How to Befriend Your Soul

“You talk too much. I can’t keep up and it sounds like a whole bunch of nothing because I don’t get it but its still interesting. Can you make it real simple and direct, five words or less please” came the request from someone who had accompanied a friend. “Sure” I said “How to befriend your Soul”.

Ultimately that is all I’m interested in and thus offering, nothing more, nothing less.

“OK, that sounds cool. How?” she said. “You have to be willing to look at every single thing that you take for granted, believe that is how it is or expect to be based on any socio-cultural programming or inheritance“. “Hmm” she intoned as her brow furrows set in. “Thats a lot you’re asking”. “Weigh it on the scales against befriending your Soul whilst living and tell me if its a fair exchange?”.

She said she’d think about. I never saw her again. Her friend told me she occasionally asked her about this or that due to her obvious progression but this is a perfect example about how many are called but few choose themselves. In the Matrix sense you can say that many are plugged in to these external concepts and definitions. They are akin to a walking stick that was given to one with perfect legs. Over time they have become so used to it that they’ve developed a weakness that needs this aid and thus is terrified of it being stripped as they see it as an actual, factual part of themselves. In reality its a coping mechanism.

Sure, after removing it and seeing the lay of the land as it is with the muscular imbalance due to the wastage that prevented its full strength is a pill tainted with bitterness but those who make it through to the end of the course of action will run, sprint and jump with a huge grin as they are, once again, the embodiment of Inner Sense with its all its familiar newness.

“She was asking me how I got rid of those dark circles around my eyes I’d always had” she told me the next time we met. “So I told it her it was actually a side effect of being less anxious by examining my relationship to stress and how that was linked with the immense dread of disappointing my parents as a kid and how I’d really fret the night before a test and not get a wink of rest”.

The astute among you would have seen the simple regularness of this scene and how Self evident it is when one gets caught up in the energetics of a downward spiral such a this but how many clicked that we keep on repeating these Patterns through our life as our mind thinks “Well, it worked then so it’ll do the same again”. Really think about it. People are not grown or mature in any respect. The comment sections online prove this in abundance. No, they are overgrown, Adulterated children running around with an operating system inside their head that was hastily scribbled in crayon in times of immense stress.

This is the basic, fundamental problem because we, early on, fold in on ourselves and then keep up the habit until we become old and arthritic.

“So, how do you do it then? Can you teach me?” said the friend because the idea sounded appealing but the results were a mere side effect of a larger process in action which was the acquisition of Knowledge as it relates to the Self. In a world of sixty second abs and on demand everything this is, quite possibly, the most unappealing method you could think. If you’re on the outside looking in. If, on the other hand, you absolutely hate your existence and the zone of discomfort the contempt of familiarity brings then you’re probably already a Warrior in training, but didn’t realize it.

See, most people are just miserable enough and entertained well enough to not acknowledge this but those of us who are really suffering and trying to find meaning, salvation and a little security in all this take to the water like a black swan that relishes finding its environment. From the jump she felt different, in a “one of these is not like the rest” sense. It wasn’t as obvious as the dusky Cygnus because this was an internal thing. She was hyper sensitive to criticism. It all had to be perfect. Living to try and build this image almost spelled her end and bought her to her knees and this is how we met.

“You know, after decades of reading every self help book I could get, trying yoga and meditation as well as countless other things that made my family think I’d flipped my lid I’m actually so happy that this is working. I feel…. I feel a sense of freedom from within. Granted my outer life is still a total mess but this feels like… renovation. Yes” she added, with a grin. “Because you’ve got to destroy to rebuild and I’m enjoying the process”.

Her friend was cut from a different cloth. While they were birds of a feather in many respects as they enjoyed getting wrecked, staying fly plus the allure of vigorous sex and the validation this brings how they related to their underlying tension was exceedingly different. One found herself pulled in during these experiences. She described it as “It almost allows me to separate from it and I can look at the mess which is my life as I try and figure out where it went wrong and how to fix it”.

Problem was a lot of people who do this engage in the mental equivalent of the lost key trick. Know what I’m saying? No? Check this:

You are in a rush to leave. Today is a day with an appointment. As you are about to step out you realize your car keys are missing. Frantic, you look around and realize they aren’t where you think. You check somewhere else and then the rest but you’ll note you constantly circle back to the place you know fine well does not house them. Some will even argue with themselves as they point at the space of absence and say “But they should be right here”. All the while your stress levels are rising and “Its either taxi time or blow it” you think as you sit down on the step, look to your left and spot them underneath curtain.

Suddenly you recollect coming in, being tired and hungry as well and how they slid off the shelf and you made a mental note to correct this miscalculation but forget as you dozed off in front of the set before going to bed that evening.

