Anam Cara

Now, he took his chief disciple and they set out for the woods, but he had forgotten just where the exact place was, though he did remember how to light the fire. So he said, “Oh, God, I don’t know where the place is, but you are everywhere, so let me light the fire here. Your people need you, calamity threatens. Please, help.” And then after the prayer he turned to his disciple and said, “It is all right now.”

And when they returned to the town, they were greeted with the joyful news that the threat had been removed. Well, then, that disciple became the master in the next generation, and once again, a catastrophe was imminent.

This time he went out with his disciple. He no longer knew the place, and he had forgotten how to make the fire, but he still knew the prayer and he said, “God, I don’t know this place very well, but you are everywhere. I don’t know how to make the fire, but all the elements are in your hands. Your people need you. We ask your help.” Then he turned to his disciple and said, “Now it is all right. We may go back.”

They went back and everything indeed was all right. The story concludes by stating that today, we don’t know the place; we no longer know how to make the fire; we don’t even know how to pray. So all we can do is to tell the story, and to hope that somehow, the telling of the story itself will help us in this hour of need.

Psychology and Self-Absence: Talking Ourselves Out

Our culture is fragmented; the old shelters are gone and the sever of the cold breeze of isolation is everywhere. This has made our desire for belonging all the more intense. We search continually for connection. Today many people find this in therapy and psychology. If you find a wise guide to lead you on the inner quest, you are a fortunate person. It is dangerous to open your self to another in such a total way. Opening your soul to an unworthy guide can have negative consequences. When you really tell how and who you are, you offer your listener a key to the temple of your life. You allow that person a huge voice in your conversation with yourself. Listening is such an underrated activity. In fact it is hugely subversive. Because when we listen deeply, we take in the voice of the other. The inner world is so tender and personal, and the voices that really enter assume great power.

I like to think of psychology as soul-searching: you search your soul and you also search for your soul; and, of course, on the quest your soul is searching with you. The journey has diverse paths, and different voices surface suggesting a real adventure and the possibility of awakening and healing. Good soul-searching refines and heals your presence. It helps you to belong more honestly to yourself. If you are driven by needs and inner forces of which you are unaware, then your behaviour and actions are not free; you only partly belong to yourself. To bring these subtle forces into the light helps change their negative control over you.

The magic of psychology is how powerfully it underlines the effect that awareness can have. When you come to know yourself, you come home to yourself and your life flows more naturally. As you become more integrated, your integrity deepens. You inhabit the heart of your life; you become the real subject of your life rather than its target or victim.

When the wall came down in Germany I remember meeting a friend who had been in Berlin that week. She said, “Man erlebt sich als reines Subjekt,” i.e., in Berlin in those days “You experience yourself as pure subject.” This was a lovely statement of the immense personal power of feeling, thinking, and seeing that is in each of us. When the run of life and possibility is with you, you feel as if you are riding a wave of energy. Unfortunately, much of the time we are not gathered in the grace of such inner fluency. More often than not we are split asunder within, one part fighting against the other. To learn the art of being the subject of your own life and experience enlarges your spirit.

It would be great as we grow older to become more free and fluent. You often see old people who have grown into this grace. Though their bodies are old, their presence is as majestic and swift as a ballet dancer. They have somehow entered the mystery of true unity. They are at one with themselves. It is interesting to hyphenate the word “atonement,” the religious ideal, as at-one-ment. This unity is the heart of all belonging; without this hidden unity of everything, no belonging would be possible. The unity is also the secret. Elsewhere that now holds the presence of those who have vanished from our lives; it ensures that absence is not vacancy.