Years ago I was sitting with my beautiful friend Nora. I was feeling frustrated and bogged down by something. She listened intently. When I finished she acknowledged my feelings. Then when I was ready, and she could tell because she truly knows how to engage authentically with me, she asked me how I could move past that suffering. That interchange with her really clarified what true friends do for one another...they empower each other to move from stagnant and obsessive thinking into healing and release.
Byron Katie's great work is a perfect example of what friends can do for each other.
http://www.thework.com/index.php . My friends love me and therefore they understand that they can serve me best by acknowledging my suffering briefly so that I know that I am heard, and then lovingly offering me thinking that can scoot me beyond it, if I so choose. They know that being stuck is no fun, and yet I am the only one who can unstick myself!
I really appreciate how each of my friends, in their own unique way, use language and hold up signs to remind me of my healthiest direction. My friend Chrissy will listen to me dive into something emotionally painful from my past and then she will time her gentle response perfectly, "In your new life you have...", "In your new life you are treated...". Chrissy knows me and realizes the language which encourages me to look up from my stuck place and see what is happening in the Nowness of my life. I need that because I do not want to pick up old painful vibrations.
Complaining with each other and egging each other on to feel worse and worse about a situation or person is no way to be in relationship anymore. Pleading with and people pleasing with our friends is also no way to be in relationship anymore. Doing things for our friends that they should be doing for themselves is also passe, as is being enmeshed, covering for them, bailing them out, or being codependent.
It is time for everyone to find synergy and positive joy within our friendships.
Many religions and spiritual disciples refer to the "two or more people gathered in my name" energy that elevates people to great joy. Napoleon Hill calls this wonderful synergy, The Master Mind Alliance.
How do we find balance with our friends and call to us those friends who are most healthy for us?
By releasing us and them of the judgements and importance of their opinions!
Friends for a New Paradigm are those people who empower us to be in our best well being selves by being committed to their journey to their well being selves. Friends for a New Paradigm are those that celebrate who we are and celebrate who they are in happiness and joy, no matter what.
My friend Laurie eats a Weston Price diet http://www.westonaprice.org/ and she eats lots of animal products and fats including lard. In fact we call her, Your Lardship. I, on the other hand, eat a vegan diet http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/vegan.htm. While our food diets are as opposite as can be, we are both on a journey of expansiveness, joy, happiness, and love. Laurie and I founded a Spiritual Community together. After each of our Spiritual Gatherings we eat a potluck lunch. Sometimes Laurie makes a vegan dish, sometimes a vegetarian dish, and sometimes a meat dish. I am never insulted if she brings a dish that I will not eat, nor does she feel pressure to prepare something specific for my diet. Our support and love of one another is tremendous. We listen to each others' process, which consists mainly of the shifting into a more peaceful and serene emotional state. We are creating an actual village together and many mornings we text to each other as if we are already living in the village. It is a great way to start my day! We hug, we dance, we walk, we create, we laugh a lot, and we also cry. We sit in very hot Sweat Lodges together, and we sit in very cold New Hampshire water streams together. She is the friend that I say, "Hey, let's do this..." and she lights up and says, "YES!" This is the kind of friend one deserves and this is the loving expansive friendships that signify the New Paradigm.
Friends who are truly finding their self love are the friends that are the best ones to have in this New Paradigm. They are raising their vibration into and beyond Love. They are not bogged down in the past, they are present in the now. Friends who find joy and happiness in the NOW, who are shifting and flipping their patterns and woundedness, and who know that this is the profound path that they are committed to being on, are the friends that will most serve your journey of joy.
You can lovingly say goodbye to the old friendships which feel heavy, exhausting, and uncomfortable. They served their purpose and now it is time to be responsible for ourselves, for our choices of the past, in the present, and those of the future. Those people in our lives who resonate the joyful, hope filled, aspects of ourselves are those we keep within our closest circle. People who reflect the beauty and bounty of the Universe will trigger effortlessly that beauty and bounty within ourselves. Friendships are not work. Friendships are about rejoicing together, not in spite of life but because of life.
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| My friend Arlene's response when I told her I wanted 27 billion dollars delivered to my house. Obviously she is first on the guest list and gets shot gun on all the trips to spread the happiness! |
Look around you. Be with those that smile and congratulate you for finding gold. May today be a first day to begin friendships that honor you. Be love and choose to be with those who prioritize themselves as love. May you expand in this dance of Friends For A New Paradigm.
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