Relating to Friends and Spiritual Allies

An offer of friendship. Sometimes we overlook the significance of these offers. We are too busy or distracted by other things and don’t notice a helpful email from someone, a gesture or small favor. Often we are so preoccupied with trying to attract certain types of people that we don’t notice other types reaching out. You don’t have to make friends with everyone who offers friendship, but in this lonely world of ours, it is wise to appreciate friendly gestures and offers.

Be wary of those who approach with hollow intentions. Choose your companions with infinite care. Know the difference between an acquaintance and a friend or spiritual ally. Are you hanging out with people with whom you would trust your life? Life is too short to spend in hollow company when it could be lived with true friends, soulmates, spiritual allies, or creative solitude. Some people approach us with hollow intentions; they seek us for pleasure, manipulation, money, power or just out of impulsive, neurotic chaos. We must be discriminating and set strong boundaries between those who approach with unworthy intentions and ourselves. T.S. Elliot wrote a haunting poem entitled “The Hollow Men.” Here are a couple of excerpts: We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless… The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley You are not the first to notice that there are amazing numbers of hollow people. Lacking a strong individual core, hollow folk are inevitably determined by outside conditioning. Hollow folk in the Fifties lived [...]

The Babylon Matrix is set up to undervalue one of the greatest treasures you could possibly give or receive — compassionate, healing empathy. Empathy is a treasure that often enriches the giver even more than the one who receives it. The opposite of empathy is an exclusive focus on “internal considering”: — what you are feeling, what other people have done to you, how everything feels weighed by the scales of your agenda. Empathy is “external considering,” it considers what is going on in others; how others feel; how our actions (such as spoken words) may affect them. One way out of inner neurotic torment (which is always based on internal considering) is to focus on external considering. On the other hand, the ability to feel empathy for others is built on your ability to have empathy for yourself. So if that is what is being neglected, this may be a propitious time for some internal considering and to empathically focus on your inner child, shadow or other aspects of yourself that need more compassionate attention. This card has a few layers of meaning and it is for you to discern which layers are most relevant to your present life [...]

Spirit guide at your service. Don’t forget that there are good and evil spirits. There are unseen forces at work — some of them hinder us, manipulate us toward darker feelings and appetites so that we produce the sort of energy they can harvest. Other spirits watch over us, respecting our free will, embracing us with love if we allow them. You are never alone, not in your body, not on this planet, and not in the spirit realm where your soul and psyche live. Our bodies are a colony of 50 trillion cells working together to allow us a corporeal existence on a planet where there are another six billion of us and myriad other living things. But we are even less alone in the spirit world where location is irrealized, and sympathetic vibration transcends boundaries of space and time. Invisible allies in the spirit world and in the microbiological realm work to keep you alive. As above, so below. In the unseen realm there are watchers and helpers always available. Sometimes we need to tune into their subtle messages, other times to call out for their help, other times merely to allow their ministrations to occur while we [...]

Don’t forget that there are good and evil spirits. There are unseen forces at work — some of them hinder us, manipulate us toward darker feelings and appetites so that we produce the sort of energy they can harvest. Other spirits watch over us, respecting our free will, embracing us with love if we allow them. You are never alone, not in your body, not on this planet, and not in the spirit realm where your soul and psyche live. Our bodies are a colony of 50 trillion cells working together to allow us a corporeal existence on a planet where there are another six billion of us and myriad other living things. But we are even less alone in the spirit world where location is irrealized, and sympathetic vibration transcends boundaries of space and time. Invisible allies in the spirit world and in the microbiological realm work to keep you alive. As above, so below. In the unseen realm there are watchers and helpers always available. Sometimes we need to tune into their subtle messages, other times to call out for their help, other times merely to allow their ministrations to occur while we are scarcely aware of their [...]

M. Scott Peck has an interesting definition of love: “I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Someone once said that, “Love is cool, it is not hot.” It is crucial to distinguish love from passion, infatuation, codependence and sentimentality. It is also said that love is a verb, not a noun. What you love is what you spend time on. Sometime in the Nineties an eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, gave a talk I attended in Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman. “Now that you are an elder,” asked the young woman, “what can you tell me as a young woman about love?” The elder woman replied, “When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is better to simply be love.” A few love quotes: “In real love you want the other person’s good. In romantic love you want the other person.” — Margaret Anderson “You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing [...]

This is a propitious time for conscious discourse with a spiritual ally. The ally could be a person, an oracle, an entity or your higher self. Most conversation is chatter, small talk, there to keep lines of social connection open with the least substance and thinking possible. If you have a commitment towards consciousness, this type of communication will be inadequate and irritating after a certain point. It is crucial to have spiritual allies with whom challenging, thoughtful discourse is possible. The Socratic dialogue must be guided by intuition as well as thought or it quickly descends into Philosophy 101 amateur hour. Something needs to be at stake in such conversation, and there needs to be explicit and/or implicit permission to give challenging feedback. Such Socratic dialogue does not need to be interpersonal. If you have the capacity for it, the dialogue can be intrapsychic, your mind can dialogue with your higher intuition and these psychic functions can be personified in the imaginal space within. Patanjali, in his yoga aphorisms (which are at least two thousand years old), says “Always, everywhere be talking to people about God.” If you take that literally you would become a very tiresome person indeed. [...]

What treasure can life offer greater than beautiful friendship? If you have such treasure don’t neglect it or take it for granted, but appreciate the blessing, and give it the time and life energy to keep it alive. In the final scene of the heart-centered movie Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, an old woman is reflecting back on a long and fulfilled life and sharing her wisdom with a middle-aged woman. “You reminded me about what the most important thing in life is. You know what I think it is?” “No, ma’am.” “Friends, best friends.” Consider Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30: “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste: Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight: Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid [...]

Giving audience to others from a kingly stance. One of the greatest services you can do for others is to give them a fair hearing from a calm, clear, compassionate place, meeting them neither more nor less than half way. The ability to do this interpersonally rests on your capacity to do this intra-psychically. Empower a stable, central witness personality that gives kingly audience to the various sub-personalities and voices within. Do not allow yourself to be persuaded by inner or outer voices to do anything that compromises your inner dignity, and do not compromise the dignity of others. If inner or outer personalities approach with undignified, unworthy intentions, then lovingly withdraw your energy from them while they are in the state of eclipse.

Focusing on the small side of relationship. It is all too easy for our attention to become obsessed with some overblown soap opera. Handle your relationships in a way you will remember well on your deathbed. If you are emotionally entangled, then ask yourself the question: “When have I felt this before?” If you are honest with yourself you will almost certainly recall having the same sort of feelings in previous circumstances. Instead of attributing the feelings to the particular, current situation recognize that outside events are merely triggers for classic internal patterns of emotional reactivity, which ar inevitably stirred up by something. How much will the present difficulty matter in 100 years?