I LOVE this photo above. It was taken last year on retreat. Two new friends sitting silently together in the freshness of the early morning, ready for Yoga pracitce.

To be able to sit closely with a friend like this, in silent communion, is a precious and rare thing, isn’t it? And when it is a new friend, I feel it says even more about the value of shared time in sadhana (spiritual practice)? Would you agree?

For most of my adult life,  before I moved to Stratford Upon Avon, I found myself in spiritual community. It began in Japan where I lived after University, and continued through my years in London and also throughout my stays in ashrams in India and Bahamas. It has been such a blessing, enabling deep and supportive connection, like spiritual family.

Having come to know relatively early on in life, the blessings of spiritual community, I have been motivated in my teaching to always endeavour to include structures which encourage spiritual friendship and community amongst my workshop and retreat participants.

For me, it is as essential a part of my work as any other. It is spiritual community that holds us up, supporting us to live in alignment with the Yoga teachings and to trust ourselves on our path which can otherwise be a lonely one to walk. Lonely because probably not many in our social and familial circle will have the inclination to take an honest look inside and journey with you on the path.

Walking the path alone, we can easily doubt ourselves, and even lose momentum and turn away from our practices, forgetting the value of our inner calling and prioritising instead the expectations and values of others.

The spiritual path because of this can feel like a blessing and a curse for our lives, Yet, once started there is in truth no turning back. And it can be arduous to keep going. There are forces that will pull us down and quite literally attack us, as we move more toward our own light. You might have experienced it. Your evolution, your growing light and radiance will become a brighter and brighter mirror for others to look at themselves too. And they may not want to look. They may get angry with you and blame and judge and mock, anything to make you smaller so that you cannot be the presence that calls them out of their comfort zone. It can be just too painful for a person to look and make the changes their own soul cals them too sometimes:  and so they will hit out, and hurt, and push you away with all their might rather than feel and look at that which they have invested so much in (consciously or unconsciously) hiding from for so long.

On the path therefore, the refuge of spiritual community is invaluable. It is an almost essential part of our journe,y to have friends who can mirror back to us that “Yes, I am doing OK, I “am” OK, I am on track”, and who will have the understanding and caring to point us back on track when we have gone astray.

Our spiritual friends understand our inner calling and can reaffirm to us our innate goodness, despite our transgressions. They know our essential goodness because the part of us that calls us forward to evolve and become the best version of ourselves that we can be, is also alive within them, calling them forward too. They know it in you because they have touched that part in themselves together with you, in shared spiritual practice.

What I love about spiritual community and spiritual friends is that they will lovingly hold you/me to account. They know we want to evolve and grow, and that we are on the path of Truth and so they will hold space for us, supporting that. For example,  when you fall as the inner demons such as self-sabotaging behaviours, rise inside us (we all have them, right?!), the spiritual friend can be present without condemnation and yet also without excusing or condoning: a loving presence who holds space for us to see for ourselves.

You might say any good friend will do this and that is right..yes? Yet we all know that friendships like this can take years to develop, whereas when we’ve shared and experienced together the deeper parts of ourselves in retreats and other transformational events, we have a common frame of reference. We know that what unites us is the search for the Truth about who we are and our place in the world, and that being a friend means supporting that search in each other.

Years ago when I was living in London, someone in our community gave me a cassette tape! Ha ha…yes, it was that long ago! It was a tape about Frederik Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra” by the mystic Osho, and it was on the subject of the friend. I want to share a transcription of some of this discourse with you. I find it so potent and it has stayed with me all these years.

“Of the friend.

Our faith in others, betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love, we only want to leap over envy. And often we attack and make an enemy in order to conceal that we are vulnerable to attack. ……If you want to be a friend, you must also be willing to wage war for him: and to wage war you must be capable of being an enemy. You should honour even the enemy in your friend.  

Can you go near to your friend without going over to him?

In your friend you should possess your best enemy. Your heart should feel closest to him when you oppose him….

He who makes no secret of his anger excites anger in others: that is how much reason you have to fear nakedness. If you were gods, you could be ashamed of your clothes!

You cannot adorn yourself too well for your friend: for you should be to him an arrow and a longing for the superman.

Have you ever watched your friend asleep – to discover what he looked like? Yet your friend’s face is something else besides. It is your own face in a rough and imperfect mirror….

