Soulful Friendships

I woke up this morning with two things really present, and I will be honest in admitting that sitting her, now, is the manifestation of avoidance of the second, which is the unabashed dread of spending the day mucking through the rest of my belongings in the garage in an attempt to make space to park in it again....Goodwill will be forever grateful, and profit, from my downsizing. So, I lull myself into an agreement to get out there AFTER a hot cup of tea and some time spent with words.

So, more to the enjoyable point......I am SO THANKFUL to be blessed with such intimate friendships. Such amazing souls in my life who truly care for and about me. Who know how to truly show up with an open heart and mind and listen and witness and support, and counsel....you know who you are! Namaste!

I've been working inwardly and outwardly with what I have coined a "21st Century Relationship", which is what I see as my current ideal. Somewhere in the back of my mind I am still the little princess wanting the knight in shining armor to show up and take me to his castle, but in reality, my soul finds that ultimately boring and I recongnize that I have no desire, or even ability to be someone's possession or property in the least. Nor do I care to possess or feel control of another's heart, mind, soul or body.

I like the way that Thomas Moore speaks of relationship when he says,

"Our problem in relationships is how to have an ongoing, intimate life with another person at the same time as we invite this completely unpredictable depth to have a significant place in our lives. It isn't easy to live with the power and mystery of another's soulful personality. For one thing, you can't depend on what the person promises, since the soul isn't willing to be chained to intentions or even to commitments. If the individual doesn't understand everything going on in the soul, how can one who is close, who is seriously wrapped up in the other, have even the remotest understanding?

The only solution is for both parties to respect soul, to acknowledge the mystery , that is inescapably contained in the soulful life, and to treasure that very unpredictability. This may entail a radical shift in values. Ordinarily we honor commitments, promises, fidelities, and reliable habits. If on the other hand, we had a larger picture in mind and honored the tendency of the soul to move in mysterious ways, we might see that the unpredicted developments that come from the soul can have a positive effect on relationship. They demand a great deal of adjustment and allowance, but they also offer continuous deepening of the connection and a grounding of the attachment in soul rather than in any one person's will. Besides, individual willfullness is usually laced with fear and manipulation, and is hardly solid ground for the building of intimacy."

This is my definition of an ideal relatinship.......

Now I'm off to brush my teeth and sort mostly useless possessions.


Ok...one more quote for the day before I deal with it..

"A soulful relationship is not a simple gift; it asks for concentrated cultivation. Anyone can find vernacular sources of soul in the familiar world around them, but there is a spirit in our time that goes against the vernacular. It prefers the abstract, the general, and the numerically insignificant. This abstracting spirit trickles down to our relationships and shrinks the space necessary for the soul. It is a philosophy that finds comfort in knowing what the majority feels and thinks. It's also a moralism that tells us, based on majority opinion, how to be in relationship. But to live a vernactular life and find vernacular intimacy, one has to go against the tide and cherish the things that call out to us in particular, whether or not they are valued by the culture around us." Thomas Moore