Anam Cara

mabar

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
Anam Cara by John O'Donohue
Anam Cara means “spiritual/soul friend”.

It is a journey to Celtic wisdom. I read this book years ago, I am rereading it again, I am not good at words ... but to me, has been an inspiration into understanding life, to understand Work also, I remember reading the chapter of being old, writing is in such beautiful way that I wanted to be old already (¡??¡) Quite a lovely book.

Now that I am rereading it, sometimes I think of FOTCM being a big anam cara group :D
 
mabar said:
Anam Cara by John O'Donohue
Anam Cara means “spiritual/soul friend”.

It is a journey to Celtic wisdom. I read this book years ago, I am rereading it again, I am not good at words ... but to me, has been an inspiration into understanding life, to understand Work also, I remember reading the chapter of being old, writing is in such beautiful way that I wanted to be old already (¡??¡) Quite a lovely book.

Now that I am rereading it, sometimes I think of FOTCM being a big anam cara group :D

Thanks for the memory mabar. I like the concept of 'FotCM being a big anam cara group'.
 
I am translating some quotes (I have the book in spanish) although I had been busy after work, I think I will be able to bring some in a few days, in the mean time, this link have good ones:

_http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6224.John_O_Donohue
 
I've read this book myself a few years back, an elder Irish friend suggested it to me. I remember it was uplifting and inspiring. O'Donohue writes about life, friendship, growing, death, the cycle(s) and stages of life and nature, and the need of the human heart to be reborn again and again, very poetically, through his understanding of the Celtic tradition:

The Celtic mind was neither discursive nor systematic. Yet in their lyrical speculation, the Celts brought the sublime unity of life and experience to expression. The Celtic mind was not burdened by dualism. It did not separate what belongs together. The Celtic imagination articulated the inner friendship which embraces nature, divinity, underworld and human world as one. The dualism which separates the visible from the invisible, time from eternity, the human from the divine, was totally alien to them. Their sense of ontological friendship yielded a world of experience imbued with a rich texture of otherness, ambivalence, symbolism and imagination. For our sore and tormented separation, the possibility of this imaginative and unifying friendship is the Celtic gift.

mabar said:
Now that I am rereading it, sometimes I think of FOTCM being a big anam cara group :D

I agree with you. He writes in the book:

In Celtic tradition the anam cara [soul friend] was not merely a metaphor or an ideal. It was a soul bond which existed as a recognized and admired social construct. It altered the meaning of identity and perception. When your affection is kindled, the world of your intellect takes on a new tenderness and compassion. The anam cara brings epistemological integration and healing. You look and see and understand differently. Initially this can be disruptive and awkward, but it gradually refines your sensibility and transforms your way of being in the world.
 
Here are some quotes. My apologies, I had not been able to post them earlier. Since I have the book in Spanish, I'm sorry from my lack of translating skills into English –somehow being translated (to me), it does lose some of it's nice writing.

(Page number are from the book in spanish, but I guess around the number you will find it in the english version.)

“When you learn to love and allow yourself to be loved, you return to the home of your own spirit. You are sheltered and save. You reach the wholeness at the home of your yearnings and your roots. This growth and returning home is the unexpected benefit for the deed to love someone else. The first step is to pay attention to the other, a generous act by neglecting the own self. Paradoxically, this is the condition that allows us to grow” (p. 28)

“If you are generous to give, but skinflint to receive, you lost the equilibrium of your soul.” (p. 29)

