Friendship can be likened to a harvesting process. You plant a seed, nurture it with love, kindness, compassion, tender-ness, acceptance, empathy and support and it opens up into a full bloom flower of beauty and magnificence.
True friendship begins at home or in the garden of your own consciousness and the thoughts you allow to inhabit the household of yourself. As it has been said many times, "In order to have a friend, you first need to be a friend."
"Be a friend!" What does that mean? How do you be a friend and to what are you being a friend?
As I've learned from my experiences, there are several different kinds of friendship: casual relationships, companion relationships and ultimate relationships.
In search for a meaning in each category, I believe each one of us has an individual idea or concept that is applicable and practiced in our own life. However, for me there is a common core connection and thread that is found in any friendship relationship.
It all begins with self honesty and developing a healthy relationship with One Self . . . "to do unto others as you would have done unto you." A love and respect for one another's Self.
The "how" that makes any relationship a loving and cherished friendship is honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness.
Self honesty is a discovery step and requires taking the necessary action of a personal inventory and searching our heart for the motive behind our attitudes, actions, responses and behavior. Open-mindedness is a flexibility of mind to be able to perceive, understand and accept the many choices and options that are available to each of us in our communication with one another. And a vital ingredient of friendship is to really learn how to listen so we may truly listen to learn what the needs of our friends may be. It is when we've developed the capacity to listen to learn what the feelings are behind the words being spoken that we can be more responsive and less reactive. We are then able to commit to and support the friendship. Likewise, quality friendship is founded on the mutual ability of each participant to bring to the relationship the same considerations, concerns and maturity of purpose.
Willingness plays a big part in the "how" of any success-felt relationship. To be willing denotes a desire to put into action, to take the next step or go the extra mile, or to go beyond seeming appearances. It is the essence, energy and sincere desire of what you choose to invest in creating a friendship of love, peace, harmony, understanding, compassion, acceptance and support.
The root of a lasting friendship has its beginning in awakening spiritually to one's own divinity and the attributes thereof. As truth students and seekers we are all on a journey of spiritual awakening and enlightenment. Though we may be at different levels of awareness on this journey, we each share the common bond of Spirit. Spirit is the rudder of the soul and we are truly all one and connected by this spiritual thread. The Christ in you and the Christ in me . . . the hope and glory. The reconciliation of man to God and to one another.
When we truly acknowledge and accept that God is all there is, expressing in many different forms and at various levels of awareness in creation, we are readily able to transcend any sense of separateness. And in our human-hood we awaken to the realization that when we can accept what another person cannot give us, we embrace what they can give us.
Our own spiritual integrity, dignity and maturity are the tools of awareness that offer us the dynamic life-giving and life-enhancing gifts for creating and developing a quality and lasting friendship whether it be a casual friendship, a companionship friendship or an ultimate friendship.
When we realize and accept that our own thoughts are our best friends or worst enemies, we can enter into a rendezvous within the friendship garden of our own household. And there we cultivate, nourish, care for and support the harvesting of the divine attributes that result in a quality relationship with One Self and assure us of a warm-felt and satisfying friendship with all others. The blessings of life are many. The gift of friendship is one of the most precious gifts we can give ourselves.
The Christ in me salutes the Christ in you.
Rev. Pat Cross is staff minister at the New Thought Science of Mind Center, Tampa, and founding minister and director of the Holiday Science of Mind Center. Holiday, Florida. (813) 934-6730