The Way of Irish Blessings - The practice of Anam cara (Soul Friendship) as a Way of Life

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route

The Blessing of

The Road (1)

Over the next number of weeks I am intent on examining what might be considered the deeper meaning of certain Irish Blessings together with broader Celtic Blessings and finally with what is called The Great Invocation.

In order to experience this blessing of life in form and beyond form we are each required to honour certain Universal laws. These are laws not made by you but that are established for your protection when living in a body within time and space. These are laws that are fair and just and in no way judgemental. They simply seek to establish harmony and balance within this experience of human form.

One of these universal laws is the Law of Cause and Effect. This Universal Law states that whatever you do you will reap the consequences. This does not mean you will be judged and punished in anyway by powers outside of yourself. This Law is very simple in its operation - like attracts like. Whatever you give out comes back to you. It is an energetic Law of Thought.

You give out a resonance with every thought you ever think. Thought has power and is an energy form that arises and impacts not only you as the individual but the totality of human consciousness. This human consciousness that you in your identity as 'little me' partake off returns this energy to you. This can be immediate or take until the end of time. However, the end of time must be understood as paradoxical. This is because time is a construct of the human mind and does not in reality exist. The only time there ever is is this eternal moment.

In the following series of ezine articles this writer invites you to consciously honour this Law by practicing what he is calling The Way of Irish Blessings.

Do not, however, place an over sentimental attachment to the idea that these Blessings are Irish. Blessings are an energy form that when invoked bless you and the one to whom the blessing is offered. Let this practice of blessing be part of your daily routine. Let it become something that lights up and lightens your heart. Do not let doubt or fear enter your mind. You are well entitled to bless others and too receive blessings in return. All you need is a little understanding of their inordinate power and the willingness to give such practice a trial.

This writer assures you that you are Blessed for all eternity. Only you have forgotten this wondrous fact. This forgetting is well illustrated in William Wordsworth’s beautiful lines from Intimations of Immortality. William Wordsworth reminds us that we come into this world trailing clouds of glory. These clouds can disappear over the horizon of ‘little me’ but they are still there and will always be there.

Intimations of Immortality

William Wordsworth

You need no training to experience the Blessing YOU are. You need to be untrained. You cannot make the beauty that shines from within you. If you could then you might truly lose it and then where would you be? You are truly blessed in that this beauty beyond form can never be lost. This is the real blessing.

Irish Blessings can be made a daily practice. They can be used to give you space in difficult situations. They can be invoked silently or aloud. The most important first step is attitude. Attitude is everything. The chief attitude is humility.

The ego hates the idea of humility. It thinks of humility in terms of grovelling, in terms of being pious, in terms of begging. The ego, which is that separate sense of ‘little me’ living in time and space as a bag of bones bounded by skin, truly is the beggar. In its felt isolation from the source of All Creation the ego cannot really bless anyone not even ego itself.

The only real blessing that one should invoke for another is the knowing of the eternal that is within them. Blessings are a form of torchlight that cuts through the fog of separateness to reveal the brightness within that other for whom the blessing is invoked.

In this way the second greatest commandment is invoked. You invoke Love for your neighbour because you come to know the you are Love and that you and your neighbour are in truth not separate. You get to shine the light and power of Love into that aspect of their mind that is always at one with their source. In this way you become a healer and are healed of separateness. This sense of separateness is the core disease and cause of most of the suffering in this world of form. In this way you can become a miracle worker.

It is an attitude of mind. It is in no way a sign of weakness but of strength. It places you in an attitude of right-mindedness. You recognize that all that you are is given from the One Source. Without this One Source that is invisible to the eye of the body you could not be. This is the power of Creation that is without beginning or end. In each and every moment it is loving you into existence. You are not separate from this power. You are a reflection of the One Mind creating forever. This experience of unity with this One Mind can be known and will make you feel not only humble but also extraordinarily loved. When you are the knowing of this One Mind then there is one certain thing will happen to you. You will want to give it away to everyone so that they too can enjoy (in joy) their real sense of who they are.

A real sense of blessing arises naturally from within this knowing but that is not the place from where most of us begin. We begin without much idea that we are so potentially beautiful and beauty filled. I say potentially because it is for each of us to realise this potential. Without such realisation you have not claimed your birthright that is eternity itself.

I will begin to explain the meaning of this Blessing line by line. Sometimes I may even simply take one word and develop its deeper meaning. Let me remind you that you are not required to be Irish or have Irish ancestry in order to have an Irish Blessing positively impact the life of another and thus by the universal Law of Cause and Effect positively impact your life.

Wherever you are in the world it is important that you connect to the blessings, invocations and prayers of the tradition you are born into. It is this writer’s experience that you are required to return to the tradition that you may have fallen out of love with in order to heal any sense of separateness you may have with it.

Anyone intent on practicing the Way of Irish Blessings should have a store of favourite poems, blessings, songs and prayers that speak to their heart. These expressions of your heart need to be spoken. They can be expressed privately but in allowing them expression you clean up our outer world that is only a manifestation of our inner poverty.

