Anam Cara: 25th Anniversary Edition

by John O'Donohue

In your thoughts, the silent universe seeks echo. An unknown world aspires towards reflection. Words are the oblique mirrors which hold your thoughts. You gaze into these word mirrors and catch glimpses of meaning, belonging and shelter. Behind their bright surfaces is the dark and the silence. Words are like the god Janus, they face outwards and inwards at once.

If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us.

Human presence is a creative and turbulent sacrament, a visible sign of invisible grace.

‘Colours are the wounds of light.’ Colours bring out the depth of secret presence at the heart of nature.

All your life, your mind lives within the darkness of your body.

The eternal makes you urgent.

Sometimes it is easy to be generous outwardly, to give and give and give and yet remain ungenerous to your self. You lose the balance of your soul if you do not learn to take care of yourself. You need to be generous to your self in order to receive the love that surrounds you.

You can suffer from a desperate hunger to be loved. You can search long years in lonely places, far outside your self.

IN A VAST UNIVERSE WHICH OFTEN seems sinister and unaware of us, we need the presence and shelter of love to transfigure our loneliness. This cosmic loneliness is the root of all inner loneliness. All of our life, everything we do, think and feel is surrounded by nothingness. Hence, we become afraid so easily. The fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart says that all of human life stands under the shadow of nothingness, the umbra nihili. Nevertheless, love is the sister of the soul. Love is the deepest language and presence of soul. In and through the warmth and creativity of love, the soul shelters us from the bleakness of that nothingness. We cannot fill up our emptiness with objects, possessions or people. We have to go deeper into that emptiness, then we will find beneath nothingness the flame of love waiting to warm us.

The Celtic tradition recognized that anam-ċara friendships were graced with affection. Friendship awakens affection. The heart learns a new art of feeling. Such friendship is neither cerebral nor abstract. In Celtic tradition the anam ċara was not merely a metaphor or 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 ċara 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. Most fundamentalism, greed, violence and oppression can be traced back to the separation of idea and affection.

One of the deepest longings of the human soul is the longing to be seen. In the ancient myth, Narcissus looks into the pool, sees his own face and becomes obsessed with it. Unfortunately, there is no mirror in the world where you can catch a glimpse of your soul. You cannot even see your own body completely. If you look behind you, the front of your body is out of view. You can never be fully visually present to yourself. The one you love, your anam ċara, your soul friend, is the truest mirror to reflect your soul. The honesty and clarity of true friendship also brings out the real contour of your spirit. It is beautiful to have such a presence in your life.

There is within each of us at the soul level, an enriching fountain of love. In other words, you do not have to go outside your self to know what love is. This is not selfishness, and it is not narcissism; they are negative obsessions with the need to be loved. Rather, this is the wellspring of love within the heart. Through

Landscape was here on its own. It is the most ancient presence in the world though it needs a human presence to acknowledge it. One could imagine that the oceans went silent and the winds became still the first time the human face appeared on earth; it is the most amazing thing in creation.

A world lies hidden behind each human face. In some faces the vulnerability of inner exposure to these depths becomes visible. When you look at some faces, you can see the turbulence of the infinite beginning to gather to the surface.

While the rest of the body is covered, the face is naked. The vulnerability of this nakedness issues a profound call for understanding and compassion. The human face is a meeting place of two unknowns: the infinity of the outer world and the unchartered, inner world to which each individual alone has access. This is the night world that lies behind the brightness of the visage. The smile on a face is a surprise or illumination. It is as if the inner night of this hidden world brightens suddenly, when the smile crosses the face.

The face, instead of being a warm presence, has hardened to become a mask.

Consequently, in the Celtic tradition, there is a fascinating interflow between soul and matter and between time and eternity.

Indeed in the human heart is somehow gathered some of the biography of the Earth itself. This huge inheritance remains largely silent within us. Now and again we sense its presence. It comes awake especially in the experience of love.

It is far more creative to work with the idea of mindfulness rather than with the idea of will. Too often people try to change their lives by using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their life into proper shape. The intellect identifies the goal of the programme, and the will accordingly forces the life into that shape. This way of approaching the sacredness of one’s own presence is externalist and violent. It brings you falsely outside your self and you can spend years lost in the wildernesses of your own mechanical, spiritual programmes. You can perish in a famine of your own making.

P. J. Curtis, the great Irish authority on rhythm and blues music, often says that the search for meaning is really the search for the lost chord. When the lost chord is discovered by humankind, the discord in the world will be healed and the symphony of the universe will come into complete harmony with itself.

Solitude is one of the most precious things in the human spirit. It is different from loneliness. When you are lonely, you become acutely conscious of your own separation. Solitude can be a homecoming to your own deepest belonging. One of the lovely things about us as individuals is the incommensurable in us. In each person there is a point of absolute non-connection with everything else and with everyone. This is fascinating and frightening. It means that we cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for the things we need from within. The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by your self. They are at home at the hearth of your soul.

The surfaces of our minds continue to be seduced by the power of images. There is a sinister eviction taking place; people’s lives are being dragged outwards all the time. The inner world of the soul is suffering a great eviction from the landlord forces of advertising and external social reality.

Silence is one of the major thresholds in the world.

Encounter and farewell which framed conversations were always blessings.

Fundamentally, there is the great silence which meets language; all words come out of silence. Words which have a depth, resonance, healing and challenge are words that are loaded with ascetic silence.

If you could trust your soul, you would receive every blessing you require. Life itself is the great sacrament through which we are wounded and healed. If we live everything, life will be faithful to us.

This notion of the day as a sacred place offers a lovely frame for the creativity which a day can bring. Your life becomes the shape of the days you inhabit. Days enter us. Sadly, in modern life, the day is often a cage.

The heart of the matter is, you should never belong fully to something that is outside yourself.