“The soul needs love as urgently as the body needs air. In the warmth of love, the soul can be itself. All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes in to 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.
The anam-ċara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance. Such friendship can remain alive even when the friends live far away from each other. Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed. When the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured. Even across the distance, two friends can stay attuned to each other and continue to sense the flow of each other’s lives. With your anam ċara you awaken the eternal. In this soul-space, there is no distance. This is beautifully illustrated during the meal in the film Babette’s Feast where an old soldier speaks to the woman he loved from youth but was not allowed to marry. He tells her that even though he hadn’t seen her since, she had been always at his side.
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. In the work of soul, our false urgency can utterly mislead us. We do not need to go out to find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us. Some of the most beautiful writing on love is in the Bible. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is absolutely beautiful. There he writes, “Love is always patient and kind; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offense, and is not resentful…. Love is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes.” Elsewhere the Bible says, “Perfect love casts out all fear.”
~ John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
No comments:
Post a Comment