This article invites you to the place where you are the reflection of beauty and grace in form. It takes as part of its invitation the story of the ugly duckling whose nature is that of a swan. The swan metaphor in fairy stories represents the awakened soul full of beauty and grace. The Anam Cara who is a friend of the soul invites you to remember that you are naturally grace filled and beautiful. (The meaning of Anam Cara is Soul Friend - Anam means Soul - Cara means Friend. The writer defines soul in this way

Source
Of
Unlimited
Love

Many people subscribe to a fitness regime. They work out. They go to the gym. They do aerobics, yoga or some other body exercise in order to keep fit. For many people the primary focus of a fitness regime is the development of the body beautiful. Often this masks the unconscious judgment of themselves as somehow ugly.

This writer and storyteller works out in the garden. It is a natural way of working out. Doing physical work is healthy and its primary function is to ground you in the body. This allows you to feel the body beautiful not as something to simply be admired but as an instrument through which creation can freely flow and express as beauty in form.

You might be someone who follows a fitness program of some kind but have you ever asked the question, "What am I fit for?" This is a powerful question for the Quest I On. It is the sort of question an Anam Cara will invite you into. They will ask, "Are you fit for the purpose you are intended?" These are great spiritual direction questions.

There is no judgment of you intended here. Only the invitation to the grace and beauty of who you are. These questions are invitations to see the reflection that many of us avoid. Secretly there is often part of us still attached to the ugly duckling and refuse to even imagine that we are metaphorically swans full of grace and beauty.

An Anam Cara will tell you that while it is important to care for the body there are other bodies that if not cared for and tended with grace and tenderness adversely impact the physical dimension. These bodies are the mental and emotional bodies. These bodies are more subtle than the physical body. They are more refined and careful attention to them allows you to feel fine.

Your body mind and soul are meant for a purpose. The Anam Cara will tell you that the primary purpose of your being in form is to be in service to the power of Love. They will ask you a rather intimate question. This is the question, "Are you fit to be a Lover." No one is ever asked this question and very few ever ask it of themselves.

Of course any question asked by an Anamcara has two answers. Like the storytellers of old they are spinners of magical tales and riddles. These riddles are for one purpose. They are like Zen Koans in that they are designed to take you out of the ivory tower of the intellect where you keep beauty asleep for one hundred years and more. The Anamcara is a paradox. They are of two worlds. The world of time and the world of the Timeless.

The answer to the question, "Are you fit to be a Lover?" is "Yes you are and no you are not." Why is this answer as it is? You are always fit to be a Lover of the Beloved because you are created in the image of Love. Nothing you do or do not do changes this primacy. No you are not fit to be a Love because you have forgotten who you are. You have become not who you truly are but a beggar.

What keeps you unfit for Love.

It is a mind that you allow to control you and use you for its purpose which is the purpose of your ego, your separate sense of self. It uses you for its purpose of limitation which is to say that it uses you for every purpose other than Love. You are unfit to be a Lover because you allow your emotional life to run away with the peace at the heart of who you are.

Again it is very important to be reminded that this is not a judgment of you. If it were a judgment then there would be no invitation to grace. The darkness of separateness is not made light through judging but through awareness. An Anam Cara is a Lover in the service of Love. 

They know there is no greater reward although one does not get to be a Lover of the Beloved as a reward. You do not get what you already are. You simply get to give up the illusion that you are something other than Love. You get to give up the ugly ducking illusion for the knowing of the beauty and grace that you are.

Fitness of mind for the purpose requires the practice of quieting the mind through meditation and/or contemplative prayer. This is not the prayer that asks that you win the lottery.  Prayer arises out of the beauty of knowing how graced you are to be a swan. Prayer serves the highest good of all and offers itself up in service to the Beloved. It is not a public act but an action that takes place in the silence of the heart.

In becoming fit to be a Lover there are lots of things you have to lose. You have to lose the weight of doubt. You have to lose the weight of thinking about. You have to slim down living in the past or the future. When you become light weight you become empty. This is the paradox of spiritual development. You gain everything by becoming as nothing. In becoming nothing you become as no thing. In becoming no thing the everything that is Love pours into you in celebration.

As a lightweight Lover you get to fly to those placeless places beyond your imagination. There is no more begging in the world of form for something that you think is outside of who you are. You free the mind of its unfitness for the purpose of Love. You become as no mind which is the One Mind. This is the bridal chamber that the Master Jesus invites you into. There you become fit for the purpose of Love and are raptured by the Beloved. The two become One.

An Anam Cara invites you to become fit for the purpose you are intended. Keep the body fit, keep the mind fit, keep the emotions in free flow and you will become a willing offering to the radiance of Love. An Anam Cara will tell you that you have nothing to lose except the illusions of grandeur that are not real. You are invited to give up the ugly duckling image that is only part of the process toward reflecting the swan of grace and beauty within.

An Anam Cara will tell you that there is the grace and beauty of a swanlike nature living within you. You will not, however, realize it living in the farmyard where everyone else tells you that grace and beauty are not who you are. You have to leave the farmyard and take the journey into Love. This is the invitation to beyond what you think you know and who you think you are.

You are here to reflect the image of Love that created you. You need no thing more than to live from the heart of this knowing. People will never again see you as other than the natural invitation to grace that is inherent in your being. This is your real inheritance. This is the inheritance that your soul friend knows and invites you to claim. Let this be your invitation.

Let the real purpose of your life be the invitation to be willing to serve the purpose of Love. Let Love use you for its own purpose and your swan nature will be revealed to you.

THE ANAM CARA EXPERIENCE INVITATION

Why not learn more about the way of transformation into the beauty at the heart of who you are. Why not journey into the Anam Cara Experience. This is by what of learning designed to ensure that you do not improve yourself in any way. This is a way of learning that invites the ugly ducking into the swan grace of self acceptance.

This invitation comes by way of the following:-

• How to leave behind the farm yard with its critic's voices with all its judgments and tyranny and come to the place of the swan lake.

 

• Discover the real power inherent in prayer and meditation that will take you nowhere but get you everywhere.  
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• Learn the only second language that you need to take you into the hearts journey where you will discover the way homeward.

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• Find out how unwanted circumstances in your life situation can become the path to the lake of true reflection.
  
  Simply complete the Question of Interest poll below and we will keep you informed of how to journey into beauty.