“Human presence is
a creative and turbulent sacrament, a visible sign of invisible grace”.
John
O’Donohue’s “Anam Cara” has been a constant companion over these few years that
I have been opening up to the Celtic Path.
For me, he speaks from the heart of truth, from a genuine place of
spiritual awareness and expression that cuts across boundaries of faith and
denomination. In it he reveals the heart
and essence of presence, solitude, relationship, friendship, embodiment, work, ageing
and dying, and of course, of the Anam Cara – literally “soul friend”.
The
book’s various chapters examine a number of
interconnecting themes woven around an exploration of the journey of the
human soul through life’s stages, the narrative weaving and flowing its way unbroken through these subjects. He
has a beautiful way with words, and manages to explore themes in depth without
ever seeming to repeat himself. It is possible to simply dip into this book and
find something short, but so full of depth and meaning that it is enough to
read only that one paragraph and allow its essence to distill in the heart and
mind over a number of days.
What
I love especially, because I relate to it so strongly myself, is his sharing of
poetry - his own, and that of others. His prose flows poetically too and
perhaps this is why you feel that you are reading something sacred. It seems,
to me, to flow from Source, for the poetry is flawless and uncluttered. This,
of course, is the poet’s craft. I have
shared many of his poems with friends, in my healing work and in ritual and
ceremony. Because poetry is a distillation of thoughts and words, it strikes so
close to the heart of feeling that it can be an incredibly powerful medium for
contemplation and indeed for transformation. He speaks of this power himself when he writes
about the power of language in the Celtic world.
“Language
itself had power to cause events and to divine events yet to happen...”
The
concept of the Anam Cara is, of course, the core essence of the book. And in
writing, he offers both himself and the divine as an Anam Cara to the reader.
He is able to see right to the heart of the human experience of longing for
this understanding and acceptance, and provides it in the understanding. The
truth and openness of this is almost seductive, because it offers “knowing”.
“In Everyone’s life, there is great need for an
Anam Cara, a soul friend. In this love, you are understood as you are without
mask or pretension...”
What
was most revealing to me when I first read it, was that I felt both the longing
for the Anam Cara AND the fulfilment of it in the same place. I would imagine
most people have a sense of intimacy as suggesting physical, perhaps even
sexual intimacy and yet there is incredible intimacy to be found in other
expressions of relationship. I have found this in my own healing work and in
particular in my work with people living, and dying, with cancer. In those
relationships I experience profound moments of love and intimacy that were
completely about that context. In Anam
Cara we are invited to view intimacy as sacred. Indeed, the most intimate
relationship we can have is with the divine.
In The Celtic mind this is connected with the divine in and around us,
in nature – the landscape, plants, trees and animals - and in each other.
Various
repeated themes stand out for me. The first may seem rather trivial, but it is
his use of the word “clay” to describe both the Earth and the matter – including
our own bodies – which arises from it.
To me, this is potent symbolism. There is a deep sense of being OF the
Earth, certainly not distinct from it and not just a product of it. And this is
seen as sacred.
He
offers us a view of the human body as a sacred expression of the divine. Not
simply a vessel. And the experience of being embodied and having the physical experiences
that arise from the senses – including pleasure and passion and sensuality- are
all natural expressions of being in this embodied state. They are, therefore,
all expressions of the sacred.
“Your
senses link you intimately with the divine around you.”
The
idea of “Presence” is also something that has profound meaning for me and is a
concept that I refer to regularly in my work. It is something that J O’D describes
as “the soul texture of a person”, and he comes back to this theme throughout
the book. It offers a view of being that is about how we engage with others,
with ourselves and with the divine. To be in the presence of your own soul is
to be in the presence of the divine. It is in Solitude, he suggests, that we
are really able to be with this your own presence.
“The
eternal is at home- within you”
I
am reminded in this sentiment, of the words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi
”
What we are looking for, is what is looking”
Here,
in one of my favourite poems (really, they are all favourites) he speaks of
presence in solitude.
A blessing of
solitude
May you recognize in your
life, the presence, power and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone,that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique,
that you have a special destiny here,
That behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening.
May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.
“May you learn to see yourself
with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every
moment.”
I am touched and moved by the
intimacy with which he describes the love of God as a father in this poem. Anam
Cara encourages this intimacy with the divine as being in genuine relationship
with and indeed, not separate from, the individual soul.
In this I see the parallels
between this Celtic view of the spiritual existence and my studies in Yoga,
especially in Advaita Vedanta – where the individual soul or “Atman” and
Universal Consciousness “Brahman” (indeed the Universe itself) are see as inseparable.
I felt powerfully drawn to these teachings when I first
received them but over the years I began to feel that my yogic path wasn’t an entirely authentic
expression my own heritage or DNA. There is deep truth in it which resonates
clearly, but what I found in Anam Cara , almost at the same time as my
awareness of the Celtic Path was developing, was an expression of what I was
beginning to understand for myself. Something of the ancient links between
these two cultures resonated with me, to
the extent that some years ago, I developed – intuitively and untutored - a
“Celtic Yoga”.
There is a Yogic and Buddhist
saying “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear...” and it is
certainly true for me, of John O’Donohue and “Anam Cara”. At the time when I
was beginning to unravel some of these truths for myself, the book made its way
to me and was formative in opening up this path of enquiry, spiritual
expression and above all, my understanding of the power and possibility of divine
love.
In this video, John describes the Anam Cara. It is beautiful.
“...Love
is the most real and creative form of human presence. Love is the threshold
where divine and human presence ebb and flow into each other...”
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