Celtic Wisdom

Recently, I finished reading Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue.  I loved that book.  The author had some wonderful insights, and he managed to relate ancient knowledge to considering and remedying the worries and cares of the modern world, the present-day individual.  I will share a few quotes on love and the "soul friend" that really resonated with me...

"There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times.  In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control.  The more love you give away, the more love you will have." (35-6)

"You can never love another person unless you are equally involved in the beautiful but difficult spiritual work of learning to love yourself." (26)

"When you fall in love, common sense, rationality, and your normal serious, reserved, and respectable persona dissolve.  Suddenly you are like an adolescent again; there is new fire in your life.  You become revitalized.  Where there is no passion, your soul is either asleep or absent.  When your passion awakens, your soul becomes young and free and dances again." (20)

"The greatest gift new love brings into your life is the awakening to the hidden love within.  This makes you independent.  You are now able to come close to the other, not out of need or with the wearying apparatus of projection, but out of genuine intimacy, affinity, and belonging.  It is a freedom.  Love should make you free." (27) 

"One of the most precious things you should always preserve in a friendship and in love is your own difference...Often in a relationship there can be a subtle homogenizing force, which is destructive.  The irony is that it is usually the difference between people that makes one person attractive to another." (28-9)

"Two people who love each other should never feel called to explain to an outside party why they love each other, or why it is that they belong together...Their souls know why they are together; and they should trust that togetherness." (34)

"...”relationship” has become an empty center around which our lonely hunger forages for warmth and belonging.  Much of the public language of intimacy is hollow, and its incessant repetition only betrays the complete absence of intimacy.  Real intimacy is a sacred experience.  It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture.  Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved." (17)

"No one can hurt you as deeply as the one you love.  When you allow the Other inside your life, you leave yourself open...Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair.  This tests every aspect of your affection...If you can come through this time, it can purify your love, and falsity and need will fall away.  It will bring you onto new ground where affection can grow again." (12)