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

In the first line of this most favourite of Irish Blessings there is a request that the road rise up to meet you. Ireland is a land of hills, mountains, lakes and rivers. You will not go far before the road starts to rise. The one who invokes this Blessing is using the metaphor of the rising road as the path of your inner life.

This Blessing is not simply a nice saying with regard to the way in which you are invited to travel across an Irish landscape. Blessings are always inviting the knowing of your true homeplace that is the knowing of your oneness with the All One. The road in this Blessing is the unique way that you have come to express in form.

It is the unique way that creativity, the life of the Infinite expresses and flows through you. The more you allow this flow the higher the road will rise up to meet you. The more you force the life of ‘little me’ into the life of time and space alone the more you will keep yourself on the level and the more linear and time bound will be your experience. You will be as Goethe said, a “ trouble’s guest on this dark earth.” You will not reach the heights of your true Self that is your birthright – at least not in this lifetime.

Tell a wise person or else keep silent
for the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive
and what longs to be burned to death.
In the calm waters of the love nights
where you were begotten,
where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught in this obsession with darkness
and a desire for higher lovemaking sweeps you upward.
Distance does not make you falter.
And now, arriving in magic, flying
and finally, insane for the light
You are the butterfly.
And you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this,
to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on a dark earth.

You will begin the assent of the road when you are intent on putting an end to your own suffering and the collective human suffering. You will become insane for the Light that is real sanity. This is the beginning of right-mindedness that is living with a mind that is not split and connects your hearts real desire. Right-mindedness does not mean judgement between right and wrong. Right mindedness is the felt desire for higher lovemaking that will sweep you upward. The hills really will rise up to meet you in your endeavour

You will not listen to the massman. You will look to no other authority than that which is within you. Goethe uses the word massman for the average person whose road in life is directed by the inner critic and not the wisdom voice of Love. It is only a commitment to Love that will invite the hills to rise up to meet you. With such a commitment the Universe begins to align itself with your longing to come home to your true homeplace.

You will find that when you reach the top of the hill that beyond it is another.

This is what Sufis call stations on the Way. These are not to be confused with Stations of the Cross. These stations are a term to describe a plateau. They are more than states. They can be viewed as a placeless place of beautiful abiding. This is where you can rest awhile, assured that you are going homeward. These are beautiful inner states of rest and peace that can now be relied on. It means that once you reach a station on the mountainside that you are not going to fall back into the hollow places, the flatlands of going nowhere except faster in time. You will cease to be as a Wanderer searching in all the wrong places.

In our modern culture we are so future and goal orientated that we travel our life’s path without ever truly being present to the moment.

Our travelling is time based, condition based, ego based. It is determined by concepts such as success and failure. It is determined by ideas of good and bad. Much of it is governed consciously or unconsciously on what others are going to think of us. More importantly for most people is the unspoken question, “Will I be loved.”

This cultural focus of continuous goal setting is bound by limitations of all kinds. When we arrive at one goal we are already launching headlong into another. Then we wonder where the wonder went? We become slaves to time, running helter skelter on a flatland between our birth and our death. We experience a new sort of poverty that we call time poverty. Some of us think that this is all there is. Thank God then for those who are always calling from the mountaintop.

The road that this invocation calls to rise up before you is that road that will take you higher and higher. This road is not an outer road. It is the inner road. The higher the road climbs, and it climbs forever, the nearer you are to the Light that illuminates all and is ever illuminating your true way. This true way is not a way of words or creed. The true way is not some set way owned by a particular group of people within time and space.

It is more a way of resonance. This is the meaning of ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ The Word is not simply a sound that is heard on the ear. The Word is the Universal Song that sings all into existence. When you are attuned to this Universal Song called the Word you become sound in mind and body and soul. This is what it means to be tuned to the Source. The Universal Song that you have come here to sing begins to sing beautifully through you as the unique expression of the form that you are.

There is one sure way to travel this road that takes you higher. This signpost is not a popular signpost and too few people are encouraged to follow it. Yet it is part and parcel of Universal Way to peace and contentment. It is one of the ways that all religions teach and very few practice at least as a core teaching. When was the last time when you were told explicitly that you are not only loved but Love? When were you last invited to serve Love as the only Way that will ever set you free from the sense of loneliness and isolation that we often feel in this world of form?

This way up the hillside, up the mountainside, into that station of forever has been practiced and taught by the greatest of teachers who have graced human form and radiated the presence of the All One. This is the practice of service. Without this key practice in your life then you are likely to be held on the flatlands and even get caught in the doldrums. This metaphor of the doldrums represents the ever-increasing prevalence of depression within out Western culture. I know of many people who struggle not only to give the gift of who they are but recognise the gift of who they are.

This service can be as simple as a smile to the cashier behind the desk rather than the poisoning of the collective mindset with the irritation of ‘little me.’ It can be the service of a prayer to invoke the healing of the core wound in the collective human psyche. It could be a kind word or email to a friend in need. It does need to be a practice. It does need to be a committed practice each day and a primary committed practice each day. This is the proper use of you will which is the willingness to serve the highest good.

Service to others is the beginning of the end for the ego. Remember that real service arises out of thanksgiving. It does not come out of the idea that you are doing good. To think that you are doing good is to create and continue to create a sense of separateness. There is you and there is the other. There is you doing good works and the other who has what appears to be less than you receiving the good works that you do. On the flatlands of gain and loss this is what is called charitable words. These are absolutely necessary given the present state of the collective human psyche.

However, the line “May the road rise up before you” invites you into the realm of true giving where you and the other are not separate. On the hilltop you simply see the world in a different way. You will out of this seeing act. It will not arise out of a sense of separateness but out of the truth of Oneness. This is a different degree of charity. It has a more holy and healing resonance. It goes further in time because from the hilltop it rains down without judgment, without condition and without limitation.

The one invoking the line, “May the road rise up to meet you” is inviting you into the true healing of yourself and thus the true healing of the whole of humanity and all sentient beings. This is someone who might be termed an Irish Bodhisattva. A Bodhisattva is a Buddhist term. It is the name given to one who takes a particular type of vow. This vow is taken by one living in the eternal realm knowing that they are never separate from it but choosing to return to this world of time and space in order to guide others up the mountainside to their true homeplace.

So in the Way and Practice of Irish Blessing the first step on the path on the road that will rise up to meet you is to commit to serve in some little way to the healing and wholeness of this world of form. In this way you bring down from the mountain the station called heaven on earth. Heaven is not some place you hope to go to when you leave this body. It is who you are when you know who you are.

When you are the knowing of Heaven then the Blessing is already here and you are it.

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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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Website and Course