness we call ego. They will remind you of the threshold places of beauty beyond the false sense of self. In Irish mythology such places of threshold are called thin places. One such place is called ‘Beyond the Ninth Wave.’

A Soul Friend does not so much give advice as they ask questions.

This journey into Self, this journey into the Return to Love is the real quest. It is the real ‘Quest I On.’ You return home to the place you never left which is oneness, Sacred Unity, God, the Beloved or Danu to name a few signposts that are only that.

This is a journey of subtraction rather than addition. It is a journey of attention, commitment, and practice and ultimately surrender. These are concurrent practices that go deep and deeper into the beauty of no thing ness, which is the no thing ness out of which all form arises and which is never born or never dies.

A Soul Friend focuses you primarily in the world of the timeless, the world beyond form, the inner world. They pull you back from your distraction with the world of form and the illusion of time. They invite you into the world of the forever young into the only time there is. This is the present moment. In this present moment all is arising from the world of the formless into the myriad forms that come and go. All things pass except that which you are. An Anam cara reminds you that this experience of knowing who you are is the truth that will set you free.

Your Soul Friend is your Self. This is your inner teacher and your inner knowing. You may have a friend out in the world of time and form but they will go as all forms within time arise and dissolve. The real friendship of soul is eternal and is inner. To be a Soul Friend is to be in love with who you are. When you know who you are beyond this illusion of a separate sense of self Love happens. Out of this Love action arises in the form of compassion. You do not do compassion. You are compassion and you are friendship because you realize (you have real eyes) that you are not separate from all there is.

To share this real-eyes-ation is to be an Anam cara.

Before this realization that you are not separate from Love you will look for your Anam cara on the outside. When you find this person you will project the beauty that you are unto them. Yet lurking within this projection is always the shadow self. Lurking within the outward focus on the other is the avoidance of those parts of our self that we do not love. We look for unity with the other but our real happiness is within the knowing of Sacred Unity that is never other and is forever.

Your Soul Friend will invite you into this unity and knowing. They will constantly invite you to stop judging yourself in anyway and simply be engaged with silent witnessing of your thoughts and feelings as they arise and fall. They invite you into the silence of the Self that is the real secret of a living a wonderful and wonder filled life.

Does your Anam cara, the one on the outside, the one who is in form, bring you closer to this silence, closer to the timeless now and closer to the knowing that your are forever? Do they themselves know that they are forever? Are they so in love with life beyond the life of ‘little me’ that to be around them you feel more alive and sense that they know something you do not?

Do you and they journey into thin places which is to journey beyond the illusion that either one of you is separate. If you are lovers do you take each other into places of transcendence beyond the body and into the experience that We are All One, which is Love?

Never rely totally on the outside form for your Soul Friendship. This too will pass. Be Soul Friendship. Be who you are. Then you will know that Soul and Friendship are not other than who you are. You will drop the illusion that it is something that is separate from you. Then the dance really does begin. The real lover and you come home to the place you never left.

In Soul Friendship there is no duality. There is only all that is and you are not separate from this. You will find your Anam cara out in the world of form when you are the knowing of the Anam cara experience beyond form. Never rely totally on the outer. They are or it is transient. Focus on the inner. Go deeply into the knowing that you are the All One, the non-separate one, and the birthless/deathless one.

Then you might go out into the world of form and be a light unto others as a Friend of the One Soul. Only when you do there will be no one doing Soul Friendship. There will only be the movement of Love in Action. You will be the movement of compassion in the world of form. This is Anam cara. This is delight. This is Love doing you as a surrendered one.

Then you will be who you truly are. Nothing special but special beyond imagination. You will know that the Blessing is already here and you are it.

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Blessings For You e-zine (Vol. 3, Issue 25), © 2006 Tony Cuckson, IrishBlessingsMatter.Com. It is republished here with his permission.]