John O'Donohue

Discover the Celtic Circle of Belonging John O'Donohue, poet, philosopher, and scholar, guides you through the spiritual landscape of the Irish imagination. In Anam Cara, Gaelic for "soul friend," the ancient teachings, stories, and blessings of Celtic wisdom provide such profound insights on the universal themes of friendship, solitude, love, and death as: Light is generous The human heart is never completely born Love as ancient recognition The body is the angel of the soul Solitude is luminous Beauty likes neglected places The passionate heart never ages To benatural is to be holy Silence is the sister of the divine Death as an invitation to freedom

A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Anam Cara

Laura Mei

Time and time again, we miss out on the great treasures in our lives because we are so restless. In our minds we are always elsewhere. We are seldom in the place where we stand and in the time that is now. Many people are haunted by the past, things that they have not done, things that they should have done that they regret not doing. They are prisoners of their past. Other people are haunted by the future; they are anxious and worried about what is coming. Few people are actually able to inhabit their present time because they are too stressed and rushed. Stillness is vital to the world of the soul. In this stillness, you will engage your soul. As T. S. Eliot writes:

You should always keep something beautiful in your heart. Perhaps, as a poet said, it is beauty that will save us in the end.

Memory is one of the most beautiful realities of the soul. Memory has its own selectivity and depth. Human memory is an inner temple of feeling and sensibility. The beauty and invitation of old age offer a time of silence and solitude for a visit to the house of your inner memory. You can revisit all of your past. Your soul is the place where your memory lives. Since linear time vanishes, everything depends on memory. In other words, our time comes in yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows. Yet there is another place within us that lives in eternal time. That place is called the soul. The soul, therefore, lives mainly in the mode of eternity. This means that as things happen in your yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows and fall away with transience, they fall and are caught and held by the net of the eternal in your soul. There they are gathered, preserved, and minded for you. Consequently, as your body ages and gets weaker, your soul is in fact getting richer, deeper, and stronger.

No one has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest. This is always one of the great tensions in an awakened or spiritual life, namely, to find the rhythm of its unique language, perception, and belonging. To remain faithful to your life requires commitment and vision that must be constantly renewed.

Silence is the great friend of the soul; it unveils the riches of solitude. It is very difficult to reach that quality of inner silence. You must make space for it so that it may begin to work for you. In a certain sense, you do not need the whole armory and vocabulary of therapies, psychologies, or spiritual programs. If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you.

The unconscious is a powerful and continuous presence. Every life lives out of struggles with this inner night, which casts its challenging and fecund shadow over everything we think and do and feel.  We are earthen vessels that hold the treasure. When the unconscious becomes illuminated, it's darker forces no longer hold us prisoner. This work of freedom is slow and unpredictable; yet it is precisely at this threshold that each individual is the custodian and subject of their own transfiguration.

Freud and Jung illuminated the vast complexity of the soul. The person is no simple, one-dimensional self. There is a labyrinth within the soul. What we think and desire often comes into conflict with what we do. Below the surface of our conscious awareness, a vast, unknown rootage determines our actions. The mythic story of the earth and the gods whispers within us. We become aware of the patterns and blindness and obsession that unknowingly drive us. We find ourselves so often returning to the same empty places that diminish and impoverish our essence. All psychic activity is at first unconscious; this is the realm of concealed wishes.

Sometimes our spiritual programs take us far away from our inner belonging. We become addicted to the methods and programs of psychology and religion. We become so desperate to learn how to be, that our lives pass, and we neglect the practice of being. One of the lovely things in the Celtic mind is its sense of spontaneity, which is one of the greatest spiritual gifts. To be spontaneous is to escape the cage of the ego by trusting that which is beyond the Self. One of the greatest enemies of spiritual belonging is the ego. The ego does not reflect the real shape of one's individuality. The ego is the false self born out of fear and defensiveness. It is created out of timidity, the failure to trust the Other and to respect our own Otherness. One of the greatest conflicts in life is the conflict between the ego and the soul. The ego is threatened, competitive, and stressed, whereas the soul is drawn more toward surprise, spontaneity, the new and the fresh. Real soul has humor, irony, and no obsessive self-seriousness. It avoids what is worn, weary, or repetitive.

For millions of years, before you arrived here, the dream of your individuality was carefully prepared. You were sent to a shape of destiny in which you would be able to express the special gift you bring to the world. Sometimes this gift may involve suffering and pain that can neither be accounted for nor explained. There is a unique destiny for each person. Each one of us has something to do here that can be done by no one else. It is in the depths of your life that you will discover the invisible necessity that brought you here. When you begin to decipher this, your gift and giftedness come alive. If you can awaken this sense of destiny, you come into rhythm with your life. You fall out of rhythm when you renege on your potential and talent, when you settle for the mediocre as a refuge from the call.

To be born is to be chosen. No one is here by accident. Each one of us was sent here for a special destiny. When you consider the moment of conception, there are endless possibilities. Yet in most cases, only one child is conceived. This seems to suggest a certain selectivity is already at work. This selectivity intimates a sheltering providence that dreamed you, created you, and always minds you. You were not consulted on the major factors that shaped your destiny: when you were to be born; where you would be born; to whom you would be born. Your identity was not offered for your choosing. In other words, a special destiny was prepared for you.

The body is your only home in the universe. It is your house of belonging here in the world. It is a very sacred temple. To spend time in silence before the mystery of your body brings you toward wisdom and holiness.

The body is a sacrament. A sacrament is a visible sign of invisible grace. All of our inner life and intimacy of soul longs to find an outer mirror. It longs for a form in which it can be seen, felt, and touched. The body is the mirror where the secret world of the soul comes to expression. The body is a sacred threshold, and it deserves to be respected, minded, and understood in its spiritual nature.

The body is also very truthful. You know from your own life that your body rarely lies. Your mind can deceive you and put all kinds of barriers between you and your nature; but your body does not lie. Your body tells you, if you attend to it, how your life is and whether you are living from your soul or from labyrinths of your negativity. The body also has a wonderful intelligence.

Emma Bose

A luminously lyrical read. Thank you, once again, John O’Donohue.

"Anam Cara is a rare synthesis of philosophy, poetry, and spirituality. This work will have a powerful and life-transforming experience for those who read it." —Deepak Chopra John O'Donohue, poet, philosopher, and scholar, guides you through the spiritual landscape of the Irish imagination. In Anam Cara, Gaelic for "soul friend," the ancient teachings, stories, and blessings of Celtic wisdom provide such profound insights on the universal themes of friendship, solitude, love, and death as: Light is generous The human heart is never completely born Love as ancient recognition The body is the angel of the soul Solitude is luminous Beauty likes neglected places The passionate heart never ages To be natural is to be holy Silence is the sister of the divine Death as an invitation to freedom

Melody Izard

Rejoice if you have a soul friend - and I do. Don't be scared of death. Not sure about that one. A little over the top for me and the accent was a bit off-putting when I think I was supposed to be swept away by it. But there were many comforting points and spiritually settling lessons. Just why oh why did he have to use so many cliches? He actually told the story of the Emperor's new clothes and the Elephant and the blind men - as if we had never heard them.

Anam Cara A Book of Celtic Wisdom

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