Are you pure air…and bread and medicine to your friend? Many a one cannot deliver himself from his own chains, and yet his is his friend’s deliverer”. Osho, Thus Spake Zarathustra

There is so much in that, text isn’t there?

I love the line..

 “Can you be with your friend without going over to him?”

Can you be with your friend, can you be a presence for him or her without compromising your own Truth (or theirs)? This is surely true and valuable friendship. How often we “go over” to our friend, agreeing with his/her complaints, judgements, and criticisms to make the friend feel better, instead of holding a space so that the friend sees him/herself and in that seeing becomes a better friend to themselves and the world. This for me, is the value of spiritual, or perhaps we can just say, “true” friendship. What do you think?

Then the line…

“You should be to him an arrow and a longing for the superman.”

Wow. We should be the one who nurtures the deepest longing for realisation of their best Self in our friend.

By the way, Satyam or Truth is one of the five principles or “yamas” that we are invited to cultivate as Yoga practitioners.

I was always taught that if something we say hurts the other, it is not Satyam. Satyam does not mean “speaking our truth” regardless of the consequences. Our truth is our truth, not THE truth, right? Perhaps instead as friends who have our friend’s deepest and best interests at heart, we can be a container within which our friend is supported to uncover and live by his/her own deepest Truth and longing. Let us be the one who encourages our friend to honour their own Truth. That is surely one of the best ways we can show up for our friend, as according to the Yoga teachings, the deepest longing in all of us, conscious our unconscious, is to re-member our True Nature, our Essential Self, our Divine Self.

For me this is the highest gift of spiritual community or sangha, and the highest privilege for me as a spiritual friend. It is the kind of community I aspire to nurture out of my retreats and workshops: so that long after the retreat is ended, the participants can be that most precious container for each other’s awakening.

Before I finish this piece,  I must add a word of caution.  If you are joining established spiritual community anywhere, please keep your antenna on alert. We open the deepest, most loving parts of ourselves up in spiritual community and so become very vulnerable to hurt and abuse. We all long for that sense of deep belonging and connection and when we find it, we can rush into it with our guard down. Established spiritual communities, unfortunately can be as abusive and hurtful as anything we have seen in established religions. I have seen people really hurt, let down and abandoned and so please enjoy and enter and draw sustenance from the community you may be drawn to but resolve to always trust your own Inner Teacher above all else.

My counsel would be, (having been around the block a few times in this regard!)….

1. Find your spiritual friends, people who “get” you and share your deepest wish for yourself in this life, perhaps outside of established community (even if you are all connected by that community).
2. Hold yourself to the pure teachings of the Yoga scriptures or your own spiritual tradition above all else.
3. Let your community of friends be the ones who inspire you and support you to live by and find guidance in the teachings.
4. Keep to continuous practice and honouring of the teachings, to keep the vibration of the connections high, and thereby keep your capacity to inspire and motivate each other on the path strong….and to keep the connections loving, valuable and enjoyable.

On that final point I am reminded of a little first-hand experience. About fifteen years ago, I immersed in a deep transformational process with around 50 other people. We were put into smaller sub-groups for a week. And in my small group we became so close and in love with each other, as if we had found the BEST friends ever.

In fact, we fell so in love with each other that we all headed to an ashram where we knew we would be reunited in India. We kept in touch by Skype and emails, in the meantime overjoyed by our connections.

 I think I was one of the last to arrive at the ashram in India. And when I did, guess what?  Ha ha…it had all fallen apart already. The  spell was broken and there were the same old squabbles and hurts we find everywhere. Jeez! Seriously?! What had happened?

Well, perhaps, lack of sadhana (practice) had happened? Those old tendencies can come back at any time with destructive force. Even amongst spiritual friends and community, like any other kind of community, the positive ties that bind us need nurturing, and that nurturing is dedicated practice and remembrance of that which has brought you together. In this way the connections can become even more joyful, and remain a certain container within which you can evolve together.

I hope this blog helps you.

And  if you feel a longing for meaningful, spiritual connection then there are many reputable teachers creating online community these days. Maybe listen to their podcasts, find the ones you really like and then check to see if they have community groups.  And I am sure you can seek teachers out in your own areas, leading community groups that you can join in person, such as meditation groups or women’s circles.

And if you live nearby, please join us. We’d love you to bring your unique qualities to enrich our small community and let us add something to your life in return. We gather for workshops, retreats, sharing circles and more and you are always welcome.

CHECK MY CALENDAR OF EVENTS to join us any time.