So next week we are going to examine the deeper meaning of the first line of this Irish Blessing. It may be that I simply examine the first word. This is because this word begins many Irish Blessings and for good reason.

With this intention I leave you for this week. I want to say again, “Thank YOU to all of you who take the time to bless me with your emails of thanks.” This is how you and I are co-creating the world our hearts long to see. The good news is that you have for all eternity but the paradox is that you can only ever do it now.

The Blessing is that when I remind you of the beauty that you are beyond form and time that I am so reminded. I am reminded of the knowing that God is Love, that you are Love and the power that animates all that is, is Love. I am here to remind you of this. I am here to remind you to be this for that is who you truly are. As A Course in Miracles so clearly emphasises:

When you know this you are truly blessed. When you know this you want that everyone knows this. So let us all begin to awake to the knowing of the Blessings that is already here. - Irish or not.

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If you haven`t already downloaded your copy of our FREE ebook entitled New Irish Blessings for Life - 12 Blessings for the Journey Home then please do so by double clicking on the link below. There you will be given instructions on how to download this ebook.

There are 12 new Irish Blessings designed to mirror the journey through life from beginning to end. This Ebook is in three parts. It begins with blessings approiate for a new born, a young child and a young person. The second part deals with career, home and relationship. The final part deals with growing old and preparing for entry into the dimension beyond Time.

This FREE Ebook will be available for you to give away to as many people as you would like. The idea is that together we start a chain of Blessings that takes us higher and higher and then road really does rise up before us. In this way you really can begin to bring Heaven to Earth.

The Anamcara Experience

Website and Course

Shortly, the writer will be launching his new website called The Anam Cara Experience. It is subtitled “Ready to Radiate.” This is an invitation to radiate the beauty that is flowing within you. This writer is also launching a new course that will invite you into the experience of this beauty.

He will not be teaching you what you do not already know. He will be focusing on education in its real sense. Education means, to bring out. He will be a constant invitation to bring out the direct knowing of who you are. He will be the invitation that invites you to the wisdom teaching that says, “To your own self be true.”

In this Soul Friendship course entitled Ready to Radiate you will be introduced to the Anam Cara Training.

This is a training that will not fill you up with more information but will invoke the flowering of your heart. It is a training that will allow you to feel the paradox of being more by knowing less. These are practices and techniques that the writer uses in his everyday life and is intent on sharing with as many people as are interested.

This writer takes you through practices that you can adopt within your daily life that will invite you again into wonder. Not only that but you can build on these practices and become a deeper and deeper friend of your Soul and to the Souls of others. This paradoxically speaking is the one no thing that will give you all you could ever imagine and more.

This course will train you in entering the heart. These practices engage you not on a cerebral level but on a heart level. These practices will open up your mind, your body and your spirit. They include the use of poetry, songs, fairy tales, movies, people, blessings, prayers, practices and places to invite into you that which is sacred.

That which is sacred in you is whole and holy. You do not have to do anything except learn to trust this wholeness in deeper and deeper ways. This is the invitation to let go and relax and allow the intelligence that you are to dance the dance it longs to express uniquely through you.

Soul friendship involves a different kind of language. It is not a language that you have been taught at school, college or University. In fact the teaching you will have received in such places will, in all likelihood, close the door on the heart and focus you in your head. The language of soul is a Universal language.

Universities originally grew out of wisdom schools who taught this language of the Soul. Universities today, however, do not teach wisdom but teach facts about things. Wisdom is not something that you learn. It is who you are when you are prepared to allow the Timeless to flower within you.

The primary language that you engage with in learning to be a Soul Friend is the language of mystical poetry. This is not simply rhyming verse but contains hidden invitations into the Timeless. There are are also many new songs and old songs that also have this hidden invitation. On this course called The Anam car Experience - Ready to Radiate the writer takes such poems and modern day songs and unpacks their deeper meaning. This is their invitation to Soul Friendship that is contained in them.

When you listen to the song or read such a mystical poem it is more than just the words and even the feelings that they invoke. It goes beyond that to remind you of your true home in the Timeless. This is an invitation to an experience that will take you way beyond anything your logical mind can ever comprehend. It takes you into the deep sense of security in knowing you belong to that which is creating forever in Love.

The writer will invite you into the real spirit of song, the real spirit of storytelling, the real spirit of poetry and the many powerful practices that impact your day to day living experience in a postive and uplifting way. In addition you can meet with like-minded people who are similarly engaged in this process. It is the writer’s intention that we as a group raise the vibratory level of the collective soul so that everyone can be invited to bring beauty into the world where she is so much needed.

It will be available at the above website Anam cara Experience which is presently being set up. It is intended that this course be available with various bonuses for the cost of €19.97.

It is also intended to that anyone who wants to finish such training at any time can have a full refund of any monies that they have paid without any questions being asked. So in this way there is absolutely no risk involved expect the risk that you lose a opportunity for the real life. Until that time I will keep you posted.

and you will be notified once this course is completed (around end of August 2008).

This course is intended to give you access to your birthright as a being of unlimited creative potential. It is a course intended to ground you deeply in your heart and uses practices and techiques specifically intended to promote this as a way of living your day to day life. This is the way of wonder.

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