Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
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Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. A world lives within you.
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Everyone is an artist. Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.
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intimacy is the secret law of life and universe.
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The human journey is a continuous act of transfiguration.
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You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the friend of your soul.
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Since the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process, love is the continuous birth of creativity within and between us.
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All creativity awakens at this primal threshold where light and darkness test and bless each other.
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When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you. Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, now there is courage; where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning.
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When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow.
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Meister Eckhart says that all of human life stands under the shadow of nothingness, the umbra nihili.
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Others want to love, to give themselves, but they have no energy. They carry around in their hearts the corpses of past relationships and are addicted to hurt as confirmation of identity.
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In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam ċara. It originally referred to someone to whom you confessed, revealing the hidden intimacies of your life. With the anam ċara you could share your inner-most self, your mind and your heart. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging.
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Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person’s individuality and soul.
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Ruins are not empty. They are sacred places full of presence.
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The life and passion of a person leave an imprint on the ether of a place.
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Love does not remain within the heart, it flows out to build secret tabernacles in a landscape.
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When you find the person you love, an act of ancient recognition brings you together. It is as if millions of years before the silence of nature broke, your lover’s clay and your clay lay side by side.
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Love opens the door of ancient recognition. You enter. You come home to each other at last.
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The Buddhist tradition has a lovely concept of friendship, the notion of the Kalyana-mitra, the “noble friend.”
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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.
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You can never love another person unless you are equally involved in the beautiful but difficult spiritual work of learning to love yourself.
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There is nothing as lonely in the world as
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that which has hardened or grown cold. Bitterness and coldness are the ultimate defeat.
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Kahlil Gibran says, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness. Let the winds of the heavens dance between you.”
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wounded gifts;
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In the human face, the anonymity of the universe becomes intimate.
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In the human mind, the universe first becomes resonant with itself.
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to gaze into the face of another is to gaze into the depth and entirety of his life.
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The human person is a threshold where many infinities meet. There is the infinity of space that reaches out into the depths of the cosmos and the infinity of time reaching back over billions of years. There is the infinity of the microcosm: one little speck on the top of your thumb contains a whole inner cosmos, but it is so tiny that it is not visible to the human eye. The infinity in the microscopic is as dazzling as that of the cosmos. However, the infinity that haunts everyone and which no one can finally quell is the infinity of one’s own interiority.
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we need to practice a new art of attention to the inner rhythm of our days and lives.
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Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself.
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The senses are generous pathways that can bring you home.
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Your senses are the guides to take you deep into the inner world of your heart.
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Human skin is porous; the world flows through you. Your senses are large pores that let the world in. By being attuned to the wisdom of your senses, you will never become an exile in your own life, an outsider lost in an external spiritual place that your will and intellect have constructed.
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it is human longing that makes us holy. The most beautiful thing about us is our longing; this longing is spiritual and has great depth and wisdom.
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the eye is also the mother of intimacy, bringing everything close to us. When you really gaze at something, you bring it inside you. One could write a beautiful spirituality on the holiness of the gaze.
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destiny. If we could look at the world in a loving way, then the world would rise up before us full of invitation, possibility, and depth.
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To recognize how you see things can bring you self-knowledge and enable you to glimpse the wonderful treasures your life secretly holds.
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Poetry is the place where language in its silence is most beautifully articulated. Poetry is the language of silence.
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the slim word shapes are couched in the empty whiteness of the page.
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The page is a place of silence where the contour of the word is edged and the expression is heightened in an intimate way.
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In poetry your language will find cleansing illumination and sensuous renewal.
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At the deepest level, breath is sister of spirit.
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One of the most ancient words for spirit is the Hebrew word Ruah; this is also the word for air or wind. Ruah also denotes pathos, passion, and emotion—a state of the soul.
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True listening brings us in touch even with that which is unsaid and unsayable.
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Sometimes the most important thresholds of mystery are places of silence. To be genuinely spiritual is to have great respect for the possibilities and presence of silence.
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When you listen with your soul, you come into rhythm and unity with the ...
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Poets are people who become utterly dedicated to the threshold where silence and language meet.
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It takes a long time to sift through the more superficial voices of your own gift in order to enter into the deep signature and tonality of your Otherness.
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When you speak from that deep, inner voice, you are really speaking from the unique tabernacle of your own presence.
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