BE-FRIENDING THE SOUL
I'm always grateful when I come across authors who
speak with a mystical voice. Their poetic nature speaks to me at my
deepest levels and feeds a stream within me that is seldom accessed
by more ordinary means. I found such a voice in John O'Donohue's generous
book, Anam Cara. I say "generous" because there are jewels
on nearly every page. At times his thoughts all but took my breath
away, and I heard myself whispering, "Ah yes..."
That's what truth does, you know. It echoes inside
you, its silent reverberation triggering a moment of profound recognition.
It isn't that we don't know the truth. It's simply that we've forgotten.
That's the beauty of books such as this, because they remind us of
what we already know at our deepest level.
O'Donohue draws heavily from the Celtic tradition,
so rich in its closeness to Nature, its reverence for the unseen.
The particular window of perception that underlies this inspiring
work is the subject of soul mates, and while part of the book addresses
what one might expect under such a title, it was his unexpected definition
that got my attention.
According to O'Donohue, your closest and most intimate
soul mate is yourself! I'd not thought of it in quite that way, but
now, having "remembered" it be so, I found the idea fascinating,
particularly when he began talking about what we tend to think of
as the "dark" side of our nature. He's talking, of course,
about the side we tend to ignore, to try to make go away - the part
of us we want to deny, to correct, to "fix," if that were
possible.
In the author's own subtle way, he questions why
we can't find it within ourselves to embrace both the dark and the
light sides of our nature. He suggests that a healthy dose of patience
toward our "lesser side" might indeed prove it not to be
a fault at all, but simply the part of us "where growth is imminent."
I like that concept. It gives a positive character to what we tend
to think of as negative.
According to O'Donohue, we need to change how we
feel about "negatives." He believes "difficulty is
one of the greatest friends of the soul." He posits that our
lives would be immeasurably enriched "if we could but offer the
same hospitality to the negative as we bring to the joyful and pleasurable."
What an amazing thought! According to my dictionary,
to be hospitable is to welcome, to greet warmly, to embrace, to accept
into your domain. And we should feel hospitably toward the difficulties
that confront us? Indeed! I found myself saying, "and would you
be so kind as to tell us why?" Fortunately, O'Donohue does just
that. He reminds us ever so gently that when we try to ignore or avoid
something, we encourage it to recur! In other words, the very act
of ignoring something fixes your attention on it, and, of course,
we all know that what you put your attention on never goes away. The
paradox is strange, but true. The harder we try to avoid something,
the more our attention locks in on it, so the more we have of it.
The only way we'll ever really break the cycle is to accept whatever
it is as it is. Then we can begin to see how it has contributed to
who we are at this moment.
So how do you befriend something you'd like to get
rid of? O'Donohue suggests that "just because something may be
negative does not mean it is destructive." He says if we can
let go of our desperate struggle against whatever we think of as our
"darker side," if we can just accept it as it is, the vice-grip
of our attention will relax and release its hold on the problem. The
key, of course, is acceptance.
Why is it so hard to accept the way things are?
Why do we try to make things into what they aren't? It's a futile
effort because, as he so clearly reminds us, things will always be
what they are. At that particular moment, they can't be anything else!
O'Donohue says our dark side does have one significant
attribute, and that is its intrinsic honesty. The negative does not
lie. Pain is utterly honest, regardless of where we feel it, or what
is causing it. However, if we are to be free from our pain, we must
first be present to it. Pain simply asks for attention. Something
needs addressing, and until we give it the attention it is asking
for, the problem has no other way to speak to us.
This is why pain can be such a blessing. Pain is
our system's way of asking for help. We are being given the opportunity
to find out what is needed so we can do something about it. When you
stop and think about it, that is such a gift! What if the problem
just came to stay, like an uninvited guest, with no chance of it ever
going away? Fortunately, life isn't like that. Almost always there
is something we can do, and that something has to do with "inner
work."
"Inner work" means facing our inner issues.
It means beginning the long and sometimes difficult work of what O'Donohue
calls "self retrieval," of finding out what is really going
on inside us. As we do, we must remember to practice compassion toward
the one who needs it most - ourself! Acceptance is the beginning of
compassion, of being present to yourself, of being a friend to yourself.
That means no looking back. No looking ahead. Just being with yourself
as you are right now.
You see, if we are ever to make peace with ourself,
we have to accept ourself, foibles and all. O'Donohue put it so well.
"When you decide to practice inner hospitality, the self-torment
ceases." As all great moments do, that can only happen in the
silence.
O'Donohue reminds us that Nature is almost always
silent. The mountains and seas, the flowers and trees and stars -
they are all sentient beings, but without voice. Yes, and without
eyes, too, and yet they know. Theirs is a solitude of which we seldom
are aware.
O'Donohue speaks eloquently about how healing it
is to enter into Nature's solitude. He talks about the restorative,
balancing rhythm of the ocean, how just being there helps unravel
all the tangles and snares inside us. As our own inner rhythm entrains
with that mighty force, healing reaches in to the deepest levels of
our soul, and all the discordant places inside us begin to dissolve
and fade away.
O'Donohue says the ocean never really sees itself.
I'd never thought of it in quite that way, but it's true. How sad.
Such a beautiful, magnificent being, and yet it has no mirror! The
ocean is not alone in that regard. Even light, which makes it possible
for everything to be seen, cannot see itself. "Light," he
tells us, "is blind." I have to admit my heart filled with
compassion for these great, unseeing beings when I read that extraordinary
thought.
Our solitude is so different from the solitude of
Nature. Even though Nature does not really see itself, we have a mirror,
and that mirror is our mind. Everything we entertain - both inwardly
and outwardly - is reflected in our mind. That is why solitude can
be so healing. In solitude, we enter into companionship with our own
inviolable space. We enter into fellowship with our soul. Here, in
this hallowed place, is the stuff of eternity.
The soul is a place of uncharted and unmeasured
depth. It is where we carry our world around within us. We alone have
the keys to this sacred domain, and we alone can enter it. In its
deeps we touch upon the vision that gave our life its purpose. The
responsibility for our soul's care and keeping belongs to us alone.
It is up to us to nurture the harmony and balance that are native
to this sacred space.
There is so much potential residing within each
one of us. Too often we allow that potential to go untouched and untapped.
We allow our fears and preoccupations to create boundaries that limit
what we expect from life, but it does not have to be that way. When
we are willing to face our fears, we begin moving toward what O'Donohue
calls the "fully inhabited life" that frees us to live the
life we love. When we do that, our self-imposed boundaries just melt
away, revealing our true nature in all its eternal splendor.
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~Donna Miesbach~