Sound familiar? Its so obvious and universal that most never talk about it but lets imagine that instead of a missing key we’re dealing with the root cause problem, that event which was filed in your emotional Rolodex, back when, that causes flowers of dismay to spring into your internal garden. In that case how would you know? Simply put, you wouldn’t.

I’ve met countless people like this who were actively seeking solutions and coming up with nothing and a heck of a lot of them self medicated using various substances to bring that distance required for true observation. That in itself is a dangerous spin as well as being quite fruitless for many as they nurse an addiction which brings its own symptoms and builds upon the problem they attempted to demolish.

The Path of Power is quite different because you’re basically examining the story in your head that you scribbled back when and then spent a lifetime tracing over in thicker and thicker ink until you became defined by it.

Sounds crazy when expressed like this, yes? Welcome to an impartial glance at the inner realms of most on this floating insane asylum. See, her friend could see the shifts and rued the day when they’d drift because it was becoming obvious that things were changing from within and that is why she hitched a lift and came to our next meeting as she wanted in.

Thing is her motivation in relation to her tension was the exact opposite. A true, blue hedonist as when she was on it she’d push it to the limit and barely remember a thing as she craved the sense of total obliteration. From the outside they may have seemed very similar as they both derived great joy from their choices but internally how they handled the process was quite different.

“She often commented that I would blow her high when we rolled in around five for the comedown after a night and passed the peace pipe” she said, with a grin. “In what respect?” I inquired because this afterglow period is akin to realigning in the flesh after spending a night in lower Earth orbit. “Well, by that point – depending on how the drugs went – I’d often be talking out loud, to myself about my feelings and what I was seeing. Sometimes I’d start pacing, ranting and raving she said, as I hashed through things. Looking for the keys, as mentioned” with a slight shake of her head. “How pointless. Anyway, yeah, she used to really hate those nights because I’d got to that point where I wouldn’t quit and I guess it made her uncomfortable to think like this. That was when I realized how we could appear so similar on the surface and yet be so different”.

The example I’ve often used is a cheap football, given a kick. It is made of thin plastic and thus floats easily on the wind but todays Brucie bonus is the fact that it contains within, a solid steel ball bearing. This makes things far more unpredictable and that keeps life interesting. This is why no two people have the same energetics but there are types we find comforting as they provide a resonance whilst still being different. If you were to meet someone identical you would intuitively hate them because your sense of individuality would be a threat. Opposites may attract but trines vibe best as its all about the angles in the Game we’re playing.

In many ways the girl of whom I’m speaking was prepped of her own actions and decisions to introspect and examine the foundations of her existence. When she heard that the journey and destination was nothing less than the befriendment of her Soul she was all in because she’d had a chemically assisted glimpse of this feeling and thus knew it exists and was willing to do anything in order to become the living embodiment. She related to her story with a sense of distance which made perfect sense when I introduced her to the concept of the Witness that makes this all possible:

“Of course! Yes, yes, yes! It all makes sense. That is the me I feel and not the I they see. Yes! How on Earth did I not see this? she said as she slapped her head. I asked her how does one perceive that which does the perceiving and believes its the perception? Its a very elegant deception that creates the problem of being human and that is the puzzle upon which I’ve been bent upon solving in order to make sense of my own existence. I’m not saying I’ve got it all figured out. Heck no, this is more like a hasty sketch on the back of napkin over a couple of drinks as we’re talking but what I’ve got so far is pretty effective for those that are willing to question their assumptions with the intent of upgrading their paradigm.

For her it was perfect as she was never scared to dive in and, truly, was the prime motivator behind why she did what she did as she spent most of her life walking around with a sense of numbness and the highs let her feel the pain and misery within from the life she had lived and wished desperately to examine. On the other hand her friend was like champagne fizz and defined her existence by the alluring bubble that wrapped around her intense emptiness. To her the idea of checking the why beneath her actions felt like being tortured from within as she had found her solution and it worked pretty well. “To obliteration” she said as they downed another drink to chase the latest pill as they were out clubbing.

In that respect tools are tools and we all see our own view. I haven’t seen the girl in question for a moment. She just stopped coming which is actually quite common as people either take what works and freestyle on their own once they know the ropes or have fixed their problem and are now off living the life they knew was possible. The third option is they get pulled back in to their old habits and behaviors which their friends or family felt were under threat as a lot of people interpret this change as quite unwelcome then said “This isn’t who you are. Whats all this crap inside your head? Befriend your Soul? What rubbish. Come on, lets go for another drink and forget all about this”.

Till we meet again