“ The Celtic tradition posses a beautiful conception of love and friendship. One of the enthralling ideas is the love of the soul, that in ancient Gaelic is anam cara. “Anam” means “soul” in gaelic and “cara” is “friendship”. So that “anam cara” in celtic world is the “spiritual friend”. In early celtic church it was called anam cara to a teacher, companion or spiritual guide. At first it was a confessor, to whom one reveals the most intimate and hidden of their life. To an anam cara one can reveal the inner self, the mind and the heart. This friendship was an act of acknowledgment and ingrain. When one had an anam cara, that friendship transcended the conventions, the moral and the categories. One was united as an ancient and eternal form with the spiritual friend. This celtic conception did not imposed to the soul restrictions neither in space nor time. The soul does not know of jails. It is a divine light that penetrates in yourself and in your other. This nexus awaken and fomented profound and special camaraderie.
[…]
In life everyone needs to have an anam cara, an spiritual friend. In this love you are comprehended by how you are, without masks and unpretentious. Love allows comprehension to be born, and this is an invaluable treasure. There, where you are comprehended, is your home.” (p. 34)

“The soul is the most intimate of a person. You know it before you know your body. When the soul and body are one, you penetrate in the world of the other. If one could reciprocate in a tender and reverent manner to the deepness and beautiful of this encounter, one would overextend up to the unutterable the possibilities of joy and ecstasy from the act of love. This would liberate upon both the interior spring of the profound love. Would been outwardly reunited with the third force of light, the ancient circle, the primer that unite the two souls.” (p. 47)

“The body is the mirror where expresses the secret world of the soul. Is the sacred threshold that needs to be respected, to be looked after and to be comprehended in its spiritual dimension.” (p. 62)

“The body also is veracious. You know your own life rarely lies. Your mind could deceive you and raise barriers between you and your nature; but your body does not lie. If you hear, it would tell you how your life is, if you live it from your soul or from your negativism.” (p. 62)

“The longing is the most beautiful that is within us; it is spiritual, possess deepness and wisdom. If you focus it to a remote divinity, you unjustifiably submit to tension. So, it happened that the longing search for the divine, but the immoderation of tension oblige it to fall back in form of cynicism, emptiness o negativism. That way a beautiful life can be destroy. But is not necessarily submit it to any tension, if we believe that the body is in the soul and it is in a sacred place, the presence of the divine is here, close to us.” (p.71)

“In regard to the eye that loves, everything is real. This art of love is not romantic neither naïve. This love is the main criterion of truth, celebration and reality. According to Kathleen Raine, a Scottish poetess, what you don't see with light of love, you don't see it at all. Love is light in which we see the light, that one in which we see each thing in its legitimate origin, nature and destiny. If we could contemplate the world with love, this would present itself to us plethoric of incitements, possibilities, deepness.

The eye that loves can seduce the pain and violence unto the transfiguration and renovation. It shines because is autonomous and free. It contemplates everything with tenderness. It does not relinquish by power aspirations, seduction, position nor complicity. It is a creative and subversive vision. It rises above the pathetic arithmetic of guilt and judgment and, learn the experience to the plane of its origin, structure and destiny. The eye that loves sees beyond the image and incites the most profound changes. Vision performs a central function in your presence and creativity. Recognize how you see things can get you to self knowledge and allows you to catch a sight of the wonderful treasures that are hidden by life.” (p. 76)

“The ear sense allows us to hear the creation. One of the greatest thresholds of reality is the one that is in between sound and silence. All good sounds have silence in their proximity, before and after them. The first sound that the human being hears is the heart of the mother in the profound waters of her womb. That's why since aforetime we are in harmony with the drum as musical instrument. It sound calm us because evoke us to the time in which we beat up unison with the heart of our mother. It was a season in total communion. There was not any separation; our unity with another was complete. P. J. Curtis, the great Scottish scholar of rhythm and blues use to say that in looking out for the meaning of things, in reality we are looking for the lost chord. When humanity finds it, it will eliminate the discord of the world and the symphony of the universe will enter in harmony within itself.” (p. 81)
 
John O'Donohue is one of the best spiritual writers out there. He brings to mind Thomas Moore's books, like 'Soul Mate."
 
I finished reading this book couple a days ago and it is simply amazing, and so easy to read. I recommend reading this book to everyone, there are some timeless and universal truths contained within.

This video is not entirely related to the book, but it conveys the same message as the book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5uTRXm9hZY
 
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