Honest Friends
May. 19th, 2011 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cedar_groveFrom The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
Honest friends are doorways to our souls, and loving friends are the grasses that soften the world.
I have few people in my life that I would call 'honest' friends. These are people that I have been close to even when we haven't seen each other for a long long time. We can bump into each other, speak to each other on the phone and it's like we haven't been apart at all.
These are people with whom I could, if I were a brave soul, share all that is going on in my life, and they would listen with an open heart, and I know they wouldn't judge me.
Being not the brave soul, there is only really one of my honest friends that I open up with in that respect. Yes I know it's a cliche that the one you love is your truest friend, your best friend. But it also happens to be true in this case. Mir, I love you.
I know they won't let me get away with bullshit either, which is sometimes a source of endless frustration. The child inside that is having a tantrum, for instance, and just wants to be humoured - and we all have one don't we, whether or not we're honest enough to acknowledge them or not - hates when my honest and true friends call me on it. It might be what I need at the time, but it's not what I want.
At times it feels that they're being hypercritical, but I know that's not true and is just a reflection of that inner child rising up in petulant protest against not being coddled. Times like that I have to take a breath, take a step back and look and feel with adult eyes and an adult heart... and times like that I hope that I am able to be the same kind of honest friend to others as they are to me.
Nothing among human things
has such power to keep our gaze
fixed ever more intensely upon God
than friendship.
-Simone Weil
Honest friends are doorways to our souls, and loving friends are the grasses that soften the world.
I have few people in my life that I would call 'honest' friends. These are people that I have been close to even when we haven't seen each other for a long long time. We can bump into each other, speak to each other on the phone and it's like we haven't been apart at all.
These are people with whom I could, if I were a brave soul, share all that is going on in my life, and they would listen with an open heart, and I know they wouldn't judge me.
Being not the brave soul, there is only really one of my honest friends that I open up with in that respect. Yes I know it's a cliche that the one you love is your truest friend, your best friend. But it also happens to be true in this case. Mir, I love you.
I know they won't let me get away with bullshit either, which is sometimes a source of endless frustration. The child inside that is having a tantrum, for instance, and just wants to be humoured - and we all have one don't we, whether or not we're honest enough to acknowledge them or not - hates when my honest and true friends call me on it. It might be what I need at the time, but it's not what I want.
At times it feels that they're being hypercritical, but I know that's not true and is just a reflection of that inner child rising up in petulant protest against not being coddled. Times like that I have to take a breath, take a step back and look and feel with adult eyes and an adult heart... and times like that I hope that I am able to be the same kind of honest friend to others as they are to me.
