Friends

Intimate relationships are one of the most exquisite, disappointing, frustrating, supportive, revealing and illuminating opportunities for calibrating our present state, catalyzing transformation and healing, and focusing attention on the light within the darkness. I can’t know how, when or if my partner or friends will be there for me when I am in an emotional crisis, a spiritual ascendency or when I have a flat tire; whether they will see me in the way I long to be seen or hold me in the way I yearn to be held. But there is one thing I have learned I can absolutely rely upon. If I allow my intimates to matter, they will unexpectedly, creatively, often unwittingly . . . but most certainly . . . reflect everything within me to which I am blind, that is unresolved and longing to return home. This is the gift of friends; the gift of those whose hearts bond with mine; this is the silent, shared vow, the promise fulfilled by our presence in one another’s lives. Sacred. Devastating. Precious.

The relationship between my inner soul/ego experience and these external others, my friends, partners and companions, helps me to remember the relationship of this apparently finite and physical reality to the infinite and inclusive absolute. Coming to my partner and my friends with some remembrance of the spaciousness of our origins allows me to be curious and accepting; for moments I can play in and explore the human world with my fellow travelers, together and alone, alone yet together . . . in the truth of what we are is the mirror of the love that lives through us . . . we are home.