The Friend

“No matter what people call you, you are just who you are. Keep to this truth. You must ask yourself how is it you want to live your life. We live and we die, this is the truth that we can only face alone. No one can help us. So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?” 

• Shams-e-Tabrizi

Shams set out a long time ago to find a friend. He was different from the other dervishes: A quicksilver temperament, but a heart of gold. From a young age he saw angels and talked to God, believing that other peoples’ lives would be the same. A few years later he realized that this was not so and vowed to walk his path in love. In later life he prayed so fervently to God to send him a spiritual friend that he was having dreams about him a year before he met Rumi. When they finally met, they knew that fate had finally brought them together. They would experience great shifts in their hearts, but also endure pain and suffering. There is a price to pay.
In Sufism the spiritual friend is one of the most important components of the path. Without the spiritual friend one can get lost in the myriads of alleyways that present itself. However, it can be said that the spiritual friend can present themselves in a myriad of faces all over the globe. The friend can show up in a lover, a parent, a husband, a lady at a supermarket, at the local market, at a café, at the art gallery or at a local reading. Who knows where they are hiding? They are everywhere- they are mouth pieces of divine consciousness and we are the ones that have to listen.
We should realize that no matter what, we have to remain centered, never loose our sense of gravity. We have to get to know ourselves, not wondering what happened in the past but what we are encountering right now. Often we have to overcome heavy burdens, such as financial obstacles, health problems, issues with work or friends and family. They are tests on a highway that leads us into a more settled and creative way of living. A step toward a different future, a timeline that only we create and not others. We have to become so aware that only love is the narrative that will sing from our hearts, the narrative that we would like to speak and emanate wherever we may go. It is a love for humanity, for nature, and for the creatures that crawl upon the earth that holds us up. Nothing less and nothing more. We are no other than we want to be. We always have a choice: Choose love or hate.
There exist no other choices in life that cannot be linked to that. Only love or hate. Each day you have to re-evaluate which road to take. Love or hate?
But you have to know yourself for this completely and surrender to the process until nothing is left but love.

You will know that you found your spiritual friend long before they show up. You will dream of them for a whole year. They will move in and out of your dreams for a precise year. They will not show their face for many months, maybe even the entire year. But when the time is right they will finally show their face in a dream and then make themselves known in real life. This is how the Universe works. There is no other way. But you have to be sincere in your undertaking. There is no going back on it afterwards, no second thoughts. Do not listen to the workings of the mind that is always like a little bird changing its direction. You have to become as stern as a tree and hold onto love. For only this will carry you over to your miracle of the spiritual friend.

One day they will stand right in front of you and you will know.

Have you found your spiritual friend yet?

Vanessa