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

You are on a road of your own making. No one has travelled this road before. It is unique and it takes you on a journey that has no end. There are others who have been on this road but they have not walked it in your shoes. They have, however, left signposts along the way. This road has been called the Road Less Travelled or The Hero’s Journey.

When the road rises up before YOU what have you done? This is Life inviting you to go higher. Are you afraid of these higher regions where few travellers venture but where all must venture in order to be true to oneself?

Usually what we do not do when the road rises up to meet us is to express gratitude. This is the most powerful spiritual practice that you can invite yourself to practice. You are never alone on this road although at times and even many times you may feel lonely. The Universal Intelligence that created you in Love is not separate from you. It is not separate from you at the lower reaches of the journey or nearer to you at the higher reaches. It is only you who appear nearer or further away.

Offer this practice that I am going to describe, silently to yourself. This is a practice where we take the line May the road rise up before YOU. Imagine a situation in your life that you are struggling with. This can be in a relationship home or at work, an illness or simply loss of direction (which is not simple at all).

Take this line from the most common and well known of Irish Blessings and invoke it for yourself. If you are Irish it is part of your cultural heritage. If you are not Irish invoke it as a symbol of well wishing to yourself. Let it be an invitation to the holy well of being that you are.

This is a heart practice. The important focus is the intention. Intend that life for you is not a struggle. All sages and mystics know this to be true. Do you doubt it? If so know that you doubt it. Do not fight this doubt but recognise that it is there. You are thus in effect practising one of the highest spiritual practices - resist not evil.

This instruction affirms the reality that judgement is not overcome by more judgement. Invoke for yourself the power of intention that your unique expression will be a breeze. When you invoke the line of the Irish Blessing May the road rise up to meet you, you are inviting the wisdom of the great sages of the past and the present.

Seng Ts’an

Are you willing to gift yourself such an easy life. Are you willing to invoke the feminine way that the masculine energy of doing and action is meant to serve rather than repress or dominate?

Are you willing to be supported by and in tune with the Infinite Creation who is loving you into existence without asking if you are worthy enough? Are you willing to make your life worth what it is without conditions? Let it not be made difficult the remembrance of gratitude for what little or lot you are given. In this way you are being willing to live the only life you ever have which is in this moment and always in this moment.

Create for yourself a dynamic expression in mind and body that you are. Focus on gratitude and see what happens. See how little it can take to be happy now once you begin to get your chatterbox of a mind out of the way. Gratitude lightens the heart. It softens that which is rigid within which then begins to increase the flow of energy in and through the body leading to a greater sense of wholeness and healing.

Use your sense of visualisation to imagine your symbolic road rising up the hillside before you. You might draw it or paint it. When doing so paint whatever comes. If the road rising up before you is dark allow it to be what it is without judgement. Of course like most of us you will judge what you do not like. If the road ahead is dark invite someone you love or loves you to walk with you. This person need not be related to you in any way or even alive within a body. Invite someone who lifts your heart to come and walk with you toward the rise. You might speak to them or not.

You might image a signpost that gives you a sense of direction. If it had one word on it what would that word be? If it had a line of poetry or an inspirational quotation on it what would it be?

If there is some strange writing or an unknown symbol on the signpost then let that be. These are often intuitions from the deepest part of yourself. Simply trust them and honour them by remembering them in some way. Do not worry about not knowing what they mean. You have been taught that if you do not know what something means you need to reason it out. In this practice you are setting reason aside to allow the arising of the voice from your inner teacher. This is your true voice that is calling to be heard. It does not always mean that it will appear in sound. It will appear to you usually via your preferred way of sensing either by sight, sound, touch or smell.

Take this phrase, “May the road rise up before you" and silently offer it to others. Start with a good friend. Imagine that they are blissfully happy striding the road of their true life’s purpose radiating that deep peace that benefits all for the highest good. See them happy, as you would wish yourself to be. See them looking at the next signpost and having them recognise it as a long lost secret that has them throw their arms wide to the sky in gratitude. This is gratitude at having found their unique way into the knowing of their true self.

Then come back and offer such imagined gratitude to yourself. See that sign that would have you throw your arms to the sky in gratitude. Don’t be surprised if it makes your heart ache. This is an aspect of the unfreezing of your hearts longing. The lifeblood of your purpose is flowing into places that have long been constricted. If you have hardened your heart so that it has gone cold in any way then forgive yourself and let the warmth of the return to who you are unfreeze and soften that which has gone rigid in you. Thus you practice one of the greatest instructions ever given. This is

Let this be a practice that you intend to take you to what into what is known in Ireland as the homeplace. It is not a place of ancestry but a place of infinite belonging beyond a body that might suffer along a timeline between birth and death. This is the placeless place of the forever young that in Ireland is called The Land of Tir Na Nog.

When you are willing to enter the timeless then you will be the knowing of the true Blessing. You will know that it is never separate from you and that you are already more than you can even imagine.

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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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Seng Ts’an

The Anamcara Experience

Website and Course