On Friendship
The entire society around us has totally isolated us. In society there was never the need for a great relationship; everybody could relate to everybody and the flow was very effective and smooth and basic. Now it is not. You need three, four types of friends. One type you can go to lunch with. One kind you can go to dinner with. One kind you can visit and cry at their shoulder. One who you can go to and make them miserable. One who comes and makes you miserable. Lot of things; lots of types of relationships. Yet, you are lonely, you are isolated and you have lost communication and confidence. This has not happened to an individual. This has happened to the whole human race. --Yogi Bhajan
Labels: friendship
Golden Sea
Here in Northern New Mexico we don't have the ocean, but we have miles and miles of sand--arroyos, dunes, great mountains of clay and sand formed by wind and rain. Last night I was on my usual walking route behind the ashram and it had been so transformed by the spring rains that I hardly recognized. Over a field of wild grass the setting sun caught the seed fronds so that it became a shimmering wave of light. So beautiful. And in that breathtaking moment I realized that everything changes. This landscape so fragile, yet so rugged has survived so many hundreds of years and will continue to transform again and again and again.
So, too, we spiritual pilgrims to this land continue to survive and transform only to be refreshed by spring rains--new insights, new vistas of the Self, and new understandings of our patterns. Things become clear. But it's generally the result of a great storm. Sometimes painful, often confusing, and generally uncomfortable.
There have been many times in my past where friendships have ended. Usually I was 'fired' for reasons various and sundry but generally because of judgement or misunderstanding on the part of them or myself. Because of this, I've learned that my opinions aren't what being a friend is about--even though I have plenty of them. Most of the time, friends just want someone to listen to them--not save them, not judge them, not teach them, not mother them. Or any of the other 'helpful' things people call friendship.
As time has passed, I've become more self-aware and more grounded in my own truth. And with that, I've recognized that friendships are fragile just like the environment here and sometimes they come and sometimes they go. Sometimes breaches can be healed and sometimes they cannot. Sometimes it simply changes. For the first time in my life, I've had to make choices about who I will continue to call a friend and who I'm willing to let go. It's been painful to be on this side of the equation. Generally, time takes care of these breaches. But sometimes the impact on the land, this fragile ground of the human psyche, is too great.
This is a reflection and also a prayer that the spring rains will continue to come and what is now a scar on my consciousness will heal into a golden sea, a rich new landscape, that covers the breach, that dry desert that warps the face of the land--the face of our friendship.
Labels: friendship
