Friendship & Consciousness

Trevor HendyThoughtsLeave a Comment

My Viewpoints are just that…. viewpoints.

I have arrived at them from working with lots of people and organisations and falling over plenty of times myself. I am often writing about one way of looking at things and haven’t gone into the validity of any opposing or differing viewpoints. I share them here in my blog for anyone who is interested in looking at things from at least one other angle. That’s all it is – another angle. If it works for you and helps you to loosen up a little or allows a little food for thought, then that is fantastic. Its’ not usually the viewpoints that we have that screw us up, normally the fact that we are too fixed on one or two.

This week – something that really hit home for me a couple of days ago and made a huge difference to my week.

Friendship & Consciousness

For most people life is flat out. We are living in a whole (or hole), mostly, dysfunctional system where so many things have to fall into place at one magical time for us to feel like we have reached any point of completion or accomplishment. The whole intricate fabric of family, work, community and personal commitments can bring with it so many challenges, setbacks and knock downs, big and small, that often getting up and going again, being brave for 5 more minutes, gets harder and harder.

So, when it all adds up and becomes just too much, the one thing we don’t really want or need from someone close to us is to be told that we “Haven’t done enough yet” or we “Could have done it better” or perhaps anything other than “Well done for having a big go”. Sure, if you are in a good head space you can take ‘feedback’ from anyone but with so much piling up and so many pressures for so many people, it seems to be getting harder and harder.

So, this is where it gets tricky, because the feedback we are getting has some substance and can often be quite helpful if we can let it in, but the build up of life and its shortfalls leaves us in a space where we can’t let it in.

So, in short, we have a chance in every moment to raise our consciousness (get the lesson) and work out where we are going or where we went wrong, but we are usually so full that we can’t quite let it in. Then we go on doing the same things, creating the same frustrations and are never quite able to get the lesson. The dysfunctional cycle continues.

This is where friendship comes in. I am not just talking about the old throw away “This is my friend…” type friendship. Yes, they are wonderful and they do make the world go around but I am talking about a little bit more than that. I am talking about real friendship.

It is more of a description of an act of kindness than a particular category of friends. Yes, our friends are capable of it and we are capable of it for them, but also strangers are capable of giving it to you and you are capable of give to a stranger.

I am talking about real friendship. An authentic desire to be a friend for the other person. Maybe they want to get something off their chest or just have a huge whinge or cry, to have someone stand silently by their side and say nothing. It is in the feeling, not the words. It comes from the intention, not the action. It is the act of friendship.

If you think about your own life you will remember those instances I am talking about and they will bring a feeling back to you instantly. Just think back to those previous acts of kindness, acts of friendship and you will know what I mean. The other person wants nothing in return and their interest is not in you “getting your act together”, it is in you – full stop. The feeling is that if absolutely nothing changed for the better, or even if things got worse, they would still be there, loving you know matter what.

When you do this for someone else you are giving them almost everything they have dreamt of. They are the center of someone’s universe for a few moments. Once you receive it, remember it or demonstrate it, you will realise that life is pretty flat and lifeless without it. Given that it is a rarely experienced phenomenon these days, it does make you realise why life has felt flat and lifeless so often.

We need to, or at least, can, demonstrate it way more often.

When someone understands what it is that isn’t working for them, they can instantly change for the better, but it is them that has to understand – not you. So maybe it is our job to grant the understanding to the other and hold strong until the penny drops. In my experience, when people are granted a little bit of understanding through a true friendship, they are more than capable of magic.

Try and change someone and you may just be stopping them. Love them anyway and you may just be setting them free.

So, given that the world and all of us in it would benefit from some magic and is in fact in need of a big lift in consciousness – remembering that being under pressure and being defensive slows down that consciousness process – perhaps real friendship is the only way to truly change the world. One friendship at a time.

Remember, bring it into now and never underestimate the power of who you are!

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