Anam Cara - by Tony Cuckson

On Soul Friendship

To be an Anam Cara – 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. To share this is to be an Anam cara. The focus of your life situation must be 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 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: “I am the wave on the ocean, I am the wind that blows across the sea ...". Amergin knows that he is in everything. It is a poem about the transcendence of the illusion of separateness.

An Anam Cara reminds you of what is important. They will invite you into this unity and knowing, constantly inviting 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 living a wonder filled life, they bring you closer to this silence, closer to the timeless now. They are so in love with life – beyond the life of ‘little me’ – that to be around them you feel more alive. They know that the greatest gift they can give is to be who they are.

They take you on a journey beyond the illusion that either one of you is separate. If they are lovers they take each other into places of transcendence beyond the body and into the experience that 'We are All One', which is Love. This journey into Self, this journey into the Return to Love is the real quest. You return home to the place you never left which is oneness.

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 nothingness out of which all form arises and which is never born or never dies.

When you find your Anam Cara 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.

An Anam Cara loves your essence and guides you to the presence you are. They see you beyond your mask, the mask of persona. They see beyond the fear. They see the absence of love. This is love you withdraw from others and yourself. This is the love that is your real power. This does not mean they have to like YOU. You are the one that gets in the way of soul. Your soul is the light of love and it needs light. It needs the lightness of being. An Anam Cara will remind you simply “to be.”

A Soul Friend is only a mirror. When you are with a Soul Friend you are assisted in recognizing your true self. Too 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.

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 you will be who you truly are: Nothing special but special beyond imagination.

Know that about yourself and the dance really does begin. The real lover and you come home to the place you never left.