"When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity
awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You
come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses.
Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner
landscape."
- Anam Cara, p. 17, by John
O’Donohue
John O’Donohue was an Irish priest, then lay philosopher,
and often-dubbed mystic. I’ve attached a
link to a lecture in which he summarized parts of his famous work “Anam Cara,”
and if for no other reason than to listen to his brogue-enhanced storytelling
magic, I believe it’s worth a bit of your time. Anam Cara translates literally to
“Soul Friend,” which I imagine most of us would further translate to
“soulmate.” O’Donohue’s thesis is that
it is our duty to awaken each other to the best person inside us:
”Real friendship and love is about helping your friend to
bring their soul to life.”
Moreover, he reckons that awakening to be a touch of God:
“When the Divine awakens within you, that is the most
profound invitation to creativity.”
When Thomas Merton speaks of the value
of a soulmate, he says:
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the
meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”
And so we meet ourselves in another, whose unique
form of encouragement wrests from within us our highest form of creativity…
that of becoming the person we are meant to be.
O’Donohue calls this the connection with the ineffable:
“Your identity is more sublime, mysterious and eternal than
the things that happened to you in your experience... the ineffable... the
mystery of yourself.”
Again we
see the practice of silence and solitude for its enigmatic nature… Going into
the quiet to bring resonance.
Keeping
away the noise to welcome in the connection.
Shedding human
concerns to make way for the divine.
I liken
this process to separating the wheat from the chaff - a sorting out – a
filtering and finding of what is meaningful in our lives. For as we get older, the road narrows and we
feel the inner urge to expel the toxic and retain, even cherish, the
sublime. Perhaps we can do all that
alone, but if O’Donohue and Merton are to be believed, that true essence of
ourselves is best left to the soulmate whose love and discernment is God’s
secret for us, and His gift to us.
Ah, and
that gift is so often overlooked.
The hardest thing I have ever done was change from what I would like to do to what I can do and accept it.
ReplyDeleteI must slow down and be patient. God’s will be done.
This is beautiful. No one can say it like the Irish. I love the topic of “soulmates”. So far I listened to part of John O’Donohue. I like when he said something about the greatest gift is being mid-wife to the birth of another’s soul. I hope to listen to more of it. It is long and I am always looking to move on. I will come back to it. I think it is best digested in small amounts.
ReplyDeleteWow, week by week these just keep getting better
ReplyDeleteReally loved this one, and agree totally with the fact that, of course, it’s always an inside job
Lots and of thoughts rolling around in my head. Thank you Alexis!
This falls in line with what I’ve been thinking all week...in the care of the people who really love me and are doing for me what I would do for them.
ReplyDeleteNow it’s up to me to learn to accept it and realize this is their opportunity to earn their wings to give back for all that’s been given to them in the past.
I know it is in my weakened state that God can get my attention because when I’m the weakest, I pray for His care.
I realize that I am at the beckoning of many other people, it’s demeaning sometimes to know that you are not in control of your own life.
However, it teaches me humility and gratitude.
Wonderfully said and helpful! Great reminder to someone who’s overthinking causes irrational emotions!! Ha ha. STOP THINKING I must remind myself.
ReplyDeleteI most definitely enjoyed this. I have to always remind myself of exactly what the post reads. I am in control of nothing other than myself. Wanting to change and make others do what I want them to do will simply create havoc.
ReplyDelete